Death Hurts

River was also a compassionate soul and took Dougal's death hard; at least he was trying to make amends and well, unfortunately the meteor taking him cut short his attempts to mend fences with his daughter. Haruo, however, was not so magnanimous about it. "Oh, come on, honey, the guy was only trying to weasel his way back in because he knew that he would have a roof over his head for the rest of his life. If he had hurt Cait, I would have kicked his teeth in." There were some people and some transgressions for which there was no forgiveness.

You didn't just abandon your daughter and make her life a living hell then expect to waltz back into her life. Just as much, Haruo was skeptical of Caed's intentions too, but of course he was watching him with an eagle eye. But he was more willing to cut Caed some slack because his wife did and wanted her husband to as well. With Dougal, there was no such leeway. In 34 years of marriage, River had never seen her husband angry, but he was now. What Cait was feeling, the both of them would never know. Cait had withdrawn into her room upon word of her father's death...and it appeared that she had the computer on as loud as she possibly could.

"Can you honestly say that it was for Cait's benefit that Dougal came back...or was it because he'd run into a situation where it was either stop his criminal behavior or end up going to jail?" Haruo asked.

River honestly couldn't give Haruo a straight answer with regards to that because she didn't know the answer to that question and she realized that with Dougal's misfortune, they would never know the truth.

One by one, subdued, the other members of the family trickled down to the kitchen table in the morning, grabbing their morning repast in silence.

...and Alanna caught her taxi to CFB Starch.

The atmosphere in the house was subdued for a long while.

There wasn't really much that Haruo would say with regards to the past few days' events and River and Haruo mostly ate their breakfast in silence.

In other Riverview News, the Watcher tortured Quentin Carpenter-Rhodes for skipping school.

Quentin: "STOP IT...QUIT TORTURING ME WITH BEES"
Watcher: "Are you going to go to school? Quentin."
Quentin: "I'll think about it...now will you stop making the bees sting me! AGGGH!!!!"
Watcher: "I'll think about it."

C'est la vie...