184:

Once in the air, albeit a bumpy ride, the lights of the islands far away and unseen, Blaze asked Ramiro what he planned to do, and they struck up a conversation about plans which lulled Tracy and the children, the latter who all eventually fell asleep with the normalcy of it all. Jake and Robyn also drifted off.

Tracy didn't speak at all. About an hour into the flight, Ramiro ran out of things to say, and Blaze had lost interest in the conversation anyway. Tracy's cell phone rang again and she answered it quietly.

"Hello? Yes, this is Tracy. Oh, I'm over the Pacific, about four hours out. Why? What can I do for you, Grace?" she switched a dimmer light on in case Ramiro wanted to sleep, and it seemed like he had been about to fall asleep when he became abruptly alerted to another phone call.

 Again he and Blaze listened attentively to a one-sided conversation that left them confused and annoyed. 

"She is? She is? How early? Oh, yeah, she what? Well, yeah, I want to, absolutely, I planned to if it went this way." She seemed to listen carefully for a few minutes and then said she would be there directly in four hours. "Have Andria meet me there. Om, yeah, wow, I think I might be able to nurse... I'm still producing a little milk, have weaned the twins.... Would you have a lactation consultant on hand as well. Yeah, that would be the best. No, no problem, I'm just making a quicker trip than I expected. Oh, no, it's all fine." She clicked off and smiled and wagged her head from side to side, stretching a bit. "You guys tired, you want to sleep? We still have quite a ways."

Blaze licked his lips. "Tracy, tell me about the last two phone calls. You're too cryptic, and you haven't told anyone what's going on with you. Is this about the funeral?"

She glanced sideways at him and managed a small shrug. "I can't let myself get on an overload, Blaze. There's no one to diffuse me, so I'm simply practicing stress management. It's all good." Her voice was a fake kind of cheery.

"Are you serious?" Ramiro laughed, watching her scrub at her forehead and then the back of her neck. "Those calls sounded important."

"Oh, yes, they were, really important." She checked a blinking light, adjusted the headset, rubbed her forehead rather forcefully and then turned to the two expectant gentlemen. "You want to know? Okay." She wagged her head again, eyed them in the mirror and then lifted a shoulder. "I told you not to come, told you my life outside of production is too crazy for you both, not to mention I don't need help with it. I'm fine, and you will only object to my decisions, so you might as well not hear them."

"Why would you think that, Tracy?" Blaze quipped in irritation.

"In my past experience all guys object to these kinds of decisions, but you really have no need to feel obligated. In fact, I would really prefer to do this stuff alone. I am perfectly capable.... Seriously now... perfectly capable of dealing with it all. This isn't the worst thing that has ever happened to me."

"Losing your adopted mother and brother?"

"I told you, we have been estranged for years. My brothers didn't want my help, just my money and I'll be damned if I'll give them money to support drinking habits whatnot." She added glibly. "No, the other two calls were Lisa, Austin's new wife...." At Blaze's startled look she smiled benignly. "They got married this weekend and had arranged for her sister to take the boys, but the sister bagged out, sick I think, so she asked if I'd take the boys for a couple of weeks, or a month or something so they can honeymoon."

"And you said a sensible no, I've a funeral to attend to, and a brother to console, and my own kids to deal with..." Ramiro prompted, glaring at Blaze for his agreement, but he was shaking his head.

"Of course she didn't, Ramiro, she wouldn't dream of putting her own needs first. Even with people who have abused the right to call her friend in the last little while. What was the other call?"

She actually hesitated before finally sighing, determined to follow through with disclosure. Blaze winced, steadyig himself with an elbow braced against the window frame.

"Grace Shepherd from ABCSC, one of the midwives. One of the girls is having her baby a bit prematurely, and she has decided to give it up for adoption rather than keep it. The child was a product of a form of incest and the memories are too hard to overcome, I told her..."

Ramiro was protesting as he saw where this was going, but Blaze piped up. "That's why you said I would object, because you've been this route before, haven't you?" And he glanced meaningfully at the sleeping six-year-old in the back.

"Um hm." She said cheerfully. "I'm adopting Kylie's baby girl. I'll probably miss the birth, although, with first babies, they come a little slower, I might make it."

"Tracy.... You already have three kids. Three is perfect for you, you can't have another." Blaze said firmly and Tracy gave him a lowered-brow look that he correctly read as annoyed astonishment. "Yes, I am telling you what to do, for your own good, I have to."

Tracy managed to wag her head again, not telling them that it was an effort to relieve a mounting headache. She patted his leg very close to hers. "I assure you, dear friend, I can-- have already made all the proper arrangements, and will be holding my daughter in my arms in about six hours if all goes well. And I won't put her down for anything, even to plan a funeral. Been there, done that."

She was picturing holding Steven just moments after his mother's death, and helping to plan those funeral's. Abruptly the memory almost took her breath away.

She was picturing Megan and Melia flying out an upstairs window just moments before their father's death, and a few days before....

 Well, she hadn't planned their father's funeral, Richard had. She had not really been able that time. Her heart clenched painfully. She released that pent up breath and gave Blaze a sidelong look, ascertaining he was staring moodily out the window.

Her life had taken some really bizarre turns, hadn't it? 

But tonight... she chuckled to herself, traveling back to the states as quickly as possible to attend the birth of a daughter, with two young and very popular actors on the eve of their wildly expensive and very lucrative new film, while planning two funerals and getting ready to babysit Chris, Steven and Kelly... well, she supposed, this takes the cake.

"Want to know something weird?" she said conversationally to the two astonished young men.

"Weirder than what is already going on in your world?" Ramiro asked sarcastically, also annoyed at her behavior, the supposed thought of her planning funerals and adopting a baby in the same breath.

"Well, I was thinking that all the funerals I've planned have been for more than one person. First Casey and Jolie, then Raine and Steven.... Now Ty and Ruth..." her voice caught. She shuddered. "Not really, I guess, I planned Jet's by myself, and he was alone. I planned Geoff's too, pretty much alone, actually, cometo thinkof it,  it was planned by his mom, but I helped and then I planned the memorial for the entire plane full of people who died."

"Your life sucks." Blaze grunted.

"You thought I didn't want you to fly with me because I'm stubborn and prideful and exclusive and that I don't like you, but really, I was trying to save you from being with the menace to society... Me."

Blaze wrapped a hand around her slender neck gently, rubbed his thumb tenderly under her ear and across her cheek. He drew close to her and planted a very light kiss on the corner of her mouth. "Your life sucks more than anyone's I've ever known." He whispered.

Poignant. Unexpected. He withdrew and she felt a queer sense of insecurity. For the first time in the last two hours, he'd made her really acknowledge him. She was caught off guard.

He sat back and closed his eyes and she glanced over at him now in consternation. It was easy to ignore him when he meant nothing to her, and she didn't care what he did, or where he went, and she didn't need him. Well, he didn't mean nothing to her, it was just that her mind was so occupied with other things. But he'd penetrated that wall.

Disgruntled, she flew in silence the rest of the way home.

*****