Jan 18th, 1891 — Art Pettigrew's house, Bartonburg

Ben felt, in a word, adrift. He'd been so preoccupied with solving the riddle of who the woman was who had written to him he had never stopped to consider what he would do once he had the information, and now he was at a loss. Should he tell the mother he knew, or not? Should he try to learn more about the boy, or not? And if he did, was it better to keep writing to the mother or to try and find things out on his own?

Should he try to tell Melody about this? Where would he even start?

In need of guidance and not feeling he had the patience or enough cigarettes to wait for a reply through letter, Ben dressed to go out. He knew the Howlers' practice schedule almost as well as his own work schedule, so knew the odds of finding Art at home were good enough though it was still relatively early in the afternoon. If he was lucky, Dez would be out. If he was unlucky, they'd cross that bridge when they came to it.

He packed a small bag full of alcohol. Because of his job he always had some on hand, and while it was too early for anyone to want to seriously drink, Ben had long since determined it was best not to show up empty- handed when in need of advice.

"Hi," he said in brief greeting when Art answered the door, before launching immediately into, "I've met him."

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   Melody Crouch

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Dezzie was out and he'd spent the day so far mostly playing with Gwenog, who was recently two years old and determined to get into mischief. She was down for a nap now, though, and the nanny could handle her for the rest of the afternoon if Art got into something else.

He was trying to decide what to do with his afternoon when a knock came at the door. Art shuffled over and pulled it open; he hadn't been expecting Ben, but he wasn't surprised either, (this was not unusual behavior for either of them, or had not been at one point in their lives), and stepped aside to let Ben in.

It wasn't that hard to guess: "The baby?" he asked, eyebrows popping up in surprise.

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"The baby," Ben confirmed, moving inside. He set his bag down on the nearest table, where the distinctive clink of glass bottles made it quite obvious what was inside, but he didn't move to open it. Instead, he paced, one hand rising to run nervously through his hair.

"Only he's not really a baby. One and a half. I met him last month. I just figured it out," he continued. "I didn't — she didn't tell me, so she probably doesn't know I know. But — shit," he said emphatically, this one word a stand-in for whole monologues of feeling he could not presently articulate.

  

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One and a half; Art's first disconnected thought was that the boy was not much younger than Gwenog. They would be in the same year at Hogwarts, even. His second thought was that a bastard child with an identity Ben realized was much more real than a hypothetical, so he could not just think about how Gwenog and Ben's son would probably know one another, one day. He should actually try to be supportive and useful.

"Shit," Art echoed, "You met him? And her?" He gestured for Ben to open the bag; it looked like Ben needed something to calm his nerves, or to steel them.

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"Him and her," Ben confirmed before taking Art's cue and moving to open the bag. He removed several tall bottles of alcohol from it and stood them up along the sideboard in the hallway as though on display. They were certainly not going to run out anytime soon, unless one of them got alcohol poisoning. Ben hadn't really been paying attention when he'd packed the bag; he'd just absently grabbed a wide variety, and because of his job there was no shortage of available bottles near at hand.

"I can't believe it took me this long to figure it out," he continued. "I knew she was acting weird, and I remembered sleeping with her. I never thought the kid might be — but I should have pieced it together when I got her first letter." He knew why he hadn't, though; he'd had some much more recent and more pressing developments with Melody on the brain.

"During the Christmas festival in Hogsmeade. That seems like a year ago, now. So much has happened," he said, without elaborating. He took a bottle and opened it, then gestured for Art to choose one as well. He didn't know whether it was a full-bottle-to-yourself kind of day, but he certainly couldn't be assed to stop and find glasses.

  

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Arthur wanted to know who the boy was, but it seemed like an almost-perverse question to ask outright - he ought to wait, and if he was going to find out then he was going to find out. He grabbed a bottle from the table and unscrewed the top, taking a dragging sip while he mulled over everything Ben said.

"I mean, it's not like you expected it," Art said, "What's happened since then? Do you - did you ever figure out what the mother wants?" Did she actually want anything, or did she just want Ben to know? When Art thought about it - well, it made sense to want to tell him. If Art was in her shoes, he would want the father to know, too.

He gestured for them to go into the sitting room; they might as well sit.

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Ben would have avoided the question of what had happened since; except when asking for Art's advice, he tried to spare him any information pertaining to his relationship with Melody. The less Art knew about it, the better, because Art knew him better than anyone and if anyone was going to figure them out, it was him. In the light of this new development with his son, however, the potential divorce was a very pertinent bit of information. It might become relevant pretty soon, if Melody found out about this.

"It was — nothing related to this. Melody stuff," he said vaguely. He moved to the sitting room and essentially collapsed onto the nearest sofa. "I don't know whether she wants anything. She hasn't said anything. But — now I know, and I feel like... like I should do something." He shifted on the sofa, restless, and took a sip off the bottle. "But I don't know what. What do people do when they find out they have a kid?"

  

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"Try to get to know them, I think," Art said, dropping into an armchair across from Ben. He took another sip of liquor. The thing was, he couldn't imagine not knowing Gwenog - could not imagine operating in a world where he knew that she existed but did not get to spend time with her.

But maybe Ben was built different.

"Do you want to know him? If you can."

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"Yeah," Ben said, a bit hoarsely. He'd struggled with it after the first letter; he'd tried to force himself not to feel attached in case this was a trick, or blackmail, or in case he otherwise needed to distance himself from the situation. That was why he'd written Art the sort of letters he had — he supposed he'd been looking for someone to tell him it was alright to be feeling sentimental. The details that the mother had shared with him made his heart soar and ache all at the same time. He wanted to know more, but also felt every new line he read would hurt him. He did want to see the boy, desperately, but he wasn't sure if that would ever be possible.

"But that's — she's married now," he said, looking down at the neck of the bottle and rubbing his thumb over the rim of the opening. "And she doesn't know I know. So I'm sure she wouldn't want me to... and then there's Melody," he concluded, with a heavy sigh.

  

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"I think that if she wrote you letters she - might be willing to give you something. Some time," Art said, because he could not really imagine her saying no if she had gone to all this trouble to let Ben know that the boy existed. "Or information. Or something." It had to be unfair to hold a child hostage. Never mind her husband, really - husbands didn't notice things all the time.

Right, he ought to try to remember Melody's feelings to at least some extent. "Does Melody know about him?" Art asked.

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   Reuben Crouch

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It was an intriguing possibility, but even if he managed to get the mother on the same page and arrange some sort of visit schedule or periodic updates, it would still be complicated to keep it from Melody. He had no thought at all of telling her, now or ever; their relationship was too fragile to withstand such a blow, even if, as Art had pointed out, he'd slept with her long before Ben had any formal commitment to Melody.

"No," he said, taking a large swig. "And I can't tell her. She'd lose her mind. She's not... Well. She's not a very trusting person by nature," he said carefully. "She'd think there was something going on." She'd want a divorce.

  

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For the first time, Art could sort of - kind of - see where Melody would be coming from. "Oh," Art said, let it hang there, "But -- I know she wouldn't like it, at all. But he is your son."

He couldn't imagine not knowing Gwenog at all. It was unfair to ask that if someone, even if Melody's very existence was the only way it was asked.

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Ben let out a heavy sigh. "Yeah," he replied, though it was unclear which part of the statement he was agreeing with. This was an intractable problem, Ben thought; if he told Melody, he was going to crush her, but if he didn't tell her he would have to keep it a secret, and sooner or later she would know. She caught on to things like this. Especially if he was going out for regular meetings he wasn't telling her about or inviting her to, or receiving and saving letters from a woman she didn't know. She'd catch on that something was going on, and she'd probably assume it was an affair.

"We almost got a divorce," he said suddenly. He shouldn't have told Art, hadn't been planning on telling him, but he couldn't try and have this conversation while keeping it to himself. Art couldn't possibly understand the stakes without that key piece of knowledge. He couldn't know how fragile they were unless Ben said it explicitly. And now he'd said it. Now it was out there, for better or for worse. He couldn't unsay it.

He took a drink. After a beat, he continued, "We had an argument before Christmas, and she brought it up. We put off talking about it until the holidays were over. We decided not to. But — if I drop this on her —"

  

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Arthur choked on his drink when Ben mentioned divorce, and swallowed the alcohol awkwardly. His face was red. Divorce? They'd talked about it? Art was pretty sure he didn't even know anyone who had gotten divorced.

"Isn't it -" Art wasn't sure how to articulate this. He took another sip from the bottle. "Really difficult? To get a divorce?" He hadn't realized that things were this bad; divorces were not granted or pursued or even discussed lightly.

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"I don't know," Ben said sullenly, his eyes on his bottle. "We didn't really get that far." Any time they tried to think about the realities of it, the idea broke down, because of course they couldn't. Melody had been disowned, so she didn't have anywhere to go. She would be even more ruined than divorced women usually were, and Ben couldn't do that to her (or let her do that to herself). The logistics of the process itself were beyond him, too. He'd only ever seriously considered annulment, during the few hours after they'd married when he thought she might still have a chance to marry the American instead. Divorce had never really been a serious consideration.

It was, however, a consistent one. Which meant it was at least a little serious, wasn't it?

He took another drink. He should stop talking about this, but — now that he'd started — well, it wasn't going to do any more damage to say a little more, was it? He looked down at the bottle and swirled it in a loose circle, watching the way the alcohol swished. "It's not the first time it's come up," he admitted.

  

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"I didn't know things were that bad," Art said. He had thought things were a little bad - Ben said cagey sad things about Melody, and Melody had been so odd when he'd seen her in December. But there was a journey from 'things are a little bad' to 'we are trying to get a divorce,' especially if it had come up more than once.

"If you need out," Art said, "I'm there for you, you know. No matter what."

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