Confessions to My Past

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Dean asked quietly as he pulled into the street where Josie’s family’s house was.
“Yes.” Josie replied, and he was glad to hear the strength in her voice. “With you, I’m finally ready to close that chapter.”
Dean took her hand, and Josie closed her eyes to fully enjoy the feeling it sent through her body. He parked in the driveway, and Josie felt memories and grief hit her with full force. She pressed Nathaniel a little closer to her body when she got out and looked at the eerily forlorn house.
Dean walked around the car and laid an arm around her waist, kissed the top of her head and murmured: “It’s alright, love.”
Josie nodded, swallowed down the lump in her throat and said: “We need to visit the neighbours first, they have the key. They kindly promised watching out for the house and of keeping the key safe for me.”
“Alright.”
“I should warn you… Remember Mrs Partridge?”
“All too vividly.”
“Well, Mr and Mrs Hudson are worse.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I wish.” Josie replied, but then smiled: “But they’re nice people, and really cared about me and my family when we moved here.”
“Well, then I suppose I can stand through Stepford revived.”
“And remember: It’s Amanda now.”
“I’m starting to believe you have as many aliases as I do.”
“With the only difference being that mine actually sound realistic, Ted Nugent.”
Josie rang the door bell, and almost immediately the door opened, as if someone had waited behind it; which wasn’t that unlikely. Probably Mrs Hudson had seen how the Impala, not exactly an inconspicuous car, had pulled up in the driveway and watched Dean and Josie get out.
“Amanda!” An elderly woman beamed brightly. “It is so good to see you again! How are you?” She looked at Nate, then at Dean. “And look at that, you brought your own little family!” Her face fell the tiniest bit; she was one of the few people who knew Josie’s real age, and seeing her with a baby on her arm…
Josie smiled. “Hello, Mrs Hudson. May I introduce you to my boyfriend Dean? Honey, this is Mrs Hudson.”
A piqued expression crossed the other woman’s face for just two seconds. “Boyfriend?” Then she shook her head and held out her hand to Dean. “Nice to meet you, Dean.”
“Likewise. And thank you for being such a great help to Amanda.” Dean smiled pleasantly, and Josie thought with amusement and pride what a gentleman Dean could be if he put his mind to it. In her experience, Sam was normally the Winchester brother who got girly smiles from elderly women.
Mrs Hudson forgot every scepticism she’d felt upon the unmarried parents before her and smiled at Dean. “Please, it’s my pleasure. Come on in!” She opened the door wider and made a sweeping movement with her arm. “I’m glad to see Amanda have a fine young man as yourself looking out for her now.”
Josie bit her lips to suppress a laugh. Dean’s smile faded for just a second.
Mrs Hudson called up the stairs: “Jack, come down, we have guests!”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m comin’.”
“And what an adorable child you have!” Mrs Hudson beamed when they all sat down in the living room, Dean and Josie on the couch, Mr and Mrs Hudson on an arm chair each.
“This is our son Nathaniel.”
“How old is he?”
“Little over a week.”
“Oh, congratulations, you two.” Mrs Hudson smiled brightly and placed a plate with cookies and a pot of tea before them. “You make just a lovely couple, and surely will be great parents.”
“So, what brings you back to Sandy Springs?” Jack Hudson interrupted his wife’s baby chatter.
“Honey, let those two arrive first, there’ll be plenty of time to answer your questions later.” Mrs Hudson waved her husband off. “Tell me, Amanda, dear, how have you been this past year?”
Dean could almost hear Josie’s mind working on an answer that didn’t reveal too much, didn’t rouse curiosity and would still be satisfying. “Well, the first months have been tough, but now I’m happy.” Her smile was an honest one, and Dean had to suppress the urge to kiss her right then.
“Where do you two live now?”
“Chicago.” Josie quickly lied.
“Really? Well, that’s nice.”
“What do you work, Dean?” Jack asked, and Dean felt as if on formal call with his future parent-in-laws.
“I’m a mechanic.”
“Dean’s job brought us together, too; he saved my life when he discovered a leaking break line at the annual check up of my car.”
Dean grinned inwardly. Josie’s skill of telling the truth without actually telling it was quite amusing.
They spent another twenty minutes talking about trivialities (or as Dean thought of it: inquisitions) before Jack asked once again: “Now that my wife’s curiosity ought to be satisfied, I would like to repeat my former question: What brings you back here after the tragic accident of your parents and sister?”
Dean felt Josie flinch and press her body tighter against his. “I want to sell the house, and for that, I need to clear it.”
“Oh, dearie, we’re sorry that you don’t consider moving back in, but of course we understand that you don’t want to cling to painful memories.”
Jack nodded quietly. “I’ll get you the key.”
“Thank you so much for everything you’ve done, really.”
“No problem, Amanda. Glad we could help.”
They said goodbye to the Hudsons and slowly walked back to the Lindschoten house. “God, I feel as if I’ve just met my future in-laws or something of that sort.” Dean shuddered.
Josie grinned weakly. “Trust me, Dean, my father would have given you hell of a worse time.”
“I really wish I could have experienced that.” Dean kissed Josie’s temple as they stood before the front door.
“I think the fact that you know how to handle weapons might have appeased him a little.” Josie chuckled as she remembered her Dad and how the first meeting with Dean might have gone; her Dad would have never shown that he was relieved, but knowing his daughter’s boyfriend could protect her must have been a comfort to him (plus the fact he didn’t have any visible tattoos or piercings). The fact that he was 12 and a half years older and a ‘mechanic’ would have probably undone that, but Josie knew her parents would have loved Dean. Because he made her happy.
“Speaking of…what was your Dad like?”
Josie turned to Dean in surprise. “My Dad?” She thought for a minute. “He was a lot like you, in a way. Tall, black belt in karate, a child at heart, a rock in the surf of life, loving and loyal to those he cared about, gruff to those that annoyed him…” He had not been like Dean in many ways, too, and was an easier and more stable person to live with than Dean. Her mother might have shaken her head over her daughter’s choice at first, but she would have realized that Josie wasn’t her, despite their similarities, and that she needed a man at her side who was, in more ways than one, more extreme than her father.
“Your Dad was a black belt?”
“Yeah. And he had a rifle hidden under the staircase.”
Dean took a deep breath. On the one hand, he’d have loved to meet Josie’s parents, on the other hand, he felt intimidated by Josie’s Dad without ever having met him.
Josie kissed his cheek. “My parents would have loved you, Dean. Trust me.”
When Josie had eventually opened up the door and they walked into the Lindschoten home, Dean wasn’t so sure about that anymore.
This was what Josie had grown up with; a lifestyle he would never be able to give her, even with the nearly four million dollars they still had in all. This house was writing a story of distant countries visited, other cultures encountered and high hopes of a bright future for the children.
Josie pressed Nate tighter against her, drawing comfort from the tiny body of her son. “I, um, I’ll just take a look around.”
Dean released her, feeling that she needed to handle this first encounter with her past alone.
While Josie was walking upstairs, Dean walked into the kitchen. Maybe, this weekend, he would finally learn something about the people who had raised the love of his life.
His eyes caught a collection of pictures mixed with postcards and other scraps of memories.
There was the one picture he’d been looking for: One with Josie’s family. A tall man with short dark hair, brown eyes and an edged face had an arm around a plump but pretty blonde woman smiling brightly. She had blue-green eyes and was a lot shorter than the girl on the other side of the man – Josie. She was the spitting image of her mother, just that she was taller, slim, had longer hair, a face a little more edged and blue-grey eyes. Dean’s eyes wandered to the other girl, probably somewhere around the age of 13, standing beside her mother. Josie’s sister, Veronica. She looked nothing like her older sister; straight brown hair, brown eyes, pale complexion, a round face and a little chubby, not old enough yet to have proportional, attractive curves.
Dean heard steps behind him and turned around. “You look just like your mother, Josie.”
She smiled. “Yes. Her second name was Josephine, you know.” Josie looked at Nathaniel. “She would have given anything knowing you, Nate. She’d have spoilt you rotten.”
Josie raised her eyes to Dean again. “Let’s get started, the quicker we get this over with, the better.”
“Alright. Which room first?”
“Let’s start upstairs, with my room; it’s relatively empty already.”

*****

“How I wish you were still here.” I whispered as I held a picture of my Mom and me in my hand. Dean had gone downstairs to get the coffee machine going before we’d start on the living room. So far, we’ve finished up my room, the office and the storage room, marking what to take, what to toss and what to sell. “Dad and you would love Dean and Nate…”
“They do.”
I nearly jumped out of my skin at the sudden, familiar deep voice. “Cass!” I cried out, then gave him a one-armed hug as I was still holding Nate in my other. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I was ordered to keep an eye out for Nathaniel.”
“A personal Guardian Angel?”
Cass smiled, against his nature. “Yes. You might say that.”
“So everything’s okay with your angel siblings and God now? You’re back working for Heaven?”
“Despite what I might have believed, I was readily accepted again in Heaven.”
“I think you shouldn’t ever have been kicked out in the first place.” I smiled and hugged him again. “It’s good to have you back, we missed you.” I frowned as his first words came back to me. “What did you mean when you said that my parents…”
Cass looked at me intently before he said: “I visited your parents, Dean’s, too, before I came back to Earth.”
I swallowed hard. “Ah. And?”
“And God granted them to have a look at their children’s lives.”
“Come on, Cass, don’t torture me.”
Castiel smiled at me. “They’re proud of you, Josie. Your mother asked me to tell you that she’d always known you’d find out money isn’t the key to happiness. They are both very happy for you and proud of what you’ve done with your life so far and how you are working it out.”
“Josie, I’ve heard- Cass?!”
“I’ll, er, get some coffee.” I excused myself with that and left those two to talk. A smile played around my lips. Maybe, now that I knew for sure that I had my parents’ blessing, I could fully immerse in my new life and didn’t have to painfully hang on to my old one.
“And when you’re old enough, I’ll take you to see your other home country.” I said to Nate, who was gazing up at me with bright blue eyes that already took on a greenish shade. “We’ll somehow get your Dad to board an airplane.”
“Sweetheart, I don’t think that even you could come up with an argument convincing enough for me to get on a flying metal monster.”
I raised my eyebrows, set down Nate back onto his bed of pillows and blankets, stepped towards Dean, laid my hands around his waist lightly and said quietly: “Really? Not even the prospect of having shady sex in a tiny, confining cubicle to keep your mind off flying?”
Dean didn’t reply, but I could hear his heavy breathing as he probably played that scenario in his head. “Okay.” He finally said with a hoarse voice. “Fine. You found an argument that is quite convincing.”
I smiled and kissed him. “What’d Cass say?”
“That he’s our son’s Guardian Angel or something of that sort, which I consider to come in quite handy.”
I nodded, as there lay undeniable truth in his words; with the hunters community now knowing about Nate and maybe even his destiny, an angel’s protective hand would indeed be helpful.
“He also delivered a message to me… from your dad.”
“What?” I whirled around, nearly spilling my coffee. “My Dad?”
“Yes. He told me to take the best of care of you and his grandson, and ordered me to never let you park my car.” Dean said that last part with a wide grin.
“Yeah, that sounds like my Dad.” I chuckled.
“Something else… He also told me I should keep on showing you the world, like he had shown you and your family.”
I pressed my lips together, closed my eyes and thought of all the marvellous holidays we had spent together, what places we had seen… how addicted I had been and probably still was to discovering new countries.
“That especially sounds like my Dad.” I swallowed down the lump in my throat.
Dean embraced me, stroked my hair and just held me like that for a long time, until I felt strong enough again to continue clearing the house.
After four days, a whole family’s life was cleaned up, sorted into different categories and dispersed. And I could finally start healing.