Into The Woods:
The itch to know had long been there, first born out of a desire to know why many of his cousins weren't allowed to visit the home and then again when his mother relayed to him that much of her family was unknown to her, beyond a few first and second cousins who'd kept in contact. But for most of his life that's all it had been- curiosity.
And then he'd been shot.
In many ways it had been, and still was, a wakeup call, something that led him in a thousand and one directions even as he steadily began to hone his impulses to more productive ends [but not before he'd gotten a custom highland green 1970 Ford Mustang Boss 302 Fastback (he was tempted to add an Irish flag to the roof), the
entire National Geographic catalog going back to 1888,
one beaut of a stallion (he was considering naming
Friday), one of Jimi Hendrix's guitars (he actually planned to learn how to play, honest!), and
completely filled up their personal library with all sorts of tales
after he'd gotten the lumber and
built the cherrywood shelves himself], one of which was to track down and hire a reputable (yet discrete) genealogist to compile a full and complete compendium of the family to at least the fourth generation; regardless of what was found, the plan was to create four copies and have them leatherbound to distribute to the family on his parent's anniversary. Every so often he'd receive regular updates from the man, one Reginald Rhys-Cadawallader III (formerly of Cardiff, now of NYC Queens), yet since Tunisia he hadn't heard much from the man, to the point he'd have forgotten if not for the fact he was paying the man.
So it came completely as a surprise when the man arrived at his door with
an entire office's worth of documents, letting him know that, short of any genetic testing, he had completed his task to the best of his ability.
After one lengthy six hour presentation on the O'Briens and
a fairly strange nap-dream about him following in George and Dave's footsteps after Reginald had left, here he was again looking over his family history, Carrie and Todd a little ways off reading about their own family with Debbie. For the most part, the more recent family history was fairly and uncannily accurate...though he was surprised to see not only confirmation of AmeriGran's adoption but also record of her assumed birth parents [her mother had died shortly after childbirth due to complications, only living long enough to give a set of names and a picture of
the father, whom had died previously] that traced her da to County Donegal. He made note of it and continued on with the maternal line, finding all sorts of things he hadn't previously known, such as one line having been made American by way of Australia, one that
perhaps traced to a Polish crewmember that'd been aboard the May Flower, evidence he might be distant cousins with
Francis P. Duffy, another that had intermarried with a Welsh family that now lived in Galway, and...he'd been second cousins with
Sally Flaherty.
In the weeks that passed, Bruce devoured the information that had been presented to him, in the hopes of knowing what had not yet been shared and to prepare. He loved his family, and to know that there had been members that he had
already failed to protect- He sighed and shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts,
gently strumming the guitar absentmindedly.
He hated this recent spout of feeling real blue, so here he was, about to make a fool of himself with Robin and John in front of Carrie after
one band rehearsal, all in the effort to not think about it.
A/N: This ended up being more stream of consciousness than I intended, since it originally was supposed to end with him gifting the Tome for their anniversary and them start talking more indepth about the family, but I forgot when his parent's is supposed to be, so...yeah. Nothing here was really planned except for the genealogy report, of which I've intentionally left mostly incomplete to give Magoose [and other omakers] the opportunity to play around with it.
