The Cummings - Cursed Bloodline Series - 18+

3. Heating Up

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Jon
June 14th, 2000
6:48 PM

Hotel Marigold, Manford, Connecticut

   This trip is mostly for Jonny, but it's also so I can check up on Poppy. It was hard to think of anything besides Jonny; it was hard to focus while driving back to the hotel in traffic. Even 5 miles away at my office, I could catch his scent... when I was outside and focusing. 

   My skills took a little time to get used to, but they are rusty since I haven't been around an Omega in a while. My father is the only Omega I know and lives in California.

   Poppy's father, my grandfather, Pops, did what I am doing for the family now. Pops founded an oil rig, and Poppy didn't have to work a day in his life. Technically, I didn't have to work either; I gave most of my inheritance to Joey after graduating college and had a steady job. 

   I wish I had taken a position closer to California, but I was hired right out of college by one of my professors who had a firm here. When I had an overflow of cash, I moved the family to California multiple times, but the opportunity to create my firm presented itself first.

   When Pops died five years ago, I wish Joey or I had stepped up and taken in Poppy. He was the most devastated out of any of us. Poppy and Pops were close, nearly husband and wife, but Pops was a player and couldn't be tied down. Would it be too horrible to say that Poppy deserved better than him? I mean, he is dead, and my grandfather...

   Poppy knew how to take care of himself. He took Grandma when she was dying as he raised Joey and me. He took care of Pops and his extravagant lifestyle. My father gets lonely... I asked him to move in with us at the funeral, but he and Karen didn't get along. He is living in a retirement home now... I hate him living there.

   It is hard to explain Age Span in the Cursed Bloodline. Karen's parents are both dead, and they were in their 90s. They were both healthy but died of old age. From what our two families knew, it was because their blood was watered down from generations of conceiving with normal people. I can see Karen aging like them, but most of my genes are carried on to our children. So I am not scared of them dying too young.

   Pops was 113 when he died, but you couldn't tell his age. You don't know Joey or my age, either. We stopped maturing when we were in our 20s. I still get carded when I go to bars and get jabs from the other lawyers for having a youthful face. 

   Poppy looked like he was in his 30s five years ago, but the grief aged him when Pop died. He is living in that community... he looks like he has aged a decade and doesn't do as many active activities as he used to.

   A forest fire spread into the neighborhood I grew up in. Pops was in his sleep when the fire hit his house. The smoke he inhaled while sleeping made him pass out. Not only did we lose Pops, but we also lost all of Nana's photos and almost a century of images, even the Heirloom Book that Pop kept. 

   I understand why he is so upset; still, Pop died, seeming like he had many years left to live. We don't know much about his parents. I am not even sure if he does. He was raised in an orphanage and hired a PI in the '80s to find his parents. He never told us what he did know.