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────018, the curse of crain.
"I'M SORRY. YOU'RE STAYING WHERE?"
The Wreck is an idly thrumming hub of both locals and tourists by the time Cleo arrives later in the morning with JJ by her side, most guests lounged outside on the quaint patio as buzzing chatter overlaps the faint sound of music playing from the radio on the counter. Truthfully, neither Cleo nor JJ had any inkling as to where the day would take them after breakfast with Lorelei, a pleasantly tranquil hour spent at the Blue Shell Cottage's kitchen table with the three of them as JJ entertained the others with humorous anecdotes of anything and everything as a charmed Lorelei watched on and a giddy Cleo giggled to herself. But as the cell towers only recently started working again after Hurricane Agatha's heralding, JJ had gotten a text from Pope asking to meet with everyone at the Carrera establishment in the anticipatory wake of reuniting with John B, risen from apparent death as normal as he had been the day prior.
It's only after Cleo and JJ pick up Pope on their way over (with JJ driving Cleo's Jeep, if only because he swore he always loved to drive that thing━━though Cleo sometimes wondered if it was simply because the Jeep had adamantly been Kellan Bennett's when the family was still in Kildare, and Kellan never let anyone touch the vehicle being that it was one of his most prized possessions, though that never really did stop JJ insisting he and Cleo sneak the car out anyway on late night drives around the town when neither or could sleep and was, thus, still some sort of act of liberation and defiance even despite JJ and Kellan's strained acquaintance) and finally see John B in the living flesh, does the Routledge boy tell them the shocking events of his morning.
Because while, yes, John B was still currently nursing a delicate concussion and a fractured wrist now bound in a heavy cast, he relayed the truth that Ward Cameron, after having learned of the night before and apparently everything else from Sarah, had found him in his hospital bed that morning and declared that he would like to legally adopt John B if only to prevent DCS from continuing their chase after him. And John B, so startled and taken aback by the gracious suggestion and with a head perhaps still not quite thinking straight, obliged at once. So, when he had been released from the hospital, he had promptly been taken into Ward's custody and was apparently now living at the Cameron's grandiose estate while the adoption papers became finalized.
And that was where it left Cleo and her friends, gawking in disbelief at the boy as he retales all this newfound information in an equally numbing manner, leaning against the counter of the Wreck and blankly examining a pepper shaker. Cleo was sat at one of the tables closest to the counter with Pope, with JJ standing just next to it and hovering over the surface where the plat map of Tanneyhill was now splayed out, John B at least having the inkling to remember to bring it after Sarah had given it to him the night prior before Topper shoved him off the Hawk's Nest. Kiara is there too, in the midst of a shift as she delegates with customers who've only just walked in to serve them their drinks, and now doing the same with her friends (on the house, naturally), though she was clearly not in the least bit amused to hear John B's tale, quivering with impudence over the boy's sheer audacity. Cleo has just spoken, voice trailing off in a candid stupor.
