A/N: This took a long time for me to get right. While this is intended to primarily be Lumen's story, it didn't fall into place, until I started doing things from both Dexter's perspective as well as Lumen's. Dexter is obviously a terribly difficult character to write, so I would appreciate any feedback you have on that point. Over all I anticipate the whole story will be about four parts.
Lumen goes back home.
Not immediately. No she delays for weeks. Traipses across the Midwest in a lazy zig-zag that seemingly lacks rhyme or reason.
Buys a good pair of boots and hikes back-country trails in eastern Kentucky.
Goes to visit Graceland and winds up discovering instead she has a taste for bourbon but none for the Blues.
Drives a hundred miles out of her way to get sick on four different slices of pie.
Stays three days in Branson, Missouri.
(She doesn't really have an explanation for that).
Except she does, actually. Only it doesn't hit her until she's standing ankle deep in the headwaters of the Mississippi—what she's doing, what she's been doing for the past few weeks . . .
She's reliving her life, trying to reconstruct Lumen Pierce moment by moment, memory by memory.
It isn't working.
Absently she watches as the water rushes past her, pulled inexorably forward by something (gravity she supposes). It will never be this beautiful again. It will get polluted, get bigger, get faster and harsher until it's unrecognizable—until it's dirty and powerful and dangerous. And inexplicably magnificent.
But it will never be like this again.
Okay. She thinks. Let's go of a breath she didn't realize she was holding. Okay.
00
Two weeks after she leaves, Dexter gets a postcard in the mail—"Hello from the Bluegrass State."
It's blank on the back.
He fingers the postmark and logs in to run a check on the Criminal Activity and Missing Persons reports for the surrounding area with tightness in his chest that is unfamiliar.
(If he could have asked someone they would have called it hope).
00
She goes through five postcards in Kentucky. There are a hundred things she wants to say—Thank you. I'm sorry. I miss you. Wish you were here. Wish I was there—only they all feel cruel, feel like a promise she can't keep, a claim she doesn't have the right to make.
But she keeps writing them anyway, over and over until she finally has to face the fact she can't lie to him, even by omission.
It doesn't stop her from trying all over again when she reaches Memphis.
00
He keeps the postcards (six in all) tucked in the bottom of the trunk next to her knife. Clean and neat and compartmentalized. Right where she belongs.
Only he starts to think about Christine Hill, about Trinity. About her fingerprints on the paper. About guilt by association and how easily everything can unravel.
Dexter burns them in the sink and washes the ashes down the drain.
It's harder than it should be.
Two days later another one shows up in his mailbox—"Greetings from Minneapolis."
00
Lumen goes home because it's what's next.
Because she isn't going to get any better, any less damaged. And she could keep running, could delay a little more, but that's too much like stasis, like being stuck.
Going home at least feels like doing something.
Her mother's at the door before Lumen gets out of the car, before she's even made the decision to get out of the car. She's sitting there at the end of the long drive in the spot she knows from long practice is concealed from the kitchen window, hand still on the ignition key, and she's about three seconds away from pulling back out when suddenly there Margret Pierce is, silhouetted in the doorway, wiping her hands on a kitchen towel, driven there by some sixth sense all mothers seem to possess when it comes to their children.
And the decision is made for her. There's no recognition in her mother's face, nothing to indicate she's pieced together what the strange car sitting at the end of her driveway means, and yet . . . Lumen can't shake the feeling that's she's done this before, with every unfamiliar motor, every rustle of leaves or bark of a dog her mother has stood in that doorway and hoped.
She opens the car door and gets out.
For a moment nothing happens, her mother just stands there rooted, blank, and Lumen can't move either.
Maybe . . . maybe her mother doesn't recognize her, can't recognize her, maybe what she's been through (what she's done) has changed her too much, chipped and carved and hewn at the core of her until she is someone all together different, someone new and separate from the little girl Margret Pierce raised.
Suddenly her mother lets out a strange, strangled sound that's half way between a scream and a sob, and stumbles forward, keeps stumbling until she's running (actually running) towards her across the lawn.
Lumen knows she should meet her halfway, understands the premise of reunion with a kind of intellectual detachment. Like an actor whose read the scene, remembers the blocking but can't connect with the emotion.
She doesn't move, doesn't do anything.
This is wrong. I'm wrong. It flashes through her mind a second too late, and then her mother's arms are wrapped around her, enveloping and suffocating and heart-wrenchingly missed.
And the next thing she knows she's holding on to her mom for dear life, clutching her close and crying, repeating over and over. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Sorry. Sorry."
She keeps saying the words apologizing to everyone and no one—to Owen, to Dexter, to the girl who died in that cabin so that she could live. To this woman holding her, who thinks she's got her daughter back.
"I'm so sorry."
"It's okay. You're home now. Everything will be okay."
Lumen wishes she believed that.
00
Astor doesn't say anything about the postcard that's stuck in the middle of the otherwise blank freezer door, but he can feel her eyes settle on it briefly before flicking away to survey the apartment he is belatedly realizing will be far too small for the four of them.
These were the kinds of details Rita always took care of.
There's an long awkward pause he doesn't know how to fill.
All their excitement about being here, their joy at the prospect of spending the summer together. He can feel it all leaking away, slipping through his fingers and he doesn't have the first clue how to stop it.
Don't leave. He wants to say. I can get this right. He wants to promise. But the words stick in his throat (he's said them before and Lumen left all the same).
Astor just gives him a small determined smile, "It'll be like a sleepover. Won't it Cody?"
It is, of course, nothing like a sleepover (or at least he assumes its not because why would anyone ever want to do that?)
The next day he moves them into his bedroom and takes the couch. Starts trolling Craigslist for belated summer rentals.
Deb rolls her eyes, when he confesses the problem. "I swear to God, Dex. How are you this big of a fuckwad?"
He could tell her, but it would ruin the moment.
Still two days later Quinn stops him in the parking lot and hands him the phone number for a realtor. "Just tell him you're a friend. He'll hook you up."
He's good enough at faking emotion to know his attempt at a smile is more of a grimace, but Quinn determinedly ignores that and grins back like they're best buds.
Dexter doesn't know whether Quinn is still thanking him for Liddy or has moved on to trying to suck up to his girlfriend's brother.
Either way he hopes it stops soon.
When the realtor actually comes through with a two bedroom rental four blocks walk from the beach, and he's forced to have Deb and Quinn over for a barbeque ("Because that's how normal people say thank you, asshole. And make sure you have beer.") it just solidifies his desire to introduce Quinn to his knives.
He never thought he'd miss Lundy.
But the kids love it and Astor surprises him by taking the postcard off of the freezer and adding to the pile of things they're bringing over from the apartment with a small tight smile he can't translate.
"It's okay. Sometimes I still miss my dad."
He doesn't understand. Astor hated Paul. It had always been Cody who forgave too easily, too generously. But this feels important, delicate in a way he's bound to break, and all he says is, "He was your dad."
Astor shrugs. "She's your friend."
Dexter stares down at the postcard and tries to absorb the present tense.
Somewhere out there Lumen is getting up, is drinking coffee, and going for a run. Living the life he gave her.
He wants to take it back.
Instead he asks, "Do you want to invite Olivia to come down for a few days?"
And this time Astor's smile is easy to read.