Chapter Twelve
Afterward, Denny lay quietly for a long while, her head on Jim's shoulder, her arm thrown loosely around his waist. His fingers smoothed her hair in long, lazy, soothing strokes. She sighed, her eyes half-closed; it was always so tempting to fall asleep here, all safe and warm and loved, so tempting to think of waking beside him.
She sighed again, resigned. She stirred and lifted her head, pausing to drop a kiss on that warm shoulder, and slowly sat up. As she swung her legs over the side of the bed, she felt Jim's hand on her arm.
"Stay," he said softly.
She didn't answer, but she waited. The mattress shifted beneath her as he rolled toward her. He slipped his arm around her waist.
"It's after midnight already," she whispered.
"Just a little while, Den. ... Please."
She had wondered a hundred times whether his simple presence might chase her demons away, whether she might look back some day, years from now, and mark that first night she'd been brave enough to stay as the beginning of the time she no longer needed to fear where or how she might wake to find herself some morning.
She turned to look over her shoulder, and found him propped on one elbow, watching her steadily. "Just a little while," she said, and he sat up, and heaped the pillows against the headboard, and leaned back against them and reached for her. She settled in against him and dared to half-close her eyes.
"You never stay, Den. You know I wish you would," he murmured against her hair. "By this time, you should know you're welcome."
She nuzzled closer against his chest in lieu of answering. The hand that rested upon her shoulder picked up that slow, soothing stroke again.
"Remember back when we were in high school?" he asked, a few minutes later.
She nodded. "Yeah." Her voice was barely a whisper.
"You know, Denny... when you went away to college, I told myself I'd get over you, that we'd both find somebody else. Once or twice, I thought I had." He bent his head and pressed his lips to her temple.
"Then they told me you were coming back. The minute I saw you I knew I hadn't gotten over you. Now I know I never will."
She felt the sweet drowsiness creeping over her, and let her eyes slip the rest of the way shut. Her limbs felt so heavy; in only a few more minutes it would be impossible to move. Surely she could give in; surely she was safe here...
She was almost gone when Jim's voice found her ears again. "Denny... baby?"
She drew a deep breath, stirring. "Mmm?"
"Den, we..." His voice was soft, almost tentative. "We could get married."
Her eyelids fluttered open and she was suddenly, utterly awake again.
There was so much, too much, that she had never dared to tell him. He meant too much to her. The risk had always seemed too great. How could she tell him what had really driven her back to this place? How could she describe the great missing chunk of her life, the childhood that had vanished? When Jim reminisced sometimes about how he'd tipped over her dollhouse and made her cry on the first day of kindergarten, she always smiled as if she remembered it, too, but it was gone, like everything else that had happened before the morning she'd found herself standing at the edge of a sunny forest glade in the July just before her seventh birthday.
"There are," she whispered, "... there are things... you don't know."
"You can tell me," he murmured.
Jim waited, silent, but even over the din of her own racing heart she could feel how his had quickened its pace beneath her ear. She owed him this. She owed him more than she could ever give him, really, but this was a start. Start small, Dr. DeMontreaux had said. The door was open. She had to step through it.
"You know how, on Tuesdays -- I always leave early. I go and... " She took a shuddering breath. "I see a doctor."
Jim's arm tightened around her. "You're not -- baby, are you sick?" he said, and she knew he was thinking of the cancer that had taken her aunt and her father, spreading by inexorable, inoperable degrees from their sinuses into their brains.
"No," she answered quickly, "no, no. It's not that. It's... she's a psychiatrist. I talk to her about... Jim, do you remember when we were little, when I..."
Her voice failed her. "It's okay," Jim whispered into the silence. "It's okay."
"Do you remember..." She closed her eyes, willing away the threatening tears. "Do you remember when I was taken?"
"Yes, baby," he said soothingly. "Yes."
"Jim, I... I don't."
"Not at all?" he asked, and she could only nod. "Well, I guess that's not too unusual, is it?" Denny was too relieved and surprised to answer. Jim's hand kept up the comforting, soft stroking against her shoulder.
"I mean, people block things out all the time. It's just a defense mechanism," he went on. "And something as scary as that? For a little kid? ... It's not strange at all."
She let out a long sigh and sagged against him, and he held her quietly for a while. At last he shifted a little and gently took her chin in his hand, and turned her face up to his.
"Baby," he said teasingly, tickling her under the chin, "if your purpose in bringing this up was to distract me so I'd forget that I just about proposed to you, it's not working."
His eyes were merry. She found herself smiling back up at him. She opened her mouth to answer, but he laid his finger across her lips.
"Shh. We don't have to talk about it anymore right now," he said. "All I want to hear now is that you're going to stay right here for the rest of the night."
"Right here," she sighed happily, nestling closer against him and closing her eyes.
Chapter Thirteen
"You sure you don't want to come?" Jim asked.
"No.You guys go do your male-bonding thing." Denny shook her head, glancing down the hall to where two of Jim's state-trooper buddies stood by the front door waiting. One of them lifted a hand to wave when he saw her looking, and she smiled back at him. "I've still got half of yesterday's lunch left over in the fridge."
Jim squeezed her hand in his. "You've been messing with the paperwork for old Calvin all morning, haven't you? I'd think you'd want a break."
"By the time you get back I'll have it done, and all I'll have to do then is start trying to call his next-of-kin." At his raised eyebrow, she smiled. "I found one. A nephew in North Carolina."
"That's amazing. I didn't think that old hermit had any relatives left." Jim grinned a little and shook his head. "We're wasting you in this office, Denny. You should be out here doing detective work with us."
"This *is* detective work, Jim. The difference is that the people I'm investigating stay put while I do it without being arrested first." She smiled and nodded toward the waiting men. "Go. Feed the troops."
"Okay. I'll see you in a little while." He leaned over and pressed a quick kiss to her lips. "Love you."
"Love you," she said softly in return, and stood, leaning against the frame of the open door, watching him walk down the hallway to meet the other men. When they had stepped outside into the parking lot, she turned and went back into her office, closing the door behind her. She lingered at the window for a moment, watching their car pull out of the parking lot and into the street; when they'd gone, she turned back to her desk and picked up the phone.
She dialed the number from memory. She didn't sit down; she leaned against the desk, twirling the phone's coiled cord in her fingers, as she listened to the ringing and waited for an answer.
"Good afternoon. This is Dr. DeMontreaux."
"Doctor, hello. This is Paula Dennison," she said.
"Well, hello!" Dr. DeMontreaux answered warmly. "What can I do for you today?"
Denny let go of the phone cord and twisted around to open the top drawer of the desk as she spoke. "Well, I'm starting to wonder about the new meds."
"Ah." She could picture the therapist reaching for the ever-present notepad and picking up her pen. "And why is that?"
"I'm not even sure it's the meds, actually," Denny said apologetically, sorting through the odds and ends in the drawer. "I don't feel --" she groped for the right word -- "I don't feel *connected.* I've had mornings when I wake up and I don't even remember what I did after I got home from work the night before."
"But you do wake up at home, with nothing in disarray?"
Denny withdrew her hand from the desk drawer and studied the thick, glossy coat of too-red polish on her nails. "Yes, that's true."
In the short pause she could imagine Dr. DeMontreaux sitting back in her chair, setting her pen down on the desk beside her notepad. "And, overall," the doctor remarked, "you did say you've been feeling better."
Denny thought about it for a moment before answering, a bit reluctantly, "Yes, I suppose I'd still have to say so."
"You don't sound convinced," the older woman said.
"I... should be," Denny answered slowly, still studying her hands. "It's like you said -- I haven't had any, um... incidents. Not since we changed the meds." She hated the polish. Her nails were short, her hands workmanlike; red was a terrible color on her. She hated red.
"So what is it that keeps you from being sure?" Dr. DeMontreaux continued.
"I don't mean to sound like I don't think it's helping," Denny said, shaking her head. "I mean, this is so minor, compared to the other stuff. But it's just such a weird feeling. It's like... like I'm missing time." She folded her hands together to keep the offending polish out of her sight. Red. What had posessed her to try red? She couldn't remember putting it on, couldn't find the bottle of nail polish in her apartment, and now she couldn't find it in her desk, either.
"Well, we had discussed the possibility that this medication might make you feel fatigued. I imagine you're just overtired in the evenings because you're still adjusting to it." There was a short pause, and Denny was sure Dr. DeMontreaux was picking up her pen and writing something on the notepad. "Tell you what. Let's give it another week, and if you aren't comfortable with it then we'll back off a little. Okay?"
"Okay. Good," Denny nodded. She was going to have to stop on the way home tonight and buy nail polish remover -- she didn't have that at home, either. "Thanks."
"You're very welcome, dear. And now I must go, because I'm expecting a patient in a few minutes. You know you can always call me right away if you have any more questions."
"I will," Denny said. "Thanks again."
"My pleasure. I'll see you Tuesday. Bye bye."
Denny hung up the phone and sat back against the desk. She held one hand out in front of her, turning it a little from side to side, looking at the nail polish. She pursed her lips. She supposed she should be grateful, actually, if misplacing her reading glasses and putting on red nail polish was the worst thing she'd been getting up to during those foggy evenings lately. Maybe this was actually a good sign. Maybe she was heading in the right direction after all.
She sighed and stood up and stretched, feeling a little better about things, and headed out of her office toward the break room to get her lunch.
Chapter Fourteen
Mulder was already pressing Paula up against the front door as she struggled with the lock. The blood sang so stridently in his ears that he could not distinguish the omnipresent voice of the river just beyond the little picket fence. When the door swung open they staggered inside; Mulder roughly kicked the door shut behind them. He heard Paula's keys fall, forgotten, to the hardwood floor.
There was no time to bother with a light. He pushed her hard against the back of the nearest chair, tangling his fingers into her hair, pulling, forcing her head back, his mouth urgent at her throat. Her fingers clawed at his belt buckle and then at the zipper of his pants. He felt her tug down his pants and his boxers, and then suddenly her strong arms pushed him back, her hands braced against his chest.
He lifted his head, panting, dumb with confusion. He couldn't read her eyes in the shadows.
She twisted in his arms until her back was turned toward him. "From behind," she growled, pressing herself against him. His breath hissed savagely between his teeth as he ran his hands up under her skirt and found that she was wearing nothing at all beneath it.
---
In the hallway, Scully's stride grew shorter and shorter as she came closer to the door of Mulder's room. She would not look at it. She wouldn't even look at it. She meant to walk past, but her feet balked; she paused, and glanced up sidelong, reluctantly, at the door; her gaze traveled slowly up the bland wood, lingered on the dull sheen of the brass doorknob...
Silence. There was no sound at all from behind the door. It was no surprise. She had already assumed he wouldn't be there. She dropped her eyes and studied the blue-and-cream pattern of the carpet, watching one foot, and then the other, step -- and step -- and step, carrying her toward her own room.
---
Mulder let himself into his room and drew the door shut softly behind him. He waited in the silent darkness for a long moment before he sighed and reached for the light. He dropped his jacket over a chair and tugged at his tie as he headed toward the bathroom.
Three times, now. He wondered why he couldn't just close the door of his room and leave the shame outside in the hallway. In the shower he turned the water up, hotter and hotter, until he felt the sweat breaking out on his face again. He scrubbed at his skin as if that could wash away the memory of her body.
It was Scully he dreamed of, Scully he longed for; it was Scully he couldn't have. He thought he had long since resigned himself to it. Why, then, was it that when the Fates dropped someone like Paula into his life like some kind of cosmic consolation prize, he just couldn't put Scully out of his mind for a little while and enjoy himself?
He laid in bed, propped against the pillows, the TV remote in his right hand. He changed the channel over and over. Nothing caught his attention. In his mind he constructed elaborate fantasies, scenes of Scully confronting him, accusing him; Scully enraged, tearing into him, telling him she knew everything. He could see just how her eyes would flash. He could hear the furious intonations of her voice. How could you do this? the Scully in his mind demanded. To the work? To us? To *me?*
He had no answers. He couldn't even pretend that Paula cared for him; he certainly didn't try to convince himself that he cared for her. It was the wickedness of the affair that thrilled him, and he was too selfish to turn away from it.
But worse than the Scully in his conscience was the Scully who faced him each morning over breakfast. It was worse knowing that she could tell just by looking at him that something was wrong. Worst of all was the way she watched him, when she thought him unaware, with that clear light of concern in her gaze.
Chapter Fifteen
"Hey, Jim, I'm starving," Denny called, opening the door of his office. "Are you almost ready to-- oh!" She hadn't expected to see the two FBI agents sitting across the desk from him. File folders were stacked three-deep on the desk, and another was open on the redheaded woman's lap; more papers were laid out across the desk. "Excuse me. I didn't mean to interrupt."
Jim turned in his chair to face her. "No problem," he said. "We shouldn't be too long here." The heap of paperwork looked more than not-too-long to Denny, but Jim winked quickly at her before turning back to the agents, and she smiled in understanding.
"I'll be in my office when you're done," she said. She nodded to the agents and turned to go.
"Oh, Denny?" Jim called her back. "If Nate Raymon calls, would you go ahead and tell him the NCMEC has added Jessy to the database?" He added, turning back toward the two agents, "We've had a little girl missing for about a week and a half now."
The effect of Jim's words surprised Denny. Both the agents stiffened in their seats for the briefest of moments; they turned toward each other and exchanged a look that seemed to Denny to be part of a years-long, ongoing conversation that only those two were privy to.
"Missing girl?" the redheaded woman asked, a little too quickly to be casual. Her bright blue eyes had fixed on Jim like a cat's on a bird.
"What were the circumstances surrounding her disappearance?" her partner asked at almost the same time. His voice betrayed his keenness less than Agent Scully's, but his eyes were alight just like hers, and he had begun leaning subtly forward in his chair.
Denny felt a sudden wariness. She looked over at Jim and saw that his expression had gone cool and unreadable, and knew that he felt the unease in the air as well. Jim was almost always gracious about accepting help on a case, but she wondered if he'd extend that attitude to these two people -- she knew, just from a few offhand comments he'd made to her, that they had already come perilously close to stepping on his toes. She found herself waiting in the doorway to see what would happen.
Jim leaned back in his chair and stretched his sturdy legs out in front of him, slowly crossing them at the ankles. He turned that carefully blank gaze from Mulder to Scully and back again. "The parents sent the kid up to her room to do her homework after supper," he began slowly, as if testing the waters. "Her mom went in about an hour later and she wasn't there. House was locked, windows shut -- nobody'd seen a thing."
"How long did the parents wait before they called the police?" Agent Mulder asked. "Did you go out yourself on that call?" Denny glanced over at his partner, and saw that she had picked up her notepad and was flipping, pen in hand, to a blank page.
Denny could feel her blood pressure going up as she listened. Enough, she told herself. Enough. She slipped back out into the hallway and pulled the door silently shut behind her.
She made her way slowly back to her office, her shoulders bowed with worry. Even if Jim managed to find Jessy alive and bring her home, Denny couldn't help but dread what it might still do to the Raymons. She had seen it in her own home after she'd been returned. The constant tension between her parents had seemed to cloud the air around them. Sometimes it had been hard just to breathe in that house. There'd been terse, clipped words instead of happy chatter; there were Mama and Daddy's sudden silences when she walked into the room. Daddy had taken to sleeping down the hall in the spare bedroom months before Mama had gotten so sick.
She pushed her office door open and stepped across the threshold into the shadows. Her hand lingered on the switch, but she didn't turn on the light. Instead she leaned against the doorframe and sighed, and thought that what it would do to Jessy herself would be worse than what it did to Linda and Nate.
The other children had always seemed to know, as if by some instinct, that Denny was different, and her memories of the time before she was taken were so vague and scattered that she couldn't say whether it had ever been any other way. She was the one they singled out, the one they teased and bullied, the one they excluded. She'd thrown herself into her studies and pretended it didn't matter that she had so few friends. She'd never told Mama and Daddy about it; she could tell they had troubles enough of their own.
Her adult mind could rationalize most of it away now, but down inside her there was still a child who helplessly, constantly wondered what she had done to bring all this to pass, and who despaired of ever being able to make it right again.
"Hey." Jim's voice almost startled her. "What are you doing standing here in the dark?"
"Just thinking," she answered, but she turned and reached for him, and he put his arms around her. She laid her head down against his shoulder.
"It's okay," he murmured. "What is it, baby?"
"It's just everything at once, I guess," she sighed. "The whole Raymon thing. And those two -- they're starting to give me the creeps. Why did they start asking all those questions?"
"They were a little evasive on that point." She felt Jim shake his head. "I didn't like it either."
"What else did they want to know?"
"All kinds of strange things." Jim's hand, rubbing soothing circles against her back, slowed a little. "What Nate does for a living. They got all excited when I told them he drives a tanker truck for Bouchereau Oil. And then they wanted to know if Linda'd left any handwritten notes in the house."
Denny lifted her head to look at his face, profiled in the light from the hallway. "What did you tell them?"
"I just said the only note in the house was her grocery list." He paused, lifting one hand to smooth Denny's hair. "Then I said if they thought it mattered what flavor of Pop-Tarts or what brand of cat litter the Raymons bought, I supposed I could subpoena the grocery list as evidence." He chuckled. "They got the message. They left."
"They wouldn't give up that easily," Denny murmured. "I wonder if they're not telling us why they're really here."
"Well..." Jim said slowly, "you hate to think the Feds would come in and sneak around, instead of just saying what they want. But we both know they work that way sometimes."
Maybe it was the way her face was still hidden in shadow that made Denny so bold. "That woman knew who I was before she even got here," she blurted out. "She knew about a case I worked in LA -- one of the last ones I did." She shuddered involuntarily. "It was an awful case. Just awful."
Jim's arms tightened around her waist for a moment. "What was it about?"
"It was a girl who'd died. A six-year-old girl. She --" Denny stumbled over her words. "I never saw her alive. They just sent me the blood and tissue samples, because they didn't know what to make of it. She had some kind of... There were genetic mutations I'd never even imagined were possible. It was a miracle she lived as long as she did."
Jim said nothing; he only leaned down just enough to press a kiss to her forehead.
"That was bad enough, but it wasn't the worst of it. I got hold of the casefile." Denny didn't realize her voice had dropped to a whisper. "She'd been... kidnapped, or something. She'd gone missing. Somebody dropped her off at the hospital. They didn't even know who." She pulled back and looked up at Jim, searching his face as well as she could in the half-light. "Why would that woman mention that case to me right away? Why would they ask you all those questions about Jessy Raymon?"
"I don't know, baby. I don't know." Jim pulled her closer. "But the sooner they find whatever they're looking for and go home, the better," he said, his voice darkening. "I don't trust that Mulder as far as I can throw him. I don't like the way he looks at you."
Denny stifled a gasp. "You... you've seen that, too?" she asked. Her fingers clutched at his shirt. "I hate it. It's unnerving."
"It's goddamned rude, is what it is," Jim growled. His arms tightened around her. "He's got no right."
She closed her eyes and hid her face against his chest. "They'll be gone soon," she murmured like an incantation, as if she believed that saying it could make it so. "They'll be gone soon."
"Let's hope so," Jim sighed. He released her from his embrace, and cupped her face between his hands, and kissed her forehead gently. "Get your coat, baby. Let's get out of here." Then he chuckled softly. "It's my turn to cook, remember? And you can never tell how *that's* gonna turn out."
"You?" she teased, feeling her spirits lift. "Mr. Jim 'Martha Stewart' Cormerais? Please." She stretched up to kiss his cheek. "You can be the chief cook in our house. I'll wash the dishes."
"Works for me," he said, and swatted playfully at her derriere as she turned away to get her coat. "Come along, my little kitchen-maid," he crooned in high-pitched voice. "The souffle is ready, and you have to set the table with the good china!"
"Yes, Martha, sir," she giggled, taking his hand, and they headed down the hall together to go home.
Chapter Sixteen
Tonight clouds covered the moon, and fog veiled the little house from the Jeep's headlights as Paula turned into driveway, one hand on the wheel, the other distractingly high on Mulder's thigh. She parked the truck and set the brake, and he shivered at the slow, deliberate way she scraped her nails all the way down to his knee before wordlessly turning away and opening the door to step out into the night. Mulder's shaking fingers fumbled with the catch of the seatbelt, and Paula was halfway up the front steps when he got out and slammed the door and hastily followed her.
By the time he came through the front door, Paula was already coming out of the kitchen with the glass, the ice cubes gently clinking in the splash of orange juice; he shut the door and watched her at the sideboard, topping it off with the vodka. He had drunk more in the past week, he thought, than he had in all the past year. He didn't expect it to make him forget that he'd slipped away from Scully again, but it drove the guilt down just long enough, made it easier to lose himself in the moment, in Paula's arms and her mouth and her...
She pressed the drink into his hand. "Thanks," he murmured, lifting it to his lips. She stepped back a pace or two, watching him, her eyes knowing and hungry, her slow smile almost feral. He found himself half-expecting to see fangs.
She folded her arms across her chest, the gesture tugging even lower the already revealing neckline of her soft, clinging dress. He let his gaze travel there, and linger, and he heard her laugh softly.
He drained the rest of his drink in a single draught; he set the glass down on the sideboard and reached for her. He caught her about the waist and pulled her close. He leaned in to kiss her, but she dodged him, and instead reached down, unbuckling his belt, unfastening his holster and weapon and tossing them aside onto the sofa. He gasped against her neck as she slipped one hand under the waistband of his pants, stroking his flank, teasing; then just as suddenly she withdrew, leaning back in his embrace, pulling his head down toward her breast. As quickly as he could, he found the tab of the zipper at the back of her dress and pulled it down. He nuzzled the fabric aside, felt her nails tighten against his scalp as his lips closed over a nipple, but as he closed his eyes a wave of vertigo washed over him, and he blinked and lifted his head.
"What is it, Fox?" Paula asked, straightening up in his arms. "What's the matter?"
"I don't know," he said. "I was just --" and he let go of her with one hand, reaching toward the sideboard to steady himself as the room tilted again -- "I was dizzy all of a sudden."
"Is that so?" she murmured. "Maybe I should get you some water." And she slipped out of his arms and backed away slowly toward the kitchen, watching him with an odd expression that he couldn't quite fathom. The dizziness hit him again, harder this time, and he put out a hand toward her, but she stepped out of his reach.
"Paula --" he gasped, but she only stood back, watching him, and he stumbled toward the sideboard; stretching out a hand to support himself, he knocked the purse that she'd set there to the floor, and the things inside it tumbled out.
Something made a metallic thunk, accompanied by a sickeningly familiar *snick* that he had first heard, years ago, as he stood among the shards of the broken lamp in the living room of the summer house in Quonochontaug. His gaze swam uncertainly toward the glint of reflected light moving on the floor, and his unsteady eyes focused on the blade of the terrible stiletto as it rolled slowly toward Paula's feet.
--- Continued ---