Chapter Two
A/N: Merry Christmas Eve! At least it is beginning to feel more like it…supposed to have a little snow tomorrow in Denver. The following still doesn't 'feel right' but at least moves things along. Hopefully Chapter Three will follow tomorrow.
Off early after her pithy exit from the Pony, and after the two brief drinks which consumed one after the other without food had made her a little light-headed, she realized she didn't have anywhere to hole up, anymore.
She wondered if she would end up on one of the park benches that dead guy had occupied a couple of years before. She sure didn't want to run into Cady in her current state, she might take the woman's head off. The station was populated by Ferg, the library was closed and she had no place of her own. The casino was not an option, and she really didn't have enough money for a hotel that week.
She quite simply didn't know where to take herself off to, to find any peace, anymore.
It was going to be sub-zero that night, staying out in the cold was not an option, or she could have gone camping or taken the truck up in the hills where nobody would bother her.
Her phone rang. Cady's number showed.
"Hey, dad was just here looking for you. I think he was worried."
Great. He'd put out an APB out on her if she didn't watch it.
"I'll call him," she promised Cady.
But her finger just resisted poking the green connect. She waited a while, until her breath steamed the windows enough that she finally forced herself to punch the button to connect with his cabin, and sighed with resignation.
"Vic?" Did he sound panicked?
"Hey. Cady said you stopped by."
"You were drinking. I just wanted to make sure you're okay."
No, I'm not okay. "Sure. Have a good evening."
"I wondered—"
She waited.
"Would you like to come out to the cabin for a while this evening?"
She was no longer waiting, she was busy retrieving her jaw from where it had dropped on the floor.
"Vic?"
She took a deep, shaky breath.
"What the fuck, Walt? Are you drunk again? If so, don't walk or drive anywhere. It's too cold to be drunk outside, even."
"I'm not drunk."
"Well, something's wrong. Maybe your phone is cutting out. It sounded like you invited me to your cabin."
A pause. "I did."
Well, it was now or never to throw it back. "What ever happened to the exact nature of my relationship is none of your business? Seems to me you just crossed that line you drew in the sand. You know, that sort of thing doesn't work just one way. You don't go calling around trying to find me on my off hours. You don't engage in after-hours social intercourse, or burgers and such. Those might be considered dating. Personal lives."
Another pause. Longer. He sounded exhausted. "Maybe, maybe I did cross it. I'm just tired of trying to play it neutral, trying to be above it all to keep you all safe."
"Safe?"
"You know, out of the line of fire."
"Walt, that is our job and our choice. Not yours, unless you want to fire us en masse."
"After Branch…"
Her lips twisted. "After Barlow you berated Eamonn and me for finding the dead girl's ID without letting us know your arrangement with Jacob, corrected me in front of Mathias, refused to get a burger with me, told me, 'some people don't know how to end things'— you lied about wearing the new shirt and threw your lot in with Donna, a woman you didn't know, one you hadn't spent almost every day for the last four years with— you made it pretty clear, Walt. If I didn't misunderstand you when I signed those papers in your office, something had changed. That's why I asked tonight, what changed. Maybe it was just all a big misunderstanding. I actually hoped that's what it was, that I misunderstood you when you asked me to stay."
He cleared his throat. His voice came through very soft. "You didn't misunderstand. My feelings didn't change, but I lost a deputy, and hadn't handled anything with you or Branch very well. If that lawsuit had come to fruition because of improprieties with the staff, it could have sunk the entire department."
"And then Donna."
"And then Donna—I thought she was safe. My age. A professional. Someone I thought I should pursue because of a dream I had. I thought she was Martha's replacement, but she was… a mistake. I only saw her a few times after the cabin. She, um, didn't like how I handled myself there, and she said I was broken beyond her fixing."
"No shit! She said that?"
"She dropped me, and Ruby's mad at her for it, but I'm so sorry, Vic."
She waited a beat, to see if he was finished. He evidently was.
"It's been hell, Walt." It was probably time to get back to Cady's. The truck was getting really cold, her fingers numb.
"I know. When you told me about Eamonn, I just…"
"I know. You snapped. You put me in my place. I finally figured out that you were retaliating with Donna. And you're still mad, which is why you still yell at me now, when you don't even know it. I was just surprised Ruby spoke up. And Eamonn was once, Walt, just once, and he told me to get my shit together before we could be anything else, anything more. He was right, I didn't have my shit together, but I won't be a consolation prize, Walt."
Her teeth began to chatter.
"Vic, I know I don't deserve anything from you, I just wanted to talk." A pause. Maybe he heard the chattering. "Where are you?"
She huffed out a voiceless laugh. "My truck." She was still registering his words, I just wanted to talk. Where had those come from? His therapy with Dr. D?
"It's way too cold to stay there. You won't come out to the cabin with me to talk?"
"I don't think so."
"Well, at least—get warm. You must be freezing."
"Yeah." Her throat closed up. "I will." She couldn't manage more. She hung up.
Despite the ambient temperature of around seventy Fahrenheit inside Cady's place, it seemed like some of the parts she hadn't used for a while like her heart didn't thaw out that entire night, and she was desperately afraid they might stay frozen for a long, long time.
XXX
She usually didn't sleep real late at Cady's, but she didn't have to be in until five that evening, and it was somebody at the door, not the usual sensation of her head pounding, which woke her the next morning.
She cracked the door open, hiding behind it wearing only her t-shirt and panties. The frigid air flew in.
"Vic?"
Shit. It was him. "Oh, it's you." She wished she could wake up first to say something more apropos. "I'll get Cady—"
"I ran into her earlier. I'm here to make sure you're all right."
"I'm still all right, Walt."
"You're not all right. You're angry, rightfully so, if what you said last night is anything to gauge by."
She stopped, annoyed, and canted her head. "You really are Sherlock-y, aren't ya, Walt? You didn't hear what I said last night about checking up on me not being okay?"
She cocked her hip, and realized the door had swung open and her t-shirt had ridden up provocatively. "Shit." She tried to tug it down. "Walt, I can't talk to you like this."
"I can wait, if you want to get dressed."
"Walt, I can't talk to you about this."
"We need to talk, Vic. More than just the phone."
She snorted. "Yeah, like that will happen. Aren't you on County dime time? I don't come in 'til five."
"I'm the sheriff, and I'm taking a break."
"Well, break somewhere else. I'm not dressed, and I work evening shift. I'm going back to bed." She grabbed for the door, but to her disbelief, he pushed in, and she was confronted by an entryway full of sheriff, close enough to her to catch a whiff of his scent, the one which could make her go from zero to sixty in a couple of seconds if given a chance. She didn't want the chance. He was way too close.
"Fuck, Walt, I'm not dressed and this is Cady's house."
He reached for her. Primal self-defense kicked in, and she tried to knee, then kick him, but without her boots, she had little ability really hurt him close-range. He was so tall, it ended up a glancing blow, and he got her in a wristlock, wheeling her around. She acknowledged that he did have the superior leverage with those long arms, but she was spitting mad at being treated like a suspect.
She realized she was cussing up a storm, but he merely lifted her and carried her to the kitchen counter, where he stepped into the vee of her thighs, imprisoning her with his arms.
"I just want to—"
"Fuck it, leave me alone!" She tried to duck under one of his arms, unsuccessfully.
"Dad?" It was Cady, wide-eyed. Vic hadn't heard her come in, but she was carrying a drink holder with two coffees. At her voice, he half-whirled.
"I hope one of those is for him," Vic said, wriggling away while his attention was diverted, dived for her room, heart beating more than she could bear.
"You going to explain?" She heard Cady ask it, presumably of Walt, before she slammed the door shut. She heard a quick shuffle and the door slamming, hard. Vic peered out her window and saw him almost running from the house, and she'd bet a dollar he was blushing.
Cady knocked a couple of minutes later. "You want to talk about it, Vic?"
Too much Longmire. She didn't answer, dressed and flew out the front door before Cady could corner her again.
It was the straw and she was the broken-backed camel. Too much shit to process, she was just beginning to cope with Branch and violent dreams and divorce and beginning to function well at her job again. While they had been sharing a table and drinking at the Pony, Travis had ventured that maybe she was depressed. Despite Travis's misfortune to be a chronic chucklehead, she had thought maybe he was onto something, and maybe that's why she had gone for Eamonn, like she always went for a target. Straight, full frontal, and all that.
Mom Lena might be right after all, she at least needed a change from all the nonsense in Durant.
At the end of her shift, she left her written request for time off, and if not accepted, her resignation on his desk along with her truck keys and badge. The rental company even picked her up at zero-dark-hundred at the station in the car she'd reserved that afternoon. She dropped the driver in Sheridan and drove to Billings in the wee hours of the morning to catch her flight.
On the way to Billings, and for the first few days after her departure, there were a flurry of calls on her phone from the official ASD number. It didn't matter if it were Ruby, Ferg, or even Walt. She deleted all the messages. She didn't need any more half-baked apologies or whatevers. After that, there was nothing. She figured they must have finally accepted her at her word and given her the resignation and closure she'd sought.
Philly reabsorbed her.
XXX
Christmas came and went. Lots of family, both at the obligatory parties and behind closed doors, but not wondering at her wild behavior, probably just the opposite, what had happened to the Terror who had used to confound them. Now, it seemed she was the rain on their parade. She hadn't found anything to celebrate, yet. New Year's came and went and she grudgingly rocked the new year in, but didn't drink much and went home to her parents' house alone.
Ferg called her at the beginning of her third week of down-time, while she was puttering in her old bedroom at her folks' suburban home.
"He's in bad shape, Vic. Are you coming back? He said you were taking some time off."
She thought of his previous grieving and thinking bouts. "Bad shape—like, drinking, hiding out at the cabin, sulking like somebody did something to him?"
"No. Not at all, and that's the thing—he's here every morning before us. He hasn't added on any deputies to replace you, and is taking on the extra shifts."
"Whatever." She shrugged. It wasn't her problem anymore. She'd figured he'd accepted her resignation, shrugged off her departure, and had taken on the extra work in expiation for his bad behavior. It would probably take him months and another Steinbeck novel to hire on the next deputy. By the time he got to it, it might be The Old Man and the Sea. More surprising was that Ferg still thought she might come back, evidently part of a Walt pipedream.
"He seems to have gotten over that angry phase we were all familiar with the last few months. He's being…nice." Ferg's tone alerted her.
Her lips bunched, she could imagine why. If she was what he'd wanted as he claimed, his actions had sure said the opposite and driven her away. Given that, he might have realized he needed to reform a little for the remaining deputies' sakes. It sounded like he'd begun that plan.
"Good. You guys don't deserve that outrage shit. I think he was just really, really angry at me. Not at you, just me."
"The reason I'm calling, Vic, he's talking about putting Eamonn in charge for a few months, who's got the most experience of all of us still here. Walt even apologized to him for sending him back to Cumberland County, before."
She keyed in on specific words. "For a few months?" Her brows crinkled. "What for?" And then, finally heard the least believable event. "He apologized? To Eamonn?"
"Walt says he needs some time off, too."
She thought of her instant gut reaction to his expression at the Santa gig…about eating his gun…and didn't like the sound of that at all. An idle Walt, a thinking Walt, was Walt at his most dangerous…to himself.
"Oh."
"I was wondering, maybe you could come visit and talk him out of that?"
"Me? I'm the last person he wants to see. I rained on his fucking pity parade." And she had been raining on everyone else's since she got back to Philly. She really had to try and be more personable, if only for her family's sake.
"Just think about it, Vic. Nice Walt scares me more than Grieving Walt or Grumpy Walt."
That scared her, too, but…an evening of drinking with her brothers and their friends beckoned. Maybe it would let her forget…some of it, at least. She only wanted to stay sober enough to fend off the inevitable advances. All she could come up with was, "I'll think about it."
Twelve hours later, waking with a pounding head that was not Walt at the door, she realized how empty and frozen she still was inside. She had left something behind in Durant, something she hoped to need again someday, and she was terribly afraid it was her heart.
