Hello!

A big thank you to everybody who has supported this story! You guys are fantastic!

Another update...once again, I'm procrastinating on studying. For anybody who is interested, I'm studying to be a medical radiation technologist, which is a fancy name for x-ray tech (I think they're called radiographers in the States? Not sure!)

Once again, usual disclaimers apply. There is a bit more swearing in this chapter...you have been warned!

If you are enjoying this story or have any comments/suggestions, reviews are always welcome!


It shouldn't be any sort of surprise, given that nothing else in the entire county had changed that Ruby is still sitting at that desk, carefully arranging bright yellow sticky notes filled with neat cursive. Still Vic pauses, momentarily trying to figure out just how old Ruby had to be. After a second, she just shakes her head. As long as the world turned and the sun shone, Ruby would be waging a one women war organizing the Absaroka County sheriff's office.

"Can I help you, ma'am?" Ruby looks up with her usual smile, adjusting the brightly coloured chiffon scarf coiled around her neck. Her face was more lined, the grey in her bob cut a little more evident but still, it was the same Ruby that Vic remembered.

Vic grits her teeth—she figures by the end of the day, she's going to have to get dentures and crosses her arms "Ruby, it's me."

Behind her, Callie sniggers. Vic's head pounds painfully.

"I—Vic?" Ruby's eyes grow wide and she stands up, a hand covering her mouth "Well, Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Vic Moretti?"

"Yeah," Vic rubs her face, trying to ward off the impending headache "Hey Ruby."

Ruby doesn't look like she can believe her eyes and continues to stare at Vic, apparently incapable of speech. Vic doesn't quite know what to do—march right into that office and demand that Cady tells her where Walt is? Or better yet, hope he's here somewhere, haunting the sheriff's department like a ghost. A ghost with control issues and trust issues and zero hobbies. Instead Vic sighs and gestures towards Callie who is still texting, eyes glued to the screen "You remember Callie?"

"You and Walter's little girl? Of course, I remember." Ruby is surveying Callie with a look of thinly veiled horror, apparently undecided about what part of Callie's appearance to be most offended by. Vic couldn't quite decide herself—was it the pink streaks in her hair? Or the nose and lip piercings? The school-mandated kilt hiked up well past dress code policy? Or that stupid, stupid tattoo?

It was definitely a toss up between the tattoo and the piercings. And above all of that, the behaviour.

Vic had been a terror of a teenager, but she was a saint compared to her daughter.

Ruby hastily arranges her features into a smile and rushes towards Vic "Well, how about a hug? And I'll call up Ferg and you two can pull up a chair and I'll put on the kettle for tea and we'll catch up—"

"Look Ruby," Vic clears her throat, tries to think a delicate way to phrase her words " I didn't know where else to go. So please tell me just tell me where the hell Walt is."

Vic Moretti does not do delicate. She winces as Ruby literally stumbles backwards like she's been hit and tries to rectify the situation, glancing backwards to make sure that Callie is still there "Look, we will catch up. Soon, I promise. But I've had one hell of a day and I really, really need to see Walt. Immediately."

"Vic," Ruby begins to chortle with apparent disbelief, her face rapidly reddening "Vic honey, you haven't come to see Walt in ten years. You took his daughter away." Her voice raises by an octave and she glares at Vic "I don't think you can just waltz right in here—"

"Ruby," Vic glares right back; Ruby's stronger a hurricane, she can handle the wrath of a Moretti "If you don't tell me where Walt is, I will find him. I will drive around this county until I find him. It may take days but I swear I will."

Ruby regards Vic aggressively, glares at her with an open hostility that Vic had never fathomed a woman like Ruby could possess. The receptionist crosses her arms over her pastel knit sweater, shakes her head with pity at Callie.

"Then I suggest you start driving."


"Well, that was fucking pointless."

"Language Callie!" Vic slams down on the accelerator to pass a slow-moving farm truck, rusty and loaded up with bales of hay "I'm not gonna tell you again."

"Or what, you'll tell dad?" Callie rolls her thickly made up eyes. "Such a threat. So scary." Callie fiddles with her cellphone, looks up to meet Vic's glare. Vic feels a pang in her chest—Callie had always been a dead ringer for Vic, somewhere beneath the thorns and sarcasm and tattoos. Except for her eyes. Callie had her father's eyes, a fact that plagued Vic every single day "Let's face it, you're a shitty mother. What's dad going to do about it?"

"C'mon Cals. Don't do this—"

"Good God," Callie seethes, eyes glinting "Are you actually fucking kidding me? Now you're gonna play the parent role, the responsible—"

"Callie."

"Selfless—"

"That's enough!" Vic is yelling, her Subaru flying down the cracked of the empty country road, a road she was sure that she had gone down a million times before but seemed absolutely foreign.

"Single mother, who always gave her all, a literal mother Theresa, who did it all on her own because she was so fucking hard done by."

The road blurs in front of Vic. She's glad she's wearing sunglasses.

"Not so nice is it now?" Callie pants, her face twisting into a bitter smile "Not so nice when we both know the truth that this is all your fault. Everything about this is your fault. And you can't do a thing about it, you stupid bitch."

It's not the first time Callie has called her a bitch. It's the first time it hurts like this though.

Vic looks out the windshield, at the rolling fields dotted with wildflowers and wide blue Wyoming skies eclipsed by mountains. A land so vast and empty and wild that when she had first arrived in Absaroka all those years ago, it had scared her, more then any criminal ever had.

Hands tightening around the wheel, she wonders why the hell she hadn't just murdered Walt while she had the chance.


Thank you for reading! Have a great day!