The loft was warm, and dry, and about as comfortable as a loft could probably be. She should have been able to sleep.
She couldn't. Every time she moved the straw crackled comfortably underneath her, until the scent of it filled the air and soaked into her skin, until she couldn't sleep for the memories. It was a mistake, coming here. She'd know better than to sleep in a hayloft, ever again.
She'd read about heartache before in stories, star-crossed lovers and the like, but foolishly she'd always imagined it was a metaphor. She hadn't realized that the heart could actually ache, a physical pain eating away at you just under the ribs, keeping you awake in the still, silent hours.
Which is why she was awake to hear the hoofbeats, and shouting, and the pounding on doors. Loud, strong voices. "Open up! Open up and gather now in the name of the Queen!"
Belle eased off the straw, crawled to peer out one of the windows. Outside, the town was ablaze with torchlight, and full of soldiers in the Queen's black, hammering on doors, shoving sleepy villagers into a crowd, holding up posters of…her. How…how?
She heard one of the soldiers proclaiming, "a traitor and a criminal and a known consort of the Dark One," and she knew the how didn't matter. What mattered was getting away.
Belle eased back, into the dark of the loft, even as she heard the door to the mill open. An old woman's voice drifted up to her — the woman she'd spoken to this afternoon. "Are you still there, girl? Why don't you come into the house, my dear? It's such a cold night out and it can't be comfortable in this drafty old place."
The words were smooth and sweet as honey, but Belle had spent months with a man who made a game of twisting words, and years before that among courtiers who kept their positions by telling royalty what they thought they wanted to hear; she could hear the discord amid the chorus. There was a window to the back of the loft. She held her breath, but it didn't creak as she lifted the latch and swung it open. She levered herself out, as far as she could manage, until she was holding on to the edge.
She dropped.
And landed hard, and badly, twisting her ankle under her. Belle could hear the soldiers more clearly out here — hear a voice call out "A gold piece?"
And then a soldier call back, "Yes, in return for any knowledge that puts us on the girl's trail, and one hundred gold if that knowledge leads to her capture" — and Belle didn't stay to hear the rest. She pushed herself up.
The forest wasn't far off. Even with her injured ankle, she made it easily.
It probably wasn't big of her, but the term mental patient did tend to stir up certain connotations. Straight-jackets. People mumbling to themselves, swaying back and forth and — okay, Emma was willing to admit they probably weren't the most accurate images. It was probably based on one too many Hollywood stereotypes and little-to-no actual dealing with people who had mental problems.
But, still, she ordered Henry to wait in the car as they pulled up to the ramshackle cabin in the woods. Nothing major looked out of place — aside from the missing padlock, which she could spot from the car.
"The lady isn't dangerous, she's scared," Henry said.
"You'd be surprised how fast scared can get dangerous, kid," Emma tossed back, unbuckling her seatbelt. "Stay. In. The. Car." Henry stared at her, his dark eyes huge and stern behind his thick glasses, but he didn't move. She gave him a pointed look and swung herself out of the cruiser.
There were no lights on in the windows, and it was too dark to see if anybody was moving around outside. The place looked abandoned. Maybe it was; girl might've run off after Henry left —
— except Emma doubted it. There was something so earnest about Henry. He was completely and totally sincere, in a way that only a 10-going-on-85 year old kid could be. He made you want to believe him, and that, Emma thought, might just stick with a crazy person. And that made her nervous. She jogged up to the door, eyeing the hinge where the missing padlock should be.
"It's on the table inside," Henry said from behind her. Emma didn't bother to turn. She wasn't really surprised. She didn't even bother with the I thought I told you to stay in the car, which was probably the obligatory parental response in this situation.
Emma shook her head sharply, really glad she hadn't said that. She wasn't a parent.
She debated knocking — not crazy about announcing their entrance, but not thrilled with the idea of surprising a nut job either — but decided against it, and just pushed the door open. She held a hand out for Henry to stay back, then snagged his jacket when he tried to duck under her arm. "Woah, not so fast, kid. You don't know — "
"It's me, Henry!" he called out. "I brought…a friend, and some stuff for your foot. And more Snickers."
There was the sound of scrabbling towards the back, past a door what was either a bedroom or a bath. Emma rushed towards it and pulled the door open just in time to see a pair of dirty feet kick once and disappear through a window. Emma almost gave into the impulse to climb through after her — but, yeah, there was no way her hips were going to fit through there — so she ducked back out, shouting at Henry to "Stay here!" as she raced outside after the girl, tossing an, "I mean it this time!" over her shoulder as she skidded out the door and ran around back.
The girl had a head start, but Emma had built a lifetime around chasing after people. And she had shoes on. Still, the girl didn't look back. She kept pushing forward, stumbling over roots and rocks, catching herself when she would've fallen, fleeing with a sheer desperation that yanked at Emma's gut. The desperate ones were always the worst. Emma pushed, and got close enough to snag the girl's sleeve. She had on a pair of damp scrubs and a rather dusty sweater. The girl jerked, twisting so frantically that her feet scraped out from under her and she landed, hard. Hard enough that the ancient yarn creaked free from Emma's fingers. The girl tried to push herself up, but she seemed to have some trouble — and anyway it didn't matter because Emma was there. It wasn't much of a struggle; Emma had more experience at this, and she was strong. And even if she wasn't she'd still have been stronger than this girl, who — now that Emma could get a good look at her, confirm for herself that it was Lacey French — seemed to barely weigh more than Henry. Even with the girl struggling, it was a simple thing to get her arms behind her back and clasp the handcuffs around her wrists.
But it took Emma a second to get the girl on her feet because she was staring at the scars. The ones around the girl's wrists. Dangling against them, the handcuffs looked small and delicate.
A knot formed in her stomach, and Dr. Hopper's voice popped into her head. What it is, is potentially very illegal.
Emma shoved that back. Shoved everything away except the cold, hard reality of the moment — that this girl was sick, and needed help, and it was her job to make that happen. "Ok, on your feet," Emma said, and she got the girl there, too, no matter how much the girl kicked.
It took some time to get back to the cruiser. The girl fought the whole way. Emma was tempted to throw her over her shoulder — she could do it, what with the pull-ups every morning and the fact that the girl was barely a feather-weight. But Emma wasn't really prepared to do that. There was something…not right about the way the girl kept fighting, mindless of the rocks scraping her and the branches scratching. Something not right about the scars on her wrists, or that file. Something really, really wrong about how quiet the girl was. For all that fighting, she didn't make a sound.
Henry was waiting by the car. He saw them, and set himself firmly in front of the back door of the cruiser. "Move it," Emma told him.
Henry crossed his arms. The girl jerked again, then doubled over and started heaving. Henry hurried forward, grabbing a fresh water bottle from his bag. He stared at Emma in horror when he saw the girl's arms behind her back. "You handcuffed her? Why did you handcuff her — she didn't do anything wrong!"
"She resisted arrest," Emma snapped. The look on the girl's face was making her gut churn, and she was so not in the mood for Henry's black-and-white righteous indignation.
"Because she's scared!" Henry hurried towards the girl, cracking open the water bottle — and then gaped up at Emma open-mouthed when she caught the back of his shirt and dragged him back. He dropped the water bottle and started yanking on Emma's arm as she eased the girl into the back of the cruiser, the water glugging out over their feet. "You can't do this — you can't — you're supposed to make things better!"
"No, I'm supposed to do my damn job," Emma told him, charging around the front of the car to the driver's seat.
"I never should've told you, you're just going to go to take her back," Henry shouted.
"I sure as hell am, kid," Emma fired back, snapping on her seatbelt. "You riding or walking?"
Henry clambered in, his face red. "But it's wrong! They hurt her — look at her wrists — they hurt her and she's scared! You can't take her back!"
"It's not that simple. She's a patient of the hospital and they need to treat her. But if they did hurt her, then I'll deal with it. I'm not just going to hand her over and shut my eyes and forget about her — "
"Why not? You're good at it," Henry snapped.
It wasn't supposed to hurt. She'd made the right choice — the mature, adult choice — to give him away. She'd been eighteen, she had no business trying to raise a child. Not when she didn't have a home, or a job, or any idea how she was going to pay the hospital bill, let alone support a kid. Not when she'd still basically been a kid herself. It was the one thing in her life that she didn't fuck up. He did not get to throw it back at her as if she'd done something wrong.
Emma gunned the engine. When she finally managed to unclench her jaw, she said, "I'll drop you off at school. You should be thinking about how to explain this all to your mother. I'm sure they've called her by now to find out where you were."
Henry crossed his arms and turned away from her, which was okay with Emma. She headed back into town, and didn't let herself glance back in the rearview mirror.
There was very little Archie could do with a non-existent file. Psychiatrist or no. He told himself it would be ridiculous to theorize on nothing, and knew that it was, and did his best to ignore the voice that said it wasn't nothing. He had never met, nor treated, Miss French himself, but he knew people. He knew Mayor Mills, and he knew, knew, that if she was involved, then something was wrong. She did not help. She did not care about people. All the caring she seemed capable of she gave to Henry, and that poor boy was so starved of affection that he had stopped caring about it himself.
But knowing...others was not enough to lay the foundation. As Sherlock Holmes had said, one could not build bricks without clay.
So Archie could've gone home. But he didn't. He didn't want to think about why, but if he did he would know that it was because of the way that Sheriff Swan had looked at him. She didn't look at him very much, no one did, but she had this morning and he hadn't liked it. She didn't trust him. And with good reason. It had been wrong to give her Henry's file, and more wrong still to let Mayor Mills bully him into reporting it as stolen. The Sheriff had asked him for help, and he owed it to her. Besides, he could not in good conscience leave it at oh, well, empty file. Something wasn't right.
So he spoke to the staff. The ones that had time and would speak to him. And eventually one of them pointed him to a door with a keypad. And he'd knocked and knocked and kept knocking, and made such a silly nuisance of himself — which he was very good at — that a janitor eventually came up and let him in.
There was a row of steps, and beyond that a desk, and beyond that a nurse. She stood as Archie came down. "Excuse me, sir, you're not supposed to — "
"What's your name, miss?" He tried to put a little Mr. Gold in his voice. The tone that said I will not be disobeyed.
She raised an eyebrow, but it worked. "Peg. And you are…"
"In a hurry. I have been brought in to consult on the Cecelia French case. I am going to need to have a look at any and all paperwork you have regarding that patient, and I'm — "
"Does the Mayor know you're down here?"
Archie tried to peer at her sternly. He wasn't very good with sternness, so he wasn't entirely sure how it was coming out. "Would I be here if she didn't?"
The nurse peered back at him and evidently saw nothing to say yes, he would. Or perhaps she simply didn't think anyone would be anywhere that Mayor Mills didn't want them. She made a face, but she rolled her seat back and unlocked a file cabinet behind her desk. There weren't very many files in it. The one for Cecelia French was slightly larger than the one he'd received upstairs, but not by much. It had a copy of the admission form, and the rest was simply a log of times and amounts of medication administered. Wrong wrong wrong — and he had to swallow back the wave of anger that tidaled through him. Had to remind himself that he didn't know anything, not for certain.
"I'll take a look at Miss French's room now," Archie said, biting back the if you please.
The nurse rose, a jangly ring of keys dangling from her hand. She led him down a bare concrete hallway that reminded him more of a fallout shelter than a medical institution. The nurse unlocked a door and stepped back.
"I don't know what you're supposed to do, it's just a room," the nurse said as Archie stood there and tried to take it in.
After a minute, he said, "Thank you." Then, "Please excuse me. I'll be right back."
The nurse shrugged and went back to her desk, as Archie left to call the sheriff.
