Family is Where the Heart is

Chapter 10

Dean sat at the bar at a diner, looking at a newspaper of recent deaths. Sarah sat next to him, finishing a plate of scrambled eggs and toast. His eyes moved straight up when a young, beautiful waitress stopped in front of him on the other side of the bar.

"Can I get you anything else?" she asked him.

Dean smiled with his pen he was using in his mouth.

Sam walked up, "Just the check."

The waitress nodded and walked away.

Dean turned to his brother. "You know, Sam, we are allowed to have fun once in a while." He pointed to the waitress turning the corner in the kitchen. "That's fun."

Sarah looked over where the waitress had disappeared. "How is a waitress fun?" she asked.

He looked back over his shoulder, "I'll explain when you're older and dating. Anyway, I think I found another one." Dean showed Sam a news article he circled in blue ink. Sarah sat up, onto her legs as she leaned on the bar to get a look herself. "Lake Manitoc, Wisconsin. Last week, Sophie Carlson, eighteen. Walks into the lake, doesn't walk out. Authorities dragged the water…nothing. Sophie Carlson is the third drowning this year. None of the other bodies were found either. Had a funeral, two days ago."

"Funeral?" Sam questioned, looking at the article.

"Yeah, it's weird, they buried an empty coffin. For closure or whatever."

"Are we gonna check it out?" Sarah asked.

"You bet we are," Dean told her, looking at the newspaper again before he looked over at his daughter and placed his right elbow on the bar. He held his pen towards her, "What are you going to remember while we're on this hunt?"

Sarah moaned. "Dad, I told you a hundred times, already."

"I don't care. I want to make sure you understand what is expected of you. Now tell me again."

Sarah dropped her forehead against his upper arm. "Obey every order you give me no matter what it is," she recited in an irritated tone.

Dean leaned over and kissed the top of her head. "Thank you."

"Dean," Sam interrupted his brother and niece. "The trail on Dad is getting colder and colder, why stop for another hunt?"

"Look Sam, you know I want to find Dad, too but until then I plan on killing anything bad between here and then. Okay?"

At that moment, the waitress walked behind them. Dean stared at her as she walked away. Sarah watched him. "Dad, it's impolite to stare."

Dean slid around on his stool to face his daughter and gave her a hard stare until he grinned and winked at her. "And I will explain that when you're older of why it's okay for a guy to stare at a girl." He took his wallet out and dropped a twenty on the bar. "Let's go, nerds."

Sarah jumped down from her stool and followed her father out of the diner. Sam rolled his eyes as he followed along, as well.

On the road, Sarah had fallen asleep since there was nothing to do and her PSP was dead. Visions of people drowning filled her mind, including a young boy around her age. She twitched in her sleep and shifted multiple times until Sam reached back and shook her. Sarah shot up, awake. She looked around.

Dean looked in the rear-view mirror as Sam asked, "You okay, Sarah?"

Sarah rubbed at her right eye with the palm of her hand and nodded.

Sam showed her a thick workbook he bought when they stopped at a store. "Hey, I bought this for you. I figured I would homeschool you in between hunts since you won't be going to school." He looked over at Dean when Sam said the last part. "You're in second grade, right?"

Sarah shook her head. "Third. I got bumped up a grade because I was too far ahead than the rest of my class. They wanted to put me in fourth grade but my mom wanted me to be with kids more closer to my age."

Sam took the book back. "Well, I think this is useless. What's the highest math you can do, by yourself?"

"I can already multiply single numbers. Two times two is four…uh, four times six is twenty-four…nine times seven is sixty-three."

"Uh…wow and how is she your kid, Dean?" Sam asked of his brother, giving him a hard time.

Dean gave him a cold glare. "For your information, her mother went to Stanford before dropping out to raise her. Plus, she is also related to you."

Sam was skimming through the workbook, trying to find the hardest page. He looked up when the first part sunk in. "Wait…Sarah's mom went to Stanford?" he asked.

"According to Sarah's grandfather. She went for a few years, then we met when you, me, and Dad were on that werewolf hunt in California. When she found out she was pregnant, she quit school."

"How did Sarah's mom find you after all these years?"

"She didn't. Sarah's mom passed away, remember?" Dean reminded him. He glanced up into the rear-view mirror. "Sorry, Sarah."

"It's okay, Dad," she replied.

"So how did you find Sarah, then?" Sam asked.

"Sarah's grandparents were looking for me. They got ahold of Dad somehow and he texted me coordinates to where they lived," explained Dean.

"He texted you? The man could barely turn on a computer, and he texted you?"

"I know, surprised me, too," he shrugged.

"So, Dad knows about Sarah already?"

Dean shrugged again, "Guess so."

"What did he say?"

"Nothing, he just told me to do the right thing. Never heard from him since which is why we came and got you."

Sam shook his head, returning to the workbook. He wished he knew why his father wasn't telling them anything or why he hasn't called. He stopped on a words with two meanings work page and turned in his seat. "Sarah, come here."

Sarah scooted to the middle of the backseat, onto the edge.

Sam showed her the page. "I want you to do this page for me. Okay. You know what double meanings are, right?"

She nodded at her uncle.

"Like the example shows," he reviewed it to her, anyway. "Bark can mean the skin of a tree or the sound a dog makes. Make two sentences for each word using each meaning. Understand?"

Sarah took the workbook from him. "Yes, Uncle Sam," she said, rolling her eyes.

Dean passed back his pen he had been using back at the diner. "Here, you can use this." Sarah reached up for it but her father moved it higher, out of her reach. "Oh, too slow." She kept trying. "You have to be faster than that," he grinned, switching between the road and his daughter out of the corner of his eye. "Oh, too slow."

Sarah playfully glared at her father. "Dad, can I please have it?"

Dean smirked, "Okay. I guess since you said please."

"Thank you." Sarah went to take it when he did it one last time. "Daaaad."

"I'm just teasing you. Here." He finally let his daughter take the pen from him so she could work on the worksheet Sam assigned. When she was done with it, Sam checked it over and assigned another page. This time Sarah had to write the word that the picture shown.

When Sam checked that page over, an eyebrow was raised. "Ah, Sarah, you got number four wrong," he told her.

"No I didn't," she argued. "I got them all right, I know I did."

He showed her the page, pointing at the fourth picture with the pen. "Sarah, the arrow is not pointing at his…um…" Sam paused, not wanting to say the word to his seven-year-old niece.

"Yes, it's pointing at his lap."

That got Dean's attention. "What the hell are you two talking about?" He asked, grabbing the workbook from his brother's hands and looked at the picture, himself. "Seriously?" He saw the picture of a man sitting and an arrow pointing in the general area of his lap. "What is that supposed to be?"

"I think it supposed to represent sit," Sam shrugged.

Dean tossed it back at his brother. "I'd say just let her have that one because that's basically what it is implying."

"Dean, the answer is not…that word."

Dean continued driving until they finally arrived in Lake Manitoc, Wisconsin, stopping at the Carlson cabin first. Dean knocked.

"What am I today?" Sarah asked.

"Again Sarah, we are keeping the short lie. Okay? You are twenty-five and very short so quit…" A young man answered the door. "…Hello, are you Will Carlson?"

"Yeah," he replied.

"I am Agent Ford, these are Agents Hammel and Olson." Dean showed him a badge. "We're with the U.S. Wildlife Service."

The young man, Will looked down at Sarah then back at Dean. "Isn't she a little young to be an agent?" he asked.

"She has a condition that makes her look like she's a kid but she's an adult, trust me."

The men and Sarah walked towards the lake and stopped a few yards away. Will turned to look at them, his hands hanging out of his pockets. "She was about a hundred yards out," he nodded towards it before looking at the Winchesters. "It's where she got dragged out."

"Are you sure she didn't just drown?" Dean asked.

"Yeah." Will looked back at the lake. "She was a varsity swimmer. She practically grew up in that lake. She's as safe out there as she is in her own bathtub."

Sam spoke next. "So, no splashing? No signs of distress?"

"No, it's what I'm telling you," he said.

"Did you see any shadows in the water? Maybe some dark shape, breech the surface?"

"No, again she was really far out there."

"Did you see any strange tracks by the shoreline?" asked Dean.

"No, never. Why? What do you think is out there?"

Dean took in a deep breath. "We'll let you know as soon we do." He walked away. Sarah, of course followed after him. He stopped when Sam asked, "What about your father, can we talk to him?" making Sarah run into him. Dean looked back.

Will looked back, over his right shoulder where his father was sitting on the lake dock. "Look, if you don't mind, I mean he didn't see anything and he's kind of been through a lot."

Sam nodded, "We understand." He turned and headed for the Impala.

At the police station, they spoke to the town's sheriff. "Now, I'm sorry but why does the wildlife service care about an accidental drowning?" the sheriff was asking the Winchesters as he let them inside the small wooden gate.

Sam walked through it. "Are you sure it's accidental? Will Carlson saw something grab his sister."

"Like what?" he asked with some irritation present in his voice as they made their way back to his office. "Gentlemen, ma'am, sit." The sheriff offered two seats. Sam and Dean took them while Sarah stood in between. "There is no indigenous carnivore in that lake. There's not even anything big enough to pull down a person unless it was the Loch Ness Monster."

"Actually, the Loch Ness Monster is in Scotland," Sarah pointed out.

Dean pulled her towards him and whispered, "That was sarcasm."

"Look, Will Carlson was traumatized and sometimes the mind plays tricks. Still, we dragged that entire lake, we even did a sonar sweep just to be sure and there was nothing down there," the sheriff continued.

Dean leaned forward. "That's weird though. I mean, that's…that's the third missing body, this year."

"I know. These are people from my town. These are people I care about."

He nodded, "I know."

The sheriff threw up his hands, leaning back in his chair. "Anyway, all this…it won't be a problem much longer."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, the dam, of course," he said.

Dean sat back in his own chair. "Of course, the dam." He and Sam exchanged looks between each other before turning back to the sheriff. "It's uh, it sprung a leak."

"It's falling apart."

Dean nodded.

"And the Feds aren't giving us the funds to repair it, so they opened the spillway." The sheriff leaned on his desk. "In another six months, there won't be much of a lake. Won't be much of a town, either. But as Federal Wildlife, you already knew that."

"Exactly," replied Dean before there was a knock on the window.

A young woman walked in. "Sorry, am I interrupting?" she asked, embarrassed. Sam and Dean stood up, slowly, looking at her. "I can come back later." She turned to leave.

The sheriff stood up, as well. "Gentlemen, ma'am, this is my daughter."

Dean walked over to her and held his hand out. "Pleasure to meet you. I'm Dean."

She returned the handshake as she smiled. "Andrea Barr."

He smiled at her, too. "Hey."

"They're from the wildlife service," the sheriff explained to his daughter. "About the lake."

"Oh," was all she said just as a little boy around Sarah's age peeked from around her.

"Oh, hi there," Dean greeted him.

The boy moved beside Andrea.

"What's your name?"

He just stared at the ground, catching a glimpse of Sarah waving to him, in a friendly-like matter. The boy turned and walked away. Sarah suddenly remembered him as the boy from her dream she had during her catnap. She watched as the boy left the office. Andrea followed after him.

"His name is Lucas," the sheriff answered when they were gone.

Sam turned around to face him. "Is he okay?"

"My grandson's been through a lot…we all have." He turned and headed towards the door. "Well, if there's anything else I can do for you, please let me know."

Dean thanked him as he walked out of the office. He stopped and turned around. "Now that you mention it, can you point us in the direction of a reasonably priced motel?"

"Lakefront Motel. Go around the corner, its two blocks out," Andrea told him.

Dean pointed back, behind him, "two," thinking out loud. He turned to Andrea and asked, "Would you mind showing us?"

She laughed, "You want me to walk you two blocks?"

"Not if it's any trouble," he told her as Sam rolled his eyes, knowing what his older brother was up to.

"I'm headed that way, anyway." Andrea turned towards her father. "I'll be back to pick up Lucas at three."

The sheriff smiled, nodding.

Andrea bent over to tell her son, "We'll go to the park, okay, sweetie?" and kissed his head before standing up.

Sam thanked the sheriff, as well as the four of them left the station. As they walked to Lakefront Motel, Dean tried to do a little flirting with Andrea. "Cute kid."

Andrea smiled, "Thanks."

They crossed the street, speed-walking.

"Kids are the best, huh?" he told her.

They finished crossing, stopping in front of the motel. Andrea turned to face Dean. "There it is. Like I said, two blocks."

"Thanks," said Sam.

She sighed at Dean, "It must be hard with your sense of direction. Never being able to find your way to a descent pick-up line?" With that said, Andrea walked away. "Enjoy your stay."

"Kids are the best?" Sam questioned his brother with his hands on his sides. "You don't even like kids, which is why I was surprised you took Sarah in."

"I love kids," Dean tried to argue.

"Name three children that you even know." Dean was about to answer when Sam added, "besides Sarah."

Dean thought about it, not thinking of any. Sam just waved him off and walked away, towards the motel. Dean scratched his head and followed after his brother. "I'm thinking."