A/N: Fail. Big, giant update fail. I know it's been forever... almost 3 weeks. But to be fair, they have been rough weeks, filled with many doctor's appointments and unanswered questions. Also, those of you who read The Foster Child in the Forensic Anthropologist may remember that about three chapters into that story, one of my friends passed away in a tragic accident. The 3rd of this month was the one year anniversary of that, which was very hard. Anyway, here is the newest update on this story, and please let me know what you think. Given the way it ends, I should be more motivated for a quick update...
May angels lead you in
Hear you me, my friends
On sleepless roads the sleepless go
May angels lead you in...
- Hear You Me, Jimmy Eat World
Always remembered, Jeff
"So our human life but dies down to its root,
and still puts forth its green blade to eternity."
- Thoreau
Brennan rolled out of bed around two, feeling sluggish and hot the way she usually did if she slept too late into the afternoon. The fan whirred overhead but she was sticky with sweat, having fallen asleep under the pink John Deere comforter and apparently been too exhausted to kick it off in her sleep. She stumbled into the bathroom and splashed water on her face, pinching her cheeks in a vain effort to wake up. When she ruminated on the past week and a half, both the events that had taken place and the utter lack of sleep she had experienced, it was no wonder she felt so drained. It had finally caught up to her, like a train.
She took a cool shower and felt fresh and awake, the sweat and grime and glaze of anxiety from the past two days cleaned off of her. There was a neat stack of clothes sitting in her open suitcase, and she could only assume that Lydia had done her laundry at some point during all of the insanity. She smiled wryly as she pulled a pair of jeans and a shirt out of the pile—that woman really never stopped, regardless of what was going on.
In the kitchen she found Molly busying herself with the dishes, scrubbing them intently with a fervor most people did not apply to flatware. She didn't even seem to be aware of Brennan's presence as she entered the small room, watching her cousin with piqued curiosity. She went to place a plate in the drying rack on the counter when Eleanor called out from the yard, and Molly jumped visibly, plate falling out of her hands and onto the floor with a plastic clatter. She wiped her hands on her pants legs and rubbed her face, taking a long breath before replying.
"What, baby?" she said, turning to the side and looking surprised by Brennan's presence.
"When are we goin'?" she asked, poking her round face into the doorway in the kitchen.
"Soon," she said. "Just let me finish these, okay?" Eleanor nodded and disappeared again into the yard, where she and Maya appeared to be playing some imaginary game with co-conspirators they couldn't see.
"Where are you going?" Brennan asked, noticing Molly's apparent pallor. She looked ill, like she was just beginning to recover from a bad case of the flu. It was undoubtedly stress.
"Me and Charlene are fixin' to take the kids to the Super Wal-mart up in Starke," she said.
"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Brennan asked, wary of her family members leaving the relative safety of the surveillance Booth had put on Lydia's home. "Booth said it would be best if everyone stayed around…"
"Look," Molly said, more harshly than she meant to. She sighed and continued. "Sorry, but look, Sarah Leigh's gonna be home later tonight maybe and she's gonna need a lot of taking care of. We're next to out of food, mom just used the last of the detergent last night—" Brennan felt a pang of guilt as she looked down at her freshly laundered top. "—and the kids are going stir-crazy. I'm going stir-crazy. It'll be good for everyone to get out of the house for a little bit, plus Eleanor needs to get her eyes looked at, I think she needs glasses."
"What makes you think so?" Brennan asked. Molly broke a grin.
"Eleanor!" Molly called out into the yard. Brennan subconsciously clenched her teeth, the way she did when anyone said Eleanor's name. Where she came from, Eleanor was an elegant, flowing name with a soft ending. Down here it was harsh and dropped off at the end, sounding more like 'Eluhner.' The little girl looked up at her mother in the doorway. "How many fingers am I holdin' up?" Molly held up two fingers in the shape of a "V". Eleanor squinted despite the cloudiness that had rolled in over the past hour, smooth face scrunched in concentration.
"Uh… four?" the little girl guessed. Molly shook her head and stepped back into the house.
"See what I mean?" she said. "She's startin' kindergarten in the fall, I don't want her not being able to see the whiteboard. They got an express eye place in the Wal-mart, she can get looked at while we shop. You want to come with us?" Brennan chewed the inside of her cheek for a moment, then nodded.
"I guess a trip to the store won't hurt."
oOoOoOoOo
Booth felt the warm, sticky breeze blow through the Bronco's open windows as Mike drove them down a smooth county road, empty fields dotted with hay bales and the occasional cluster of cows gathered beneath a tree for shade. Their tails flicked lazily and he felt his lids droop, the sound of the wheels against the asphalt and the gentle rattle of trash in the backseat pulling him under like a lullaby. Every once in a while he would feel Mike's hand shoving his shoulder lightly, and hear him say, "Don't go to sleep, we're almost there."
Forty minutes later they were actually almost there, and Mike slowed down as they turned left at an ancient-looking convenience store with sheets in the windows and plastic trash bags over the gas pumps. Booth's FBI spidey-senses tingled, but he shook it off—he wasn't out here to catch drug dealers, he had bigger fish to fry. Further down the road he saw a large, square cement building in the back of a field with an almost shed-like house set off several yards from it. There was a sign pounded into the dirt on the side of the road at the turn that said "Walton's Snake Emporium" with a phone number underneath.
On the other side of the road the field turned into woods, cut through the middle by a poorly-defined dirt path. Mike turned right onto the path and trundled through the bumpy grass, into the woods, then passed through the woods into a clearing. In the clearing stood an impressive Victorian-replica house, complete with a creepy spire and collapsing wrap-around porch. Paint flaked in areas and the house had an aura of dilapidation, not unlike the old Ford truck parked in front. Set off behind the house was an old brown barn, heavy doors locked with a chain and padlock.
"Here it is," Mike said, pulling the keys out of the ignition and pocketing them. "Tony and Mary Moretti's house." They got out of the vehicle and walked up to the front door, carefully testing their weight on the planks of the porch, which did not look entirely stable. There was a knocker but no doorbell, and Booth had the itching feeling up the back of his neck that he was in the beginning of a horror flick. They rapped the knocker against the flaking red door, and waited. They heard absolutely no sounds from within the house, and Booth began to wonder if anyone was home at all, until the door very suddenly opened in front of them.
"Mike Rainer?" the man asked, looking pleasantly surprised to see two living people standing in his doorway. Mike shook the man's hand kindly and nodded.
"Yep, sorry to drop in on you like this," he said. "This is Seeley Booth." Booth offered his hand to Tony Moretti, who shook it with a hesitant smile. His eyes were lazy blue and narrow set on his face, paired with a tapering nose that gave him a slightly rodent-like appearance. His hair was mousy brown and peppered with grey, even though he was only just thirty, still several years younger than Booth. He looked to be forty, with his receding hairline and somewhat portly figure.
"Hi Seeley, I'm Tony, it's nice to meet you. Y'all come in, please," Tony said, stepping back and allowing them to enter the house. Booth couldn't help but notice the man's soft-spoken voice, almost a whisper, as if someone were sleeping in the next room. He didn't see anyone in the house though, as they walked down the hall, passing a sitting room cluttered with knick-knacks and a neglected upright piano, a dining room whose table was cleared on one side and covered with stacks of books on the other, and the most peculiar staircase Booth had ever seen. It started straight up, then suddenly branched off, cutting up to the right on one side and spiraling upright all the way to the top of the spire.
Tony lead them all the way to the back of the quiet, slightly stuffy house, into a kitchen with a cast iron stove and an old, humming green refrigerator circa 1970. There was a small table in what almost qualified as a breakfast nook, with two chairs pushed neatly underneath it. Tony excused himself down the hall into the dining room, where he came back dragging a heavy wooden chair from the dining set.
"Please, sit down," he said. "Would you like anything?" Mike and Booth both shook their heads, and Tony set down the glass he had already taken out of the cupboard and took a seat at the small table with them. The house, Booth decided, reminded him very much of an old person's home—stuffy, quiet, decaying. There was something dying about this house, slowly and unassumingly, and it unnerved him.
"Nice place," Booth said to break the ice as Tony stared placidly at him from across the table. The man smiled.
"Thank you," he said softly. "My parents bought it and fixed it up when we were kids, really made it shine. Of course, you wouldn't know that now from looking at it. I've kind of let things fall apart as of late…"
"No," Mike protested politely. "It looks great." Tony looked as though he appreciated the man's sentiment but could taste the forced kindness of it. "Doesn't it, Seeley?" Booth nodded vaguely, but he wasn't paying attention to the conversation at the table anymore. As an FBI agent and the father of a young boy, he was well trained in hearing the sound of muffled tip-toeing footsteps, and he heard them now. They started down the stairs a few steps, then stopped, and Booth strongly felt the presence of someone else in the house.
"Uh, yeah," Booth said, forcing himself back into the conversation. "It's nice."
"So what brings you out here?" Tony asked, directing the question mostly to Mike.
"Well," Mike said, swallowing before he answered and laying his hands out on the table as if to show that he had nothing to hide. "Seeley is a special agent with the FBI, he's been running an investigation on what happened to Abby and Robbie and Laura." Tony nodded gravely.
"I was sorry to hear about that," he said. "Abby was your sister, right?" Mike nodded in a hard way.
"Yeah," he said. "She was. Anyway, Seeley's been doing some diggin' around and he wanted to ask you a few questions about… well, go ahead," he said, giving the floor to Booth since even Mike wasn't really sure what they were out there for. Tony turned his gaze to Booth patiently.
"Well, uh…" Booth began, not even knowing for sure what exactly compelled him to come out to this place. "I was wondering if you can tell me what you know about the Waltons."
"Waltons, like, the snake folks across the street?" Tony asked. Booth nodded, and Tony shrugged his shoulders. "They're alright, I've spoke to them a few times, I honestly don't know them very well though."
Suddenly there was a loud clatter in the hall, like the sound of plastic plates hitting the ground. All three men jumped up from the table, Booth and Mike naturally on the defensive after what had transpired over the past two weeks, and bolted to the hallway to see the culprit.
She stood in the middle of the hall, frozen like a nocturnal creature caught in bright lights. On the ground at her bare feet was an empty plastic plate, ketchup still smeared on the surface, and a sideways cup whose remaining contents were dribbling out onto the floor. Her eyes traced from Booth, to Mike, to her brother, then inexplicably back to Booth's.
She reminded him terribly of his mother during her worst times of mental instability. Her face was hollow, thin and lifeless like a sketch, large dark eyes protruding slightly from her face and standing in stark contrast to the whiteness of her skin. Her hair was dark and limp, unbrushed like that of a child, and she wore a blue nightgown that hung away from her slight frame. Her tongue darted across her lips as her brows pulled together, eyes drawn to Booth's seemingly without her own consent.
Tony stepped forward and stood between his sister and the men, seemingly shielding her from their sight. He tugged at her arm and pulled her towards the stairs, and she obliged without a fight. Booth and Mike couldn't help but watch as he lead the woman up the stairs and out of sight, only their footsteps audible. Tony returned after a moment looking terribly apologetic.
"I'm sorry," were, naturally, the first words out of his mouth. Booth was already shaking his head.
"Don't be," he said firmly, bending down to pick up the plate and cup. Tony met him half-way down, taking the flatware from his hands with a brief thank you. They made their way awkwardly back into the kitchen, and Booth chose to quickly change the subject to something hopefully benign.
"So Tony, what do you do for a living? I saw you've got a pretty big barn out back," he said casually. Tony set the plate and cup into the sink and ran water over them, still avoiding the gaze of both men directly.
"Hay," Tony replied. "All those fields you saw driving up were my parents', I keep up with what they left." Booth watched as the man wiped a soapy sponge over the plate and around the inside of the cup, rinsing them and setting them on a drying rack. When he leaned over to set up the plate in the rack, Booth saw a bit of something peek out from under his shirt sleeve.
"What's that?" he asked, motioning towards the man's upper arm. Tony smiled sheepishly and looked down at it.
"Oh, a bad idea from my teenage years," he said with a little laugh. "You know how kids are; they don't realize tattoos are permanent." Mike let out a barking laugh.
"Oh yeah, I know what you mean," he said. "I got one on… well, nevermind where, but point is I'm always gonna have a little bit of Lisa with me whether we're divorced or not." Booth snorted, and Tony smiled amusedly.
"Yeah, I guess I just thought I was cool back then," he said, pulling up his sleeve and revealing the faded rattlesnake curled up on his bicep.
oOoOoOoOo
Brennan pushed a laden buggy across the steaming asphalt of the Wal-mart parking lot, sweat dripping down her breastbone despite the clouds that were forming ominously overhead. Behind her Charlene huffed and puffed as well, pushing the weight of both the packed buggy and Maya, who at three years old barely fit into the child seat but was easier to push than carry. Leading both of them was Molly, chastising Brandon about 'giving her lip' while Eleanor walked slowly, gazing in awe at the world around her.
"Wow," the little girl said, looking at the rows of cars they walked past. "They're so… wow." Brennan couldn't help but grin as the little girl looked back at her, new pink wire-rimmed glasses adorning her small face, and beamed. She stopped under a small tree that grew in a grassy divider and positively exploded with happiness.
"Wow! Momma, look! Momma!"
"What, baby?" Molly asked as Charlene popped the trunk of her Explorer.
"The leaves!" she exclaimed, pointing up into the tree. "Lookit all the leaves on it! And the branches… wow. Wow!" Molly shook her head and laughed as they loaded the trunk with plastic bags.
"I should'a gotten her those years ago," she said sadly. "God knows what the world looks like to her without 'em. Leaves on the trees… if she can't even see leaves, what's she been lookin' at this whole time?" They loaded up into the vehicle, Brennan squeezed in the back between Maya in a booster seat on her left, and Brandon and Eleanor both strapped into one seatbelt on her right. She cringed when she saw them do this when they first got into the car, thinking of all the possible safety implications, but Molly and Charlene both waved it off as perfectly normal when there were too many kids and not enough seats.
About ten minutes down the road Eleanor slumped over and fell asleep on Brennan's arm, Brandon leaned in the opposite direction against the window. Maya's chin fell down to her chest and she snored in a congested sort of way that made Brennan smile. The sun was dipping lower and lower on their right, casting the sky into brilliant shades of orange and pink, and Brennan had to say that this was one thing Florida had on D.C. if nothing else. As the sun dipped lower, the trees became a dark wall, backlit by the waning dusk light, and the Explorer's automatic lights flicked on.
Brennan fought her drooping eyelids—they had another twenty minutes to go before they were home, and as tired as she was, she knew if she took even that small twenty minute nap it would ruin her ability to fall asleep later that night.
"You think they got Sarah Leigh home yet?" Molly asked Charlene, whose head was also pressed against the glass like Brandon's, eyes barely open. She made an indistinct humming sound. Molly smiled and turned back to the road, the soft roar of the wheels against the asphalt lulling them all deeper and deeper into sleep.
All that changed they heard a series of blasts from the side of the road, and the unmistakable burst of tires blowing out beneath their vehicle. The SUV spun out at fifty miles an hour, hitting the soft, sandy edge of the road, flipping, and rolling multiple times before coming to an upside-down resting position in the ditch on the side of the road.
