Veronica finds a box

Many years later...2014

Veronica didn't live with Dick. She didn't. She sort of maybe lived with Logan. It's just he wasn't there and she couldn't really stand to be at the house alone.

Not when her dad was still at the hospital. Better...much better but still a few days from coming home and every time she crossed that street she was sure that truck was coming back for her. No matter how spotless that asphalt was, she could see Sacks' blood on it.

So she had taken up residence in Logan's room slowly changing the smell of his bed from him and fabric softener to her own shampoo; doing her best not to spend too much time in any room with Dick.

It had been a long time since they had called a truce due to his apparent love of her bestie. Surely it had lapsed by now just as there apparent love for each other had.

She sat at the kitchen bar nursing a beer and waiting for her Skype to connect. It was Thursday, Logan days. She loved Thursdays.

Dick walked in, his hair still wet and the smell of the ocean all over him. He went straight to the fridge and pulled out a mostly devastated tray of brownies.

He sets it down with a clatter on the bar and goes searching for a knife.

She only knows what happened between Mac and the surfer by proxy. No one has gone to the trouble to tell the whole story, and because of it she wants to know. Badly.

She knows that Mac hadn't wanted to go to Portland for that job. That perfect job that she loved for years until a recent management change. Dick had forced her to go and she had forced him to stay to finish school.

Then nothing.

They had seemingly fizzled out amicably and they hadn't seen each other since the reunion and the reception had been chilly.

There had to be more to it, but no one was willing to go into it.

"You going to be here tonight?" He asks, all his focus on the minimal amount of baked good left in the pan.

"I was going to go to the office for a while but yeah..."

He lets out a heavy sigh and gives up on the knife and grabs a fork from the dish rack and leaves out the garage door; leaving her alone to try and decipher what the hell that was supposed to mean.

There wasn't much time to do so, however, because Logan's call came in exactly on time, as it did every Thursday. The navy sure had made him punctual.

"Hey..."

"Hey Bobcat." He looks around at the background and his eyes grow sad, "still at the beach house?"

"Yeah... Dad gets out of the hospital on Monday so I'll be back there next week."

He shrugs, "you don't have to. You could stay..."

"I don't think so Logan. Not without you here. Just me and Dick? It's weird."

"It's not."

"It is. He's all moody and weird. When he's not drunk or stoned he's on his way to get to one of them. Mac met me here the other day and Dick just about had my clothes on the lawn when I got back."

"What?"

"Yeah." She deepens her voice, "it's my house Ronnie. You're bad enough, I don't want your friends hanging around too."

"He didn't." Logan sounds tired and pinches the bridge of his nose, "It was Mac."

"That picked me up? Yeah, of course."

"No, I mean the reason he flipped. Did he spend the rest of the night watching Evil Dead 2?"

"Yeah...the whole night. I figured he would have moved on to Army of Darkness at some point, but when I woke up the next day it was still Dead by Dawn."

"Yeah..."

"What is his deal? I thought they were over?"

"He thought she would come back for him."

"That's ridiculous."

"You came back for me..."

"Yeah well..." She fiddles with the label on her bottle, "it's because I love you." She tells him quietly and when she looks back at the screen his smile is worth the wait.

She shrugs once she has his attention again, "Plus I had to help you beat a murder wrap."

"Again. Yeah I know." He smirks at her and she wants all her days to be filled with that smirk, that smile and his gaze on her. Not just Thursdays.

"He could have gone to Portland." She points out.

"Are we going to spend our entire conversation talking about Dick and Mac?" Logan asks resting his head in his hands looking through the miles at her, "just so you know I had some pretty good material built up to have you all a flutter."

"It's just... It's weird... I don't want it to be weird. There is enough weird in our lives without Dick throwing random fits."

"At the back of his closet, under a stack of old Playboys..."

She crinkles her nose in distaste, "what?"

"It is where you will find your answers, oh nosy one."

"Nosy?! I'll have you know that this adorable nose of mine has gotten you out of a lot of trouble over the years, mister." She taps her nose and his laughter bubbles across the room, it's a little tinny, but god she had missed it so much.

LE + VM carved into her heart, she had been fooling herself for a long time but not anymore.

She hadn't planned on actually following through on Logan's suggestion, but when she had come back from the office around midnight and Dick was still nowhere to be found, it had been like a magnet.

She's on her knees in Dick's walk in closet searching out a stack of old Playboys, her fingers tingle as they finally hit paper under another pile of t shirts. Seriously did he really need one for everyday of the year? Had he not seen the beautiful energy efficient front loader in its own special room right off the kitchen?

She pauses for a moment to flip through a thankfully pristine magazine, brunettes in librarian glasses and narrow skirts. It's not hard to figure out when Dick's preferences changed.

Setting the magazine aside she sweeps the rest of the similarly adorned magazines aside.

It's a shoebox.

Written carefully on the lid is Cindy. Mac had always hated that name, but she had seen a few people get away with it.

Mrs. Mackenzie and the Casablancas brothers.

Her stomach twists as she shuffles back out of the closet dragging the surprisingly heavy box out with her.

She pulls the lid off and puts it too her nose, yeah, it smells like Mac and the whole thing kind of breaks her heart in a way she hadn't been prepared for.

At the top of the box sits a couple of magazine articles cut out with a steady, focused hand. She picks up the first article and there's a picture attached.

It's the thirty under thirty article Mac had been in. It was the same article that had been cut out and framed in Macs old office.

There are a few more, ranging from just a few months ago to years ago.

Pictures from college, ticket stubs, receipts and scraps of fabric. A bottle of that perfume Mac wears almost religiously. Unused tickets to Portland, unsent letters, Mac's handwriting sprawled across a few of them, love letters and notes and grocery lists.

A broken bed spring she doesn't want to know the story behind, ruined stockings, ancient red vines and a little box.

Confused by the box within a box she picks it up and instantly regrets it.

"God... He really meant it..." She rubs a thumb across the little velvet box. She doesn't need to open it to know what's hidden there.

She puts the ring box aside and repacks the shoebox, stuffing it haphazardly back into its hiding place.

The thing about being a private eye again was that it had jumpstarted all her observational skills and had seemed to create a backlog and a particular observation that had seemed like nothing at the time came flooding back to her.

Just last year while on spring break she had spent some time with Mac in Portland. Needing a sweater she'd gone to Mac's closet and had a similar box tumble out at her.

Ticket stubs, and jewellery, surf wax and a pi sigma sweater. It hadn't seemed like a big deal at the time, after all she still had some of Duncan's stuff at the back of her closet but there had been articles cut out of social magazines that had been terribly recent.

With a sigh she picks up the ring box and puts it on Dick's night stand with the keys to the office and leaves the room, hoping to god that she's doing the right thing.