Chapter Thirty-Five: Missing
Jeb leaned on the counter, watching Kyle tap away on his laptop. "Is Reilly any better?"
"Well, how did he tell you he was?" Kyle didn't look up from the screen.
"He looked sick when I saw him. Flu or something."
"Wasn't the flu." Kyle tapped out a sequence of characters and squinted at the screen.
"Do you know what it was?"
"I'm not a psychologist."
Fuck, Jeb thought succinctly, and prayed against hope it wasn't PBD. "Was he acting depressed?"
"He was depressed," Kyle said. "I'm not a psychologist, but he was."
"Is he talking to someone?" Jeb demanded.
"Voices, no. Shrink, yes. I made him."
Good on you. "Good," Jeb said. "I was starting to worry about him."
"Starting to worry about him," Kyle said sharply. "You didn't notice anything wrong."
"I thought he was sick," Jeb said, then added, "Besides, he works with Prescott, not me. I don't even talk to him that often."
"You see him an awful lot, though," Kyle said, and glared up at Jeb, resting his hands on the keyboard. "You really didn't notice anything wrong?"
"No, I didn't," Jeb said, deliberately keeping his cool.
"You're more oblivious than he is." Kyle's mouth twisted.
Jeb found Roland next, playing solitaire in the staff lounge and looking out at the desert. "Hey," he said by way of greeting, and Roland looked up mildly.
"Hello," he said, and went back to laying out the cards.
"I've just been talking with Kyle."
"Is that so?" Roland started flipping the cards over. Nine of diamonds. Two of clubs. Jack of hearts...
Jeb looked up. "Yeah. About Reilly."
"How is he?" Roland's hand shook slightly.
"Fine, according to Kyle." Jeb shrugged. "I couldn't get much out of him, though."
Roland looked up, making eye contact with Jeb. "How's Reilly doing?"
Jeb got the point, for once not as dense as he usually felt. He looked down at his hands, the game of solitaire, the table. "Not well, I think."
"Any idea what's wrong?" Roland moved cards from one stack to another.
Solitaire, Jeb found, made less sense when you watched it being played upside-down.
"No," he said. "Kyle says he's depressed. I thought he had the flu. He didn't look well."
"Where is he now?" Roland looked at the cards, thinking.
"Eight of spades can go here." Jeb tapped the nine of diamonds.
"Thank you." Roland moved the card.
"I have no idea," he admitted, focusing his attention on the game. "Kyle says he's talking to someone, but I don't know where that means he'd be."
"Pray he's not off the grounds," Roland muttered.
"Why?" Jeb asked. "Two of clubs can go to the ace."
"Thank you." He moved it, turned over the next card in the stack. "Because if he's that bad, I wouldn't let him anywhere near a car."
"Ah." Jeb watched without speaking for a moment.
"Didn't you notice?"
"Notice what?"
Roland rolled his eyes and kept moving the cards. "I thought it was obvious."
"Thought what was obvious?" He could be so irritating. Jeb bit his lip.
"Reilly has PBD." Roland turned a card over.
"Oh." Perhaps he was as dense as he usually felt he was. "That makes sense."
"Well. It's not a professional diagnosis, but... all the signs are there. The obvious ones, at least." Roland adjusted his glasses, and Jeb bit back a smile. That was one of his nervous habits. "A while back -- do you remember how cheerful he was? Abnormally so?"
"Yes," Jeb said, trying to remember. He thought Reilly might have been abnormally cheerful, but couldn't really remember.
"And now he's so depressed he won't leave his room." Roland moved cards from one stack to another. "The last time I talked to him before that he wouldn't stop talking about some plan he had."
"Sounds like PBD to me." Jeb shook his head.
Roland grinned. "I told you."
"OK, fine. You were right."
"Of course I was."
"So you could tell?"
"Yeah." Roland tilted his head and looked at Jeb curiously. "Why?"
"I should have known."
"Why?"
Jeb couldn't meet his eyes -- but he did feel something remarkably like hope setting root in his heart.
"Not everything is your fault."
"I should have seen this coming."
Roland deliberated for a moment, then moved a card.
"I could have... asked him to get help," Jeb continued. "I could have done something. If I'd seen this coming."
He glanced up and saw Roland very obviously suppressing a smile before he said:
"You don't have to save everyone, you know."
Jeb blinked at him. (The little hope plant in his heart sent out a few tentative shoots, seeking the light, tickling his ribs with delicate leaves.)
"Really."
Jeb dropped his gaze, staring at the table instead.
Roland put out a hand and tipped his chin up, forcing Jeb to look him in the eye.
"This isn't your fault," he said.
(The hope plant did something very un-plantlike, sending odd sparkling feelings of... happiness? bouncing around Jeb's chest.)
"You couldn't have known," Roland said softly. "There was nothing you could have done. It was going to happen, sooner or later. You don't have to feel guilty."
Jeb... well, Jeb felt almost free. As if he'd had a burden lifted from his shoulders, one that he'd forgotten he was carrying.
"Reilly's going to be fine, you know that? He'll be OK in the end." He smiled.
"Right," Jeb said.
"Really. We came out of it all right, didn't we?"
Jeb smiled back at him. "We did, I guess."
He leaned across the table and whispered in Roland's ear.
"I love you. You know that?"
Roland's hand stuttered on the table, spilling the game of solitaire out of order.
He whispered back.
"Of course I do."