Chapter Fifty Two:

Monday, November 3, 1997 – Burbank, CA

Enos had not made any attempt to close the doors, front or back, even though the cross breeze brought a few bits of loose earth in with it. He took her hand and led her to a bench, out of the way of the breeze, that was facing a large, multi-paned window with the same view of the mountains as the back door and laid his gun on the table flat, butt towards him, at a ready-to-grab angle.

Whether he was trying to scare her or just impress on her the importance of being cautious, it was working on both counts.

"I was kind of afraid you wouldn't want to come," Enos admitted. He relaxed a little and turned to see her. The overcast sky had limited the light in the otherwise unlit cabin and it cast random dark shadows on his face.

"Your buddy, Thompson, really didn't give me much choice. But nothing would have stopped me, Enos. You should know that."

"Not sure what I know anymore, Daisy."

He looked at her with a sadness she had not seen in those penetrating hazel eyes since his father died. Or was that the last time she'd seen it?

"You comin' out here to L.A. and all. Not callin' first or tellin' anybody what you were doin.'"

"I think I surprised myself."

"So, why did you come to L.A.?"

At least this time he asked. This was the conversation they should have had on Friday night. She had certainly thought about it more than a few – hundred – times over the last three days.

"Like you're tryin' to do I guess," she sighed. "Fill in the blanks." She wanted to reach out and touch him, but for the first time in her living memory, she didn't know if she should.

"I guess you got most of them filled in by now." He turned back to the view of the mountains and rested his arms over the table.

"Some of them," she said, watching him play with the stem he had pulled from the vase of desiccated roses on the table; his hand never far from the gun. "Others? I guess they don't matter anymore."

Picking the dried petals off the rose, he had exposed undried petals of blood red within. The flowers in the vase were recent. She looked around the interior of what she had assumed, from the outside, was a seldom used cabin. Inside, there was only a week's worth of dust on the window sills.

Even though Thompson had given her a reason, she found herself asking, "Why did you bring me way out here?"

"It's close to the airport and isolated. Hardly anybody knows about it."

She noticed that the overstuffed chair and couch, were new and placed in front of a fireplace with wood that had been recently burned.

She honed in on the far corner. "This is your cabin, isn't it?"

Next to the fireplace sat a mahogany wood chair and music stand, similar to the one in Kay's apartment.

Still fixated on his hands, he nodded his head slowly and put the rose back in the vase. "Not yet. But it will be. Eventually."

Without moving his right hand from next to the gun, he turned and flashed her a quick smile. "I thought it was time I put down some roots."

Daisy heard, 'now that I have a reason.'

She thought of the years it had taken Enos to pay off the mortgage on the Strate farm that Uncle Frank and Aunt Judy had been living on for the last thirty years. He had always said he would never take on another. We should never say never.

His smile had disappeared and she knew that, from what Kay had told her, Kate was not far from Enos's thoughts.

"You're not responsible. For Kate. You know that, don't you?"

"My brain knows it, Daisy, but my conscience is somethin' different." He took a deep breath and straightened up. "But I didn't bring you out here to talk about that. We don't have much time, and I wanna talk about you and me."

"From what I've seen, there isn't any 'you and me.' Not anymore. Maybe there never was," she said, looking away so he wouldn't see the tears welling up in her eyes.

"Don't say that, Daisy. Please don't say that."

"Uncle Jesse said we were just kids, but…" She swallowed the lump in her throat and sniffled, "You left me behind...and it changed everything."

"I know. And I'm so sorry. But, we were just kids. And," he hesitated and closed his eyes. "You never really loved me, Daisy. Not that way. Not the adult kind of love. Took me a long time to admit that. But it's true. You know it is."

She looked at him now, not trying to hide the waterworks.

"The way you love her?"

"Yes."

He'd said it without a moment's hesitation. It wasn't as hard as he had imagined. In fact, it was kind of liberating.

"No doubts?" she asked.

"Not a single one." He wiped her face with his thumb.

"Enos, I'm so sorry I hurt you." The tears started coming again, harder this time and she leaned her face into his shoulder.

"That's not the reason...And if anybody's to blame...I guess we both gotta take some of it."

"But what I did..."

He cupped her head with his hands and brought it back to face him.

"You were just smarter than me, Daisy. Stronger. You knew it wasn't right for either of us. We were just both hangin' on to memories of how things were between us – before I left. Maybe, if I hadn't left the first time..."

"I've thought about that a lot over the last six months," she sighed, wiping another tear from her cheek. for so long she hadn't been able to cry, now she couldn't seem to stop. "But...I would have gotten what I wanted. Or, maybe what I thought I wanted. But you would never get to be the person you are now...I'd have clipped your wings."

"I think I woulda' done the same to you," he said, with that sad, knowing smile of his.

"Maybe if you had mailed the letters...I think that's what made me get on that plane Friday morning. I needed to know why."

"I wish I could answer that, Daisy. But I don't know why."

"I think I know, now. And I think deep down, so do you."

"I started another letter to you a couple of months ago but I could never get past the first line. I guess it was 'cause I was actually gonna' mail it. Funny how it was always so easy before - when I never intended to mail 'em."

Through the tears, she laughed for the first time in a week. "All 476 of 'em?"

"Maybe things woulda' been different if I had mailed the first 476." He squeezed her hand. "But different doesn't mean that it woulda' been good for either of us."

Daisy wanted to tell him he was wrong. But he wasn't. And, for some insane reason, she thought of the apple peel that had landed at his feet in the form of an 'S.'

"So what now? You and Kay gonna to get married?"

He got a strange sense of the surreal talking to Daisy about Soonie; like the Earth had somehow shifted poles. But there were things he could tell Daisy and things that were private between him and Soonie.

"It's kind of complicated for both of us right now."

They fell into a momentary silence until Daisy asked, "Enos? You ever comin' home again?"

Before he could answer, or tell her that he would always have one foot in Hazzard and the other wherever Soonie was, there was a creak on the front porch and Enos's hand went immediately for the semi-automatic on the table.

"Daisy, hunker down behind the chair," he said while he raised his weapon and straight-armed, left palm cupped under his right hand, pointed it in the direction of the creak. Then he heard Thompson's tap on the door jam and relaxed.

Thompson came into the room holding the radio and said, "Kim says she's got something we need to see."

Angela Kim pulled up to the back door in her own vehicle and pulled a smallish figure with slicked back greasy hair out of the back seat. He was handcuffed and bent over.

"I believe," she said to Enos, "you're acquainted with Mr. Underwood?"

While Enos went to retrieve Daisy from behind the chair, Angie deposited the man unceremoniously onto the bench on which Enos and Daisy had just been sitting.

"I caught the little weasel trying to sneak in through the back entrance. Wasn't too good at it. Kind of stupid, actually."

Thompson said, his gun raised and pointed at Mr. Underwood. "Put your hands on the table where we can see them."

The man complied, but protested, "She didn't even Mirandize me, Enos, you gonna let her get away with that?"

"You wanna' be Mirandized, Squiggy?" Enos asked.

"No, that'd mean you you're gonna take me in. I don't wanna go in."

Enos motioned for Daisy to sit in the chair he'd ask her to hunker down behind and took a place on the bench across from the man.

"We got a lot a pallaberin' to do, Squiggy, so you better settle in." He was laying on the Blue Ridge as thickly as he could after being out of practice for so long.

But Angie tapped her watch at Enos, reminding him of the time. He got back up again and looked down at a contrite Squiggy.

"Think real hard before I get back, Squig. Or I'll just leave you with Detective Thompson over here. And just so ya' know, he didn't git that cast on his arm from playin' tennis."

Enos took Daisy's hand and led her out the back door, with her straining her neck to see the little man who looked both terrified and defiant at the same time and Thompson, in his three piece suit smiling at him.

"Enos. Is that the guy who Kay said came up to you at your apartment? What are you gonna' do with him?"

"Daisy, listen to me." Enos kept having to pull her gaze away from the scene in the cabin. "It doesn't matter right now who he is. You have to catch a plane. Angie's gonna' escort you to the Atlanta Airport and Rosco's gonna' pick you up. She'll fill you in on the way. Angie, you got her carry bag?"

"In the car."

"Enos, I can't go like this. There's too much we need to talk about, things I want to say."

"Gonna' have to wait, Daisy. For me. If you ever loved me at all, please do this for me."

Daisy threw her arms around him again and closed her eyes. "Are you still gonna' come for Thanksgiving?"

"We'll see."

Then he put her in the car and Angela Kim headed to the Burbank airport. He had not actually remembered the conversation he had with her at LAX when he tried to put her on a plane home the first time, but Turk had related enough that he knew what she meant about coming for Thanksgiving. Now he had that burden to bear was well.

Tuesday, November 4, 1997 – Atlanta, GA

The Boeing 737 landed at Hartsfield-Jackson International at 4:23 a.m. Atlanta time. Deplaning, Daisy found Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane waiting for her at the gate.

"Hey, Rosco."

Rosco played with his tie and tried to smile at her but he kept doing that thing with alternating smiling and sad-face that always made Daisy think there was more to him than met the eye. And he was distracted by her companion.

"Rosco, this is Detective Angela Kim."

"Ooooo, Enos told me somebody was gonna' escort you. He never told me detectives in Los Angeles were so fetching. How do you do, Detective. Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane at your service."

Angela opened her eyes wide and gave Daisy a look that clearly said, 'Is he for real?' and Daisy returned it with, 'Told ya.'

"Hey, Daisy girl. You got any luggage, uh, needs retrieving from that whirligig they call a carousel?"

"No, just this carry on," Daisy said, flashing him a smile, then caught him by surprise. She hugged him around the neck with her free arm and then pulled back to admire his new look. "Oh, Rosco, you old charmer. You look so handsome in plain clothes. You went all out, vest and everything."

Enos didn't have the market cornered on blushing. "Don't feel quite right workin' outta' uniform. Not sure how the dipstick does it. This gun's awful hard to see-crete under my jacket."

With eyebrows raised nearly to her hairline, Angela mouthed, 'Dipstick?' and Daisy just rolled her eyes.

"Pet name. Umm, term of endearment." she said.

"Ah. Sheriff, I see you carry a revolver. His service weapon is a Berretta," Angela offered. "A bit shorter and less obtrusive...and he doesn't try to, uh, secrete it. You know, badge and all?" She pointed to the one clipped to her belt.

"Yeah, but how 'bout when he's, you know, tryin' to be co-vert?" he whispered.

"If I told you, it wouldn't be co-vert anymore, would it?" Angela whispered back with such a mischievous twinkle in her eye that it forced a short snort-giggle out of Daisy.

"That's enough chewin' the fat, Rosco. Detective Kim has to catch a plane back to L.A. in half an hour." She turned to Angie and said, "Thanks, Angie."

"You're welcome." Angie winked. "Enos will get my bill."

"Awful nice meetin' you, Detective Kim." Rosco straightened his suit jacket again.

"Same here, Sheriff."

"Tell Enos...Tell him I said, hey."

"Sure thing, Sheriff. Now I really have to go." And she hurried away to catch the queue for her return flight.

Daisy caught hold of her carry bag and surveyed Rosco again. 'Ole Rosco did look pretty dapper in that suit,' Daisy thought, and wondered who picked it out for him.

"Well, we better get a move on, now, Daisy," he said. "We gotta' pick up your bike yet and get it in the back o' the truck. Say, what'd she mean Enos would get her bill?"

"Never mind, Rosco," she sighed. "Let's get going. I don't want anybody seein' me switch to my bike when we get close to the farm."