Chapter 69: The Third Toll

The conversation that had ambled about for the last half hour or so as the afternoon faded into the early evening had all been rather the same: where to go for a weekend in the next month or so, before the country was buried beneath the encroaching blanket of winter. "I don't see why a couple nights in London isn't enough to get your mind off of Midsomer," Barnaby muttered, sat beside his wife in the front room, a few newer travel books detailing some of England's nooks and crannies spread on the table in front of them, another in her hands.

"How many times have we been to London, Tom?" Joyce asked, now leafing through the one he remembered discussing Hertfordshire in detail. He tried to ignore the flashes of colors and maps at the corner of his eye.

"It means I know where to take you—and have done for years."

"Of course you do—we met there."

"So much the simpler."

Joyce shook her head. "That's not the point."

Perhaps it wasn't, Barnaby had to allow; the last couple of months had been wearing, and that might be a polite accusation. Between Aunt Alice's unexpected death, the sudden tension and space between Cully and Troy that both pleased and unnerved him, the rapid conclusion to the ongoing burglary spree that left him more concerned for his sergeant's safety than he found comfortable...Well, a couple or three days to not think on any of it might do them both some good. "Then what about the seaside?" he asked.

"I thought we were hoping for a little peace and quiet, not a lot of families on holiday?"

"Don't tell me you want to visit some far corner of the county that seems that way?"

"Not everything is about work—you know that."

"I do know that," he said, settling his arm around her shoulder.

"Then let's talk about it later—and maybe we'll go over reorganizing the spare room instead."

That might be even worse, struggling to decide where to put this and that, all of which had no proper home out and about. "I rather think you believe I don't want to talk about it."

"No, but I think you're putting it off a little longer than necessary."

"Well, if you just want some peace and quiet, all the best to just let the world go by and just stay—"

"Not here—not with you after all these years."

"You make it sound like I don't enjoy time off, love."

"Well, when you're always so ready to be distracted, it's hard to tell some—"

The lock on the front door jiggled as they spoke, sticking slightly as it always preferred to before a gentle blast of cool air and a fragment of conversation was swept in. "...you knew better," Barnaby heard his daughter say, lifting his face at the sound of her voice. It was perhaps the last thing he expected to see: Cully glancing over her shoulder, chastising someone else behind her.

"He was the one who jumped the light." Barnaby knew that voice well as Cully pulled him through the door, her hand clasped in his.

"I was sitting right next to you, Gavin."

"But you weren't the one driving."

"Well, of course," Cully said, hardly through the door before she turned back to him and slapped him across the shoulder.

"You're still in one piece," his sergeant added, following her inside and closing the door in his wake.

"That's not the point."

"It's what maters in the—end..." Troy's words trailed away, and Barnaby saw him looking around the room: realizing. He saw the man glance at Joyce—him—and perhaps really remember where he was. "Yes."

"Troy," Barnaby said quietly, peering at the younger man. His stomach was already roiling seeing him here in his own home—where he didn't belong. "Why are you here?"

That drew his sergeant's attention entirely. "Uh, hello—sir," Troy said, looking at his feet for a second, though he didn't release Cully's hand. "Well—"

"I wasn't expecting to see you today," he went on. And wasn't that the truth? A Sunday with no case to hold their attention?

"I just—"

As Joyce dropped that travel book on top of the stack on the table, she whispered, "Tom."

"We were just talking," Cully said quickly as she looked back up at Troy and shifted even closer to him, "before I caught the train from Cambridge—and Gavin offered to give me a lift from the station."

"Oh?" It was an answer, but not a good one, dancing around something—Barnaby heard that much clearly. He had heard the same sentiment, if not the same words, from them both over the last few months.

Barnaby didn't miss their eyes flickering toward one another, Troy clearly trying to start once before he finally managed an answer. "I thought it was the least I could do, all things considered."

"What—"

"It's nothing, Dad."

Of course it's not, he thought. The space between them was truly gone, their hands still folded together, knuckles almost white if he had a guess. "Well, thank you all the same, Troy," he said, his teeth gritted. Unless he was blind, something had suddenly been righted about and between them—something very wrong.

It was another glance darting back and forth between them before Troy cleared his throat. "Of course."

"I'm sure it was very good of you."

"Tom."

For the next few seconds, no one spoke, the air thickening all about them, going syrupy with the silence. Well, at least we're done for the— "It's getting late," Joyce said, standing quickly. "Why don't you stay for dinner, Gavin? It's nearly ready."

What? It was the last thing Barnaby expected to hear, a social invitation. Troy may well have been very good to Cully—very good to all of them with the upheaval of Aunt Alice's death as they all struggled to cope—but those moments were rapidly drifting into the past.

Troy shook his head—just a bit. "Well—"

"We talked about this—" Cully began quietly.

"I know," he said, cutting her off. "Uh, sure," he added, probably for Joyce's sake. "Thank you."

Cully vanished into the kitchen with her mother, already a little chatter about "fixing this and that" wafting through the doorway. Leaving him alone with his sergeant. With Troy sat across the room in the chair opposite, Barnaby leaned forward, closing his hands together. "I assume you have all your reports in order for the preliminary hearing later this week?"

Troy nodded. "Yes—of course, sir."

"I supposed. You've put in a lot of work on this case."

"Well, I remembered how you never like coincidences—"

"Even when I thought you were being rather daft." And wasn't that the truth, following up on a suspect based on the prominence of a name on train reservation lists, doubling down with the theory that the man might be left-handed—only to find his suspect was left-handed, as a slew of other small facts fell into place.

"I was only following the evidence, sir."

"On more than a bit of limb—"

"Dad!" Cully called from the kitchen, amidst the faint clatter of plates and silverware, all the final preparations for dinner.

Still listening, Barnaby realized. You're being so protective of him again, Cully, I thought you were past that. "And happily it turned out to be right," he said, remembering the review—interrogation?— of his sergeant, forgetting for now the odd situation blossoming in his home.

"Thank you, sir," Troy answered quietly—still not really looking at him, more watching the wall over his shoulder.

"I hope to see more of that insight from you—in the future."

And that was how a short while later—after a few more minutes of troubling silence and odd words in the front room—Barnaby found himself sat at the dining table beside his wife, opposite his daughter and his sergeant. The stew and mash Joyce had landed on the table looked lovely, but the company was more than a little uncomfortable. The conversation—primarily about the latest chaos in Midsomer, though it occasionally improved with a comment about the weather—ran in fits and starts at first, but soon settled into relative comfort—for three of them. There was something very off about it all: how close the two of them sat to one another, the small looks from one to another they couldn't possible hope to go unseen—worse than when they first walked through the door—even how Cully hadn't made mention of her audition, how it had gone. That alone was a strange change.

"...sat next to a couple of French girls lost in conversation," Cully was saying, more focused on her mother than anyone else. "Don't think they even noticed me apart from bumping their knees trying to get to my seat."

"I suppose they fancied you couldn't understand a word."

"Maybe, but I'm a bit rusty."

"Better that than terrible," Troy interrupted. "I was until they encouraged me to drop the course."

Barnaby almost laughed. "Spanish might suit you better, I think we already talked about that."

"I don't think it's more useful, sir, apart from that one case—"

A dull ringing broke through Troy's voice, tinny and muffled. "Sorry," he muttered, thrusting his hand into the pocket of the windbreaker hanging from the back of his chair. (The man had forgotten to take it off until he sat at the dinner table, surely not intending to stay beyond a last moment of saying goodbye to Cully. She still wore her windbreaker, quietly saying something about being cold.) He hardly even looked at it before he silenced it and shoved it away again. "I'll call her later tonight," he said to her quietly. Not to anyone else, Barnaby noted. So many little words—thoughts—comments—were floating back and forth between them, like there was no one else in the room, no one else to listen.

"I'm sure she'll be happy to talk to you," Cully said, leaning toward him, closer and closer.

"We'll see—"

Barnaby coughed, rather louder than he might do otherwise.

The distance between them suddenly reappeared, both sitting straight in their chairs, both looking at the table. "Sorry, Dad," Cully mumbled.

For the next minute or so, everyone was content to just eat their dinner, the stew something old fashioned Joyce had teased from a WI newsletter, the mash still a touch lumpy. Sunday roasts hadn't been a common feature in their household since Cully first went to university, a production too large for two people.

"You never told us how your audition went," Joyce said suddenly, echoing Barnaby's own thought.

"Ah."

"You usually have a sense of how it went," he added. And his wife was right to ask: it was a strange silence about the plays and auditions she often worried over, though perhaps less than a few years ago.

"Yes, but..." And again, he noticed his daughter looking at Troy. Her eyes had struggled to stray from him all evening. Why?..."I'll tell you later."

"And what about you, Troy?" Barnaby asked.

His sergeant started. "Sir?"

"What do you think?"

Cully half reached for Troy's arm before she stopped. "Dad, it's dinner, not an interrogation—"

"About what, sir?" Troy asked. His sergeant was staring at him, waiting for an answer.

"Everything about Cambridge, and this play."

A few moments wore on in silence, with even more of those new glances and looks playing on between them. "Well..." Troy began.

"Yes?"

He felt Joyce's hand on his, a new weight and reminder to watch his words. "Tom," she whispered.

"It would be a long few months," Troy finally finished after a few seconds.

That was not the answered Barnaby wanted.

By the time dinner was finished—the conversation bordering on banal from the moment the plates were laid to the second the last bite was finished—a few more of Barnaby's questions received half-hearted answers. All of them had an echo of truth from both Cully and Troy, but each sentence was hesitant and well overthought. Talking around the proper answer, he surmised.

Rather quicker than usual, Cully volunteered to help her mother clear things from the table, leaving him to wander from the dining room to the front room and Troy to snatch his windbreaker from the back of his chair in tow. (He half-remembered her doing something similar once before though it must have been several years earlier, leaving him alone with someone who had caught her eye.) They chased some of same thoughts and concerns about again, covering the same details ahead of the upcoming preliminary hearing. But it was hardly a couple of minutes before all the ground had been covered and the new silence grew heavier than the awkward words.

His arms crossed, Barnaby had to swallow before he spoke once more. "Thank you again, Troy, for bringing Cully home."

His sergeant was twitching, probably wanting Cully's hand again even though she was still back in the kitchen, sorting the plates and cooking dishes with her mother. "Of—of course, sir. I was glad to see her."

"I know you weren't getting along recently—"

"That's not it—"

"Then what was I watching for the last two weeks?"

"I think that's between me and Cully—sir," Troy said quietly.

"Troy—"

"Dad, is something wrong?" Cully asked, finally stepping out of the kitchen, pulling the sleeves of her jacket back down from her elbows to her wrists. Strange.

"No," Barnaby said quietly. "Then I'll see you tomorrow, Troy."

"Yes—"

"9 am sharp."

"Yes, sir, I know," Troy snapped.

"Just making—"

"Dad!" Cully said loudly, walking past him to Troy—taking his hand for a brief moment, just as she had clutched it when she stepped through the front door with him rather later in the evening than he found comfortable. "I'll be back in a minute." She disappeared through the door with him—closing it rather sharply—back into a world he feared had suddenly changed, a growing knowledge that had been settling on his shoulders for the last hours. And the minutes ticking away know added pound after pound to that weight.

"Bit of a long goodbye, isn't it?" he asked quietly, hearing Joyce come in from the kitchen.

"You've been better about things lately, Tom, don't forget that."

"I know—"

"And it might do you some good to be more charitable after the last two months," she added, touching her hand to his back.

It wasn't soothing as he muttered, "Perhaps." Something was troubling him—more than just something. "What train did Cully say she was planning to take today?" he asked, taking a step toward the front door and the windows.

"I think she said she hoped to catch the 2:30 express to King's Cross, so she could spend a bit of time with one or two of her old university friends and still be back early."

That should have had her in Causton in the early evening depending on how her connections fared, some time after she walked in with him, hand in hand. "A quick drive back from the station." But of course, if she had bought a ticket for one of the later trains from King's Cross, the maths didn't work. "If that."

"Not everything is a mystery you need to solve."

"It's not that, Joyce, just a lot of rather curious things. Usually she's happy to tell us how these things go, soon as she can."

"Perhaps she has other things on her mind," his wife said quietly.

Other things—but that wasn't quite right, if his eyes had worked properly for the last little while. "I'm afraid that's what worries me."

Barnaby wasn't certain what he expected, not after the last two months—and certainly after the last two weeks. In one moment, his daughter seemed happy to spend every free hour with Troy, until suddenly on that Sunday morning two weeks ago, she wasn't. But whatever spat had driven the wedge between them, it so plainly had eroded swiftly; he hadn't missed the worry on her face the evening he tried his best not to burden both her and Joyce with the more grisly details of Troy's misadventures ahead of a, to them still unmentioned, visit to A&E that afternoon. Nor had he missed the strange amalgamation of quick words and veiled barbs in that short conversation he overheard when he forced them together again: comments about anger on Saturday, questions about why they hadn't spoken the next day, all of it tainted with regret and...even resignation.

But what he hadn't expected was what transpired tonight...His sergeant's halting acceptance of Joyce's dinner invitation. How near the man sat to Cully. The small and almost invisible glances they had for one another, like they fancied he couldn't observe them. And now, finally just peering through the front window out to the drive…

Standing beside Troy's car in the darkening evening, they were again a little too close for his comfort. Talking, Barnaby assumed, then laughing until his sergeant seized his daughter's hand—whatever had been amusing appeared to turn altogether serious. And then her other hand rose to the man's face, his shoulder, drawing him closer and pressing her mouth to his as all the space between their bodies disappeared. As his hand drifted to the curve of her back, they must have truly lost themselves in their own small world.

Barnaby's stomach churned despite the better than average dinner from his wife. Still just standing in the drive, Cully and Troy broke away for a second—one or the both them laughing again—before it was his sergeant's turn, probably whispering something into her ear before he kissed her, tangled his hand through her hair. And there was nothing chaste, nothing innocent about those kisses. A friendly goodbye he well understood, especially after the past two weeks with whatever had been troubling them apparently swept away. But at least he finally had an answer for the question he had never quite asked his daughter, the question Troy had never quite answered. What was really going on? Barnaby asked himself again. A lover's quarrel.

Even when they finally fell apart, they just lingered in the last rays of the day's sunlight and the harsher glow of the lamps dotted along the street, still clutching one another's hands as they talked, still laughing once in a while. "Clearly forgotten everything else," Barnaby muttered to himself, turning away from the window. Probably impolite to spy on your daughter and her—no, something more fleeting than that. It couldn't be.

"Did you say something, Tom?" his wife asked, reaching for the book she had begun to ignore, when the front door first opened.

"No, nothing important, love. At least I hope..." He had to stop. If he didn't say anything, then perhaps—somehow—he could forget what he had just witnessed, and somehow it could cease to be real.

"What is it?"

"Maybe nothing."

He retired to his study before he heard Cully come in, fancying he heard her ask her mother if she had a few minutes to talk, words dulling into incomprehensible whispers after Joyce told her daughter to come into the kitchen for a cup of tea if she really wanted to talk. For the best, Barnaby thought, leaning back in his chair, his gaze bouncing about the room. Here and there—a couple on a particularly empty space on the bookshelves, one tucked into the far corner of his desk beneath the lamp, a later one hanging from the wall—photographs of his own small family stared at him from the past:

The three of them what must have been more than two decades ago, Cully hardly more than a toddler stumbling about with still uncertain steps, her words too new and young to be so cutting as they soon became, future unformed and malleable—all possibilities awaiting her.

A school play—the title swiftly forgotten after its only painful performance—and the first indication they ever had of her later career choices.

Some unremembered moment of his daughter captured toward the end of secondary school, her gaze somewhat sullen with the wavering moods that had surfaced alongside the whispers of the poorer decisions she made, leaving both Joyce and him more anxious and unsure how to intervene—always hoping her better sense would prevail before she wandered down a road that had no way back.

And just a few years ago, a family portrait—probably just around the time Cully won exhibition to Cambridge—her smile easier than before. Happy to be leaving everything behind? he'd always wondered. Or excited for something new?

"Something new," he muttered, folding his hands together behind his neck. That certainly was what he was finally seeing—even if it was forced in front of him. Or perhaps, it was rather old, weeks and years in the making. He couldn't quite remember when, but at some point in the last few months, Troy's awkwardness where Cully was concerned grew exponentially almost overnight and suddenly she was a stumbling block for most every word between them during their working days. It all playing out on a new level? Possibly. And the timeline of this weekend was nonsense, clearly so, no matter what his daughter or his sergeant said. Every comment over the course of dinner had been technically true and nothing more. If he actually believed she read for that role, well then he would be playing the fool, no doubt about it.

Everything about Cully was transformed from when he last spoke with her Friday evening: Barnaby had seen happiness in her, even as she likely bickered with Troy as they were just inside the house, or when they occasionally cut one another off before the dinner conversation stalled out yet again. And now he remembered the moment so like it, one just as awkward then but more comfortable as the days rolled on: arriving home in the midst of one of the crueler deaths he and—they had ever investigated, finding Nico in the kitchen, chatting with Cully not a care about anything else. And that, her last real relationship—that they knew of, he had to allow—had eventually just evaporated little by little and day after day, no matter how swiftly and potently it had come on. (Who could say for certain what had happened throughout her teenage years, when her hopes to become an adult so soon propelled her through more than a few moments he still cringed about when he remembered.) "You may well be on borrowed time, Troy," Barnaby said quietly. The thought gave him hope for the next few working days. Or perhaps not, seeing how eager Cully was to protect the man from mere words he probably deserved to hear. And again, so close, almost melting into one another as the sky above began its last move from blue to the true black of night.

And was that what he had witnessed all those weeks ago, woven together with her grief after Aunt Alice's passing: loneliness as Troy toiled away at CID, allowing him more time at home? Joyce had said—he had even said so himself—it was good of his sergeant. And it had certainly blinded Barnaby to the truth fermenting within both Cully and Troy, ready and waiting to boil over as it had two weeks ago. Now, it was very plainly not the anger of friendship betrayed, but of something so much deeper.

Barnaby had long ago divested himself of the concept of his daughter as his innocent little girl—it was wishful thinking to do anything else. But she and her choices had always existed separately from his work, everything and everyone in that particular universe. Well...there was no more ignoring what he had struggled not to see since summer while it surged over the horizon and they crashed together again. "Cully Barnaby and Gavin Troy," he whispered. Inconceivable, even as his eyes rose to that picture of his daughter, trapped in the height of her adolescent fits of temper. "I suppose you could always be counted on to choose—what I'd rather not have for you."

None of that quelled his ire for Troy. More than once, they had found themselves in a difficult situation, trust in one another as a team the only thing that had seen them through to the end they hoped for. "Don't make me think I can't trust you any longer."

But maybe, in the end, it wouldn't matter all that much. Cully had found many—boyfriends throughout the course of her life, Troy seeming to merely be the latest in that line. And with the man likely eyeing the detective's exam in the nearing future, it might only be a matter of time. So perhaps for the remaining time of his daughter's infatuation, he could learn to hold his tongue—Troy be damned, it would be for her sake alone.

A/N: I think that must be a hard thing to do as a parent, watching your child grow into an adult with very normal adult feelings and desires. (Or maybe my brain is just tainted from growing up in a hyper-Christian household.) There may be some editing on this because I'm doing that thing I know I shouldn't do: post right before going to work.