A/N: More story.

Big Swamp

Chapter Seventeen: Wave

After Bolonia returns from a brief visit with Morgan, Ellie convinces Bolonia to go home. Ellie and Devon are going to take her.

I'm impressed with Devon. He fell in immediately with us all, even though he did not know Carina or Father Casey or Bolonia — or Morgan. As Bolonia goes out the ER doors, Ellie and Devon follow. I see Devon settle his hand on Ellie's back and rub it gently. I'm so tired, so angry, — so emotional that Devon's gesture brings tears to my eyes.

I'm trying to blink them away when Sarah notices them. She's still holding my hand. "It's okay, Chuck. Morgan's going to be okay." I nod. She waits a moment, then continues. "Is it a case? Is that what got Morgan hurt?"

I look at her, my lips pulled to one side of my face, and wiping my eyes with the palm of my free hand. "I don't know. Probably. But I can't talk about it."

She looks into my eyes, concern in hers. "Be careful, Chuck, please."

I squeeze her hand. "I will."

Carina comes back into the ER. She'd gone back to see Morgan too. She stops beside us. Father Casey rejoins us, a small cup of machine coffee in his hand. He sniffs it and frowns.

"He's fine, I think," Carina says, visibly relieved. "I'm just starting to like that guy. I don't want to lose him."

Sarah nods at Carina but squeezes my hand: "I know how you feel."

"Carina," Father Casey says, "can I give you a ride?" He tosses the full cup of coffee in the trash.

"Yes, please."

Father Casey nods gravely at me and then he and Carina leave.

Sarah turns to me. "We should go, Chuck. There's nothing you can do here tonight."

"I suppose so."

She steps to me and kisses my cheek, gives me a gentle smile, and leads me out of the ER.

Sarah parks the Rover at my house. Ellie's not home yet; the house is dark. Sarah shuts the engine off.

My phone beeps and I panic, worried about Morgan, but it's a text from Ellie. She's going to stay with Devon again tonight — if I'm okay. I text back that I am. Sarah's watching but hasn't asked anything.

I face her. "That was Ellie. She's spending the night at Devon's."

Sarah nods and searches my face. "Do you want me to stay, Chuck?"

Everything in me screams yes. "No, believe me, I'd love it," I don't catch myself before I use that word so I just keep going, "but I wouldn't want...I can't...Not tonight, with Morgan there in the hospital…"

"Chuck," she says softly, "we don't need to do anything. I just want to stay with you, be with you."

I feel deranged. I want her so desperately — and yet I don't want our first time to be tonight, enshadowed by what's happened.

But I would like her to stay, be with me. "I just want...I just imagined...our first time to be...celebration, not comfort."

"You say the nicest things, Chuck. Are you sure you never thought about writing?"

That's a secret I will share with her but not tonight. I lean to her and kiss her. "Come on inside."

Sarah stands and looks around my room. The pad I'm using to write Do I Not Bleed?'s on my desk. My guitar's in the desk chair. She scans it all, the posters, the books and magazines.

"You weren't lying about this room being different from the rest of the house. But I like it too."

I grin and open one of the drawers in my dresser, rifle around. "I guess I could go to Ellie's room," I offer, shrugging, "I really don't have any PJs."

Sarah chuckles. "Just a comfy t-shirt, that'll do."

I find her one and hand it to her, folded. She holds it up in front of her and reads it. "Just For Him"?

I blush. I had forgotten what was on the shirt. "Um...yeah, sorry. That's a barbershop — um, male salon — in Auburn. I was on their softball team one summer. That shirt's my souvenir."

She shakes her head and chuckles again. "How'd your team do?"

"We sucked," I say without thinking. She gives me a flat look.

"Oh, sorry, we were bad. Lost every game by mercy rule. It was a sad season."

She looks around and I point her toward the bathroom. "There're new toothbrushes in the top drawer, unopened. Ellie insists I be prepared."

Sarah tilts her head. "Lots of women in and out, Chuck, lots of toothbrushing?"

My blush returns, heightened on its second visit. "No," I report and leave it at that.

I dated a couple of women in college, each for a while, though each relationship fell apart eventually. One woman was a Lit major — she dumped me for a tortured writer. The other was a Psych major — she dumped me for a Psych assistant professor. Since I graduated, I haven't dated much. I've gone out with Hannah a few times, in a friends-ish way (on my side, anyway), and with two other women, nurse friends of Ellie's, but only once with each. So — not a lot of toothbrushing.

Other than mine.

Sarah shakes her head at me. As she starts for the bathroom, I tell her there are clean washcloths and towels on the rack.

When she goes into the bathroom, I kick off my shoes and sit on the end of my bed, putting my phone on the nightstand. I rest my hands on my knees and sigh. I need to figure out Jane Peterson's death. Everything seems increasingly to center on that. And then it occurs to me.

To figure out her death, I need to figure out her life, beyond what Diana told me.

A plan of action begins to take form.

And then Sarah comes into the room — and no other form matters for a moment: the balance of the universe is dark, without form, void. She is light.

She stands there in my orange softball t-shirt, Just For Him, her blond hair loose.

She puts her arms out to her sides, wrists relaxed, and spins. She lets her eyes smolder for a second when she stops, puts one hand on the words, on her heart.

"Truth in advertising, Chuck," she whispers. Her legs are bare, her feet. The smolder in her eyes arcs, leaps across from her to me, and I feel it keenly. I stand and kiss her, careful to keep my lower body separate from hers. If I contact her, the smolder will inflame.

She senses my caution and respects our middle distance. I take my turn in the bathroom.

When I finish, I find her in my bed, beneath the sheet, propped on the pillows. She's on my side, but I absolutely don't care. The lamp beside the bed's supplying a soft glow. She pats the open side of the bed. I'm wearing one of my Oberlin shirts and some gym shorts. I slip under the sheet beside her. She unstacks the pillows, gives one to me, then rolls against me. She rests her chin on my chest.

She smiles a small smile. "I'm sorry about Morgan, Chuck. But I'm glad to be here with you, glad...well, just glad..."

"Are they going to miss you at the Hall? Do you need to call? Text?" I recall my early worry that she and Wylie were involved. I dropped that thought a long time ago, I realize. He may not be her uncle but he's not her lover. I've never felt the slightest jealousy toward him, not like Bryce.

"I'm a big girl, Chuck, Uncle Wylie doesn't monitor my comings and goings." I nod and she waits, looking at me, expecting another question. When I don't ask, she grins. "And Bryce has no right to monitor my comings and goings; as I told you, Chuck, that's done. I'm just waiting for him to leave. Eager."

"You're not alone."

She rolls her eyes. "I'm in your bed, Chuck, and, although we're not making love, we both want to. Got that?"

"You're telling me what I want?" I ask, raising my eyebrows and laughing beneath my breath.

"No, the deliberate distance between us in that post-spin kiss told me what you want: I'm just relaying the information on the off-chance it didn't travel northward in you."

I take a second to repeat that sentence in my head. "I'm not the only one who should think about writing."

She pushes herself forward to kiss me. I feel her all along the length of me. We both sigh as the kiss ends, then we start laughing at each other.

"Chuck," Sarah asks, still laughing, "what was the record you played at Jill's?"

"The Sinatra album?"

"Yes, do you have it?"

I nod. "It's on my iTunes. Sinatra and Jobim. Jobim was an amazing Bossa Nova composer, songwriter."

"What was that song, the one where Sinatra sings that really low note?"

I think for a minute. I love the album but it's not in my regular rotation. I save it for special occasions. "That song's called 'Wave'."

"Can you play it for us? Since I told you what you want, why don't you listen to the words for me? I...loved them when I heard them — when we were dancing at Jill's. Especially after our talk." She turns her head, resting her cheek on my chest, not her chin.

I stretch, get my phone. I start the song. She squeezes me as it begins but does not look at me.

Sinatra sings. Sarah squeezes me harder.

Just catch that wave, don't be afraid of loving me
The fundamental loneliness goes whenever two can dream a dream together

The wave catches us and we drift away.

I wake up early and check my phone.

Nothing. I take that as good news, but I want to check on Morgan. Sarah's wrapped around me, a clinging vine. I kiss her and gently extricate myself. She smiles in her sleep.

I get up and go into the hallway, closing the door. I call Bolonia. She answers immediately. The cheerful sound of her voice tells me what I want to know before she answers my question about Morgan. She tells me he's fine and that she'll be taking him home later this morning. I tell her I will stop by their house this afternoon, once she has him settled.

I have things I can do between now and then. I need to do something.

I kiss Sarah goodbye and tell her I will call her later. Things between us feel warm, comfortable — but combustible. She drives away as I get into the Camry.

It's sunny but surprisingly pleasant. There's even a hint of a breeze. The standing rainwater of yesterday has evaporated.

I drive out to the edge of Opelika, to a large, two-story house surrounded by magnolia trees. Dr. McCombs lives and practices in the house. A discreet shingle hangs on the porch, over the stairs, but he no longer takes new patients. He still sees some of his old ones, but only for minor issues, and really then only to chat. For more major issues, he now sends them on to younger specialists, as he did Jane Peterson to Devon. I imagine he must have had his hands full over the years with Jane, her hypochondria.

I knock on the door and it takes Dr. McComb's longtime assistant, Mildred, a moment or two to make it to the door. Talk around town for years has been that she and McComb's were a couple, but if so, they were never seen in public together and she was never known to spend the night. But neither was ever seen with anyone else and it was impossible to be around them without noticing their attunement to one another. Even as a kid, when Mom took me to see McComb's, I could feel it.

"Why, it's Charles Bartowski. It's been ever so long, my boy!" Mildred's voice is the tonal equivalent of Ellie's sweet tea, all amber, and syrupy, a sweet treat for the ear.

"Hey, Miss Mildred? Is the doctor in?"

She laughs. "Yes, the miserable old grump is here. He's in his office. He says he's watching the news. I know he's really watching his soaps. He records them, you know. He talks to them too. Worse and worse, as he gets older."

She knocks on the interior office door and I hear McComb's bellow: "Don't disturb the doctor!"

"Vance," Mildred says in a voice of infinite patience, "it's that lovely boy, Charles Bartowski. He wants to talk to you."

"I don't care!" McComb shouts. "I want to watch The Young and the Restless, not talk to 'em."

Mildred looks at me and grins. "He'll see you now."

I go inside. Mildred doesn't close the door but she goes back to her desk.

McCombs, although seated, seems tall. That's because he is — he's taller than me, but longer waisted, so that he seems even taller when seated. He's staring at a small television. A soap opera is on, and about to go to commercial. There's a swell of dramatic music and a close-up of a generically beautiful brunette with a look of shock on her face, and then an announcer's talking about the scent of new and improved Gain detergent. McCombs picks up the remote and clicks it, mutes the TV.

He stands but old as he now is, standing is as much the work of his arms as his legs. It takes a minute, but then he steps forward and shakes my hand. "It's been a while, Chuck, how are you?"

"Well, Doc. I'm not here about my health, I'm here on a case."

"Oh, that's right. You finally became Encyclopedia Brown, didn't you? A late bloomer, I guess." He chuckles and I do too. "How can I help?"

"I was hoping you could tell me about Jane Peterson."

He gives me a close look. "Jane? She's gone, Chuck, and her life was sad enough. Is there really any need to dig her up, so to speak?"

"This isn't ghoulish curiosity or anything like that, Doc. I'm professionally puzzled about her death. Was it a heart attack?"

He sighs and sits back down, again using his arms as much as his legs. "Yes, it was. They called me after they found her. I went out to the Hall. She'd had problems with her heart for a long time. Unlike a lot of her ailments, that one wasn't in her head." He shook his. "She was on the floor, in a puddle of her own urine and cat urine, cats crawling all over her, sleeping on her corpse, stalking through the house, mewing their heads off. A couple of cats were dead, on the floor too. It was like a scene in a goddamn movie."

He pauses and then continues. "She loved those cats but most of them hated her. That was Jane's lot in life, I suppose, to love things that hated her back.

"Jesus, how that house stank, Chuck! Cats everywhere, cans of food on the floor, on the counters, some food in half-dried piles on the floor. She must have fed them out of the can — no bowls anywhere. One of the paramedics opened the refrigerator: it was full of open, half-empty cans. She must have lost track of how many she opened."

I regret having heard the story. I change the question. "Was she crazy, Doc?"

"Shit, son, this is the South! Who knows who's crazy? Was Jane crazy? Yes, more than half. But it was partly her inheritance — the whole family struggled psychologically. Jane's father and mother didn't help, but…" McCombs drops his voice, "that doomed love affair did most of the damage."

"They say she used to walk the grounds with a lantern late at night. That she sang naked on the upper balcony?"

McCombs' face softens. "She probably did. I know she owned an old lantern. She used to sing in the St. Dunstan's choir, but that was long before your day, and before the day of that massive new priest."

"Would anyone be able to tell me about the lantern, the singing?"

"I don't know...Mildred," he says without raising his voice, "since you are undoubtedly listening, do you know?"

His ancient intercom crackles. "Edna, her housekeeper. I think that nice Mr. Stroud hired her to do some light housework at the Hall. She worked for Jane for a long time."

I realize I met Edna the other day, the woman with the broom.

McCombs shakes his head at himself. "Hell, I knew that. Yes, Edna. Getting old's a test of the health of your self-image, Chuck. If you idolize yourself as a youngster, you're going to hate yourself as an oldster. Best not to get too attached to youth, or to picture yourself only as young. Time'll stomp on that."

I nod. "Thanks, Doc."

"I hear good things about your sister, Chuck. Oh, and I hear she's taken up with that handsome Dr. Woodcomb." I grin. Word travels like lightning in these towns. "Good for her. That's one hell of a sister you have there."

"True," I say. I shake his hand and Mildred shows me out.

My eventual destination today is the Opelika City Police Department. I want to know about what happened to Morgan. But I also know the Department. It does not move quickly. So, I postpone that trip and head for the office. It's Saturday, and so the office is closed, but I need a few minutes to myself.

I can't chase that story about Jane's body from my head. And my anger about Morgan is returning.

I unlock the door and go inside, close the door, luxuriating for a moment in the cool dark of the office. It's not as hot as usual outside, but it is still hot. Morgan closed the blinds before he left the other day, and so there're only a few stripes of sunlight on the floor.

I huff to myself, trying to decide whether to open the blinds, and chance someone thinking the office is open, or whether to sit in the dark. Neither option's attractive.

There's a knock on the door. I consider not opening it. We're closed. But it might be important.

I open the door to Bryce's Larkin. I blink, both because I didn't expect him, and because I hardly know him without his smile. He's not smiling. As I look at him, he looks over his shoulder then back at me.

"Do you have a minute, Chuck? I can call you 'Chuck', right?" Hell, no. I think of Bill Peppers' neighbor but I nod my head.

He pushes past me into the office and turns. He's wearing a light blue, short-sleeved Polo shirt and dark blue slacks, pressed to perfection, the crease like a samurai blade, and a pair of brown loafers. Someone took the Hamptons, refashioned them as a human male, and tanned them, and now they stand before me in four-hundred dollar loafers.

He's still not smiling. Odd. I didn't rate his smile as optional.

"Can we chat for a minute, man-to-man?"

Oh, goody. "Yes." I keep my answer very man-to-man, a John Wayne yes. Bryce walks over and sits down in Morgan's chair. That pisses me off but I try to ignore it.

"We need to talk about Sarah."

I raise an eyebrow but say nothing.

"She spent the night at your place last night, right?"

This is none of his business. I drop the eyebrow and just stare at him.

Something like pity slips into his voice. "I just want you to know, Chuck, not to put too much into Sarah's...putting out. I can't count of all the men she's slept with — I'd need my fingers and yours and hers. I just don't want you to think you've been, well, singled out for any particular honor. At best, you get a participation trophy, like all the others."

Now the smile.

I'm tempted to get my gun and shoot him right in the smile.

"Including you?" I finally ask.

He nods in showy indifference. "Yes, but I understand her, Chuck, I don't expect...faithfulness...from Sarah Walker. I know what I'm getting into. As long as she makes sure I'm satisfied, I don't care who else she satisfies or how she satisfies herself."

I may not fully self-identify as a Southerner but I do care about manners. This isn't just a breach of them, it's a damned overthrow.

"If you don't care, Bryce, then why are you here?"

I'm puzzled he didn't anticipate that question because he clearly didn't. The smile falters for a moment.

"Because," he eventually offers, reasserting his smile, "I know you care. You don't know her, you see, and you won't like her when you do. You're going to regret last night, I'm afraid."

I don't want to believe him. I don't believe him. His smile is all-the-way-back, smug.

"I can see you don't know whether to believe me. I'm sure she's been pretending to be...otherwise. She's good at pretending. She's best at lies. I've never seen anyone better. Bail on her now, Chuck, before she screws you over."

"I've seen her reduce better men to nothing — steal their hearts, steal their self-respect, steal..."

"Get out, Bryce," I say in a low voice as I stalk to the desk from the door where I'd been standing, start to circle it. "Get out before I provide you with free tuition on Southern manners."

He's in great shape, I know. But I'm taller, heavier, and I'm not going to give a damn about my face or teeth. I'm just going to beat the shit out of him. My anger from last night, at what was done to Morgan, rekindles, adds to the fire inside me. I don't believe Bryce did it, but at the moment, I don't care.

I'm a tower of flame.

Bryce leaps from the chair and scoots to the far end of the desk.

"I'm here for your own good, Bartowski," he yells as he runs for the door.

I chase him but he's out before I can grab him. He runs out into the parking lot and then down the sidewalk to his parked car.

My hands are shaking. I'm not sure what I would've done if I'd grabbed him. I've never known myself this angry, this capable of violence, this willing to be violent.

I slam the office door and lean against the inside of it with both hands, light-headed, my face burning, swallowed by a wave of nausea.

Sarah didn't sleep with me last night, not that way — but Bryce thinks she did.

Sarah's past is hers. — I don't know whether Bryce is telling me the truth or not, but, even if he is, it's not his truth to tell.

Sarah wants to tell me her own stories. That's what I want; I want her to tell me her own stories. But she won't tell me if I don't trust her.

Bryce accused Sarah of stealing, but he aimed at theft. He aimed to steal last night from me and Sarah, and Sarah's story from her.

I hate Bryce Larkin.

A/N: Hang on. Here we go. Look for Chapter 18 next week.