Disclaimer: The OC and its characters belong to someone with much more
money than me.
Author's note: This story takes place sometime after the Rescue because Sandy has changed jobs. I have given Ryan's father, Mr. Atwood, the first name Russell.
Thanks for reading and an absolute THANK YOU to my new but soon to be long suffering beta.
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Thursday Afternoon
Chapter Two
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Sandy closes the door behind him. His new office is still unfamiliar to him. Despite what the lawyer often tries to convince himself of, his foster son is still unfamiliar to him. Ryan and his family and the emotional baggage they all pretend doesn't exist.
He gestures for his sudden visitor, Ed Carden, to sit down.
"So, you're a friend of Dawn's? " Sandy asks with false gusto. He really doesn't want to know the answer.
"Not really," Carden replies uncertain, stares back at Sandy, and then drops his eyes.
Ill at ease, Ed studies the floor, seems unsure where to start. Sandy pushes, "So how do you know Dawn Atwood?"
"I guess," Carden answers, "Maybe once she was a friend."
Wordlessly, Sandy settles in a chair, gestures for Ed to do the same.
Carden makes an effort to get comfortable, gives up and stands. He distances himself from Sandy, shoves his hands in his pockets and begins pacing in the back of the office.
"Dawn and I were neighbors," Carden begins softly. "Back in Fresno. I was young, eighteen. She was barely nineteen, maybe twenty, I forget."
Sandy crosses and uncrosses his legs. Carden's nervousness is contagious.
The man clears his throat and adds, "The minute I graduated from high school my older sister and I got the hell out of Illinois. We both wanted to live in California." Carden glances over at Sandy and shrugs. "We ended up in Fresno in a one-bedroom pit, living on nothing. Dawn and her husband lived in the apartment next door. Hell, Dawn kept me feed the first two months we were out there. She had a little guy running around, Trey, mischievous shit and Dawn seemed overwhelmed, but my God, she did love him."
Sandy opens a bottle of water left on his desk, takes a sip. He thinks about offering to get Carden one but he doesn't want to interrupt the man.
"So," Carden continues, "My sister got a job as a waitress during the day, and I ended up with the night shift at the nearest 7-11. Nights paid better. Pretty soon we got to know Dawn and Russell," Carden laughs to himself, "And Trey. And basically they were real nice people, friendly, helpful. Russell would come down to the 7-11 and hang out with me sometimes. They were young, like me, and I thought it was amazing that they were already married and raising a kid. But when he drank, Russell was an absolute nightmare. My sister and I would listen to the two them, screaming at each other, Trey crying, and we wanted to do something, but..."
Attempting to help ease the man's level of tenseness Sandy offers, "But you were young, confused. They were your friends."
Carden nods to himself and says quietly, "I suppose that excuse works, but even then my sister and I knew it was wrong. We would see Dawn's bruises; watch Trey bash the hell out of all his toys. We should have done something. But Dawn always seemed fine the next time we would see her. She joked about their drinking, made it seem like no big deal. She was always insisting on how much Russell loved her and Trey. My sister and I didn't want to call the cops. Russell would end up in jail and Dawn would hate us. What was the point? They would have just ended up back together anyway. They had this energy. Good or bad, Dawn and Russell were connected by some heavy duty forces of nature."
Sandy finds these insights on the early Atwood years fascinating but in his heart he knows this is not why Carden came to his office. He takes this opportunity to clear his throat and ask Ed if he wants a bottle of water, anything to drink. The guy declines with a wave of his hand. Sandy takes another sip of his own water and watches Carden pace. Periodically, the man takes his hands out of his pockets, wraps them around his mid-section, and then puts them back in his pockets. He kicks at the floor.
Sandy tries to squelch the warning screams in his head. More than this man's eyes remind Sandy Cohen of his foster son.
Running fingers through his hair, Carden seems to have reached a second wind. He stops pacing and continues with his story.
"So, about three months into my sister's and I move to Fresno, Dawn and I start sleeping together."
Sandy drops the bottle of water he had been fidgeting with. It splashes on the floor. Carden looks at him helplessly.
"Yeah, so, ok." Sandy says to no one in particular. He picks the bottle back up, not bothering to clean up the spilled water. He gestures towards Carden with a whirl of his finger, "Um, you were saying?"
Carden nods, "So Russell was getting into heavier stuff than pot and alcohol. He started dealing crack, taking it, acting more and more erratically. I'm sure there was more, God knows what else. Dawn didn't want the stuff around Trey. She caught one of Russell's friends giving Trey a hit off a joint and practically tore the idiot apart. She started spending more and more time at our apartment to keep Trey away from what was happening. We became close friends. My sister would leave for work. Russell would leave for work. And Trey would watch lots of television."
Having relieved himself of this much information, Carden seems relaxed slightly. He makes an attempt to move closer to Sandy but stops halfway across the room.
"So, that's how it was for months. Everyone would leave for work. Dawn and I would act like we were together as a couple for whole days at a time. We would do everything together, grocery shop, take Trey to the park, just appreciate each other's company. Then at 4:00, Dawn would go back over to her place. Russell would come home. And on more nights than not, I would leave for work listening to him beat on the girl I was falling in love with."
Carden clenches his fists into a tight balls and looks up at the ceiling.
"I never did a thing. I never stopped it. God, what a fucking coward."
Ed doesn't appear to be a violent guy, but there is a new tenseness in the room. Sandy tries to divert Carden's anger, "Did Russell ever suspect anything?"
Carden laughs sarcastically and shakes his head. "No, he still thought we were friends. He would come by the 7-11, drunk or high, confessing how he was such an asshole to Dawn and how he should stop doing drugs around his kid. But he never changed. I think he looked at Dawn as used up and dirty. I don't think it ever occurred on him that someone else would want to be with her. Russell and I were close in age, but shit, he had lived three times the life I had. He thought of me as a kid, not a threat to his marriage."
"Were you a threat?" Sandy asks. "Did Dawn ever talk about leaving Russell?"
Carden shoves his hands back in his pocket, looks sideways, and talks to the wall.
"No, never, ever. She loved the bastard. I tried to talk her into running away with me, back to Illinois. My parents would have taken one look at Trey and built us a damn annex. But Dawn didn't want that. She wanted a diversion, not a change. That's why I finally decided to break it off. I turned nineteen, realized I was living in abject poverty with a married girlfriend who had no intention of leaving her drug-dealing husband. My life was going nowhere. I needed something different. I waited until the day before I planned on moving out to tell Dawn I had enlisted in the Air Force. She cried for hours, begging me to stay, promising me she would start to consider leaving Russell. But it was too late for me. I had already moved on."
Sandy feels like an intruder into Carden's private thoughts. He doubts that the man has ever told anyone about Dawn. He wants to get up and throw an arm around the guy, reassure him. But Carden has paced his way back to the edge of the room. He looks despondent, on the verge of tears.
"So, she was crying, and begging me to stay, and I was telling her no, that I was leaving, but she could still leave Russell. I gave her my parent's phone number. Told her to call them. They could get a hold of me. We would all help her get away from Russell. She told me to go to hell and left. About fifteen minutes later, she came back, said she had pawned Trey off on another neighbor. We made love one last time. We were both so damn sad."
Sandy gulps and asked the inevitable. "Was Dawn on birth control?"
Carden shrugs. "I assumed so. I always used a condom. But that last time, all my stuff was packed. I was emotional, not thinking straight. I loved Dawn, I didn't want to hurt her by rejecting her the last time I saw her." He pauses before adding, "I was nineteen, stupid."
Sandy wants to throw his bottle of water out the window and have a shot of whiskey. He's emotionally drained, Carden looks spent, and they haven't even gotten to the part of why he's really here. Sandy knows, he just needs the man to say it, to confirm Sandy's suspicions, make them a reality.
"My wife Sara died six months ago," Carden says suddenly, waking Sandy up from his momentary daydreaming. "Car accident. She was driving to work and that was it. She never came home. I've been numb ever since. We have two kids, both boys. They want their mother back. They look at me every morning and I can see it in their eyes. They'll settle for me, but they want her. All I can think about is how short life is. Nothing is a guarantee. I tried to function normally, but one month ago I cashed in my vacation days, took a temporary leave of absence. I need to get myself together, for my kids, my career, ultimately for my wife. I'm not sure why I tracked Dawn down. Maybe I was hoping she could comfort me like I used to comfort her. Maybe I just wanted to feel some closure over a loose end that has always gnawed at me. With my wife dead, it felt safe, I wasn't betraying her."
"Dawn's life is a mess," Sandy says quietly.
"Yeah," Carden agrees. "I figured that out when she was drunk at noon today. When she answered the door, I barely recognized her. There's nothing left of the girl I loved. This Dawn isn't my Dawn."
Finally he sits down. Ed wants to be close to Sandy for this last little bit. "She knew who I was right away, started crying, asking me why in the hell after all these years I had come back. We sat down. It was awkward. She was all over the place, barely coherent. After one hour I realized this was not what I came for. Hell, this is only making me more depressed. And I'm so sorry for Dawn, because looking back now, I probably knew all along she would end up like this."
Carden squirms a bit, folds his hands in his lap and leans over. He's talking down, into the floor, his voice low. Sandy is concentrating so hard he can hear the man breathing.
"So I get up to leave, thank her for seeing me, and she says hold on, she has something to show me. And I can tell something is up, because she's acting even stranger then she has been. She disappears for a second and then, bam!" Carden snaps his fingers, "She shows back up and shoves a picture in my hand. 'His name is Ryan' she tells me. 'You left me something to remember you by.' And I turn the picture over and Jesus Christ, the hair is different but the picture could have been one of my boys. I didn't know what to say. I wanted to vomit. She tells me he isn't living with her anymore. He's with you." Carden looks up and Sandy can see he is starting to lose it. His eyes are watery, his voice quivering. His eyes meet Sandy's for a moment, and then turn away.
"She shoved your work number and address at me. Told me she would call you, told me to get the hell out. So I did."
Carden stops talking and Sandy assumes he's done. But the man springs from his chair suddenly, unconsciously knocking it over. His voice is getting louder and he is beginning to openly cry. He grinds the palms of his hands into his eyes.
"No fucking word from her for seventeen years. She had my parent's number. She knew I loved her. She raised my child, my fucking first born, in that hell hole." He shakes his head back and forth vehemently. "She had no right to do that."
Carden is trembling now, breaking down. He sags against Sandy's desk and slumps to the floor, sobbing. "God, he had Russell for a father. That fucking drug dropping, wife beating head job. My kid, living in that, with that." Carden pulls his knees up and folds his arms. Dropping his head into them he laments, "Jesus Christ, what am I going to do? How am I gonna fix this? I don't know what to do to fix this."
Sandy is silent. He knew deep down from the moment he had met Carden that this revelation would be coming. But Sandy still wasn't prepared. He tears himself away from his own confusion to consider the man sitting on his floor. He should get the guy a tissue or perhaps, better yet, a round of Valium.
Thanks again Dawn Atwood.
Sandy's shrill cell phone ring breaks the silence, rising above Carden's sobs. Sandy places a hand on Carden's shoulder and quietly excuses himself. Normally he would ignore it, but Kirsten's number is the one that pops up and suddenly, Sandy desperately wants to hear his wife's voice.
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To Be Continued
Author's note: This story takes place sometime after the Rescue because Sandy has changed jobs. I have given Ryan's father, Mr. Atwood, the first name Russell.
Thanks for reading and an absolute THANK YOU to my new but soon to be long suffering beta.
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Thursday Afternoon
Chapter Two
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Sandy closes the door behind him. His new office is still unfamiliar to him. Despite what the lawyer often tries to convince himself of, his foster son is still unfamiliar to him. Ryan and his family and the emotional baggage they all pretend doesn't exist.
He gestures for his sudden visitor, Ed Carden, to sit down.
"So, you're a friend of Dawn's? " Sandy asks with false gusto. He really doesn't want to know the answer.
"Not really," Carden replies uncertain, stares back at Sandy, and then drops his eyes.
Ill at ease, Ed studies the floor, seems unsure where to start. Sandy pushes, "So how do you know Dawn Atwood?"
"I guess," Carden answers, "Maybe once she was a friend."
Wordlessly, Sandy settles in a chair, gestures for Ed to do the same.
Carden makes an effort to get comfortable, gives up and stands. He distances himself from Sandy, shoves his hands in his pockets and begins pacing in the back of the office.
"Dawn and I were neighbors," Carden begins softly. "Back in Fresno. I was young, eighteen. She was barely nineteen, maybe twenty, I forget."
Sandy crosses and uncrosses his legs. Carden's nervousness is contagious.
The man clears his throat and adds, "The minute I graduated from high school my older sister and I got the hell out of Illinois. We both wanted to live in California." Carden glances over at Sandy and shrugs. "We ended up in Fresno in a one-bedroom pit, living on nothing. Dawn and her husband lived in the apartment next door. Hell, Dawn kept me feed the first two months we were out there. She had a little guy running around, Trey, mischievous shit and Dawn seemed overwhelmed, but my God, she did love him."
Sandy opens a bottle of water left on his desk, takes a sip. He thinks about offering to get Carden one but he doesn't want to interrupt the man.
"So," Carden continues, "My sister got a job as a waitress during the day, and I ended up with the night shift at the nearest 7-11. Nights paid better. Pretty soon we got to know Dawn and Russell," Carden laughs to himself, "And Trey. And basically they were real nice people, friendly, helpful. Russell would come down to the 7-11 and hang out with me sometimes. They were young, like me, and I thought it was amazing that they were already married and raising a kid. But when he drank, Russell was an absolute nightmare. My sister and I would listen to the two them, screaming at each other, Trey crying, and we wanted to do something, but..."
Attempting to help ease the man's level of tenseness Sandy offers, "But you were young, confused. They were your friends."
Carden nods to himself and says quietly, "I suppose that excuse works, but even then my sister and I knew it was wrong. We would see Dawn's bruises; watch Trey bash the hell out of all his toys. We should have done something. But Dawn always seemed fine the next time we would see her. She joked about their drinking, made it seem like no big deal. She was always insisting on how much Russell loved her and Trey. My sister and I didn't want to call the cops. Russell would end up in jail and Dawn would hate us. What was the point? They would have just ended up back together anyway. They had this energy. Good or bad, Dawn and Russell were connected by some heavy duty forces of nature."
Sandy finds these insights on the early Atwood years fascinating but in his heart he knows this is not why Carden came to his office. He takes this opportunity to clear his throat and ask Ed if he wants a bottle of water, anything to drink. The guy declines with a wave of his hand. Sandy takes another sip of his own water and watches Carden pace. Periodically, the man takes his hands out of his pockets, wraps them around his mid-section, and then puts them back in his pockets. He kicks at the floor.
Sandy tries to squelch the warning screams in his head. More than this man's eyes remind Sandy Cohen of his foster son.
Running fingers through his hair, Carden seems to have reached a second wind. He stops pacing and continues with his story.
"So, about three months into my sister's and I move to Fresno, Dawn and I start sleeping together."
Sandy drops the bottle of water he had been fidgeting with. It splashes on the floor. Carden looks at him helplessly.
"Yeah, so, ok." Sandy says to no one in particular. He picks the bottle back up, not bothering to clean up the spilled water. He gestures towards Carden with a whirl of his finger, "Um, you were saying?"
Carden nods, "So Russell was getting into heavier stuff than pot and alcohol. He started dealing crack, taking it, acting more and more erratically. I'm sure there was more, God knows what else. Dawn didn't want the stuff around Trey. She caught one of Russell's friends giving Trey a hit off a joint and practically tore the idiot apart. She started spending more and more time at our apartment to keep Trey away from what was happening. We became close friends. My sister would leave for work. Russell would leave for work. And Trey would watch lots of television."
Having relieved himself of this much information, Carden seems relaxed slightly. He makes an attempt to move closer to Sandy but stops halfway across the room.
"So, that's how it was for months. Everyone would leave for work. Dawn and I would act like we were together as a couple for whole days at a time. We would do everything together, grocery shop, take Trey to the park, just appreciate each other's company. Then at 4:00, Dawn would go back over to her place. Russell would come home. And on more nights than not, I would leave for work listening to him beat on the girl I was falling in love with."
Carden clenches his fists into a tight balls and looks up at the ceiling.
"I never did a thing. I never stopped it. God, what a fucking coward."
Ed doesn't appear to be a violent guy, but there is a new tenseness in the room. Sandy tries to divert Carden's anger, "Did Russell ever suspect anything?"
Carden laughs sarcastically and shakes his head. "No, he still thought we were friends. He would come by the 7-11, drunk or high, confessing how he was such an asshole to Dawn and how he should stop doing drugs around his kid. But he never changed. I think he looked at Dawn as used up and dirty. I don't think it ever occurred on him that someone else would want to be with her. Russell and I were close in age, but shit, he had lived three times the life I had. He thought of me as a kid, not a threat to his marriage."
"Were you a threat?" Sandy asks. "Did Dawn ever talk about leaving Russell?"
Carden shoves his hands back in his pocket, looks sideways, and talks to the wall.
"No, never, ever. She loved the bastard. I tried to talk her into running away with me, back to Illinois. My parents would have taken one look at Trey and built us a damn annex. But Dawn didn't want that. She wanted a diversion, not a change. That's why I finally decided to break it off. I turned nineteen, realized I was living in abject poverty with a married girlfriend who had no intention of leaving her drug-dealing husband. My life was going nowhere. I needed something different. I waited until the day before I planned on moving out to tell Dawn I had enlisted in the Air Force. She cried for hours, begging me to stay, promising me she would start to consider leaving Russell. But it was too late for me. I had already moved on."
Sandy feels like an intruder into Carden's private thoughts. He doubts that the man has ever told anyone about Dawn. He wants to get up and throw an arm around the guy, reassure him. But Carden has paced his way back to the edge of the room. He looks despondent, on the verge of tears.
"So, she was crying, and begging me to stay, and I was telling her no, that I was leaving, but she could still leave Russell. I gave her my parent's phone number. Told her to call them. They could get a hold of me. We would all help her get away from Russell. She told me to go to hell and left. About fifteen minutes later, she came back, said she had pawned Trey off on another neighbor. We made love one last time. We were both so damn sad."
Sandy gulps and asked the inevitable. "Was Dawn on birth control?"
Carden shrugs. "I assumed so. I always used a condom. But that last time, all my stuff was packed. I was emotional, not thinking straight. I loved Dawn, I didn't want to hurt her by rejecting her the last time I saw her." He pauses before adding, "I was nineteen, stupid."
Sandy wants to throw his bottle of water out the window and have a shot of whiskey. He's emotionally drained, Carden looks spent, and they haven't even gotten to the part of why he's really here. Sandy knows, he just needs the man to say it, to confirm Sandy's suspicions, make them a reality.
"My wife Sara died six months ago," Carden says suddenly, waking Sandy up from his momentary daydreaming. "Car accident. She was driving to work and that was it. She never came home. I've been numb ever since. We have two kids, both boys. They want their mother back. They look at me every morning and I can see it in their eyes. They'll settle for me, but they want her. All I can think about is how short life is. Nothing is a guarantee. I tried to function normally, but one month ago I cashed in my vacation days, took a temporary leave of absence. I need to get myself together, for my kids, my career, ultimately for my wife. I'm not sure why I tracked Dawn down. Maybe I was hoping she could comfort me like I used to comfort her. Maybe I just wanted to feel some closure over a loose end that has always gnawed at me. With my wife dead, it felt safe, I wasn't betraying her."
"Dawn's life is a mess," Sandy says quietly.
"Yeah," Carden agrees. "I figured that out when she was drunk at noon today. When she answered the door, I barely recognized her. There's nothing left of the girl I loved. This Dawn isn't my Dawn."
Finally he sits down. Ed wants to be close to Sandy for this last little bit. "She knew who I was right away, started crying, asking me why in the hell after all these years I had come back. We sat down. It was awkward. She was all over the place, barely coherent. After one hour I realized this was not what I came for. Hell, this is only making me more depressed. And I'm so sorry for Dawn, because looking back now, I probably knew all along she would end up like this."
Carden squirms a bit, folds his hands in his lap and leans over. He's talking down, into the floor, his voice low. Sandy is concentrating so hard he can hear the man breathing.
"So I get up to leave, thank her for seeing me, and she says hold on, she has something to show me. And I can tell something is up, because she's acting even stranger then she has been. She disappears for a second and then, bam!" Carden snaps his fingers, "She shows back up and shoves a picture in my hand. 'His name is Ryan' she tells me. 'You left me something to remember you by.' And I turn the picture over and Jesus Christ, the hair is different but the picture could have been one of my boys. I didn't know what to say. I wanted to vomit. She tells me he isn't living with her anymore. He's with you." Carden looks up and Sandy can see he is starting to lose it. His eyes are watery, his voice quivering. His eyes meet Sandy's for a moment, and then turn away.
"She shoved your work number and address at me. Told me she would call you, told me to get the hell out. So I did."
Carden stops talking and Sandy assumes he's done. But the man springs from his chair suddenly, unconsciously knocking it over. His voice is getting louder and he is beginning to openly cry. He grinds the palms of his hands into his eyes.
"No fucking word from her for seventeen years. She had my parent's number. She knew I loved her. She raised my child, my fucking first born, in that hell hole." He shakes his head back and forth vehemently. "She had no right to do that."
Carden is trembling now, breaking down. He sags against Sandy's desk and slumps to the floor, sobbing. "God, he had Russell for a father. That fucking drug dropping, wife beating head job. My kid, living in that, with that." Carden pulls his knees up and folds his arms. Dropping his head into them he laments, "Jesus Christ, what am I going to do? How am I gonna fix this? I don't know what to do to fix this."
Sandy is silent. He knew deep down from the moment he had met Carden that this revelation would be coming. But Sandy still wasn't prepared. He tears himself away from his own confusion to consider the man sitting on his floor. He should get the guy a tissue or perhaps, better yet, a round of Valium.
Thanks again Dawn Atwood.
Sandy's shrill cell phone ring breaks the silence, rising above Carden's sobs. Sandy places a hand on Carden's shoulder and quietly excuses himself. Normally he would ignore it, but Kirsten's number is the one that pops up and suddenly, Sandy desperately wants to hear his wife's voice.
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To Be Continued