Chapter Seven

These days I'm up about the time I used to go to bed
Living large was once the deal, now I watch the stars instead
They are timeless and predictable unlike most things that I do
But I tell the wind and my old friend I'm headed home to you

Lynn retrieved, and retrieved, and retrieved.

Garrett watched her from the boat as time and time again, she would push off the side and descend into the cold waters of the bay and come back with a body basket.

It had been an activity bus for an elementary school – fourth graders on a field trip. Lynn had hurried back to the morgue and got her gear. As soon as they had got to the site, she had sized up the situation, asked the police a few questions, and begin to dive.

Hours passed, she didn't stop. Not to rest, not to eat. Not to warm up. It was like she was on automatic pilot. When the task was finally complete, and everyone – both dead and alive – were accounted for, she returned to the morgue, showered and changed. Garrett had sent her home, telling her she had done enough, the rest of the staff would take care of anything else. She had only nodded and walked out the door.

Garrett hadn't thought about it too much at the time. Children's deaths were the most difficult thing for a morgue staff to deal with. Lynn's reaction wasn't out of the ordinary. She'd need a few days. Then things should get back to normal

Only they didn't.

As the days passed after the accident, Lynn continued to be withdrawn, absent-minded. Her work began to suffer. Not getting any information out of her, Garrett picked up the phone and called Kathy Leland.

"Kath," he had asked over the phone, "We had an accident up here involving the death of school children. A bus went into the bay. Lynn did the retrieval. She hasn't been the same since. Is there something in her background that you or she didn't tell me that I need to know about?"

He heard Kathy take a sharp breath. "She needs to talk to someone, Garrett. Do you still have a state psychologist nearby?"

"Yeah."

"I think I'd make Lynn see him."

"You want to give me some kind of hint about what's going on?"

"Wish I could, but I can't. It needs to come from Lynn. You need to hear it from her."

A few minutes later and after a phone call to Stiles, Garrett strode into Lynn's office and shut the door. "I need to talk to you."

Lynn looked up from her computer. She had been waiting for this, expecting it. "What about?"

"You. You haven't been the same since the bus accident."

She grimaced at the word "accident." How could anyone call the deaths of so many innocents an "accident"? There had to be a better word...but there wasn't. That's what it was – an accident.

"What about it?" she answered harshly ... more harshly than Garrett had ever heard her speak to anyone.

"You're having a hard time processing it. I want you to see Stiles."

"I passed my last psych exam with flying colors, Garrett."

"That was before this."

"No."

"What do you mean, no?"

"Just what I said, no. I won't see him."

"I can order you to talk to him, Lynn. I can do that as your boss. But as your friend, I think you need to."

"And as your employee, I can quit and go back to North Carolina." And with that she grabbed her purse and strode out of the morgue, nearly running through the doors. He watched her go with a sinking heart and a tight gut. He had a feeling he may have just lost one of the best things that had ever happened to him. And the most difficult part was he didn't know why or how to fix it.

Lynn drove along the coast for hours, often at a breakneck speed, pushing her Mustang to its limit. She was shaking with fear, anger, hurt...he doesn't know, her mind kept telling her. But that did nothing to ease the hurt that she so carefully kept tapped down deep in her life and her heart. Finally, much later that night, she pulled over into a parking lot, and sobbed for what seemed like days. As her mind cleared and the pain eased just a bit, she knew what she had to do. She needed to find Garrett and explain herself. Still shaking, she put her car in gear and drove back over to his house and found herself ringing his doorbell. It was nearly midnight, but the light was on in his living room.

Garrett went to the door expecting the worst. No one rang his doorbell this time of night with good news. His mind flew to his daughter and then to Lynn. He had called her cell phone for what seemed like a hundred times tonight and she didn't answer. He fully expected to see a police officer on his stoop with bad news.

He opened the door and saw Lynn – she looked like she had been to hell and back. Any anger he had towards her melted as he took in her sagging shoulders and tear stained face.

"Hi," she managed weakly. "Can I come in? I believe I owe you an explanation."

He wordlessly held the door open wider and pulled her inside, into his arms and held her tight. "I've been so worried about you." He just held her until she quit shaking. He shut the door and ushered her inside to his couch and poured her a drink. Gratefully she took it and rolled it between her palms before downing half of it. "I'm sorry I went off on you today like that, Garrett. As your employee, it was disrespectful and wrong. As your friend, it was even worse."

She got up off the couch and stood by the fireplace. "I need to tell you a few things, Garrett. Some things that are very personal and things that very few people know about. I don't talk about them much because they're painful. But you need to know. I don't want what happened today to happen between us again.

"You see, you know I have Mark. But three years after I had him, I had a daughter, Lauren. When Lauren was in elementary school, Bill or I always picked her up from school. She wasn't allowed to ride the bus until she was in middle school. But one day, when she was in first grade, she wanted to spend the night with a friend. I told her that I would pick her up from school and take her to Nichole's house. I got tied up in autopsy and called Bill. He was in a meeting and couldn't leave. So he told the school just to let her ride home with Nichole on the bus. The bus went over the bridge at Morehead inlet.

"I was called in to do the retrieving. I didn't think a thing about it, because Bill was supposed to have picked Lauren up. Instead, I ended up retrieving my own daughter's body out of the inlet."

Garrett's eyes widened with horror as Lynn continued her story. He got up from his chair and stood behind her, wanting to put his arms around her, but she wouldn't let him. At least not yet. Choking back her tears, Lynn continued.

"As if that wasn't bad enough, my marriage fell apart. I blamed Bill. He blamed me and my job. In the end, I took Mark and we went to Greece for about six months to give us all some space. When I got back, I found out that Bill had moved in with a friend of mine and was in the process of divorcing me. We tried to work things out....stopped the proceedings....but for the next ten years it was hell. He finally found someone he was happy with – some 28 year-old bimbo, and divorced me about three years ago...." Lynn sighed as her voice trailed off.

"So now I know," said Garrett, gently putting his arms around her from behind.

"Yeah. Yeah, you do. You know why I reacted the way I did today. It just brought back too many memories. Memories that I thought I had at bay....stuffed down....dealing with. But they resurfaced this afternoon." She leaned back against him, enjoying his closeness.....his strength.

"You should have said something. I would have never let you do that dive."

She turned around in his arms and buried her face in his shirt. "It's okay. It's over now. And I hope you know that I'm normally not a bitch."

Garrett chuckled. "I know."