Dear readers and reviewers – yeah, I know, a year is a long time. So please don't kill me when you read the following, and please be patient…
Two years later
Danny and his wife are expecting their first child and he is ecstatically happy. His happiness lightens the mood in the team. The last two years have been pretty grim. Vivien had a long sick-leave and is just coming back again to everyone's relief. Martin is single again after some traumatic fights with his girlfriend who accused him of not being able to commit. Worst of all is the relationship between Agatha and Jack which can best be described as not being one at all. Agatha is deeply envious of Jack's talent for his job, constantly second guessing and obstructing him. She has also started to spread stories around. Thanks to her everyone in the building knows exactly how much time he spends burning the midnight oil over the old Samantha Spade - Case:
Poor old Jack. I hear he still refuses to see the psychologist? Isn't it sad to see someone go down like that! By the way, I heard he had an affair with Samantha Spade? Really? Do you think he was in love with her? Oh God, how tragic!
Jack trusts her about as far as he can throw a mountain. He has tried to get rid of her but her family is too influential. Also, he has no intention of going down. Not as long as he has not found Sam. The day he finds her body he might reconsider that, but right now he is hanging on, he is hanging on to her.
Vivien finds Jack leaning against the window frame in the dimly lit bullpen, looking out at the city lights. She can remember another night she found him in exactly the same spot. It was during the Sean Collins Case.
"You are a hope-junkie like the rest of us," she told him then and she knows that is still true.
He smiles when he sees her, a faint light shining for a short moment in those dark eyes.
"It's good to have you back," he says.
"It's good to be back."
A lot more things pass between them, all unspoken.
Today they found a child they were looking for – dead. Jack has just finished speaking to the mother. He has always been good with people but Vivien thinks he is doing even better now. The families feel that he knows what they are going through. Vivien overheard the conversation and she thinks he has found just the right words for the grieving mother. A bright warm spot for him glows in her heart.
"What are you thinking about?" she asks.
"Chet Collins," he answers his voice steady.
Vivien nods:
"I remember we talked about, how he should move on. I guess life proved us wrong. He proved us wrong," she replies.
Jack looks at her.
"Are you giving up, Jack?" she asks gently.
His eyes bore into hers.
"No, I'm not giving up on her. I will keep going. Remember, I'm a hope-junkie like the rest of you?" He tries to smile.
"No, Jack," Vivien says, "that is not what I mean. Are you giving up on yourself?"
His gaze wanders out the window and he does not answer.
"Once you find her, whether she is dead or alive, will you know how to go on?"
"If I find her alive, I will know how to go on."
"Are you sure Jack?" she whispers.
Something breaks open in his eyes and she sees the horrible pain he is in.
"Oh God, Vivien," he says barely audible, "I don't know. I will try."
Three years later
Jack opens the file he has been keeping for the last three years. It contains only a few sheets of paper. He has written down everything about Sam's disappearance that seemed important and much that did not seem important at all, just in case. He is reading through it one more time. He has done so often in the past years. But still there is nothing to go on – nothing at all. Sometimes he even thinks it would be a relief to find out that she had some sort of secret life – something, anything that would explain where she went.
He opens another file. This one is thick with clippings. It contains newspaper stories on people turning up with amnesia and without identity, police reports on unidentified corpses and pictures of women looking remotely like Sam – everything that might be interesting.
Then there is a third file. It is not quite as substantial as the second one, but it contains his real obsession – stories about missing people that turned up again. He does not really understand why he keeps collecting these, as if his life depended on it. It may be a hope-thing, he ponders. Dr. Harris would probably know how to explain it.
In the last couple of weeks he has once more spoken to all the people they originally interviewed. The want to help him, but there has not been anything new this year, either. Most of them know him by first name now. He is treated like an old friend. They know he will be back next year.
Jack turns to a small box filled with letters. He found it in Sam's apartment three years ago. He reads them again, one by one. There are letters from a couple of friends, dating back to her school days and some letters and notes from former lovers it seems, dated more than eight years ago. There is one letter from Martin, dated months before Jack suspected that there was something between them. It seems to have been written while he was on vacation, because he writes, that he misses her and how much he loves her. He also writes how happy he is that she has finally put the episode with Jack behind her. That is the word he uses – episode.
The word haunts Jack. He wonders if Sam ever used that word to describe their relationship. The thought hurts. But maybe it was Martins choice.
For Jack it has been no episode. For him it has never even truly been over, regardless what he might have told her. He can admit that to himself now. The choices he made against her and for his family have not really been choices. He forced himself to make them, but part of him has never been able to let her go. Not for a moment.
He puts the letter aside and takes the last item out of the box. It is a note he wrote to Sam two days before she disappeared. He left it on her desk in the evening because she was busy in the archive when he went home. It simply says that he will be in a little later in the morning because he has to accompany his father to the neurologist. It is signed: See you later – Jack.
Actually, he never saw her again.
Jack sits motionless after putting the letters and notes back into the box, not understanding why she would keep a simple note from him together with items that she obviously treasures. He feels drained.
He feels so empty, in that moment he wants to die.
TBC