Chapter 24
The coffee pot was the first thing to go on that morning, just like it always was. Martha knew that her husband would be wanting his usual cup as soon as he was ready to get out of bed. She didn't mind that he often wanted to sleep in. She liked having the kitchen to herself, and getting to quietly start her day. It was nice, padding around the kitchen tiles in her warm slippers, a fluffy robe thrown on over the top of her pyjamas, getting to do everything at a slow pace. It especially went with the weather they were having outside – she could've sworn that the snow nearly reached the base of the window!
A hot breakfast on the table nearly completed the picture. All that was left to do was turn on the television, and see what had been happening in the world while they had been comfortably asleep. Settling herself into a chair, she pressed the power button and let the screen flicker to life, taking a bite of her toast as she flipped through the channels until it landed on the news. Martha considered it lucky that she'd managed to swallow by the time she made it there, because she gasped so hard she would've inhaled it.
There, on the screen, was the headline "Missing Producer Found Alive", and the news anchor was talking animatedly about how the case had unfolded.
Martha thought she could've let out a surprised bark of laughter from her own delight. At last, the case that had had everyone talking had been solved! They'd found the poor woman who'd been taken, miraculously alive, and now she was safe!
Even though she didn't know her personally, Martha felt a weight very much like relief lift out of her heart. She hadn't been able to shift it since she had last visited Thomas, and she'd followed the case ever since. It felt like the right thing to do – at least, it felt better than ignoring it all entirely. She'd wanted to make sure that her son really did have nothing to do with the case, just as he'd told her. The police would have a better idea, so she'd just quietly followed the news and all the updates as they came in.
But it had broken her heart any time she'd thought about it. That poor woman – that C.C. Babcock – she'd had everything in the world, from money to a flourishing career, to power and influence all over the city, and all of a sudden it had been taken away?!
It hadn't been fair! She was more than thrilled that the poor dear had been found – it would take time, but she could recover and move on with her life. She could start again, and eventually be happy. And the person who really had tried to do it deserved punishing to the full extent of the law!
Eight months that poor woman had been missing, and Lord only knew what she'd had to endure in the meantime! Whoever had inflicted...whatever it was, on her, needed finding and locking away where they couldn't hurt anybody anymore! They could only be the lowest form of evil, and deserved to be treated as such.
Martha could only wonder what other information they'd found out (had the caught the monster who'd committed the crime?), when the anchor handed over to live footage from outside a precinct of the New York Police Department. It was a sight she had come to know well, and she leaned in and listened intently as she realised they were going to an announcement by the woman who had been leading the investigation: Detective Christine Lane.
"We have confirmed today that Chastity-Claire Babcock has, indeed, been found," there was a hint of relief in her voice, underneath the serious tone. "She is alive and recovering in hospital under close supervision. However, we regret to inform that her captor is still wanted and at large."
Martha felt herself deflate a little. She had been hoping that they would have wrapped the case up neatly, and that she could stop worrying about what kind of people were out there on the street...!
Her breath caught in her throat when Lane continued.
"However, in the interest of public safety, we are releasing some details on our perpetrator."
Martha took her breath back in and held it.
"His name is Thomas Jones. He is around six feet..."
Suddenly, despite the bright light coming from the morning outside, Martha felt as though her world had been plunged into blackness, and her heart and stomach had quickly been sucked into an abyss, never to return. Her toast dropped from her hand, her face falling as it happened, and suddenly she wondered if she might throw up what little she'd managed to eat.
Lane's voice went on, getting into her ears and echoing in her head, no matter how much she tried to block it out.
"...He is also considered to be extremely dangerous to members of the public..."
No. No, it couldn't be. This couldn't be confirming everything she'd hoped wasn't true – it had to be a coincidence, surely! It was too big an area to leap to that conclusion so early! There were lots of people named Thomas Jones in this part of the world, about the same height as her son, with the same hair and eye colour! It had to be a mistake!
He'd said he'd had nothing to do with it! Had he really lied to them?! Of course he had, one part of her head smacked the other and scolded it for ever believing such a pitiful excuse as the one he'd given! She'd had a hunch, when he'd said he'd had nothing to do with it, and yet she'd wilfully chosen to ignore it, anyway! How could she have done such a thing, in a case of such great importance?!
The other tried to defend itself – of course she'd given him the benefit of the doubt! She was his mother, and even though her boy had had his troubles in the past, he'd said that was behind him! That he was moving on with his life, and trying to do better! She'd...she'd done everything she could, to help him be better! She couldn't have failed, could she?!
It had to be a mistake. It had to be someone else! Not her boy. Not her little boy, whom she had wanted to save from all the things he had seen in his short life! Her little boy, who had grown up and promised her that he'd had nothing to do with any missing woman!
It was all she could think: it couldn't be her boy! It had to be some mistake; somebody else's son who had done this terrible thing!
Not her boy...whose face had just appeared in a box on the screen, the word "Wanted" stamped underneath!
She scrambled from her seat, her heart breaking in her chest and not even hearing, let alone caring, that she had swept all the breakfast, crockery and cutlery to an untimely demise on the floor, and hurried towards the television. She grabbed it by its sides, gripping it and staring and pleading with all the powers – any at all – that were listening that somehow, this was a mistake. That the picture would change and form the face of some other, unknown individual, and then the world would go back to normal. She'd get her son back, just the way she wanted him to be, and they could all move on innocently.
But it didn't change. The detective drummed on at the viewers about who to call if they saw "this man" on the street, or if he came to the door, and how it was best to treat him with extreme caution.
It was her son they were talking about, whether she liked it or not.
And Martha, in her heartbroken despair and with a weight that had been lifted suddenly doubling and slamming down on her tenfold, could only let out a mournful, wailing scream. She barely felt her husband's arms when they eventually wrapped themselves around her shaking body and brought it close to his. She barely felt the tears that were pouring down her husband's now-ashen face. She barely heard his soft, loving words that said he was there for her. That he loved her.
He didn't even try to say it would be alright, though. It would never be alright, and both Martha and Edward knew so with painful certainty.
Still, the thoughts going on in each parent's head couldn't have been more different if they'd tried. While there was pain in both of their hearts, Edward (unlike Martha) was seething with blinding anger. He could physically feel his blood boiling as it coursed through his old veins.
That little bastard had lied to them. His own parents, who had taken him from the depths of hell and had done everything they could to turn his life around! They'd given him a warm home, good food...all the love and attention two parents could give to their child...
Edward felt the cracks deepening into fissures in his heart. Thomas had been their golden child, and in his mind an image of the quiet, unassuming little boy who'd tried to imitate him constantly – speech, mannerisms, even the way he walked and ate – appeared. The future had seemed so promising back then...
What had they done wrong? How could they have failed him so badly that they'd failed another person right along with him?! Though it wasn't even fair to group the poor woman with what their monster of a child had done – she'd had nothing to do with it. No, Thomas stood alone for this. It didn't matter who he'd been before, if this was the way he'd turned out.
And Edward decided in that moment that he wanted nothing more to do with him. The boy he'd adored so much was gone, if he'd ever really existed in the first place, and he couldn't stand to even think of being in the same place as him again. Not without doing something drastic, anyway. For all the pain he'd caused that poor woman, and for breaking his parents' hearts like he thought it was nothing.
It should've been obvious to them that their boy had never truly loved anybody but himself, but they had been blinded by their own attempts at loving him and making him feel loved.
Well, both their eyes should've been wide open now.
Not that he was going to say anything like that to Martha. Right now, more than anything, she needed his comfort. She needed him to be calm, strong and rational – not to break down over what they had done, versus what they should've done, and what their bastard of a son had done as a result. He had to keep it in. Whatever the case was, he was still the boy they'd raised and it would only hurt all the more to have to talk about the angry feelings now. They wouldn't do anybody any good.
And it felt like the world needed a little more good in it, right at that moment.
So, settling himself down on the nearest chair, he pulled Martha into his lap and held her in his arms, trying as best he could to hush her sobbing even as the pain in his chest threatened to make him collapse from the grief.
"It's alright, honey...I've got you...I've got you," he murmured, turning his lips and pressing a soft kiss to her temple. "I'm here..."
He wanted to add that they'd get through it, but how could he? Before, "we" had always meant them and all of their children. But after this, it couldn't mean all of them, ever again. There was no way he would ever include Thomas in their family anymore, even if he was still their son.
And how could he even think they'd be alright, when they had to wake up to the knowledge of what he was, every day for the rest of their lives?
Niles could feel his heart hammering in his chest as Lane's police car pulled up in front of Thomas Jones' home; had the property not been roped off with crime scene tape, Niles was sure they'd have gone all the way up the driveway until they'd reached the door, but as it was they'd have to make do.
He'd have to make do, at any rate. He was, after all, but a guest that had been given the rare opportunity to see the place where Miss Babcock had been held for all those months. Lane had told him she'd be breaking a slew of rules and that they'd have to be quick, but he was still thankful that he'd finally be able to put part of his fears to rest. He needed (and he really didn't know why) to see for himself – he needed to see or risk being driven insane by the nightmarish images his brain kept coming up with.
He hadn't told Miss Babcock he'd be coming – what good would it make? She was delicate enough for him to even mention the subject! No, he'd told a little white like instead. He'd said he had a doctor's appointment with his cardiologist, and had left her with her parents, who seldom left her side these days.
Their reunion had been heartbreaking – Niles had been present when it had happened; C.C. didn't like him being away, so she'd asked him to stay around during the reunion with her family.
He hadn't been able or willing to do anything else. After so long apart and with so many instances of worry and terror still swirling around in his stomach and stinging at his brain like wasps, he'd not wanted to be out of her sight, or to let her out of his, either. It had served more than helped her to remain calm(er), throughout the whole meeting. He couldn't have possibly imagined the thoughts and feelings that would've been circulating all the minds of the Babcocks present at that meeting. How could he possibly capture and know the relief or joy that parents would feel, in knowing their daughter was alive, or the hurt and guilt and anger in knowing that...that they hadn't been able to protect her from a lunatic?
Granted, he had felt all of those things, but they were her parents – they would have felt it more deeply than him. How could he begin to compare his own feelings, as strong as they felt to him, with people who actually mattered in the conversation?
He didn't know. He wasn't even going to try. He was just going to help in any way that he could, all while trying to put his mind at rest for the good of everyone involved. And that started with opening the car door, as Lane switched off the engine.
He waited for her to get out of the vehicle before heading towards the property – anxious as he was, he still knew his place. They walked in silence, each of them lost in their own little world as they crossed the snow-covered front-yard.
"She jumped from there," Lane suddenly said, pointing towards the window directly above the roofed entrance porch. "When she escaped? She opened the damn window and hopped onto the roof and then the garden – the snow softened her fall."
Niles winced even imagining. C.C. had not only built up the courage to find a means of escape, but she'd also gone through with an extremely dangerous one! What if the snow hadn't been as deep as she'd thought and it hadn't cushioned her? What if she'd broken both her ankles on impact? What if she'd...she'd broken her neck?!
His next automatic reaction was to realise that none of that had even mattered. Not only had none of it happened, but it also didn't matter because C.C. had been willing to take the risk, no matter what.
She hadn't cared what it had taken, in order to be free. And that sent a swell of mixed emotions directly into the butler's chest. Rage, resentment and guilt, for not having done something to prevent this from happening or for not finding her before she'd had to do it. Sorrow, for the pain she would have gone through. Admiration, for the fact that she had been so determined to survive, it simply didn't matter what needed to be done. She had done it anyway, because she was strong and she was a survivor – and that sounded very much like the C.C. Babcock that he knew.
He couldn't imagine himself doing it, even if his own life were on the line...
Or maybe he would – he didn't really know. She'd lived through unspeakable horror, and desperation could make a person do things that they otherwise wouldn't.
"Ready?" Lane asked when they reached the front door. "We can still go back, if you want…"
Niles shook his head. Part of him would much rather not see, but another, much wiser part of him knew he couldn't afford it. This house and the cruelties within haunted his dreams – he needed it to stop, especially if he was going to be there for Miss Babcock.
"No…I'm…" Niles trailed off, going quiet for a moment before snapping out of whatever terrible thought he'd been in. "Let's go in."
"Very well then; put these on," Lane said, and handed him a pair of latex gloves. "It's standard procedure – we don't want your fingerprints suddenly popping up at the crime scene, do we?"
Once he'd snapped them on tight and wriggled his fingers quickly to make sure they were comfortable, he looked at Lane. It was a silent message, telling her that he was ready. Ready for whatever happened when she opened that door. For the nightmares to come true – for something worse than the nightmares to be the real truth.
He didn't know what could possibly be worse than the things he'd seen and heard in his head whenever he'd been told what had happened, but he had to acknowledge the fact that people were often sick in the head and life was very unfair. He figured that if he kept that in mind, he might just survive being in that place.
Lane nodded back at him, taking out a key, "Alright, then..."
She unlocked the door and pushed it open, stepping into a...an immaculate hallway?
It was hardly the grimy, filth-and-dirt dungeon of a room that Niles had been imagining. Whenever a house where abuse had happened was portrayed on television, it was nearly always dark, dank and mouldy at the tobacco-stained walls. This place looked like a show home in comparison!
The only way he could tell that police had been there at all was because of the taped off areas he could see in the back, and he assumed that the plastic sheet acting as a kind of second carpet in the hallway was something to do with them as well.
Lane confirmed it when she indicated down at the sheathing.
"You can only walk on this plastic cover – the forensics department still wants this place just as we found it, so no making footprints," she said, before an uncomfortable look crossed her face. "We need it in good condition as evidence, too. C.C. was made to keep it like this, under threat of violence."
Niles thought, in that moment, that if he ever met Thomas Jones, he would kill him. Not just punch him to the ground, or beat him until he was unconscious, but beat him until the last breath left his body in agony and terror.
Granted, the butler had had the feeling and the urge before, but taking one look at that bright, spotless carpet – not so much as a speck of dust or dirt in sight and as crisp as a new linen sheet – and knowing that Miss Babcock had been threatened into keeping it like that, only to suffer at that bastard's hands anyway, made him want to scream until the entire hellhole of a house collapsed around his ears.
And he wanted to bury the monster underneath the rubble.
The worst part, his mind reminded him, was that he hadn't even made it through the door yet. The worst was yet to come, and his blood was already reaching its boiling point...
"Deep breaths, Niles," Lane said, gently patting his back – she'd clearly picked up on his distress. "We can always leave if this is too mu––"
"I'm alright," he cut her off, perhaps a little forcefully. "Just…let's move on."
Lane gave him a long, scrutinizing look, but said nothing. It was better that way, too – he wasn't in the mood to talk. Not even to Lane. Together, they made their way down the entrance hallway and turned left to step into the kitchen. The place was, admittedly, impossibly clean, but he could see a number of dirty plates and cutlery stacked in the kitchen sink.
"She never got to wash those," Lane said, pointing over at the sink. "We took the two glasses though; one had her DNA, and the other Mr Jones'. Now, if you'll come this way…?"
Niles simply had to let Lane drag him out of the kitchen, otherwise he would have lingered in there, eyes burning holes in the dirty cutlery. Evidence that she'd been there. Evidence of her abuse. It was all over the first floor of the house, in obvious places and in clear signs as well as the hidden spots and invisible markers. The only difference was how loudly each one spoke. Smashed glass (that Lane thought may have been done out of anger on the night C.C. had escaped) screamed in violent fury, while silver polished and buffed to a panicked high sheen and placed "just so" on mantles and side tables in the rooms where company would normally be expected were whispered at best, hissed desperately at worst. Almost as though the person doing them were afraid of being caught. Of getting into trouble for reasons they didn't know yet. Of being punished for doing something wrong without understanding what mistake had been made.
It only got worse as they made their way down to the basement. Lane hadn't attempted to talk about any of what they'd seen around the rest of the place, perhaps figuring that pointing out any specific locations or details would make him fly off the handle. Niles understood if that was what was going on in her mind, which was why he simply took in a few shaking breaths and curled up his fists the moment he'd spotted the sofa covered by a sheet, a crime scene evidence marker on the floor next to it.
He'd kill the bastard. He'd do it painfully and he'd do it himself – no middle man, like a hitman, or weapon, like a gun or a knife. Both of those things might've proved efficient, but they'd take away the satisfaction of actually getting to do the work with his own two hands. And he might've never killed anybody before – he certainly wasn't about to develop a taste for it – but he knew that he could do it, in this case.
He could do it. And if that bastard took even so much as a step in Miss Babcock's direction, he'd––
"We can take a look at the sub-basement, too, if you want to continue?"
Lane's voice snapped him back to the present moment again, suddenly making him aware of what he was actually looking at (or had at least appeared to be): the room's fireplace.
A fireplace that had been cleared out, and the back pushed open to reveal a secret door...
It was as close to vomiting as Niles had come since entering the house, and that was after some close calls they'd had on the floor above. He swallowed back what he could, feeling the burning sensation sting as it made its way down his throat. He didn't care – it didn't hurt half as much as being stood just feet away from where Miss Babcock had once been held like a prisoner.
Did he go in? He'd said he would, before even taking one step inside that house! Could he really go back on that, just because a simple, stupid door was already making him feel uncomfortable?
The answer was automatic and correct, as far as he was concerned.
Miss Babcock had endured months of torture in that room, and he'd vowed to stand by her, no matter what had or would happen. He wasn't going to abandon that promise, just because he'd been terrified at the thought of finding out what...what that place really looked like...
That settled it. He pursed his lips and spoke (slightly hoarsely) to Lane for what felt like the first time in ages.
"I want to see."
Just like with the rest of the house, Lane had then taken the lead to show him the way. She'd also pointed out places that she'd suggested he shouldn't touch as they crawled their way through the space.
He didn't ask why. He was certain that he didn't want to know.
The moment he spotted the ladder into what he just knew had to be the cell where Miss Babcock had existed for so long, he felt his stomach drop again.
This was it. This was the moment he was faced with the awful reality of what she'd had to endure. No matter how much every sense in his body told him that he should turn back, run, not look over his shoulder until it was out of that place and somewhere far away, he had to continue.
He had to endure it, too. Even if it was only for a brief moment, compared with the bravest woman he'd ever met.
Lane could probably still sense his urgency, so she let him go first.
"Remember, you still can't touch anything, no matter what feelings it brings out in you," she said. "The more we can cleanly take from it, the quicker we'll get the bastard put away."
Niles frowned, wanting to ask about their search for Thomas, but quickly realising that he was trying to delay himself without even thinking about it. He couldn't let anything come between him and his task. Not now. Not when he was so close to finding out if the nightmare really was worse than the reality.
He slowly descended the ladder that made its way down into the room, and was immediately hit by a stale smell of dust and unwashed clothes. But that wasn't what bothered him – having looked after people all his life, Niles knew what unwashed clothes and dust smelled like.
No, what bothered him (more like sent him into stunned shock) was the stained mattress that immediately hit his eyes as they fell to the floor, covered in dark patches and looking like it had been left down here to rot for years.
Niles covered his hand with his mouth, eyes widening and coming closer even though he wasn't willing his feet to move.
Was...was that really where Miss Babcock had slept, for all her time spent down here?! On barely anything, covered in filth and surrounded by what could only be...patches...oh, dear God, patches of her own blood...
It could only be. There was a chest of drawers nearby, each one having been opened by forensics, revealing pile after pile of old, comfortable-looking but ultimately stained clothes.
Just beyond that was a rack, too. That held neatly pressed dresses – the kind you'd expect from an episode of "I Love Lucy", not the real, modern world – all hanging neatly in a row. They must have been for the bastard's own "special occasions", and Niles could only burn up inside as he sharply turned away, soon getting lost in the rest of the few meagre possessions she had down there...
A CD player with a few CD boxes scattered around it, as though they'd been neatly stacked but pulled apart at some point. A wicker basket full of yarn that was clearly meant to be for knitting and crochet work. A pile of books (more than a whole year's worth of novels and crossword puzzle books) on a table, one placed open upside down to hold it on its current page...
And on the wall nearest the table was a mural. Made up of scenes and quotes from what must have only been a handful of the books she'd been given: from the confession of Mr Darcy to Elizabeth Bennet to the Mad Hatter's Tea Party and Robinson Crusoe washing up on his island...
That last one seemed to cry out in how much its artist yearned for freedom. To be spirited away somewhere quiet, apparently deserted, where she could learn to survive by herself again.
It made Niles want to weep as he looked. He ached to know if she'd actually written anything around that subject in the books as well, but the urge had to remain beneath the surface. Lane had just descended the steps, and he didn't want to do a single, absentminded thing which could get the case thrown out.
Besides, he'd quickly looked over to the last thing he could see on the one little table she'd been allowed down there, and had just spotted that it was a map. A map of the area – of New Jersey, so detailed, the house had even been lightly circled in pencil, while a faint dotted line of it pricked at the paper, heading one particular way down the street...
And turning a corner, following the road. Keeping going, taking more corners and shortcuts and alleys until she reacted the...the ferry port...
The pencil line extended from that paper, straight to another directly underneath. He didn't lift it up, but he could only guess that it was a map of New York. What else could it be, when this was clearly a draft of her escape plan? The rescue she had had to organise herself, perhaps after giving up hope of anyone looking for her anymore, or of ever being found again?
The butler tried to remember Lane's advice from earlier and just breathe, but it hurt to even try. His lungs were on fire, his body was cold and he could feel himself starting to shake with no way of stopping. He clamped his hand over his mouth to at least stop himself from shouting the pain out of his body, but that barely began to even cover it!
How could he feel anything but pain, when he was looking at the miserable existence of the woman he loved, as it had been for eight whole months, and he hadn't been able to do a single thing to stop what he had started?
"This is where he kept her, when she wasn't…" Lane paused, probably looking for the most tactful way to put the unspeakable horror, "…needed."
Niles would have spat, if he could. Needed. As if Miss Babcock was some sort of toy that could be taken out of its package for its owner to use. And she'd certainly been used and abused, probably to an extent that he couldn't even imagine. He'd known seeing the horror would be difficult, but he wasn't expecting this. He wasn't expecting to be in a room where he could still hear her screams, encased in the mundane crap surrounding them.
"We found plenty of food hidden around the cellar, too," Lane said, probably afraid of leaving him to his own thoughts for long. "Our best guess is that she kept some provisions around in case she wasn't fed for long periods of time."
Not for the first time arriving at that cursed house, Niles felt sick. Miss Babcock, a woman who'd grown not knowing what wanting for things was, had had to hide food in order to avoid complete starvation. It was no wonder she was so underweight – this was yet another aspect of the bastard's power trip. The little games he liked to play to keep his sick, twisted mind entertained. All at the expense of the suffering of the woman Niles loved…
It wasn't fair.
None of it was fair.
And he was to blame.
It hurt to think it, but it was true, wasn't it? He'd done this to her. It was his fault she'd been kidnapped. His fault she'd been starved into compliance. His fault she'd been beaten black and blue for not cleaning a stain out of a carpet.
His fault...his fault she'd been...
He shook his head as the tears started to well up and overspill in the corners of his eyes. His heart had long since been shattered into dust by what he'd heard and seen, but now...now there was only a hole where it had once been. A void, filled with nothing but agonising guilt and knowledge that he could never make up for what he'd done...
He could see Miss Babcock's face, so beautiful as always, but contorted in complete agony and terror, as her captor bared down on her and she was forced to–
He quickly shut the image out and buried his face in his hands, unable to contain it anymore.
"This is all my fault!" he cried, the tears hot against his skin. He didn't care – they could scald him and scar his face, and he'd consider it a weak attempt at punishment for what he'd done. "I did this! I'm the reason this happened! If I'd never made her leave that stupid hospital–"
"Niles!" Lane was at his side in an instant, trying to talk to him over the sound of his own earned misery. It was difficult, when he just kept inflicting more verbal punishments on himself. "Niles, listen to me–"
"I'm sorry! I'd go back and change it all in a heartbeat if I could! I swear, I never meant for any of this to happen!"
"But Thomas did!" Lane had to raise her voice and pull his arms away to make him look at her. "You are not to blame for this. We found journals, Niles. A lot of them, with detailed plans of how to kidnap C.C. – her daily routine, changes in her life which might have meant changes in said routine, her address, her license plate – anything he could've used to help him find the perfect moment! It just so happens that the time he chose to carry out his plan was after her visit at the hospital."
Her words were commanding enough to get Niles to stop crying, but he still felt like he was being torn apart from inside. How could he not still be responsible for the plan succeeding, then? If she hadn't left when she had, the plan would've failed! She wouldn't have been around at the time that bastard was, and he'd have missed his opportunity!
And then the other times might have failed, too. They just couldn't say so for sure because he'd been stupid and selfish and he'd let it happen...!
He might have started crying again, trying to argue back in between sobs, had Lane not spoken first.
"C.C. doesn't blame you, Niles," she said, gently but firmly. She then took in a deep breath. "When she was...down here, she spent some time knitting. You saw the basket on the table?"
Niles nodded, wiping his eyes and wondering what that could possibly have to do with anything but willing to listen to the detective anyway.
Lane walked over to the basket, starting to look through it, "Well, we found a lot of notes stuffed in her mattress, talking about loved ones she didn't want to forget and the scarves she intended to make for them. They were meant to be gifts, when she finally got out of here."
She reached in, pulling out a full ziploc bag and laying it on the table. Then another. Then another, all of them filled up with different coloured materials that Niles eventually recognised as the folded-up scarves Lane was talking about.
He came closer, peering at the bags as Lane lined them up. Not one of the scarves was the same – he assumed by design, too, not due to lack of material, which wrenched at his heart and his gut in equal measure.
Miss Babcock had taken her time. Thought about each design carefully, stitched in colours and designs that she'd thought each person would like. She'd even taken the time to put in names, so everyone would know whose scarf was whose; her parents in elegant maroon and grey-blue, Noel in quite a jazzy yellow-gold, Maxwell in forest green…even Miss Fine, in the most vibrant shade of pink the eyes of man could stand…
But Lane wasn't finished. She laid out a bagged-up cream-coloured creation for Miss Margaret, an ultramarine piece for Master Brighton with only a slight warping where the stitches had been unpicked and the name had been redone, and a delicate mauve design for Miss Grace that had a beautiful if small loop in the G.
Niles felt his throat close up. She'd…she'd remembered them all…even the children! Right down to their names! She hadn't wanted to forget about any of them – not there, in the place where memories of them were all she had left, and had probably once, awfully, thought would be the only thing she'd be able to leave behind…
"This one will probably make my point best," Lane's voice and the faint rustling of a final ziploc bag brought him out of wherever he'd been. "Take a look at the name on it."
She slipped the last bagged scarf across the remaining table space. Under the room's one light, it could almost look white if you weren't looking hard enough. But Niles was looking and he realised it was actually a light, bright blue. The colour of the sky on the horizon in the early morning, or the ice at the North Pole. And, true to the words Lane had omitted when telling him to take a look, the corner next to the tassels was delicately stitched with the name "Niles".
Barely anything above a whispered gasp left his mouth as it gently felt open.
"Oh…!"
His heart swelled, so hard and so painfully that he thought it would burst in his chest. It forced tears out of his eyes, and the little air that could make it into his lungs wasn't enough to breathe with.
She didn't hate him. She didn't hate him and…she…she'd made him a scarf, just like everyone else!
He counted as a loved one? Just like any one of her friends, or her family? Despite the fact that he'd been the one to do all of this to her…?!
He couldn't believe it. He…he didn't understand! After everything that had happened before and all that he'd done to lead her right up to the greatest suffering she'd ever known, she still didn't want him out of her life?
Why? If it'd been him in her position, the other person would've been dead to him! And deservedly so! All he'd ever done was cause her misery in some form or another, and it'd all escalated into this!
Even if everybody else kept insisting that he wasn't to blame for her going missing, he couldn't join them in that belief. How could he? He knew it wasn't true. If he had taken just one split second to think – really think, for once in his life – then they wouldn't have been there. Miss Babcock would never have seen those walls, or ever felt the need to make those scarves.
She wouldn't have had to think about him, in forgiveness he hadn't warranted or not.
More tears dripped down his face, bypassing the table and its contents and landing on the floor with a soft plip. His lip trembling caused a ripple that sent the quivering through his whole body, and the tears fell harder.
He'd been granted an honour he hadn't earned, being on that table with the rest of her family and friends. She would've known that better than anybody. And yet she'd done it anyway. To her, it clearly hadn't mattered that the only fitting punishment for his crime was to be forgotten. For some mad reason she still wanted to remember him, to see him, and to have him in her life after he'd done something so utterly vile as to send her away.
Not to put a too-fine point on it, he didn't get it. He didn't think he ever would get it, either. But that didn't mean at all that he was ungrateful, or that he wouldn't thank Miss Babcock for making it for him the moment it was appropriate to do so. She deserved to know that he appreciated what she'd done, whether or not he was worthy of it…
One of his hands fell gently on top of the bag, softly closing up over his name.
"She…" the butler sniffed, pausing and gathering the thoughts that started to scatter the moment he went to put them together. "She didn't have to do that…!"
"I can't let you take it right now, for obvious reasons," Lane told him. "But if you want to keep it, I'll do everything I can to make sure it gets back to you once it's no longer needed as evidence. And everyone else's, if they want theirs."
Niles nodded back at her, words failing him before they could ever leave his mouth. Everything was piling on him like a ton of bricks dropped randomly in bags of a hundred pounds, flooring him over and over even as he tried desperately to struggle back to his feet.
Lane seemed to notice he was being crushed under it all, though.
"Are you all done here? We can head back outside if you think you've seen enough…"
Niles nodded again, more fervently this time. There was nothing about "thinking" in it; he knew he had seen enough. How much else did he need to look at to know just how much Miss Babcock had suffered? Enough until he broke down?
He was already halfway there, he thought. He didn't need to be taken the rest of the way and driven mad with the police descriptions, or even the imagining his own traitorous mind would do if it looked at a room for too long.
The detective made a noise at the back of her throat, and nodded back at him.
"Okay. Leave the scarves where they are, and let's get going."
Wiping his eyes on his sleeve and taking one last, longing look at his gift from Miss Babcock, Niles turned and followed Lane out of the room as she left.
It might've been important for him to see, and he knew he never would've slept properly again if he hadn't gone at least once, but that didn't mean he wanted to linger.
If he stood any chance at all at helping Miss Babcock to feel better, then he had needed to know what he would be up against. But now he knew, so they could get the hell out of there. He'd be able to pull himself together once they were out of that place, and in the open air again where he could breathe properly.
If he could breathe after this, then he'd be able to find a way to help her breathe too. And he was set harder than concrete on making it happen. All this talk of anybody deserving anything, most of all, Miss Babcock deserved to be able to breathe. To breathe and to walk away from the place like he was doing now.
Filling his mind with that gave him some small semblance of peace, as did the idea of him walking alongside her and leaving it all behind without ever looking back.