"So, how are you liking Lima?" Kurt asked as he and Blaine walked out to his SUV. He kept glancing surreptitiously over his shoulder for Karofsky.
Blaine caught him at it. "Are you – looking for someone?"
"What? No! No," insisted Kurt. He forced a smile, but Blaine stopped walking.
Kurt stopped, too, and turned around, a questioning look on his face. "You know, I've been down this road before, Kurt. I'm not an idiot. If this is some sort of ambush…"
Kurt sputtered. "Ambush?" he asked incredulously. "By whom exactly?" He planted a hand on his jutted hip and seemed so genuinely offended, Blaine began to feel guilty for even suggesting it. "And in case you've forgotten, you were the one that invited me…"
"You're right." Blaine stepped into Kurt, clasping his diva hand with both of his own. "I'm sorry."
Kurt looked down at his right hand, clasped between both of Blaine's, and the older boy's eyes followed Kurt's gaze. When he realized what he'd done, he released Kurt's hand. "Sorry, that – I shouldn't have."
Self-consciously, he buried both his hands in the pockets of his jeans – one of the new pairs his… the Berrys… had bought him. His eyes dropped away from Kurt's.
Kurt dropped both his arms and shrugged it off. "Don't worry about it," he said, sounding less shaken by the unexpected contact than he felt. He couldn't quite figure out if it was a good sort of shaken or a bad sort of shaken, but he decided, for right now, he could table the question until after he ordered himself a mocha.
It was nearly 6:00 when Blaine walked in the front door. Hiram sat, legs crossed, foot shaking anxiously, and LeRoy stood behind his husband, arms crossed over his chest. Rachel was nowhere to be seen, but there were two strangers – one woman and one man – seated on the couch, a tray of tea and cookies down in front of them. All four of them looked up when Blaine arrived home.
His brow furrowed, and the smile he'd been sporting slipped easily from his lips. He looked from one face to the next. "What's going on?" he asked. His heart thundered in his chest.
LeRoy uncrossed his arms and placed them on Hiram's shoulders. "Blaine. We tried to call you."
"My phone died in seventh period." Probably due to his own incessant checking for messages, but he kept that little fact to himself. "What's going on?" he repeated, as he dropped his backpack by the shoe rack in the foyer.
This time, the woman stood up, but Hiram answered for her. "These people are detectives. They have questions about your mother." He didn't sound happy about it. The female detective looked at Hiram as he spoke and then back at Blaine.
"That's right, Blaine. It's our job to investigate what happened to her and bring the responsible person to justice…whoever that might be. Please, Blaine, join us."
Blaine looked at his fathers, and then at the officers. Detectives. "Why?" he asked as he walked farther into the room. "You never did anything before she died. Why would you do something now." The woman sat and gestured at the empty armchair across from her.
"Was something happening before she died? Because that's part of what I'm investigating. We have different cops working different types of cases, Blaine. I wish I could say that I would have gotten involved earlier, but my bosses only call my partner and I in when someone has, unfortunately, passed away."
Blaine dropped heavily into the seat and crossed his arms tightly over his chest.
"Whatever was going on before – if someone failed to act. If someone failed to do something they should have done…. Well, that's part of what we're looking into now."
Silence passed between them for a long minute. Blaine said nothing, and neither did the police officers.
"She didn't pass away," he said quietly, though rage bubbled behind his eyes. "She was murdered. There's a difference."
The female detective lifted her chin, her eyes honing in Blaine as if he'd suddenly done something very interesting.
She leaned in a bit, nodding, as if she understood. As if she was on Blaine's side. "And who murdered her Blaine."
He hesitated, not because he didn't want to say, but because he worried that if he did, he might burst into tears. "It's OK, son," Hiram said, then quickly corrected himself without amending his tone. "Blaine, it's OK. Just – tell Detective Ward what you told us." Blaine glanced up at them, not even thinking to protest the use of the word "son". He had more important things going on right now. Hiram and LeRoy both nodded at him.
He looked at the female detective – Detective Ward, he assumed. "My mom's boyfriend, Darrell. I – I don't know his last name," Blaine said, deflating a bit at the end.
Detective Ward just nodded, but said nothing. Meanwhile, man-detective jotted down notes.
"Blaine," Detective Ward asked, a renewed intensity in her tone, "did you see Darrell Phillips hurting your mother on October 22?"
Blaine shook his head and sighed. "No," he admitted, voice trembling with suppressed anger. "I didn't. Not that time."
Silence again, until Detective Ward prompted him. "What do you mean, Blaine? What do you mean by 'not that time'?"
Blaine's jaw tightened. He would not cry. He wouldn't. "I mean," he responded, defiance and annoyance tinging his tone. "He was always hitting her. I tried to stop him. She wouldn't let me. I tried calling the cops. And then she'd lie to protect him. And he'd be back in the house the next day. When she finally kicked him out, he said he'd kill her."
He was looking at the coffee table, as if he was telling the table the story. He didn't realize he'd gone silent until Detective Ward said, "Did you actually hear that threat, Blaine? With your own ears?"
He looked up, eyes glistening. She sounded almost eager to know the answer, but her face betrayed no emotion. Nothing.
"Yeah. I heard it."
"When?"
It was the other detective this time – the one whose name he didn't know. He turned his head to look at the sandy-haired man and shook his head. "I don't know. A few days before my principal pulled me out of class to tell me my mother was dying. But he said that sort of thing all the time." He said it with more bite than he probably should have, but he couldn't help himself. Thinking about this all was making him feel anxious and reminding him of all the terrible times. It was reminding him that his mother was dead. It was reminding him – that if he'd just stayed home from school – if he'd just done something…
Detective Ward excused herself for a moment, and stepped into the hallway, retrieving her phone from her pocket as she moved.