Martha retires early, unable to maintain the graceful, optimistic façade she's been adopting all evening. Alexis locks herself away just a few minutes later and Kate can hear her crying from the other end of the house.

"I should have seen this coming," she sighs pitifully, plopping down on a kitchen barstool, laying her head in her arms on the island counter. Everything they'd been through, all of the obstacles thrown in their way, everything that had tried to push them apart, it all should have told her that they wouldn't make it. "But we were so close," she whimpers, curling in on herself. "We almost did."

She pushes herself up, skirts swishing as she jumps down and around the corner, pulling a crystal tumbler out of the highest cabinet and slamming it onto the counter. "I should've known," she seethes, spilling his scotch all over the counter as she tips it carelessly over the lip of the glass. "I should've known." She throws the glass back and pours another, picking it up and carrying both the drink and the bottle up the stairs. She kicks open the door to their bedroom, cringing as it crashes into the wall, and clunks the glass and bottle down on the table behind the bed.

She reaches behind her, struggling to unbutton the top of her dress by herself, wiggling and jumping and bending and twisting until she slips the button through the hole and unzips the zipper. She steps out of it quickly, kicking it onto the chair in the corner, and stalks over to fireplace in the wall, turning on the gas and flipping the lighter. The fire roars to life, licking over the anchor like the flames licking over the roof of his car. She steps back, mesmerized by the sudden heat and glaring light.

The flames bounce off of the mirror on the wall, the reflections causing her entire body to glow yellow. She turns to look, scowling at her rumpled, forlorn self, the complete opposite of everything she should've been right now. She unclasps the lacy white bustier, rips off the garter, belt, and panties, and throws them all into the fireplace in a fit of rage.

She stands there, chest heaving, some misguided sense of pleasure accompanying the guilt and grief in watching them burn to little more than ash and blackened wire. "Aaaaagh!" she shrieks, whirling around to grab her robe off of the bed and yank it on. She stalks out into the hallway, glass in hand and all the dramatic flair that Martha usually supplies. She stomps down the stairs and into his office, throwing herself into the oversized chair and rifling through all of the drawers until she finds a notebook, laying it open in front of her and scribbling his name across the top of the first page with an angry flourish.

She splits the page into two columns, one labeled "abduction" and the other labeled "runaway." She leaves the second column blank, as it doesn't seem at all realistic to her, and focuses on the first column, writing "accident" at the top. Underneath she writes "staged" and halfway down she writes "accident" again, continuing on like this and scribbling in all of the information she has so far, both evidence and assumed, until she has her own little preliminary case file, ideas to pitch to the investigators tomorrow and blanks to fill with whatever they find.

When she's all theoried out she relents, dropping the pen onto the notebook and slumping back into the chair. She picks up her drink, considering the glass in hand. She shouldn't be losing herself in it, relying on the alcohol to help her forget the pain, but she thinks she's entitled to it tonight. Just one night. So she throws back this second serving of scotch, swiping up her case and returning to the bedroom to pour another glass.

Halfway through she pauses, setting the bottle back up right. "Fuck it," she gives up, emptying the glass and then leaving it behind, fisting the bottle instead as she returns to the ground floor, sweeping back out the French doors opening out onto the lawn, avoiding looking at the wedding setup as she bolts for the beach.

She trips across the sand, flying down to the water's edge, and digs her feet in at the line where the waves break. The wind breezes through her hair, blowing inland from the Atlantic. She takes a deep breath in, letting her head fall back, hair blowing out behind her, as she raises her arms to the side. She stands like that until the Scotch hits her, swaying on the beach until she loses her balance. She continues to sit at the water's edge, feet in the sand, until she's gotten through half of the bottle.

"No more, Kate," she sighs, dribbling some of the last swig down her chin as she caps it and lets it fall to the ground beside her. "Gitit together," she scolds, wiping the spill away with the back of her hand. "Be'n adult."

I don't want to be an adult. She pouts, falling back into the sand, and stares at the stars. You could never see them like this at home, and for that she's grateful. Soon she'll have to go home, and they won't be there to throw their twinkling hopefulness in her face. Fucking stars. She raises both hands, flipping the bird to the sky until she can't hold them up anymore.

Only when the water reaches her hips does she move, scootching back and pulling her knees into her chest, blinking as she tries to focus on the lights of a ship chugging steadily across the horizon.

Tugboat, ocean liner, or tanker, she can't quite tell from this distance. Whatever it is she wishes she were on it, sailing far away from this darkened reality and anywhere, anywhere else. Just take me away.

The tears start to fall again, mixing with the sprinkles of salt and water that flick up with every crash and break of the waves. She moves to stand, grabs the scotch, and stumbles back a few feet with her overestimated upward momentum. "Just take me anywhere where there's no such thing as pain, no such thing as loss. Take me somewhere where happy endings are real possibilities. Take me somewhere where I can finally be okay." Take me to him. She lets her head fall back, arms thrown out to the sides once again, as though bracing herself to be beamed to another place.

She's just kidding herself, though. Those places don't exist, and nobody is listening to her desperate pleas.

"Just go to bed, Kate," she sighs, shaking her head. And so she turns, listening to herself, and makes her way back up the beach, past the setting of the fairytale wedding that was never meant to be. She deposits the bottle on the island on her way through the kitchen, trips on the third to last stair and gives up, crawling her way back to their bedroom.

"I can have this one night," she reasons. "One night to be pathetic and drunk." She affirms the decision by rolling onto her back, eyes glued to the flickering of one of the outside lights, dancing around on the swirling ceiling, as soon as she clears the doorway.

"Of all the times I've deserved that one night, this is definitely a good time to cash in." She kicks the door shut and stretches out. It only takes a few minutes before she can't stand the silence anymore and she rises, unbelting her robe and letting it fall to the carpet as she crosses the room to flip the switch on the fireplace, waiting for the flames to die down before she looks away. "Just like my dreams."

Ugh. "I've got to stop talking to myself." So she buries herself under the comforter, silence becoming her only companion until she finally finds solace in sleep.

The sun wakes her in the morning, forcing her lids open with its blinding fingers, piercing through the cracks in the blinds. She sits up slowly, head still a little spinny and her body lethargic. She runs her hands through her messy, fallen hair as she looks around, ripping out each bobby pin she finds and dropping them to the comforter as she takes in the massive, empty room around her, grayed dress in a careless ball on the armchair in the corner, robe left in the middle of the floor.

She hauls herself out of bed and paces over to the chair in the corner, reaching out cautiously, running her fingers over the damaged fabric. "I'm so sorry, Mom," she mourns, lifting the dress gingerly, straightening wrinkles and creases in the skirt as she holds it up, stretching on tiptoes so she doesn't trip over it as she goes to hang it up in the closet. She picks the robe up off of the ground as she crosses the room again, slinging it on the hook on the bathroom door as she clicks it shut, preparing to shower.

Her eyes are still red, from the hangover and the sorrow both. Her makeup is smeared all down her cheeks, caked into her pores and her laugh lines. She leans in to the mirror, fighting to disentangle the last few clips from the rat's nest her hair has become. She doesn't bother trying to brush it out, jumping right under the spray and dumping half of what's left of her conditioner on her head.

When she's all done she takes a second, leaning her forehead against the cold tiles of the shower wall as the warm water beats down on her, psyching herself up to get through the day.

She dresses quickly when she's done, pulling a t-shirt and jeans from the top of the pile out of the dresser and tossing her hair up in a sloppy ponytail, brushing her teeth almost as an afterthought before she goes to find the others.

Martha is sitting at the island, an untoasted bagel and a cup of coffee perched on the counter before her. She's slouched over them, staring somberly at her index finger chipping at the edge of the granite. "Oh, good morning, Katherine," she tries to smile, the usual lilt absent from her words.

"Good morning, Martha," she responds, not even attempting to offer the woman a smile. She rounds the counter, pours herself a cup of coffee, and turns, leaning back against the counter across from his mother. She couldn't eat if she tried, even if nausea wasn't rippling through her.

"So, what is our plan?" Martha asks quietly, pushing away her uneaten breakfast and clasping her hands in front of her. "How do we proceed from here?"

"Well," Kate contemplates, taking a gulp of her drink before setting it down behind her and crossing her arms. "I'm going to go back down to the station, see if I can get a rush on all of the reports. I'm going to see if they've gotten anything back on traffic cams or witnesses. I'm going to call the precinct and get them to pull and fax over his phone records. And then… I don't know. It's going to depend on what we find."

"Are you going to put his picture out?" Martha questions. "Shouldn't we have done so yesterday?"

"I don't…" Kate trails off. "I think it would be better to get a better grasp on the situation before we let the media on," she admits. "I want to try to narrow down as many details as we can before we release anything. Honestly… I don't think the media, or the public, are going to be of any help in bringing him home. I can't be certain, not yet, but I don't think this was random, and I don't think it was someone looking for money. I think…" she starts to cry again. "I think this was very intentional, and I don't think those intentions were anything other than malicious."

"I suspected as much," Martha nods, her own eyes filling with tears. "Please be safe, Katherine. Whatever happens, whatever you find… please be smart. I want him back just as badly as you do, but I don't want to lose you, too. Richard would never want anything to happen to you at his expense or for his sake."

"I know he wouldn't," she swallows back the lump in her throat. "I know he wouldn't. But this whole situation, it could be the reverse. It could be that he is wherever he is because of me, and I will do everything I can to bring him home," she vows. She dumps the rest of her coffee down the drain and lifts her keys off the hook by the door. "Everything."

Invitation only, grand farewells
Crash the best one of the best ones
Clear liquor and cloudy-eyed
To early to say goodnight

-Stolen
Dashboard Confessionals