C h a p t e r T w o – S a t u r d a y M o r n i n g
P a r t O n e
It was as awkward as she'd hoped it wouldn't be. Even without incredibly perceptive people skills, she could tell Ray and Linda Vanault were avoiding her eyes, avoiding looking at her completely. They'd invited her into their home with desperation etched around their faces as if just having her there would provide answers. As if returning to the start could bring some compromise to the end. She knew what they all wanted; to erase Tuesday night, to have Lucy back and Temperance, a stranger, out of their house. Instead they were showing her Lucy's room and the carefully kept cards that dated back to the first one that had arrived, fifteen years before.
"The police are downstairs." Ray Vanault arrived to break the silence between his wife and Brennan. They'd been numbly staring at different things; Linda Vanault at the half-made bed, probably remembering the last time she'd roused her daughter from it. Brennan had fixed her eyes at a picture that had only the corner showing, the only thing in the room she even remotely recognised. She'd flown in for a brief meeting with Lucy, at the Vanault's request. They'd wanted to keep her in Lucy's life as much as Lucy allowed. Brennan had taken Lucy to a park, feeling inadequate and awkward. They'd fed ducks and eaten sandwiches packed carefully by Linda Vanault. Brennan had pushed Lucy on the swing while her parents had watched on. Linda Vanault had found time to take a picture and in the picture Lucy's auburn hair was all she could see, flying as she and the swing fought so hard against the gravity that tethered her.
"Oh." Linda Vanault pushed a piece of grey hair back and straightened her already-straight skirt. She and her husband were at least ten years older than Brennan and she'd always felt the difference so strongly.
"Mr and Mrs Vanault." The detective nodded towards her hosts as they preceded down the stairs before fixing his eyes firmly on her.
"Dr Temperance Brennan." Brennan held out her hand and inwardly cringed at the shudder in it. She still had the title to hide behind, but it was nothing more than a spoken formality, unable to shield her from more personal emotions.
"Dr. Brennan, Billy Wright." He shook her hand firmly before motioning them all to seats. In the week the police had been in and out of the small home they'd established seating rules, comfortable places that could be found quickly. Brennan was as yet unassigned an unspoken chair and she lingered on her feet as everyone else settled into their well worn positions. Probably the same positions they'd all sat in Tuesday night, as they'd been handed the news that would devastate them, as the detective had absorbed the grief he brought to their family room.
"I've got news about the perpetrator." There was a smaller armchair that had been left vacant. Brennan sat on the edge as the Det. Wright spoke.
"You've found who did it?" Ray Vanault's arm was curled around his wife's shoulder, her hand buried in his. They had unconsciously formed themselves a wall, something unyielding, bracing for more.
"We think we have him. DNA will convince us completely, but my gut says we've got him." Brennan saw, then, that it wasn't just FBI agents that went on intuition steered by the humble stomach. Maybe Booth wasn't such an institution.
"Who is it?" Linda Vanault's voice was shaky but her eyes were clear.
"A man known to us on several counts of rape and indecent exposure." Linda Vanault's gasp on the word rape made Wright pause. He looked at his hands briefly before he continued. Brennan stayed quiet. She felt like an observer in this except that Wright wasn't Booth and the Vanault's were more connected to her than any of the suspect's they'd had in interrogation had ever been. As much as she wanted to shut out the detective's voice, his words were directed at her as well.
"We think he forced Lucy into his car before driving her to a deserted park north of where she was found. He's refusing to talk but evidence found so far means we can hold him. DNA will put him away for life."
"And we can have Lucy's body then… Bury her?" Ray Vanault's arm around his wife tightened and Brennan noticed her slight wince.
"We've got as much information as we can from Lucy… Any time you're ready to have the funeral home pick her up, you can." Linda Vanault gave her husband's hand a squeeze as she rose from the couch. Her eyes searched for the cordless phone that was sighted on the sideboard. Her husband reached it first, wordlessly handed it to her. As a unit, they left the room. At the door, Ray Vanault turned, nodded at Det. Wright.
"Billy…" Wright nodded back, eyes blinking slowly. He'd done his job. Brennan wondered if he felt as drained as she always did or whether he still felt excited at the fact that, in an increasingly justice-less world, justice had been served.
P a r t T w o - M o n d a y M o r n i n g
The funeral was held on Monday. Brennan called Cam earlier than she'd be in the lab and had left a message on an answering machine that, blissfully, couldn't ask her anything. She was too emotionally exhausted to call Angela, or Sully, or Booth. This weekend had sucked the life from her and replaced it with a pain so sharp it throbbed in her chest every time she sucked in a breath. Consequently, she was breathing shallowly, having to remind herself that she needed the air and couldn't just stop breathing.
"Sit with us. Please." Linda Vanault still looked like the perfect mother; pearls decorated her otherwise black attire and mascara-less eyes allowed a smudge free path of tears. Brennan envied her the freeness with which her tears were shed. She still hadn't managed to surpass the lone one which had rolled down her face as she left Angela. Maybe stifling it at that point had left her stunted, unable to weep for Lucy despite the fact that she wanted to honour her with tears. Wanted to somehow reconcile herself with how many hours she could have spent with Lucy, how much time she could have given a child who had wanted her to be there so much more than she was.
"Of course." Brennan followed the Vanaults to the front row, ignoring the stares that followed her. All of the people here probably knew Lucy better than she had yet she was given a privileged position.
"Family, friends…" The pastor paused and Brennan realised she didn't directly fit into either category. She was someone else entirely, an unexplained stranger with a ticket to fly out that night, and no reason to look back. The contract she and the Vanaults had was null and void without Lucy.
"Lucy Vanault was a wonderful, wonderful person." He went on to list achievements that Brennan had never realised Lucy had been capable of. Had never wished to know. She'd been a phantom figure in Lucy's life, never looking in more than she had to.
She stared at the picture of Lucy that rested lightly on the coffin. Taken only weeks before Lucy had been killed, it showed a unusually pretty teenager. Auburn hair and big blue eyes stared out of a mahogany frame. Brennan wondered if the funeral home had matched the coffin to the frame intentionally; now the Vanaults could have a picture of Lucy inside mahogany, exactly as she would remain for the rest of their lives.
Her biggest, most selfish regret was realised only when the coffin was being lowered into the ground. She wished she'd never looked back. She wished she'd not sent the cards, not made any contact with a child who had, after that first taste, wanted so much more from her. And that was what finally made her cry.
P a r t T h r e e – M o n d a y A f t e r n o o n
She'd said her goodbyes at the funeral and had declined the wake. She wanted to stop wiping her overflowing eyes, let the tears settle on her cheeks. The Vanault's knew the time her flight left and had said goodbye before Brennan got into the taxi that would remove her from their lives for good. She returned their farewells and had ridden away from the funeral with her eyes turned towards the other headstones, away from the empty place that was still waiting for its chilly marble headstone.
Back in the hotel room, she sat in the corner of the shower and let the cold water beat down on her. She needed to feel something other than the pain. Freezing was all she could think of.
She hadn't thought of the lab all weekend but now her thoughts strayed to it. Angela and Jack would probably have found some reason to work together. Cam would be doing paperwork and Zack would probably be identifying the skeleton that Brennan had been meaning to get done on the weekend, before Lucy.
Getting up and turning the shower off, Brennan walked through to her bag and pulled out jeans and a shirt before hurriedly returning to the bathroom with a brush. She'd somehow lost track of time and was going to be late for her flight if she didn't hurry up. Looking in the mirror, she paused in mid-stroke. Their eyes had been the same shade. And their hair. She'd never noticed that before.
"Temperance?" A knock and a call at the door made her put the brush down and turn. She opened it to see Linda Vanault standing outside, a picture clutched in her hand.
"I thought you'd want this." The woman was still in her mourning clothes. Brennan wondered whether Ray Vanault was downstairs with the car running while guests at the wake were alone in their house.
"It's really the only one we had of you and her…" The awkwardness increased and Brennan reached out to take the picture she had looked at two days before. Linda Vanault's words carried guilt through the doorway like a rising tide that Brennan almost felt a need to step back from.
"I'm sorry. That I wasn't there more. That I didn't want to be more involved." Brennan felt her voice lose itself in the raggedness of her throat towards the end of her sentence but, looking up, she saw that the message had got through. Linda Vanault's eyes were suddenly tearless.
"I'm sorry." The older woman said just as softly. "You entrusted her and we… We couldn't keep her safe." Brennan shook her head, realising she'd had it the wrong way around the whole time. The Vanault's hadn't been blaming her, they'd been blaming herself. She'd been too busy doing the same thing to notice.
"It is not your fault. I wanted better for her, and that's what she got from you." The hug she suddenly received from Lucy's mother was fierce and she imagined the love Lucy felt when she was enveloped in it.
"And you were a child. You did the right thing for Lucy, and that's all you've done since. I promise." Linda Vanault's words were delivered straight to Brennan's ear as she hugged back. Then they were just two women in a motel hallway, locked together in grief.
A/N: Thanks for all your reviews so far; they've been fantastic! Which is why I'm posting this so quickly.
I know a lot of people wanted Brennan to call Booth but I think this chapter needed just Brennan. It was something she has to deal with alone, in a strange city, in a place where someone so connected to her has died. She doesn't know how to cope and she's not herself; ergot, she hasn't felt the need to pick up the phone and call Booth. She just wants it to be over and forgotten; if she tells Booth the circle of information widens and she won't be able to bury it as efficiently as she did before. At least that's the way I've seen it as I was writing!
Hope you enjoyed; as always, please review. Thanks for reading.