A/N: *Heads up* There's some material in this chapter, immediately following this opening flashback scene, that contains references to rape.

Recap of previous chapter: Sookie recalls the night in Eric's dune shack when they discussed Eric's reasons for becoming an architect and she first realized she might be pregnant.

Disclaimer: All SVM characters belong to Charlaine Harris. I'm just taking them on a tour of New England.

Chapter 15: Water Breaks

The waves pushed us apart that night, tossed us in the surf like bits of broken shells. Coughing and sputtering, we washed up on the shore only when the sea was done with us. I stood up first and looked down at Eric, lying on his back and propped up on his elbows, eyes cast out toward the water as the waves lapped at his feet.

I laughed crazily, still pumped up from the wild way I'd been flung about. I'd needed the roughness- the hard, pounding sex and the biting scrape of sand—to overtake the flooding panic. Desperately, I wanted anything but panic. My straggly hair hanging about me like strands of seaweed, I must have looked like some kind of sea monster.

Eric stood up and wiped his face with his hands, flicking away the water still dripping from his brow. "You're bleeding."

"Oh!" Relief. It had all been a big mix up, an error in accounting. Unabashed, I spread my thighs open and looked down, but saw nothing but sand and sea water. My eyes fixed there, I jumped at his unexpected touch on my hip, where a stream of blood was forming. Oh.

"Waves are rough tonight." He pulled me close, his sandy flesh chafing against mine.

"Yes," I choked out. Tears were coming, tears that were much too powerful for a little cut on my hip. I gulped them back in a way that made a huge knot right in the middle of my chest.

His eyes flickered away. "It's nothing we can't fix with a quick clean-up."

Yes. A quick clean-up would be good. I barely nodded, afraid I might really shake something loose inside.

Back in the shack, Eric handed me a towel and pulled one of the chairs up to the table for me to sit. From underneath the counter, he retrieved a first-aid kit and a bottle of water, and then pulled the other chair up across from mine. He washed away the sand and saltwater from the wound and dabbed at it with a gauze pad. "There. See? You won't need stitches. It's just a scrape," he said, smoothing on a spot of antibiotic ointment. He patched on a bandage. "Good as new." His hands stroked my thighs.

I couldn't look him in the eye just then, but I didn't want him to release me from his gaze. And anything he wanted to do with his hands would be just fine with me.

But there were too many hands.

An insistent voice said my name. "Sookie? Can you hear me? Sookie? You're in the hospital."

"It's just a scrape," I told her.

Another voice, buttery and unctuous, murmured in my ear. It was too smooth to be soothing. People who talk to you like that have a reason, and usually it's not a good one. I wanted to throw up. Maybe I did. The sour taste of bile coated my tongue. Hands patted at my head, smoothed my hair. I jerked away. "Don't touch me!" A mask smothered my face. I could feel the press of it around my nose and mouth. Could I still talk?

This wasn't right. There were too many bodies around me, moving quickly, surrounding and confusing me. Their soft-soled shoes squished on the floor. I hoped they were white shoes. Mr. Beck, our 8th grade PE teacher had admonished us to not wear black sneakers in the gymnasium. "Black soles leave a mark," I wanted to tell them. I pictured the long, dark streaks that had marred the gym floor.

Wheels rolled by. A cloth flapped, unfurling. Bodies swished. Plastic and paper tore. There was a lot of that noise—plastic and paper tearing—and things dropping to the floor. Plastic and paper make a dry, rustling noise when they fall, and crinkle when they're stepped on. Other things sound wet and heavy. Something hissed. There was beeping too.

Their incessant voices talked around me and over me, but I couldn't catch their slippery words. They spoke in code, in puzzle talk, not making any sense. Numbers. Barked orders. Lingo that meant nothing to me. They said my name, over and over. Yes, I'm here. Tell me what is happening!

Oh, no, this wasn't making any sense. There was another voice to the side, and then a man. Loud and commanding. Right over me. His voice brought an unpleasant clarity, made me jump, want to flee, but when I tried to move, that's when I felt the hands pinning my knees back. And when I tried to kick, cool air licked my bare flesh.

Oh! I was splayed naked. And so very cold.

Wild, unbridled panic snapped at my heels and caught hold. There were more hands. There were hands pressing and digging down—so very hard—wrenching unbearable pressure on the tender parts of me. Pain ratcheted me up to an even higher level of clarity. No! I take it back! I don't want to know!

Oh, God, the hands were touching everywhere.

No, don't touch me there! Did I say it or think it?

If I could have floated away, I would have, but their relentlessly pressing hands brought me back every time, fastened me right down to that table. There was more tearing too, of me. I felt sure of it. "You'll have to stitch me up again," I told them. Yes. I'm sure I said that aloud. Hello? You can't do this to me without putting me back together again. I think I might have laughed too in my own forced way. "Make it look pretty," I told them. I did. I said it just like that. Some things can be fixed.

All of those hands exhausted me. They let go, finally, so I could float, warm again.

Floating is always easier than struggling to stay on top.

"Lie back, Sookie," Gran had coached me in the pond. "Just let yourself go."

Sinking back into the water had felt so wrong. As soon as my head had touched the water, I'd panicked and stiffened. And sank.

She was right. Once I trusted her and relaxed, I floated. Letting go made me buoyant.

Here is where I would float.

"Hey, Sookie. Sookie! It's me. I'm here. Sookie?"

Something was tugging at me, trying to lift me out of the water. I struggled against it, and even as I struggled, I felt myself lifting more. This wasn't how this was supposed to work. Struggling should make me sink, pull me under. Only, which way was up? Disoriented now, I couldn't tell.

I lay back, willing my body to go limp.

The hand pulled at me.

I rolled my head and felt my eyelids flutter. Jerking away from the hands grasping at mine, I tried to anchor myself here in my soothing place.

"Sookie?"

Somewhere a rope creaked, rubbed by the waves against its mooring. Somewhere, a boat was secure against the tugs and pull of the tide.

I squinted. Or I imagined my ears squinted, if there could be such a thing, trying to make sense of the creak, which had turned into more of a chirp, a metallic, unnatural scraping that pricked at my ears. I wanted it to stop. I felt the beginnings of another cold chill.

"Sookie, wake up. I'm here."

The fingered chill found its way, prodding and poking until finally bursting the protective water-like bubble around me. Consciousness sliced through me. I gasped, taking in a deep breath, as though testing out my lungs for the first time.

'Sookie? Can you hear me? You're in the hospital."

A deep and heavy ache had settled low in my belly, where a boulder-like weight had lodged itself atop me. I didn't like the feeling of being trapped here and being peered at. Yes, there was a pair of eyes too.

"Eric," I mumbled.

"Eric? Who's Eric?"

Oh, it was Jason. And then I got doused with a bucketful of clarity. Someone important was missing. "E.J!"

I struggled to come up now, thrashing against the heaviness and sluggishness overpowering me.

"Easy, easy! He's okay. He's okay! You're in the hospital. He's here in the nursery. Been raising hell." He called for the nurse. "Jesus, you scared the shit out of us."

Knowing E.J. was okay, I held quiet and tentatively looked around. I seemed to be in a standard hospital room. Plain light beige walls. Vinyl-covered chair by a window. A sink. A printed curtain that would wrap around my bed. Where did they get the fabric for those stupid curtains? They always looked the same, with insipid tones and prints that said, "Shh. Take care. Somebody is sick here." I hated them.

My eyes were drawn down to the end of the bed, where there seemed to be pointy things poking up, making a little tent down there. Were those my feet? That was the end of my body, wasn't it? I tried wiggling my toes just to check. The tent wiggled too. Yes. That was where my body ended. Excellent.

"Do you remember what happened?" I heard Jason, but I was too busy wiggling my toes. My fingers worked too, and yes, they were there where they were supposed to be. All mine. The rest of my body was dicey at the moment.

"Sookie, do you hear me? Sookie?"

Oh, hey, my eyebrows could move too. Gran and I could make our eyebrows go up and down like a see-saw, something Jason could never do, but I didn't think I'd try that at the moment.

"Sookie, do you remember what happened?"

With that brief adrenaline rush gone, even simple movements seemed to take an enormous amount of energy. I sighed heavily, noticing the way my ribs opened up. I was still figuring out where my body ended and the rest of the world began. Where were the margins?

"You passed out at Bill's. It's lucky he called 911 right away. God, Sookie, you were bleeding all over the place. You should have seen your sweater. It was soaked. And they had to give you a transfusion, but they got the bleeding stopped. Thank God, because they asked me permission to do a hysterectomy if it was necessary, but it wasn't, so, you know, you're still a woman. I mean, you can still have kids, but I… "

Jason continued his yammering as the final splash of icy cold realization washed over me. The hands. Pamela. Know your neighbors. Lorena. L.L. Leclerq. Eric. The hands.

It was all back to me again. A sob escaped. If I could have curled to one side, I would have, but I couldn't seem to work up the energy to do it. Still, I turned my head away from Jason.

"Shhh. Shhh." I could hear him hitting the call button again just as Nurse Carney came breezing in.

"Morning, Sookie."

Maybe she was peering down at me. I think she asked Jason to leave, but I was losing focus again, drawn to the pressing weight on my belly. My fingers gripped the waffle weave of the blanket covering me.

"I can give you something for the pain." Vaguely, I felt the squeeze of the blood pressure cuff on my arm. That was the last I'd remember again for a little while.

When I woke up again, Jason was gone, but Nurse Smith was there. I smiled. I liked her. It took me a moment to remember that I was back in the hospital, not still here from E.J.'s birth, but back.

"You're awake. How do you feel?"

"Like a train wreck," I managed.

"Yes," she seemed to agree. "How's the pain?"

"Better, I think." I was thinking about shifting my body and testing it out, when from the corner of my eye, I suddenly saw her hand reach toward me. I flinched. She stopped immediately.

"I'm just going to touch you right here." She pressed against her own abdomen. "I won't press hard. Can you give me your hand?"

I reached out. She pressed my own hand against me. "Do you feel that? That's the top of your uterus. It's much firmer now and shrunk down closer to the way it should be. See? It's just below your belly button."

She pulled the dreadful curtain closed so she could "check my bleeding." Surrounded by ugliness, I found nothing pleasant about this procedure, but there was nothing to be done about it. As she carefully peeled the blankets away and lifted my gown, I realized that at some point I'd picked up a few extras-a catheter, an IV, and a pad between my legs that felt more like a diaper.

"Can you lift your bottom?" Bracing my feet against the bed, I realized indignantly that I couldn't, really. No matter. She managed to shift the hospital-issue mesh granny panties down and set to work cleaning me up. I scrambled inside myself, looking for some scrap to hang onto. Humor.

"So it looks like I have a few of this season's hot fashion accessories." The joke fell flat even on my own ears. There really wasn't any use trying. This sucked.

I started to cry. She handed me a tissue.

"Would you like to see E.J.? You can feed him if you'd like."

I nodded, wanting nothing more.

I was never so glad to see someone in my life as I was at that moment, and that's when I really and truly lost it. I couldn't decide exactly what I felt like crying about most at that moment—there were good things and bad things—but I went with it anyway. I would sort through the mess in my head later. It wasn't like I was going to stop the tears anyway.

Nurse Smith had helped me turn onto my side and get E.J. latched on. I pulled his cap off to admire his wild, spiky golden hair as he nursed greedily. While she stayed there, helping to hold him in place, I cried some more until the hiccups came. Soon, I started to drift off, and shortly after that, I felt her lift E.J. from my arms and cover me up.

That's how the whole first day passed, kind of in a blur, marred by bouts of realization.

People were extra cautious around me, with all of their checking and monitoring and "let's-take-a-looking." Yeah, that wasn't pleasant—frightening even—but it happened so often, I got used to it, which helped me cover over and make sense of those terrifying moments in the ER.

I was alive, and those hands had saved my life.

Tara came by on the second day with some of my favorite pjs from home. Best of all, she just sat with me while she paged through some magazines, occasionally pointing out mundane or ridiculous things like simple skillet suppers, Oprah's platitude of the month (Make your life count, now!), or adding color to your shade garden—things that got me grounded and feeling like a normal person again, and I loved her for that. With her there, I could come back into my head and my body and take a look around.

"Tara, I think I'm in a bit of a jam."

She set down her magazine. I didn't know where to begin. It all seemed so complicated.

"I found out that a woman named Lorena Ball owns all of the property around mine. She's the same woman who offered to buy Gran's house a couple times."

"So she owns William's house?"

"Yes. He lied to me about that. Or at least he hid that from me." I couldn't remember whether we'd ever outright talked about who owned his house. I'd probably just assumed it, with good reason. "And I don't know exactly what his relationship is with this woman Lorena, but I suspect it's more than a simple tenant-landlord kind of relationship."

I paused, considering whether I could say this next bit out loud. I decided to forge ahead. "It's even possible that L.L. deliberately mismanaged my money to put me in a position where I'd have to sell my house."

I was grateful, at that moment, that Tara held calm. It gave me courage to keep going. "But it's really hard to know. L.L. offered to pay my real estate taxes on more than one occasion. Why would he have offered if he had been part of a plan to force me to sell? Maybe he knew I'd refuse him. It seems like an awfully twisted plan, though. Do you think he's capable of that kind of duplicity?"

Tara paused. "It seems hard to believe, doesn't it? I mean, it's hard to believe that about someone you trusted."

Though I had asked the question myself, I was grateful she didn't leap in with an L.L. berating, making me feel like an even bigger fool. Plus there was no denying the fact that aside from anything else he'd done, he'd helped save my life. No, of course he wouldn't have deliberately let me bleed to death there on his doorstep. But he'd been there with me, and he'd made the call, and for that, I felt connected to him, regardless of anything else. Maybe I shouldn't. Maybe he didn't deserve any extra points for doing what any decent human being would do. It was all very confusing.

My mind wandered, thinking about what might have happened if I had left his home, in the dark, and passed out somewhere between our houses.

"Sookie?"

Amelia wouldn't have known I was on my way. L.L. wouldn't have known I didn't make it home. How long could I have lain there on the lawn?

"Sookie?"

E.J. could have been left without a mother or a father.

"Sookie!"

Startled, I looked back at Tara.

"Do you want to keep talking about this?"

"Yes." I needed direction.

"So it sounds like you're the lone hold-out."

"Or the sitting duck."

Maybe from a practical standpoint, this was what I should have been thinking about—what was going to happen to the property around me, and my own property for that matter. My home. What were their plans? Would I eventually be swallowed up? How long would I be able to hold out? They couldn't just take my property, but they could make it hard for me to stay, or give me enough incentive to leave. Or more likely, I could run out of money to maintain it. What could I do to fight back?

These might have been the things I should have been thinking about, but what was really on my mind was wondering what Eric's involvement had been with the proposal Leclerq had submitted. Sookie, I have obligations.

"And that's not all. According to L.L., Eric's architecture firm proposed a plan for developing Lorena's property."

Tara, bless her, held steady. "What does that mean, exactly?"

"I don't know. I wasn't in the best state when he told me." For all that I knew, I realized there was a lot more that I didn't know. There were still plenty of missing puzzle pieces. Like how were Pam and L.L. connected? And how were Pam and Eric connected? If they were friends, why would she have given me a message that had indirectly implicated Eric?

It was a very bad case of the more you know, the more you realize what you don't know.

"Eric had to have known about Leclerq's business relationship with Lorena. He was a freaking partner in the firm. He'd known for sure, right?" Of course he'd known. Why else would he have come looking for me and my home? The only reason I held any doubts was because it was just too painful to consider otherwise. The very thought of his putting pencil to paper, drawing me right into his plans…

"Tara, it doesn't look good, does it?"

She hesitated. "Well, you don't know everything. You still don't know why he left his firm. Maybe he left because he realized he'd gotten himself into quite a conflict."

I wasn't sure that sounded like Eric. "You really think he'd actually leave behind his own business to carry on a summer fling?"

"I don't know, but you said he'd hinted at starting up something more with you, and that you missed it at the time."

My breath hitched here. I'd missed something that was maybe even more important. I'd missed my own feelings on the matter of us. We'd started off our summer gloriously carefree, stumbled along the way, and then somehow had found our balance, only to be thrown off balance by a few missed pills. I thought about that night in the shack, how we'd talked and laughed, and how the panic had washed it all away, almost as if it had never existed, the moment I'd heard the rattle of those pills.

The summer fling had been an illusion. Sure, I'd packaged it up nice and tidy and sold it to myself as a carefree season, a time to get lost in the pleasure of him—his body, his laughter, the surprising lighthearted parts of him…his intent fascination with his profession…the thrilling dark side of him, lurking…

Eric hadn't come a la carte. There was no plucking the cupcake from atop the crossbones; he wasn't just dessert. He was a whole big package, and along with the fun parts had come troubles too. At minimum, Eric had kept his knowledge about his firm's plans from me. At worst…well, he'd come into my life with ill intent and trespassed all over my home and body…and my heart too. Yes, my heart had gotten wrapped up in it too. I knew this now, the pain of his deception cutting to the quick. I'd been a fool thinking I'd be able to keep things neat and tidy with him.

Somehow Tara seemed to know what was running through my head. "Don't beat yourself up, Sookie."

There is almost nothing more lovely than having the support of someone who knows you to the core. With Tara in the room there with me, I cried some more.

That just about wiped me out for the day, and when the nurse at the front desk called to say, "There is a man here who says he's…" I cut her off, without a second thought. "No more visitors, please." Jason had exhausted me. I spent the rest of the afternoon dozing on and off in a welcome fog. Tara left at some point, leaving me a little note with her stack of magazines. When I woke up for dinner, I noticed that some flowers had been delivered—a bouquet of pink carnations from Sam, a planter from Amelia, and another bouquet of pink carnations from Alcide. I was in the process of reading the cards when the phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Sookie, it's Jay. We have a little problem here."

"What?"

"You have a burst pipe in the upstairs bathroom. Water gushed everywhere. Luckily, Amelia was here and shut the water off. She called her dad, who sent a plumber over who said he can fix it, but…"

It'll be expensive. .

"It has to be done, right?"

"Yeah. You don't have any water."

"All right, then. What about Amelia?"

"She's going to stay with Holly for a few days. Oh, and the craziest thing happened."

"Besides the burst pipe?"

"When the plumber was ripping apart the walls…"

I winced. Did he have to describe it in those gory details?

"…he found a big bundle of old letters. Looks like they're letters written by Gran to Fintan."

A/N: When I think about Sookie & Gran in this story, I think of this poem, "First Lesson," by Philip Booth, who was a New England author. Oh, it's sentimental and accessible (free of puzzle talking) which is sometimes just what a gal needs. ;)

www(dot)poemhunter(dot)com/poem/first-lesson/

~As always, thanks for reading!~

And thanks, makesmyheadspin & peppermintyrose ;)