Chapter 12: You Shouldn't Be Alone
Disclaimer: The characters of Castle belong to Mr. Marlowe and ABC Studios. I'm merely borrowing them.
"What, Sorenson?" Kate snapped testily, a prickling bundle of damp curls trapped between her cheek and the mobile's earpiece, failing miserably to temper her annoyance at his untimely interruption. She'd braved the elements, foregone sleep in favor of standing behind a line of immaculately coiffed bimbos, and was freezing her ass off in the frigid interior of the store—all dripping coat and limp clothing and icy, clammy skin—for the promise of a perfunctory, impersonal meeting. Was she really that pathetic, that besotted, that addlepated by the way his hair fell so raffishly over his forehead and his eyes reflected the most compelling dichotomy of youthful charm and world weariness? Resoundingly, humiliatingly yes. All she wanted was the opportunity to talk to him, to request a personalized inscription and relish a few well-earned minutes of normalcy before burying herself in the scanty details of their case. And the gathering silence on the other line told her the chances of that reprieve transpiring were slim to none. "What is it?" She repeated, voice wary now, gut reflexively tightening at his pause.
"They—they found another body," he ground out, his response heavy with defeat, regret, self-reproach, and she stiffened as a wave of nausea rolled through her. Goddamnit.
"Are you sure? But his cooling off period, it's—it hasn't been long enough. And where? Not the—not the mass gravesite again, it couldn't be. We had a patrol detail assigned to drive by periodically, he would've seen it. Would've thought it was too risky." She questioned after a beat, prattling voice just this side of unsteady—hating herself for the tremor she couldn't entirely ascribe to the vigorous industrial AC—and turned to face the bordering windows. The rain-lashed panes distorted passing cars, humanity, and flickering traffic lights, and she squinted at the waning cherry glow of a cab's tail lights as it careened onto 46th, dazed and restive by dizzying turns. The need to act, to do, swamping her, causing her fingers to quiver with latent energy. What the hell happened? Her scalp felt too tight from her pinched topknot, her waterlogged clothes abrasive, her mouth desiccated. Things had gone seemingly sideways in the space of a breath—it was too soon, too close to the last murder, his whole timeline moved forward by several months, and the implications of this sudden shift were sickeningly inscrutable. Was he hunting for a replacement even now? And how in god's name had they both, both, overlooked the disappearance of the latest victim? Not picked it up via local news or word of mouth? Provided the body was, in fact, one of his.
"No doubt it's him. Same place, same MO, same COD. Has his mark all over it."
"But how—"
"Well, how do you think?" he snapped, voice crackling with tempered rage, "Maybe he was watching us, Beckett. Maybe he found a window in the detail's route, timed it out for the body drop. Or the son-of-a-bitch had no knowledge of the drive-by, and he really is just that lucky. But either way, it's him. It's him, and I know it's him, and I—"
Sorenson stopped abruptly, overwrought or infuriated or both, and the line went flat, the hum of the room, her intrusive thoughts rushing to fill the vacuum his pause created. She was grateful for the sharp edges of her mother's book, the way they scored the flesh of her palms, dug unforgivingly into the skin of her stomach even through the damp cotton trench—it anchored her to the moment despite the distant, multitudinous constellation of thoughts she couldn't quite collect and the self-possession she couldn't quite muster.
Willing her voice to steady, she turned back to the conversation, to reality, to the remote safety of facts. For now, for this moment and for the sake of that small, cold body lying prone in a field, she could hold herself together. Even if she was all but unraveling at the seams. "So, we're operating on the assumption it's him and not a copycat? Even with the details—minimal though they were—revealed by the press?"
"Right."
"Okay, right" her features hardened reflexively as she braced herself, a grimace puckering her mouth, narrowing her eyes, and she embraced it, needed it—her war mask. "And we know this because of—"
"The bruising on the victim's neck, the age, gender, and general profile, not to mention the location. Who else would It's him, it's gotta be. I just—I feel it."
"And if—if patrol—did you talk to them? I mean, did someone tell them not to handle the remains—"
"They're not that stupid, Beckett, they followed protocol."
"Right," she blinked, swallowed the questions, concerns crawling their way up her throat. This case was enough of a clusterfuck, and the last thing they needed was some over-zealous, idiotically intrepid rookie further muddying the waters. Yet another motivating factor—she needed to go, needed to be at the scene, needed to scrutinize every move, every action for legality and precision. Because situational clusterfuck or no—scanty information, even less physical evidence, and the antagonizing absence of a motive—it was her clusterfuck, and this case would not fall about their ears in court. The stakes were too high for a slip-up, lives riding on every decision made.
"Okay. So—"
"So, I'll—I'll meet you there."
"Yeah, I'm on my way now." God. His voice was so rough she wanted to reach out and soothe it, blunt its ragged edges. Because Sorenson wasn't the only one with an infallible intuition, wasn't the only one who felt it. Her free hand clutched A Rose for Everafter, fingers curled so tight the knuckles creaked in protest, fighting to contain the aggressive swell of emotion in her chest, the muted echoes of Lanie's warm contralto—"kids are the worst"—and the bright, pervasive anger that threatened to shred what remained of her tissue-thin composure.
"See you in forty," Kate murmured flatly, somehow betraying nothing of her latent emotion, and snapped the phone closed. You need to move, need to go, to do your job, she acknowledged, and instead surveyed the utilitarian Frieze carpet tiles, the contrast of her inky boots against the worn camel pile a better, safer vista than what awaited her in Vinegar Hill—small, prone body swelling with heat and decay, delicate limbs lying at odd angles, skin velvety as peach flesh marred by bruises and livor mortis. Dozens of stills to add to her bank of nightmarish kindling; images she could never completely scrub from her memory, never mind the passage of time or happier recollections. Kids are the worst. Regardless of the outcome of this case, each boy was destined to live on in her mind—adjacent to her mother, her thoughts a sentient graveyard—and she considered it a brutal honor. Grisly, and painful, and right that they never be forgotten. And if that was masochistic or morbid or wrong, she embraced it—they deserved to live on in whatever way they could, their truncated existences dignified by the ache forever carried by innumerable officers, detectives, first responders, parents, siblings, friends, and empathic strangers. And she'd never wanted more to talk to Alex, their work injunction—Montgomery's actual injunction—be damned. To relax her throat, let the cramping words tumble free, lay it all at his feet—the sleepless nights, the haunting dreams, the case's insuperable barricades, the broken bodies, Sorenson's prickly superiority, the weight of it all bowing, trammeling her.
Instead, she pocketed the phone, willing thoughts of Alex, of broken bodies, of her mother, of self away, and shrugged into an arrantly professional mindset, as comfortingly familiar as her oldest cashmere sweater. Face severe, war mask back in place, she turned to face the folding table for a final, rueful glance of her favorite author before reentrance to reality and felt something sing, slip, steal through her, breath snagging in her chest. At seven-years-old, she'd taken the cosmetic initiative to plug in her mother's Revlon curling iron, incentivized by a rerun of The Little Princess and Shirley's enviable sausage curls, and in her glamour-induced rush, had failed to distance her fingers from the hot blade. She'd come to on the tiled floor of her parents' master suite, technicolor posphenes still dancing in her vision, and quietly, stumblingly stowed the offending object in the cabinet beneath her mother's sink.
Meeting his eyes was reminiscent of that afternoon—for hours, everything blurred and muffled, pins and needles in her hands and feet, a bewildering experience that rendered the world a nebulous watercolor smear. She'd been afraid and mystified and not a little awed then, at the power, the might, the raw energy such a seemingly innocuous object could channel, and those sensations—remotely encountered, but with all the knockdown wherewithal of sixteen years ago—coursed, current-like, through her now. With a glance. You're an idiot, she chided herself, scorning her overblown romanticism and paradoxically bemoaning a soon-to-be foregone opportunity, because his eyes were so goddamn direct, so much more than she'd expected. The superficiality had drained from them, and something suspiciously like authenticity had inhabited his gaze. Something like reciprocity, too—oh, god, enough with the egotism, Kate. And if she'd regretted leaving before, the sensation of loss was manifold now, locking her knees for the space of a breath, hampering her shallow breaths, thawing her scowl into an aspect she didn't put a name to, refused to label. It was three seconds, maybe four, and then reality barreled into her—Sorenson, the case, a small body—uncoupling her joints, and wincing once, wistfully, she spun on one sodden heel and bobbed, wove, danced between bodies until she pushed through the fire-rated double doors and into the ashy, fading light.
A wall of choking humidity and pinprick precipitation assaulted her as she withdrew from the bookstore, senses humming, breaths levelling out, a deluge of thoughts advancing. He'd looked at her so intently, eyes a fathomless indigo and remarkably artless—far more so than his publicity shoots or glossy book jackets revealed—and held her gaze as his broad frame tensed, preparing to stand she surmised, made to move toward her before checking himself. Rick Castle, master of the macabre, recipient of the Tom Straw award, and self-proclaimed womanizer had—for the space of a wildly gratifying moment—regarded her with something very like wonder and desire. And she didn't quite know what to do about that. Sucking in a shuddering breath, blinking the glaze of rain from her lashes, she curved a chilled palm around the mottled column of her neck and fought to recollect herself. Idiot, she huffed, awash in the oddest intermingling of self-deprecation and excitement, because yeah, she'd caught Rick Castle's attention, but a child was dead.
Just like that, the atmosphere shifted, and her face shuttered, brows knitting together as she strode toward her Crown Vic and a desecrated grave, leaving her discomposure, her rising cheer, and a rabble of butterflies on the rain-slicked curb.
The gravel peppered over sparse grass crepitated beneath her Vic's tires as she came to a rolling stop in a vacant lot spangled at intervals with red and blue. In the distance, a negligible barrier of police tape fluttered in a wet gust of wind, the misshapen parallelogram surrounded by feebs in trenches and officers in blues rendered black from the steady rain. Roughly, she threw the car into park, deconstructed her bun—fingers snagging painfully in the snarled mass of damp hair—and quickly restored it to a minimally tamed topknot. She took a deep breath, chest expanding, ribs straining against the inflexible band of her trench's sash, and opened the door, exited the car, and slammed it to in one fluid motion. Grimly, she made her way down a steep decline, centering her weight on her heels to keep from slipping on the slick grass, dodging the bottles, wrappers, trash bags, and other unidentifiable, discolored dreck that littered her path. Sorenson stood to far right, his stern profile visible over the upturned collar of his coat, watching the harried proceedings dispassionately, and she slowly padded over, coming abreast of him wordlessly.
Without even a glance in her direction, he extended a cup of coffee—a peace offering, perhaps—and she murmured unintelligible thanks, wrapping her hands around the wet cardboard and taking a draw on the now-lukewarm Americano. Will raised his own cup, and when he lowered it, his gaze flickered to her, eyes rivaling her own for fatigue and solemnity. Honestly, he wasn't a total jackass—they knocked heads frequently enough, but only because he was so accustomed to being right. Something she could relate to, if she was honest. So she bent her mouth in the faintest of smiles, and he returned it hesitantly. "Helluva day," he commented, and tipped his head back to survey the low-lying cloud cover, sky the color of a dingy wife-beater.
"The techs find anything in the rain?" Doubtful, she mused dully, and saw from the way Sorenson's jaw tautened that they hadn't. "Maybe Lanie'll find something useable," she continued with optimism she didn't feel and he bobbed his head once.
"If there's anything recoverable, she'll find it. She's good." He appended, the compliment surprising and gratifying her.
"She's the best," Kate corrected, but without any bite, careful not to dismiss his tentative steps toward a state of mutual peace. Everything about this thing between them was tentative, delicate—an expansive floor of eggshells.
He squinted against the rain, blinked irritably—a dusting of rain limned his lashes, she realized—and took another swallow of coffee. "We'll head over in a minute. They're securing the scene, but shouldn't be too much longer now."
"Lanie called me, said she'll be along any minute," she informed him, and took another hit of the full-bodied brew, "and thanks for this. Coffee's good."
"Day like this, anything over 98.6 is miraculous," Will murmured, and she pressed her lips together, lifted her disintegrating cup to hide a smile.
"Miraculous. Didn't think you used words like that, Sorenson."
"What, hopeful? Happy?"
"More than three syllables," she quipped, and he huffed appreciatively, swiveled his head to survey her with narrowed eyes. Water was beaded on the hooked tip of his nose, swaying pendulously, and she fought the urge to collect it with a finger.
"You're testy today," he observed wryly, "in the best way."
In the best way? "Well, it's amazing what five solid hours of sleep can do for a girl."
"Five hours? What do you think this is, Beckett? Holiday? With you AWOL, snuggled in your bed while the rest of us hoof it at the precinct, it's hardly a wonder this case is such a debacle. Makes Lindberg look like child's play." Oh, banter. Or rather, knife-edged humor interspersed with a modicum of truth. This was good, she decided. Albeit, unexpected—humor was neutral ground, a modality most cops defaulted to, and a bang-up distractor, besides. Honestly, she wasn't sure what to make of his waffling temperament, but there was that maxim about gifts and horses and mouths, and who was she to question an objectively good development?
"Wonder," she regarded him, head tip-tilted, "a disappointing number of syllables, but you've got a surprisingly optimistic vocabulary, there."
"Yet another impressive addition to my resume."
"Well, you need all the help you can get—"
"Katherine Beckett—" she jerked in dismay at the sound of her full name—feeling sixteen and truant and ripe for a heated lecture—pirouetted neatly, then bit back the smile that curled at the edges of her mouth. "Get your skinny ass over here and help me with my goddamn collection kits, would you?"
The woman was a goddess, Kate decided—hair immaculate even in the rain, flawless makeup, curves apparent even in her unflattering jumpsuit. "You need to pare down, Lane," she chided, but started up the hill regardless, "maybe leave the chem set and compound microscope at the lab next time."
"How does it feel to aim for humor but always miss so completely?" She snipped, flashed a pert grin, raked an assessing gaze over Kate's disheveled appearance. "Were you rolling in the grass? What happened to your hair?"
"Nice to know I can always count on you for an ego boost."
"Yeah, yeah, if you wanna feel good about yourself, I have a feeling asshat agent over there would be happy to supply some choice remarks on some of the finer points of your person," the ME quipped, and handed Kate a camera bag and half-eaten bagel.
"You mind keeping it down? He may be an asshat, but he's also an agent, and there are these requirements the FBI has—"
"Probably because deaf agents are a real downer—"
"Sensitive of you. But yeah, I'm guessing he topped ANSI's standards by more than a few hertz," she groused, pinning Lanie with a pointed look, and the other woman rolled her eyes in response. "How're you doing?" She continued, and with that vague allusion to the scene beyond the yellow tape, all levity dissolved like sugar in piping tea. Lanie turned to her, all fathomless eyes and hard-set features, and Kate blinked once in understanding before dropping her gaze. No need to elaborate. Some moments, words didn't reach—"Sorry is shallow and empty. I hate sorry"—and she, more than anyone, grasped that, appreciated, deeply valued Lanie's solemn reserve. At times, silence was the greatest homage, the most profound tribute.
Both women came to stand at Sorenson's elbow, and Kate took a generous bite of Lanie's seed studded bagel before nonchalantly proffering what remained to the ME. "'S good," she managed around the mouthful, "Kossar's?"
"Brooklyn B&C, you glutton," Lanie quipped through a simpering smile, and started back in on her misappropriated breakfast, "and it's nice to see you, too, SA Sorenson."
God, he smiled at her, she observed bemusedly. Why was it that she continually dipped below his appallingly stunted threshold for tolerance while everyone else got a free pass? Lanie would say it had something to do with sublimated attraction, but that only meant this was the adult equivalent of a schoolyard situation—pulling her proverbial pigtails to express affection—and as a kid, she'd unhesitatingly socked those handsy little mealworms in the nose. Which seemed a rather unadvisable resolution to her current dilemma. So that left her…where? Oh, yeah—exchanging verbal barbs and engaging in constant one-upmanship. Excellent.
"Dr. Parish," he nodded, all polish and politesse, "you ready for this?"
"Can't say that I am," she remarked coolly, readjusting her grip on the collection kit, peering detachedly at the scene unfolding before them. "But situations like this call for a Geronimo attitude. You don't dare dip your toes in the water or you'll never have the nerve to take the plunge."
A tech, featureless and Lilliputian from this distance, looked their way and waved a beckoning hand. And Lanie huffed a sigh, squared her shoulders, and regarded them both resignedly. "So I guess I'll see you on the way down."
She'd left any preconceived expectations behind the tape, but even after poring over the crime scene photos, even after steeling herself, after stowing any and all emotion—so she'd naively assumed—in some dark, inaccessible corner of her mind, actually seeing him siphoned the air from her chest. Sat curdled and sour in her stomach, flooded her mouth with bitterness. The 16th—the special victim's unit they often partnered with—had been the responding team for Deacon's case, had been the hands that gently disinterred him from a shallow grave loamy soil, foil wrappers, and hypodermics. A couple of Lil Jon impersonators used this particular grove of trees as their own arboreal hangout, the ideal place to relax, smoke a joint, shoot up, and keep the company of—unbeknownst to them—five silenced companions. The night before one of their drug-centric capers, a fierce storm had blown through, the deluge floating off the dirt sparsely blanketing Deacon, and a nameless 911 operator had listened as some jumped in, strung out, puffed up, Glock-wielding kid had bawled unintelligibly over the line about a "hand in the fucking ground".
So she hadn't actually been there for the preliminaries. She'd been myopically fixated on her mother's case, bribing city officials, and scooping her father off of vomit-slicked floors. And while she'd read the reports—knew the details backwards and forwards, knew the syntax and punctuation and sentence structure, knew them the way Czerny knew Beethoven or Hawking knew cosmology—rote memorization of all those details was no preparation whatsoever for this moment, for the weight of reality.
He looked very small, she contemplated, suddenly regretting that impetuous bite of Lanie's bagel. Waxy and chimerical and devastating. Nothing like the removed quality of the photos. Americano sloshing in her stomach, she followed behind Lanie, treading only where the other woman had placed her feet, and watched as the ME pulled a pair of exam gloves from her jumpsuit pocket, donned them, knelt beside the body. Lanie's movements were slow, gentle, reverent as she lifted a rigid arm, brushed leaves from his mottled chest, examined bruises and lacerations.
"He didn't even bother to bury this one," Will's voice pulled her focus, lifted her gaze, and she shifted uneasily at the intensity with which he regarded her. Don't try to read me, jackass.
"I noticed the same thing." Goddamn, her voice sounded thready, a little tremulous. Not at all in line with the image she wanted to project. Clearing her throat, pulling herself straighter, she forced herself to meet his eyes steadily, to ignore the churning in her gut. "Any thoughts as to why?"
"We'll add it to the profile," he equivocated, and let his eyes drift back to the grim tableau.
"Who called it in?" She asked, gratified that her voice reflected a strength she didn't feel.
"Don't know. It was anonymous, from a payphone on Hudson." He didn't elaborate, but she knew they were both harboring the same insidious thought, both questioning the source—good Samaritan or vaunting perp.
So goddamn small.
It was hours later—when the dove gray sky had shifted to charcoal and then again to a blunted onyx—sitting in the cracked leather of her Vic's driver's seat, taking slow sips of the stale, sultry air that she felt the first traces of the onslaught to come, the first hint of the grief that would ride raw and roughshod over her in the early morning hours. This was a different upending, a quieter anguish than when she'd observed her first autopsy. It was regret and fury and perplexity and abject horror with no proper outlet. It was guilt—she was a sentinel, and this had happened on her watch, negating all of their grueling efforts and sleepless nights and hopeless days. It was fear—that even with all of her training, her intellect, her passion and drive, another life would end prematurely, another boy begging for life and oxygen in his final moments. And it was shame—because somewhere in rural upstate New York, or coastal New Jersey, or in Pennsylvania off the Susquehanna was a kind family with an indomitable mother at the helm, a woman who had hoped against all hope, had hung fliers and organized search parties and tearfully implored her son's captor on some hokey local news syndicate—I'll do anything, pay you whatever you want, just don't hurt him—and Kate would have to take all of that hope away and give her nothing but a corpse in return.
She didn't remember the drive over, or even exiting the vehicle, but she found herself on the steps to the 12th and took it as some cosmic sign. A proper outlet. So she put in the work—started on the paperwork, composed an exhaustive briefing she'd deliver to Montgomery in the morning, and an exigent statement in the event the press got wind of this. And when she finally looked up again, scrutinizing the clock with gritty eyes, it was 10:26 and she had nothing left to distract her. It's time to go home. To face the reckoning.
To confront herself.
Unlike her fugue-like return to the precinct, she did remember the drive home. The neon glow of some crumbling liquor store beckoned, and she considered stopping to pick up a bottle of cheap tequila, but an article she'd read last week on alcoholism and heredity—the sins of the father—was a surefire interdiction. And on she drove. And then she parked. Rode the lift in silence. Unlocked her door with preternatural calm. Pushed it to behind her. Deposited her keys on an impractically small table. Drifted to her couch. And sat.
It was an odd sensation. Unspooling like this. Coming apart so neatly and completely and apathetically, hands shaking, breaths coming hot and far too close together, intrusive thoughts tumbling one over the other over the other until her head was aching, swimming with remembrances of dead children and evocations of weeping parents. No tears on her part, though, and it was something of a disappointment—much like an exhaustive bout of vomiting quelled nausea, she theorized that a crying jag would salve her wounds, ease her distress. But her eyes remained gritty, and the knot in her stomach screwed tighter, and she simply sat with her hands on her knees, palms facing skyward in wordless supplication for a reprieve. For the stress to abate.
And she thought of Alex, sitting there, quivering like a leaf in a brisk wind, and considered him, his words, the way his voice rinsed viscously over her. Tell me something real, he'd implored. Fine is meaningless. Really, how are you? And if ever there was a moment she was most herself—brokenness coalesced, no energy in reserve for witticisms or flirtation, minimal coping skills drained, wrung dry, and benched—it was here and now. Maybe she was giving him what he'd petitioned. Maybe she was seeing how far she could push this, seeing if this conversation—bloody and real and not at all fine—would signal his retreat. Because if he was going to leave when things got gritty, if desertion was imminent at some point, then at least it was on her terms, her timeline.
"Kate," his greeting coursed through her, more warm and ardent, more grateful than something as arbitrary as a simple phone call justified. "I was thinking about you this afternoon. Wrapped up this inane, tedious work thing, and I passed by Ralph's on my way home and wondered if you've ever had the exquisite pleasure of one of their lattes. Let me tell you, my friend, they are life changing—simultaneously frothy and substantial, which is a contradiction in terms, I know, but…" he trailed off, abandoning his soliloquy when nothing issued from her end. "Kate?" He intoned after a beat. The magnitude of concern he'd injected into one paltry syllable was simply remarkable, and she released a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.
"Yeah," she countered, and—oh, the tremor was back, as was that infuriatingly pinched quality. She swallowed convulsively, willed it away, tried again. "Yeah, I'm—I'm here."
"Are you okay?" Of course that would be his primary consideration—he wanted to take care of everyone, from his mom, to his kid, to her. He wouldn't be Alex if he didn't have a deep seated, misguided messiah complex.
"No," she conceded, and it was easier than she'd expected, the admission rolling off of her tongue as easily as her name off of his. "There are some things you can't unsee, can't unknow. You understand? It's—some things are so heavy you can never shake them off—" her mother's case files, her father buried alive in a bottle, children brutally snuffed out and callously discarded, "—and I know this is part and parcel of the job. I mean, I literally signed up for this. Scrawled my name on the dotted line, devoted my life to service, and I don't regret it, really. But sometimes—" she broke off, her meandering discourse hitting a wall.
"Sometimes what?" He prompted, coaxed, his voice so soft, so tempered—as though she were blown glass or spun sugar. You can't break something broken, Alex.
"I don't know. Sometimes…it aches. Compartmentalizing is a learned skill, and I'm good at it. Excellent, really. A fucking pro. But—but this—this case," she stammered, struggling to explain without revealing any salient details, without discussing evidence to which civilians could never be privy, "it's like—it's curled up in my mind. It's made a home there. It's what I eat and sleep and breathe right now, and if you knew what was going on, if you knew who we're hunting, you would know why that was right. Why anything less than obsession on my part would be—would be wrong. Miles, leagues from simply wrong, actually. And maybe, when we've put this thing to bed, and the files and photos are in banker boxes, collecting dust in some storage room, and when the perp has a needle in his arm and is forced to confront the friends, the family whose lives and hope he razed, when he sees them through a single pane of glass, judging him as he lies helpless, strapped to a table, maybe then, just maybe, I'll breathe a little easier. And maybe the things I've seen, the things I know will fade to specters. Maybe they won't weigh me down quite so—quite so—"
There. Your true colors revealed. The whole monochromatic spectrum. Every bleached and careworn shade. She waited on a knife's edge—for the tell-tale snick of disconnection or the comforting growl of his voice, she couldn't quite say.
"You shouldn't be alone." And that's when the tears finally came. The asymptomatic kind, sans hitched breathing or jerking shoulders or tremulous words. Just a steady stream of grief, one she couldn't stem even if she'd wanted.
"I'm—"
"Don't tell me you're fine, I swear to god, Kate. I—I can't fix it, as much as I'd like to. I mean, I really wish I could. But just do this for me—don't try to deny or invalidate your suffering. I don't—I don't want you to be alone in it." He was such a good man, she mused, and brushed at her eyes, smudged the mascara on her water-spiked lashes.
"I was going to say that's why I called you."
"What?" She'd lost him, or rather, he'd dropped the thread of his original comment.
"You said I shouldn't be alone, and I was going to tell you 'that's why I called you'," she intimated, curling in on herself like a touch-me-not, cradling the phone against her shoulder. Shocking the hell out of him was supremely gratifying, she decided.
"Oh," he murmured, sounding duly contrite.
"Yeah, oh. You kinda flew off the handle there, Rorschach."
"Weird, I know," he huffed sheepishly, and she could almost envision him pressing a soothing palm against the nape of his neck, wished not for the first time she knew what he looked like. "Especially considering how open and refreshingly transparent you are as a rule. Crazy how I might expect a different type of sentence. Something resembling an evasion as opposed to—"
"The direct and honest response I gave you just now?" She halted his—somewhat surprisingly—charming run on, disarming him with her candor. Again, supremely gratifying.
"Yes. That," he admitted, and there was a smile in his response. Not one with teeth, she knew, but the kind that curved the mouth, reached the eyes and rounded the cheeks—soft, gentle. "So you're not fine but you're not alone," he syllogized and she quirked a smile, irritably blotted at the wetness on her face.
"That's the long and short of it, yeah."
"You don't have to be bulletproof with me, Kate. I know out there, with your job, even with your family, you do. But not here." Bulletproof, no. She didn't think she needed any armor with him, and there was a thrill in inching her guard downwards, dismantling her walls with each conversation. But complete transparency? Baring it all? That was a pipe dream, that was folly. Not with this case, at any rate. And not yet, not while this thing between them still had the sheen of something new, still inspired impulsive calls and irrepressible smiles. She didn't trust herself in this companionate honeymoon period.
"I'm beginning to believe that," she allowed, voice soft. Dimly, she perceived a hollow pang in her stomach, realized the last—in point of fact, the only—thing she'd eaten today was a mouthful of bread and the coffee Sorenson had foisted on her at the scene. With a sigh, she unfurled, moved from the couch to her narrow galley kitchen. "And it helps, not having to slog through everything independently."
"You spend a lot of time voluntarily climbing inside the minds of uncommonly evil individuals, and those are some deep, dark holes to scale, to wend your way out of," he remarked, and she was struck afresh by how attuned he was to her own thoughts, his ability to pare away the outer, conventional layers of their conversations and find the meat of the matter.
"I do," she agreed, jerking open the freezer door, indifferently surveying its ice burned contents before shoving it to. "And while at times I'd like to unburden myself, you have to realize that there's protocol in place that prohibits me from disclosing information pertinent to current cases, and furthermore, there's—there's the ethical side of things, too. There are some things I would never discuss because I feel—I guess I feel like it would be a sort of…betrayal. In regards to the victims, I mean."
"Like you're treading on their graves?" He posited and she paused in her foraging, realized tears were still leaking from the corners of her eyes, swept the side of a hand beneath her lower lashes.
"Um, yeah. That's a close comparison."
"I can understand that. And I respect it—your efforts to always remain above reproach. Whenever you do want to share, however, and whatever you're able, I hope you consider me a safe and discreet sounding board."
"Do you really think I'm still straddling that borderline?" She was too honest tonight, grief making her bold.
"Oh," he sounded thrown by the rhetorical question, "I—well, I'd like to think we've moved past that figurative line in the sand, yeah." The words were spoken warily, too hesitantly for comfort.
"I for one feel like it's behind us, lying somewhere between absentee exes and the monologue I just rattled off, and if you felt that way, too—like you claim you do—then what are you really asking, Alex?" Interest piqued, she shuffled to prop herself against the cheap Formica countertop, felt her brow cinch together in perplexity. Obviously something was gnawing at him, and she felt those same teeth worrying at her gut, kicking up a flurry of apprehension. Is this where you back off, walk away, let me down easy, Alex? Tell me we should retreat behind the line again, that it's just too much?
That she was too much.
She could hear him shifting the receiver as he considered, the creaking protests of the plastic as he banded his hand around it, pressed the mouthpiece against his jaw. These audible moments—the clatter of a spoon in his sink, the knock of a door he pushed to, the way his breath roared in her ear in the moments before his laugh broke through—they made their conversations singularly intimate, reminded her that the disembodied voice she'd come to trust belonged to a flesh-and-blood man with a little girl and a batty ex and a harebrained mother and an auspicious career. That in the broader scope of his existence, to date, she had played a relatively minor supporting role—providing fleeting conversations and a handful of letters and more baggage than the underside of a Greyhound bus. But despite her rather dampening personal contributions, despite the foreboding that he'd open his eyes a little too wide one day and see her scars in a glaringly new and more merciless light, this was Alex. Who had restored a long lost book to her; who attended to her words and struggles with the gentlest of patience; who spoke with the silver-tongued ease of a poet; who voiced her inmost thoughts with clairvoyant aplomb; who sent her letters replete with secrets and hope and heart; who foreswore sorry but injected real empathy into every conversation;who didn't accept fine despite her insistences; who embodied wisdom and kindness and steadiness. Alex. Who promised, planned to overstay his welcome. And if she couldn't let him in, at least a little, then no one would ever make it over her walls. She would live and die a fortress.
"I guess…never mind, it's—it's—I don't know." He finally muttered, much to her consternation.
"As with fine, Alex, I don't know is a non-answer. What don't you know."
"This could get meta real quick, detective," he parried dryly, and she rolled her eyes at his abstract humor.
"You don't know what you don't know? Is that what you're saying?"
"I guess I'm—" he paused, the beat charged with latent energy, and she shifted uneasily, a pulse of anticipation coursing through her because something, something meaningful was lodged in his throat, and it was one cogent thought away from ripping free. "Okay, I guess I want to know if the line between my ex and your case is the only one we're gonna cross together. Because I think—I think I want more than this." Her body tautened at his declaration, heart kicking at her ribs—from dismay or satisfaction, she couldn't quite tell. More, Alex? "I think—no, I know—I want us to meet, Kate. And I'm sorry for the shitty timing, and sorry that this is such an as the spirit moves moment I'm springing on you, and if you don't think you might want that at some point, then please, please just disregard the last thirteen seconds of this call and let's consign this misbegotten conversation to a poorly lit corner of both of our memories, chalk it up to the late hour and stressors of a pretty terrible day. But if you do…" His voice softened, his sentence trailing smoke-like, unfinished and laden with meaning.
"I don't know," she heard herself say, intonation flat, nonplussed, inscrutable.
There was a beat before he replied, a collective moment in which her heart lurched. "That's fine, just—just forget I mentioned it." The words were so kind, so gentle, she knew there was pain beneath, and that knowledge galvanized her.
"It wasn't a no. Really. It was—just give me some time. To think about it," her correction tumbled out inelegantly, but they were loose and there and she hadn't said no, which was a miraculous personal triumph on par with the fishes and loaves phenomenon.
"We can work with that." The glow of contentment was back in his voice now, and it pulled a reciprocal smile from her. Yeah, it wasn't a no. It was a bid for time—to process, to prepare, to plan. It was an I can't bear any more personal disturbances today, Alex. But it was far from a no. Miles from it, in fact.
She shifted gears, dropping a non-sequitur to reign the talk in, redirect the trajectory to safer territory. "What about you? Are you okay? We only ever talked about me."
And bless him, he tacitly complied, transitioning with gracious ease. "Oh, I'm good. I had a work thing today—rubbed shoulders with some professional lightweights, smiled until my jaw felt arthritic, the same old same old, you know? After that I came home and made enchiladas with my kid, watched a movie, and then fielded a call from my Girl Friday."
"Your Girl Friday, huh?" She'd been called worse, she reflected wryly.
"We'll work on that, too," he allowed, and she laughed unsteadily—marginally amused, but more vastly relieved than anything. He was okay, and they were okay. She didn't know, and he accepted that. This thing—through some celestial benediction—was still in one semi-stable piece, and her hesitation, her walls hadn't killed it. And if that wasn't akin to magic or fate or some other higher power endorsed by Alex in all of his optimism, she didn't know what to call it.
Of course she wanted to cross another line.
Of course she wanted to meet.
They'd retreated, falling into more comfortable dialogue—discussing the intricate though admittedly boilerplate quality of Dan Brown's newest thriller and Alex's latest cooking fiasco, which involved a pressure cooker and an ill-fated bag of pintos—and by the time she terminated the call, the smile that had flickered throughout the evening was now permanently affixed, her tension abated if only for the moment. Their ability to transition so seamlessly from one diverse topic to the next—death and darkness, walls and hope, literature and elitism, cuisine and humiliation—was vitalizing, and left her radiant. A diaphanous reflection stared back at her from the dusty kitchen window, and her face, even mirrored dimly, was soft and bright from the afterglow of their repartee. And he wants to meet. Glancing quickly at her microwave's digital display, she grimaced—11:52—and resumed scrounging for a proper meal, finally settling on a can of Spaghettios. Doing away with the lid, she ate her meal cold, the tang of aluminum heavy in her mouth, and washed it all down with a glass of tepid water. Ah, the grand life of a single, working girl, she reflected dryly, and then busied herself with tidying the kitchen.
Despite her swollen eyes and midnight having come and gone, she'd braved the ramshackle lift to retrieve her mail, taking comfort in the tedium of her routine. Safely restored to her apartment, padlock and security chain engaged, she shuffled through bill statements and advertisements, political letters and credit card offers, and exhumed two letters—Alex and her father. She resisted the familiar swell of anger, stared at her name writ in her father's confident scrawl—the distinctive loop of the K, the bold linearity of his lettering. Growing up, notes and compositions—most in legalese, perfectly legible but entirely inscrutable—had littered her parents' home. Stacks of canary yellow paper and pale blue post-its, all a record of where he'd been, a testament to his dogged professionality—and his barely contained chaos, her mother would argue. She'd wanted that for herself when she was young, envisioned being so studious, so engrossed, so impassioned that she'd have to paper the world with her thoughts, would have no room for them in her head. How she'd be a revolutionary enacting change. Tonight, that starry-eyed girl was as dim and remote as her watery window-pane reflection.
Stiffly, she relegated her father's missive to her entryway console, resolving to read it when her emotions weren't quite so near the surface, and turned instead to Alex's words.
Kate,
Writing a letter mere hours after a lengthy phone conversation seems rather tautological—it's a distinctly bookish term, I admit, but as you're a fellow bibliophile, I'm predicting you'll know its definition if not its origin, Little Miss Gogol—but following our discussion, the afternoon swiftly derailed. Compliments of my daughter's flighty, egocentric mother. Yet again. I'm talking Quintinshill, here—messy, fast, brutal. Immediately following our talk, too. Where I upbraided her, told her she was damaging our kid. My kid. Told her to grow up, to be all in or all out. And she looked right at me, wide-eyed, seemingly repentant, and apologized. Which I—in all my idealistic naïveté—took to mean she comprehended on some minimal level the nature of her actions, that we were finally on the same goddamn chapter if not the same page. Really, though, it's not her fault. I know my ex, know her character. Her flaws and failings. And if I'm being honest, I should have seen it coming—that she would disappoint my daughter yet again. That there would be unshed tears and broken trust and a bruised heart and a protracted mending process. So yes, I blame her for the way this shitty afternoon turned out, but ultimately? Ultimately, I hold myself responsible.
There was a break in the page—unusual for him—a shift in focus and intensity, and she read on, interest piqued.
Okay. So you know how I used the Quintinshill rail disaster as an historical metaphor to cleverly describe the state of affairs that exists between myself and my ex while simultaneously wowing you with my outré indices of knowledge? I was wrong. Quintinshill wasn't yesterday morning, it was last night—yes, my friend, nearly 22 hours have passed since I last worked on this communiqué. Additionally, you should take note that I've availed myself of two French words in as many sentences, because the French are a people of heat and passion, and I'm navigating a narrow ledge in regards to my seething temper at the moment. A plight on which I will elaborate momentarily. But I digress—Quintinshill, last night, my ex still the singular cause of yesterday's flagrant, multiple, derailments. I won't bore you with the exhaustive details, but in the abridged edition, you'd find my ex barging in, thoroughly baked, and emptying her stomach on my favorite pair of sweats. Martinis don't look quite so sophisticated when they're making a return trip. Needless to say, she was bustled back to her glitterati-colonized hotel, while I spent another hour scrubbing olive juice and vodka from my hardwood floors. She left sometime this morning. No goodbyes, no apologies, no follow-up visit, she imparted nothing save a pithy text—"headed home"—and an implausible story. And I got to tell my kid that she'd taken off. Yet again.
She took it like a champ, all sage understanding and grim maturity, but I'm coping a little less robustly. I'm furious, yes, but even more than that, I feel alone. A parental island. How does one handle situations like this? How do I minimize the impact my ex's childish capers and selfish caprices have on my kid's mental health? How do I move forward? What sort of boundaries do I set? And legal boundaries—do I look to impose even more? Further restrict my ex's access to our child? It's as though I'm racing up the ascending side of a steep hill—no knowledge of what lies beyond the zenith, and only a brief margin of time in which to decide on a course of action. Do I stop or forge ahead? My attorney says one thing, my mother another, and my instincts contradict both pieces of wise and experienced counsel. Add to that my lamentable inability to discern what's right without first acting—post facto, the way is clear, the right choice evident, but decision comes first for me and perception only follows.
I'm sorry the case you're working has been such a source of anxiety, has weighed so heavily on you. You seem far more decisive than me, which I intend in the best way possible—you're bold and bright and brazen, relentlessly following your convictions, using them to carve out a career enacting justice and delivering hope. And if this case is wrought with indecision, if the pressure of it all seems overwhelming at times—and especially if it's unremitting—I hope you remember the clarity that has defined your life to date and the strength that's carried you this far. Most of all, I hope you get some much needed sleep because you sounded several shades past exhaustion, a little like a chain smoker at the tail end of a 12-hour factory shift. And I'm prone to worry. Take care of yourself, Katherine, and the rest will come in time.
Yours,
Alex
Take care of yourself, you shouldn't be alone.
It was an odd position in which to find herself, on the receiving end of such kind emotional ministrations. She couldn't recount the last time someone had fretted over her this way, reminded her to prioritize self-care—that had died along with her mother. And submitting to his well-meaning attentions was an awkward adjustment. Not unappreciated, just unfamiliar. But he was right that she shouldn't be alone, shouldn't slog through her thoughts in isolation.
Early one morning, swapping words over an autopsy table, Lanie had told Kate how any case involving kids kept her up at night, that the anticipatory dread of the postmortem she'd have to perform encouraged drinking, wrecked her sleep. And if she shouldn't be alone, then neither should Lanie. Kate retrieved her phone and dialed up the ME, the ringtone chirruping dissonantly once in her ear before the other woman picked up.
"Hey, girl, a body drop?" She asked, sounding drained though not groggy.
"No," Kate returned quietly, "I—were you sleeping just now?"
Lanie's surprise was evident in her delayed response, a little beat that passed before she spoke. "I wasn't. Sleeping just wasn't—no. No, I wasn't. Why'd you ask?"
"Do you wanna come over? Sleep isn't a likely prospect for me either, and I have a bottle of red in my fridge that I really don't want to take on solo. And—and I don't think either of us is in any condition to weather this evening without a partner." You shouldn't be alone.
Another pause, an inhalation. "Gimme ten minutes to pack a bag and I'll head your way."
"Wait, roll it back, he said he wanted to meet?" Lanie—hair wrapped, face bare, wearing a ratty Tulane tee—had wedged herself into the corner of the sofa, and was peering owlishly over the rim of her wineglass.
"Yeah, he said he didn't want personal discussions to be the only line we ever crossed. Said he wanted more," Kate divulged, and took a generous swallow of the merlot, which was uncommonly good. Chewy, full-bodied, a peppery finish. As the silence stretched, she glanced up, took in Lanie's look of stupefaction and snorted.
"Wow, okay. Should I be offended?"
"Honey, the Christians fared better with the lions than men fare with you. As a rule." The ME arched a sleek brow, regarded her complacently—you know I'm right.
"Well, you're not wrong," Kate groused, grimacing in consternation. "But if there's anyone who invalidates my rules and preconceptions, it's Alex."
"You found an exception," The ME remarked, treating her to a dazzling, suggestive grin that had Kate rushing to amend her statement.
"A platonic exception, Lane. The horses are here and the cart is all the way back at the precinct," she waved a hand behind her for emphasis, "and the very last thing I want to do is assign meaning where there is none, or anticipate an eventuality that's—you know, that's never gonna come to pass. And I don't know if that's even what I'd want. I mean, I've never met the guy—God knows what his legal name is—and he has a kid and I've got issues and—"
"And yet," Lanie interjected, voice calm and dark eyes a steady, grounding force, "not only are you entertaining the thought of meeting a complete stranger, I'd lay steep odds you've revealed more about yourself to him than nearly anyone else with a pulse."
Her chest tightened, the indirect reference to her mother's death a sharp reminder as to why she so fiercely she guarded herself. She sighed, wetted her lips, bobbed her head in the affirmative. "There's still a lot he doesn't know, but—but like we've covered, he knows me. Hasn't even met me and he knows me. And even with all of my sidestepping and the radio silence and really, terrifically cumbersome baggage, he still keeps writing, still keeps calling."
"You don't have to convince me. The boy's a class act—I've known it since you told me about him. And it's not anything he said or wrote or did either. It's the way your eyes warm and your cheeks flush when he's mentioned, the way your mouth tips up just a little. He makes you happy, and that's good enough for me."
Lanie smiled again, her full lips stained russet from the wine, and a wash of gratitude supplanted her wistful remembrances, her relational incertitude. God, she was a great friend—running over in the dead of night at what was quite literally a moment's notice to drink and chat and forget.
"He is a class act, huh?"
"He really is," Lanie affirmed, "and when you talk yourself outta meeting him, which is inevitable, I'll bully you right back in."
A laugh bubbled out of Kate and she sunk further into the sofa cushions, drawing a fraying quilt further up her chest. "And I know you're dreading that thought—bossing me around, proving your superiority. God, what a nightmare."
"Oh, please. If anyone's got the fuzzy end of the lollipop, it's me. You might have to put up with a little sass, but when all is said and done, not only do you have me—which is a pretty sweet reward in and of itself—but you also get the guy."
"Lanie," she warned, smile slipping, "cart. Horses. Knock on wood. Something."
"You're not gonna jinx this, Kate." Lanie's eyes were resolute, no trace of doubt as she polished off the dregs of her wine.
"You really wanna tempt the wrath of the whatever from atop the high thing?"
The other woman shook her head slowly. "Kate. You're not gonna jinx this."
"And you know this how?" Lanie's was a bold claim, especially given Kate's track record—scads of first dates, a handful of seconds, unreturned phone calls, and an assortment of irate voicemails. If there was any excuse to dip out, she took it. Any opportunity to assign fault, rest assured she found it. No backwards glances, no second thoughts.
"Because," she murmured gently, eyes understanding, tender, "he isn't gonna let you."
A/N:
I'm categorically the worst. And I wish I had a better explanation for my absence than "because life has been chaotic", but that's all I've got. Moreover, the few times I did have an hour or two to spare, my schedule and mind seemed at cross purposes (i.e., writer's block). Rest assured, however, I'm still here, I still value this story, and I have a definite plan for its timeline and conclusion—it's my baby and I'd never allow it to remain incomplete.
And if I'm the worst, you all are indisputably the best! Every uplifting message and word of encouragement was so appreciated, and I value your thoughts and opinions more than I can say. All that said, how are we feeling about the imminent and long-awaited face-to-face? It may be a few chapters off, but I for one can't to get there.
-Feministly