"Follow me, reader! Who told you that there is no true, faithful, eternal love in this world! May the liar's vile tongue be cut out! Follow me, my reader, and me alone, and I will show you such a love!"

Mikhail Bulgakof

INTERLUDE

Two weeks.

Two weeks after his call, then silence.

Under the shower's jet, Daisy gently touched her belly, still flat: too early to see her new condition, but not too early to feel the new life inside her, Enos' and her baby.

Nobody except Doc Appleby knew 'bout it, and nobody would have known it before Enos: he had to know it before her family did, so she was trying to hide it behind the word "worrisome"; it could explain her lack of appetite and her daily drowsiness (easy to convince her uncle and cousins she couldn't sleep during the night so she was tired during the day).

But she couldn't hide it for months.

Besides, the real problem was: where was Enos?

Finally his left arm was free.

Enos looked at the doctor of the little town, "Thank you, Doc", grateful the doctor removed the cast: already a month since John Fitzroy broke his arm, and Hospital's doctors told him he had to stand that cast for one month, and he stood it, now managing to convince the doctor of the small Hospital of the town to remove it.

Doc Fay stared at the man in front of him: faint beard, tired eyes (as someone who couldn't sleep), ruffled hair and soft voice.

Enos noticed the inquiring eyes of the doctor.

"I'm not a fugitive, doctor, don't worry", he took his I.D. and his badge off his wallet, "I'm a deputy… in convalescence".

A brief look at that I.D. and at the badge: Enos Strate, Deputy, Hazzard County.

Doc Fay's mind started to analyze that name and that place: Hazzard County wasn't so far away, only two hours by car, and he knew Doc Appleby, there, an old friend; Strate, wasn't the name of the woman committing suicide at Ridge Institute, the Institute clearly visible from his little town?

"Thank you", the deputy in front of him stood up, and Doc Fay kept on looking at him. Probably he lived in one of the little cabins for rant scattered around the town, and, thinking about it, he remembered that man coming to town nearly every afternoon (early in the afternoon) in the last weeks. Why did he spend his convalescence so away from his town? Was he running away from something? Was he related to that woman, Rose Strate? He remembered someone telling the son of that woman was a cop, and her lover too was a cop: rumors of a quiet small town, where the echo of that rough news from the nearby Institute spread like fire on dry grass during summer.

"Are you… related to Rose Strate?", Doc Fay couldn't hide any more his curiosity.

Enos looked at him in shock, "How do you know…?", he stopped, stupid question; Ridge Institute was near the little town, and he knew pretty well how rumors worked in little towns. Besides, it was his choice to run away from Hazzard to hide himself in one of the town near Ridge Institute (and Miss Kate), his last shelter in case he couldn't stand his loneliness, so he couldn't be surprised if someone knew his mother and…

… Sudden awareness.

"Doc Fay, did you know my mother?", his heart started to race, waiting for the Doc's answer, not knowing what answer he feared the most.

Doc Fay had a deep sigh before to talk, "Yeah. I saw her several times along the years, before… her last staying at the Institute. Sometimes she came here, it's one of the towns nearest Ridge Institute, and patients there, patients who can spend some time away from the Institute, came here for a walk, for a coffee, and so on; a brief pause from their life inside the Institute. So, yeah, I saw her several times".

Enos swallowed against the lump in his throat, forcing himself to ask what he feared the most, "and… was she alone or…?"

Doc Fay understood what the pale man in front of him (paler and paler since they started talking about Rose Strate) was asking him: "I saw her several times with a man, a blonde man, blue eyes. They seemed a… happy couple".

Enos was shocked, a double shock: his mother and Andrew Salinger met each other "along the years" (using Doc's words), as a "happy couple". So, he had an answer to Erika Salinger's question, a bad answer for her.

"Erika, you can't stay any more in that town. Not in your condition. You knew what you wanted to know, or, at least, you tried to know what you wanted to know, and now it's time to come back home", Josh Baldini's imperative, but sweet, voice.

"My condition? Josh, being pregnant is not an illness", lying down on her bed, wrapped in her bathrobe, Erika sighed: overprotective man, but she loved her husband also because of it.

Being pregnant: she looked at her body, a body of a woman who seemed only a bit overweight, the signs of her pregnancy not totally manifest, yet.

"Besides, Enos is missing… I mean, he run away, and nobody knows where he is. And I feel a bit responsible of it. I've shocked him, even if I didn't want to. I can't go away, NOW. I'm… worried". She was worried: there was no other word to explain her feelings.

"WHAT?", she looked up at the ceiling, exasperated, "Ok, OK! If you want to…"

Josh was coming to Hazzard.

"Happy couple"…. "along the years"

He didn't want to believe in Doc Fay's words. He couldn't think of his mother and Andrew Salinger as a "happy couple", meeting "along the years", whereas he was living his hell with uncle Opie and aunt Minnie after his father's death (Thomas Strate was is father! Not Andrew Salinger! No matter what's the blood flowing into his veins).

In the middle of the night he came out the little cabin, only his underpants on, letting the rain lash his bare skin and hoping it could wash away his thoughts and his desperation.

In the morning, Bo and Luke entered the farm in a rush.

"We know where Enos is!"

Uncle Jesse and Daisy looked at them in shock.

"We met Doc Appleby, and he told us one of his friends, Doc Fay, called him to ask him 'bout Enos", Bo, excited, kept on talking 'bout what Doc Fay told Doc Appleby, about Enos' condition (not soothing), and, the most important thing, where he stayed.

That small town near Ridge Institute: why didn't they think he could stay near that Institute? It was so obvious, after all. Soon after he ran away, in effect, they called Miss Kate at the Institute, hoping he reached her, but unfortunately Miss Kate didn't see him, and they didn't think that, even if he didn't meet Miss Kate, he could be nearby: that place, that mountain and that wood, had been his shelter for so many years along his life, before his mother's death, it wasn't surprising he was driven to it.

"OK, I go", Daisy took her jacket and she walked to the door, turning to her uncle and her cousins before to go out, so preventing their questions and their protests, "and I'm going ALONE. I'll find a way to bring him back, trust me".

She knew what to tell him in order to bring him back home, and it was something that needed intimacy, a lot of intimacy.

"But… Daisy", Luke's vain attempt, stopped by Daisy's fierce eyes.

"Trust me, Luke, I'll bring him back"

A shorter chapter, I'm sorry, but this is a sort of bridge to the next one, for sure more interesting :-))

Stay tuned.