A/N: I truly haven't forgotten this story. A snow day is letting me get to it, so here's the next bit, if anyone's interested, and the rest (all the way to the end) should be up within the next 3 days. Truly ...
This is a necessary transition (well, I judged it so) chapter, the next one will be more active.
The drive up to Magritte's cabin was a few hours long, but pleasant, with little traffic on a late Friday morning. Once she got out of the city, Ellie found herself relaxing; the air was clearer, and her head seemed to be as well. The past few weeks she'd been working and thinking about the loss of her relationship with Devon, and about avoiding John Casey. She had been trying not to think about the future. It had been too much. She hadn't even mentioned to very many people yet that she and Devon had split. But the news had gotten out anyway, of course, and that had given her even more to face at the hospital; the half-sympathetic, half-curious overtures of her co-workers.
But right now she was driving. Just driving with the windows down, her hair moving at the whim of the near-autumn wind that reached playful fingers into the car. Maybe there was some validity to that whole life-on-the-road obsession that some people had, she mused. The highway was smooth beneath the whir of her tires. The trees were green, the sky was blue ... she breathed deep. It was good, after all, to be alive, after the pain of amputation followed by days of numbness. She'd seen Devon a few times around the hospital, unavoidably, but communication other than head bobs and polite smiles had been avoidable, and avoid was what they had done.
Magritte took her out a few times to get her good and drunk, but Ellie had been afraid to get too loose, for reasons that had nothing to do with Devon. She knew what little good her inhibitions did her around John Casey when they weren't diluted with alcohol. She didn't want to run the risk of doing something monumentally stupid.
She switched the radio on to a soothing jazz station, considering that. Her mind, her heart, and other parts of her still leapt at the thought of That Man. If she'd given it thought before now, she would have guessed that the misery of separating from Devon would have obscured her visceral reaction to John. But that wasn't what had happened. Yes, breaking with Devon hurt – but the pain felt old. Emotionally they'd been separated for a long time. When she probed around her heart, she found no fresh wounds. Rather, to her surprise, it seemed she'd worked through a lot of her issues during those months that they allowed the relationship to drag on much longer than they should have.
It might even be a good idea to have a meaningful conversation with Devon, one which would give her closure and then ... well. Maybe it was time to have some of the things that she'd been denying herself.
Once at the cabin, Ellie scoped the small, comfortable space out and then sat under the trees in the back with a mug of coffee in her hand, feet propped up. With the scent of pines all around her, she punched Devon's number up and left him a message.
She spent Friday in quiet relaxation with a book, pottering around to get lunch, then eating out on her own for supper at a tiny restaurant that specialized in lake trout. The next morning Devon returned her call, sounding surprised but also relieved to hear from her. Their conversation was brief, but Ellie felt much better for having it. Devon ascertained that she had no problem with him hanging with Chuck every now and then, and that she was fine with seeing him at the house when he did. Final arrangements were made about some of his things. Ellie hung up and stared at the dark cell screen with a twinge. She knew that was likely the last call they'd be sharing.
But she set the phone down on the arm of her wooden deck chair with a sense of release that was stronger than the hurt. Then she pulled on sturdy shoes and went for a walk in the woods.
Clarity. Peace, even. Freedom. She was feeling many good things that she'd gone a very long time not even knowing she was missing. She walked for a bit, just breathing. By the time she got back to the cabin, she was thinking about the house back in Burbank and some painting that might do to brighten it up here and there. She found herself looking forward to a project in a way she hadn't in a long time. She headed to bed feeling invigorated. She'd get up early tomorrow, she decided, and head home. She had a lot she wanted to do; including, if she got the nerve, paying a call on a certain tall, smoky-sexy neighbor.
She slept well, rose before the sun, threw her duffel into her car and headed back into town. She stopped for coffee just as the sun was rising, and was carrying the hot liquid and her bag as she approached her front door. She could hear something, voices or movement, inside. Huh, she mused, Chuck sure was up early.
But when she turned the key and opened the door, she walked into insanity.
Standing in the middle of the doorway, her coffee and bag both puddling disregarded at her feet, Ellie was unable to register much beyond an impression that she had stepped across a portal into an alternate universe, to a true Twilight Zone world. John Casey, next-door neighbor and Buy More salesman, stood menacingly in her living room with a gun – an actual gun, a gun, her mind stuttered on the word – out and pointed authoritatively at a man who lay in handcuffs on her floor. Chirpy, butter-wouldn't-melt Sarah Walker knelt with her knee digging harshly into the spine of another black-clad man while pulling tight a rope that was knotted around his wrists. Chuck, Ellie's own dear brother Chuck, was in the middle of saying something, gesturing over his shoulder and appearing completely in command of himself in the midst of a situation which should have made him appear just the opposite.
That wasn't her brother; she didn't know these people. This couldn't be her house. She almost backed out of her coffee puddle and the apartment, but she was stopped by a familiar voice.