I want to take the chance again to thank everyone who's stayed with this story, even when it gets dark. There will be a light at the end of this long and twisting tunnel...eventually. For now, though, gotta let the story live up to its drama distinction.
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What am I going to do?
Staring at the flickering cursor that hovered over Adam Chandler's number, he knew one thing for certain…or two. Number one: he really needed a new pair of glasses.
Number two: he wasn't within close proximity of an answer to that question.
"Peter, hello."
The owner of that even voice was standing approximately three feet away, with precisely two files tucked neatly into the crook of her arm, and just the slightest hint of a smile on her face.
His own smile wasn't quite so subtle when he raised his head, confirming each assessment.
"Hi, Lily." Pete put the phone in his pocket and kept his hand there, trying his best to at least look the cool-casual part. For once today, he had absolutely no doubt what he was going to do. Something long overdue. "I was thinking that maybe…" The tiny frown between her eyebrows should've made his cotton mouth worse. Instead, it gave him the needed push. "Would you join me for dinner?"
The frown lightened just a fraction as her eyes widened, and before her steady gaze rested on the files in her arms. "We do have a lot of work to do for the project. Perhaps a work dinner could help stimulate our minds, but the probability for an accident is high, such as you spilling your drink on the documents." The fact that she attributed this theoretical disaster to him with such ease only made his smile grow wider. "Also, it would be rather late for a business engagement, so I am not certain of the feasibility -"
Quietly, he had taken the files away. Finally, she made eye contact with him….or at least looked somewhere in his general direction. Progress. "No business dinner," he said softly. Clearing his throat, he added with more conviction: "I would just greatly enjoy the pleasure of your company, Lily."
The frown in her brow had taken leave, replaced by the straightest of lines on her mouth. "Like a…date?" Perhaps for the first time in her life, Lily Montgomery had failed to utter a complete sentence.
Only that and a tiny twitch of the lips betrayed her calm demeanor.
Pete smiled again. It wasn't overly animated. It wasn't nervous.
It was genuine. "Yes," he said.
####
What am I supposed to do with this?
Given enough practice, even laying eyes on a reanimated corpse could lose the element of surprise.
The first thing Bianca felt upon seeing the newest Pine Valley zombie was not shock. No, anger was a better fit now.
When David pushed her from the doorway into an adjoining room, he should have counted himself lucky that she couldn't reach up and slap the hell out of him.
Twice, Erica-Kane style.
He did have the good sense to stand a few well-placed feet away. Unfortunately, that left his toes out of range as well.
"I won't even ask how you found me here, although I have a few ideas."
She didn't feel inclined to share the fact that she had tailed him following another little bombshell...one that somehow was not even top priority anymore.
"Before you say or do anything, please, just let me speak. Without interruption, although I know that'll be hard. And yes, you can trust what I will say. Believe it or not, you always could."
His hands were not held out in a defensive position. They were laced behind his back. He was leaving himself vulnerable. Exposed. She'd become a bit of an expert, or so she thought, at body language. David Hayward, however, had always defied any and all experts.
Something, though…something short-circuited all of the frenzied thoughts smashing their way through her brain. Even if she wanted to scream and rage right now, she couldn't.
She could only listen.
"I won't try to justify this, or the lying. I'll just give you the facts as they are, because that's what you deal in, right? After that, you can draw your own conclusions, like you ask your readers to do. You can understand, maybe a little. You can have me locked up. You can write the ultimate story. Or, if you need to, you can….you can hate me."
It wasn't fair of him. It wasn't fair of him to throw an impossible possibility out there. The opposite of love was always indifference, after all, and he knew…
He knew, even as he laid out every detail of Angie Hubbard's condition on that night and in the days after.
At some point, he had ceased talking to her. The words grew more contemplative. "They both have this thing I really don't get. Probably never will. She lies about being blind; he lies about their child's death. On the surface, pretty bad things. But somehow, somehow with them it's a noble sacrifice."
He stopped pacing and turned to her again.
"We never expected this, either of us. You know admitting failure has never been my strong suit, but we thought at the end of this journey that she'd end up like -" The cough and the sudden intake of breath could not be attributed to the dust floating around the room. "Grief, I think you and I both know a little about that….too much. There's a reason why the most prolific sociopaths like to inflict a thousand tiny cuts on their victims. When it's a sudden slash, at least you bleed out fast. It's…easier that way. She thought it would be easier for them to let her go."
"She…" Bianca had finally discovered her voice. Rusted. Unsure. Unacceptable. She bit the inside of her cheek until she felt…anything and tried again. "She seems okay now, so why can't she go home?"
Why can't someone in this town have their miracle?
David's next words were direct. "Because she won't remember seeing them again. She won't even remember seeing you in five minutes. In fact, she's probably already forgotten." He had easily slipped into doctor mode. "Some of my former patients have been experiencing adverse effects, and I'm hoping that Angie's condition is a part of those effects and not a product of her original injury. If the amnesia is a result of Orpheus, then thee may be something I can do."
An image of her sister immediately entered her mind. "Your former patients? What about Zach?"
"Have you noticed any abnormalities in his behavior?"
She looked away. At one time, she could have answered that question with ease. Not now. "I haven't talked with him, or Kendall, in a while." The memory of a breakfast date gone awry tugged. "There was some tension the last time I saw them."
"We'll get the answers."
She opted for biting her lip this time. "We?"
David chanced a few steps forward. "I told you this was your call. Whatever you decide, I will understand."
She thought he might actually mean it. Every word. "If I agree to keep this secret for now, and if we can still exist. I need to know two things first."
He didn't hesitate. "Okay."
And neither did she.
"Why did you lie to me – to all of us – about Babe?"
####
What is she gonna do?
"We can ask if they have one of those green bottles," he offered.
After an intense appraisal, Lily picked up the ketchup bottle and squeezed a gob of the concoction on her hamburger.
Her smile now rivaled someone who had conquered Everest. "My life skills classes have taught me the value of the color red. It is one of the colors representing our country. It teaches us to stop when we need to. It is symbolic of love…."
Pete studied his date even as she studied the dessert menu. And it wasn't the words of some great poet or the homespun, if-not conventional wisdom of his mother that fueled his next impulsive move.
It was the bemused voice of Adam Chandler still rattling in his head: What'll it be now, boy?
Pete's hand reached acros the table - quite against, and in conjunction with, his will.
####
Now what?
That one question embedded itself in every whir of green and every passing car.
She had convinced him.
'I'm not…I'm not as close as you are. She might feel more comfortable talking with someone who's a little more…'
Distanced.
No matter how many strides they had made in the past year, Dixie knew that it would take time before she and Kathy shared the kind of bond that Kathy and Tad had built. Now, she was actually hoping that lack of a strong bond would help her reach her daughter.
The only problem was that she had been white-knuckling the steering wheel since they left the school, and Kathy had never found the dull scenery outside the window more fascinating. It would be easy to turn on the radio and let that tickling at the back of her mind creep forward. Take over. She could stay on autopilot long enough to get Kathy home, then turn over the reins to Tad and say she tried.
God, she had to try.
"When I first came to Pine Valley…"
The unexpected words didn't startle her, even as they spilled from her mouth. Neither did their wistful, almost nostalgic tone. They just felt…right.
"I went to live in this big mansion. Every kid's dream, right? People milling around in tuxes and dresses, even on a Saturday. Crystal and china plates. They even had a cook!" A sideways glance confirmed that she now had at least one listener. "And everyday, I felt like a fish out of water."
From her maddeningly limited vision, the slightest shift. With every particle of willpower. Dixie kept her eyes focused forward. Not yet.
"I didn't dress the right way. I didn't talk the right away. And I surely didn't act the right way."
"What happened?"
The question was quiet, but the words clear.
Dixie smiled as she made an unexpected left turn.
No, a right turn.
"Someone…" The grin took on its own life at the image of a familiar face covered with a beak and feathers. That face may have been younger and more dashing. In one key area, however, the current incarnation had that charming rogue beat by a country mile. This key area was manifest in the eyes of one little girl. "Someone helped me see that I had known the right way all along. It was my way."
They pulled into the gravel patch: the sole parking lot for the small farm.
"My truth." Dixie swept a hand to the tiny collection of animals. "Sometimes, after work – after the kids have challenged me to their fullest – I'll stop by here. See that nice fellow over there?" She waved to a stout figure in overalls, who gave a hearty wave back. "That's Jimmy. He'll let me hang out with the roosters. I even got to name one of the little ones. I'd like you to meet him, all of them."
"Why?" Kathy twisted the pages of her school folder.
"Because whenever it's tempting to forget, this place reminds me of home...of who I am right here, where it has always mattered." She placed a hand over her chest. "And I want you to know me, Kathy. Just like I want to know you.'"
The hidden plea had driven all roadmaps away.
Just them, and she hoped it was enough.
Kathy's hands shook. Dixie resisted another, far more primal impulse to reach out and still them. Still shaking, those hands opened the folder and removed a folded piece of paper. Without looking, Kathy pushed the paper to her. Dixie unfolded the yellowed edges and smoothed out the well-worn wrinkles.
It was a sketch. Etched in simple pencil, but beautiful nonetheless. She knew at least one of her daughter's secrets: Kathy was an artist in the making. The figure's face was turned away, but something in its stance was equal parts bitter and sweet.
She traced the soft lines of the boy's profile and felt a stirring inside.
Maybe it was all just… "Kathy, is this about a boy? Did some of the girls pick a fight with you because you liked -"
Her daughter's newest gift stopped the words that she knew, even as she uttered them, weren't the answer. This time, Kathy's hands were not shaking. And this time, a pair of terrified but determined eyes were trained on her.
A new sketch. The boy's face was now revealed. A beautiful, familiar face with the same set of terrified, determined eyes.
"It's me, Mom." This time, soft fingers tucked under Dixie's chin, navigating her toward those eyes. "It's my truth."
####
(September 2011)
If you knew that hope and despair were paths to the same destination, which would you choose?
A question posed by one of his favorite tenors, and a question he had a damn hard time answering as he closed the door on his newest patient.
Part of him had been grateful for the distraction of staging another body swap from the hospital. Villainy, if nothing else, always kept one busy, what with bribing the right officials, forging the right documents, and choosing the right dark corridors. It was the art of immersion at its finest, and his hand was always as steady as when it clenched a scalpel.
Now, that same hand couldn't manage the keycard. It ducked, weaved, clattered, and made a storied run around the slender lock.
"Damn it!" His uninjured hand snatched the card angrily and promptly produced the same results.
It was just the silence, punctuated only by the steady, maddening drip of an errant puddle somewhere in this sprawling facility: this monument to genius and scientific advancement that could not vanquish a leaky faucet.
It was just the quiet, …completely absent of life.
Just the quiet that was wrapping his fingers in a vise and squeezing them mercilessly.
Not those whispers underneath, those indistinguishable voices from another place, another -
David jammed the card through until the green light blinked. His entire weight collapsed against the door as the first sob wrench itself from his throat. The second pummeled at his chest, clawed its way forward. Only the quaking fist crammed into his mouth stopped its onslaught.
His darting, clouded eyes searched for something, anything. They fastened on another door….another lifeline.
Pushing himself up with force, he stumbled to the opening. A sliver of light spilled through. An ounce of hope.
He had to see her.
If he just saw her, just held his hand out and felt the slow breaths warming it –
David fully opened the door to Babe's room.
(Present)
"In reality, hope is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs man's torments." David finished his recollection with the first coherent thought that had laid claim to his mind following the discovery of his daughter's dead body. He looked up at Bianca, whose own silent thoughts had laid claim to her. "You know who said that? Frederick Nietsche: acclaimed German philosopher, sermonizer of the "death of God." Unlike most great preachers, he got to see his mores realizes, though, when he lost his mind and his life shortly thereafter at the ripe old age of 55."
"He was telling the truth. He was there. He -"
It was muttered, more to herself than to him, but it jolted him nonetheless. "Who was there?"
She had obviously not intended for that musing to slip out, but she covered her surprise quickly. "No one."
"You never told me how you found out about Babe."
"It's not important right now."
"Like hell it's not, Bianca."
"David, you're content to keep your secrets, so I think you can leave me one of mine, for now." She leaned forward and he thought for a moment she was going to deliver the slap that had only been promised in her eyes earlier. Instead, she laid her hand over his. "How did it happen?"
David did something he'd probably ever done one other time in his life. He shrugged. "I told you…" He tried to sniff the cracks away, but the rough, raw edge in his voice could not be dulled. "I told you that all of my successes – all of my wonderful miracles – were only ever outweighed by my failures. I don't know what happened. Maybe she just couldn't….hold on anymore. I just know that my greatest failure happened that night, when I lost two daughters that I never really had."
She didn't offer him apologies or shoulders. But her hand never left his own. And, like before, it meant everything.
He only awaited her second request. He was expecting it, in fact. and he couldn't do it again. No matter what, he would keep his eyes trained on the tiny granite specks in the floor. At least then, he could lie more honestly. Only the subtle squeeze compelled his eyes up again.
"Please, David. if there are any more secrets, tell me now."
He looked into those eyes that had, in spite of themselves, managed to let that last sliver of trust and hope slip through. That always, only - in spite of the odds - wanted honesty. Just honesty.
"I -"
"It's okay, bro."
He never had a chance to make the choice. The man in the dorrway had, once again, saved him from the task.
Or perhaps condemned him.
His gaze shifting between his brother and the first, and last, daughter he ever had, only one thought claimed David: What in the hell will we to do now?