FEELS LIKE HOME
Elizabethtown, Kentucky
June 16th, 1995 – 4:25 pm
Alfalfa and daisies; those were two things he remembered well about home. Well, the home that he never really got to have at all. The home that was a part of him deep down, undiscovered for too long, and only experienced on a fleeting whim of adventure with the one girl who he actually considered 'home'.
It was the hottest summer in 26 years. In some places, on certain roads and fields, there were more wildflowers than grass. Lily loved this, he remembered that too.
They were staying in the old house on Freeman Creek; old, only by reputation of having been abandoned by a broken, half diminished family. It was the house his great-grandfather had designed and built during the civil war. It was the one that his Congressman father had held onto through every move, every change of scenery they had made since his mother's death. It was in the will seventeen months before.
Shane and Tom had come with them, but had stayed at the house to get unpacked. Lily had insisted that Jeff take a walk with her, to clear his head and get away from all the things she could tell were haunting him. So just like she had shown him every bit of the Cape, Jeff worked on pointing out what he could remember all along their travels for the afternoon.
They held hands through fields of the golden, purple and sapphire flowers that drove her mad with smiles and peace. And just as they made it to the wire fence that led to the other side of the creek and river, the side with the rope swing he swore he recalled, he noticed a tangle of fiery orange flowers around one of the old wooden posts.
"Come here," he whispered, pulling her to them and reaching down to snatch one up. "This is the one you need."
Lily stood before him with wide, grinning eyes, as he wove the stem of the flower into the soft curls at her right ear.
"Daylily."
"Daylily?"
He nodded, "It'll close up at sunset, just a few hours from now."
"That's kind of sad."
"Why?"
"Well, it never gets to see the night, or the stars. That's depressing."
Jeff chuckled a little and leaned his forehead down to match hers, keeping her eyes on his.
"Then I guess that's what Night Lily is for…"
"There's no such th--"
His lips caught hers quick, savoring the way that her mouth somehow seemed to taste like everything that surrounded them; the huckleberry and the dandelions, the fresh creek water and the sunlight. Something about Lily Hanson masked all the evil or the pain in the world, all the time, even when it was clearly evident.
He hadn't been sure he wanted to come back down here to this place, or that he wanted to bring his sister, or her, but he knew then, kissing her in the middle of nowhere in particular. Their tongues dueled for control, as often they would, and even though Kentucky had never been the most appealing place of all the ones he'd gone to before, it was on that day at least.
They made it to the rope swing and the dock on the creek. They swam nude and made love in the black water as the sun set over the tops of the ancient oak trees. And then they got out, got dressed, and moved on. Because that's what they did, always. They moved on to other things, better adventures and motives. There was no use in trying to justify the past.
That was the trouble for two people like Sheldon and Lily.
Cactus Road Motel - 2:45 PM
He swore he could feel her wet skin, fresh from the creek water. It was like velvet, or better yet, like the petals of that lily. There was pain and he wondered if he'd fallen off the dock, hit the rocks on accident when he jumped in, the same way his mother always swore he would when he was four and first learning to swim alone.
He had hadn't he? He'd finally done it and proved her worrying mind correct.
He thought he was laughing but it was all in his head, and only seconds later, there was the burn of something intense enough to make even the blindest of men cry and the most determined of clowns stop laughing. It cut through his side, my fucking kidney, are they taking my kidneys now too, he thought with a vivid image of a greedy Mexican man standing over him, wishing the pain away but missing the success of it.
Biting his lip, Sands groaned against the back of his throat loudly and thrashed his face to the pillow.
"Jesus…"
Shane could only half hear his mumbles but she went on, focused on what she was doing.
"Relax, the bullet's almost out."
She tugged with the corner of a bloodied, wet cloth and the brazen end of her dad's old pocket knife, until the chipped curve of the bullet came back through the torn muscle and skin, shining under the low glow in the motel room. She watched regrettably as her brother struggled just to breathe, let alone relax. He was never good at letting other people take care of his wounds. Sheldon would just as easily have ripped the bullets out with his own bare hands as he would let someone near them with a knife and lemon.
Luckily, Shane hadn't been able to find the lemons. She laughed at the thought though.
"I got hit in the leg, Shane. Not there…" a louder growl ripped from his throat as the bullet slipped out of his side and onto the towel under him. Shane sat down beside him, keeping pressure on the opening.
"Well you obviously didn't seem to notice the three chunks of shrapnel you acquired from your desert friends. Why am I not surprised?"
"I was a little preoccupied." And then his mind came back to earth, came back to the room and the situation at hand and he flew up in the bed and under Shane's grasp.
"Where is she, where's Lily?!"
"Jeff, lay down."
"No. Where is she? She's hit. You need to help her, not me!"
Shane shoved his bared chest until he fell back to the bed, thrashing of course. Andy was in the corner of the room for this though, and he came to assist in holding Sands' right arm down, allowing for Shane to treat his last wound the rest of the way.
"Shane, go help Lily. They shot her in the stomach."
"I can't."
"What the hell do you mean, you can't?! Go. Now."
He shouted at her, blindly facing halfway in another direction as Andy and Shane shared a quick and worried glance from across the bed.
"Shane!"
"Jeff, I can't help Lily because--" he kept trying to get free of her hands and push her away, until she took a deep breath and whispered down at him solemnly, "Lily's not here."
"What?!"
"You heard me. Now lay still or I'll shoot you too."
His teeth ground together when he heard her threats in his ear, softly, demonically, the way only his little sister got in the midst of confusion and self-pain that she couldn't reveal. He could hear that she was telling the truth, just by the way her lips quivered against one another with her words. It was the sound of her attempting to hold back a million different emotions and dress his wounds at the same time. He wasn't helping her in any way and he knew this.
So he threw his head back angrily and tried to be calm, be patient, and not think about it until there was a decent moment to wonder what could have happened to the woman who had been bleeding in his arms the last time he was awake.
My wife, she's that much more to me now. His mind shifted back and forth, seeing images that tore deeper holes in him. How can she just be gone? My Lily Grace, my wife, my girl. She's mine. Not theirs.
"Shane?"
She taped down the thick gauze on his stomach and wiped away the excess blood, sighing.
"Yeah?"
"We have to go get her back from those cocksuckers."
Lucky for him, for Lily, Shane was already in the middle of finding a way.
Somewhere down Interstate 15 en route to San Francisco…
Lily wasn't that far out of it anymore. She could feel the rumble of a car's seat underneath of her and she could smell the gasoline being burned in the middle of the desert, by scent alone. She heard music, country, since it appeared to be all that would come in. There were no other voices, but there was wind, movement, and the smell of cheap cologne and blood.
It didn't take her too much longer to figure out that the cologne was a man's in the driver's seat of the car, and the blood, was hers. Small droplets of it came off onto her fingertips where she reached down and saw a large bandage tied around her stomach.
A kidnapper with a heart, she thought to herself, trying to sit up and see the face of the man, trying to figure out what she had to do to get away from him. Sliding against the worn leather of the car, she realized it was a Mustang, an old one at that. And if there was one thing she knew well, it was the backseat of an old Mustang.
"What do you say? Take advantage of your brother's nice cleaning job on this thing?"
"You are desperate aren't you?"
"Desperate for you, kid."
It had been freezing that night and they were stuck in a rainstorm that Lily refused to let Jeff try to drive through. Some random patch of grass by the side of the coastal road. Some random song playing on the radio and her brother's borrowed Mustang. She felt the leather under her hands now, smelled the air through the car around her, and she remembered that.
Glancing up with what felt like a swollen eye, Lily could just make out the reflection in the dusty rearview mirror. There was a beat up old baseball cap hiding the face of the man, navy blue with a half torn symbol of some kind, frayed from front to back. He had a crop of messy brown hair poking out from the back, a kissed tan sort of tan from being in the southwestern sun too long, and a rough but delicate looking hand on the wheel.
She coughed and the hat moved around, but the face and the eyes were still hidden well.
"Excuse me?" She finally asked with a tired and achy voice. "I'm bleeding."
The head half turned back toward her over the front seat, but she could only see the shadow of a nose and lips as they moved and said, "Try not to move around. I'll find a place to get you new bandages in the next town."
She nodded, confused that the voice was so soft, so understanding. Not like that of any kidnapper she'd seen on TV before. Too weird.
Lily relaxed into the seat again, holding her palm over the end of the bandage covering her stained t-shirt, letting the pressure keep blood from spilling beyond the fabric. Her focus was steady for a long time, as she watched the road remain dead straight for miles and miles, tumbleweeds passing them by every so often, and orange dust sliding across the already dirty windshield. The man said nothing. He just drove and tapped his fingers on the wheel to the hillbilly music.
And yet just as she began to fall into a hazy sort of rest, Lily's head tumbled down to her shoulder enough, so that the last thing she saw before trying to close her eyes, was a leather gun holster in the pocket on the back of the passenger's seat. Her eyes shifted from the handle of the gun she could see, to the mirror and the baseball cap that refused to tilt up, then right back to the gun.
Slowly, without being caught up on, she reached across and pulled the gun out of the holster carefully, then to her lap. She waited until she saw the man's hand move to turn the radio up higher, drowning out anything but the wind, and then she quietly lifted it as high as she could without being seen. She breathed deep, thought of father in that moment as the gun rose higher in her hands, and silently prayed what she was about to attempt wouldn't fail her.
When in the clear, she flew forward at the driver and wrapped her arm around his neck, half choking him as the car swerved on the empty road.
"What the fuck!"
His gargling voice was angry, anxious almost as she whispered into his ear.
"I want you to pull over. Now…"
The harshness in her own voice, not only struck the man with seriousness, but it scared her a little too. She sounded like Shane, like Jeff with a gun. Lily pushed the barrel of the gun into his cheek as he barely drove in a straight line.
"Pull over and let me out. Or I'll shoot you."
"I can't drive with your -- get your arm off--"
"No. Stop the car."
The cocking of the gun in her hands made him stiffen and finally slow to a duller pace, and eventually right into a parked position on the dusty edge of the road. Lily kept the gun pointed at him as she pushed her way from behind his seat and out of the driver's side door, landing barefoot on the burning pavement.
"Shit," she hissed, trying to adjust to the heat on her feet and face. Once it was accomplished, she turned the gun back in the direction of the car, where he still sat in a shadow. "Get out."
The man hit the wheel with a fierceness that startled her into moving the gun only closer to him for safety, as he took his time getting out of the car. His worn boots hit the blacktop road one at a time, and still, as frustrating as it was to her, his cap hid his features. But something did come into a better view as he rose and stood a foot taller than her. With his head low, the symbol on the hat was revealed finally as half aged white B against the tattered navy.
"B..." she whispered, almost crazed by the sight, eyes shifting inside her head with too many memories. But holding strong, she gritted her teeth and said, "Move."
Lily forced the gun toward his shoulder, making him walk to the back of the car. She shoved him with all the strength left in her to the trunk, checking the pockets of his jeans for other weapons as she hacked on her own pain and spewed blood to the road. Thankfully, she realized the search was of mute worth since other than the gun in her hand, he was weaponless.
"It's too bad you're a Red Sox fan," she murmured angrily, checking the ankles of his boots. Something she'd learned from being cop's daughter.
"I'm not really. Someone I knew once was."
"Someone you killed no doubt."
"No," he finally answered as he stood and turned to her again with a sinister glow in his sigh, "I didn't kill her. Why would I kill my own sister?"
And then, when Lily hadn't expected to ever see it, he turned his face up under the spoon bill of the cap and revealed it to her in the midday sunlight.
He began to speak at about the same time her jaw dropped and her heart sank.
"Good to see Jeff and Shane taught you how to protect yourself," he smirked wildly, scaring her, threatening her every muscle and brain cell, "I'll have to thank them personally."
Lily had nothing to say, locked into one of those moments where the world shifts and you're standing with one foot on either side of the fault line. She gulped once to try and contain herself from screaming or shooting or running away. But it did nothing, not with the loss of blood or the heat burning down upon her as she stared into the eyes of her kidnapper, or better yet, her savior.
The gun hit the ground seconds before she thought she would. Instead though, she fell into the strong arms that she convinced herself weren't real at all. She did however swear that the last thing she heard before completely being consumed by unconsciousness was a knowing whisper and a laugh.
"That didn't take long."
Fenway Park - Boston
April 14th, 1985
"Tommy?"
Lily's eyes moved away from the passenger's side window as her brother's Mustang moved directly past the entrance of the middle school. She turned and looked at him funny, not sure what was going on.
"You missed the school. Where are you going?"
He said nothing, and only faintly smiled.
"Tommy, I have a math test."
"Doesn't matter. You can make it up."
"Why do I need to make it up? Where are you taking me?"
This time, his smile widened and he looked over at her with wide eyes, an expression she hadn't seen in two months.
"You'll see."
And she did, eventually enough. After her brother had driven around the city in search of decent enough parking, he took her to the café that they loved at the end of Boylston Street for brunch. He had skipped school and brought her along for the joy ride he seemed to be on for the first time in what felt like forever. This was the café their dad used to take them to on weekends, the one they had spent hours in, laughing and sharing each other's food. This was the one he went to with them, not the one he went to with his partner on the south side, not the one he'd been killed in two months before.
When they were done eating, they left the café and walked down the street toward Yawkey Way, Lily was still completely lost for a motive, except that her brother thought they needed a day to relax, to get their minds right. He'd caught her crying the night before, and the week before that, and basically every night since Valentine's Day, since the night of his senior dance. It wasn't some secret that everything had changed, or that missing their dad was like missing a limb, a part of each of them. It wasn't something they could hide from one another. Tommy and Lily knew each other too well.
They stopped at the crowded gates of Fenway and Lily looked up at her older brother suspiciously.
"Why are we here?"
He laughed and rustled her hair, "Opening day. What do you think goof?"
Her eyes went wide and glossy, as if she were ready to cry. This was tradition, but never with Tommy. This was what her dad did with her, every year since she was old enough to understand the game at all. This was their team, not usually her brother's thing at all.
"You're taking me to the opening game?"
"Yeah, of course."
"Tommy--"
He turned his face down at his little sister to see the tears on her cheeks, and he pulled her to into his chest, hugging her as they stood in line.
"Dad wouldn't want you to break tradition. And someone's gotta be here to help you root on your team, right?"
She smiled with teary eyes into his shirt, clinging tighter.
"You're the best. Thank you."
Lily shot up and awake suddenly, gasping for air and tasting nothing but dry breath on her lips and tongue from sleep. Her eyes went wide and she looked out of the same dusty windshield from the back seat of the car. It was empty, save for her, in the hazy blue darkness of early night. There were two street lights, and as she looked through the windows, she realized she was parked at a gas station in the middle of nowhere on the same lonely road as before.
At least, she thought she was alone.
She heard a tap on the half window of the backseat and turned her head immediately to see a baseball cap, two eyes from under it and a glass muffled voice.
"Hey there, Sleeping Beauty."
There he was again, plain as day, normal as can be. He smiled like there was nothing odd about him being alive, or here, talking to her, breathing, standing, not six feet under. If it was even him and not some bizarre reincarnated clone, come to haunt her, come to give her a heart attack.
Even the psychologist in her wasn't prepared to deal with that.
"You hungry, Lil?"
She just crossed her brow at him confusingly and slid, ever so carefully, for the opposite door of the car. After she managed to jump out, barefoot again on the cooler, oil slick pavement, she eyed him from over the roof of the candy apple red Mustang.
Her mind said, run, run, go, now, run back to Vegas. This isn't real. Run away from it.
And of course, her tricky heart said, that's Tommy. I don't know how or why, but it's my big brother. He's safe.
"Well? Tacos?"
He nodded over her shoulder, still pumping gas and smiling. Lily turned slightly enough to see the sign for a small all-night taco stand next to the gas station, but shook her head no, and began walking backwards away from him.
"Lily, don't run," he warned softly.
"Don't follow me. This isn't real. I don't know who the hell you are, but don't come near me."
She was halfway towards the bathrooms of the station, when there was the sound of loud tires screeching and a tinted black SUV swerved into the lot, kicking up dust as it came at her.
"Lillian!"
She heard Tom shout, or whoever he was, and then she saw him leaping around the car and out after her. The man, her potentially reborn brother, with his strong arms, grabbed her and fell to the pavement as the truck rolled by them, firing out warning shots overhead. He covered her with his body and watched the vehicle whip in and out of the station lot in less than ten seconds.
And when it was gone, Lily was already trying to wiggle free of him, as the store attendant shouted something in Spanish at them. She struggled to get up from the ground, dirtied, bleeding, tired and losing her mind.
"Stop. Where are you going?"
"I'm getting away from you!"
He grasped her waist and pulled her up with him, carrying her in a struggle back to the car and sitting her down on the hood. His voice was peaceable, soft, when she heard it again.
"Tom. It's Tom, remember? And those guys weren't after me, they're looking for you."
She ignored the latter remark and headed for the first, "No you aren't!"
Her yelling was met with a fight of strength as she tried another time to run away, but he just pulled her right back into place, under his gaze and hold, her legs kicking on the hood.
"You're not my brother. My brother is dead! He's been dead for eight years!"
"Not quite eight years yet."
She stopped and looked up into his eyes, the ones she could hardly deny anymore.
"What did you say?"
He gulped with a tired breath, "It's only been seven years, ten months and eleven days. Sis."
He smiled again, but Lily didn't like it one bit and she shoved his arms away and stomped on bare toes and frustration for the store again. Her strength in weakness though, only lasted so long. It only lasted until she heard him call out very calmly, very knowingly after her.
"Monkey see, Lillian."
She paused, dead in her weary tracks. Her eyes suddenly welled with tears, her hands shook at her sides, and she sucked in air like it was alcohol, desperate for the pain relief. He said it a couple of more times as she stood thinking, contemplating what would happen if she did turn back, what if it was Tommy?
She didn't say it but she thought it. 'Monkey do, Tommy.'
Something only he would know. Only the real him.
What if…
Soon enough, when she'd fallen victim to the complete ridiculousness of the possibility itself, she shifted her weight around, wiped her tears, and looked straight across the station lot at him. He looked like Tom, he moved and talked and smiled like Tom. He was the exact height as when she'd last been in his arms, last held onto him, and last teased him from a shorter altitude. He had Tommy's eyes, he had Tommy's chuckle, and he had Tommy's promising sort of sigh.
"I'm not going to hurt you, Lily," he spoke quietly, in distress and pain of his own.
She tried to hold back the tears and whispered faintly, "Then what are going to do?"
"I'm here to save you. Aren't you ready for a hero yet?"
Lily saw him smirk playfully, the way only Tom Hanson had about him. And she was sure that's when she knew the truth. She didn't need to fall unconscious this time. Instead, she took one bare step closer to him.
"Jeff was supposed to be my hero." She sniffled with an unexpected laugh. "Funny notion, huh?"
Tom nodded with a smile.
"He can still be your hero. Just--" He stepped closer as she did again. "Let me rescue you temporarily. I swear I'm damn good at it. Even you'll be impressed."
She couldn't help to keep laughing through the tears that boiled over in her eyes. With a last shuffle of pain and a hand over her bleeding stomach, she reached him as he threw his arms soundly around her and held her to his warmth. She could feel him, comfortable and breathing and existing again. And she thought, maybe that's all the proof I need. Just that.
A deep breath came and she found herself speaking just as calmly as he had, consumed with the idea and the possibility of what could have never been otherwise.
"Monkey do, Tommy."
