DIRTY WATER HEALING
Finn's Bar - Boston
January 14th, 1996
She had two hands covering her face and two hands leading hers onto an icy curb, somewhere she didn't even know, somewhere she was entirely too lost to feel comfortable. Even with her self-chosen escorts.
"I can't believe you guys. You don't come home for four weeks, and when you do, it's for this."
"Why don't you just relax and enjoy the surprise."
Lily grumbled something into Jeff's hands as he slid one down to teasingly cover her mouth and prevent anymore harassment of their plot. Tom held her mitten hands gently as he helped her onto the icy sidewalk and towards the corner of the street. It was quiet for this corner, which was unusual, but only because they'd set it up that way.
She trembled in Jeff's hand and suddenly shouted, "Are we in Boston?"
They laughed and shook their heads at one another.
"We are. It smells like Boston. You drove me all the way here. Why?"
"You'll see."
She only had a chance to sigh one more time, before she felt Jeff lift her completely off the snowy ground and carry her through a doorway, one she could hear swinging back with a squeak. When her boots hit ground again, it was wood, and the air was warmer around her. She felt someone place something on her head, and when she reached up, she giggled, knowing it was a plastic tiara.
"What are you guys doing to me?"
She could hear their laughter still when something soft was draped around her neck, a feather boa. Her head shook, her brand new heels clacked together like a frightened Dorothy hoping that the munchkins wouldn't attack at any moment. And then, after too much time had gone by, she heard a growling, sensual whisper in her ear.
"Ready, Tiger Lily?"
"Yes," she sighed exhaustedly as she felt Jeff's warm hands move from her face. Her eyes fluttered open to the scene of a bar, filled chaotically with balloons and confetti and people, lots and lots of bizarrely dressed people. All she could do was gasp with a giggle as they suddenly all jumped out and shouted at her.
"Happy Birthday, Lily!"
Her hands went to her cheeks as a blaring stereo picked up and a hundred or more bodies of friends and family rushed towards her. She greeted them all in a haze, only feeling one solitary, memorable thing throughout Flynn's bar, and that was the arm that never left her waist. No matter how many people came to her, or how many alcoholic substances were passed around, he was always right there, hooked to her.
"I can't believe you did all of this."
Jeff smirked and took a sip of his beer, "Twenty-one is a big deal when you have Irish blood running through your veins, kid."
"You would know," she mocked as she held onto him tighter, kissing his neck.
"And you're about to know even better. Come here."
He tugged her through the crowds of half dressed and half sober bodies to get to the bar. Jeff lifted her onto one of the stools, one of their regular stools, and from around the bar came Flynn himself, a man she'd known far too long for anyone just becoming legal.
"Flynn," she smiled and leaned over as Jeff held her hips from falling. She kissed his cheek and then sat back down.
"This is gonna be the best shot I ever poured, ain't it?"
She laughed with a nod as Jeff and Tom came to stand at either side of her, doing the same.
"Give her a double."
Lily turned to Tom with a dropped jaw.
"Double Tullamore Dew, the good Irish stuff you always hold out on," Jeff insisted even louder, making her turn to him instead, shaking her head. "Three double Dews."
Flynn laughed wildly and shouted, "No, four," as he poured the shots out for each of them. Jeff and Tom both grabbed one and Flynn slid one close to Lily's hand as he lifted his own in a salute over her head.
"To our little Hanson all grown up," she smirked and hid her face in her pink boa as Jeff kissed the top of her head, "May she have another twenty-one years of the same confusion, and sickness and good vibrations that she's about to experience right here tonight!"
"Here, here!" Tom and Jeff shouted at the same time, slamming their shots on the wooden ledge of the bar before downing them with Flynn.
Lily watched them with wild, spontaneous eyes before she heard the all too familiar sound of the Standell's pick up from a distant corner jukebox and she felt Jeff's arm tie snugly around her waist again, pressing for the only assurance she ever needed. It took one second, and the shot had disappeared into her hungry, excitedly beautiful gut.
Then she was asking for another with her tongue half hidden down Jeff's throat.
Chatham – Hanson House
One month later – March 22nd, 2004
2:37 AM
It didn't take much to set Lily off into a fit of tears and tissue havoc. The reasons and causes for it worsened as the days went by. Sometimes it was a song, or the weather changing outside, or the sound of her mother's pill bottles, or even just the way her bare skin felt inside of his long since abandoned PD sweatshirt, the one he'd left here the first time he'd left her.
No matter the infliction, the result was the same. She would rummage through her mother's cabinet of wines and whiskey's until she found something that suited the mood or the memory she was lost inside of. On this night, or early morning for that matter, as she sat at the kitchen table in a pair of his old college boxers and that same ragged blue sweater, she allowed herself indulgence in the one thing that she knew would take care of the pain for as long as she wanted to be numb.
Lily relaxed into the chair, sighing, wiping her nose and pouring a small glass of Jack Daniel's at the same time. As the sunshine golden fluid sank into the crystal glass with a hearty splash, she sniffled and remembered a time when whiskey would have done her in for a week or more, back when she was weak enough and fragile enough to be nothing more than a cop's sister, a cop's daughter, and a cop's girlfriend. Not an assisting firearms specialist herself.
She stopped pouring and instead began to sip at the smooth heartache in a cup. The house was silent, save for a few drips of the kitchen faucet, a gentle breeze blowing against the windows and the sound of a scratching, flopping puppy on the rug under her feet. Lily glanced down with watery eyes and an upturned nose, not wanting to fall for it, not wanting to go anywhere near that issue in her current state.
"Sparky," she huffed, rolling her eyes and taking a stronger gulp of the whiskey. "He's crazy if he thinks I'm falling for that. I don't care how cute you are."
The little black dog mumbled with a low moan and tilted head as he stared at her, belly up and arms crooked on the floor.
"Go on and look helpless. It won't work on me."
He turned then and rested on his stomach, his head perched on his paws as he moved his droopy eyes up at her still, sadly.
"No. Don't even try it, dog." One more twist of his head in innocent, loving fashion, and Lily felt her heart strings being tugged despite all attempts to mask it for the last month. She twisted her wedding band on her finger, staring at it as she mumbled between her hand and the dog's face, "You're not Sparky. You can't be Sparky, no matter how hard you try. So stop."
8:10 AM
There was music flowing from downstairs to the second level that made Debbie Hanson wake up with a sore head and worried dementia. She got out of bed and threw on her robe, checking in Lily's room, which was empty, then into Tom's, to see him stretched out, half dressed and nearly on the floor from his bed. It was unnerving for her most days, to feel the way she had so long ago, all over again, with only minimal explanation or reasoning behind him being back. But she accepted it with complete faith, smiled, shook her head and took off down the stairs for the living room. The music was all too familiar, especially to her, and she even hummed a few of the lyrics as she stepped down into the foyer, walking through towards the kitchen.
Can't You See, she thought to herself, confusedly.
She hadn't even made it inside of the kitchen before she saw the sight that answered every one of her questions and probably a whole bunch she hadn't even thought to wonder about. In the middle of the floor, curled up and sprawled out on the rug beneath the table, was Lily. She was wearing clothes that Debbie felt certain she remembered from a different time altogether, from a boy who would most likely never be seen again, unless it was as a grown, broken man. There was a half empty bottle of Jack Daniel's settled in her palm, over head. And the dog that she had been less than fond of the last four weeks, Sparky, sat curled up with her, eyes wide and his face nuzzled and resting on Lily's thigh, protecting her.
Debbie shook her head, laughed breathily and then leaned down to lift the bottle from Lily's hand as she heard Tom step behind her with a tired yawn and chuckle.
"Marshall Tucker and whiskey, someone had a rough night--"
They both noticed then that the song turned over and repeated itself from the beginning. Debbie and Tom stared at one another with crooked smiles.
"Guess she likes the song," he whispered to his mom as he leaned down and brushed Lily's hair out of her eyes. "Think I should carry her back to bed?"
"Please," Debbie quietly replied, calling the dog into the kitchen for breakfast. But he didn't come to her like usual. Instead, as Tom reached down and lifted Lily into his arms, carrying her in a sweep towards the stairs, Sparky followed on his heels.
"Where's he going?"
Tom glanced back with a tired grin, "Looks like they've finally bonded. Come on, dog."
Sparky trotted carefully up the stairwell behind Tom, his small legs making him trip a few times before they made it to the end of the hall and into Lily's room. He laid her down on the mattress, covered her with both blankets against the cold March morning, and then reached down and lifted the puppy into the spot just beside her.
Tom scratched him behind the ears, "Take care of my baby sister, Spark." Then he kissed Lily on the head and left the room again for breakfast, haunted by the memories of having told Jeff on numerous occasions a lifetime ago, to take care of his little sister the same.
He always had.
Lily's Apartment – Beacon Street, Boston
November 30th, 1995
"Tell me I'm rushing into this. Go ahead," she threw her hands around as she shuffled through boxes in the middle of the empty living room. "I know you want to say it. So say it."
"I'm not saying anything."
"Jeff."
He paused with a shove of another heavy box onto her couch.
"Lily, I have nothing to say. Except that I'm excited for you."
"Ha," she scoffed, turning down the hallway for one of the bedrooms with a small crate. He could hear her voice echoing through the empty, open halls and off of the wood floors. "You're mad, I can tell!"
"What would I be mad about?"
"You're mad because," her voice suddenly fell three octaves as she came closer to him in the living room of the apartment again, "You're mad because I'm not moving into your place instead."
"That's not true."
"Yes. I know you. I know that's what you wanted."
He shrugged and fell down to the floor in a tired heap, sweating and breathing heavily.
"See."
Jeff just looked up at her, catching Lily's eyes every so often as she tore through things that didn't need to be bothered with, things that could be hung and unwrapped another day.
"I'm glad you have your own place, especially since I'm not in town a lot right now. When Tommy and I finish this job, if you want to move in with me then, I'll still want you to."
Lily dropped her curling iron back into one of the boxes. She let out an exhausted sigh as she stood over him, feet on either side of his hips and hands on hers.
"You promise?"
"Don't I always?"
Her lips tightened with an innocent glow as she slowly fell down and straddled his lap on the floor, head falling to his chest and hands sliding through his messy, sweaty hair.
"One day we'll be sharing so much space, that you'll lose your mind over me."
"When we get married?"
He laughed, rubbing her back as he turned her over underneath of him instead.
"Yeah, and since you've already picked out the house--" Lily giggled as he rubbed his sweaty cheeks across hers, "That means I have to start making plans to fix it now."
"Oh please." She shoved on his stomach and jumped back to her feet without him. "You're never going to get that house."
"Excuse me?"
His voice was testy as he rose to meet her level, looking down into her challenging eyes, backing her towards the kitchen counter. "Is that doubt I hear coming from you Miss Hanson? You know how I feel about being doubted."
"What if it is?"
He wasted no time in grabbing her waist firmly and lifting her up to the edge of the kitchen's counter as they stepped out of the living room. Lily screeched when she landed with open legs and his tight jeans pressing into her at the marble ledge, where Jeff's lips also met the open curvature of her revealing t-shirt.
"I guess we're just gonna have to christen every last inch of this new apartment--" he kissed her breasts over her bra as he tore her shirt away and listened to her sudden moaning, "--until you remember how to believe in me…"
Lily laughed and tugged at his hair, forcing his lips to her harder with a tired mew.
"That could take a while--"
He nibbled at her hardened nipple through the black lace and smiled "…God, it better."
Lily's Apartment – Woodley Park, Washington D.C
Three months later - June 14, 2004
"Why couldn't Tommy come and help again?"
Debbie ripped off a string of tape and closed one of the boxes in the pile Lily was marking.
"He's been helping across the Cape, working on the old Quinn estate."
Her jaw dropped with a gasp, "He's what?"
"Yeah, I thought he told you honey."
"No. He hardly tells me anything anymore. It's like he's trying to protect me from the world."
Her mother smiled and taped another box before shoving it towards the front doorway of the apartment.
"Well, he worries he's going to offend you, or hurt you I think."
"Why would that hurt me?"
"Your brother knows how you always dreamed of having that house."
"Yeah but, it was just a stupid dream, when I was a kid."
Lily got up from the floor angrily and stomped down the hallway towards her bedroom with Sparky close on her heels.
"I'm gonna go and work on my closet."
"Lillian."
She stopped at her mother's quiet but affirmative tone and turned back.
"What?"
Debbie sighed, not sure what she wanted to say at all. She really just wanted to stare into her daughter's eyes, to capture the sadness she saw there, from between the swollenness and sleepless nights of crying and drinking. She just wanted to see herself from thirteen years before.
"Nothing, sweetheart," she finally whispered, watching as Lily turned into her bedroom with a heavy breath.
Her bedroom, the one with that utterly fantastic view of the park downtown and the capitol at a far distance, was nearly empty now. There were a few boxes, a lone dresser, and her unbelievably full closet of dresses and shoes and jeans and designer suits for the job she'd given up temporarily. There was a lot of history in that closet, but not because it had been made here in Washington, as much as it had begun all the way back in Chatham.
She sighed and walked inside, falling down to the floor in a heap as she began to stuff her numerous pairs of heels and boots and tennis shoes into boxes. She packed up all of her scarves and mittens and hats into separate seasonal boxes. She packed her coats and cocktail dresses and suits into a travelling cardboard closet, stuffing and squeezing everything together with tears trembling at the corners of her eyes for some reason. Then she heard him, softly, in the back of her mind and had to stop momentarily.
"Do you have to have like, SIXTY different jackets? I mean really, come on."
Lily snatched a few of them from his hands and stormed back into her closet.
"We can't all be so secure in the same jacket for twenty years."
"Clearly," he teased in a mumble that she wasn't supposed to hear. But she did, and because of it, he felt a high heel smack him in the back of the head as he turned away. "Jesus! You're kidding me right?"
He turned, rubbing his head with a sour face at her.
"Do I ever?"
Her glinting smirk made him go mad with lust. Like always.
"Oh, you are gonna get yours, kid."
He barreled toward her in the closet as she yelped and tried to fend off his pinching, tickling hands.
Lily shoved the box of coats away across the wood floor, accepting the rush of energy coming over her, the flurry of memories and images and pain in seeing his face so vividly. She felt certain that it would never stop hurting, no matter how much she drank or how much she did to ignore it boiling in her head. He'd always be there.
She growled under her breath and moved inside of the closet again, reaching up high for where she saw a few dusty, old unmarked boxes. When she pulled one though, another on top of it, out of clear view, tumbled down and just missed her head as it fell to the floor in a mess.
"Shit."
She let go of the other boxes to clean up the menagerie the first had made underneath of her. But as she crashed on the floor and began reaching for papers and objects that had rolled out of the box, she found herself in an alternate universe, where everything felt and smelled and tasted like Sheldon Sands. She lifted old letters, a Cracker Jack ring he had once given her as a tease proposal, a small stuffed tiger he'd won for her at the Boston Carnival, and aged photos that told stories over and over again.
Lily gulped and fell against the shelves of her closet, legs tangled and an armful of memories pressed to her chest as she cried deeply into them, letting him whisper to her as though he were actually there.
"I'm not going anywhere."
"Well, maybe you should."
She hurried off down the sidewalk in a flurry of tears.
"You can run away from me, but I'm just going to follow you."
"What if I jump off a cliff?" She shouted back over her shoulder.
He chuckled and rushed to stomp down right beside her, "Then I'll jump first and catch you as you fall."
"You're an idiot."
"Okay," he teased as she suddenly paused and threw her angered eyes back at him, "I'll be an idiot. If that's what you want."
"What if I wanted you to get lost and not bother with me? Huh?"
He shook his head down at her, watching as she wiped away tear after tear from her own guilt, her own satisfactory mistake of thinking that he didn't care the way he swore he did.
"I'm not leaving you. That would be like abandoning oxygen underwater. I'll drown."
Her brow twisted with a clenched jaw, "Stop that."
"Stop what?"
Then Lily stomped her foot and fell against his chest for the hundredth time that night.
"Stop making me fall in love with you…"
Somewhere deep inside of her ear, while she cried heavily and moaned with the tears as they echoed through the house, she heard a faint chuckling whisper of, 'No way.'
Too many glorious and altogether unfair things washed over her as she sat there, reeling in her mind and heart, examining photo after photo. There were ones on his father's yacht, pictures of Jeff and Shane, of her and Tommy, there were Polaroid's of Jeff and Lily half naked and wrapped up in sheets, and there was one that stood out among all the others as what she would forever be undone by.
It was an old Polaroid snapshot of Jeff in his candy cane boxers, standing in the middle of the bed at his apartment, strumming wildly on Hank. That was an afternoon she knew she'd never forget, no matter how many other memories passed her by in the next month, or next year, or decade without him. That one never could.
"Sing it, baby." Lily fell down on the couch, laughing out of her mind at him on the bed. "Yeah, sing it just like Brad does!"
He gave her a twisted smirk. "What, with the girly screams and all?"
"Hell yeah," she giggled and threw a pillow across the room at him as he danced around in the middle of the mattress, shaking his ass at her whistling.
The strumming of his guitar was poetic and deliberate and sexy all at the same time. It made Lily swoon as she jumped from the couch in his old t-shirt and approached the edge of the bed with her camera, waiting and listening as he began to sing to her.
"I looked out this morning and the sun was gone…Turned on some music, to start my day…"
His knees were bent like Elvis as he worked his hips close to where she was snapping photos. Polaroid's fell to the bed, one by one, slowly forming images in the light of the room as he continued to croon for her and shuffle in his socks with an east side hum.
"I lost myself in a familiar song…I closed my eyes and I slipped away…"
Lily lifted her hand up high to his face and he bit on her fingers with a soft lick, grinning like crazy from the corner of his mouth as she belted out.
"…It's more than a feeling…When I hear that old song they used to play…!"
Lily sighed with a tiny murmur, '…More than a feeling…' and wiped her tears off of the old photograph before tossing it into the box with everything else. She was halfway back to having it all hidden from sight and mind again when she felt her knees buckle with the sound of her bedroom door opening wider and her mother's voice startling the tears right back to her eyes.
"Lily, honey?"
"Mom," she whispered through her sobs, reaching out when Debbie fell inside of the closet with her and to the floor. She took Lily's hand and hugged her closely, arms tight and kisses warm on her head and cheeks. They sat tangled together, two women at a loss for the world and why God saw so fit to take certain men from their lives all the time, a mother and daughter grieving on impact of the same tragedy.
"Oh baby, I know it's not fair," she brushed through Lily's tangled hair as she heard her mumbling into her shirt.
"It just doesn't make any sense," there was a deep breath and sniffle, "Why wouldn't they just tell us something? Tom has worked for those bastards for the last eight years. Why won't they tell him at least, what happened?"
"The CIA is a complicated thing, Lillian."
"That's bullshit, Mom, and you know it. Look what they did to Tommy."
"Yeah," she sighed, rubbing Lily's back, "You're probably right."
There was a long stretch of silence, where only muffled sobbing and the shuffle of limbs together could he heard or known. The sound of taxis down in the street could only faintly be acknowledged, same as the sound of the dog barking at something, and the same as the radio that drifted around the empty, wickedly lonesome apartment. Lily was glad to be getting out of her lease, glad to be moving back home where she had all the sources of healing and spirit lifting she would ever need. But at the same time, she felt there was something she was missing in D.C, something that connected her to the CIA still, the case that had been finished with her help, and the team of agents who had practically disappeared off the face of the earth.
When she'd relaxed enough but not cried quite enough for the day, she lifted her face where it was tucked into her mother's shoulder and neck, and stared with teary eyes up at hers.
"When does it stop hurting?" She asked with a quiet gulp.
Debbie sighed and held Lily's head as if she were a child who had fallen off the swings. She knew exactly what she meant by the question, and knew that she was the only person in her daughter's life who would know what to say and how to say it, all things considered.
"Never," she replied firmly. "It won't stop hurting, honey. It will just get, easier, to swallow the pain and move on. You have to take it one day at a time, same as you've been doing."
Lily rested her head back down and fell into desperate agony all over again.
"One morning you'll wake up and everything will just look brighter, and you'll smile. You might even let yourself love again."
"No," she pronounced with an anxious wave of tears. "I'm never going to love anyone else."
"Now you know that wasn't true the first time with Jeff."
"That was the first time."
Debbie stroked Lily's arms where the hairs were raising from nervousness and uncertainty.
"He's my husband now," she glanced down at her ring. They both did, as Lily twirled it over her finger. "That's the end of it. I can't go any further. I don't want to go any further without him, Mom."
