Chapter 8 Somebody That I Used to Know

"Dana."

Duke ducked the shoe aimed at his head.

"Dana, I'm sorry."

Caught the other one that followed right on its heel.

"Stop. Now wait a minute!" when she started aiming the wine at him too. He couldn't help but smile at the ridiculous scene they made, even while he was in the middle of it. "That is yours. And a bloody good year, too." He'd gone to some effort picking it out before coming up here.

The bottle landed back on the side table with a hard clunk. "You think this is funny?"

"It's a little funny…" he laughed, offered a hopeful eyebrow for her to join him.

She threw his pants at him instead, balled them up and launched them expertly across the length of the room. "Get out."

Actually, Duke had been waiting for that move. If she'd been really angry they could have been launched into the bay. He put the pants on, all the while keeping an eye out for any further missiles. He stepped towards her, his arms displayed palm out, no hidden weapons. Smiled. She held no hostage but herself, but for all that she might as well have been holding a bomb. "Dana."

"You think it matters now how many times you say it?" Dana clutched the sheet tighter around herself, dramatically strewn across the floor and bed still. "Stay the fuck away from me, Crocker. You freak. I'm not your dead girlfriend and you'd better get that through your thick skull."

A step closer still. "She's not dead." And never his, though at this point that seemed too fine a distinction to matter. He'd loved Audrey, lost her and maybe he was only recognizing it now. But Dana was not Audrey.

She was back. She wasn't Audrey, but she always helped the Troubled regardless of her name, her memories, and right now – for purely selfish reasons – Duke needed that to be true. They were all just barely hanging on; him, Nathan, the rest of this cursed small town. Could be worse, indeed. But that was an optimists' view of hell, too.

Dana was trembling, barely able to hold herself together, clutching onto the sheet not just to cover herself, but as some sort of anchor. Another step, two, and he gathered her slowly to his chest. "I'm so sorry," he said, stroking her hair. "She was taken. Two years ago. I know you're not her. I just…" In truth, there was nothing he could say to justify what he'd done. He'd let go, just a little, let himself believe, let himself trust in a way he hadn't since Kyle Hopkins had died at his feet. "I'm sorry."

*.*.*

"Then what – no, never mind. Don't tell me. Get out." She had news for him. Two years abducted meant dead.

It was the laugh that caught her, held her. About the worst mistake a man could make while – doing that – and he could… She didn't understand him. He could laugh about it? It wasn't that he didn't know what he done. His apology was evident, and genuine, and even as he kissed her hair his lips strayed down to her temple, tiny kisses caressed her skin towards her ear.

"Stop it." Weak, and meaningless. "I'm still mad at you." She wasn't. She'd known about Audrey. Seen her face in the mirror. So yes, he had an excuse. Not a reason, but at least an excuse. But that laugh…

Where was the tragedy? Why wasn't he devastated, guilt-ridden, grief-stricken… like the bloody potted police chief, Nathan?

How could he laugh?

Dana ached to possess his secret. To laugh at loss. To feel it, absorb it and still be strong enough to live again, whole. God, she wanted to laugh again, like that, the way he did. Like she meant it.

"Come back to bed," he said, low and resonating through her like a tuning fork.

She let the sheet drop, reaching over his shoulders and kissing him. He laughed again in surprise, pleasure and surprise, as they both fell towards the bed, laughed deep in his throat without breaking off the kiss.

She would stay at least until she learned his secret.

*.*.*

Donald McCutcheon looked at her like she'd lost her mind. "Lemon juice?"

"Lemon juice. Like half juice and half water. And a pot big enough to put everything in." Everything being the carbs from her bike. Boiling everything in lemon juice scrubbed the varnish off like nothing else. If she was going to pull it apart anyway, it was going back together clean.

McCutcheon looked over her shoulder at Duke. He was Duke's friend, he was lending her his shop and his tools – she tried not to take offence.

Duke only shrugged. "It's probably easier to just go along with it," he said to McCutcheon, who – fifty, pot-bellied and grey whiskered – gave Duke a dark look, then muttered something under his breath and wandered off. He was the only one Duke had trusted his Land Rover to, he said, up until a few months ago at least. Something had happened that he'd suddenly retired and the shop sat unused. Duke was evasive about what exactly. But he should be able to help her out with the bike repairs.

"Call me if anything … strange… happens." Duke didn't look at her. He might have been talking to his side mirror. But since this was the first time in thirty-six hours they'd be more than an arm's reach from each other, Dana forgave him.

"Why? You think he's gonna want some of this?" She teased lightly, patting her backside. She didn't like the idea of stepping in between whatever was going on. Especially when neither of them wanted to talk about it. It was odd, but Dana got the distinct impression it involved her somehow, despite how she'd never met either of them forty-eight hours ago. Of course, that meant it involved Audrey Parker somehow.

"Don't worry. Dirty old men I can handle. I have a strict look but don't touch policy."

"Call me."

McCutcheon wandered back with an aluminum pot big enough to hold multiples of Maine lobsters. She smiled wide at him. "Perfect. Now what about a stove?"

*.*.*

McCutcheon got his money's worth while she pulled the bike apart, Dana figured. He sat on a stool in the office and watched from a distance as she huffed and puffed and wrenched and cursed until she had the seat off, and the carbs wrenched loose. She couldn't see where his hands were, she didn't want to know, but she never caught him at anything, even after she deliberately turned her back, bent over for him.

Apparently, that wasn't why he watched.

That was strange, Dana mused, amused, but she didn't think it qualified as an excuse to call Duke.

McCutcheon's garage was a mess though, all his tools were heaped on top of each other like some misguided modern art installation. Some – his wrenches for instance – balled together somehow, like yarn after a kitten attack. He knew where each and every one was though, directing her with hand gestures when she requested one. The tool sculptures fell apart from each other whenever she tried to take one, to pick it up. She spent almost as much time organizing his drawers as she did fixing the bike. McCutcheon didn't seem to mind the invasion of his space, just kept watching.

She ducked down behind her bike when a beat up old Bronco pulled up in front of the garage, disgorging the police chief, and a crying, disheveled teenage girl, who flew past Dana on her way past her father and into the house.

Chief Nathan something-or-other saw her anyway, looked her up and down. Dana looked at him right back, returning glare for glare. He looked – better. Stood capably on his own two feet at least. Dana was aware of the grease not only under her fingernails, but in streaks up her arms and across her shirt. Duke's shirt. She would just bet she had it on her face too, from the way he stared. "Chief."

He turned to McCutcheon instead, who had finally stirred off his stool to come out to meet Nathan. Their conversation was low, and not really for her ears. But what the hell, they were standing not ten feet from her. It wasn't as if she wasn't here first. She caught bits about fights at school, things needed to change. Control her temper, or get her some help.

She also noted how McCutcheon seemed to back off and shut down as Nathan tried to tell him what to do – something that the cop looked utterly blind to. Both of them just got angrier with each other as the discussion went on, until Dana dropped a wrench on the cement floor of the garage. It rang like the closing bell of a boxing match, and they both turned to look at her. She bent over with exaggerated grace to pick it up.

"Don't mind me."

"This doesn't concern you," the chief said.

"It does concern that girl, and you're talking about her – behind her back – like you can control her without her consent or even input," Dana bit back.

"She's my little girl. She does what I tell her to do." McCutcheon added.

"Since when?" Dana judged the girl's age as fourteen or fifteen. "Not for a few months now?" Not since whatever happened, happened? There may well be girls in the world that age who did follow their father's commands, but they weren't the kind who got hauled home by the police for fighting.

McCutcheon grew even redder in the face. Dana felt an odd tingle in her hand, and realized the wrench she was holding was quivering like it was alive. A great clanging noise – Dana flinched – of a hundred wrenches being dropped, a whole truckload spilled… and all the tools she'd spent a couple hours sorting were stacked together behind her in a twisting sculpture of steel that looked like the solid stainless flame of an enormous bonfire.

McCutcheon walked away.

Nathan grabbed her arm and pulled her out from underneath. It stayed upright though. From a couple steps back it looked a lot more threatening, as if they were reaching for her specifically, a wave about to break.

It was incredibly beautiful, and preposterous. Impossible, over-balanced, alive and a work of art. It took her breath away.

"That man has a lot of tools."

Where that came from she didn't know. This was – strange. This was probably something she could call Duke about.

This wasn't strange. This was impossible.

"Welcome to Haven," Nathan said.

She looked over her shoulder at him. Now he was making jokes, too? He wasn't looking at her, or even at the sculpture of tools. He looked at something internal, his eyes resting where his hand still held her arm. She pulled herself free, rolled down her sleeves to hide her grease covered arms. Something else was more important than a magically constructed seven foot tall sculpture of steel tools? "You don't seem so surprised," she said, slowly.

"It's called a Trouble. A lot of people here have them."

Dana turned back to the tools. Amongst the stack was every loose bolt and screw in the place, along with several pieces from her bike, parts that had been neatly laid so that she could find them again were now deeply embedded amongst everything else. "But that's my chain…" she whined, just a little.

...tbc