Chapter thirty-six

Dear Susanna,

Father has again allowed me to write to warn you of the danger you are facing. It appears that Joshua's birth family is not as good as they appear to be. Specifically that godfather of his of whom you speak so highly. Did you know that his mother is crazy? I mean locked in an asylum crazy. And he put her there years ago, just abandoned her like she was an animal he no longer wanted. And did you know that he's a gambler? He's notorious around the casinos in Las Vegas; they've even banned him for cheating there. And he's a drug user as well, a church member saw him leaving a meeting…

BAU Headquarters
FBI building
Quantico, VA

Spencer

Okay this was getting ridiculous. More than that, it was getting personal.

Spencer stepped out of the conference room and sighed. Thankfully everyone here understood without his having to actually say anything. John, after all, went to the same NA meeting he did, Strauss was still in AA, and Hotch…sometimes he thought Hotch felt like he was responsible. After all, he let Gideon handle everything knowing that Gideon was having his own problems.

Anyway, everyone had settled on the story that he was at that meeting to support a friend. This story was backed up by his passing every drug test clean and by the fact that John had been there when he received his five year coin. The ban from the gaming commission was new news, more or less, but it wasn't like he could help counting cards. He just wasn't going to tell anyone about how much he had won before he was caught was all. And everyone knew about Mom. Everyone knew about all of it now.

Everyone but one person. He headed down to his desk and started gathering his things. "What's going on?" Blake asked.

"I was at an NA meeting…supporting a friend." The pause in the middle told the lie, but Blake knew anyway. She'd been one of the few who picked up on something wrong when he was using. "Somehow Goodwin found out and he had Susanna's sister send her a letter trying to scare her back to the fold."

Blake grasped the situation and sighed. "You have to go tell Susanna the truth."

"I have to go tell Susanna the truth."

Bellflower House
3625 Yuma St. NW
Washington DC

"Where were your friends through all this?" Susanna asked as she folded her hands into his.

Spencer had just finished telling her all of it, Hankel, getting addicted, getting clean, all of it. He was proud of how long he had been clean, but if there was one thing he had learned this past year it was the simple truth, once an addict, always an addict. Period. "I don't think they noticed." Spencer admitted. "Emily was new to the unit and Hotch was having problems with his marriage and a baby at home and Morgan was dealing with his own demons… I think they all thought Gideon was handling it, but with his PTSD he really just couldn't. Part of it was my fault, growing up I knew it was better to keep things to myself, especially when it would upset the other person. And Gideon was already feeling guilty."

Susanna was quiet a long moment. "That's not all of it, is it? I can hear it in your voice."

Damn. "I didn't want to stop." He admitted at last. "I only stopped because if I hadn't I would have lost the real thing…the real friends I had instead of a false comfort." He'd explained this once, in a letter to Maeve. He couldn't have talked about it before that. "When I was young it…school was hard. And Dad wasn't there and…I know Mom tried but sometimes her illness got in the way. When she was having a lucid time I used to snuggle in bed with her and she would read to me. That always felt so…safe and so…good. It was a time when I didn't have to be afraid or uncomfortable; I didn't have to hurt at all. It was…good. I don't know how better to describe it."

"It was love." She said simply.

"Yes. Years later, before this happened, I met a girl named Lila. We were in LA, she had a…a stalker…I was supposed to be watching her and she…there's this theory called transference. She transferred one set of feelings to something else and to me. Desire, mostly. She pulled me into her pool and tried to…"

Susanna blinked in alarm. "Oh!"

Oops. "Well, no, not that. But I was twenty-four and felt all of twenty-one at most and she was…is very attractive and for a moment…" It was a good thing it was dark out here in the garden, he could never say this if he could see her face. "…lust can be a part of love. For a couple of minutes in that pool nothing hurt at all. But it wasn't right in so many ways so I pushed her away." Susanna smiled as if she completely understood. "Look, I've never been good around girls, I'm shy, I get nervous, I tend to babble and say the wrong thing…Dilaudid takes all the pain away; all of it, even the mental and emotional kind. You feel very warm and safe and very good. I guess when I felt that first hit I realized that Tobias was sharing something that felt a lot like love."

"A false love."

"True, but a love that wouldn't laugh or call me a freak or walk away. Just like it was always there for him."

Susanna held his hand a little tighter. "I can understand that."

"I had to choose between false love and real friendship and I chose my friends."

"Believing you would have to live without love."

"Yes. And I did, for years. I made myself sick with it, literally. I started getting these horrific headaches from the stress and feeling so alone. That's kind of what led me to Maeve. That's when I realized what it was."

"Because you felt it with her."

Now here was the sticking part. "Kind of. The potential was there, the anticipation, but we never had the chance. I have to admit, there have been some hard times since then, but I have stayed clean."

"I'm proud of you." It was so simple, but her acceptance was a warm thing in that corner of the garden. "And I understand."

Somehow he thought she might, at least part of it. "Do you?"

She was quiet a moment as she gently rubbed his fingers. "I still have nightmares." She admitted. "I still dream sometimes that I'm in my room back home and it's too quiet. I go downstairs and there's no one. They all forgot me. You know, I'm seeing that therapist that Penelope recommended, but I don't care what she says. I know I'm dreaming about never being loved. A Trappist monk named Fr. Louis once said 'Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.' Maybe we're both afraid of never truly finding our destiny."

Spencer sat rock still, not even daring to breathe. "Thomas Merton." he said at last. "That quote is from Thomas Merton."

"Oh. It said Fr. Louis on the front of the book." She replied. "The paper was different though; it might have been a replacement cover. But the point is, given how everything is changing I'm going to try to have hope that my destiny is waiting for me."

Thank you Maeve, he thought. Thank you for teaching me how. I will always love you, but now I understand. He reached up and gently brushed a lock of hair off Susanna's face. "I think…"

His phone started ringing.