When the Cradle Falls
Chapter Six: Yellow Gold
February 1996
Ogallala, Nebraska
It was an insane idea. A ridiculous, dangerous idea. Dean shook himself out of the reverie and propped up the pillows he was leaning against. The book on his lap was specific for the lore of Midwestern farmlands-who knew there was such a thing? Dean did, and after the introductory chapter, decided it was even worse than the never ending, flat scenery of the Heartland.
...but if he could pull it off. He just had to know why. He could easily be there and back before the sun was even down. The math was easy: just over a hundred miles, maybe two hours behind the wheel. The Impala was out of the question. Good thing carjacking was a sin Dean could deal with. He just wondered how long a moody, twelve-year-old Sam and a potentially drunk Dad could last without ripping at each other's throats. Ultimately, it was a risk Dean would have to make.
He wondered what kind of excuse he could come up with.
After mulling it over, Dean decided he would say he found a hunt the hundred miles away, figuring if he was found out, the crap he caught from Dad was of lesser importance than finding out the truth that had been gnawing at him for years. No matter what, he hadn't been able to stifle it. But, freshly turned seventeen, Dean couldn't wait any longer.
Luckily, there was an actual hunt close enough that it could be plausible. He got the much appreciated green light from Dad—after some serious begging and ass-kissing—who sighed in defeat and said to put the stolen car back where he found it when he returned. Sam had glared in jealously, begging Dean to let him come with.
Most definitely not.
He stole a gray sedan, conspicuous enough to not be so noticeable, but nice enough that he knew he was stealing it from someone well off, a world that wouldn't be shattered knowing their car was gone. He'd return it to the parking lot in a few days, anyways, after he put the original plates back, that is.
Dean made it there in nearly three-quarter's time. It was a stupid thing to speed in a stolen car, but he'd never been pulled over.
Once in the familiar, quaint, yet stale town, Dean parallel parked along the main street and loped his way towards the public library. He sat in the back near a phone book and ripped out the desired page.
He located a phone booth on the side of a lime-riddled brick building that bored such a vague sign, Dean couldn't even to comprehend what the building specialized in. Not important, he reminded himself, popping in the correct change, pausing a moment before he typed the number.
On the second ring, a pleasant but stiff female voice answered. "Hello?"
"Hi...is Alice there?"
A long pause. "Who is this?"
"Umm...this is Dean. I went to high school with her for a while." He scratched his ear.
"Alice hasn't lived here for nearly two years. Good-bye." He swore he could hear the ringing of the woman slamming down the phone into its proper cradle. He held the payphone to his ear for a moment, contemplating the dial tone. She didn't live there? Then where the hell did she live? Did she go to college early? He knew she was smart but...he honestly didn't know what to think.
Good thing her parents were the type that would die in the first house they bought together. For a moment, Dean let himself wonder if Dad and Mom would've been like that had she still been alive. He abruptly shook off the thought and sped a few miles over to the Mercer's little house.
He hugged the car to a shallow curb and marveled how unchanged the house was. It was a butter yellow with a white porch and brown roof. Now, everything was muted slightly. The lawn and flowers had wilted slightly; paint chipped off everything; the driveway was full of pothole. He remembered sneaking in through the ivy trellised bedroom window, or watching a nervously excited Alice sneak across the lawn at midnight.
He propped open the storm door and used the brass knocker. Ever punctual, a woman with caramel hair-gray at the roots-opened the door. She wore a thin floral blouse and khaki slacks. Her shoes were pointy and shiny, hair done back in a demure bun. A silver cross necklace hung at her throat. Sherry Mercer's dull bluish gray eyes changed, seeming to connect the strange phone and house call all within one hour. "Alice doesn't live here anymore," she repeated, cementing any doubt in Dean's head that she might not know who he was.
He shrugged, standing politely from the door. "I just wanted to see her. It's been…"
"A year and a half?" Sherry Mercer offered pointedly.
"Yeah...I guess so." Only a few months short.
Sherry quirked her eyebrows, half hidden by the door. "Well, she's not here, Dean. And if you don't mind, I have some errands to run so I should be going. Thanks for stopping by."
Dean caught the door before she could slam it. "Please. Could you just tell me where she is? It's important that I see her."
The door was jerked away with surprising strength. "She lives out of state with relatives. If you would kindly never darken my doorstep again, that would be fabulous." Sherry smiled tightly, with a great level of dark undertones in her voice.
"M'am, if you could just-"
"You have fifteen seconds to get off my property before I call the police for trespassing." The door slammed.
Back at the godforsaken library, Dean pored over public records. And just as he was about to give up and actually hunt the damn monster like he said he would, he stumbled across a Breckenridge family tree-Mrs. Mercer's maiden name, as Alice had once mentioned.
Not believing his luck, Dean went back and found a Sherry Breckinridge born in mid-summer of 1951, who later became Sherry Mercer in 1974.
That wasn't what Dean was interested in, though.
Another branch on the Breckinridge tree pointed to one born in 1946, a Janet Sutton nee Breckinridge, residing in Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois, right in the Gold Coast strip.
Dean gulped. It was over seven hundred miles from point A to point B, but God, he suddenly loved busybody little towns with nothing better to do than keep records of every used-to-be citizen from decades past. Vaguely, though, he wondered if his fixation with Alice was simply due to that she'd ended it before he was ready—something that had never happened before. He was pretty sure he would've dumped her eventually, but that fact she left him high and dry couldn't let him just forget her. She had her hooks deep, whether or not she wanted things that way—and whether or not he did either.
He rented a crappy hotel room and then tried to talk himself out of it over a couple of beers he bought with his fake ID, to which the bartender still scrutinized Dean's face for a couple of minutes. A wrinkled cougar in a sleazy looking sequined dress cozied up next to him and asked Dean what he was doing in a place like this. Any other day, Dean would've been the first one to jump on that, but now, he couldn't help notice her surgically enhanced assets and the leathery, inelastic quality of her skin when she ran a hand up and down his side. He felt slightly sick when she sidled up next to him.
"Really not in the mood, lady," he said rudely, throwing a Jackson onto the bar. He just scoffed when she said something about him not being able to keep it up at such a young age.
He slept for a few hours, then got behind the wheel and drove, stopping only twice.
Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois
Chicago, Dean remembered, had some of the rudest motor vehiclists and some of the most entitled pedestrians. However, the closer he got to the lake, the calmer the whole city got, if that was possible. He tried to imagine small town Alice living in such a bustling place. In his mind, she was still in Nebraska and he'd made a terrible mistake driving here. This place was too uppity and stuffy for her. Looking up at the skyscrapers made him dizzy and he could only imagine Alice must have felt like they would topple onto her every time she went outside. Dean realized he was thinking about Alice like she was still the same girl from two years ago. His girl, no less.
His task to locate Janet Sutton's residence took nearly two days—partially due to awful construction. But when he did, he drove down an elm-lined street that would surely shadow everything when there were leaves on the trees, but in the middle of winter, they were dead. Dean was surprised by the lack of snow, though.
Both sides of the street were lined with identical three-story brownstones. He stopped in front of one that had frilly curtains in the large picture window. The only thing that separated him from her was a squeaky, wrought-iron gate that came up to Dean's waist.
Pushing past the gate, Dean was suddenly aware how everything was encompassed in heartbeats. He breathed with them, everything happened with the guh-lug of his atriums and ventricles-the only reason he knew those terms was through Sam, who had annoyingly taken to repeating his biology vocab words over and over. Shaking his head, Dean wondered why he was letting his mind wander like that. Dad always told him he was distracted easily and-
"Snap out it," he commanded to himself, slamming the brass knocker against the maroon door.
He waited a bit, impatiently tapping his foot until a woman who was definitely Sherry Mercer's sister opened the door. Janet Sutton was average height, a railish build. The roots of her hair were gray, while the wiry caramel was shot with twines of silver. She was dressed strangely, wearing an ombre shirt with flared long sleeves and wide leg jeans studded on the back pockets. Of course, Dean didn't need to have a knowledge of fashion to know this woman was not dressed the way someone fifty years old should dress.
"Mrs. Sutton?" he managed.
She raised an eyebrow. "Seven years a widow, but yes?"
"Janet Sutton?"
"I believe we've established that." Her eyes raked over him, taking in his appearance critically.
He stared, at a loss.
"It's cruel they make inner city kids solicit for the school district. A shame. Can't even talk, for one." She went to shut the door, in disappointment.
A miracle, he regained his voice and shouted, "I'm Dean Winchester!"
The door and the women froze. "Oh." The tone was low and void of any possible emotion.
"Do you know who I am?"
She reanimated. "Of course. I've heard your name many a time. Allie recently started mentioning you a lot more than she used to."
His face paled. Was this real?
"Well, are you going to put indents on my welcome mat or come in? I'm Janet, by the way, as you already know."
As he did, he said, "I just thought-"
"Thought what? I'm not Sherry, my sister. Allie is not a child anymore. I'm not going to be the one who hides that you came by. I may think I know what's best for her, but for her sake, I sure hope Allie knows what she's doing." Janet paused, eyes high. "I don't want any of that in my house."
"Any what?" Confused, Dean looked around, checked the bottoms of his shoes to see if he tracked in mud or leaves.
"Don't insult my intelligence, boy. I knew what you were when I first laid eyes on you. I mean your weapons, Winchester." She said his name like she already knew him.
"My what?"
"Drop the act. It's not cute. I know what you are. God knows only a hunter could track someone down like that."
"How do you-"
Janet shrugged and unlocked the front hall closet with a key in her pocket. She waited until he put all his weapons in there and relocked it. "Takes one to know one, son."
"Does-"
"No. Alice doesn't know. Let's keep it that way. Now, take a seat. You want anything to drink?"
A shot to calm the nerves? "No thank you." Dean sank down onto a plastic covered couch in the front room, nervously glancing from the window to Janet.
Stalling a moment, Janet kneaded her hands together. "Well then, I'll go get Alice. Wait there."
Alice Mercer was there. Dean was going to see Alice Mercer. Some sweaty, panting images flitted across his mind, but he ultimately settled on the memory of her in that bright blue dress she was wearing the last day he saw her.
"Al, you have a visitor!" Dean heard Janet yell after opening what sounded like a back door.
"Who is it?" he heard a faint, indistinct voice call back.
"Go see for yourself."
The voice got closer. "Aunt Jan, just tell me who it is." There was a playful, but slightly demanding whine in the tone.
"I won't tell you again. And if you don't want to find out who it is, then fine. Stand there letting all sorts of cold into the house."
"Oh, fine! But's it's actually very nice for a February day!" The back door slammed and loud footfalls retraced the hallway Janet disappeared.
He was seeing stars, suddenly afraid it wouldn't be Allie, but another person pretending to be her. Maybe, he was crazy and in some djinn's dream, one that fabricated Allie completely. But the greatest fear of all was that she wouldn't be how he remembered, that she wouldn't remember him, and above all, that she would repeat two years before and tell him she never wanted to see him again again.
He just had to know.
He heard the soft voice, full of wonder before he saw her. "Dean."