The Road Home

[abrightboy]

Raylan's loose ends had been tied in Kentucky and Malcolm's were as tantalizingly close as they'd ever been. He and Raylan made the trip to New York with the intent of discovering the fate of the girl in the box, so they could head down to Miami without... baggage.

They would have to start with the revelation Jessica and Ainsley had made to Malcolm right before Raylan was shot, sending Malcolm back to Kentucky: that Eve had infiltrated the Whitly family to learn more about the Surgeon's victims.

Malcolm let them into the New York loft - a space he considered theirs now, more than his, since they decided they might weather the hurricane season there after moving to Miami - smiling as Sunshine tweeted greetings. Once the door was shut behind Raylan, he opened the door of her cage. Ainsley would have fed her diligently, but nobody would have let her out to fly. Sunshine took off across the loft and Malcolm grinned, watching her go.

He looked at Raylan. "We can still bring her with us when we leave, right?"

Comments

[tinstar]

Raylan couldn't help but duck his head down with a smile. Fair enough; no excuses needed. It was just as odd to have them accept it was it was for him to accept it - Life rarely slowed down because he'd been injured and yet.. But he was starting to understand how far and true Malcolm was when it came to him. How steadfast and reliable. Sickness and injury were always a test and not one he'd been eager to hasten on.

"And I'm healed up now," he assured to follow Malcolm's gesture and clarification. "Sounds worse than it is. I'll keep my hat on durin' dinner tonight though, if it's all the same to everyone." No one needed to stare at him or the hair that was still short enough to be obvious in his mess of salt and pepper.

He focused on Ainsley with a smile. "I'm okay." He couldn't help but glance at Jessica too, extending the comment to her as well. "And done with Kentucky for good now."

The Danger of it had passed.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm's smile in the direction of the table betrayed his delight at that. He looked at Raylan and it hadn't left his face.

"Done with Kentucky? You haven't shown me the fabled hills," Ainsley reminded him with an impish smile.

"Ah, yes," Jessica said, looking less delighted. "Then it's off to Miami with you, I suppose. When do you leave?" she asked crisply, setting her napkin across her lap.

Malcolm looked at her with a soft sigh. "Mother, I'm going to see this through first. That's why we came."

[tinstar]

"Yeah well.. They're blowin' the tops off those, so I'm afraid, they're done with Kentucky too," he said with a regretful tone and a look as he took his seat, looking over at Jessica.

"He's right. Miami doesn't happen until his business is settled too. Be awfully selfish and rude of me to try and ask him to leave it, right?" He pulled out his napkin and set it over his knee, returning his eyes with a serious look at Jessica. "We don't leave til he's good and done here. Then we're back for hurricane season. Maybe the holidays, if things go that way."

the point was, while Raylan was focused on the future, it didn't discard the now or the needs the Whitly family. He might not be married in yet, but they were important and he would begrudgingly admit he'd taken a fondness towards both of them. They deserved the same support Malcolm got, as best as he could provide.

[abrightboy]

Jessica's feathers seemed somewhat smoothed by that.

"Hurricane season. Do they have that every year?" she asked.

"Yes, mother. Every year. Actually..." He glanced at Raylan. "We were thinking... maybe between Christmas and New Year this year.... we could bring the baby up for a visit." He watched her for a moment. "Raylan's daughter."

Her expression brightened warily, like it was something she wanted, but it could easily blow away. "Really? You'd bring her here?" she asked. Then her expression suggested she didn't know why she was asking Malcolm and she looked at Raylan instead.

[tinstar]

Raylan glanced over as Malcolm glanced to him, the starts of the silent communication that all married people had, looking over at Jessica to see how she took it. They'd talked about it enough between themselves that he wasn't nervous about what her reaction would be, but he was curious.

The tentative, almost smile was a good sign and Raylan smiled softly, crookedly back at her. "If she's welcome, I'd like to. Winona will have her on Christmas, her mother's already claimed that time, but afterwards.." He gestured at the table with a small motion, suggesting the house in whole as their secondary stop. "She's gonna be with me and while I don't really do Christmas the same way, I know that's gonna have to change too, so it'll be good practice for all of us and a good time for you two to meet her."

[abrightboy]

"That is a cheating change of subject," Ainsley told them as Louisa brought three salads and a soup to the table.

Malcolm shook his head at her and Jessica waved the comment off with her hand, her attention still focused on Raylan.

"So you're thinking the week after Christmas, she clarified, clearly already making plans in her head.

Malcolm looked at her sternly. "Don't go crazy," he warned. "No... ponies or giant dollhouses or... pets of any kind."

"How old is she?" Jessica asked Raylan, sweetly ignoring her son.

[tinstar]

He couldn't help but chuckle at Ainsley's protest as Louisa set his salad down, picking up his fork as he looked back over Jessica.

"She'll barely be 10 months by then. She won't even remember it, if we're honest about it." Which was to say that Jessica shouldn't go spending large on someone who won't even remember being here. "But I want you to meet her anyway. I hear that babies have this terrible habit of gettin' all grown and independent on people in a blink of an eye. Can't go missin' the small phase."

He also couldn't help eyeballing the very grown, very independent children sitting with their mother. He was now officially a doting father and holding a baby had done something to him somewhere.

[abrightboy]

"You certainly don't," Jessica assured him, picking up her own fork. "At that age, they even listen to you now and then," she explained, giving Malcolm a significant look.

He spread his hands in a 'what?' gestured.

"You wanted me to settle down," he reminded her. "I'm settling down."

"On the other side of the country, in a cocoon of perpetual law enforcement," she retorted. She looked Raylan over. "But you could have done worse," she admitted.

[tinstar]

Raylan smiled at that, stabbing and taking a bite of his salad, bobbing his head at her assessment and glancing over again with a faint passing look of surprise before glancing at Malcolm.

"It's only a few hours on a flight. And it'll give you a reason to come down on vacation, see the beaches. There is a world outside of NYC worth seein' every once and awhile. When's the last time you left the city?"

[abrightboy]

"Oh, please," Jessica said with a wave. "I was in the Hamptons last weekend."

Malcolm rolled his eyes. "You were mad when I didn't put my feet on the beach. We're going to live on the beach. You can come and watch me put my feet on a beach," he pointed out. He held up a finger. "With advance notice. And by knocking."

[tinstar]

"Does Long Island count?" he asked, largely looking at Ainsley to draw her into the conversation too. "What about you, desk anchor?"

At the mention of knocking, Raylan looked over at Jessica, curious how she'd take that from Malcolm himself. Raylan had no problems backing Malcolm up but he wanted to provide that opportunity for Jessica to not require Malcolm needing being backed up.

[abrightboy]

Ainsley giggled at Raylan's question. "It's definitely not Manhattan," she quipped.

Jessica looked from Malcolm to Raylan, seeming to have a clear idea where she thought this notion was coming from.

"Well, I'm hardly going to chance coming all the way to Florida without knowing whether you're home, am I?" she said as though the idea were unfathomable.

[tinstar]

Raylan smirked at Ainsley's comment but kept his eyes on Jessica.

"I think the knockin' is the important bit. Let's all go the safe route and just.. plan trips out. No surprises for anyone, that can be New York's thing." This place wasn't his to control and he was happy to let them go about their lives as they always had, when it didn't involve his front door. Those were different rules.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm's front door would be Raylan's front door officially when they were married, but he wasn't ready to broach the wedding with his mother in any depth. They hadn't set a date yet. They had to get the house first.

"Tell Raylan what you learned from Eve," Malcolm said to his mother, dipping into his soup, largely because that would please her.

Jessica heaved a heavy sigh. "Well. She said she thought she found the identity of the girl in the box. She has a lot of missing women on file because of her work on human trafficking."

"There's someone in her life that she lost; that's why she does that work," Malcolm filled in.

"She was adopted. She originally comes from the same state as the girl she thinks is the girl in the box," Ainsley added.

[tinstar]

Yes, that was a better, safer topic and Raylan listening intently.

"Did he work in people like that? A preference for those who were.. untraceable?" His face pinched. "Those people, unfortunate enough to be caught there, have handlers, they're not just.. roaming the street. She looking into those?"

He glanced at Ainsley, eyes narrowing a little more before looking over at Malcolm.

"Sounds.. personal." He glanced back between Jessica and Ainsley. "She tell you the identity?"

[abrightboy]

"I'm not sure she ever was a victim of human trafficking. Eve must have thought nothing else could have happened to her until... she didn't," Malcolm explained. "But the Surgeon didn't care whether people had friends or family. He made himself untraceable. Law enforcement didn't track him down, you'll recall. They couldn't tie him to the crimes until they already knew who he was." When Malcolm turned him in.

"She showed me a photograph," Jessica told him. "Said the woman's name was Sophie Sanders."

"I wasn't here and she didn't leave the picture," Malcolm added. "I'm the only one who knows what the girl in the box looked like. If she'll show us the picture, I can tell whether it's the right girl. There's rampant speculation that the Surgeon had more victims, but he isn't saying."

[tinstar]

Raylan listened intently, gears rolling in his head as he shuffled the information and in turn, his own opinion on it.

"You said same state. Hard to believe that's their only connection. You know where Eve was adopted out from? Ain't they about the same age? Few years apart?" He focused back on Malcolm. "I hate to bring this up at dinner, but now that we're talkin' about it, you never told me what happened with the girl in the box. Ain't that box downstairs?"

He knew Malcolm would see the missing piece to Raylan's laid out puzzle.

[abrightboy]

"She would have been older than Eve, but I don't know by how much. I was ten. She was... a woman. Maybe it was a sister or even her mother?" He paused, setting down his spoon and he took a breath. He was steeling himself a little.

"After I found her, my father found me. That must have been the first time he chloroformed me; everything between that night and the night he was arrested is missing or fractured and fuzzy. At the time, when the police came... I didn't understand why she wasn't in the box. When I called the police, I thought I was saving her. I didn't understand that time had passed. A significant amount of time. At least a week; I still don't actually know how much."

Jessica, watching him explain the last days of their ideal family when she had no idea of the darkness befalling her child at the hands of what she thought was her perfect husband, had a hard time hiding how stricken she was by information she'd previously gotten past by believing it wasn't real.

She knew it was real now.

Ainsley had never heard more than the bare bones of the story, either. Malcolm talking about dreaming about the girl in the box and Jessica telling him she wasn't real.

Malcolm hadn't shared what he'd been piecing together with anyone.

"But I've recovered more fragments of those memories and I know now that I saw her in the back of the station wagon that my father bought to go camping and that he took me... and her... to a cabin in the forest with John Watkins, the Junkyard Killer. He would have killed her there." He leaned forward. "In the basement...."

His voice trailed off. He had to talk about that day under the house and he wasn't sure how his mother would react. She was staring at him, but that was all.

He turned his attention back to Raylan. It was easier to talk about it when he was talking to Raylan.

"In the basement, Watkins told me that he and my father were supposed to kill her together, but my father 'took care of her himself'. He and Watkins had a falling out over it and when Watkins was stabbed, my father left him to his own devices instead of helping him. That's what Watkins told me. I don't remember it," he said carefully. "But that's where the girl went after I found her. She went into the back of the station wagon and then... I don't know what he did with her. They never found her. But that's why the box is still in the house and she's gone."

[tinstar]

Raylan glanced around the faces as Malcolm spoke but his gaze always came back to the profiler. He didn't blame Jessica, didn't know that Ainsley didn't know the tale and this was, by far, not the dinner conversation he expected to have. Once Malcolm was done, Raylan nodded slowly, hand coming down to finger an empty glass.

"Mm." He nodded slightly. He didn't suppose Serial killers let people go, so that wasn't a reasonable option. "No chance she.. got away?"

[abrightboy]

Malcolm pressed his lips together, holding Raylan's gaze for a long moment.

"I have one other memory fragment from that trip with no context. It recurs in my dreams. I have a bloody knife in my hand and I'm running through the forest..."

"A knife?" Jessica gasped. "What in the hell was your father thinking?"

Malcolm looked over at her calmly. "Probably that I already knew too much. John Watkins also told me he brought me on that trip to kill me."

Jessica's hand flew to her mouth and she got up from the table and left the room shakily. Malcolm's gaze followed her with some concern, then he looked at Raylan.

"My point is, it's not outside the realm of possibility. The Surgeon may have been distracted, though Watkins was sure she was dead. And if she did live, where'd she go that she never resurfaced for twenty years?"

[tinstar]

"In this country? Anywhere. Vanishin' ain't hard. Some cash in pocket, a little know how." He stared after Jessica, thumb and forefinger worrying together before he was glancing around with a faint pinch of his brow. "Where's the scotch here?"

He looked back at where Jessica fled. "Should one of you go after her?"

[abrightboy]

Malcolm shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

"We make her feel worse," Ainsley volunteered. "Especially Malcolm, now that she knows dad abused him and she didn't even see it."

"Ainsley..." Malcolm took an irritated breath, but trailed off because he didn't have an argument against that. He didn't their mother a lot of the things he rememebered because he knew she already felt profoundly guilty.

"Maybe you should go after her," Ainsley suggested to Raylan, ignoring the look Malcolm gave her.

[tinstar]

Raylan squinted briefly with a heavy note of suspicion before he looked over at Malcolm for his opinion.

"Not without a hard drink as a peace gesture. I've dealt with this.. kind of situation before, just not with a woman her.. caliber." That still felt like the wrong word and he frowned a little as he stood up and pulled off his hat to set it on the table. "Scotch?"

Maybe he would go after her. Whatever he thought about her, that was a hard revel and he couldn't help but feel a little badly for her. Maybe he could talk her into coming back to dinner with the promise that they'd talk about something like the holidays or awards seasons or something.

[abrightboy]

"On the sideboard," Malcolm told him, pointing. "The middle decanter."

He watched Raylan carefully. He didn't want to make him do something that made him uncomfortable but he possibly was the best person to talk to her. He wasn't connected to the tragedy, except by the association he chose to have.

[tinstar]

He moved over that way, helping himself quietly to the decanter and glasses, pouring two fingers in both before looking over his shoulder at Malcolm.

"Neat or on the rocks?" If anyone knew his mother's drink style, it would be Malcolm and presenting it in the style Jessica favored was in his favor on it's own.