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 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.

[abrightboy]

“Neat,” Malcolm told him grimly.

Jessica was pacing restlessly in the lounge, wringing her hands. She knew she had to calm down, but the drinks cart was in the dining room and she couldn’t look Malcolm in the face just then.

[tinstar]

Raylan nodded and picked up the glasses, striding with purpose towards the lounge. He stopped just short to slow himself down and came into the room with a casual pace and a kind look on his face.

"Here," he offered, glass outstretched as he got closer. "Thought you might need this." He wasn't going to say 'considering the news' or reference the conversation directly just yet - She clearly needed a few moments to put her face back together and Raylan wasn't looking to push her. He had a feeling that'd go over just as well as pushing Malcolm. AKA not at all.

[abrightboy]

Jessica took the glass gratefully, throwing most of it back in one go.

“God, will the nightmare never end,” she lamented into the glass more than at Raylan.

[tinstar]

Purposefully, Raylan didn't drink from his, fully prepared to give it over to her should it be needed.

"Once Malcolm solves this last question, you may never have to look at it again," he offered with a little tilt of his head. "We shouldn'ta talked about it at the table. He's been thinkin' about it a lot. He wants it to end too."

[abrightboy]

She made a little wave with her hand.

“Apparently, he wants it to end so he can run off to Miami with a cowboy,” she said dramatically. She looked at him. “No offence.” She drained her glass and contemplated the bottom of it. “Maybe it’s for the best,” she allowed. “At least he won’t be seeing his odious scumbag of a father.”

[tinstar]

He couldn't help but scoff at her answer with a wry twist of a smile and the little wave of her hand, offering out his untouched glass to replace her empty one.

"He won't. He also won't throw himself out any windows or stress even more about his day to day or how he stacks up in the dating world." Raylan eyed her for a half second. "I've asked him to marry me. He's already agreed. I think Willa will be good for him. A tiny soul to pour some of his enthusiasm and mania into."

For whatever motherly comfort that could provide. Malcolm was capable of deep and meaningful love and Raylan wanted to encourage that. People were their own kind of long term projects.

[abrightboy]

Jessica looked about to say something, maybe about the window or about the dating, but she stopped short, eyes widening as Raylan mentioned marriage.

“You’re getting married? When?” she asked. Then quickly “What for? Isn’t it a little soon and... sudden?”

[tinstar]

"Oh, we planned on droppin' by the courthouse first thing tomorrow," he teased with a faint curl of his lips before shaking his head. "Nah, it'll be after we're settled in Miami, whenever that is. Lots to happen before then. But my point in tellin' you is that he's not gonna get left alone. And I don't like the way Martin gets under his skin. Follows him home."

Raylan met her eyes purposefully. "But there is an end to this rabbit hole. We just gotta let him find it."

[abrightboy]

She held his gaze for a moment, then looked away, taking the full glass from him, but not drinking from it yet. Her eyes found the window behind him.

"Martin wanted to kill him. Our baby; his own child," she said in a low, lamenting voice. "Why didn't I see it?"

[tinstar]

"You're not the only one that falls into that trap," he assured as a matter of fact. "No reason for you to think that your perfect life and lovin' husband would turn out the way that it did."

It wasn't her fault, but he fully understood where and why she felt responsible.

"Girl I went to highschool with married the quarterback, real American dream til he started beatin' her. She shot him over their dinner table." He blinked over at Jessica again. "He didn't have a clue it was comin'. Didn't suspect a thing."

It wasn't just murderer's wives that got blindsided by the ugliness and capability of people.

[abrightboy]

She nodded dully, looking down into her glass, contemplating the contents.

"I was eighteen when I met Martin. He was almost 8 years older than me. Up to that point, my mother had prepared me very diligently for the sort of life I was to have. An appropriate marriage that I would attend dutifully." She gave Raylan a knowing look. "There were certain indiscretions you were meant to ignore and even actively hide. The family's name was everything. Children to carry on the legacy. Good works in the community." She shrugged. "Martin was not an appropriate match. He was a medical student from a... less than ideal family. Penniless, of course. My mother absolutely forbid me to marry him. But I did anyway." She looked at Raylan. "She wasn't right for the reasons she thought, but it would have saved a lot of heartache if I'd listened to her. Of course..." She shrugged. "He became a renowned cardiac and vascular surgeon and fences were mended. For a little while. Until his arrest." She pressed her lips into a wry line. "I knew he was sneaking around. Coming home with cheap perfume clinging to his clothes. I thought he was having an affair. I followed my mother's lessons. Kept quiet about it. Looked away. Malcolm never looked away from anything. I think if Martin was what he seemed to be and not... what he is, Malcolm would have gone into medicine. He followed his father everywhere, hung on his every word. Then Malcolm saw what he was and... everything came crashing down. My family avoided us. Children at school were cruel to him. The only good thing in his life was Gil. Of course he became obsessed with law enforcement. There's never been any way back since then." She stepped a fraction closer to Raylan. "Do you want to hear something horrible?" she asked, as though what she'd been talking about so far was light garden party conversation.

[tinstar]

That was young. Far younger than Raylan would have felt himself an adult, in comparison. At 19, he was just trying to get an education and a job; start a better life for himself. He almost felt bad for Jessica, if he didn't look at the lifestyle she led. But he could sympathize with young love and the damages that came of it.

Raylan tilted his head in a little, eyebrows lifting curiously in invitation for whatever Jessica was biting at the bit to tell him.

[abrightboy]

Jessica glanced towards the door, then looked at Raylan.

"Martin was careful. He killed at least twenty-three people and nobody had a single clue that he was the one that did it until Malcolm called the police. How did he happen to let his ten year old see what he saw? I think he wanted Malcolm to see those things. I think he wanted to teach Malcolm how to kill. After Martin was taken away, I took Malcolm to countless psychiatrists. More than one of them suggested I watch him carefully for symptoms of latent psychopathy."

[tinstar]

Raylan bobbed his head, glancing at the floor with a nod. "It doesn't take much to make a killer and.. Well, I met him, I don't know if you ended up hearin', but we.. didn't get on well. I don't know that I disagree with those psychiatrists but he's not over any cliff edge yet. I think you're right." There was nothing untrue about that statement. Martin was grooming Malcolm and was still trying to keep control of him.

"I'm not afraid of stoppin' him from goin' over it. This is somethin' that can be managed, if he's allowed to be happy. To let his brain get used to the idea and feelin' of not freakin' out all the time." He really did hope that Jessica saw the effect that he did on his time with Malcolm. She meant him well, savage, ashamed mama bear that she was.

[abrightboy]

She looked at him for a long moment.

"I suppose I never thought that would be an option for him. Happiness. This kind of happiness, especially." She sighed and took a sip of the drink, then looked at Raylan again. "Okay, happiness would be good for him; I can get behind that. But what's in this for you? Sleepless nights? Malcolm lives on a knife's edge. Why do you want to be part of that for the rest of your life?"

[tinstar]

He let out a little sigh, head bobbing as he pulled back a little, one hand gesturing out to the side. "That answer hasn't changed. Just him. Jessica, I'm forty three years old and this is the only relationship that hasn't ended in pain and disaster. I was happily married for nearly 7 years. I just wanna be that kinda happy again." Surely she understood that need, that want.

"Divorce shouldn't be the end of all relationships. My last girlfriend before him told me I was too emotionally messed up to be with anyone. The one before that stole from me so she could buy her husband that I didn't know about ten grand in fuckin' poultry. He can handle my job. Me. My devotion to it." He could be himself was the real point and that was worth everything.