by Ciara Shayee
Riley opened the door furthest from them. Grace clasped Indie’s hand, kissed her forehead, then urged her to slide off of Laker’s lap so they could disembark. To her surprise, Indie clutched at Laker with a whimper and refused to move at all.
“It’s all right, Grace, I can lift her out,” he said. Hiding the sting of rejection, Grace pushed away and stepped onto the cracked driveway as Laker shifted his body with Indie still clinging to him.
Riley, Agent Davies, and Agent Willows took in the condition of the girls with barely concealed horror. Indie’s expression, or what they could see of it with her face pressed against Laker’s broad chest, was devoid of any emotion.
Her body was slim. Too slim. The thin white t-shirt she wore was stained by ash and smoke. It hung loose over her skinny frame, her bony right shoulder clearly visible because the neck of the top was far too big. Grace’s condition wasn’t much better, but marginally; and only because she’d managed to eat and keep food down. Indie hadn’t been able to eat for days, but she’d never been a big eater anyway.
“Come on, let’s get you inside.”
Agent Willows, the only female agent available at short notice, coaxed Grace forward. Laker walked ahead of Riley and Agent Davies as they valiantly battled to disguise their disgust at the way the girls had been treated.
Inside, Indie refused to be put down. Grace sat herself on the shabby couch, ignoring her hatred of unfamiliar people to curl into Laker’s side so she could be close to Indie. Baby-blues took everything in; from the peeling wallpaper to the pair of cold coffees sitting on the table a few feet away. Terror clouded her thoughts when she spotted a large, intimidating man with grey-brown hair standing guard in the corner. She felt silly because he didn’t look anything like him, not really, but his hair and the stance…it triggered a fear response she’d never before been aware of.
Her fragile nerves weren’t helped by Indie’s prolonged silence. All Grace wanted was a sound, a single word to reassure her. To take away the crushing fear that this was all a big joke. As much as Grace had prayed for this day to come, she couldn’t believe it was finally here.. Not yet. Not even with the blast from the past Laker represented.
Riley’s appearance took her fear down a notch. The tenuous link between their rescue, their safety, and Riley helped her racing heart settle just a little. For a few long moments, the room bustled with activity as agents moved equipment out of the way. The thumping rhythm of their FBI issued boots on the exposed stairs sent frissons of anxiety through the girls, although only Grace showed it with the widening of her eyes. Phone calls were made, plans changed, revised safety measures put into place within a matter of minutes, and throughout all this, Indie and Grace stayed still and silent, unable to do anything but take it all in.
Then, Laker caught a nod from Riley to one of the agents whose name he didn’t know. The dark-haired man glanced over at him, cradling Indie while hugging Grace around the shoulders, before darting up the stairs. The muffled sound of smashing glass and something hitting the floor above made Indie flinch, a low whine escaping her lips. Heavy footsteps running down the stairs a moment later elicited a similar, albeit sharper, response.
Indie and Grace startled, cowering in fear against each other and Laker as two men burst into the living area—one in dark wash jeans and a black, long-sleeved top while the other sported vintage wash jeans and a matching top, but in navy. Heaving, panting breaths eradicated the silence, their eyes trained solely on the shivering girls across the room.
Thick anticipation saturated the air as two broken fathers set eyes on their daughters for the first time in what had been twelve lengthy, heartbreakingly unbearable years.
Faced with a broken, too-thin Indie, so different to the rosy-cheeked girl of his memories, Reagan was forced into the sudden realisation that his little girl had grown into a young woman.
A mother.
She was no longer the eight-year-old he remembered, though she was tiny even for twenty-one. It was a hard pill to swallow—for him, and for Peter, who was fast coming to the same conclusion. Hauling in a deep breath, Reagan exhaled it shakily, managing to utter a single word. His daughter’s name.
Nobody could have predicted her reaction. Not even Grace.
Her body went slack before tensing up. A ragged, harsh huff of air left Indie’s lips; it was loud even across the room as her haunted blue-green eyes fell on Reagan, the torture of that simple contact hitting everybody square in the gut. Pain lanced Indie’s heart, her voice raspy as she groaned, “No. No, no, no, no, no…”
Aching sadness mixed with pain from her head injury, her refusal to take painkillers coming back to bite her now, and lingering shock created a potent, disbelieving haze.
It’s all a dream. This isn’t real.
A heartbreakingly realistic dream that didn’t seem to be ending.
Everyone watched with teary eyes as she began to rock on Laker’s lap, her face turned into his neck, hands white-knuckling his slightly-too-small borrowed hoodie.
“What do I do?” Reagan asked nobody in particular, alarmed at the sight of this unfamiliar yet so familiar girl in clear distress right in front of him.
“Let me just…” Laker trailed off, adjusting his position a bit. He squeezed his arms around Indie, ignoring the beguiled but enthralled onlookers as he whispered, “Hey, Indie, you don’t have to be scared, okay? You’re safe. You’re safe with us, with me. I don’t have to let you go if you don’t want me to, but your dad wants to see you. He’s been waiting a long time just to see your face again. Don’t you want to see him, too?”
Slowly, Indie’s keening slowed, then stopped. Each muscle relaxed infinitesimally until Laker wasn’t just holding a bundle of nervous tremors anymore. With her hair forming a matted golden halo around her troubled mind, she blinked tear-filled eyes a few times, and Laker could almost see the change in them. The switch from unseeing to aware.
Reagan let out a strangled whimper, Peter’s arm shooting out to hold him upright, as matching sets of anguished aqua eyes met for the first time in over a decade. It took an endless moment for Indie to realise…
It’s not a dream.
“Daddy…” As soon as the choked word was free of her lips, Reagan shot forwards to fall to his knees in front of her. His large, calloused hands hovered nervously over her legs as torrents of tears soaked their faces. Having barely managed to hold herself back in case Indie needed her, Grace bounded across the room into her dad’s waiting embrace.
“Oh, my girl,” Reagan croaked, heart breaking all over again as he gazed into his daughter’s tortured eyes. “I’ve missed you. So, so much.”
“Me too, Daddy.” Without another word, Indie slipped neatly from Laker’s lap against Reagan’s crouched body, hitting him with a muffled whimper. The force should have knocked him off-balance, but he barely felt it. As he wrapped his strong arms around her tiny body, Reagan barely managed to suppress a shudder at the all-too-obvious mistreatment of his girl. If he tried, he could probably have wrapped his arms around her twice, that was how scarily thin she was. The feel of her spine and shoulder-blades against his forearms was almost more than the emotional father could handle. The only thing stopping him from letting go to hunt Smith down himself was that he’d been waiting a long, long time for this day.
As Laker quietly stood to step away from the reunited father and daughter, Indie tightened the weak hold she had on her dad and found herself struggling with the idea that, at some point, she’d have to let go.
That point came some thirty minutes later.
Laker heard it first. Over the course of the past few days he’d become attuned to the way Marley fidgeted, the sounds she made with her body if not with her mouth. And he knew, even though she was upstairs watching SpongeBob with an agent watching over her while he was downstairs, that she wanted something.
He excused himself silently, leaving Indie and Grace on the loveseat with Reagan and Peter. It was a testament to the poor conditi
on the girls were in that they all fit, because it was barely four feet across.
Creeping up the stairs on socked feet, Laker grinned when he spied Marley. She was on folded knees in front of the portable DVD player, but her eyes were on the doorway, then him when he appeared. Her gaze brightened and her lips moved into a small, hesitant smile. A hopeful smile. She looked so sweet, so innocent, with a single red tulip tucked behind her ear. One of the agents had brought a bunch to the house to brighten it up at Riley’s request, and Marley had silently giggled behind her hands when Laker had plucked one from the vase to settle it at the side of her head.
“Yeah, Little Sweet, I’m here to get you. Are you done watching SpongeBob?”
She nodded, looking forlornly at the repeating main menu. Ah, so the DVD had ended.
“All right, well I’ve got some people who’ll probably want to see you. C’mon.”
Only once he’d opened his arms to her and given her permission to move did Marley scramble to her feet, rushing across the floor to wrap her arms around his leg, peering up pleadingly. He knew exactly what for, too.
“Oh, all right. You know you just kill me with those big ‘ole eyes, don’t you?”
Marley’s smile widened further, a flash of white teeth between her rosebud lips. He hadn’t been able to deny her one single thing so far, and he didn’t start now. Laker lifted her small weight easily up onto his hip, holding her there and brushing a wayward curl back from her face. He’d managed to brush it and pull it back into a messy ponytail, at least. Nobody else in the house seemed capable of doing hair—except Reagan, who still hadn’t been able to get close enough to touch Marley without her panicking.
With no further ado, Laker smiled to himself, knowing Indie would be pleased when he walked through the living room door. He only wished he could hear how excited Marley would be. Whenever he’d babysat Carl-Roman, he’d loved the way the little boy cheered at the news his dad was home, or if they were going to visit Reagan and Peter he’d tell Laker all the things he wanted to do there. Marley simply held onto the fabric at his shoulder and watched his face curiously as he grinned.
It was funny, but Laker thought he’d had enough shocks for his entire lifetime just in the past few days, and yet as he stepped through the doorway to the living room, turning in time to watch Marley as she peered around the room and caught sight of the two new occupants of the house, he found himself delighted to be surprised yet again.
“Mommy!”
All eyes swivelled in synchronisation to the little girl scrambling down from Laker’s hip to charge across the space separating her and her mother. She flung herself into Indie’s lap, sobbing big, heaving but silent, cries that broke the hearts of everybody in the room. For the longest time, Indie didn’t even move, only muscle memory pushing her arms around Marley to hold her close even as she stared in wonder at the little girl’s shaking body.
“Did she…? Did you…did you just, speak?”
Marley peered up at her mother from beneath long, wet lashes. The warm weight of Indie’s arms around her brought forth a smile as she threw herself back at her chest, snuggling in with a quiet hum.
Indie looked to Reagan, Peter, then Laker, finally noticing the wide, proud grin on his face. “What? Has she done that before?”
Laker shook his head, unable to stop himself laughing. The sound drew Marley’s attention. She twisted, lips spreading into a tremulous smile when she found Laker grinning at her. “No. No, she hasn’t spoken, not since we got her.”
“Oh, thank God.” It was impossible to miss the relief on Indie’s face as she hugged her daughter, stroking her hair repetitively, lips curling into the smallest of almost-smiles when she noticed the flower behind Marley’s ear. It smelled fresh, reminded her of home. Of England, and of Peter and Karen’s garden when she was a child. “I thought…for a second I thought I’d missed it.”
“Missed what?” Peter asked gently.
Indie shot him a shaky half-smile tinged with sadness. “Her first word.”
At her side, Grace sniffled and reached over to gently squeeze Indie’s leg, smiling when Marley stretched to be able to tap her fingertips to the corner of her mouth in a silent I love you.
“So, that answers that question,” Riley mused aloud. When Indie looked to him for clarification, he added, “Whether or not she spoke at all. We wondered if she’d warm up to us and get comfortable enough to speak.”
“She’s never spoken,” Indie admitted. “We’ve never known why. She understands us perfectly, and always does as she’s told. We talked and talked when she was a baby, trying to get her to say ‘Mommy’ and ‘Gracie,’ but she never did.”
Everyone in the room could see it upset Indie. Including Marley. She pulled her attention away from Laker to reach up and cradle her face, wiping away a lone tear as it cascaded over Indie’s cheek. “M-mommy?”
More tears fell. Happy ones, this time. Indie’s face blossomed with a smile. “Yeah, baby girl, Mommy. I’m your Mommy.”
Chapter eleven
As Riley watched over the family later that day, his eyes shone with relief.
Until now, he'd only ever seen either twelve-year-old photos of Indie and Grace, or blurred candids taken by his undercover duo when nobody was looking. To see the girls up close, in high definition, wreaked havoc on his thoughts and emotions. He was normally immovable and able to stay distanced. Not this time.
When it had been revealed that the girls weren't who they claimed to be, who Smith claimed them to be, Riley had wanted to yank them from the ranch immediately, especially when further searches didn't uncover any hospital, schooling, or identification records for them. But he'd waited.
A couple of weeks later, during an all-nighter at the office, he'd delved into the missing person's records from further afield, purely on a whim. It was those few minutes of out-of-character deviation from the plan that had resulted in the girls' real identities being discovered.
Now, watching two dads reunited with their long-lost daughters, watching Indie reconnect with her baby girl and introduce her properly to her Pawpaw, Uncle Peter, and Uncle Laker, Riley couldn't help but be glad of his lack of wife and family. If he'd had a wife, children, waiting at home for him, perhaps this group of people wouldn't have been sitting there together. Maybe Reagan and Peter would still have been in England with their broken hearts, broken families, and broken faith.
It was easy to see how shattered they'd become simply by looking at them. In every single movement Reagan or Peter made, their pain was tangible, like extra limbs or clouds of mist surrounding them.
However, as much as their pain was easy to see, so was the growing joy building within them. It grew and grew as the seconds passed. As Riley gazed at Reagan, Indie, Peter, and Grace, Marley nestled in her mother's lap, Laker perched on the end table teasing the little girl with the stalk of the flower he'd gifted her, Riley felt his decision to remain an eternal bachelor was the right one. After all, all of this, it might not have been possible if he'd been distracted by thoughts of returning home to his own family, had they existed.
Outcomes such as this one were the exact reason he had put his heart, soul, and life into the FBI, and they were the reason he'd continue to do so.
~ oOo ~
"How's Archie? And Pippa and Heidi?" Grace rasped a short while later, her throat sore from the smoke and all the crying she'd done.
Reagan and Peter shared a meaningful look while Laker avoided her gaze. Peter nodded imperceptibly when the girls looked at one another. Laker removed his cap to tug at his hair before setting it backwards on Marley's head. She bounced with a laugh, twisting it to the side—Laker snapped a photo on his phone and flashed a dimpled grin when she clapped her hands over her mouth and giggled silently at the resulting image.
"Waiting to hear from us, and you," Reagan began, squeezing Indie’s shoulder. She snuggled into his side, clinging to his black t-shirt with the hand not holding Marley at the waist. "Archie has…"
Tears sprang to Reagan’s eyes and a lump lodged itself in his throat, cutting him off. The thought of Indie and Grace only now hearing about Archie's sons was gut-wrenching in the extreme. They should have been there the night Carl-Roman was born and named after them—the little boy given the names Indie and Grace would have had if they’d been born boys. There should be pictures on the mantle of them holding him alongside the images of Reagan and Peter holding them, photos of them playing together as they grew.
Just like there should have been all those things for Marley. Pictures of her with her uncle, her honorary aunts Pippa and Heidi. But they'd never get that time back.
"Has…what?"
Reagan snapped back to the present with a bang. His eyes fell to Indie, her gaze trained on his face with curiosity and trepidation. He could feel Peter, Grace, and Laker looking at him, too.
"Baby girl," Indie blinked owlishly when her dad cupped her cheek tenderly in a large, slightly rough hand. "Archie has two sons. His eldest is six, and the youngest, Chase, is five months old. Champ, the oldest, he's named—"
Too choked up at the sight of Indie’s shock, Reagan trailed off and let Laker finish, cradling Indie to him to comfort her the only way he knew how; by humming a quiet tune he'd hummed many a time when she was a baby.
The same song she hummed to Marley whenever she got upset.
"His name is Carl-Roman, after you two," Laker murmured.
Indie and Grace were dumbstruck. Trying to take in the knowledge that Archie, their big brother, was a dad. A dad to two little boys. They tried to absorb the news that somewhere in England there was a little boy named after them who shared blood with Indie and a family with Grace.