Finding Susan

by Kahn, Dakota

  “There’ll be leeches in there.”

  “Nonsense. And anyway, I’m keeping my clothes on.”

  “That doesn’t make sense either,” Blake said.

  Kate gave him a dispassionate look. Looking around, she noticed no sign of the duck.

  “He’s gone!”

  “You scared him off.”

  “Hey, how am I going to catch a duck who isn’t there?” she said mournfully.

  “It won’t be easy,” Blake said, sounding just a bit caustic. “But I’m sure you’ll manage.”

  “Shall I go in?”

  “No.”

  “Spoil sport.”

  “Okay, go in. But take your clothes off first unless you want to walk back all soggy and dripping with river weeds and pollywogs.”

  “If you’re not going to help, I’m certainly not going to turn into a walking peep show to entice you. Get up that hill, grandpa, you’re slowing me down.” Kate cracked her knuckles, looked at Blake with a superior expression, and put a couple of toes into the water.

  “Wow that’s cold!” she called, jumping back. Blake stifled a laugh - Kate could have a sense of humor about a lot of things, but he knew that when she was really trying to do something she wasn’t going to appreciate any humor at her expense.

  “Hey, what’s this?”

  “What?” Blake said. He wasn’t going to come near her - she would push him in without giving it a second thought, he was sure. Kate bent over and picked something out of the mud and tossed it to Blake. He caught it and took a close look. “Spark plug.”

  “Litterers,” she said. “Looks like somebody dragged something through here, too.” She pointed at the ground, and even from where Blake was standing he could see the grooves dug into the ground. “I bet they dumped it in the swamp. Maybe I’ll try and clean things up while I’m in there.”

  “You have to go into the swamp before you can do any of that,” Blake said. “Will you get away from the edge? You’re going to…”

  “There he is! There’s the duck!”

  Those were the last words she spoke before taking a header into the cold, clammy swamp. Blake yelled and came running and she bobbed up in the water and cried out, then went down again. By the time he got her back up on the bank and took off his own shirt in order to dry her off, the duck was long gone.

  *********

  “We have to go back.”

  Blake turned and glared at Kate. She was sitting on his couch, wrapped in his thickest robe, and still shivering even after the warm shower.

  “Not today,” he said.

  She frowned. “I’ve been thinking. That duck knows what he’s doing. He was trying to lead us to….” She stopped. She couldn’t say Susan’s name all of a sudden.

  “To what?”

  She looked up at him and tried to smile, but tears were filling her eyes. She knew now what had been bothering her ever since she’d come back to this valley. Susan had come back. The locket proved it. But she wasn’t anywhere now, and no one had seen her. That meant something bad had happened to her. Something very bad. She was the big sister. She was supposed to protect Susan, make sure she didn’t get into trouble. Somehow, somewhere, that goal had been lost. She hadn’t been taking care of business. It was all her fault. She knew Susan was weak, that she couldn’t withstand temptations or promises of excitement, that she reached for shiny things. And where was Kate? Why hadn’t she protected her?

  “Hey.” Blake saw how miserable she looked and he dropped down to sit beside her. “Cheer up. Always remember what Scarlett O’Hara said.”

  She frowned. “What did she say?”

  “I’ll cry tomorrow.”

  “Oh, right.” She sighed. “Tomorrow is another day.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Wow Blake. That did it. Cheered me right up. Now I can go on with my worthless life with a smile on my face.”

  He looked at her for a moment, then took her head in his hands, staring down into her eyes, his empathy for her suddenly surging in his chest. “You’re life isn’t worthless, Kate,” he told her softly. “In fact, just the reality that you are here has changed my life for the better. That’s got to be worth something.”

  She stared up at him. For once, he seemed to be sincere, but she was afraid to take it as such. What if she answered in kind and it turned out he was just kidding? What if she told him about how she really felt about him and he laughed at her? It would be little Debbie Do Right all over again.

  She opened her mouth to say something smart-alecky, but once he saw what she was about to do, he kissed her quick. He’d begun to realize that really was the best way to shut her up.

  “Blake,” she began when he drew back, and he kissed her again. He wasn’t going to let her ruin everything.

  “Oh,” she said, a little sound deep in her throat, and this time she let herself sink into it. His mouth was hot and getting sort of urgent and her pulse was beginning to race.

  She should stop him. She needed to stop him. But it felt so good. Was this what it felt like to be loved? At least for the moment. She stopped thinking about how she was going to stop him and began to kiss him back.

  “Are you going to start talking again?”

  “Of course, but…”

  He kissed her again, but just long enough to make her blink and forget what she’d meant to say.

  “I want you to be quiet,” he told her. “I want to have a little space so that I can say something for a change. Okay?”

  “But…”

  Once again, his mouth landed on hers.

  “Hush,” he said this time, and she nodded reluctantly.

  “Okay, I just want to say this. I’ve been watching you today, and thinking about you and how you’ve been reacting to things. It would be easy to just say you’re a little nuts and let it go.”

  She started to speak and he put his index finger over her lips, stopping her.

  “But I’ve got a theory. Let me tell you what it is. Then it will be your turn to talk. Okay?”

  Slowly, she nodded.

  “Here it is.”

  He took her hand in his and kissed her palm, then looked up into her eyes. “You have a little dream in there, don’t you? A little dream. You want to find Susan and you want to take us all back in time and be the kids we used to be. Isn’t that your goal?”

  “I…” She’d started to protest, but she stopped and thought about it for a minute. There was some truth in what he’d said. She hadn’t even realized it herself. That was the reason she’d come back here. She wanted to recreate the past.

  And that was clearly crazy. You couldn’t recreate the past. It wouldn’t even be good for you if you did do it. You had to move on with the times.

  But maybe you could recreate some of the emotions of the past. Somehow. She took a deep breath. It looked like he was going to give her a little space to say something and she wasn’t going to miss it.

  “You get it. That’s exactly what I want. Wow.” She shook her head. She’d started out meaning to kid him, but somehow those emotions she was talking about caught in her throat and before she could say more, she was crying again. She looked at him, her lower lip trembling. “Blake, even with Aunt Gladys and everything else, those were the happiest days of my life. I had a family. And now, I..I…I’ve got nobody.”

  Affection for this supposedly tough little cookie filled his heart. That couldn’t be right. She must have had others in her life over the years. He reached out to wipe away the tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “But, you’ve been in San Francisco for ages. Haven’t you developed any relationships?”

  She took in a deep, shuddering breath. “I try. But somehow, something in me just doesn’t connect.” She tried to smile. “I don’t know. Maybe everyone takes my jokes too seriously. I don’t know.”

  He pulled her close and held her.

  “I do want what we had growing up,” she went on, her face against his chest. “I want to feel a part
of a place, to be where people know who I am and remember who I used to be. I want to live in a place where, if I end up falling and breaking my neck in my own kitchen, someone will notice that I didn’t show up for my morning latte. That just doesn’t happen in the city.”

  He dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “That’s why you have to build your own community.”

  “Yeah. Sure.” He was right. But there was more to it. She looked up at him. “Where’s your community, Blake?”

  He looked into her beautiful eyes. She had a point. He’d come back in body, but how about the soul? He’d returned to heal and hide, and in all this time, he hadn’t found a group of people to share his life with. What was he waiting for?

  “No close friends, right?” she said, eyebrows rising.

  “What do you think, Kate?” His mouth twisted cynically. “You want to be my friend?”

  She stared at him for a long moment, then leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth. “I am your friend, numbskull. That’s what I’m doing here.”

  *********

  They went to Hank Peter’s store and bought eggs and a pint of ice cream. Mr. Peters was friendly enough this time, acting as though he was happy to see them. They went back to Blake’s apartment and sat back on the couch and shared some of the ice cream. And they talked. On and on. As though they had ten years of things saved up to say to each other.

  And then they went back to analyzing each other and finished off the rest of the ice cream.

  “Blake,” she said slowly as he filled the bowls. “I need to tell you something.”

  He looked up, his gaze suddenly wary.

  “What?” he said gruffly.

  She took a deep breath. “I was kind of mean last night. Saying you were gorging on self-pity.”

  “Oh. Is that what you said?” His smile mocked her. “I thought you said I was gorgeous. That’s why I had to kiss you. To thank you for that.”

  She kicked him with her foot.

  “Be serious. I worry about you. You are a good cop. If every cop that made a mistake and ended up getting someone killed quit, there would be no one left to protect the Cynthia Coopers of the world. I just want to say that I know you learned from it. You shouldn’t hide that expertise away and never use it again.” She shrugged. “We all need you, Blake.”

  He looked up at her and smiled. “Thanks,” he told her, his voice a little rough. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  She couldn’t hide a secret grin. “On the other hand,” she began, mischief in her eyes.

  He groaned. “There goes the lawyer again.”

  “Yeah, well…”

  They talked a little longer, and he asked her about some famous cases that had been dealt with during her time in S.F.

  “Yeah, that’s it,” Blake said, jabbing a finger at her when she told him more tales about her work as a defense attorney. “There you go. You’re a conflicted person.”

  “Brilliant. No one else has gone directly to the heart of the matter like you have.” She glared at him. “What the hell am I conflicted about?”

  “You went to law school and you became a defense attorney and you did a good job.” He shrugged. “Of course. I know you and I know you did a good job.” He shook his spoon at her. “But you were in the wrong role. You are genetically and emotionally predisposed to be a prosecutor. You can play at being a defense attorney, but your heart is firmly in the prosecutorial camp. So you were getting people off you thought should really be in jail. Weren’t you?”

  She frowned and her lower lip came out rebelliously. “Sometimes,” she admitted.

  “Most of the time. Right?”

  She wanted to whimper but she held it back.

  “In your heart, in your very soul, you’re not a defender. Kate, you’re a prosecutor. You want to catch bad guys and put them away. Don’t you?”

  She sighed. “Maybe.”

  “Sure. It’s your personality. It’s who you are. And every day you acted as a defense attorney instead, you died a little inside. Am I right?”

  She turned dark, haunted eyes toward him. “Maybe.”

  He shrugged. “You are what you are. Face it. And deal with it.”

  She blinked and tried to smile. “Okay.”

  And then she turned away because—although that wasn’t all of it, that wasn’t everything. But there was a kernel of truth to what he was saying.

  He was right. She’d been living a life full of conflicts and it was no wonder she’d been stressed out. Hesitantly, she told him about one of her biggest conflicts—the one that tortured her and seemed impossible to deal with--what to do about her own sister.

  “I’ve tried to help Susan over the years. I tried to bring her back to stay with me, tried to be a sister to her, tried to get her to help me make us into a family. But it was no use. She’d come to stay with me and in two or three days, I’d wake up and find her gone again. I wouldn’t know where she’d gone, why she left. She never told me.”

  “You tried.”

  She shook her head. “Not hard enough.”

  “But there were drugs involved. Right?”

  She nodded.

  “That makes it almost impossible.”

  “I know. But I should have got her into rehab, somehow.”

  He put an arm around her shoulders. “Kate, we’ll find her. And when we do, I’ll help you get her into a treatment program.”

  She kissed him and snuggled close. This was different. This was what it felt like to have someone else to rely on-even just for moral support. This could be good, if it lasted.

  *********

  And then it was late.

  “I should be going,” she said. “Tomorrow is the day when we right all the wrongs. Right?”

  “Right,” he agreed. He looked at her and his eyes darkened. “But I don’t think you should go back to that house. Not tonight.”

  She stretched and yawned. “I’ve got to sleep somewhere.”

  He shrugged. “My bed seems like a good place.”

  She turned to look at him, surprised. “But where will you sleep?”

  He grinned at her. “With you, silly girl.”

  “Oh.” She stared at him, heart beating fast. “Okay then,” she said.

  His arms came around her and he was kissing her again. It wasn’t home. She knew it might only last a nighttime. But it felt like home. And she needed that so badly.

  Chapter Ten

  Kate woke up with a start. The darkness of night was just beginning to show a hint of sunrise to come. She couldn’t see the clock but she knew, somehow, that it was about 4:30. Blake was sleeping soundly. She listened to him breath for a few minutes and smiled. Blakey. What had she done without him all this time?

  But her smile faded as she thought of Susan. Susan, out there, all alone.

  She remembered the duck and she half sat up. That duck. It was almost as though it was trying to tell them something. Taking the locket. Always being there, as though it wanted them to follow it.

  She thought hard, remembering the last place they had seen it, remembering the direction it had been going in.

  Joe Bob’s.

  And suddenly she knew. Joe Bob had Susan.

  She looked at Blake but she didn’t wake him. She was going to do this alone. Just a reconnaissance mission. Just a peek in a few windows to see what she could see. She slipped out of the bed and pulled on her clothes, still damp from the evening before, and topped it off with her blue jacket to keep off the morning chill. Grabbing her taser gun, she put it in one of those ubiquitous pockets Blake had complained about.

  This would only take a few minutes. Joe Bob’s place was just on the other side of the hill, just in the edge of the forest. She would be back before he woke up. In minutes, she was jogging down the road, feeling the cool morning air on her skin. She turned into the trees. Best to make an off-road approach. Best to be sneaky.

  She’d never been to his house before, but Blake had pointed it out to her
as they drove past. She bent low as she came closer, darting from behind one bush to another and trying not to make a sound, but she wasn’t too worried. After all, the man was up until all hours of the night hunting down his poor little animals. Surely he was sleeping now.

  Funny that he didn’t have dogs. You would think a man like that would have dogs. And if he did, they would announce a visitor in no time. But nothing barked. And nothing howled. So she was good.

  Unless he’d set out traps. She froze as she thought that. Oh yeah. Traps would be right down his alley. Daylight was beginning to creep in among the shadows and she began to watch where she put every step. Slowly she advanced, until she was finally at the house. No light shone from any window, and then she realized why. Every one of them had been blotted out with black paint.

  She looked around for something sharp she could use, but there was nothing but old tires and piles of rotting wood in the yard. Then she remembered the Taser gun in her pocket. The metal edge worked just fine, but she had to be careful to scratch away at the paint as softly and slowly as she could bear to. She crouched down to look in through the tiny opening she’d made. She saw a kitchen. No one was there. Sighing, she moved on to another window and repeated the process. It was a bedroom and there was Joe Bob, fast asleep.

  That was a relief. She moved on, but the third window was in a closet and she couldn’t see a thing. Looking around, she tried to think what else she could try, and that was when she noticed the low window, just barely out of the soil at the back of the house. Looked like a basement to her. She crept over and began to scrape.

  This paint came off much more quickly, as though it had never cured correctly, being so close to the cold, damp earth. She bent down once she had an opening.

  The light was dim, but not so dark that it looked unused. In fact, it was surprisingly clean for a dingy basement. No sagging boxes filled with forgotten articles. No mess of spare or broken tools in piles on the ground. The only mess was a pile of clothes bundled on a cot on the far wall, and even that…