Null Pointer

CWE1 Resolutions

1. January 1: Blush

   "And you thought it would be a good idea to--?" Peter Belden demanded, perturbed.

   Mart blushed bright red, much to Trixie's delight (well, that and that it wasn't her or one of her mysteries this time). "I, um, probably shouldn't have thought so, but it did work out and all, so I really didn't think much more about it, sir," Mart admitted reluctantly, wisely forgoing his usual big words.

   "And because you didn't Bobby and Larry and Terry thought they might be able to do likewise, or even 'better', and now Terry's in the hospital with a compound break."

   "So... grounded until he gets the cast off?" Mart guessed hesitantly.

   "For a start."

   Mart nodded meekly.

2. January 2: "And what do we have here?"

   "And what do we have here?" Trixie mused, picking up a present from the pile under the tree.

   "Who's it for?" Her niece demanded impatiently, bouncing on her knees.

   Trixie tilted the brightly wrapped gift so the younger girl would read the label. "Good question. Do you recognize that name?"

   Her niece squinted at what was still more or less a collection of random squiggles. She was starting to recognize individual letters, but was still a ways from reading.

   "Unca Jim?" She guessed.

   "That's exactly right!" Trixie agreed. "Do you want to run this over to Uncle Jim?"

   Her niece's head bobbed as eagerly as the rest of her body had been, so Trixie handed the present over, following more sedately, since she'd been naturally sitting beside her husband before she'd had to get up to pick the next gift.

   "For me?" Jim asked when the present was unceremoniously dumped in his lap. "From who?" He pointed again to the tag, wondering if his niece had really recognized his name or just taken a gamble on the length of the name.

   His niece shook her head. "Dunno."

   "That's okay," Jim soothed. "You don't call her by the name on this tag. It says 'Maddie' but you call her 'Grandma'. Thanks, Mother," he added, turning his attention to Madeline Wheeler before he tugged the wrapping paper open neatly at the side flap.

3. January 3: Picture Prompt

   

   "I found her!" Trixie called out.

   "Oh, thank goodness," Honey said, clearly relieved, as she hurried to catch up to Trixie.

   "What are you doing up there?" Trixie demanded of her cousin, who was sitting up on a half-fallen tree.

   "Meditating," Hallie replied absently.

   "There's a yoga studio in town," Trixie informed her.

   "Yoga studios are for hippies," Hallie retorted archly, crab-crawling her way back down to the path.

   Trixie raised an eyebrow at the opinion.

   "Where are your shoes?" Honey asked, noticing Hallie's bare feet.

   Hallie waved a careless hand in the direction of the path. "At the junction. I needed to feel the earth."

   Trixie was wholly unimpressed. "So yoga studios are for hippies and walking barefoot through the preserve is for, what, Pocahontases?"

   Hallie frowned at her. "For people in tune with the natural world," she answered. "You should try it sometime."

4. January 4: Volcanic

   "I take it you and our esteemed kinswoman had another volcanic eruption?"

   Trixie rolled her eyes. "She has these opinions about everything!" Trixie complained, as explosively as Mart had suspected. "And she's wrong about half of it, at least!"

   "Such as?"

   "She thinks yoga studios are for hippies!"

   "As opposed to you, who wouldn't be caught dead in one?" Mart asked, puzzled.

   "It's not that," Trixie snapped, vexed by Mart not comprehending what was so obvious to her. "She'd rather go barefoot in the preserve, climb a tree, and meditate in a tree like some sort of wild creature."

   "You could ask our esteemed eldest kinsman about the known benefits of communing with the natural world." Mart grinned mischievously. "Or our equally esteemed co-president."

   "That's your third 'esteemed' in one conversation. Three strikes, you're out. Go re-read the dictionary."

   "So it was that bad," Mart concluded.

   "Volcanic," Trixie said icily before stomping off to respond to Moms calling for her from the kitchen.

5. January 5: "Heavy in Your Arms" by Florence and the Machine

   I was a heavy heart to carry

   My feet dragged across ground

   And he took me to the river

   Where he slowly let me drown

   ...

   And is it worth the wait

   All this killing time?

   Are you strong enough to stand

   Protecting both your heart and mine?

   Sometimes Honey wondered how the algorithms decided what to put next on an auto-play, because she was very certain she'd never listened to this song or artist before, and it wasn't a new track, and it was pretty depressing for her usual musical selections. That said, she did find herself listening to the lyrics, and wondering if it could have been her story, if things had gone a little bit differently between her and Brian. For example, if the tsunami had come before their trip to Australia, if the tsunami had come in the weakest moments of their relationship rather than a stronger one. Would she have been reluctant to go with him when he asked to talk to her, heart heavy, feet dragging? Would it have felt like drowning if he'd broken up with her rather than asking her to stick with him through this diversion from The Plan? Or would she have been the one to ask him if it was worth it to keep trying to make things work after all this time? Would she have left him to try to manage his emotions and protect his heart while still being present to the devastation in Whette?

6. January 6: "It still looks crooked."

   Trixie tilted her head to one side, and then the other. She straightened back up and took a step backward. "It still looks crooked," she said at last.

   Jim sighed. "I know." He frowned at the picture of the Bob-Whites they'd just hung on the wall of Honey and Brian's new-to-them renovation house-project. "But it's not," he said, gesturing to the level balanced on the top of the frame that showed the picture couldn't be more perfectly level.

   Trixie frowned at the level. "Maybe your level is broken!" She accused, pulling her phone out of her pocket and searching for a level app.

   Jim raised a russet eyebrow. "So you're going to use the far more accurate cellphone method?" He asked, but he obligingly removed his level, setting it down next to his toolbox.

   Trixie stuck her tongue out at him as she placed her phone on the frame the way the app's instructions said to do.

   "See? Level," Jim observed, but he was already pulling up the app on his phone. He was, admittedly, a perfectionist and with teenage boys in and out of his office at Ten Acres regularly, the things on his wall got bumped regularly. He wasn't willing to indulge his perfectionism enough to keep a real level in his office, but it did make him feel better to be able to confirm he'd gotten things back where they belonged.

   He handed Trixie his phone as she repocketed hers and she placed it on the frame, scowling when it, too, confirmed the photo was as level as level could be.

   "It still looks crooked," Trixie complained, again.

   Jim frowned at the offending photograph. "I know," he repeated. "But it's not."

   Trixie's hands went to her hips and she glared at the photo before her attention locked on something on the ground. She pointed in the direction of Jim's toolbox. "Jim, look!"

   (As if he wasn't already looking where she was pointing.)

   Jim frowned. "I should have guessed, in a house this old."

   "What do we do?"

   Jim's frown deepened. "I mean, maybe when we get the rest of the pictures up and they're level with each other, it'll look better?"

   "Or maybe it'll just call even more attention to the fact that the floor isn't level! Do we hang all the pictures so they're parallel to the floor? Is that even a thing?"

   "It could be," Jim hedged. "I could draw lines with a dry erase marker on my level for what this house's 'level' is. But when we get everything hung, it might look not-straight, because we'd have to also take it into account when we put the rest of the nails in so they're all the right distances apart."

   "What do we do?" Trixie wondered.

   That, at least, Jim knew the answer to. "Di!" He called out, knowing she was somewhere in the house. "We need your help!"

7. January 7: Infatuation

   "I will not let your infatuation with Diana ruin--"

   "Hold up, stop right there!" Mart interrupted Dan hotly. "An infatuation is a short-lived feeling that makes the feeler act foolishly. 1) I fully plan to marry Di when we're both old enough, so it's not short-lived, ergo I am not infatuated with Di; I'm in love. 2) My feelings for Di don't cause me to act foolishly--"

   "No, you do that all on your own," Trixie chimed in.

   "and," Mart continued, with a silencing glare at his sister, "3) how is me wanting Di on our team because I love her worse than you wanting Trixie on our team because you know it'll make Jim jealous?"

   "That's not why I want Trixie on our team," Dan protested. When his declaration was met with a snort from not just Mart, but both Trixie and Jim as well, Dan amended, "It's not the only reason I want Trixie over Di."

   "4) Diana is taller than Trixie," Mart continued. "We're going to play basketball. Size matters." He frowned when Dan opened his mouth. "Height matters," Mart clarified. "You know what I meant."

   Dan sighed in defeat. "Fine; whatever. Let's play."

   A little more than half an hour later, after Jim, Brian, and Trixie had beaten Mart, Dan, and Di handily, Dan commented, "You know what really matters in basketball? The ability to get the ball in the net. An ability one of the present female Bob Whites has, and one does not. No offense, Di."

   Di shrugged apologetically. "It looks so much easier than it is."

   "That's what you said all week in gym, too," Dan reminded her. He looked at Mart. "Did you forget Di and I are in the same gym class this semester, and that we're in the middle of the basketball unit, so I might actually know something you didn't about Di's basketball skills?"

   "Okay, you were right, I was wrong. Happy now?"

   "No, wait, say it again so I can record it," Trixie said.

   "Do I look daft? I'm not giving you that kind of blackmail material."

8. January 8: "On Self-Knowledge" by Khalil Gibran

   While Regan certainly didn't need--or particularly want--help teaching any of the Ten Acres boys how to ride, he did understand that multiple inexperienced riders might need help at the same moment, so he did like to have at least one other experienced horseman or horsewoman on hand when he was giving group lessons. So Jim was observing the class, leaning against the inside fence of the riding corral.

   One of the boys who wasn't part of this class wandered out and climbed up to sit on the fence beside Jim. "Can we talk, Mr. Jim?"

   "Of course. I'm here in case Mr. Regan needs help with the horses, so I might have to step away. If you want my undivided attention, give me half an hour and we can talk in my office."

   "It's not like that. It's not that important."

   "If it's important enough to you to come find me in your free time, it's important enough," Jim replied. "What's on your mind?"

   "You're, um, Christian, right, like most everyone on campus?"

   "I am," Jim agreed. "Were you raised in a different tradition?"

   "I don't know that it was any specific religion, just... less old guy in sky watching and controlling everything and more everyone has a path to walk."

   Jim nodded. "Personally, I think there are a lot of truths out there, and they're more personal than the amount of fighting that's been done over religious beliefs in the history of the world would make it seem. I think there are some capital-T Truths, too, that are both bigger and simpler than we can articulate with human languages. The things that we all--regardless on religion--agree on point to those bigger Truths."

   "So it's okay?" The boy asked hesitantly.

   "Is what okay?"

   "That I don't believe in the old guy in the sky."

   Jim laughed. "Yeah, it's okay. Anyone at this school -- students or staff -- gives you a hard time about that, you come to me. And, hey, stop by my office on Monday. There's a poem a family friend gave me and Mr. Dan when we were both wrestling with our faith. I'll give you a copy. The line that I'm thinking of right now talks about how it's now about finding the truth, but about finding a truth.

   Say not, “I have found the truth,” but rather, “I have found a truth.”

9. January 9: Picture Prompt

   

   Dear Jim,

   We reached my apartment in DC early this afternoon. Good thing, too, because the snow started on our second trip in from the car with Abby’s things. We got about four inches this afternoon. At home, four inches on Christmas Eve would make things perfectly festive. Here, the world shuts down. Fortunately, the little corner café is run by a northerner, so they were still open, and we were able to get dinner, and pick up some baked goods for breakfast. That’ll give us time to sort out what I still have in my cabinets and what we need from the store. By then the snow will probably be melted. It never sticks around here for very long.

   Since I wasn’t trying to drive in it, or deal with drivers who didn’t know how to drive in it, I got to enjoy the rare DC snow, and show Abby around the neighborhood when it was looking its absolute best, all muted and softened with the snow cover, glowing with Christmas lights, some under the snow, some just reflecting on it.

   It was beautiful and even felt a little like coming home. Which was a weird feeling, especially when it came on top of an even stronger longing to be showing Abby around a snow-coated Sleepyside instead, introducing her to all the people who matter most to me, especially at this time of year, all the people who would take her in and make her part of the family, so she’d never have to face another holiday feeling alone in the world.

   Someday, right, Jim? Someday, when I come home, you all will still be the family, the Bob-Whites, I left, and no matter how you feel about my decisions, you, in particular, will understand Abby’s pain and wrap her up in the warmth of a Sleepyside holiday. I’ll look forward to that day, even while I do my best to bring a little cheer to Abby’s holiday this year.

   Merry Christmas, Jim.

   December 24 2009.

10. January 10: Posies

    Ring-a-round the rosie,

    A pocket full of posies,

    Ashes! Ashes!

    We all fall down!

    Diana smiled, watching her children play with the other Bob-Whites' children. "It never bothered me as a kid, but that nursery rhyme makes no sense. I mean what even is a 'rosie' or 'posies'; what's any of it about?"

    "You don't want to know," Brian murmured.

    "Au contraire," Mart differed. "That theory has been debunked."

    "Which theory?" Di asked her husband.

    "That it's about the, or a, plague in England. But the symptoms are wrong, and the words that that theory were based on are more modern than the original, and the older wording correlates even less with the circumstances in England at the time."

    "Finished with the dictionary so you moved on to the encyclopedia?" Dan guessed.

    Mart shook his head. "Still in the dictionary," Mart promised. "The etymology of a term like 'posies' falls under the category of 'dictionary'."

    "Phew," Dan teased, exaggeratedly wiping his brow.

    "Okay, but still, what even are 'posies'?" Di asked.

    "Small bundles of flowers, usually a gift bouquet. Apparently roses, in this case?" Honey said. "I'm with you thought, it still doesn't really make much sense. Never mattered to me as a kid, either, though."

11. January 11: "Just One Kiss" by Raphael Saadiq ft. Joss Stone

    It had been more than a year, nearly two, since all of the Bob-Whites had been in one place at one time. To celebrate, Honey had organized a Bob-White reunion party. She'd had everyone draw names, just like they did for their secret santa exchange at Christmas, but, since the reunion would be late summer, rather than gifts, she'd instructed them each to find a song that represented their relationship with the Bob-White whose name they'd drawn.

    "Jim, your turn," Honey informed her full-blooded-adopted brother.

    "I drew Trixie's name," Jim explained, "which left me with a lot of choices, but I tried to focus on our relationship as Bob-Whites, not our... well, our relationship."

    "Well that keeps this family-friendly," Dan murmured to Mart. Di, overhearing, elbowed him even while trying to stifle giggles.

    Jim ignored whatever Dan was whispering. He probably didn't want to know. "I chose 'Just One Kiss' by Raphael Saadiq," he explained.

    It was that one kiss from you

    That changed my life into a world of gold

    It was just that kiss from you

    That showed me what I truly needed most

    It was just that kiss from you

    That showed me life can be so beautiful

    "It was a Hershey bar, not a kiss," Trixie blurted out after hearing the lyrics.

    Honey smacked her arm half-heartedly. "That's what you're taking from this?! That was a such a romantic sweet gesture, Jim!"

    "Thank you, Honey. And I know it was a whole bar of chocolate, Trixie, but there aren't very many songs that talk about how a candy bar made a world of difference to a half-starved runaway."

    "That's fair, I guess," Trixie acknowledged.

    Honey rolled her eyes. "Just for that, you can go next."

12. January 12: "Are you certain?"

    "Di! We need your help!" Jim called out.

    Di stepped down from the step-ladder and looked at her oldest daughter. "Can you put the curtain ties on, and then take the other set of curtains into the office? I don't want you up on the step ladder alone, not with a armful of trailing fabric, so wait for me to come back, or go get your father, okay?"

    "I will," her daughter promised dutifully.

    Di headed for the hallway where Jim and Trixie were supposed to be hanging photos of the extended Bob-White clan. "What's wrong?" She asked when she reached them. "Aside from the picture being crooked?"

    "That is what's wrong," Trixie said.

    Di suppressed a sigh. It was a very Bob-White project for all of them to finish Brian and Honey's house while they were away on their second attempt at a honeymoon, and Honey and Brian certainly deserved both the vacation and the surprise of coming home to a finished house, but sometimes Di felt like she was herding cats, and Jim had been the one person, as her co-project-manager, that hadn't been giving her headaches.

    "It is actually level," Jim explained. "We checked it with the level, and both of our phones. Only the floor isn't actually level, so it looks crooked."

    "Are you certain?" Di asked. Even the house itself was giving her headaches now.

    Jim nodded, looking as miserable as she felt. He gestured to where his level was sitting next to his toolbox, dutifully indicating that the surface it was on wasn't at all level.

    Di rubbed her temples. "Okay, but I know neither of you think I can magically make the house level, so what do you want me to do?"

    "Do we hang all the photos level, or parallel to the floor? We couldn't decide whether hanging more would make them look less crooked or more crooked."

13. January 13: Picture Prompt

    

    Jim put both hands on his sister's shoulders. "Breathe, Honey," he reminded her gently. "In... and out." Jim was honestly bewildered. To his knowledge, Honey hadn't had a panic attack since the first year he lived in Sleepyside and, even then, they were in response to snakes, or gun-wielding kidnappers, or other acceptably dangerous things. Surely his marriage to her best friend wasn't life threatening.

    When Honey was calmer and breathing normally again, Jim asked cautiously, "What's wrong?"

    "Trixie lost her bouquet! Normally, I'd make her retrace her steps, but we already got her in her dress so she can't come out here and risk being seen by you before the actual wedding. She doesn't remember where she left it and I can't find it and it's a disaster! A disaster that Trixie isn't worried enough about to be helpful. She wants everything to be perfect for you, but other than that she couldn't care less."

    "Part of that is that she knows she has you to worry about all the things it takes to make it perfect that she would forget, flowers included."

    "I tried to plan for all the contingencies, Jim, but I didn't plan on Trixie losing the flowers barely an hour before the ceremony!"

    "Honey, take a deep breath. It's a bridal bouquet. Someone's going to spot it wherever it ended up and bring it to Trixie. And even if it doesn't turn up, you're right: Trixie really doesn't care about the details -- flowers, no flowers, the wrong flowers; it's not going to ruin her wedding day. And you know that's all I care about. She's happy, I'm happy. You've pulled together a beautiful wedding for us, and I know how hard you've worked. Now stop worrying; it's all going to be fine, and we both want you to enjoy the day, too."

    Honey wiped at her leaking eyes and grimaced. "I need to redo my makeup."

    Jim nodded. "You do. So go do that, and whatever was next on your mental to-do list that wasn't hunting down the bouquet. Okay?"

    Honey hugged him. "I love you. You're absolutely my favorite full-blooded adopted brother."

    Jim laughed and gave her a gentle push in the direction of the women's preparation rooms.

    Once Honey disappeared out of sight, he turned and wandered down the hall, looking for a little bit of quiet out of the way of the pre-ceremony chaos to ground himself before he started overthinking everything himself. As he crossed through the reception hall, heading for the patio, he spotted a white bundle on a table in the corner.

    Jim snickered to himself, meandering through the tables to confirm that the bundle was indeed the missing flowers, sitting in plain sight in the next room Honey would have searched if she hadn't worked herself into a panic.

    "This is where you got to, hm?" Dan said behind him.

    "I was headed outside to settle down for a little, but I had to avert a crisis for Honey first."

    "I'm pretty sure she cares more about every detail of this event than either of you."

    Jim nodded. "You can't tell her or our parents, but Plan A was to elope, just go do it before we came home from Mead's that weekend." He meant the weekend at Mead's Mountain when he'd proposed to Trixie.

    "Now that would have been sensible. Why didn't you?"

    "We wanted to live to our honeymoon," Jim said wryly. "Can you imagine how Moms and Mother and Honey would have reacted? And Mr. Belden isn't exactly a fan of me stealing away his princess, so he'd definitely side with Moms against me. With those odds, Dad would make the prudent business decision to side with the majority."

    "True," Dan acknowledged.

    "Anyway," Jim said, "Trixie left her bouquet in here earlier. Can you take it to Honey? I would, but I expect she's in with Trixie and that she'd consider it a major catastrophe if I see my bride before I'm supposed to."

    "Sure thing. Don't get too lost in your head out there, though," he warned.

    "That's the plan," Jim agreed.

14. January 14: Misinterpret (-ation, -ed, -ing)

    "Why must you always misinterpret everything I say?"

    Trixie rolled her eyes at her almost-twin. "Because, half the time, you don't even know what you’re saying."

    Without looking up from his textbook, Brian pointed at Trixie in a gesture that said "And...she got it in one!"

    "Using big words to use big words doesn't make you sound smarter, Mart."

    "It makes you sound like an idiot who is overcompensating for something," Trixie informed him.

    Brian sighed; he should have known better than to try to study at the kitchen table once his siblings got home from school. "And you don't need to," Brian clarified. "You're plenty smart enough, and a good friend, and as good a brother as can be expected of a middle child. There's nothing to compensate for. Which makes you sound even more like you're trying way too hard. A large vocabulary is great, but not if you don't know when to use all those words you know. If you don't know the appropriate use case for a term, it's not really part of your vocabulary, even if you know what the word means, because you'll never sound like you know what it means."

    "You're no fun," Mart muttered. "I thought college would loosen you up; all those parties. But no, you're still studying on break."

    "And not regretting it one bit," Brian replied.

15. January 15: "Dark Blue" by Jack's Mannequin

    Have you ever been alone in a crowded room

    And the whole town under water

    Honey was only a couple days into her visit with Brian, but she could see he loved what he was doing, and she could see how much the town appreciated the sacrifice he (and she) were making, even though she didn't understand most of the conversation, if Brian or Hanna wasn't around to translate. That feeling of being alone even in a crowded room reminded her of her life before Sleepyside too much for comfort, but she could bear it for the next two weeks. She wondered if Brian felt the same way at times.

    As they walked down the coastline on Brian's day off, she asked him. Brian laughed ruefully. "When you're not here, I'm the only native English speaker for at least 100 kilometers, definitely the only person who's more comfortable measuring in miles than kilometers. I'm the only white guy in the village, the only American, the only Christian. I'm also the only person with disposable income, which is such a weird feeling. I know we tried really hard to make sure it was never about money with the Bob-Whites, but we Belden kids were also pretty firm about how we weren't rich. We'd tell anyone who said otherwise that they were mistaken and must be thinking of the Wheelers or the Lynches. But here, I get into public health discussions with the village leaders and we're talking about a couple hundred dollars reducing preventable illnesses by 30%, and I'm not expecting it to be a question, because anyone could pay that, let alone a whole village. We're talking about a few thousands dollars or tens of thousands of dollars cutting childhood mortality in half and they're not sure it's feasible. And that's just the work stuff. Every day I'm here there's something that I just take for granted as 'the way things are' that just aren't here. It can be really lonely, yeah. I get homesick all the time. But--you've seen. These are good people. They don't deserve any of this, the poverty, the hard decisions, the tsunami, Phil dying." Brian wrapped an arm around Honey's shoulders. He pointed to the largest building in the village, and the most weathered. "That's the only building that was structurally sound enough to leave standing once the water went down. You see how the bottom half of the building's darker than the top?"

    Honey nodded. "It looks like a different wood."

    Brian shook his head and lead her over to the building, showing her where a single piece of wood changed color so dramatically. "I've been here almost six months and I still can't really wrap my head around, can't imagine seeing the whole village underwater."

    Honey leaned into his side. "It's not the same when we're just seeing the news coverage," she admitted, putting her hand on the water line.

    Brian nodded. "A lot of the folks -- probably all the folks -- here are traumatized."

    "PTS?" Honey asked.

    "Some for sure. Some other things, too, phobias and anxiety and everything else. Thank heavens I roomed with Jim and we helped each other study all through undergrad and our graduate school work, so my knowledge of psychology is better than the average GP, but jeepers, these people could use a whole bevvy of Jims."

    "You're doing the best you can," Honey reminded him. "That's the best you can do, and it's enough. It has to be."

16. January 16: Zenith

    "We're lost, aren't we?" Honey asked nervously and she and Trixie looked around the large clearing they'd just emerged in.

    "Again," Trixie agreed. "The boys will never let us live it down."

    "We have to get home to get teased," Honey pointed out.

    "We'll go out into the middle of the clearing and see which direction the sun is. That'll be east," Trixie concluded.

    "South," Honey differed.

    "South?" Trixie asked. "The sun still rises in the east and sets in the west, yeah?"

    Honey nodded but tapped her watch face. Trixie looked down and saw it was exactly noon. "It's a good thing you're with me," Trixie concluded. "If I even noticed it was noon, and didn't just take off assuming I knew where east was, I'd have just sat here for an hour waiting to figure out where west was. And we just talked in science class this week about how, if we're not at the equator, even when the sun's at its zenith, it's not actually directly overhead. So even at noon, if we look straight overhead, the sun won't be there, but wherever it is is south, towards the equator."

17. January 17: "Dreams" by Langston Hughes

    Dear Jim,

    Abby and I are spending a quiet day in. It’s not like we have a whole lot of choice. This city shuts down over an inch of snow, and the six we got on Christmas Eve hasn’t melted yet. I don’t mind, since we don’t have anywhere critical to be the rest of the week and it’s supposed to get back above freezing tomorrow.

    We spent most of the day just talking. Family and home came up, of course. This close to Christmas, it’s on both our minds. You came up. You always do. Her step-mom came up. I wish there were easy answers.

    Abby shared a poem she likes with me. It’s Langston Hughes.

    Hold fast to dreams

    For if dreams die

    Life is a broken-winged bird

    That cannot fly.

    Hold fast to dreams

    For when dreams go

    Life is a barren field

    Frozen with snow

    It makes her feel better, like there’s hope that she’ll have a family to call her own again someday, maybe even a stable relationship with her step-mom. Or at least that she doesn’t have to look too hard at whether those dreams are realistic because just having dreams is a good thing, you know?

    Honestly, it doesn’t cheer me up. I didn’t tell Abby that. I’m probably overthinking the poem anyway. But just…what if the dream of us having a future together dies, and then my life is a flightless bird, a field frozen under the snow, except without the hope of a spring to come, and not half as cool as penguins.

    But I’ll take the moral here, and hold fast to the dream of our future as long as I can, hoping that the dream doesn’t die or go or anything else unfortunate. Not that I’ll know, until I finish out my commitment to the National Investigative Bureau, and come home to you. Or you, until we really talk, which we haven’t managed to do since I insisted we break up for now.

    December 26 2009.

18. January 18: "Stop lying to me!"

    "Stop lying to me!" Bobby wailed.

    All three of his sibling looked at him and each other in abject confusion. Lately they'd all had cause to realize that Bobby looked up to them, and wanted to spend time with them, and was understandably frustrated when he couldn't always tag along. They'd resolved to be more patient with him. When Moms asked one of them to watch him while she went to the Garden Club meeting, they'd all agreed, and spent the morning laying a clue trail all over Crabapple Farm, so they could entertain him with a scavenger hunt all afternoon. They'd expected him to be excited (Mart had even expected "thrilled"); they hadn't expected a tantrum less than half an hour after Moms left, before they'd even read the first clue.

    Brian, always the calmest of the four, said slowly, "What's wrong, Bobby? No one is lying to you." He glanced at his two sibling suspiciously, but both looked as puzzled as he felt.

    Bobby crossed his arms across his chest, stamping his foot. "Did too! Moms promised you were all going to play with me all afternoon. And you said we were going on a scav'ger hunt. But then Trixie said I was gonna help her solve a m'stery."

    "I said it'd be like helping me solve a mystery," Trixie clarified, just in case nuance was going to be the root of this problem.

    "But then Mart said it might turn me into a whale!"

    "I did not!" Mart protested when both Brian and Trixie turned accusing gazes on him. He wracked his brain, trying to remember what he had said, exactly. "I said, 'it might even make a real shamus out of you.'"

    Trixie cocked her head to the side, trying to think like her six year old brother. "Did you think Mart meant 'Shamu'?"

    Bobby nodded. "I don't want turn into a whale!" He cried.

    Brian crouched down to be on eye level with Bobby. "Bobby, 'shamus' means a detective, or an investigator. Someone who solves mysteries."

    "Like Trixie?" Bobby asked hopefully.

    "Like Trixie," Brian confirmed.

    "Haven't you heard Jim call Honey and Trixie 'Schoolgirl Shamuses'?" Mart asked.

    "I don't want to turn into a girl neither," Bobby said firmly.

    Brian resisted the urge to laugh, though he knew their friends would when the story of their Bobby-sitting woes got out. "If I promise you won't turn into a whale or a girl or anything else, do you still want to do the scavenger hunt?"

    "There's a surprise for you at the end," Mart sweetened the offer, seeing Bobby was still debating.

    "A s'prise? Of my very own? I don't hafta share it with all of you?"

    "Of your very own," Mart, Brian, and Trixie all confirmed.

    "Okey dokey," Bobby consented.

19. January 19: Picture Prompt

    

    "Hi Dad," I answered my phone as I sorted the laundry from the other stuff in my suitcase. With luck no one else would be trying to do laundry on the last day of break.

    "Hello, Son. How was your flight?"

    "Good. We even got in about half an hour early." Before he could ask, I continued, "And the trip was good. We helped clear water damage from three homes. We were able to recover a couple of family photos in one of the houses. Irreplaceable stuff. The homeowner was so grateful. She thought she'd lost everything."

    It had been hard work all week, but it had made me feel good. I'd hesitated at first about joining a university sponsored Alternative Spring Break, because I really did want to take a break from my studies, but aside from coordinating everything the university really wasn't involved.

    My father listened indulgently until I'd told him everything I intended to share. "And who is the blonde?"

    I must have made a questioning noise. I didn't see any reporters, so how did my father know anything about the trip I hadn't told him? And if he had seen news coverage of some sort, which blonde would he be talking about? It wasn't like there was only one.

    "The one you're kissing as the tide comes in."

    Oh. Right. Angie did post that picture on social media and she tagged me. Considering the largest social media platform started with college students, the fact that there's not a "don't tell my parents about this" option is a clear oversight.

    "That's Angie," I said. "It's... it's not serious, yet. I would have told you and Mom if it was. When it is."

    "I'll run interference with you mother until the end of the semester," Dad offered helpfully.

    "Please."

    "Once you're home, you're on your own."

    "Understood. And I am sorry you found out like that."

    "You're in college now. You are allowed to have a life we don't know every detail of," he acknowledged. "We have to trust that we raised you to be a good young man."

    "Thanks, Dad."

    "Be safe and responsible," he reminded me.

    "Always. Love you, Dad."

    "Love you, too."

20. January 20: Torn

    Celia was waiting when Honey and Jim came in from exercising the horses. "Honey, Trixie called while you were out riding. She's hoping you'll go down to Crabapple Farm as soon as possible because she's torn."

    "Torn about what?" Honey wondered out loud.

    "She didn't say," Celia explained.

    "You two didn't stumble into something 'mysterious', did you?" Jim asked suspiciously. Trixie might be in the brief stage where she was torn about whether to take it to the police or investigate herself.

    Honey shook her head. "Not that I know of. I'd better change and see if Miss Trask will let me go down there before dinner."

    "I'll talk to Miss Trask," Jim offered. "I'd planned to go down after dinner; Brian and I are going to work on our admissions essays, but if you go down at this time of day, you're going to get invited to supper, and, with Mother and Dad still on the business trip... I'll ask Miss Trask if we might both go down for dinner, and I'll call Mrs. Belden and make sure it won't be any trouble."

    "Thanks, Jim!"

    Fifteen minutes later, the siblings were greeting Moms pleasantly. "Brian's in the study, and Trixie's up in her room," Moms told them. "Peter won't be home until after six tonight, so dinner will be a little later than usual."

    They both thanked Moms and headed in the directions she'd pointed them.

    "What's wrong, Trixie?" Honey asked when she reached her friend's bedroom. "Celia said you were torn, but you didn't say about what. Did you and Jim have a fight?"

    "Gleeps, no. Why would you think that? I'm not torn about anything. I am torn, or rather it's torn, and I can't afford to pay fines to the Bob-White treasury this week," Trixie explained, showing a tear in the side of her Bob-White jacket to Honey.

    "Oh," Honey said. "Well, that's easier. Do you--?" Before Honey even finished the question, Trixie pointed to her desk, where she'd already set out the pin cushion, red thread, and a needle.

    "It just looks so obvious when I mend anything, and you do it and it's nearly invisible. Do you mind terribly?"

    "No, of course not. You know I love to sew. I just wish you'd said that to Celia. I was worried."

    "I thought I did," Trixie admitted, but she knew how convoluted she could get. Honey would have understood, if they'd spoken in person, but they hadn't. "Why did you think I had a fight with Jim?"

    "He was sort of quiet when we went riding, like he was thinking about something other than the ride or the small talk. And there's been that song on that radio. I thought you were being dramatic. You get that way when things happen with you and Jim."

    "What this one?" Trixie asked, singing as best she could.

    I thought I saw a man brought to life

    He was warm, he came around like he was dignified

    He showed me what it was to cry

    Well you couldn't be that man that I adored

    You don't seem to know, or seem to care what your heart is for

    I don't know him anymore

    There's nothin' where he used to lie

    Our conversation has run dry

    That's what's goin' on

    Nothing's fine, I'm torn

    Honey giggled. "Yes that one."

    "I'd have to be feeling really dramatic to say any of that about Jim. He's not one for forgetting what his heart is for. Usually when we disagree it's about him caring too much, not too little."

    "All I had to go on was that you were 'torn'," Honey replied. "It wasn't a lot to work with."

21. January 21: "Something Pretty" by Patrick Park

    Jim knew Dan had offered or agreed to take care of the stable on Regan's day off. But he also knew it wasn't a one man job for any man but Regan, especially if the job had to be done to Regan's high standards. So he wandered down in the middle of the afternoon to help.

    "Feeling nostalgic, hunh?" Jim asked Dan, hearing the music Dan was listening to, which spoke to the harder moments in their pasts.

    "Always thought fondness for the 'good old days' was required for nostalgia," Dan replied.

    "Probably," Jim admitted. "But I don't know what the word is for reminiscing about truly terrible bad old days."

    "Yes, you do," Dan said. "Post Traumatic Stress."

    Jim nodded. "Well, yeah, but..."

    "But we're both in better places than we were, so neither of us wants to admit that 'better' doesn't just make it all go away."

    "On the best days, it all feels worth it. If I had to be orphaned, abused, everything else, in order to wind up in Sleepyside, with the Wheelers, the Bob-Whites," Trixie, "then I had to be. I have a good life now; the best. More people who love me than I had even when both of my parents were alive."

    "It was always just Mama and me," Dan agreed. "I try to imagine, sometimes, what life would be like if she'd lived, and even in my wildest fantasies, it's nowhere near what I've got going for me here in Sleepyside. And, much as I say I wouldn't wish my circumstances on anyone, I'd wish the end result on everyone."

    "I like that thought: how I'd wish my present on everyone, even though I'd never wish my past on my worst enemy. But then I remember how much I hate 'the ends justify the means' arguments."

    "That's because you don't believe the premise you started with. You said, 'If I had to, and you don't believe that, that the only path in all the infinite possible courses your life could have taken, that leads you here, or to something as good as here, or better than here, is the brutal one you lived. You'll acknowledge freely that the ugly history shaped you, made you who you are and as grateful as you are for your present, but you don't actually believe that suffering is prerequisite to happiness."

    "No, I don't," Jim acknowledged. He noted Dan's choice of pronouns. "Do you?" He asked.

    "Not to the extent that I'd tell someone in the midst of the ugly parts of life 'everything happens for a reason', but, well, if you light a candle in the middle of a sunny day, it's not going to illuminate squat. Light needs darkness to matter. Pretty needs ugly. Happy needs sad. I don't think there's a universe where a kid like me appreciates living in the attic of a log cabin with out most modern amenities unless he also appreciates what it is to live without four walls and a roof, regular meals and heat. It's hard not to take for granted the things that are always granted."

22. January 22: "I haven't been home yet."

    "Are you alright?" Trixie asked her client. He was shivering openly now, and her brother-the-doctor's voice was in her head with lectures about shock.

    "Hmm?" Mr. Mangan asked, not really tracking the change of topic. "Oh, yeah. Just cold. I haven't been home yet. I live so close to the practice facility, and I don't like to leave my stuff in the lockers -- it's a hold over from growing up in gang territory, not any reflection on the actual safety of the locker room at the current facility -- so most times I just change at home, but this outfit isn't warm."

    "You're an ice skater," Trixie said puzzled. "Surely the gear is made for ice rink temperatures..."

    Dan shook his head. "We're athletes, Detective Belden. On the ice, I'm far more likely to overheat from exertion then underheat from the air temperatures. The gear is designed for aerodynamics not warmth." Having become familiar with her curiosity over the course of the case, he offered his arm, so she could inspect the fabric of his sleeve.

    She did so and then asked him to excuse her a minute. She returned a few minutes later with a blanket and a steaming mug. "I don't drink coffee," Daniel began apologetically, though he accepted the blanket, even though he felt silly sitting in an office wrapped up in a blanket.

    "It's cider," Trixie explained. "Pod cider, not farm-pressed, but just cider, nonetheless. You've been through a lot this morning, and I'm worried you're experiencing shock."

    "You think?" Dan retorted. "I didn't even know I had an uncle, and I found out when the police notified me that my stalker killed him! How'd she even find him when I didn't know about him? Yes, it's a shock!"

    "Of course," Trixie said sympathetically. "I wasn't referring to the surprise of this morning's events; I was referring to the medical condition shock."

    "You mentioned once that you have a brother who's a doctor, did you?"

    "That's right."

23. January 23: Soul

    "What are you reading?" Mart asked casually, finding his wife engrossed with her tablet.

    "Reading the latest stories on the Appleton Board," Di answered absently.

    "Cosmo or Lucy?" Mart asked -- he hadn't checked the board yet today.

    "Both, but the new Cosmo won't appeal to you."

    "How so?" Mart asked. Not that he particularly doubted his wife knew what he liked in a good fanfic, but....

    "It's a soul mates AU," Di replied.

    Mart made a face. Despite some of his favorite authors trying their hand at the trope, he'd yet to meet a story about soul mates being somehow physically connected or destined for each other or whatever that he liked, let alone enjoyed.

    Di tapped the power button on her tablet, turning the screen off. "I know you hate the trope, but I'm not clear on why, considering I know you do believe in soul mates."

    "Of course I do. How couldn't I, when I'm lucky enough to have found my soulmate and married her? That part's not the problem, though in my fanfic, I'm less interested in the romance. It's the whole predestination. The character is looking for this one person who matches, and when they find the person who matches, they have no choice, they have to make it work or some horrible fate will befall them and their match, and what about all the other people the character meets in their life, who might have had something valuable to add to the character's life and journey and the character discounts them because they're not the one match. The trope lends itself to hyper-focus."

    "Okay, fair enough. That's at least a nuanced opinion. I'd hate to see you deprive yourself of good fics on assumptions."

    "Well, I know you read everything from both sides of the board, so if you come across a really good one on the Cosmo side, you can tell me to give it a try. I'll take your word for it. I trust your judgment."

    Honestly, Mart trusted Di's judgment about Cosmo and Lucy fanfic more than anyone's. Honey and Trixie were, of course, eager Lucy fans, their copies of each book in the series well-worn and much treasured. Dan and Mart were similarly enthralled with Cosmo McNaught as teens, their copies of the books much dog-earred. All four had quickly assimilated into the community on the Marvin Appleton Message Board. Di, Jim, and Brian knew by association the major characters and plots of the series, but didn't have the depth of passion for the books the other four did.

    Di had joined the board just so she wouldn't be excluded when Honey and Trixie were talking about things happening on the board, be it community events or the sort of drama that was inevitable when more than a few people were in regular contact. But once there, she'd found the fanfiction that built deeper, richer, more adult views of the characters Mart, Trixie, Honey, and Dan adored, and she'd been sucked in. Mart still wasn't sure she'd actually read all or even many of the original books of either series, but she read every last fanfic posted on both sides of the board, and posted thoughtful comments back to the writers.

    "You know," Di said, breaking Mart out of his thoughts, "I'd read it."

    "Read what?"

    "The fanfic with one character who was so focused on finding their soulmate that they missed all the things everyone else they met in their life had to offer, and the character who didn't look for their soulmate at all, instead focusing all their attention on the people in their present, and living a much fuller, richer life as a result before finally meeting their soulmate. Bonus points if character one and character two turn out to be each other's soulmates." Di smiled at him. "That's the thing about tropes. When you get to the point where you absolutely hate one, it's your solemn duty to write the fic that fixes it."

    "Except I don't write fanfic."

    "You don't post fanfic. That's not the same thing."

24. January 24: Picture Prompt

    

    "Let's go for a walk on the railroad," Dan's girlfriend suggested.

    Dan raised an eyebrow. He'd follow her anywhere (as evidenced by the fact that they were here, in her hometown, in the first place), but, "That seems unnecessarily dangerous." Which wasn't a no, mind you, because Dan had done far more dangerous things for far less reason than because it would make someone he loved happy; it was just an observation.

    She laughed brightly. "It's an abandoned route," she clarified. "The local parks department bought the land rights as a nature path when the rail traffic moved on to the newer, faster routes that go through the next town over. They're in conversation with the local snowmobile club about taking up most of the trestles and putting plywood on the bridges, so they and the cross-country skiers and snowshoers can user the paths in the winter."

    "I like nature walks," Dan admitted.

    "I know; that's why I suggested it," his girlfriend teased lightly, giving him a quick kiss before grabbing Dan's hand and leading him outside.

25. January 25: Poema 20 by Pablo Naruda

    "The night is full of stars, and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."

    As long as Dan continued to show up in all the right places at all the right times, no one seemed to ask who was responsible for the child of a woman nearly too sick to take care of herself. No one seemed to ask who was responsible for her orphan, either. No one asked any questions at all, until he returned to the apartment after the funeral (thank heavens for church women, who had taken care of the arrangements). That's when he found the landlord waiting for him.

    "Hey, son."

    "Hey," Dan replied, not really feeling like talking to anyone.

    "Who's with you?"

    "No one's with me." Not anymore.

    "Well, you aren't paying the rent. I need to clear the place out and get it listed, if I need to get a new tenant in here."

    "I understand," Dan said. He did. Nothing was free, and he had no money. His mom had barely had enough money for the rent.

    "I'm not cruel. I'll give you until the end of the week to take your things, but then, if the rent's not current, I'll have to list it."

    Dan just nodded and slipped inside the apartment that wasn't really his anymore.

    He didn't sleep that night. He tried, but wasn't surprised when it didn't work out. After tossing and turning for a while, he got up and began to wander through the apartment. He wouldn't be able to take much, but there wasn't much he cared to take. By dawn, he had the most important things in his backpack.

    He slipped the keys in the rent drop box on his way to school.

    Dan huddled on a bench in the park that night. It was so much colder after the sun went down. Even the stars seemed to be shivering along with him. "It's cold, Mama," he said up to those distant stars.

    ---

    January 25: Poema 20 by Pablo Naruda

    "The night is full of stars, and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."

    Jim shivered as the wind picked up, swaying the trees around him. The last time he'd done this, the punishment had been severe. Since that punishment clearly hadn't taught him, he could only imagine what his step-father would do to him this time. He couldn't let that happen. He swore to himself that he wouldn't go back. He'd set his last foot on that farm.

    The first mile had been full of paranoid anxiety, every creak of a tree was his step-father, every squeak of a nocturnal animal was a deafening noise that would rouse the sleeping (passed out) man, every change in lighting as clouds and leaves shifted to reveal more or less of the moon was the flashlight or headlights that would reveal him.

    Now that he was out into the wilder parts of the county, his nerves had settled. He was following the county highway to keep on course toward his great-uncle, but he kept to the woods, where he was both concealed and comfortable. His real father had taught him to love nature and to feel at home even far from it.

    Plus, it was hard to be anxious when he was far enough from civilization that there was no light pollution and he could see the entire resplendent canopy of stars.

    He could do this. He could make it to Sleepyside, to his blood relatives. To people who wouldn't hate him for whose he was, and for who he had reminded his mother of. To people who knew the man he hoped to make proud of him someday. He could do it. He would do it.

    The stars would bear witness.

26. January 26: "Can you reach it?"

    Mart walked past a doorway to see his wife lying on the floor, squirming awkwardly. "Diana, my precious," he started before wondering if he should even ask.

    Di sat up carefully. "I dropped it, and it fell in the heat return," she explained despondently.

    "Can you reach it?" He asked as he joined her beside the return.

    "If I could do you think I'd still be wiggling around on the floor like an idiot?" She snapped.

    Mart winced. Positive confirmation: he shouldn't have asked. "I just meant, is it too deep for you to reach at all, or is it just at the limit of your reach, where you can touch it, but can't get enough of a grip to get it back out."

    "Just at the limit," Di admitted.

    "Alright. Then why don't I try? My arms are just a little longer than yours," he offered carefully.

    "This house," Di grumbled even as she moved aside to let Mart try.

    "But just think how surprised Honey and Brian will be," he grunted as he squirmed to get a better grip on the errant object.

    "I remind myself constantly," Di said drily.

    Mart sat up, handing the item back to his wife. He looked from it to the unscrewed grate Di had moved aside before she could even attempt to retrieve the fallen object. "How did it even...?" Eyeballing it, Mart would have sworn the thing was too big to fit through the grate.

    "This house," Di hissed.

27. January 27: "1, 2, 3, 4" by Plain White T's

    Jim woke up in the middle of the night to find himself alone in the bedroom. Despite keeping a tighter rein on his curiosity than his wife was known to do, Jim didn't lack for it, so he rolled out of bed and padded down the dark hallway in search of his wife (and dog, but the dog had almost certainly followed Trixie).

    He smiled softly when he found her in the nursery, rocking their son back to sleep. As predicted, the dog was lying by the crib, watching intently. Jim knew he must have really needed the sleep, if the baby's cries hadn't woken him. Usually he was awake before Trixie.

    Trixie smiled when she saw him in the doorway but continued singing softly to the infant.

    I'll give you the most love from the very start

    I'll piece you back together when you fall apart

    Hope you'll tell me things you never even tell your closest friends

    Make you feel better when life hurts so bad

    The best that I've had

    And I'm so glad I have you

    I love being around you

    You make it easy

    It's as easy as 1-2-1-2-3-4

    There's only

    ONE thing (one)

    TWO do (two)

    THREE words (three)

    FOUR you... (four)

    (I love you) I love you

    There's only

    ONE way (one)

    TWO say (two)

    Those THREE words (three)

    And that's what I'll do... (four)

    (I love you) I love you

    (I love you) I love you

    Jim waited until she'd laid the sleeping baby back in the crib, they and the dog had retreated to the hallway, and the door was shut, to speak. "I don't think that song is meant to be about children."

    "If it's a song that can only count to four, and uses 'two' in a grammatically incorrect fashion, then it can be for kids," Trixie argued. "But yes, I took some creative liberty with the lyrics to make it a lullaby. I couldn't handle 'hush little baby, don't you cry' one more time, especially since your son absolutely does not listen."

    Jim snickered even as he ushered his wife back to bed. It was true that, sung or spoken, telling their infant son not to cry usually had no effect.

28. January 28: upheaval

    Jim looked around the room, wondering where to start. Where did one start packing the evidence of a happy family into boxes, leaving only a devastated (and possibly destitute, though Jim knew neither of his parents wanted me to know how tight money had become) mother and son in their wake?

    He couldn't blame all of the upheaval on his father's death. This move, from the cozy farmhouse he'd lived in his entire ten years of life, to a two-bedroom apartment in downtown Rochester had been in the works before his father died. They couldn't afford the farm, and they needed to be closer to the hospital, and they'd need Jim to be able to take the bus to and from school, since his mother needed to start working, once his father's paychecks dried up. His father's passing only made the need for income and childcare that much greater.

    He knew he wasn't supposed to notice how broken his mother was, either. But she'd worn herself out, stretched too thin, trying to manage the farm and his father's illness and take care of Jim and keep up with the bills. And now, with grief laying heavy on the house, she couldn't seem to bring herself to start packing up the house. But moving day was coming, whether either of them wanted it or not, and Jim wasn't going to let the good memories go just because he'd rather go back to the time when his father was alive and healthy and moving wasn't even the foggiest notion in anyone's head. Some one had to pack the house up, at least the important things, and it didn't seem like it would be his mother.

    He was the man of the house now. He'd have to step up. And that meant starting somewhere. That meant carefully and compassionately packing up all the memories of a happy family and with equal caution, discarding the devastation, with a prayer that the boxes he packed today would some day be unpacked by a happy family.

29. January 29: Picture Prompt

    

    “That’s one more thing checked off the wedding list,” Brian remarked as he and Honey walked around the gardens at their wedding venue to get back to their car.

    “It might actually all come together by September,” Honey agreed.

    “Hey, are you going to have a wedding?” A little girl was playing in her fenced yard next door and had called out to them.

    “We are,” Honey said, smiling warmly.

    The girl handed them a container with a couple caterpillars and leaves and sticks. “For good luck,” she explained.

    “Isabelle, please go in and wash your hands so we can make lunch,” her mother instructed as she came over to the fence.

    Once Isabelle was inside the mother said, “She tries to give ‘lucky caterpillars’ to all the couples having weddings next door. Don’t feel obligated; you can let them go in the garden. It’s just a phase she’s going through.”

    “Our nieces and nephews keep us on our toes, too,” Brian assured her.

    “Have a good day, and congratulations on the wedding.”

    “You, too.”

    As they finished their walk toward the car, Brian asked, “So are we letting them go?”

    “She’ll just capture them again. I thought I’d given them to the cohort the Ten Acres boys are raising. If I remember the timing right, maybe we can release some of this season’s butterflies at the rehearsal.”

    “I like that idea,” Brian agreed. “Especially given how much nurturing and evolution our relationship has taken to get to the wedding.”

30. January 30: "Close the door."

    "Close the door," Agent-in-Charge Nicholson ordered when Agent Brown entered his office for the final case debrief. "Sit," AIC Nicholson added when Agent Brown complied.

    "I've read your case report quite carefully, and Agent Belden's as well."

    "She was far too green for a case this important."

    "That decision was made above my pay grade," AIC Nicholson admitted. He'd been unhappy with the decision from the start, and losing Agent Belden so early in her career only made him all the more indignant that his concerns had been ignored. "Once it was made, however, you were the senior agent on the case, responsible for any and all junior agents assigned to it, obviously including Agent Belden."

    "Obviously."

    "So then, when an undercover agent is assaulted while undercover, you know that the incident is to be reported to the Agent-in-Charge immediately. Is that your understanding of the Bureau's policy?"

    "Yes, sir."

    "Then, I must ask, when were you informed of Agent Belden's assault?"

    "July 17th."

    "And when did you report the incident to me?"

    "August 18th, when the case was concluded."

    "Then you instructed Agent Belden to report the incident in July? Or she informed you she had done so?"

    "No, sir, neither."

    AIC Nicholson hummed. "Another clarification of policy then. When a junior agent reports to a senior agent that they are struggling psychologically, or a senior agent sees evidence that a junior agent they are responsible for might be so compromised, what is the senior agent's responsibility?"

    "To inform the agent-in-charge, and the counselor assigned to the case. An assessment will be made about the agent's ability to continue active duty in the field."

    "That's right. So, then, I ask you, when did Agent Belden first report to you that she was struggling? And/or when did you first see evidence of the same?"

    "July 24th," Agent Brown admitted grudgingly. "I assessed the situation in the context of the importance of the case, and judged we ought to continue."

    "And that is exactly why such decisions are not left to agents in the field. A third question. Did Agent Belden ever convey to you her intention to leave the National Investigative Bureau at the conclusion of this case?"

    "Yes, sir."

    "And did you convey that to anyone else?"

    "No, sir."

    "Why not?"

    "Her service obligation expiring at the end of August is documented in her personnel file. It was not news that she would have the option to leave at the end of the case, nor that the case took priority. I was the senior agent, not the agent-in-charge, and certainly not Agent Belden's secretary."

    "That's fair, I suppose, though I would prefer to have heard about her intentions as soon as she voiced them. She had a promising career ahead of her and I can't help but think it might have been possible to persuade her otherwise, had I been kept properly informed during this case."

    "She was green, and weak, and undisciplined. Better agents will replace her, if they haven't already."

    "You seem to be the only person in this agency that feels that way, but I suppose you are entitled to your opinion. What is not a matter of opinion, or entitlement, are the serious breaches of protocol that occurred on this case."

    "I reprimanded Agent Belden on multiple occasions for her contact with the civilian, Frayne."

    "She and I also discussed that breach of protocol. However, I was referring to your breaches of protocol. I can not entrust junior agents to a senior agent who will not take the responsibility he has to look after them seriously, especially if I cannot trust him to keep me properly informed so that I might properly supervise both him and the junior agents. Accordingly, you will be demoted from Senior Agent status effective immediately," Agent in Charge Nicholson declared firmly.

    "All this over that b-"

    "That you could possibly blame your junior agent for your failings is exactly why I've made this decision. I strongly advise you reconsider your culpability in the trajectory of your career more deeply if you hope to regain Senior Agent status."

31. January 31: Disturb (-ed, -ing)

    The older children were at the Lynch Estate for the night, and Helen had successfully put Bobby to bed for the night. She didn't expect he'd actually stay there, but, well, after four children, she'd learned that the parenting corollary to "discretion is the better part of valor" and "pick your battles" was "if my child doesn't force me to acknowledge that they're not doing what I said, then they are doing what I said". So...as long as he was in his room and quiet, she didn't see the light from his flashlight under the covers, or the toys that moved between when she put him to bed and when she got him up.

    In the meantime, something was on her husband's mind, and they were alone now.

    "Peter?" She queried softly, standing in the doorway of his study where he was sitting reading.

    "Helen," he greeted her with a genuine smile, putting his book aside.

    "You seemed disturbed when the kids came through to get their overnight bags."

    "Our daughter was wearing jewelry," Peter stated as if that explained everything.

    "She's in her teens," Helen replied, as if that explained everything.

    "Do you not remember last time she wore jewelry?"

    "You mean when she flashed that fake ring around so no one would notice she'd pawned Jim's great-aunt's ring to pay for Brian's car? Don't worry. The bracelet is real."

    "Did you not see the engraving?"

    Helen was struggling now to keep her face serene. "It's hard to miss. Peter, really. Don't tell me their feelings for one another is a surprise to you."

    "She's too young for boys," Peter spat.

    Helen nodded sagely. "How old were you again, when you picked your mother's prize flowers to give to the cute girl in art class?"

    "I was a sophomore, by definition, too young and stupid to be trusted."

    "And the object of your affections? How old was she? In comparison to, say, your daughter's current age?"

    "This doesn't bother you?" Peter demanded rather than answering. "You don't think we made a mistake when we let her chase after him, that we shouldn't have just let him go on ahead and run away? It was Mr. Rainsford's problem, not our daughter's job."

    Helen sighed. "Do the mysteries bother me? The fact that she seems bound and determined to get herself killed, or at least charged with felony obstruction of justice before she graduates from high school? Of course. Do I wonder, when I'm lying awake at night, if we should have done more to nip that in the bud sooner? Often. Do I think we should have left a scared, lonely, abused child to fend for himself in the wilds of upstate New York? Seriously, Peter?"

    "When you put it like that," Peter grumbled.

    "You know, much as you hate that your little princess is growing up, that James Frayne is an honorable young man, who fully intends to treat our daughter as well as he possibly can. Yes, they're young. No, I'm not in favor of them getting too serious too soon. Yes, they're in love. No, she won't listen if you or I try to put a stop to it in any way. Yes, I believe you're going to walk her down the aisle to him one day. Best you start preparing yourself for that now."

    Peter looked like he might keel over sooner than prepare himself for his only daughter's wedding, but then Peter had time. Helen doubted Jim would even proposed before they'd both graduated with their undergraduate degrees. Unless Peter tried to tell either of them they couldn't be together, in which case, they'd likely do something rash.

    "I'll get you something to drink," Helen said cheerfully, flouncing out to her kitchen to pour Peter a generous glass of his favorite alcoholic beverage.