and the bells were ringing out
Gates isn't sure how long he's been gone.
It's practically Christmas and he's practically family; she's put this off, she damn well knows why, but she sits down and she goes through everything and it's all dead ends. No email, no cellphone number, no contact address, his fucking livejournal is down, it's radio silence she can't break through and the realization that she has no idea how long it's been like this is shaming. There's a hollow place where she should be surprised, and it makes her feel sick inside - she knew she couldn't be what he needed so she wasn't anything at all and that is so much easier to live with when she tries not to think about it, when she drops off Christmas presents at her parents' and kisses Katie's hair and gives her a squeeze and feels like at least she got one thing right.
Her first instinct is to call the hospitals - starting with New York - but she knows what medical bills are like and she knows what Brody's money situation has always been like and furthermore she knows exactly how likely they are to give her any answers if they've got them. The clinics in Xanadu are her next thought (she wishes this weren't where her mind goes, she wishes she smoked or drank or something that would take the edge off this moment), but she doesn't have the number and Clifford snarls at her for waking him up to give it to her.
"Please, Ebenezer, like you give a toss about it being Christmas. Ta, though." She sounds tired, which is probably why he just hangs up on her.
It takes her an hour and a half to decide to make the call and do it, and there's a pause so long after she gets through her vague queries ('...not sure if he'll be using a surname, about so high-') that she thinks she's going to be hung up on again tonight, or they're trying to find a polite way to tell her that her stalking habit is getting severely out of control-
"Are you the mother?" the woman on the other end of the line asks, with something that sounds remarkably like Gates's own barely restrained hope.
So this is what your stomach trying to eat itself out of abject guilt feels like, she thinks absently. Gates swallows, flexes her hand against the table she's standing by, and from a long way off she can hear herself saying, "Aunt. I'm his aunt."
(Lying is the least of her sins, and anyway, it's near enough to not good enough.)