Apocrypha 3
For two years after their deaths, Mary refused to talk about her parents. If John touched on the subject in any way, she had this trick of being able to look away from him while still staring him straight in the face. For some reason, it struck him as the sort of thing she might have picked up from Deanna.
She wouldn't talk about her parents, and she wouldn't talk about her life with them. It was as if it was easier for her to pretend that they--and her entire childhood--had simply never existed. She would go quiet and sad every now and then, but for the most part she seemed to have found her footing again.
For those first few months, though, it was like she had gone back to being that weird, quiet kid who used to hang out just outside the playground, fingers hooked through the cyclone fence as she watched the others with unblinking curiosity.
When he was six, John was kind of scared of her (not that he would ever admit it). When he was seven, he just thought she was weird, and it was easy to laugh along when the other kids made fun of her. When he was eight (and, to apply the benefit of hindsight, a budding little jerk), he and Mike Guenther egged each other on and decided it would be fun to see what would happen if they gave the weird kid a little trouble. Maybe she'd cry. Maybe she'd run away.
Or maybe she'd live up to the nickname Mike had come up with for her. That could be funny.
They found out pretty quickly that the weird kid didn't like her new nickname.
John figured she must have got in a lucky shove before he could brace himself, but it felt more like his legs were just plain knocked from under him. Anyhow, he landed hard enough on his butt to have the wind knocked out of him. By the time he was recovered enough to get up, she was gone and Mike was curled up on the ground, blubbering and trying to stanch a bloody nose.
John had been angry and embarrassed, but also kind of curious. What was wrong with that kid, anyway? She'd missed so many days of school that rumor had it she would have to do second grade twice, but she never ever looked sick. Also, the only other person who'd ever gotten the better of Mike Guenther in a fight was a fourth grader.
Years later, John was still curious about that strange little girl who'd been able to knock him off his feet, but he knew little more a month before their wedding than he did back then.
Mary had stayed the weird (and scary) little kid all through grade school, but when they started junior high, there was a new building, all sorts of new people and--to all appearances--a new Mary Campbell who was determined to be as normal as possible. Not that any of this mattered to John.
All told, it was easier to ignore her. He did so as much as possible until their junior year, trading snide remarks the few times they had to talk to each other. After that, well...
Now they sat hip-to-hip on the couch in his dad's living room, silent after talking about whether they should rent an apartment for a year or two, or if it would be better to use what they could make from selling the Campbells' house to buy a place of their own right away.
Mary slumped against his side, head on his shoulder. A few minutes ago, when talk of what to do with her parents' house had put her back into that sad, silent space, John put his arm around her. She did her usual thing of tensing up as if the offered comfort was a veiled insult, but after a second she relaxed into him, calm if not content.
Given their history, it still sometimes felt strange to him that he would want to comfort her, so no wonder it might feel odd to her to want to trust him. After all, just three days before the thought inexplicably crossed his mind that he might want to ask her out, she had dumped her lunch tray over his head right in front of everyone. In hindsight, he would admit that he had kind of deserved it at the time.
So, no, this still didn't feel quite natural, but it felt right.
"You grew up here, didn't you, John?"
He'd been expecting something like this. For as much as she refused to talk about her own life, she always enjoyed hearing him talk about the minutia of his. Even the stupid, boring, everyday stuff. Sometimes, especially the everyday stuff. She would listen to the most mundane of stories as wide-eyed and breathless as if she were listening to the wildest of adventures.
"In Lawrence?" he said, even though he knew that wasn't what she was asking. "Of course I did. You know that."
She elbowed him hard enough that he winced. "No, dummy. I mean here. This house."
"Yeah." He grinned. "Lots of good memories here." Their first kiss had been right here on this couch. From here, he could see the tree that grew right past his bedroom window. The sight of that tree and the scent and silk of her hair brought with them another good memory, another first.
They'd snuck back into the house after their senior prom. Just getting to go was a big victory for her, and she didn't want the night to end. They'd gone straight up to his room, and that's where they made love for the first time. He remembered watching her get dressed early the next morning, and the way the yellow and lace of her dress shimmied down over her breasts and hips. He also remembered not enjoying the sight as much as he should have because he could hear his dad puttering around downstairs and he was starting to panic about how Mary would get out of there without being noticed.
Then--and this was something he would always remember--she had given him an impish grin and opened the bedroom window. Before he could gather his wits enough to shout at her to stop, she had hopped up on the windowsill and then out into the tree outside. He rushed to the window, but she was already clambering down, all gold and gracefulness. When she got to the bottom, she turned to look up at him. The yellow of her dress was tree-smudged, and her golden hair was every which way, but she was still the most gorgeous thing he'd ever seen as she smiled and blew a kiss at him before waving good bye and running off into the sunrise.
That was a very good memory.
"And some not good ones?" she said after long enough that she had to have been debating how or whether to ask.
"And some not good ones." The downstairs study could still be dangerous territory after all these years, even though his mother's sickbed was long gone. He understood all too well why Mary would rather sell her childhood home than move in there with her new family.
Their new family. The thought still floored him.
She squeezed his hand with a tenderness that still felt surprising from her. The first time he'd seen a glimpse of that tenderness was over a dozen years ago, a few days after his mom had died. He'd been sitting under the big beech tree by the playground, wanting to be out of the house but not wanting to play or even be with anyone, when the weird kid came up to him.
He didn't know how long she'd been there or what made him look up to see her standing still and quiet. Later, he wouldn't remember what she looked like, but would remember the tree branch that drooped behind her, the sun shining fiery gold through leaves that weren't green even though it was April. He'd never noticed that before, even though he'd seen that tree nearly every single day of his life. Leaves were always green in spring, and that was that.
Mary Campbell was weird and gross and kind of scary, and that was that. Except in this should-have-been-green light she was also very pretty.
"I'm real sorry about your mom," she said, coming right out with it before he could tell her to get lost. All the other kids in his class had made and signed a big card, but they didn't want to talk about it and they didn't want him to be sad. "I really am."
She was the weird, creepy kid with the weird, scary father, and he didn't like her at all. Still, he'd believed her when she said he was sorry, and he kind of wished she hadn't run off right after she said it. He remembered her stopping for just a second, so fast that her ponytail whipped round to the front. She looked over her shoulder so quick he almost missed it, and he thought maybe she was going to say something else, and he thought maybe she was afraid he was going to chase after her, but she stayed silent and he stayed put. She ran off, golden hair streaming behind her like a comet's tail.
Now, there was no point in saying he was sorry about her parents' deaths. She knew he was, and she knew he wouldn't run off the way she had so many years ago. So, he said the only thing he could say:
"Yeah, there's bad memories. But you get up and you move on. It hurts, but you can't let it eat you alive."
She thought about that for a moment. John remembered that for a while, that night nearly had eaten her alive, and he had wondered if there would ever be anything more to her again than the girl whose parents had both died on one night.
Eventually, she nodded, and he savored the way her hair brushed across his cheek.
"But you don't want to live here, when we're married," she said, testing the waters for some reason he didn't know.
"No." It was an easy answer even though his dad had offered the house up several times, saying he didn't need such a big place for himself. John suspected he'd sell the place anyway, once John moved out. He'd probably been waiting for a decent excuse for over a decade, now. "I want a place that's ours."
"Maybe... maybe someplace that's not Lawrence? Maybe we can just, I don't know, travel for a while? Just pack up the car and go?"
He wasn't surprised by her question, but he was surprised at the sinking feeling that came with it. Lawrence was home, and the thought of living anywhere else--or nowhere else like she was suggesting, rootless and adrift--unsettled him. Vietnam was more than enough adventure for one lifetime.
He remembered her enthusiasm about that VW microbus and her initial disappointment about the Impala, and wondered how long she had been nursing that particular dream.
"Do you have family somewhere else we could visit?" she asked. Maybe she had picked up on his discomfort, or maybe she was hinting that she'd like to hear a story. She did not say anything about any of her own family who might be out there somewhere. While she had been in touch with a distant cousin about some sort of arrangements right after her parents' death, none of Mary's family aside from Deanna's half-brother had come to the funeral.
"Uncle Jack?"
She shoulder-bumped him. "We see him every Sunday! I meant family who aren't in a retirement home in Topeka, dummy. Is there anyone else? Don't you have any family that's not from Kansas?"
"Not really." A growl told him that wasn't good enough of an answer, so he filled in a little bit more.
"Your grandmother was from Saint Louis," she pointed out.
"Yeah, but that hardly counts. I think Uncle Jack said something about her having some family out east, but he has no idea how to get in touch with them."
Mary thought for a moment. "Still, I've never been to St. Louis. It's not that much of a trip, but..."
"No one left out there, from what I hear. Besides, Mary Alice burned a whole bunch of bridges when she ran off to marry my grandfather. Uncle Jack says it was just like Romeo and Juliet, only not as stupid."
Even though he had told her the story a dozen times before, and she had heard it straight from his great-uncle himself, he recognized the spark in her eyes and once again recounted the story of how Uncle Jack and his little brother--John's grandfather--drove out to St. Louis to steal away the fancy debutante whose guardians had all but locked her in a tower when she had declared her love for a hick mechanic from Kansas.
Mary sighed dramatically. "Too bad. That would have been nice, having some rich relatives."
"Not much chance they'd have anything to do with us," he said. It was bad enough that Mary Alice Beaumont had married so far below her station, but marrying outside of the Church was unforgivable. It didn't matter that she went to Mass every morning and dragged her son along with her: more than the breadth of a single state separated her from her family. "Besides, they were kind of strange, from what I understand. Mary Alice very much included."
Mary picked up the bait. "Strange?" she laughed. "Strange how? And why haven't you told me anything about this before?"
She loved stories of the Winchester family foibles. The tale of how his dad and great-uncle tried to help him with his sixth-grade science project had made her laugh until she hyperventilated the first time she heard it. Dad and Uncle Jack had figured that two expert mechanics should be able to handle a simple rocketry project in style, no problem. When he showed her the plaster patch in the kitchen ceiling she had merely laughed until her face was red. It was when he showed her the smaller plaster patch and the scorch marks on his bedroom ceiling one floor above that she finally had trouble breathing.
As he hoped, she was quick to jump on the promise of a story she hadn't heard before.
"Well... I don't know. I'm not sure I want to tell my fiancée what kind of weirdness she's about to marry into."
As expected, she bopped him with a throw pillow.
"Fine, fine," he laughed. "I'll tell."
He did his best to tell it the way Uncle Jack would, heavy on the romantic and the absurd. He started with the way Mary Alice was a legend even before the Sunday morning when the Winchester brothers roared into town in their Ford truck with a cloche-hatted young woman sitting prim and proper on a steamer trunk in the back as if she were the Queen of England sitting on a velvet cushion in a golden carriage.
Everything about her was remarked upon, from her scandalously red dress to the fact that Jimmy Winchester didn't carry his new bride over the threshold like he ought. No, he and his brother Jack had been tasked with lugging that steamer trunk into the house while Mary Alice swanned along behind them.
Everything Mary Alice Beaumont owned was in that fancy French trunk, people said, even though she had lived in a grand house in St. Louis. An orphaned heiress, people said, raised by a wicked aunt and uncle who were quick to disown the girl and keep her money when she eloped. She was just as quick to disown them in return, dropping the 'Beaumont' completely and going simply by Mary Alice Winchester. Shocking, by the standards of the time.
"There were all kinds of rumors about something having happened to her parents when she was a girl, something she never would talk about," he continued, but the eagerness in Mary's eyes turned to something else before he realized what kind of mess he'd stepped in. That part of the story, he'd skip. It wasn't all that important.
"Anyway," he said quickly, "the truth was, her aunt and uncle wanted her back, and I don't think it was about the money. However they had things arranged, they didn't lose as much as most in the Depression. Uncle Jack swears up and down that one day, less than a week after my dad was born, a couple of Catholic priests showed up and insisted on talking to my grandmother. He's pretty sure her family sent them."
Mary's interest had returned but there was still a guarded look to her. "Priests? Why priests?"
John shrugged. "Don't know. Uncle Jack--he tells this so much better than I do--says he and my grandfather tried to eavesdrop, but even though there was lots of shouting, they couldn't tell what was going on. He did say that the very next Sunday, she drove out to St. John the Evangelist, and got my dad baptized on the spot, no fuss, no argument, just like she'd never left the church."
Mary boggled. "Your dad. George Winchester. Baptized? You're joking, right?"
John could understand her surprise. His dad would only ever set foot in a church for weddings and funerals, and sometimes not even then when he thought he could get away with showing up at the Elks Lodge for the food and drink once the boring parts were over.
"Not at all. He'll say he's worn it all off and then some by now, though. It was a huge scandal at the time. Nearly everyone in town went to the Baptist church, including the Winchester family. But then, after my dad was born, Mary Alice dragged him all the way across town to St. John's every single Sunday until the day she died."
Mary frowned. "Well, I don't think that's strange at all. If that's what she was used to growing up, and she didn't have any other family--"
"I haven't gotten to the strange part yet, although I'd say getting a couple of priests to drive all the way across Missouri was kind of out there. Anyhow, Uncle Jack said that my grandfather didn't care one bit about the neighborhood gossip. He was crazy in love with Mary Alice, and had been ever since they met."
Mary nodded. Uncle Jack had told that story so many times that John could see it like a movie playing in his head. By now, Mary probably could, too. Jack and Jimmy Winchester had driven into the city one bitterly cold and snowy January weekend to catch a show at the Folly. One their way to the show, they'd passed by a car with its hood folded back. It wasn't just some old broken-down jalopy. It was a fine car, the color of sweet cream, with a silver angel perched on her front. Fine or not, the car wasn't going anywhere soon, and the chauffeur glared at the engine as if his disdain alone was enough to fix it.
The Winchesters had stopped to help, of course. Jack wanted to be the gallant rescuer of the three beautiful young ladies sitting in the back of the car, and Jimmy wanted to get his hands on the guts of a genuine Rolls Phantom.
That had changed the moment Mary Alice Beaumont and James Winchester locked eyes. According to Uncle Jack, there was a sound like the heavens opening up and a choir of angels breaking out in a love song. He even swore that he heard the zing of Cupid's bowstring right at that very moment.
John used to think the whole thing was a bunch of bull, but then he fell in love with Mary Campbell, and Uncle Jack savored the 'I told you so' for weeks.
"Eventually, Mary Alice started getting letters from her uncle, but for the most part she burned them unopened. She did read a few of them, but it would always put her in the sort of mood where she'd slam her bedroom door and not come out for days."
Mary was fully intrigued again. "What did they want? Did anyone ever find out?"
"Well, one day Uncle Jack was rummaging through Mary Alice's papers by accident--"
Mary smirked. Even with John doing the storytelling, she could no doubt imagine Uncle Jack's air of perfect innocence.
"--and he found a bundle of letters that she'd saved. Most of the letters she'd kept were from her cousin Freddy. Uncle Jack says she always wrote him back, but sent the letters to him at school so his folks wouldn't know." John shrugged. "From the sound of things, he was the only thing about her old life that she missed. Anyhow, she did keep one letter from her uncle--just one."
He paused for a moment, waiting for Mary to nod for him to go on, go on already.
"Uncle Jack said that Mary Alice's uncle had written a five-page letter all about the war, and the family duty and so on and so on. He said the whole thing was hair-curling, but also kind of silly. 'Like something out of a dime novel,' he'd say."
"World War Two?" Mary asked. It was a good guess, given that John's grandfather had fought in the Pacific, and had done a long and harrowing stint in a Japanese POW camp.
"This was in 1934." John raised his eyebrows to emphasize the strangeness of the point.
"Okay, then. Spanish Civil War?" Mary suggested brightly. She had actually read all of the Hemingway he skipped and skimmed in English class.
"Wrong year," John pointed out with well-earned smugness. While she had been a better student all-round, he had always done better than she had in history. "And it's not like they would have had a dog in that particular hunt. I have no idea what they were talking about?"
"Did they keep sending letters?"
He shrugged. "Off and on. But Mary Alice started getting more and more eccentric around then. I think that's why Uncle Jack went through her stuff, trying to find out what was going on. Dad won't talk much about it, and I wouldn't bring it up with him if I were you, but Uncle Jack remembers her arguing with my grandfather about making Dad wear saints' medals and crap like that. There were even a few times she would drag him out of school in the middle of the day and take him to Mass."
Mary gave him a half-smile, but it seemed a little forced. "Wow. No wonder you guys never go to church."
"Waste of a perfectly good Sunday," John said, parroting his dad. He decided not to tell the story of how Mary Alice had walloped his dad good the one Sunday when he had snuck off at the crack of dawn in the hopes of avoiding hours and hours of church.
Not all of Uncle Jack's stories were funny. There were some he only told after he'd had a few, and when he told them, they always sounded more like questions than stories. Unfortunately, no one ever seemed to know the answers to those questions.
"According to Uncle Jack, by the time Dad was eight, he could speak almost perfect Latin."
"Perfect Latin?" Mary's voice was a little shaky, but John couldn't put a finger on why. Maybe it was just that she found the whole thing too ridiculous to believe. "At age eight? Really?"
"He claims not to remember a word of it, but you know Uncle Jack--he won't let the truth get in the way of a good story. Still, Mary Alice made him learn all these different prayers like his life depended on it. It got worse after my grandfather went off to the war."
"Worse how?" she asked, and somehow this had turned from just another family story into something inexplicably more serious and urgent.
"She got real superstitious--and angry. She always used to be quick-tempered, but Uncle Jack said this was different. One was fiery, this was something different. He said it was like she was expecting Hitler's goons to come marching into Lawrence and she was planning to fight them all off by herself with her bare hands."
Uncle Jack still had a couple of pictures of Mary Alice at his apartment at the retirement community. One was her and Grandpa Jimmy's wedding photo. The other was of her sitting on that infamous steamer trunk, ankles brazenly crossed, wearing a short dress and an I-dare-you smile. John always thought she looked like someone who would try to take on an army, just to show she could do it.
John always suspected that Uncle Jack had been more than a little in love with Mary Alice himself, but John knew he also had loved his little brother more than anything.
"She was absolutely fixated on the idea that Hitler was using some kind of black magic to fight the war." John said. He was starting to think that maybe he'd be better off changing the subject, but he couldn't think a way to do so without being obvious about it. "Uncle Jack said that was the only good thing about being 4F'd for a bad heart--being able to stay behind and keep an eye on Mary Alice and my dad."
Even though something about the story was getting under her skin, Mary wanted to hear more about Mary Alice. "There's something else, isn't there, John? Your dad never talks about his mother. What happened to her?"
"Well, she already had a reputation for being strange just because she was Catholic. That's how it was around here, back then. Then someone told Uncle Jack they'd seen her carving what looked like hobo sign on the trees around the house--you know,stars and symbols and stuff. He didn't believe it at first, but he went over to check, and there they were. Then, right after my grandfather shipped off for the Pacific, Uncle Jack caught her pouring a circle of salt all the way around the house. She just about ripped his head off when he started scuffing it away."
"What?" Mary exclaimed as if this was the most shocking thing she had ever heard in her life.
"Hey, you asked! Anyhow, it didn't take long for her to get a reputation for being really strange. Uncle Jack had to do a lot of damage control when other parents wouldn't let their kids play with my dad. He was pretty well-liked, so Dad didn't have it too badly, but there was nothing he could do to keep people from talking about Mary Alice. She even had, um, a... sort of nickname around town."
A childhood memory reared up and smacked him in the face just a little too late.
"Let me guess," Mary said with a tight little smile. "'Scary Mary,' right?"
He opened and closed his mouth a few times before he could speak. His face felt red-hot. "I'm--"
"Don't apologize," she said. Her voice was utterly flat. A gap had opened wide between them in the past couple of minutes and John didn't know what to do about it. "We were kids. It didn't mean anything."
"It was Mike's idea, if that helps," he said, trying to make light of things. Then, more seriously: "Just being kids was no excuse, we--"
Mary stood up. "I'm not mad at you, John! I'm not. It's just..." She flapped her hands as if trying to catch the words that wouldn't come to her. "Oh, I never should have asked you about her!"
She bolted to her feet and ran out. John knew better than to try to stop her.
A moment later, his dad came back in from the garage. Mary must have run right past him. He raised an eyebrow and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Might want to do something about that, son."
John shook his head. "It's--it'll be okay, Dad. I told her something that set off a bad memory." His dad would assume it was about Mary's parents. "She'll want to be alone."
His dad stared down at him consideringly for a moment. "Give her five minutes, son, then go looking. Then, if she wants to be alone, then by gum let her alone. But make damned sure she knows you went looking for her. Understand?"
John swallowed hard. He felt like he was fourteen again. "Yessir."
His dad disappeared into the kitchen. John heard the sound of the fridge and then a beer opening, and then the click-click-click of the kitchen timer being set.
Five minutes later it went off.
John got in the Impala and went looking. Mary couldn't have gone far in just five minutes on foot, but there were any number of places she could have gone, and he didn't want to lose too much time if he took off in one direction and she went in another.
It took him over an hour to find her.
She was at the playground. None of the equipment was the same, and the old beech tree was bigger and carved with more initials (theirs included), but it was still the same place they had played when they were kids. Well, John had played there, and Mary had stood behind the fence with her fingers hooked through the wire, watching and dreaming.
Mary sat on a bench with her back to the road, and he saw her stiffen at the sound of the Impala's motor. Still, when he got out of the car, he saw she had scooted to one end of the bench rather than sitting square in the middle.
He sat down next to her, but not right next to her.
"I'm here," he said.
She said nothing, not even 'get lost.'
"I was a real little shit when I was a kid, wasn't I?"
"It's okay," she said even though it wasn't. "I was pretty awful to you, too."
"I deserved it most of the time."
"Not all of the time." There was an evil smirk. "Remember your locker in tenth grade?"
He covered his face with his hands and slumped down on the bench. "How could I ever forget?" Then, he sat up straight again. Mary was looking at something that was nowhere in front of them. "Look, whatever I did, I'm sorry."
She let out a short, sharp breath, and her mouth set in a thin line. "You know I hate it when you do that, John! If you don't know what you did, how can you be sorry? Anyhow, it wasn't your fault. I should have known better. You said up front that she was..." She shook her head, eyes closed. "I should have known better."
She went quiet again.
"I wasn't trying to apologize," he explained, forcing himself to be patient and not to snap at her. "I was trying to say that I was sorry I hurt you, even if I didn't know how. I'd never do something to hurt you if I could avoid it. I would do anything to not hurt you."
"I know that," she said, and it was a quiet end to an argument that never really had a chance to start.
"You okay, or do you want me to bug off?"
"Stay," she said, and although she didn't move any closer, she felt closer. She leaned forward, turning to look at him. "I want you to tell me the rest of her story. What happened to her?"
He was tempted to argue the point or play dumb, but the steel in Mary's voice told him she needed to hear this.
"There's not much left to tell," he said. "One morning, she simply left without saying a word. This was when my grandfather was stuck in a Japanese POW camp, so she left my dad all alone. Uncle Jack was frantic when he found out. He went searching everywhere, but there was no sign of her. Their car was still in the driveway, and none of the bus drivers remembered seeing her. She had just vanished."
He thought of that photo, of a grinning woman who looked as if she was daring any and all comers to try and get the better of her. Uncle Jack had kept it close, for all these years.
"About a week after she vanished, he got a call from the police or someone. Mary Alice made it all the way back to St. Louis somehow, and had turned up dead at the church her family used to go to. Her aunt and uncle must have paid good money to keep it out of the papers, because other than that call, no one else in Lawrence ever heard a word of what happened to her. Uncle Jack saw to that. I think he tried to find out more about what happened to her, but if he found anything, he never told me. As for my grandfather, well... he died long before I was born, just a year after he came back from the war."
Mary didn't press for details, and John didn't provide them. They weren't pretty. Coming home to a dead wife and a son who barely recognized him finished the work the malaria and his captors had begun. James Winchester had simply dwindled away without a fight in a hospital ward, leaving his brother Jack to raise his boy all by himself.
"Thank you," Mary said. Her eyes were closed, and she smiled tightly. She didn't speak for a moment, but John suspected she had more to say. "That poor woman... 'Mary Alice Winchester.'" Each syllable came out with beautiful precision.
"I kind of wish she'd been named Ethel or something," John grumbled.
Mary got it without him needing to explain. "Your dad turned out okay, didn't he?"
"I'd say so."
She opened her eyes and looked at him, smiling sadly. "And you turned out okay."
He snorted with laughter. "That depends on who you ask."
She looked away again. "I'm sorry. That stupid nickname you and Mike came up with had nothing to do with why I ran. It's just that what I grew up with... You're not the only one with that kind of family history. Mine was just a little closer by than yours."
He reached over and put his hand over hers. She turned her hand over so their fingers could lace together.
"I think I should bake your dad a cake or something. For turning out okay. And for raising you to be who you are."
When he squeezed her hand, she squeezed back in return. He had known that while Mary had loved her parents, all was not well in the Campbell home. Mary had never shared too many details, though. All he knew is that she had spent years watching through wire and wishing she could be like all the other kids. Maybe later she would tell him more, but not now.
"I'm looking forward to getting married," she said. "To being a mom."
"You'll be a good one."
She turned and gave him one of those glorious, golden smiles. "Maybe I will be, after all." Then, she grew serious again, and he felt something clench in his stomach. "John?"
"Yes?"
"The other day, I saw a house for sale. Do you want to go and look at it tomorrow?"
"Huh? Uh, sure. I'd love to."
"I remember Mom..." She swallowed hard. "We always drove past it on the way home from the grocery store. Mom always said she thought it was a cute little house."
He leaned over and kissed her.
The next day, they decided to put an offer on the house just ten minutes after walking in the front door.
Even before they had finished moving in, Mary went and hung a picture at the head of the stairs. John watched her, wondering why she'd hang something in a hallway they intended to repaint as soon as they could.
She stood back to admire her handiwork and he recognized his grandparents' wedding photo. Uncle Jack must have given it to her when they visited the day before.
She touched the photo gently. "We Mary Winchesters need to stick together. Everything will turn out okay. You'll see. I'll make sure of that."
When she turned and saw John at the foot of the stairs, she yelped in surprise, then smiled and ran down to meet him. She all but jumped into his arms, and he spun her around a couple of times and danced her into the kitchen, where they began the oh-so-romantic work of unpacking the dishes.
They were making a home of their own, and even unfinished, it was everything he ever could have wanted.
Three weeks had gone by, and the few things John had been able to salvage from the fire still sat in boxes at the garage. Mike said he didn't mind them staying there as long as John wanted.
"It's not like they're taking up a whole lot of space," he said casually. It was almost funny how pale he went when he realized just what it was he'd said. Almost, but not quite.
What he'd said was true. Nearly all that was left of the home John and Mary had built together fit neatly into eleven boxes at the back of one of the service bays. The rest of it was in the trunk of the Impala.
"Anyhow," Mike said, changing the subject, "Katie wants you and the boys to come for Thanksgiving."
John started to protest--he didn't feel like celebrating, and the boys were too young to know they were missing anything--but Mike narrowed his eyes in a way that told John the point was not at all negotiable.
John supposed it would be better than hanging around the efficiency apartment with no one but the boys and the football game for company.
He supposed wrong. Katie Guenther had meant well, but it didn't take long for him to realize he would have been better off drinking himself to sleep alone in front of the game than sitting here surrounded by reminders of everything he had lost.
Dean sat right next to him, using a phone book as a booster seat and not eating. Last year, he had shoveled spoonful after spoonful of stuffing into his mouth to the point where Uncle Jack finally asked John if the boy was getting paid by the bite.
Back then, John had known that it would likely be Uncle Jack's last Thanksgiving and that there was little chance of him making it to Christmas, so he had deliberately anchored each moment, each phrase, every burst of laughter, deep in his memory.
He had never imagined it would be Mary's last Thanksgiving, too.
John remembered how she sat like a queen in the rocking chair he had brought down to the kitchen for her. She had issued orders from her 'throne' and watched smugly as John scurried around following all her instructions--most of which seemed to involve doing three different things at the stove all at the same time. Uncle Jack sat right beside her in his wheelchair, cheerfully heckling John's inept attempts at domesticity. Beneath it all, Dean kept up a running prattle, asking Uncle Jack about his oxygen tank and if he could try it, or when he'd be able to play with his new baby brother or sister and why Mommy had to sit down and be still all the time.
Dean said nothing, now, and his silence was loud in the teasing between Mike and his dad, and in the sisterly sniping between Mike's two little girls.
John wasn't saying much, either, except when he asked Mike to pass the rolls, or answered yet another one of Katie's questions.
Mike cast him a worried glance, and John shook his head.
"Hey, the game starts in twenty," Mike announced. "Katie, you don't mind if us guys have dessert in the den, do you?"
Katie looked like she minded very much, but Mike's mouth hardened into a line that said this had nothing to do with avoiding dishes or rooting against the Cowboys.
A beer and a game he didn't give a shit about would be better than sitting around a dining room table with someone else's family. Sam was sacked out upstairs, and while Dean was sitting right next to John, he was so silent he might as well have not been there at all.
At least the kid finally started eating, picking away at the stuffing and ignoring the green bean casserole and the turkey. John figured he could endure twenty more minutes of this holiday hell.
Dean eventually finished his stuffing, then made his way methodically through the turkey. The green beans were considered then dismissed with a squinched look. Dean cast a longing glance at the dish of stuffing. He still didn't say a word. It had been three weeks. Three weeks and not a single word.
"Take a bite of your green beans, honey, and then you can have some more stuffing," Katie said.
Dean looked up at John as if to ask 'do I have to?' and it took every ounce of self-control he had not to tell Katie to mind her own fucking business. She wasn't Dean's mother.
While Dean poked at the beans, steeling himself for the task, John tried to ignore the laughter as Mike's eight-year-old teased him about his beer gut and he retaliated--with an eager assist from the younger girl--by teasing her about her 'boyfriend.'
What was it like, having something to laugh about? It had only been three weeks, but he couldn't remember.
Some other time, he might have laughed at the look of utter disgust on Dean's face as he choked down the promised bite of overcooked green beans and what Mary called (used to call) 'cream of crud.' Dean shuddered theatrically, then pointed at the stuffing with a look of triumph.
Katie picked it up the dish and started to hand it to John, but John shook his head.
"What do you say, Dean?" It might not work, but just maybe it would. If it did, it might redeem the holiday.
Dean stared up at him as if he'd just spoken in fluent Martian.
"You say 'please,' Dean. Remember?"
Just one word. Just one miserable word. This silence couldn't go on forever. He wouldn't let it.
Dean stared at him for a moment longer, then turned to look pleadingly at Katie. It was exactly what he did whenever he thought Mary might be easier on him than John.
"Oh, let the boy have seconds, John. It's a holiday, after all," Katie said. "You have to give him a little slack. He still misses his--"
"What do you say, Dean?" John repeated even more firmly, drowning out what Katie was about to say.
Dean turned away so hard he all but curled up like a pill bug.
"'Please may I have some stuffing, Mrs. Guenther.' Then you can have some." He spoke as sternly as he could; there would be no negotiation.
Katie held out her hand. "Give me his plate, John." She did not say please. Mike told her to stay out of it, but she paid him no mind. "If he doesn't want to talk, he doesn't want to talk."
"He hasn't spoken in three weeks. He's got to talk sometime, and it's going to be now." What he was saying made no sense, everything in him knew that, but right now he needed to hear Dean say something, anything, it didn't matter what or why or how or what he had to do to get it. "Say 'please,' Dean."
If Dean heard him, he showed no sign of it. John felt his face growing hot, but he didn't know how to stop it and he didn't much care.
"Dean, what did I just tell you?"
His heart skipped a beat when he heard Dean make a soft sound. It was too soft, though. It could have been anything.
"I can't hear you, Dean."
The sound came again, followed by a hiccup. Then Katie got to her feet, and she scooped Dean out of his chair, knocking the phone book to the floor.
Dean buried his face in the crook of her shoulder, and the sobs he'd been trying to hold in finally burst out as he wrapped his arms tight around her neck. Katie gave John a glare that should have poisoned him on the spot.
Mike said something about the game starting in a few, but John was already on his way to the door. He slammed it behind him just as he heard Dean's sobs rise to a wail.
He knew he'd fucked up and fucked up big, but was it too much to ask to have one thing be back to the way it was before? Just one thing. Just one miserable word. Just one thing that was normal. That's all. He started walking with no idea of where he meant to go. The light drizzle cooled him off, but not enough.
Mary would be beyond pissed at him for how he'd acted, but Mary wasn't here and never would be again, so what the fuck did it matter? The thought nearly brought out a sob of his own, but it turned into a snarl and he punched the next mailbox he passed hard enough to skin his knuckles and set the mailbox off-kilter on its post.
He'd lost Mary, so was it so fucking wrong that he wanted to make sure he wasn't losing Dean, too? Sometimes, it felt like the last time he'd seen Dean was when the two of them went out to play catch that last night.
"You're saying Dean saw what happened?"
Deacon's question had gnawed at John for nearly three weeks now. Dean had been right there in the hallway, that night. John had no idea how long he'd been there, or how much he'd seen.
(His mother, bleeding from a gash in her belly, the blood dripping down onto Sam's face...)
But that wasn't real, and therefore Dean couldn't have seen a god-damned thing.
John kept walking, and the drizzle kept shifting between mist and honest rain just as his thoughts shifted between what he remembered and what he knew must have happened.
"The way you keep talking, it sounds to me like you really saw something. You ever think that maybe you did?"
He did, but he didn't want to. If he really saw something, then all it meant was that he was crazy. Again, he saw that flash of red and a woman screaming as he put his hand on her shoulder.
What had Dean seen at the nursery door? Something cold and heavy twisted deep in John's gut. Was there a reason Dean wasn't speaking, or was there a reason why Dean wasn't speaking to him? Why he'd clung to Katie Guenther like he was terrified out of his wits?
John had to stop and fight to keep his balance as he remembered what he'd asked Deacon. Had he done something, in-country? Maybe that was the wrong question.
Had he done something that night?
Was there a reason why his memory was so fucked up?
He doubled over and threw up nearly all of his Thanksgiving dinner right in front of someone's mailbox.
"I don't think you're a killer, and I don't think you're crazy."
John wiped his mouth on his sleeve and took a couple of deep breaths before straightening back up. He never would have done anything to hurt Mary. He knew that. It was the only thing in all of this he knew for certain.
"I think maybe you saw something."
The rain fell lightly but steadily now. It was coming on twilight, but he could still see where he was. The charred wreck of a house stood dark against the slate-grey sky. He had autopiloted all the way home and thrown up in front of his own mailbox.
The psychologist he had visited (and stormed out on during their third and last session) no doubt would have asked some bullshit question about why he did that, but John didn't need to fork over fifty bucks to some quack to figure out what was going on.
He looked at the home that no longer was, and thought about how things should have been tonight. "Happy fucking Thanksgiving," he muttered.
He expected bleak silence and the slow patter of rain in response.
What he got was an indignant, "Watch your language, John Winchester! You'd better not be using those kinds of words in front of your boys!"
John was too astounded to say anything at first. He turned to see a stern, stout black woman watching him from the street. His first and completely irrelevant thought was that her bright red raincoat and sunflower-patterned umbrella didn't really fit with the grim November dusk.
He gathered his wits. "Excuse me, but who the hell are you, and how the hell do you know my name?"
She gave him a 'tch! Language!' by way of response then marched right past him towards the remains of his house. She couldn't have been that much older than him, but she still felt free to scold him like he was a child.
"Of course I know your name. You called me, a few days after the fire," she said.
"What... no I didn't!" He couldn't remember much about the days following the fire, but he was pretty certain he hadn't called this woman.
"Oh, yes you did!" she retorted, and it was so ridiculously childish he almost laughed. "You even woke me up in the middle of a nap! You called me then, just like you called me now, wanting to find out what really happened that night."
"I don't even know your name! So how would I be able to look up your number and call you?" This was beyond ridiculous. He should go back to the Guenthers and get the boys.
"Number? Please. You didn't call me on the phone, John. You simply... cried out, and I heard you just as clear as if you'd been standing right next to me. If you hadn't called just now, I'd have been just as happy to stay home where it's warm and dry and I have a nice Thanksgiving supper waiting for me." She spoke firmly, but she sounded out of breath. "Almost as nice as that supper you walked out on, I'd say. I never can get the white meat not to come out dry as a bone, though."
John wasn't used to his head reeling like this if he hadn't been drinking.
"I have to say, I've been wanting to talk to you ever since you called me that first time, but what were you thinking, just now, leaving your little boy like that? Did you know he's probably crying his poor little head off right now because he thinks he did something to make his daddy mad?"
If John didn't feel like an total shit already, that would have finished the job. "Okay... did Katie call and tell you to come after me?"
The woman shook her head. "No. Like I said, I've been meaning to speak to you for a while, now, but it just wasn't the time." She looked at the house, but in a way that suggested she was trying to see what was just beyond it. "Terrible, what happened here that night."
It sounded more like a judgement than a platitude. All John could do was nod in mute agreement.
"No, not just terrible," she said. "Evil. But you know that already. You saw it for yourself. What that thing did to your wife. And, since you're about to ask me who I am again--and I told you to watch your language, boy--my name is Missouri Moseley."
She reached into her handbag and pulled out a business card. It gave her name in prim cursive. Beneath that, in a more businesslike typeface, it said PSYCHIC.
"Don't throw that out, John. I know what you're thinking."
"Right. Because you're a psychic." He almost tossed the card into the gutter, just because, but he slipped it into his pocket instead.
"That, too."
He glowered at her, but she seemed unimpressed. "Okay, Mrs--"
"Miss."
"Miss Mosely, then. What happened here?" He loomed over her and pointed at the house. "You said it was evil, but what was it? Tell me that."
"I'm not entirely sure of that." Rather than being hesitant, it came across in a way that made John think she was looking down at him rather than the other way around. "When I say it was evil, I'm saying that whatever it was, was made of evil. The house still stinks of it, and it's jumbling up everything inside of it so that I can't pick out anything sensible from all the mess."
"Figures." He turned and started to walk away. He was done talking to this crazy woman, even if she did know things she shouldn't have known. Things that weren't true.
"What was it that friend of yours said?" she called out after him. "That you're not a killer and you're not crazy? You were thinking that just a minute ago, weren't you?"
He stopped, but he didn't turn around.
"He's right, you know. You're not a killer, but you are crazy if you could think for even one second that you ever could have killed your Mary. You loved her. You still do. You love her so much it shines."
John closed his eyes. He did not trust himself to speak.
"But that shine will darken and turn into something else if you're not careful. You love that boy of yours, but what you did to him just now..."
He wasn't psychic, but he knew she was shaking her head in disgust.
"You didn't kill Mary, but something did, and it's something that needs to be stopped. If you could feel what I feel, standing here, you'd know it won't stop at just one woman to get whatever it is it wants."
This was crazy. She was crazy. Maybe he was, too. His mind told him one thing, and his memories told him something else. More than one something else, sometimes.
How was he supposed to tell what was true, and what was not?
Finally, he faced her again. Missouri looked ridiculous in her red raincoat and standing under that too-bright umbrella, but at the same time she didn't seem ridiculous at all.
"Who is she?" he asked. "If you're really a psychic, you'll know who I'm talking about."
If it hadn't been for the red of her raincoat, he might not have thought of it.
"That woman who isn't your wife? The other one you saw burn up right in front of you?"
John held his breath.
"I can see her, but it's just a flicker, and to be honest I'm not sure I should look any closer than that right now. This isn't the best place to talk," she said, and he thought he saw her cast a quick glance at the house. "Call me, when you're ready to talk. You're not, now, but you wouldn't be when it counts if I hadn't come to you now. Now go on back to your friends' house and be a good daddy to those sweet little boys of yours."
The thought made his stomach churn with guilt, and he felt what little was left of Katie's dinner go sour. He nodded, mumbled a good night, and turned to leave. In a few minutes, this would all feel like just another bad dream in a long string of bad dreams.
"John?"
He looked over his shoulder, but said nothing.
"There is one thing I can tell you about that woman. That bit of red you keep seeing, over and over?"
He motioned for her to go on even though he really didn't want to hear what she had to say.
"It's hair. Whoever she was, that poor thing had the reddest hair I've ever seen in my life."
John nodded something that wasn't thanks, then headed back to a place that wasn't home. It wasn't home, but his boys were there, and that was all that really mattered.
It was all he had.
Katie gave him a look when he got back, but it was tempered with sympathy. "I put Dean to bed upstairs with Sammy. Did you want to leave them here tonight?"
He shrugged, and followed Katie upstairs to check on his boys. He looked into the room, and although the two boys were curled up together in the Guenthers' old crib, he could tell Dean wasn't asleep.
Katie sighed. "Would you look at that? I put Dean in his own bed. I have no idea how on earth he managed to climb in there without me hearing," she said, but John was not at all surprised. She backed quietly out of the room, leaving John to be with his boys.
He reached down and stroked Dean's hair. It was still almost as blond as Mary's but it was getting darker and darker all the time.
"Reddest hair I've ever seen in my life."
John couldn't think of who it could be. That was because it couldn't be anyone. It was just his imagination.
He could see it clearly now, that red hair. Red that turned to black as it was consumed by fire. It was a wonder that he couldn't see it for what it was before.
He told himself it didn't mean anything.
Dean shifted and looked up at John. There was a flash of fear that broke John's heart, but then Dean reached up to him, silently asking to be picked up.
He didn't even need to say 'please' for John to scoop him up and hold him close. He held Dean like that for a long time, and when there was a faint, hesitant 'Daddy?' John just held him even closer, not saying a word.
When John finally went back downstairs, Mike handed him a drink. And another one. And a third. After a while, John no longer saw red hair and flame, or heard a stern, breathy voice telling him things that couldn't be true. That was fine by him. He wanted to forget everything that happened that night. As far as he was concerned, this Thanksgiving and all Thanksgivings to follow could go straight to hell.
For that one night, he was able to forget, but from time to time in the days that followed, he took out Missouri Moseley's card and thought about calling. He even picked up the phone a few times.
Once, he actually dialed her number, but he was drunk and hung up in the middle of the first ring.
Part 4