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grav_ityChapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
“Mrs. Gallant?” Prentiss said it as a question even though Garcia had made it clear that Margaret Gallant had lived here alone since the death of her husband.
“Yes?” the woman said curiously. It is never comforting when a stranger knows your name, and Margaret showed due caution in an unknown situation. She held the door in front of her, opening her house and standing ready to use it as a barricade if need be; welcoming, but letting them know they’d need a good excuse to get inside.
“My name is Agent Emily Prentiss and this is Dr. Spencer Reid,” Prentiss began. “We’re from the FBI. We have some questions for you.”
“About what?” Mrs. Gallant asked, opening the door a little further.
“May we come in?” Reid asked, looking his most harmless.
She regarded them both seriously. Prentiss realized that she legitimately had no idea what in the world had brought two FBI agents to her front door. She hadn’t panicked, which meant she trusted her family members and friends, and she wasn’t defensive, which meant she wouldn’t hide things from them. Their challenge, then, would be leading her to the information they wanted her to tell them, and encouraging her to remember it.
Prentiss relaxed her face. Reid would understand her signal, although she wasn’t sure it was possible for someone carrying a gun to look much more harmless than he already did. Knowing him, he’d probably already reached the same conclusion and was making every possible effort to make Mrs. Gallant feel less threatened. They stood in tableau for a few more seconds, and then the door opened all the way.
“Why are you even in Canada?” Mrs. Gallant asked as she led them into the living room. She sat down in an overstuffed chair. This left only the loveseat for Prentiss and Reid. As she sat down, much closer to Reid than she would have under normal circumstances, Prentiss almost smiled at the woman’s ability to control her visitors.
“We’re often called in to consult on cases all over North America,” Reid said. “We teach local officers to do what we do, but sometimes they need us.”
“So it’s bad.” Not a question, but still no panic. Prentiss’ respect went up another few notches.
“Yes ma’am,” she said. “It’s serious.”
“Please begin then,” Mrs. Gallant sat back in her chair. She didn’t look relaxed, but she looked settled and ready for whatever came.
“Can you tell us about the first house you lived in when you were a girl?” Reid began. He had figured it out in the car while Prentiss drove. They would start with geography and ease her into it.
“It was a farm house,” Mrs. Gallant said. “Half a century old already when I was born. It had two stories and a big porch. Not a level surface in the whole place. I lost all my best marbles through the floorboards when I tried to play inside.”
“Was it close to town?” Reid asked.
“It was about ten minutes outside of Raglan,” she replied. “In the summer, anyway. It took longer in the snow.”
“So it wasn’t close to anything?” Prentiss prompted gently.
“Oh, it was just down the road from the RAF base,” Mrs. Gallant said. “The base wasn’t a proper town back then, but if you were enlisted you could shop there.”
“Did you family shop on the base?” Prentiss asked.
“No, my father died when I was three and my mother kept the farm afterwards,” Mrs. Gallant said. “My own boys enlisted in the Canadian Forces when they were in University, but they were the first since my grandfather.”
“Was there a school on the base?” Reid asked, cocking his head like he always did when he was asking a question he already knew the answer to. Fortunately he cocked his head for a lot of other reasons as well, so it was only a tell for those who knew him best.
“There was, but I didn’t go to it,” Mrs. Gallant replied. “I took the bus to Londsborough.”
“So you never really had any contact with the people on the base?” Prentiss asked.
“Just with Stephen.” Both agents stiffened in surprise. They had all but ruled DuCette out, just waiting on word from Hotch and Rossi to confirm what they all thought they knew. They managed to keep their surprise from their faces, however, because Mrs. Gallant didn’t notice their reactions.
“How did you and Stephen meet?” Prentiss asked, only a fraction of a second later than would have been natural.
“My mother invited him over for dinner,” Mrs. Gallant said. “He’d bought a house up the road, off base, and he helped out around here sometimes.”
Reid and Prentiss exchanged a look. Something was very strange here.
“Mrs. Gallant,” Reid said cautiously, “do you remember Stephen’s last name?”
“Kalichuk,” she replied instantly.
“Did he come over a lot?” Prentiss asked.
“At least once a week,” Mrs. Gallant said. “Sometimes he took my mother out dancing.”
The agents exchanged another look, this one long enough to raise the beginnings of alarm in their hostess. Reid’s fingers flicked over his cell phone, a question, and Prentiss nodded.
“Excuse me,” he said, rising to his feet. “I need to make a phone call.”
++++++
“Speak, Boy Wonder, and the Oracle will enlighten you.”
“Garcia, I need you to run a background check on a Stephen Kalichuk,” Reid said.
“Kalichuk?” Garcia asked, but Reid knew she’d probably already hacked into his entire personal life by the time she finished the third syllable. “Oh!”
“What?”
“I’m patching Hotch and Rossi in, and Morgan too,” Garcia said, her tone all business. “I don’t want to have to read this twice.”
++++++
Prentiss shifted on the loveseat, her movement drawing Mrs. Gallant’s attention back from Reid’s retreating form.
“Agent Prentiss,” she began, “why are you here?”
“There was a murder on the RAF base the summer you moved away,” Prentiss said.
“I remember,” Mrs. Gallant replied. Then she smiled ruefully. “Actually, I don’t remember. I didn’t find out until years afterward.”
“You were very young,” Prentiss said.
“I was eight,” Mrs. Gallant said. “Just a bit younger than that poor girl.”
“What was Stephen like?” Emily had mastered the art of asking questions that might have horrible answers with a straight face.
“He was tall,” Mrs. Gallant said. “And very strong. He loved cars and engines. He used to fix the tractor when it broke. My mother was heartbroken when he was reassigned.”
“Reassigned?”
“To the RAF base near St. Alban’s. It was about an hour away to the south.” Mrs. Gallant explained. “But he always came to visit when he was on leave.”
Prentiss’s blood ran cold, and she made a note to ask Garcia to look up Kalichuk’s leave times if she hadn’t already. Garcia had a lot of initiative, and it would probably occur to her that a solider on leave could kill girls from more than one town.
“Did you like him?” Prentiss asked.
“Yes, I did,” Mrs. Gallant said. “He used to let me sit on his lap and we would whisper secrets.”
“What kind of secrets?”
“How much he loved coming to our house,” Mrs. Gallant said. “How much he loved us.”
“Mrs. Gallant?” Emily said, finally deciding it was now or never. “Why did you move?
++++++
“Stephen Kalichuk was assigned to the Raglan RAF base until 1957, when he was reassigned to St. Alban’s,” Garcia’s voice emerged from the phone.
“Baby girl, why are we looking at this guy?” Morgan said, exchanging a look with Officer Broadfoot.
“He’s the only person from the base Margaret Gallant said she knew,” Reid replied, his voice sounding tinny through the phone.
“Keep going, Garcia,” said Hotch.
“He was arrested in St. Alban’s for trying to lure a ten-year-old girl into his car with a gift of new underwear.”
“I like this guy already,” Rossi said.
“It gets worse, sir,” Garcia said. “The charges were dropped due to lack of evidence, but the local OPP watched him like a hawk after that.”
“Garcia, if he was in St. Alban’s,” Morgan began, but Garcia cut him off.
“Way ahead of you, dreamboat. He was on leave when all four girls went missing. And he owned a car, so mobility wasn’t a problem.”
“What kind of car?” Morgan and Broadfoot spoke with a single breath.
“A 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air,” Garcia said, after taking a moment to check.
“Morgan?” Rossi said.
“That’s the car Stephen DuCette claimed he saw that night,” Constable Cooke said.
“When was Kalichuk reassigned?” Rossi asked.
“He got his orders in late May,” Garcia replied.
“Alma Dykstra moved away right after Kalichuk was reassigned,” Rossi pointed out. “It’s possible she figured out what he was doing.”
“Emily is still talking to Mrs. Gallant,” Reid cut in, “but I got the impression that Alma and Kalichuk were very close.”
“When was the arrest in St. Alban’s?” Rossi asked.
“Two weeks before Lynne Bard’s murder,” Garcia replied.
“What does that mean?” Constable Cooke asked.
“It means that Kalichuk was denied a kill right before he came back to an area where he thought he’d have an easy target,” Rossi said.
“And when his easy target was gone, he acted in rage, went off-script and didn’t conceal the evidence as well as he had previously,” Morgan added.
“Kalichuk went back to Raglan to rape and strangle Margaret Dykstra,” Hotch said. “And when he couldn’t have her, he took his anger out on Lynne Bard.”
“And Stephen DuCette paid the price.”
++++++
“I never knew why we moved,” Mrs. Gallant said. “We just packed up all of our things at the end of May and left. We moved into my grandmother’s house in Waterford until we bought this place, and I’ve been here ever since.”
The door latch popped loudly as Reid came back inside. Prentiss couldn’t help starting a little. She’d been totally absorbed in her questions. Reid sat back down beside her and leaned forward with his hands on his knees. Prentiss realized that the other shoe was about to drop, and drop hard.
“Sergeant Kalichuk was reassigned to Raglan base at the end of May the year your mother moved you away,” he said.
“Why would she do that?” The question Mrs. Gallant asked was a reflex. Prentiss could see the woman deflate as she figured out the answer on her own seconds after voicing it.
“We think she was trying to protect you.” Reid gave the answer anyway, unable to help himself.
“Did they ever fight?” Prentiss asked.
“I don’t remember.” Mrs. Gallant was starting to fall apart. Prentiss locked eyes with her, letting herself be used as an anchor. “Yes. The last time he came to visit, before we moved. It must have been March, because I had a new outfit for Easter and I hadn’t worn it yet. He wanted to see it, so we played and had a fashion show while mother was cooking dinner. She found us just as I was changing back into my regular dress.”
“Did he touch you?” Prentiss waited for the explosion and felt Reid tense beside her.
“I thought that’s what fathers did,” Mrs. Gallant said blankly. “All these years and I never once thought of him. Never once. Mother never spoke of him, so I didn’t either, and then I forgot him altogether. He killed Lynne Bard that summer, did he?”
“We believe so, yes,” Reid said tightly. “And before her, three other girls whose remains were only just discovered.”
“God in mercy!” Mrs. Gallant fell back against the chair. “Tell me he’s dead.”
“He drank himself to death in 1975,” Reid said.
Margaret Gallant put her head in her hands and took several deep breaths. Reid squirmed. Prentiss knew how much he hated causing this kind of awkwardness, this kind of damage. She didn’t like it either, but it was part of the job.
“Is there someone we can call to come and sit with you for a bit?” Prentiss asked.
“My daughter-in-law,” she replied. “I can call her.”
Reid leaned back a little and Prentiss knew that they were done here. She hoped that they had not ruined another life in the search for the truth. It hardly seemed fair that one person’s peace of mind should come at the expense of another’s. She could only hope that Stephen Kalichuk’s ghost would never rest easy.
“Agent Prentiss?” Mrs. Gallant asked in a thin voice. “Is Lynne dead because I wasn’t there?”
It was another question asked on reflex. They all knew the facts. Lying about it would help no one, but that didn’t mean she had to tell the truth.
“Mrs. Gallant, your mother was a single woman in the 1950s, trying to raise her daughter in safety. She did everything she could to protect you. And nobody is responsible for a murder except for the monster who did it.”
++++++
Stephen DuCette held his wife’s hand as they sat on the chesterfield and watched the press conference. The blonde agent spoke with such poise, such conviction, as she relayed the details to the public that it was impossible not to believe her. Still, Stephen was convinced it was all a dream.
Agent Hotchner stood in the doorway, uncomfortable and unwilling to intrude into the moment, but Agent Rossi said on the piano bench and watched with them. The two agents had disclosed information that would not be public knowledge. Stephen now knew the story of a girl named Maggie whose life had almost ended that summer, and he could not begrudge her the freedom that her life had cost him.
The press conference ended, and the cameras cut back to the National. As Peter Mansbridge summed up the events of the past few days, Stephen breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t over yet. It might never be. But now, everyone would know that for fifty years, he had told the truth. That was more than he’d dreamt of hoping for.
“Mr. and Mrs. DuCette,” Rossi said, standing. “We have a plane to catch.”
“Of course, Agent,” Stephen nodded at both of them and rose to shake their hands. “Thank you. For everything.”
“It’s what we do,” Hotch said simply.
++++++
The plane ride home is always shorter. Reid talks of tailwinds and the Earth’s rotation, but they all know that they flight home is shorter because they can finally sleep.
“The woods are lovely, dark and deep
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep
Miles to go before I sleep” – Robert Frost
++++++
Fin
AN: Wow. I think I need a nap. If anyone is interested in a commentary (ie. what is the truth and what I made up), let me know.
A huge THANK YOU goes out to wojelah, who mercilessly slaughtered the Oxford Comma and pointed out that a contraction every now and then wouldn’t kill them.
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
“Mrs. Gallant?” Prentiss said it as a question even though Garcia had made it clear that Margaret Gallant had lived here alone since the death of her husband.
“Yes?” the woman said curiously. It is never comforting when a stranger knows your name, and Margaret showed due caution in an unknown situation. She held the door in front of her, opening her house and standing ready to use it as a barricade if need be; welcoming, but letting them know they’d need a good excuse to get inside.
“My name is Agent Emily Prentiss and this is Dr. Spencer Reid,” Prentiss began. “We’re from the FBI. We have some questions for you.”
“About what?” Mrs. Gallant asked, opening the door a little further.
“May we come in?” Reid asked, looking his most harmless.
She regarded them both seriously. Prentiss realized that she legitimately had no idea what in the world had brought two FBI agents to her front door. She hadn’t panicked, which meant she trusted her family members and friends, and she wasn’t defensive, which meant she wouldn’t hide things from them. Their challenge, then, would be leading her to the information they wanted her to tell them, and encouraging her to remember it.
Prentiss relaxed her face. Reid would understand her signal, although she wasn’t sure it was possible for someone carrying a gun to look much more harmless than he already did. Knowing him, he’d probably already reached the same conclusion and was making every possible effort to make Mrs. Gallant feel less threatened. They stood in tableau for a few more seconds, and then the door opened all the way.
“Why are you even in Canada?” Mrs. Gallant asked as she led them into the living room. She sat down in an overstuffed chair. This left only the loveseat for Prentiss and Reid. As she sat down, much closer to Reid than she would have under normal circumstances, Prentiss almost smiled at the woman’s ability to control her visitors.
“We’re often called in to consult on cases all over North America,” Reid said. “We teach local officers to do what we do, but sometimes they need us.”
“So it’s bad.” Not a question, but still no panic. Prentiss’ respect went up another few notches.
“Yes ma’am,” she said. “It’s serious.”
“Please begin then,” Mrs. Gallant sat back in her chair. She didn’t look relaxed, but she looked settled and ready for whatever came.
“Can you tell us about the first house you lived in when you were a girl?” Reid began. He had figured it out in the car while Prentiss drove. They would start with geography and ease her into it.
“It was a farm house,” Mrs. Gallant said. “Half a century old already when I was born. It had two stories and a big porch. Not a level surface in the whole place. I lost all my best marbles through the floorboards when I tried to play inside.”
“Was it close to town?” Reid asked.
“It was about ten minutes outside of Raglan,” she replied. “In the summer, anyway. It took longer in the snow.”
“So it wasn’t close to anything?” Prentiss prompted gently.
“Oh, it was just down the road from the RAF base,” Mrs. Gallant said. “The base wasn’t a proper town back then, but if you were enlisted you could shop there.”
“Did you family shop on the base?” Prentiss asked.
“No, my father died when I was three and my mother kept the farm afterwards,” Mrs. Gallant said. “My own boys enlisted in the Canadian Forces when they were in University, but they were the first since my grandfather.”
“Was there a school on the base?” Reid asked, cocking his head like he always did when he was asking a question he already knew the answer to. Fortunately he cocked his head for a lot of other reasons as well, so it was only a tell for those who knew him best.
“There was, but I didn’t go to it,” Mrs. Gallant replied. “I took the bus to Londsborough.”
“So you never really had any contact with the people on the base?” Prentiss asked.
“Just with Stephen.” Both agents stiffened in surprise. They had all but ruled DuCette out, just waiting on word from Hotch and Rossi to confirm what they all thought they knew. They managed to keep their surprise from their faces, however, because Mrs. Gallant didn’t notice their reactions.
“How did you and Stephen meet?” Prentiss asked, only a fraction of a second later than would have been natural.
“My mother invited him over for dinner,” Mrs. Gallant said. “He’d bought a house up the road, off base, and he helped out around here sometimes.”
Reid and Prentiss exchanged a look. Something was very strange here.
“Mrs. Gallant,” Reid said cautiously, “do you remember Stephen’s last name?”
“Kalichuk,” she replied instantly.
“Did he come over a lot?” Prentiss asked.
“At least once a week,” Mrs. Gallant said. “Sometimes he took my mother out dancing.”
The agents exchanged another look, this one long enough to raise the beginnings of alarm in their hostess. Reid’s fingers flicked over his cell phone, a question, and Prentiss nodded.
“Excuse me,” he said, rising to his feet. “I need to make a phone call.”
++++++
“Speak, Boy Wonder, and the Oracle will enlighten you.”
“Garcia, I need you to run a background check on a Stephen Kalichuk,” Reid said.
“Kalichuk?” Garcia asked, but Reid knew she’d probably already hacked into his entire personal life by the time she finished the third syllable. “Oh!”
“What?”
“I’m patching Hotch and Rossi in, and Morgan too,” Garcia said, her tone all business. “I don’t want to have to read this twice.”
++++++
Prentiss shifted on the loveseat, her movement drawing Mrs. Gallant’s attention back from Reid’s retreating form.
“Agent Prentiss,” she began, “why are you here?”
“There was a murder on the RAF base the summer you moved away,” Prentiss said.
“I remember,” Mrs. Gallant replied. Then she smiled ruefully. “Actually, I don’t remember. I didn’t find out until years afterward.”
“You were very young,” Prentiss said.
“I was eight,” Mrs. Gallant said. “Just a bit younger than that poor girl.”
“What was Stephen like?” Emily had mastered the art of asking questions that might have horrible answers with a straight face.
“He was tall,” Mrs. Gallant said. “And very strong. He loved cars and engines. He used to fix the tractor when it broke. My mother was heartbroken when he was reassigned.”
“Reassigned?”
“To the RAF base near St. Alban’s. It was about an hour away to the south.” Mrs. Gallant explained. “But he always came to visit when he was on leave.”
Prentiss’s blood ran cold, and she made a note to ask Garcia to look up Kalichuk’s leave times if she hadn’t already. Garcia had a lot of initiative, and it would probably occur to her that a solider on leave could kill girls from more than one town.
“Did you like him?” Prentiss asked.
“Yes, I did,” Mrs. Gallant said. “He used to let me sit on his lap and we would whisper secrets.”
“What kind of secrets?”
“How much he loved coming to our house,” Mrs. Gallant said. “How much he loved us.”
“Mrs. Gallant?” Emily said, finally deciding it was now or never. “Why did you move?
++++++
“Stephen Kalichuk was assigned to the Raglan RAF base until 1957, when he was reassigned to St. Alban’s,” Garcia’s voice emerged from the phone.
“Baby girl, why are we looking at this guy?” Morgan said, exchanging a look with Officer Broadfoot.
“He’s the only person from the base Margaret Gallant said she knew,” Reid replied, his voice sounding tinny through the phone.
“Keep going, Garcia,” said Hotch.
“He was arrested in St. Alban’s for trying to lure a ten-year-old girl into his car with a gift of new underwear.”
“I like this guy already,” Rossi said.
“It gets worse, sir,” Garcia said. “The charges were dropped due to lack of evidence, but the local OPP watched him like a hawk after that.”
“Garcia, if he was in St. Alban’s,” Morgan began, but Garcia cut him off.
“Way ahead of you, dreamboat. He was on leave when all four girls went missing. And he owned a car, so mobility wasn’t a problem.”
“What kind of car?” Morgan and Broadfoot spoke with a single breath.
“A 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air,” Garcia said, after taking a moment to check.
“Morgan?” Rossi said.
“That’s the car Stephen DuCette claimed he saw that night,” Constable Cooke said.
“When was Kalichuk reassigned?” Rossi asked.
“He got his orders in late May,” Garcia replied.
“Alma Dykstra moved away right after Kalichuk was reassigned,” Rossi pointed out. “It’s possible she figured out what he was doing.”
“Emily is still talking to Mrs. Gallant,” Reid cut in, “but I got the impression that Alma and Kalichuk were very close.”
“When was the arrest in St. Alban’s?” Rossi asked.
“Two weeks before Lynne Bard’s murder,” Garcia replied.
“What does that mean?” Constable Cooke asked.
“It means that Kalichuk was denied a kill right before he came back to an area where he thought he’d have an easy target,” Rossi said.
“And when his easy target was gone, he acted in rage, went off-script and didn’t conceal the evidence as well as he had previously,” Morgan added.
“Kalichuk went back to Raglan to rape and strangle Margaret Dykstra,” Hotch said. “And when he couldn’t have her, he took his anger out on Lynne Bard.”
“And Stephen DuCette paid the price.”
++++++
“I never knew why we moved,” Mrs. Gallant said. “We just packed up all of our things at the end of May and left. We moved into my grandmother’s house in Waterford until we bought this place, and I’ve been here ever since.”
The door latch popped loudly as Reid came back inside. Prentiss couldn’t help starting a little. She’d been totally absorbed in her questions. Reid sat back down beside her and leaned forward with his hands on his knees. Prentiss realized that the other shoe was about to drop, and drop hard.
“Sergeant Kalichuk was reassigned to Raglan base at the end of May the year your mother moved you away,” he said.
“Why would she do that?” The question Mrs. Gallant asked was a reflex. Prentiss could see the woman deflate as she figured out the answer on her own seconds after voicing it.
“We think she was trying to protect you.” Reid gave the answer anyway, unable to help himself.
“Did they ever fight?” Prentiss asked.
“I don’t remember.” Mrs. Gallant was starting to fall apart. Prentiss locked eyes with her, letting herself be used as an anchor. “Yes. The last time he came to visit, before we moved. It must have been March, because I had a new outfit for Easter and I hadn’t worn it yet. He wanted to see it, so we played and had a fashion show while mother was cooking dinner. She found us just as I was changing back into my regular dress.”
“Did he touch you?” Prentiss waited for the explosion and felt Reid tense beside her.
“I thought that’s what fathers did,” Mrs. Gallant said blankly. “All these years and I never once thought of him. Never once. Mother never spoke of him, so I didn’t either, and then I forgot him altogether. He killed Lynne Bard that summer, did he?”
“We believe so, yes,” Reid said tightly. “And before her, three other girls whose remains were only just discovered.”
“God in mercy!” Mrs. Gallant fell back against the chair. “Tell me he’s dead.”
“He drank himself to death in 1975,” Reid said.
Margaret Gallant put her head in her hands and took several deep breaths. Reid squirmed. Prentiss knew how much he hated causing this kind of awkwardness, this kind of damage. She didn’t like it either, but it was part of the job.
“Is there someone we can call to come and sit with you for a bit?” Prentiss asked.
“My daughter-in-law,” she replied. “I can call her.”
Reid leaned back a little and Prentiss knew that they were done here. She hoped that they had not ruined another life in the search for the truth. It hardly seemed fair that one person’s peace of mind should come at the expense of another’s. She could only hope that Stephen Kalichuk’s ghost would never rest easy.
“Agent Prentiss?” Mrs. Gallant asked in a thin voice. “Is Lynne dead because I wasn’t there?”
It was another question asked on reflex. They all knew the facts. Lying about it would help no one, but that didn’t mean she had to tell the truth.
“Mrs. Gallant, your mother was a single woman in the 1950s, trying to raise her daughter in safety. She did everything she could to protect you. And nobody is responsible for a murder except for the monster who did it.”
++++++
Stephen DuCette held his wife’s hand as they sat on the chesterfield and watched the press conference. The blonde agent spoke with such poise, such conviction, as she relayed the details to the public that it was impossible not to believe her. Still, Stephen was convinced it was all a dream.
Agent Hotchner stood in the doorway, uncomfortable and unwilling to intrude into the moment, but Agent Rossi said on the piano bench and watched with them. The two agents had disclosed information that would not be public knowledge. Stephen now knew the story of a girl named Maggie whose life had almost ended that summer, and he could not begrudge her the freedom that her life had cost him.
The press conference ended, and the cameras cut back to the National. As Peter Mansbridge summed up the events of the past few days, Stephen breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t over yet. It might never be. But now, everyone would know that for fifty years, he had told the truth. That was more than he’d dreamt of hoping for.
“Mr. and Mrs. DuCette,” Rossi said, standing. “We have a plane to catch.”
“Of course, Agent,” Stephen nodded at both of them and rose to shake their hands. “Thank you. For everything.”
“It’s what we do,” Hotch said simply.
++++++
The plane ride home is always shorter. Reid talks of tailwinds and the Earth’s rotation, but they all know that they flight home is shorter because they can finally sleep.
“The woods are lovely, dark and deep
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep
Miles to go before I sleep” – Robert Frost
++++++
Fin
AN: Wow. I think I need a nap. If anyone is interested in a commentary (ie. what is the truth and what I made up), let me know.
A huge THANK YOU goes out to wojelah, who mercilessly slaughtered the Oxford Comma and pointed out that a contraction every now and then wouldn’t kill them.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-01-08 03:57 pm (UTC)