The Sleuth Will Set You Free - A Gallagher Girls Story

Chapter Fifteen

My words didn't come.  There was nothing to say.

"No.  You didn't," he bit.  "You just went off and did whatever you wanted, because that's what you do."

I consider myself to be something of an expert on misdirected anger.  It's an art I'm well practiced in.  I know what it feels like to have the world wind you up and I know the release that comes when you finally have an excuse—any excuse—to let it all go.  Scout wasn't mad at me.  He was just mad. 

I think that maybe he realized this at the same time I did, because I watched him hang his head, leaning up against that sticky blue table for support.  His voice was softer this time.  "You just... need to be more careful, okay?" he said, sounding truly, wholly exhausted.  "I wouldn't be able to handle myself if anything happened to you."

"Nothing's going to happen to me—"

"Something already did happen to you, Mags," he reminded me.  "Something bad—something that it's going to take you years to recover from.  Years, Maggie.  We don't know how it happened and we don't know why it happened, but it did, and I need you to take care of yourself before you end up on the other end of my first surgical knife, okay?"

I watched him through that massive mirror, looking like he was the one who needed a doctor, and I wondered where my Scout had gone.  Where were the jokes?  Where was the flirting?  Where was that boy who had spotted me from a Roseville bench and smiled?

Gone, I realized.  That personality fit him like a pair of old socks, nowadays.  Worn out and too small.  He was so much more to me than that boy from the bench.

I almost told him.  Almost fessed up to my crimes then and there, but then Scout let out a long sigh.  "God, you Goodes," he said.  "You're going to be the death of me."

That was when it clicked.  That was when I knew what was really eating at him.  Scout hadn't woken up on the wrong side of the bed, but rather, in the wrong bed entirely.  A bed without Matt.  A bed without the person he loved at his side.

Scout came from a normal family.  His parents didn't cross the Atlantic every other weekend.  They didn't know how to get information from Langley.  For most of his life, they had been sleeping in the bedroom next to him, so he didn't know how to miss a spy.  He didn't know what to do when someone he loved was actively risking their life on the other side of the world. 

It wasn't really fair.  I knew the spy life and I knew that it took a lot of adjustment.  I knew that it took a lot of practice to bury that specific sort of fear and I knew that people like Scout Jasons didn't deserve to be thrown into battle without any training.

So we needed to train him.

"One time, when I was really small," I started, letting him in on a secret.  "Mom and Dad went on a mission—a long one.  It's probably the first time I really remember them being away for so long."

The zip of the plastic echoed throughout the room as he pulled himself back, forcing himself upright once more.  It was Scout-talk for "I'm listening."

"Matt and I were staying with Grandma and Grandpa Joe.  We used to do that a lot, especially when we were that small."

Scout didn't interrupt and I realized that this was what it really felt like.  This was what it meant to have someone take in my words.  Value them.  Listen.  I continued, knowing that each and every thing I said was being heard.  "I had been crying all night because, you know, I was little.  I wanted Mom and Dad to come home.  Grandma had made my favorite dinner and Grandpa Joe even let me play with his knives for a while, but it didn't matter.  Nothing can fill that emptiness in your gut and after a while, it starts to hurt."