POLICE STATION, BRENT TAYLOR'S OFFICE
Brent
doesn't even look up from the
mess of papers spread over the desk in front of him. "Come in!"
He continues scribbling a few final
notes as he listens to the door open and someone enter.
"Are you busy?" the visitor asks.
Brent's eyes pop up from the desk
immediately. "Oh, uh, hi. No, I'm not -- sit down."
He watches Molly
carefully as he
settles into a chair across the desk from him.
"So what's up?" he asks, still observing
her. Her whole demeanor screams 'serious,' and it has him on edge.
"Nothing much," she says. "We just
hadn't talked in awhile, so I thought I'd come by and see how you were
doing. And if everything is all right."
"I'm fine ... What do you mean, see
if everything is all right?"
"With us." She says it quickly and
then pauses, her eyes shifting around uncomfortably.
"Yeah, of course." He leans forward,
propping up his elbows on the desk. "Everything's fine, Molly. I know we
haven't talked much lately, but I was just trying to ... give everyone
some space. This was a time for your family to get themselves together
-- there wasn't any need to for me to be poking around."
"You were needed."
Her comment hangs between them for
a moment until Brent speaks up. "So how's everything going? How's everybody
doing?"
"Better, I guess," she says. "We're
all kind of trying to get back to normal, but it's ... weird. It's hard."
"I know. Because it's like the whole
dynamic changes."
"Yeah. It's not like I saw Tim everyday,
but ... he was my brother. There were things I had with him -- memories,
in-jokes, you know -- that I don't have with anyone else. And it feels
really strange for that to just suddenly be gone."
"I bet." Now Brent leans back in
his chair, folding his hands in front of his stomach and gazing up at the
ceiling. "When my mom died -- it was different, I mean, it wasn't unexpected,
but ..." He trails off without taking the thought much of anywhere and
continues staring at the ceiling in silence.
"I can't even imagine what it would
be like to lose one of my parents. Especially if I were as young as you
were when your mom died." Now it is her turn to watch him, and she does
it for almost a minute. Neither of them speak.
Finally Molly says, "I'm sorry. I
come in here talking about Tim without even thinking about you losing your
mom--"
Brent brings his gaze back to her.
"Don't worry about it, Mol."
They fall quiet again. Finally Molly
says, "It's been hard on everyone, I know, but it's almost like I want
to put it behind us. I don't know if that sounds awful, but ..."
"It doesn't sound awful. It makes
sense. No one wants to go on mourning forever."
"No, I guess not. But my parents
-- my mom,
especially -- are having a really hard time. They don't talk
about anything else, or at least not for long.
Jason's still hardly talking
about it at all. And Sarah--" She stops herself.
"How's Sarah doing?" Brent asks quietly.
Molly is caught off-guard by this
question. "She's been even more distant with us. I'm sure she's told you
all about it. She keeps turning everything around on us. I don't know if
it's her way of coping or what, but she's being really hard on everyone."
"She hasn't told me anything," he
says.
"Really? But I thought--" The words
are coming more quickly than Molly can make sense of them, and she has
to pause. "I thought you two were doing better. You sat with her at the
memorial service, and ... I saw you trying to comfort her after we found
out about Tim."
"You did?"
"Yeah. And I just assumed -- I mean,
it looked like ... like things were going better between the two of you."
Brent shrugs. He twirls the pen in-between
his fingers for a moment and then looks up at her. "There's something you
need to know, Molly."
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