Chapter Text
Beebee lay across the uneven floor of the old treehouse a pair of binoculars in hand. The metal buttons of her dungarees, pressed against her uncomfortably as she peered into the house next door taking care to hide her face behind the tree branches.
Like most of the other suburban houses in this neighbourhood it was virtually identical to her house on the outside. The same front porch, same big windows, and same white picket fences and red and white rosebushes. The only real difference between their house and next door was the house numbers and the lack of a tire swing.
Well that and the vicious murder that lived next door.
Her older sister Rey had told her all about it, warning her never to go next door under any circumstance least the terrible Dr Hux kill her too.
Beebee didn’t want to disappear like Ben had. Ben was her older brother, the one she’d never got to meet, having disappeared four years before she was even born. He would be even older than her older siblings, Rey and Poe, if he was still alive. Not that anyone liked talking about Ben. It always made mom cry.
Beebee wasn’t sure who to believe. When she asked Poe, he had said Rey had read one too many murder mystery and not to worry. Rey loved to tell her scary horror stories much to their parent’s annoyance. A part of her suspected it was just another made up ghost story. However Ben had been real, there were photos that proved it.
If Ben was alive why wouldn’t he visit? Even uncle Lando flew down now and again and he lived really far away in the city. Of course if Dr Hux had killed Ben then surely the police would have locked him away forever?
All these questions hurt her head.
Beebee almost wished she was back in school, or better going away to camp for the summer, but that had been cancelled because of the virus. It was dull staying at home with Rey all day, especially when mom was busy at the hospital or dead asleep recovering from the night shift.
Beebee would have liked to play with the other children in the suburb but their moms wanted them home too, afraid that polio would get them all. Rey didn’t say anything but she could tell that she wanted to be with her friends as well instead of babysitting her baby sister.
At least they had a swimming pool in their back yard.
It was easier to agree with Rey and stay away from that Dr Hux. He was mostly at work anyway.
Dr Hux was the son of the old man who had lived next door since the neighbourhood was first built. From what little Beebee had heard from the grownups there was bad blood between their family and next door. It was all due to Dr Hux who had been Ben’s childhood friend. They had apparently run away together at eighteen.
Beebee didn’t understand why they needed to run away but Rey had told her that everything had been different back then and that it was romantic.
At least it had been romantic when both Hux and Ben were both missing.
After Dr Hux’s father had died, he had moved back into his old childhood home bringing his wife with him.
It was hard to look at the photos of Ben, all boyish and spotty and forever eighteen, and picture him older in his early thirties like Dr Hux now was. Dr Hux always wore a suit and tie and carried a briefcase like he worked at a bank or something.
Mrs Holdo who lived across the road and made them hot lunches twice a week, said he was the type of man who had his life together unlike Beebee’s brother Poe, who was in a band and worked odd jobs to get by. Beebee liked to wonder if Ben had a wife and a family of his own somewhere.
It was a generally dull neighbourhood save for the odd missing cat, and so everyone had talked for days behind closed doors, shocked that after all these years that strange nerdy young Hux had returned a successful doctor with a handsome wife.
Whatever happened to Ben? That was the question on everyone’s minds.
Rey’s especially.
Beebee didn’t understand why they couldn’t just go over to Dr Hux’s house and ask.
Of course if going next door and talking to the neighbours was easy then she’d have her ball and be practising right now. Instead she was up in the tree house checking to see if Dr Hux was home. Beebee didn’t want to get in trouble for loosing yet another thing her daddy had bought her, but she also didn’t want to be murdered.
Rey said Dr Hux must have murdered Ben, drowning him in the sea or something a long, long time ago. That Ben had probably wanted to return to their family but Hux had stopped him. Rey had shown Beebee Ben’s letters, his nice loopy handwriting and the postcards which had stopped after the first year, the last postcard of a tall white lighthouse in Maine.
Maybe it’s because of boredom or maybe it’s because of Rey’s stories but Beebee has been watching Dr Hux and his wife since they moved in.
He doesn’t look particularity evil or bad. In fact he seems really sweet, making cups of tea for his wife, and dancing with her in the evenings. They look happy together whether cooking dinner or kissing.
Mrs Kylo Amidala Hux was probably the most beautiful woman Beebee had ever seen. She reminded Beebee of those new Barbie dolls her mom wouldn’t buy for her or the glossy models in the beauty magazines Rey secretly reads. Tall and shapely, with what the advertisements call an hourglass figure.
Mrs Hux’s hair is long and black and her lips are a deep red. She reminds Beebee of that princess from the fairytale, Snow white, only Snow White didn’t marry a doctor or have a big ginger cat. Mrs Hux is always wearing a pretty dress and pearls, always has her nails painted red and a face full of make-up.
Rey thinks she tries too hard, but Mrs Holdo says that’s how city gals dress, keeping up with the latest fashions. Mrs Holdo says Rey will want to start dressing for the boys soon enough. Beebee hopes Mrs Holdo is wrong and that Rey will stay home for a long, long time.
A couple of weeks ago Beebee had accidentally fallen from her bike chasing after Rey who was bigger and faster. Mrs Hux had seen her fall and helped her up. Beebee wasn’t meant to go with strangers but Mrs Hux was only next door and besides Rey had already disappeared down the road with the only key to the house. Mrs Hux had taken her to her kitchen and cleaned up her bloody knee and bandaged it. It had only taken five minutes or so, so by the time Rey returned to look for her, she was sitting on their front porch with their dog Chewie, eating chocolate chip cookies with milk.
Beebee wouldn’t dare tell her sister, but she likes Mrs Hux even if her husband is a bad man. She looks through her binoculars again and adds another bit to her map of next door. At least she has a few days before her father comes home. Time enough rescue her ball.