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Abigail didn't like Will Graham much before her parents died. He always had a distant look in his eyes. Seldom made eye contact. And he and her father got on entirely too well. They had a commonality that she just couldn't see — and still couldn't, even now, even though she felt like it was important.
As it turned out, she didn’t like him much after her parents died, either. All of a sudden, he was showing up, getting involved. He had a new look to him — cleaner, more focused. She hated to think of it, but since her parents died, something had come alive in him.
She worried the same thing was true for herself.
"Hey, kid," came his voice from the door. Will Graham was leaning in the doorway with his hands in his pockets. His hair was combed out of his face, like a father cleaning up for a part-teacher conference. He did not look like the man who had lugged bloody deer carcasses into the back of a pick-up truck, or a man who had once given her a hunting knife for her birthday. "This a good time?"
She took stock of her heavy body, her aching legs, and tilted her IV'd wrist towards the door. "I'm not going anywhere."
"Alright," said Will, shrugging, "but tell me if you want me to leave."
He shut the door behind him. He had a duffle-bag slung over his shoulder that he transferred to his lap as he sat down beside her. “I stopped by your house. Packed some clothes for you. I, uh - Dr. Bloom helped me. She picked out some new things, too.” When Abigail didn’t say anything, he went on. “So, that’s what’s in here. Clothes, a couple pairs of shoes. Underwear and socks and stuff. Some pants.”
“I know what clothes are,” she said, but she peered at the bag all the same. She wondered if he had packed her anything camouflage.
“I - I’ll set this down over here,” he said, moving the bag to the table behind him. “I just wanted to get that out of the way. Before we talk.”
The thing Abigail liked least about Will Graham was his façade of casual clumsiness — the way he could awkwardly plow through a conversation with no regard for the other person. Even her father could be a decent conversationalist, and he was — or had been — a psychopath who’d killed 9 people. But Will Graham had had an agenda before he’d entered the building, and was not interested in sugarcoating the inevitability he had come to deliver.
She swallowed, mindful of the way her bandage shifted over the movement of her throat. “I don’t see what we have to talk about.”
“Well,” said Will. “We have to discuss where you’ll be staying once this,” he gestured to her IV, “is all over.”
Her paper gown shifted over her body as she breathed. She laid her free hand across her stomach, feeling at the texture of the paper. “Dr. Bloom said I could go to a home for girls. A psychiatric facility, where they’d treat me while the rest of this heals up.”
Will searched the air with his eyes, looking past her. “Sure. That sounds nice. Do you want to do that?”
“I think so,” she said. “I don’t know where else I’d go.”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about that. You know how Molly and I worry about you.”
How you claim to worry about me, she thought. And how Molly worries about herself. “Sure.”
“I worry about you travelling alone by yourself. Enrolling in college so soon. You should be able to return to normalcy, for a while.”
She tried to think about what normalcy would even look like — if she had had anything approaching it before. High school friends and a serial killer father. SAT tutoring and a dead girl after every college tour. Her guts curled at her own thoughts. She looked to Will, and saw that he could see her inward disgust.
“Or achieve normalcy.” He said, carefully. “For some time.”
Dr. Bloom had told her that the FBI would have questions for her. Abigail knew they would likely ask her if she had helped her father, if she had seen the bodies before they’d been properly honored. If she had known what she was eating, what her mother had cooked without question. If she had recognized the man on the phone.
Abigail, can you put your father on, please?
“I don’t know if that’s possible, for me,” she said, quietly. It was true. Will’s face flickered between its usual passivity and a kind of pity. He reached across the bed and squeezed her hand, his knuckles like weights against her stomach. They sat with her confession as he ran a thumb over the back of her hand, and his face took on a mournful quality. As though his pity, unwanted though it was, could co-exist with his pragmatism.
“I’d like you to come stay with us,” said Will, slowly. “For just a little while. Nothing’s expected of you — you can do whatever you’d like. And when you’re ready, we can help you get a job — you can work at the rental office, if you want. Save up some money for your own place. Maybe take some online courses to get your feet wet. We’ll pay for it.”
It was a kind but confusing offer, like a flower blossom in a beartrap. His gaze was soft but focused.
“I’ll have money when I sell the house,” she said, protesting to be polite, and to give herself a moment to think. “For college.”
“Of course you can sell the house. But I know real estate,” he countered, “and can help you get a better price. Avoid scams.”
She couldn’t argue with his logic. She didn’t know the first thing about selling a house, let alone owning one. She couldn’t argue with anything he was offering her. He was being nice, but she couldn’t discern why, and the back of her skull felt itchy.
She bit at her lip. Will watched her do it.
“Can I think about it?” she said, smiling weakly.
“Sure,” said Will, and he permitted himself to smile, full and earnest. It did not matter to him what she thought, and they both knew it.