Chapter Text
The flight from California took longer than planned. The entire trip, really, had taken longer than necessary but when your client who is currently facing a twenty year sentence if their trial goes the wrong way decides to have a melt down you do what you have to do. Carla De Lugo wanted nothing more than to be somewhere in the mountains to de-stress with her daughter and husband right now rather than here. To make the situation even “better” though, said new husband’s phone call informing her of the visit her old husband paid to them while she was away wasn’t really the icing on the cake she had needed right now.
Things with her ex, Beau, were not in a good place. They had not been in a good place for a long time. It had only gotten worse when she had married Avery shortly after the divorce was final. Beau had been in an even worse place at the time and he was never going to take her remarrying well anyway. Carla was pretty sure she had at least finally convinced Beau that she really had only met Avery after they had split up and she had never been unfaithful. Then she and Emily had moved to Montana and she had been surprised when Beau had moved there as well.
If he had been her client, she would have advised him that following your ex-wife to a new location would have been a bad idea. But Carla knew he really had nothing left in Houston keeping him there and, even though he was angry, he was and never would be a danger to anyone but himself. She had worried about him for a long time after Randy and what condition she would find him in when she would return from work on any given day. Their marriage had been precarious even before Randy had been killed and she had already been contemplating a divorce. She had only been wondering if she could or should wait until Emily finished school. It would have been easier but that would mean trying to hold it together for at least another four years. Then Randy had died and any semblance of being able to manage had gone out the window. Beau had fallen completely apart.
Even with all of her ability to stand before a Court of Law and argue for her clients before a Jury and yet she was completely unable to convince the father of her child to let her help him. But standing before a panel of strangers to make an argument for another relative stranger was very different from arguing your heart to someone you loved.
Carla eventually came to know she was just not in a good emotional place herself to help him either even if he would have let her. They had spent too many years together and fallen into too many unhealthy patterns. She couldn’t reach him and, having the curse of hindsight, she wondered if she had even really wanted to be vulnerable to him like that again. She had been tired of letting him break her heart. So she’d seen an easy way out and taken it even if it added just “one more thing” onto the pile of emotional turmoil she knew he was already in. Maybe that made her the “bad guy” but sometimes it was the best thing to just get out. She had met Avery not long after and he had filled in all the places that were missing and so she stopped thinking about the consequences.
Carla frowned as she focused on the traffic around her. Montana morning rush hour was nothing compared to California so she let her thoughts turn back to the situation at hand.
She was supposed to be with Emily and Avery up in the secluded mountains helping her daughter and her husband get to know each other better. Emily had been indifferent to the trip but at least she had finally come to terms that Carla and her father would not be getting back together. Emily had stopped being angry at least openly. She was an intelligent girl, Carla thought proudly, and this weekend was supposed to help them all move forward.
Avery called every night from the campsite. Things had at least been going well for the few days she had missed so far. The campsite sounded gorgeous and the hostess sounded friendly and wonderful. But the phone call yesterday was concerning. Beau had stopped into the camp under some “official business” excuse. There was a missing hiker apparently and Carla had become immediately concerned.
Carla had been relieved when Emily told her that Beau had finally taken a job. He had been quietly asked to retire from the Houston police department shortly after the investigation had cleared him of wrong-doing so he had never actually returned from the administrative leave he had been placed on. She had worried about Beau, in the mental state he had been in, being alone out in the woods somewhere. Beau was a man who needed to work. Carla had been surprised, though, when Emily told her that not only was his new job with the Lewis and Clark County Sheriff’s Department but that it was actually as the Sheriff.
Carla pulled to a stop and maneuvered into a space along the street in front the Sheriff’s Department. She had begun preparing herself for the gauntlet of deputies and office staff that she would need to negotiate past to get to wherever Beau was, without an appointment, in order to talk to him. She found herself feeling slightly nervous since she had not really spoken to Beau face-to-face in some time. Oh, she had spoken with him over the phone many times and seen him from afar when picking up Emily from her weekend visitation with him but she had not needed to confront him in a long time and she was not really looking forward to dealing with the Brotherhood in Blue. She shook her head trying to push down her instincts as a defense attorney as that was not going to help her right now. She wanted to talk to Beau after all, not antagonize his new team.
Still, her anxiety grew. She couldn’t see past the first time she’d really seen and talked to Beau just after he had moved to Montana. It had been the first weekend Emily was due to stay with him. He had still looked under weight, depressed and slightly unwell. Beau had been hitting the booze pretty hard in his grief and guilt. He had pulled out of it, thankfully, and Carla had been grateful that he had not allowed himself to disappear into a bottle. He had been sober for a while now though it had been touch and go for a bit. So much so that Carla had doubted whether she should actually let Emily stay with him that weekend. Emily had defended her father and asked what that would do to him if Carla had denied the visit. She had acquiesced but Emily would only say they had a good weekend when Carla had picked her up afterward. In fact, Emily would only say Beau was “fine” whenever Carla would ask her how he was doing.
So, to call what she felt as “surprise,” when she left her car and saw Beau exiting the building in front of her, escorting a blonde woman, would be the understatement of the century. All of her planning flew directly out of the window.
“Hey, Hey,” she called out hurriedly as both Beau and the woman were looking the other way down the street.
“Hey,” she called again, lifting a hand to wave him down. Both Beau and the woman then turned to look for the source of the hail. Carla suddenly felt uncomfortable. “I’m, uh, heading up to meet Em and Avery tomorrow. I figured I’d stop by.”
Beau looked shell shocked. “Um..” he stammered, trying to recover. Carla had allowed a tone to slip into her voice. One she hadn’t meant to have. She had not intended this to be a confrontation, at least not like this.
The woman with him approached with a sly smile. She was blonde with her long hair worked into a braid meant to be worn out of the way that had worked itself a little loose. She wore stone-washed black jeans, leather jacket and a Led Zeppelin t-shirt with a cut down the middle to provide comfortable room for her breasts. Her earrings, necklace and several simple rings all spoke of function and yet femininity. Everything about this woman screamed “go ahead and look but don’t mess with me”. In a word, this woman looked tough.
The blonde reached out her hand, the smile still sly and yet oddly warm. “Jenny Hoyt.”
“Uh huh,” Carla responded politely, smiling in return.
Beau seemed to find his voice and introduced her. “This is my ex-wife, Carla,” he said to Jenny. Immediately, as he redirected his comments to Carla, his tone became defensive, which did not bode well for the course of this conversation. “Listen, can we not do this right now?”
It was like three years vanished, “Do what?”
“That thing you do,” Beau was angry and every aspect of his body language was like watching him pull layers of body armor over himself. Carla had a flash of an image of a turtle pulling all his soft vulnerable appendages into his shell.
And just like years ago, she couldn’t stop herself from poking at it. “I’m not doing anything. Ugh, so sensitive.” and now she looked over at Jenny. She was a woman, she would understand the immature nature of men. “Big ole man baby.”
“Yeah, I’m not gonna – I’m not gonna do this,” Beau was practically squirming now. “Okay. See?”
Carla suddenly realized how unfair this was to him. She really had not intended to make this into a scene. She just wanted to make sure the campsite was safe and to not use his new position of authority for selfish purposes.
“I’m joking,” she replied, wincing internally at her own tone. Beau wasn’t going to respond any better if she also couldn’t get herself under control.
“Right,” he didn’t believe her. “We got to get to work. We got a break in the case. We’re kind of in a hurry, so…” He was preparing to walk away.
We? Carla thought. This woman, Jenny, with him was a police officer too. Her curiosity peaked but she also wasn’t finished yet
“Does this have anything to do with that missing backpacker where Avery and Emily are camping?” Carla asked instead, quietly trying to get her tone back to normal so they could actually talk to each other.
“Yeah, uh – “ Beau stammered as if he had forgotten what they were actually working on. “No, it’s –”
Carla sighed. “Avery said he saw you up there?” The accusation hung in the air.
Carla caught the look Beau’s companion gave him. Empathy with a hint of sadness. It startled her for a moment as Carla looked at Beau again.
He stammered again, realizing he’d been caught. Carla eyed him. It wasn’t that he’d been caught, it was that he knew he’d be caught and yet he had done it anyway. There was a hint of shame in his voice as he finally answered, “It, uh – I was going to tell you about that.”
“Still working on those communication skills?” Carla couldn’t help it. They had been both with each other and at each other for too long that the response was instinctive.
She could see the barb had hit its mark. But instead of attacking back, Beau just took the blow. He exhaled a short, angry breath but said nothing.
A half second of awkward silence followed before Jenny Hoyt stepped in with a complex reply that was both defensive and good natured teasing. “He's actually getting better. It’s one of his best qualities.”
Carla wasn’t sure the tease had the desired effect as Beau looked away. But a different level of annoyance entered his tone. “Okay, we have a murder to solve.”
Carla swallowed the words she had been about to say. Beau had always taken his job extremely seriously and for a moment he reminded her of the young man she’d married. She took a moment to really look at him.
He did look better than what she remembered. From what she could determine past the layered clothing, he seemed to be back to a healthy weight. The dark shadows from sleepless nights were gone and he looked rested. The terrible darkness in his eyes was still there but it was muted by a sense of determination. He seemed to have found his way back to a sense of purpose. The guilt would always be there, Carla thought sadly, but he’d recovered his sense of duty. He was back to catching the bad people who hurt people.
“I don’t want to keep you from that,” Carla tried to placate him. “But I – “ She glanced in Jenny’s direction. “I need a word please.”
Beau turned towards Jenny also. “Could you give us a minute?” His words were a question but his tone suggested the only response expected was one of affirmative.
Jenny took the opportunity, “Oh, yeah, I was just going to suggest that.”
Beau turned to watch as Jenny moved a discreet distance away and pulled out her cell phone. Carla narrowed her eyes as her gaze moved from Beau to Jenny. She knew Beau in just about every way someone could know another person. There was definitely something going on. An old feeling stirred and she tried to push it away. She had no claim to him any more. She and Beau were no longer married. Hell, Carla was married to Avery.
Beau turned back to her. His demeanor had completely changed. He seemed focused and calm even though she could still sense annoyed anger simmering underneath it.
“Yeah,” Beau said calmly. “What’s up?”
Now it was Carla’s turn to stutter, unbalanced and distracted. “It’s just – Avery said that everything is fine up there but he just wants this bonding weekend to be so perfect and – “ Why was she lying about this? It had been Carla’s suggestion for the camping getaway. Things between Em and Avery were starting to get there but she was hoping this would help them both open up to each other.
But Beau cut off her train of thought, his calm exterior cracking with bitterness. “And you don’t trust him. Great, me neither.”
“Stop.” Carla broke in. For a brief second they had almost been cordial with each other. She took a breath and tried again. “I just know he can get, like, hyper-focused.”
Beau frowned, brushing her off. Whatever control he had gained from Jenny’s tease was slipping. ”You know, you didn’t even ask me if Em could go camping with uh – pbht,” he ended his tirade with one of the most dismissive and childish noises she had ever heard.
”Avery. His name’s Avery.” Carla fired back. She knew he didn’t like Avery and she really couldn’t blame him for that, but this behavior was out of line even for him.
”Yeah, well, I can think of others.”
She was done. She was determined not to let this spin out of control again so she resorted to fighting dirty.
”Oh Okay. And you know what, Beau? We did talk about it. You just weren’t listening.” Again, the hit landed, and she saw him pull up short. “I was supposed to be up there with them.” She pressed ahead softer. “I had an emergency at work. I just need to know that there’s nothing to worry about with this whole backpacker thing.”
She watched as his control reasserted itself like a light switch.
He returned her gaze but his eyes were now closed off to her. The only thing she could read from him now was total sincerity and honesty. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
He is answering me as the Sheriff and not as my ex-husband, she thought, suddenly sad.
“Okay. Good.” Carla replied, unsure how to actually answer.
But then he took a breath and her ex-husband was back, his voice once again bitter, frustrated and maybe slightly embarrassed. “Remember you promised Em she could stay with me the first weekend back from this, uh, camping crap.”
Carla smiled and nodded in concession. “I know.” It was time to go. “Okay. See ya.”
”Okay,” he nodded back. His tone was conciliatory, accepting her answer.
She took a step back from him, cleared her throat to get the other woman’s attention and then waved to Jenny. “Nice meeting you.”
Jenny waved back with a slight smile that completely conveyed the farce of their awkward interaction thus far but Carla felt no malice in it. “Back at ya.”
Carla turned, an honest smile gracing her lips and walked away determined not to look back. Beau would always be a part of her life. He was the father of her child and she could accept that she still did love him in a way. She had spent the better part of two decades with the man. But she could also accept that he was her past. She had her future ahead of her with Avery and she had found her happiness again.
She could hear Jenny say something to Beau as she took a step down from the curb on her way back to her car. Too far away now to hear any of the words exchanged between them but able to hear the fond tone in the other woman’s voice.
Carla smiled feeling her heart lighten and thinking back now at how Beau had looked. He was… better was the only word that came to her. Indeed, maybe Emily had been right after all. He was simply “fine” now. He was not yet at peace with himself but on the right path to finding it.
She made a note to herself as she got in her car. As her mind turned toward thoughts of spending the next few days with her husband and daughter, she promised to try harder with Beau the next time she saw him. Beau and Avery would never be friends and Carla would need to find a way to navigate that. But maybe Carla and Beau could eventually find some kind of peace with each other.
continued.