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There’s nothing but silence and the gray smoke twisting out the crematorium chimney. She inhales deeply, holding the breath deep in her lungs. She feels Dexter’s eyes on her, and she’s not sure she can stomach it.
“Get out,” she says.
“Deb—“
“I said get out.”
He pauses, eyes lingering on her face, before complying. The car door slams behind him.
Once he’s gone, she buries her head in her arms on the steering wheel. She needs this moment to herself; she can’t let him see her reaction. Not this time, as laughter bubbles in her throat in a flood of relief. She never has to look at Speltzer’s cocky fucking smirk again, and he’ll never again be able to hurt anyone the way he hurt Melanie. He’ll never be able to hurt anyone ever again, and after the testacular fucking couple weeks she’s had, that’s the best news in the world—except that it’s also part of what’s slowly eating away at her. He can’t hurt anyone, but only because her brother’s a sick fuck who considers murdering people a perfectly fine and delightful hobby. Oh, fuck her life.
She makes the decision then and there. She lifts her head, wipes her eyes, and starts the car. As she pulls away from the cemetary, she avoids glancing back to check if the smoke has ceased.
She drives straight through the night, only stopping occasionally for bathroom and coffee breaks. She doesn’t eat, just downs red eye after red eye like she’s been doing every day for the past fortnight since that night in the church when everything went to shit. It’s the worst time in the world to be running away—the Bay Harbour Butcher’s alive and well after all and apparently he’s her own fucking brother (how fucking great is that?), the department still thinks Speltzer’s a problem, they haven’t caught Mike’s shooter, and she’s the one who’s supposed to lead them through all of it. But she needs this, because there’s nowhere else to turn. She’s lost everyone and everything now.
Time was, when the world turned to shit around her, she’d turn around, and Dexter would be there, just off to the side, waiting for whatever she needed. He’d watch her, quiet and somber; he never knew what to say, but he always wrapped his arms around her when she screamed and raged, and that was enough. He was there. He cared—or so she thought. Now she’s not so sure, but at the time…
It hurt when their mother died, but it was ok; they’d all known it was coming, and they had each other. The three of them would brave the storm together. With her father and brother to lean on, she knew she could survive.
Her father’s death struck harder. The night his heart gave out, Dexter met her at the hospital. He embraced her there in the hallway, tears streaming down her face. He drove her home, and she sobbed into his shirt until she fell asleep beside him. It was the most affection she’d ever received from her distant brother. She couldn’t imagine life without their father, but she knew she’d be ok, as long as Dexter stayed with her.
But Dexter’s death is hardest of all, because with him, he takes her and what’s left of Harry. The ghost of her brother worms its way through her brain, sawing and hacking at her memories, tainting all that she’s ever known and loved. His body continues walking around the station and showing up at her apartment; his voice still calls her name, still babbles lies, still smiles with all his usual chameleon charm. But her brother is dead, and without him, there’s no one to lean on.
It used to bother her that Dexter started referring to their father as “Harry” after he died. Now she can’t blame him—not for that, anyway. Harry fucked them both over. But there’s no one left to help her through Harry’s greatest betrayal.
16 hours later, she arrives, cold, dishevelled and delirious with exhaustion. She catches herself in a bathroom mirror: tangled hair, coffee stains on her shirt, and swollen, bloodshot eyes lined so dark and deep, she wonders if the stains will ever come out. It’s a wonder she didn’t fall asleep at the wheel, but somehow she kept herself steady enough to stay on the road.
It’s an additional hour of driving around the city before she finds the cemetery; she gets lost twice on the way. It’s another hour after that before she finds his grave.
He’s buried beside his wife. They have a good sized plot in a southwestern corner. It’s well taken care of, for which she is grateful. She hopes Connie doesn’t mind her coming to pay a visit—it must be a little awkward, having the woman who fucked your husband after you died coming to visit your shared gravesite. She’s never made it out to his grave until now, though she’d always meant to do it sooner. Things had simply moved too quickly after he passed. She’d been shot alongside him, and she and the department were in a frenzy to find the culprit and capture Trinity. Then Rita’s death, and the Barrel Girls case had consumed her, and there simply wasn’t time. Thing after thing piled up to prevent her from making a trip down to Washington, until she almost forced herself to give up on the idea entirely. Not that she ever stopped thinking about him.
She sits at his grave, and takes out a cucumber and cream cheese sandwich she bought from a nearby deli. It’s well past 1:00 PM, with the sun already setting behind her, but he’ll understand. She puts half on the grass before his headstone; he doesn’t need to worry about clogged arteries anymore, it’s all right if he indulges. She chews the other half slowly. She fights to keep herself in check.
But in the stillness of the early afternoon light, without her treadmill or the sound of the TV or work to occupy her, there’s nothing to hold back the flood, nothing to keep her running and fighting. She bends over his grave, and lets herself truly breakdown for the first time since the night she discovered the truth. And if Debra Morgan weren’t a cynic, she’d say she felt big, warm, wrinkled hands wrap around her prone frame, as her body is racked with uncontrollable sobs.
The invisible hands rock her until she falls asleep on his grave beside his uneaten half of sandwich.