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“Beginnings are sudden, but also insidious. They creep up on you sideways, they keep to the shadows, they lurk unrecognized.
Then, later, they spring.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
2015, Autumn
“The stars at night,” sang the mariachi band, all rhythmic steel twang, midtempo snare and low-rumble bass. “Are big and bright. Deep in the heart of–”
“Texas,” groused Sherlock Holmes. He let his head fall back against the stately, neo-colonial American-pine column of the wide and indulgent veranda. “Hot, irritating, dull without missing persons.”
“Yeehaw,” said John Watson by way of response. In apparent commitment to the spirit of “vacation” John downed half his beer in a go.
The faux-country twang was interrupted by a right-leading Cuban heel buffered by cognac-treated leather. The dutiful host approached.
Awesome, Sherlock snidely thought. He took a swig of Shiner Bock in the same moment as a large hand clapped him on the shoulder. He coughed, indecorous.
John did very little to hide his laughter.
Sherlock glowered, but managed to bite back on his natural inclination to not only shove off the embracing hand, but to break the wrist to which said hand was attached as well. Though standards of business decorum still occasionally eclipsed him, he recognized it was generally frowned upon to do bodily harm to one’s client (doubly so prior to invoicing).
Surveying his territory, the ruddy American Senator hooted, “Enjoyin’ yusselves, boys?”
Sherlock ground his teeth as John read his demeanor and said with exuberance, “Truly! We’re, ah, overwhelmed–”
“Over it all, really,” Sherlock added, to himself.
“–by your generosity,” John continued, with a glance. “Really, Senator. It’s completely unnecessary.”
“Southern hospitality, is all, gents. Least I can do for you after bringing Karine back home. I mean it. I am in your debt. And that's not a thing I enjoy saying.” Below an ivory cattleman, pearlescent capped teeth drew back in a gregarious smile. Roberto Castillo slapped him hard on the shoulder again with his bear-paws.
Sherlock glared daggers at John as the Senator squinted across the landscaped terrace, beyond the pool, toward the gazebo, the orchards, the acres of fields beyond. “Say where’d that little thing go?” Castillo asked, searching.
“‘Little thing?’” Sherlock parroted.
“You two don’t fool me. I know exactly where the brains of your operation is at,” Castillo accused. “I see, and I fancy myself a dance with her.”
Sherlock glanced down. Judging by the scuff marks along the Senator’s boots, he was not an agile man. Woe betide Molly Hooper.
“Seems she’s occupied over in your garden,” Sherlock pointed out. “You know. With your wife,”
Castillo exchanged some unfathomable and therefore irritating look with John.
Sherlock ignored them and took another sip of his beer.
“Ah, Senator,” John asked, moving the conversation mercifully elsewhere. “Not to be ungrateful, but is there anything more you can tell us?”
The wry amusement on Castillo’s face vanished into grim...something. “No,” Castillo replied. “Nothing I can share, anyway. FBI’s on the ground at Argonne and Livermore, but I can’t say much beyond that.” The Senator caught Sherlock’s eye. “I’d have a talk with my brother, I were you.”
Sherlock frowned. “Flights?”
Castillo waved a hand. “Javier’s got you sorted.”
John’s forehead creased. “If air traffic is suspended, how–”
“Commercial flights still grounded another two days,” the Senator replied, boyish enthusiasm gone. His expression took on the same weathered look as the land around them. “I’m heading back to Washington tomorrow. Military transport, so won’t be comfortable, but it’ll get you where you need to be. Pilot’s on instructions take you on as far as Bermuda. MOD has it from there.” He finished with uncharacteristic finality that clearly communicated: This line of inquiry is closed.
Sherlock exchanged another look with John. Politicians lying was hardly new, or interesting. But Castillo’s aversion nonetheless put him on edge. Anything that unnerved a four-term, sixteen stone Texan Senator with tours in Vietnam, Nicaragua, and the El Paso Public School system under his belt merited cause for worry.
“Now,” Castillo said, cupping his hand to his mouth. “Doctor Moll!” he bellowed across the garden. “I demand a dance, missy!”
Inside the pergola across the lawn, Molly Hooper half-turned in surprise at the sound of her (half) name. Her nose crinkled with embarrassment at being called out mid-conversation. She held up a hand, balking, offered a polite smile.
She was saved by the forthright Mrs. Castillo, who felt compelled to exactly as much decorum as her husband.
“Enough outta you, Bobby Joe!” the older woman shouted in response. “Not having you cripple an English rose right in our very own garden. You keep those left two feet over there to yourself!”
“Ah!” The Senator flung his hand at his wife, a gesture of irritation at odds with the fond and loving smile he wore.
Endless contradictions, humans, Sherlock thought. Americans more than most.
A group of large, like-mannered hats waved pig-skin hands, beckoning toward Castillo. The Senator tipped his hat to John and he. “Mistress work beckons, boys, and she wants me all hours. Have fun. My regards and thanks to your fine pathologist. We’re so grateful to have Karine safely home.” The Senator descended to his constituents, as slow-moving and theatrical as a monarch. Though, Sherlock amended, one more likely to hire widowed Finnish schoolmarms instead of dramatic and amorous Argentinian teenagers for any future childcare needs.
Sherlock drew a deep breath, let it out with great relief. Wildflower blossoms. Dust. Heat.
“You get anything more from that?” John asked, when Castillo was out of earshot.
“Lying,” Sherlock said, watching the man shake hands, slap backs. “He knows more than he’s letting on. Not our problem.”
John scoffed. “No?”
He took another pull from his beer. “Mycroft says it’s being dealt with.”
“That’s it?”
Sherlock shrugged. What more do you want? “Well, he’s been strangely quiet. Probably in the midst of something. Usually happens when he's showing off for Germany.”
“Germany?”
“Crush on the Chancellor,” Sherlock explained. “Has a thing for stern, pragmatic women. Mummy’s fault, probably. Thank god she limited her damage to him.”
John blinked, digesting what he had heard. “I...did not need that information.”
The breeze picked up, rattling branches and sending unweighted napkins across the yard. A rain of dead, pink-brown petals fell from the trellis onto them. Another victim of climate change, Sherlock supposed. Bougainvillea bloomed well into autumn.
“Hey, so, while we’re on the subject,” John said, an incredulous, shell-shocked look flicking quickly across his face (Mycroft did tend to cause disgust to linger). “Something I want to talk to you about.”
At the shift in his friend’s tone, Sherlock glanced over.
John was wearing his Serious Serious Face, as opposed to his Serious Looking (Though Not Actually Serious) or the Only Serious Because Look I Told You Giggling Isn’t Appropriate At Crime Scenes expressions.
“So, the thing is,” John said choosing his words carefully. He settled against the veranda rail, looking out. His fingers drummed nervously along the neck of his beer. He blinked several times, then looked up and said: “I have this friend.”
Sherlock groaned, head falling back on his shoulders. “Oh God.”
“I have this friend.”
Sherlock drew a sip of Shiner Bock through his teeth. “A miracle, really.”
“I have this friend.”
“Just the one, then? Why ever would that be?” he said, hyperbolic and annoyed.
John looked up, pique. You done?
Sherlock rolled his eyes. If you must, he silently allowed.
John cleared his throat, taking time with his dramatic pause. Clearly this was a matter of some importance. “I have this friend. Brilliant. Funny. Though weird sort of humor, I suppose. Generous. Particular. Great with Isabelle. Close with Mary. Someone I trust. Someone I adore.”
“Well obviously–”
“She’s extraordinary, when you get down to it.”
[...]
Words evaporated.
“And a bit lonely,” John pressed on. “Thing is, it’s hard to tell. You need to look when she doesn't know you're watching. Have you noticed that? She doesn't smile when she's alone. And that...Ah, Sherlock. That is a crime I wish you would solve. Got a mind like a diamond and a heart of gold; knows her blood-spatter patterns, her exit wounds, and runs the most sophisticated chem panels I've ever seen. She’ll stay up all night with your case or your child and expects nothing for it, beyond a thanks and a smile. Molly came all this way, and yet she doesn’t even expect that from you.”
Across the pool and the patio and the riotous summer garden, the broad, round-shouldered Texan kissed Molly on the cheek, clasped her hands between his. Succeeding in finally getting a dance (luckily, for Molly’s sake, from pre-approved parties) the Senator dragged his wife into a loping little waltz. Mrs. Castillo’s saucy giggle floated over the strumming twang of steel guitar strings.
“John,” Sherlock sighed.
Bottle clinked rail, fragile glass touched to immovable stone, unspoken silent reproval in the sound.
“I know,” John interrupted. “The Work. I know that.” John gestured to where Molly had crouched down to stroke the ears of the Castillo's Labrador Retriever. “Thing is,” John was saying. “She knows that too. I don't think she minds. Know why that is?”
Sherlock crossed his arms over his chest. “Oh, somehow I’m sure you’ll enlighten me.”
“Same reason I married a reformed assassin,” he said, leaning in a fraction. “You chose her.”
To that Sherlock made no reply.
He tapped his Samsung against his thigh. “Gonna ring Mary. Up with Hells Bells again.”
“Colic.”
“Thanks, since between the pair of us, I’m the only one to actually have been to medical school and am, as you know, exceedingly stupid.” He downed the last of his beer. “Final word of advice?”
“Oh, if wishing made it so…”
“There’s a pretty girl standing alone, Sherlock Holmes,” John said, looking pointedly toward the garden. “I think she might like to dance.”
Sunshine slipped over the hills rising west-northwest. He’d read at some otherwise uninteresting point, probably in university, about the Carboniferous period, and the late Triassic superabundance of oxygen left over after the collapse of rainforests, continent-wide, that stretched across whole of the primeval landscape. Bolstered by the great vegetal die-off, the oxygen density of the atmosphere had doubled. Without the carbon-based life to absorb the excess, there had been only ferrous iron in these hills. It lingered, bonding with the iron instead of carbon. It turned the world red.
Incidentally, Molly Hooper’s favorite color.
Catching the train of his his thoughts before they charged on, Sherlock berated himself. Geology was somehow as maudlin as it was tedious. He ducked below one hanging line of fairy lights looping between the pergola beams. As he stepped in, some unseen persons flicked a switch. Illumination.
“D’you know,” Molly said, scratching Timo the Labrador’s floppy ears as he approached. “I read about a study done in the US that concluded at no point does petting a dog yield diminishing results.” She looked up. “Till they get hungry, I suppose.”
“Dogs like petting. Alert Stockholm,” Sherlock said.
A beam of light slipped through the beams, shining in her eye. Molly raised a hand to obscure it. He stepped over, blocking it as she stood. The dog padded off strategically toward the buffet, blissed out and tail wagging.
Molly looked about the party appreciatively, a half-smile at her mouth. He took in the slight environmental changes evident in her profile. Four days in intermittent West Texas sun shone in the freckles across her nose and shoulders, the pink tinge that was fading to a light bronze. Red dust kicked up by the wind along the rusted mesas gathered in the fabric of her flats, the right edge of her skirt. Clearest of all was her emotional reaction to the case. Missing au pair and in place of foul play, there was only young love to blame. Or so he assumed; She might also have liked the sunshine.
A new song from the band. The corner of Molly’s mouth ticked up in recognition, he thought.
She turned back to him. “Do you think we’ll–” she began to say.
“Dance?” he interrupted.
She flinched in surprise. “Me?”
“Actually I was talking to the jacaranda,” he said, facetious. “Obviously you, Molly.”
He held out a hand. She hesitated a moment, looking between his outstretched palm and his face, as if trying to assess some alternate intention. The half smile appeared again. Her uncertainty blinked away, and in its place fell an expression of knowing amusement.
“Obviously,” Molly parroted.
She took his hand.
Tension dissipated in the dry, dust-scented breeze. A song about love and not love played low. Voices echoed across the pool of Venetian tile, the marble flagstones, the English garden. He lead them around, turning in time. Molly turned under his outstretched hand, skipping in time with the drowsy, plaintive plea of one hopeless love to another.
"Thank you," Sherlock said, after a few moments.
Molly nodded. "Welcome."
“For coming,” he clarified. “Assisting. All that.”
“I was glad to do it,” Molly shrugged. “I’m always glad to do it.”
Her gold dust freckles caught the red-shifting light, peach perfect and pink. “Why?” At times, he could not fathom Molly Hooper, guileless to a fault yet unique in her mysteries.
Her head dipped. Rutilant highlights rioted across her crown. “Well, I enjoy it. Not just the science, the work. Helping people. Don’t get a lot of of that in my day to day.”
“No.”
“Not like this, I mean. Like you do. Plus..." She beamed. “I like to dance.”
The singer charged into a new tune, quicker in time. He moved with it, Molly skipping along with only the slightest hesitation. Only at first. She mirrored his motions, careening in tandem at oblique turns and quick steps around the patio like it was theirs. He grew brave in their progress, moving without fail as they did. He spun her once, twice, a third time. She laughed, eyes falling closed. She trusted him. He knew this.
The music sped up and out, louder and faster, harmonic and resonant. He pulled her back, and together they went around, around, around, bound together like whirling dervishes in a frenzy. The breeze stirred, cool and sweet with jasmine. A wind chime tinkled merrily. People were clapping and Timo the labrador barking at American political powerbrokers while eight cylinder engines went roaring up the Castillos drive built in the absurdist image of a boulevard at Versaille to suit the opulent tastes of a West Texan beauty queen instead of the rugged, brutal landscape that surrounded…
Above the sound and the fury, Molly’s tumbling laugher.
“Oh little darling, don’t you look charming. Here in the eye of the hurricane,” the cantador warbled.
A clash of strings, a final flourish.
Molly fell forward, giggling. Her ponytail drooped a little. She tucked her chin against his chest. “That was fun!”
Her giddiness was contagious. He was half out of breath, and stricken by an odd sensation. A tension without pressure; a levity of precise but indistinct weight.
The singer set his guitar aside, replaced himself with Spotify.
Molly collected herself, appearing a bit chagrined, but ebullient. She moved to step back, and here, his own actions left him at loss: he tightened his hold on her shoulders, effectively keeping her close. A look relative to Molly’s earlier uncertainty crossed her face. Daughter, not twin. Furrowed brow smoothed. Posture relaxed. Her palm slid between his shoulder blades. Her chin lifted, quite nearly touched his chest again.
“Perhaps...again. Sometime.”
Bob Dylan began to drawl a nasal warning while Molly Hooper looked up, bemused and beautiful.
Beautiful? Inner John required he clarify.
"Solve a crime, or dance?" Molly asked.
Sherlock Holmes looked down at Molly Hooper, not hearing her words, hearing everything else she did not say. “Yes.”
A little glow caught her cheeks. The fading sunlight, or else not. “Then yes."
A cry sang out in the night air. They looked up.
...but eden is burning… insisted a man and a myth over clanging chords and incongruous woodwinds.
From the north, an enormous flock of birds went screeching overhead. The darkening sky was darker still with their cuspate forms, a sea of black wings crossing the falling light.
...either get ready for elimination...
Voices and background noise slowed to a halt as guests became transfixed by the arresting sight. The order of magnitude was truly astonishing.
...else your hearts must have the courage...
"So many,” Molly commented. “There must be thousands. Is that common?”
...for the changing of the guards…
Hundred of thousands, more like. Clouds upon clouds. Starlings and crows, swallows and doves. More. “No,” Sherlock replied, dumbfounded. “It’s not."
For long minutes they watched the sky. Astounded, distracted, until finally the sound and rush abated. The immense flocks vanished from sight.
Time had passed. Fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty. Maybe more.
Dazed, the guests returned to their small talk. Senator Castillo uttered boisterous expressions of a particular Texan vernacular with which he was not familiar, if, in fact, they were words at all.
“Weird," said Molly.
Terrorism and secrets and Mycroft gone dark. “Yes,” he agreed.
"But interesting," Molly added.
"Yes," he agreed, looking down at her face.
She looked up to his. She did not look, or move, away.
The bluesy singer returned with a tale of bad timing, old demons, and stubborn hearts
Music played. A breeze blew in.
Slowly, glasses and their owners vanished.
Lights flicked out.
In the last perfect night they swayed on until dawn.
Ping.
John’s face lit her screen, a talisman, a pocket idol, shining through the dark.
“Good night?” Mary asked.
John came in tinny. “Oh yeah. Hold on, I’m sending you something.”
Mary shifted, thumbing to the messaging app. A notification lit up her screen, and her face.
On the far side of the planet, Mary Watson held her infant daughter, watching the improbable (but not impossible…) video of Sherlock Holmes dance with Molly Hooper.
Changes were coming, Mary thought. She felt hopeful.
Changes were coming, and there was nothing at all to stop them.