HOME FIRES

AN: Heavy angst warning for the first chapter or two.

"I know what you're thinking, Paige. And you couldn't be more wrong," Toby said softly. He leaned his back against the counter beside her as she busied herself making coffee. No one actually wanted coffee, but she had to do something or she was going to run screaming from this dreadful place. The atmosphere in the funeral home was solemn and so very oppressive she felt like she couldn't breathe. The cloying scent of gardenia air freshener did nothing to dispel the sickening miasma of death that seemed to hover around thickly in the air. The music, meant to be soothing, was grating to her ears. "No one blames you. It wasn't your fault." There he went; the doctor was 'in', always reading everyone's minds. The compassion in his gaze nearly made her lose the precarious hold she had on her emotions.

Trying not to raise her voice and disturb the unbearable, heavy hush in the building, she gripped the edge of the galley kitchen's counter until her knuckles turned white and answered tightly, "I don't want to talk. Please." It was all she could do not to shatter when someone gave her a sidelong look or whispered condolences. Paige didn't think she could survive genuine sympathy.

What Toby said made perfect sense. Logically she knew she didn't set the bomb. It wasn't her. She didn't know.

But it was her fault Walter was there.

Three days ago, Paige and Walter had the mother of all fights. At fifteen, Ralph found everything about high school excruciating and decided he was ready to go away to college. Walter agreed, of course. The two of them were always thick as thieves. It was sometimes like raising genius twins who were twenty years apart. Together they'd been plotting ways to approach her, dropping obvious hints about the state of the public schools in their area and leaving college catalogs and leaflets and forms lying around the condo for weeks trying to soften her up. Subtle, they were not. Then they'd blindsided her with her son's acceptance letter to Simon's Rock Early College. In Massachusetts. Nearly 3000 miles away from LA, from home, from her.

To say she hit the roof was a massive understatement. Some of the things that came out of her mouth were inexcusable. And now Walter would never know how much she regretted saying them. Since crumbling wasn't an option, she chose not to replay the scene in her head. However, she couldn't quite stifle the memory of ordering him to get out. She told him to stay out of her sight for a while and the echoes of those words haunted her endless days and sleepless nights following her around everywhere like a hungry, rabid dog.

Because someone had rigged a bomb to explode when the front door of the garage was opened. The police and firefighters didn't find much in the way of remains. Just enough. Enough to shatter her whole world.

Remarkably the rest of the garage suffered minimal damage. The adjacent building took the brunt. Happy said whoever set the bomb designed it that way. The device was triggered remotely and directed the blast outward.

Best not to dwell on it yet.

Peering around Toby into the main room where the rows of chairs stood like soldiers at parade rest, she caught a glimpse of her disconsolate son surrounded by friends and family he didn't acknowledge, shrinking away from anyone who reached out. It was worse than when he was nine years old.

Yes, Paige had to hold it together. Long enough to catch whoever turned the love of her life and the only real father her son had ever known to vapor. Stealing Walter away before she could remind him how much she loved him and reducing her son to a silent shadow.

That person had to pay for all he or she had stolen from her and Ralph. The thought of revenge was the only thing currently keeping Paige upright.

XOXOXOXOXOX

Two interminable days after the funeral, Paige forced herself to go back there. She concluded it would be the most wicked form of torture, but the investigators were moving too slowly for her taste and she was tired of the accusatory silence in her apartment with one long minute plodding into the next. She had to do something before she lost what was left of her sanity.

When she explained to Ralph what she was doing, she was frankly shocked he wanted to go with her. It wasn't much, but his quiet, "I'm going too," reverberated off the walls. Those four little syllables were more than he'd spoken out loud and in a row since the funeral. She couldn't refuse him even though she worried about what the sight might do to him.

The back of the Scorpion headquarters appeared bizarrely normal in the early morning light in spite of the shattered windows. It twisted something painfully inside her anyway. Paige made herself look closely trying to spy anything at all that appeared out of place as she pulled her car around and into the alley. The idea was to enter through the undamaged bay in the back. She didn't want her car seen from the street by nosy observers.

Ignoring the yellow ribbons of crime scene tape, she unlocked the roll-up door and raised it numbly, not allowing herself a glance at the dim interior. She wasn't quite ready. Unsure if she'd ever be ready, Paige eased the car inside and Ralph popped out the minute it stopped, making a beeline for the loft. The echoing slam of the passenger door startled her like a pistol shot and she sat frozen, her hand on the keys in the ignition suddenly beating back an angry, tearing onslaught of grief. She laid her forehead on the steering wheel willing herself to breathe deeply and slowly. She whispered, "I can do this. I can do this. For him." If she could just calm down, she was convinced she would notice something out of place the investigators missed.

Paige made herself get out and pull the garage door closed. She would worry about the loose and broken tape later. At the moment it was taking too much effort to walk around trying to see the scene objectively as someone familiar with things but unattached. She shuffled slowly past the Airstream, her pulse rate increasing with each step as she scanned right to left.

Oh, no. Oh, no. Paige swallowed hard as the scalding tears flooded her eyes blurring her vision. Here was the kitchen where he told her they couldn't do this without her. It was also the scene of more than one major disagreement as it gave the illusion of privacy. He'd fired her there. She could hear her own hissed and terse and shouted words still swirling around and around on a loop in her ears; the drone of an angry insect stinging her with the memories. She pressed the knuckles of one hand to her lips, but one hiccupping sob escaped as she remembered the U-dog song. Why didn't she see how adorable he was? Had she really looked on him with impatience that day? And over there, right there, was her desk. Her knees threatened to buckle underneath her and she grasped at the edge of the dinette table for balance with her other trembling hand. He kissed her for the first time right there on that very spot. And just beyond, they'd danced to that ridiculous, stupid, but somehow perfect song and it was one of most extraordinarily romantic moments of her whole life.

Why did she ever think she could do this? Paige was on the verge of collapsing on the floor in a heap of regret and loss, when she heard Ralph's urgent, "MOM!" from up the stairs.

It was pure instinct. Sure that he was hurt, Paige instantly bolted for the stairs able to ignore the painful memories in her hurry to get to her son.

She careened around the corner into the loft only to find Ralph standing by the bank of windows clutching a crumpled piece of paper as if it was infinitely precious like it held all the secrets of the universe. Beaming while the tears poured unchecked down his face, he exclaimed, "Mom! He's alive! I knew it! Walter is alive!"