The Doctor Blake Mysteries: Unseen

Still Waters

Jean couldn't sleep that night. She'd had trouble for days. Weeks. Months. Ever since Lucien Blake had come to town. Together, they had buried his father and with him, Jean's comfortable and safe way of life. Thomas Blake had been strict and orderly, to a fault, some might have said. Lucien Blake was practically the opposite. The fact that he kept his hair and beard trimmed and neat were in complete contrast to everything else about his way of life.

And everything about him was bringing chaos and uncertainty to her life as well. He had taciturn moods, drinking bottle after bottle, night after night. He was erratic and unpredictable, leaving Jean constantly feeling like she'd been caught in a cyclone after he left a room.

But Lucien was so kind and gentle, with such a capacity for compassion and a liberal sensibility that Jean could tell was born from his distinct knowledge of hardship. She found him endlessly fascinating and boundlessly infuriating.

This case, from what she had been able to learn of it from catching snippets of conversation from Danny and Lucien, was a bit more than Jean could really stomach. Her job and her home might be ripped away by a man who had no intention of keeping her on. And to add to that, her nose was being rubbed in the terror and trauma of her own shameful past.

"The bad girls' school." Danny had called it that. Mattie and Lucien had corrected him. It was a reform school. Jean had swallowed back the metallic taste of adrenaline when she had pasted a stiff smile on her face and told Mattie that she still called it the bad girls' school too.

And as much as she'd tried to push it out of her head, Jean couldn't help but be transported back all those years ago. When she, like that dead girl, had gotten pregnant. Jean had been done with school by that time, thankfully, but that didn't stop her father from ranting and raving about how Jean had better pack her bags because he'd drive her up the hill to the bad girls' school in the farm truck. And Jean knew her father well enough to know that he meant it. If Christopher, sweet and wonderful Christopher, hadn't stood up to old Farmer Randall and insisted that he marry Jean instead. Jean's whole life had been set in front of her then.

All the possibilities and dreams for her future had been halted when she'd been foolish enough to have a roll in the hayloft with the gorgeous boy she'd fallen in love with. With the pregnancy, they'd gotten married. She'd lost the baby soon after, but the marriage was never anything she regretted. Everything that came after had been laid out in front of her. Even when Christopher died in the war, Jean had no choice but to continue on with her boys and the farm until they were old enough to make their own way and she'd been lucky enough to get a position with Doctor Blake.

Everything had always been right in front of her, solid and well-planned. Until Lucien arrived with his wild ideas and his naughty paintings and his strange methods. Thomas had never brought home the cases he worked on the way Lucien did. She'd never been privy to police information the way she found herself now, unable to escape it.

It had been a long time since Jean had thought about the bad girls' school. And now she couldn't get it out of her head, reliving the fear and shame.

She couldn't sleep. So she came downstairs to have some warm milk. The door to Lucien's bedroom was ajar and the light shone through. She paused outside, watching, curious as to what he was up to.

She saw Lucien drinking. As usual. He was slowly paging though a notebook. From what she could see over his shoulder, he was looking at drawings of some sort. His whole body was full of tension. Jean couldn't see his face but she could feel the pain of his expression radiating off him.

Jean felt a strange sense of sorrow, watching him. So powerful that she forgot about her own painful memories for just a moment. The overwhelming urge to go to him, to take care of him, nearly compelled her to cross the threshold of his room and take him in her arms.

But Jean shook herself. She went back upstairs to her room without ever going into the kitchen.