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- SCULLY POV -

The airport was seemingly deserted, fluorescent lights burning in high
ceilings, illuminating the long stretches of colourful carpet usually
alive with movement, and now barely another soul in sight.
The kids were hungry again already, they complained, so we bought some
McDonald's fries after checking in. Then they complained that they were
thirsty.
We settled down to wait in the lounge and the kids dashed off to
explore. It had been cold outside and was still a little chilly inside.
Mulder had his coat wrapped around himself and Erin, who slept on his
lap. I watched them affectionately. They were *mine*. No matter how
much we messed up or how disfunctional we were, they were mine and
always would be. That thought alone made me feel strangely immortal.

I could have moved to the seat next to Mulder but chose instead to stay
where I was. We would have enough time side-by-side on the plane. I
slipped my shoes off, drew my feet up under me, and closed my eyes.

I'm not sure how long I dozed for. The kids woke me with some argument
over whose turn it had been to play the GameBoy. It was too early for
the duty free shops to be open, unfortunately; that would have kept
them occupied. I told them to stop arguing and looked past them to
where Mulder sat with Erin at the window. He held her up, her face
pressed against the glass as he pointed to things out on the lit-up
tarmac. Then she wriggled down and tackled him, giggling, wanting to
play chasings.

"Da da da!" she squealed.

He swept her up off the ground, grinning from ear to ear, and spun her
around, playing airplane. "Byeeeee!" she shrieked, her favourite word.
"Byeeeeeeeeee!"

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- JACQUELINE POV -

Ebony had disappeared again. As I sent Grae off to look for her I held
Noah against me, reluctant to even lower him into the carrier. He was
so precious. I'd wanted a girl, it hadn't been a secret, but I loved my
little boy with my whole heart.
It wasn't the first time Ebony had done her vanishing trick and I
wasn't really concerned; I had a fair idea where she would be. Only
yesterday she'd wandered off; we were on our way to the nursery and
Ebony had ended up in the oncology ward. We'd eventually found her
there, sitting at a bedside, gazing at the woman who lay there, scarf
on her head, tubes everywhere, morphine drip. The woman was dying of
cancer.

I asked the nurse to mind Noah for two minutes as I went after Grae.
There was a commotion in the oncology ward and I found Grae and Ebony
at the very heart of it. Ebony was at the same woman's bedside,
gripping the woman's hand. Grae was trying to pull Ebony away. A doctor
called a stop to the CPR and announced the time of death. Ebony was
crying.

I stood in the doorway, stunned by the impossibility of what I'd just
seen. Ebony had never shown such an ability to relate to others. What
was it about this woman?

"I didn't realise she had family," a nurse remarked as I moved forward
to help Grae with Ebony. She was kicking and screaming and sobbing all
at once, the most emotion we'd ever seen from her. "I'm sorry you
couldn't have gotten here sooner."

She left before I could answer that. It took us ten minutes to calm
Ebony down and even then she wouldn't stop crying. Grae picked her up
and carried her, I took Noah in the carrier. They both cried all five
minutes of the drive home.

I wanted to somehow comfort her but as soon as Grae unlocked the house
she bolted inside, hiding in her bedroom. I found her there, sitting in
the corner, rocking, trembling, still crying. In her hands was a
crumpled piece of paper. I took it from her, smoothing it out. It was a
drawing, she'd drawn it yesterday, according to Grae's neat date in the
corner, and it was the first actual drawing I could remember her ever
having done. She would colour, cut and paste, but she never drew.
I passed the page to Grae, who crouched beside me. He studied it for a
moment, then asked, "Is that the woman from the hospital?"

That was certainly what it looked like, but Ebony shook her head.

"But that's you by the bedside, right? Who's that in the bed?"

The woman was dark-haired, a stick figure with arms and legs at all
angles. There was a big upsidedown smile on her yellow face. The
woman's stick hand held Ebony's. And I knew as clear as day who that
woman was.

"That's Mommy, isn't it, Ebony? That's your mommy?"

One of her tiny nods. Her hands were clenched in tiny fists.

"How old are you in this picture, Ebs?" Grae asked gently.

Fingers raised, slowly. Four fingers. Then, before I knew it, arms
around my neck, a weight in my lap, and loud, jerky tears. I took a
second to respond, putting my arms around her, stroking her hair. She
was a stranger, I realised, and she would be until she spoke, until she
had some way of communicating with us everything that boiled inside
her.
Grae put his arms around the pair of us. Now I was finally small enough
again to be held like that. "It's not so hard telling us stuff, after
all, is it Ebs?"

I heard a cry from Noah but knew he could wait. All he needed over the
next few weeks and months and months was easy to give. Ebony needed not
only the physical support but emotional as well. We had to stop
neglecting that.
"We'd like to know you better, Ebony, know all about everything that
happened before you came to live with us. That way we can maybe stop
some things from hurting so much. Do you think you could help with
that?"

And that was how Ebony started drawing pictures.

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- SCULLY POV -

"Beach."

"Pool."

"Grandma's."

"Beach."

The harrassment started before we even landed, when they heard the
weather forecast for home. The temperature was predicted to reach a
hundred degrees before midday. After a month of winter weather Josh and
Astrid were desperate to get into the summer heat and swim.

The hot, dry heat hit us like a blast from a furnace as we stepped out
of the airport. We'd already peeled off our winter layers but I still
felt overdressed in my thin sleeveless top and light pants. The thought
of a day at the beach appealed to me just as much as it did the kids,
but we had things to do first.
"We've got to get home and unpack. Erin needs a proper nap, too." She
barely slept at all on the plane.

The whining and pleading and cajoling continued. We stopped by work to
pick up the mail that had accumulated during our absence, then by the
grocery store to buy some necessary groceries. When we finally got home
the kids settled for changing into swimming costumes and chasing each
other on the strip of lawn with buckets of water, leaving Mulder and I
to unpack the car. I put Erin down for a nap and got a load of washing
going before I chased up Mulder to see what he was up to.
He was stretched out on the bed, though he hadn't fallen asleep as I'd
suspected. He was sorting through the mail and envelopes and letters
were piled up around him all over the covers. He had one letter in his
hand and was staring at it, chewing on his lower lip in concentration.
I moved closer. "What is it?"

"It's from Melissa Redburg."

For a second I couldn't place the name, it seemed such a long time
since the case. Then I remembered. "Why did she write?"

"She did some research, apparently. She found out that Hillary Walkins'
great-aunt met her unfortunate end in that same spot, a hundred years
ago. Exactly a hundred years ago."

"What are you suggesting?"

He tossed me two photos. One I recognised immediately, the same photo
of Hillary Walkins I'd shown Mulder. The other was a copy of an older
photograph, as was evident enough from the clothing and sepia tones.
The subject of the photo was almost identical to Hillary Walkins,
though several years younger.
"That's our ghost."

"Mulder -" I protested.

"Her name was Annabel Carter. You can't tell from the photograph, but
Melissa says that her eyes were blue. She died when she was only
thirteen."

"How did she die?"

"She was abducted and assaulted by two older boys, a fifteen year old
and a sixteen year old. They strangled her, then abandoned the body and
ran. According to Melissa they were caught and served time in a
juvenile detention centre. One of them killed two men in a bar only a
week after being released and was given the death sentence. The other
moved to another state, married and had eleven kids. One of these kids
had a daughter who married a guy named William Redburg. They had three
children, among them David William Redburg."

"And that's why the ghost of Annabel Carter attacked the family?
Because they're descended from her killer?"

"And now they're living in her hometown. Wouldn't that make you mad as
hell?"

I had no answer for him. There was no evidence in the case, only
speculation and conjecture. It wasn't worth wasting our energy on. It
could remain unsolved. We didn't need to untangle every mystery.

I eased the photos from his hand and tossed them down on the covers,
face-down.
"We don't need to think about that anymore." I reached out to take his
hand, giving it a quick squeeze, smiling. "What do you say we head off
to the beach for the afternoon?"

He grinned. "I say after surviving the last month, we deserve it."

fin.

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