Chapter 163
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 1986
Elliott stood on the sidewalk outside of the shitty little falling down house he’d grown up in and marveled that it was still standing. This was a part of Oklahoma City most people didn’t come to unless they had to, and he didn’t see a lot of people on the streets in the middle of the day. He looked around and then slowly approached the house.
It didn’t look like anyone lived here. As a matter of fact, he’d be shocked to know anyone had lived here since his mom had moved out, which he’d discovered through some conversations with Guardians who operated out of the area, had been in the late ‘70s, though no one knew exactly for sure when. She’d continued her string of male visitors and eventually married some man who beat the shit out of her and put her in the hospital for several months. When that was over, apparently, she’d gone back to her old ways until this Mark Butcher guy showed up a few years back and took her to Atoka to live with him on his farm. He hoped she’d found some peace out there before she finally took too many prescription pain pills and passed away in her sleep.
The front post was still missing its top half, and as a result the whole left side of the porch was hanging down such that Elliott had to duck to keep from hitting his head on it. He knocked on the door but wasn’t surprised that no one answered. Getting through the locked door was no big deal, and in a few seconds, he found himself standing forty years in the past.
Everything looked basically the same. The same abysmal floral couch sat in the same place on the horrible orange carpet. There were ceiling tiles littered all over the place, and even more trash and garbage than he remembered everywhere his eye fell, as if squatters had been using the place, but other than that, he could’ve expected to hear his mom in the bedroom or see little Jimmy come flying around the corner from the kitchen.
The last thought brought a tear to his eye, and he tried to push it aside, but that’s why he’d come. It wasn’t for her, not really. Sure, he wondered what his life might’ve been like with a mother who loved her children more than she hated herself, but more than that, he wanted to come back here and stand in the place where his baby brother had been alive, where they’d fought together against the rest of the world.
Silently, he moved to the back bedroom, the one he’d shared with his brother. It was even more of a mess than the front of the house. The two mattresses were covered in all kinds of stains he didn’t want to know about and more liquor bottles covered the floor than his mother would’ve managed to amass in a month. But something near the foot of the bed caught his eye, and he moved forward to pick it up. There, on the ground, next to his bed, was a Tonka truck with only three wheels. The tears began to stream down his face now, as he cried, not for his mother or his brother or the father he never met, but for the little boy who’d done everything he could to save everyone else and had failed miserably, losing himself in the process.
After a few minutes, Elliott wiped his tears on the back of his hand and tossed the truck onto the bed. Just like this place, it had been his once, but not anymore. It was his time to let go of the past. He might never repair the relationships he’d damaged with Peggy, Nancy, or his children, but as he walked away, he knew he and little Elliott Sanderson were good.
Elliott walked out the front door, ducked under the collapsing porch, and never looked back.
When he returned to headquarters a few days later, a small package was waiting for him. Aaron handed it over and left him alone in his office for a few minutes to discover what was inside.
The envelope had his name on it but no address, and Elliott wondered how in the world it had been delivered, but then, he had learned by now not to question the strange and mysterious ways in which LIGHTS operated. Ripping the envelope open, he extracted a short note written on a scrap of paper, and another object fell into his hand. He glanced down at his palm to see a small golden ring with a pink flower on top, the ring his mother used to wear. The note said, “Your ma wanted you to have this. Said it was her ma’s. Take care, Mark Butcher.”
That was the man she’d moved to Atoka with, he realized. Why she’d want the ring sent to him, he had no idea, but he refused to let any tears slide down his cheeks as he looked down at the piece of jewelry in his hand. He tossed the note and envelope into the trashcan and thought about doing the same with the ring. But since it had belonged to his grandmother as well, a woman he couldn’t remember ever meeting, he decided he may as well hold on to it and dropped it into his pocket until he could find someplace to store it and forget it even existed, much as he hoped to do with the memories of the woman who’d worn it the majority of her life.
Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1996
It wasn’t often Elliott’s work brought him back home to Tulsa, but when it did, just being there made him want to spend as much of his free time in a bar as possible, for old time’s sake. Of course, the lounge in the respectable hotel where they were staying was nothing like the digs he’d spent his seedier years hanging out in, and the sound of chatter and pop music was a far cry from the clink of pool balls and country tunes he’d been accustom to.
The rest of the team was upstairs, and he couldn’t blame them. It’d been a difficult hunt. Aaron had only brought him, Hannah, and Christian since they were technically only there to consult, but they’d gotten roped into the chase, which had been just that, and after running about ten miles through the streets of downtown Tulsa before Aaron finally caught the bloodsucker and ended him, everyone was tired.
