I’ll admit it; the Kid did a pretty good job of trying to hide his shock at seeing me sitting on his couch.  He even did a pretty good job of hiding his desire to run.  He wasn’t that good at dissembling, though, and I was able to see right through him.  God help him if he ever goes into a profession that doesn’t require the absolute truth.

Now I could have jumped right on him and started quizzing him.  Believe me, deep down I wanted to do nothing more.  I knew if I did, he’d just retreat and try to bluster his way out of my questions.  Eventually he would have broken down and answered them anyway.  He was no better at blustering than he was dissembling.  Sometimes the Kid was just too honest for his own good.

Instead, I decided to play it cool.  Where he expected me to come on strong I remained calm, not even bring up the previous night.  I made it perfectly clear, though, that once he got back in the room we would talk and if he tried to avoid it, it would just get nasty.

So there I sat waiting for him to come back out.  For a little while, I thought he might have taken advantage of the French doors leading out to the patio to escape me.  The small noises I could hear coming from his room quickly dispelled that notion.

Eventually I heard the doorknob turning very slowly and his hesitant step from his bedroom to the living room.  I snapped my eyes down to the newspaper again giving him the opportunity to come fully into the room before I started my planned interrogation.

Half dozen footsteps later, I heard him pause.  I knew, without looking, that he was leaning on the back of the armchair.

“I guess you want to know what happened last night,” he said tentatively.  I looked up at him and sure enough, he was gripping the back of the armchair.  He was gripping it so hard his knuckles were white with the strain.  Whatever had happened, I got the distinct impression it was far from over.

I deliberately folded the newspaper and set it down beside me.  I knew there was more going on than just what led to his accident.  If I were going to find out about it, I’d have to dance to whatever music Sam decided to play.  “Let’s just say I’m curious.  It’s not everyday I get a call to pick you up at the hospital because you ran your car off the road.  You wanna tell me what you were doing driving down that way so tired you fell asleep.”

He brought his hands up to rub his face.  He dropped his right hand back to the chair but his left found it’s way to the back of neck before it too dropped down to the chair.  His mouth opened and closed a few times and nothing came out.  I watched as he rubbed the left side of his face under his eye with his right hand.  I’d watched Sam Beckett enough to know that that was one of his “tells” when he was nervous.

Sam came around to sit on the armchair.  Actually, it was more like he perched on the very edge of it ready to jump up from it with the least provocation.  “I uh…I actually didn’t know where I even was until I got to the hospital.  I’d been driving around since Friday night and I’d lost track of where I was.”

Ok, that was a little surprising.  Why the hell had he been driving around for 48 hours and how did he lose track of where he was.  Simple, straightforward questions but I doubted the answers would that simple.

“I thought you came here after you left the project on Friday.”  I stated instead of asking any questions.  It had taken a lot of convincing to get Sam to leave the project Friday but I’d finally convinced him that he owed it to himself to take some time off over Labor Day just like everyone else.

“I did.  Then I left.  I went for a drive to clear my head.”

“Some drive,” I answered dryly.  “Most people don’t drive for 48 hours until they go off the road when they want to clear their head.”

He tried to shrug it off.  “Yeah, well, you know me.  I’ve always been an over achiever.” The smile he tried out for my benefit never reached his eyes and he couldn’t sustain it.  He resumed his study of the colorful area rug.

I decided it was time to be more direct.  I leaned forward, braced my elbows on my knees, and let my loosely clasped hands dangle between my knees hoping my physical posture would convey to him just how serious I was.  “You wanna tell me what made you drive around for that long trying to clear your head.”

Again, he reached across to rub at his face as he fought with himself for the words that he needed.  It seemed as if he were waging some kind of inner battle with himself over what to tell me and what not to tell me.  I’m not sure whether he won the battle or not but he seemed to deflate and slouched back in the chair.  When he spoke, his voice was a carefully controlled monotone but I could hear the emotion he was trying to lock down.

“When I got back Friday there was a stack of mail and I started to go through it.  The handwriting on one of the envelopes looked familiar, really familiar so I tore it open.  It was a letter from…it was from…..”

He couldn’t seem to force himself to tell me who’d sent the letter.  Instead, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper that he handed over to me.  I unfolded it and scanned the contents of the letter and the small news clipping that accompanied it then looked over to him.  He was still struggling not to show any emotion.  I looked down to the letter again.  Although it cleared things up, it put a whole new perspective on things.

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