The Woman from the Plane [Lost Fanfiction]

Chapter 14: Each to Each

Valerie fought her way through the pneumonia and slowly recovered from the injuries she suffered in the wreck. She took weeks to recover, often finding herself tired and breathless after taking short walks around the neighborhood.

This frustrated her, which she expressed in strings of expletives vivid and vulgar enough that Ben himself would blush.

She was fast friends with Walt and Hugo, with whom she shared a love of science fiction and Tolkien. She was also an avid reader of classic literature—quickly becoming a near permanent denizen of the library in his office. She particularly liked Fitzgerald—an expert in the tragedy of hubris, she explained—but her favorite book was Crime and Punishment. She told him that she liked the way that it captured the self-indulgence of wallowing in guilt. He couldn't tell if her comment was intended to needle him.

Ben was not accustomed to entertaining guests, so he was relieved that she was content to spend her days quietly reading. He was less happy when she'd started insisting on playing chess with him every day—she had been a mediocre adversary at first, but she'd learned quickly, and he was concerned that they would soon be evenly matched.

She'd been well enough to move to her own house after a while. They'd managed to recover most of her things from the boat, and she'd been pleased to resume some semblance of a normal life.

In truth, he hadn't initially liked Valerie very much. He didn't understand her immediately, which was an unusual experience for him. She was not arrogant, but she was stubborn—and while she was clearly introverted, she had an outgoing streak, and a brash—sometimes offensive—sense of humor, and it grated on him.

But she had warmed to him quickly and, in spite of the circumstances, had trusted him almost immediately. She'd told him everything—enough for him to piece together her entire life story. Her father was French-Canadian. Her mother had immigrated from an eastern soviet bloc country in the seventies. They'd moved to California when she was still a child so that her father—who had built his wealth in lucrative construction contracts with corrupt clients—could capitalize on the tech boom. She'd been a bit troubled, at times, but she'd hidden it well, and lived up to their high expectations.

She'd confided in him that—in spite of what she accomplished—she'd always felt like there was a darkness in her, and that she used to find relief in doing bad things, because the guilt reminded her that she wasn't an inherently awful person.

He didn't tell her much of anything about himself.

She seemed to like being around him—she particularly enjoyed teasing him. Even when her jokes were met with a blank stare she would burst into laughter. He didn't understand her at all.

Eventually he resigned himself to the fact that she simply liked him. It wasn't that he had disliked her—he'd been suspicious of her, and frustrated that he didn't intimidate her, but she wasn't the worst he'd dealt with.

Hugo had caught him rolling his eyes at her—she'd burst into a comedy routine that had Walt in stitches.

"What?" Hugo had asked.

Ben shook his head.

"A teenage daughter didn't prepare you for this?"

Ben looked startled.

"I'm sorry man," Hugo said immediately, "I didn't mean to remind you—"

"It's not that—it's just—not that." He shook his head again. "She's not a child." He realized that, at twenty-nine, she was twenty years his junior and—in theory—young enough to be his daughter, but the thought seemed absurd. He saw her as a peer—as a friend. It was a startling realization if ever he'd had one.