FREE FLYING HEARTS -- A collection of short stories from Tonig73

Something Akin To Hope ...

"Larry, I'm sorry, I have to go .... "  They had talked for what seemed like hours, only .... it was.  Hours.  It was almost dark.  Larry had told Laurent his story.  About his reasonably happy, but loveless childhood.  How no one in his family ever expressed emotion, of any kind, good or bad.  How he did well at school, and had a natural pull towards technical, math stuff like I.T.  How he'd got a good job, but how everything went south once he met Reign.  He's learned the hard way you couldn't tell if a person was toxic or not until it was too late.  Until they'd wheedled their way into your heart.

"She beat  you ?"  Laurent was incredulous.  He tried not to look and sound so shocked, it was obviously a touchy subject for Larry, but Laurent thought he was brave for even talking about it.  He trusted him, and he appreciated that.  Larry'd never actually come right out and admitted it, let alone said it out loud, he'd been so ashamed.  To anyone, so why Laurent ?  He felt comfortable, relieved to be telling him, to finally tell someone.  He knew Laurent was a good, no, outstanding attorney, and he could probably pull a murder confession form a donkey, but still.  

Laurent'd had knowledge of domestic violence cases before, where the woman had abused the man in the relationship, and it always hit him hard.  And he knew it wasn't as simple as the guy letting the girl hit him.  There was always much more to it than that.  But here Larry was, telling him the awful things Reign had done to him, and all Laurent wanted to do, was to find this woman, and strangle her with his bare hands.  Larry had told Laurent about the morning Reign and Ember left, now over six weeks ago, and only now the tears fell since that morning.  Tears that he had been struggling so hard to hold back, to not let fall.  

"Sorry, Laurent .... it's still so hard, everything.  No home, no job, trying to get all my crap together, and getting .... nowhere.  Not knowing where my little girl is, if she's alright."  He gulped in a hard breath to steady himself, huffing it out again,  "That's the hardest thing, the not knowing."   Laurent couldn't even begin to imagine his life without Elise now.  He wasn't too thrilled when Cassie had told him she was pregnant, but now ?  To not even know where she was, he knew he would turn over heaven and earth to find her.  His heart clenched in his chest at the thought.  

As Larry sobbed quietly, his head hung between his shoulders, Laurent gripped Larry's shoulder, offering some kind of comfort, some kind of reassurance.  They hardly knew each other, but Laurent wanted to do more for Larry.  He felt a surge of compassion like he'd never felt before, even in some of the worst cases he'd known.  This feeling for Larry was different.  He wanted to rub Larry's back, pull him to him, hug him.  Feel Larry's heart calm against his chest.  To tell him, everything would be OK.  The feeling was unusual, to say the least, and it scared him a little.

"I can help you, Larry.  Let me help, please."  It hadn't even occurred to Larry that Laurent would even want to help.  Even asking, anyone, for help hadn't crossed his mind.  Why not ?  Was it so difficult ?  Obviously, it was.  Larry looked up at Laurent.

"What ? How ..... how .... Lau ....."  

"I'm an attorney, Larry.  A partner in my own law firm.  Romanski, Taylor, Symes and Bourgeois.  I'm the Bourgeois bit ... "  Laurent smiled at him, hoping to lighten the mood somewhat.

"What ? .... "  It still wouldn't compute.  OK, then.

"I am a senior partner in one of the best law firms in the country.  We retain the services of at least a dozen private investigators to do research for us, for our cases.  Finding a missing person who's only been gone for six weeks, especially with a young child in tow, shouldn't prove too difficult."  Only six weeks.  To Larry those six weeks felt like an eternity, it might as well have been six years.  Larry still didn't really get it, well, he got it, but .... this new information just wouldn't take hold in his brain, he daren't let it.  Too much hope for him to get to grips with.  Too much to go wrong.  To much pain for when it did.