Thread: What Might Have Been (AndNich123 & Reydan)

It took a couple of days for the news of Madeline Maclean's crash, investigation, and announcement that she was returning home to filter through to Brownsville. Even in these days of internet news and immediate updates, news was slower in the remote midwest. For Charles it was a blend of concerned messages from friends and family worried that he might take the return of his former fiance poorly and the whispered interest of the wider population of the town. Nothing was private in a place like Brownsville. Everyone knew everyone's business, and most were aware already that Madeline had skipped out on Charles practically on the morning of their wedding. Broken his heart. Embarrassed and ashamed. Bed-bound for weeks. Or so the stories went. To be honest, if it hadn't been so personal Charles would have found it funny. Everything seemed to have been exaggerated in the retelling and remembering over the intervening years. You'd have thought, the way that people whispered and eyed him with wide, sympathetic eyes, Madeline had blown out of town after gunning down most of his family at the Church, her wedding dress spattered with blood as she drove into the sunlight. It had been nothing like that. It had been a normal sort of awful. Much more mundane and hurtful. To be honest Charles was fine with the distraction of the whispers and sympathetic stares. It kept him from thinking too much. Had he thought about Madeline? What she must be experiencing? How this awful event must have shaken her? Potentially destroyed the dream she had left him for and driven her back to the hometown she had been keen to leave? Of course. He was only human. But it had been almost a year since he had opened the box to look at the engagement ring she had returned to him and he had worked hard to get to that point. The box remained closed. 'You got a message to go out to a broken down van on Bossman Street' Hank said as he returned to the mechanic's from a supply run to the out-of-town depot. The twin of his younger sister Jenny, Hank was about as far removed from the young woman as was visibly possible. Stocky, quiet, slow to act and slow to anger, if it wasn't for the Lerwick red hair and freckles you'd have thought Hank was adopted. Home from agricultural college, he was helping Charles out in the garage on an occasional basis. 'Sure - say who it was?' Charles asked, loading some essential tools and parts into the pick-up. Hank just shrugged. 'Out of towners' was all he said before returning to the stock-check he was taking. That should have been a clue to Charles, but maybe he was distracted by the rumor mill in the town. The street address too, so familiar to his dating days, should have given it away too, but he drove distracted, thinking about something and nothing, and it wasn't until he was halfway there he suddenly realised that he was on the way to the Maclean family home. 'Oh hell no' he muttered, but his foot remained unbidden on the pedal. As the pickup closed in his worse fears were confirmed. The broken down news truck, a national brand no-less, was on the curb outside Madeline's family home. A blond reporter, preening in front of a portable mirror, was standing next to a leathery-faced camera man. A third figure, a man with a clipboard, flagged him down. 'Of course it would be' he groaned. They were here to cover the story. To cover Madeline. All he could hope, as he stepped out of the van, was that they had no idea who he was. And, he hoped, that Madeline wasn't actually home behind those twitching curtains.