Sunday, October 15, 2000 (12:00 pm)

        Joe Hardy sat at his girlfriend’s side, one hand lightly wrapped about Vanessa’s hand.  He sat with his head resting on his forearm while he watched and waited for Vanessa to show some signs of waking.  Her leg was encased from hip to toe in a long white cast that was slightly elevated off of the bed with a traction trolley.  Her injured right arm was wrapped shoulder to fingertip in white bandages and splinted above that.  Joe sighed as he leaned back again, stretching in the uncomfortable chair in which he sat.  Andrea had left the room only an hour before and had gone to freshen up in the bathroom of the room she was borrowing.  

       Joe twisted his neck to work out a kink in it and then took hold of her hand again, while tears streamed down his eyes.  He saw her again, he saw the car racing toward her and he saw it knock her hard enough to send her flying through the air.  He hadn’t been there, hadn’t been able to do anything to stop the car, to save her from being hit yet he saw her just as clearly as if he had stood at her side.

       “Forgive me,” he whispered to her.  “Please, Vanessa, forgive me for not being there.  This is my fault.  I know it’s my fault.”

       “It can’t be, Joe,” he turned, startled, when he heard a voice from the doorway.  Callie stood there, dressed already in the dress she would wear to a wedding later that afternoon, a cream and bronze number that matched her coloring.  “It’s not your fault, you didn’t drive the car that hit her.”

       “I might as well have,” Joe whispered, the tears catching in the back of his throat.  “I may as well have driven the car that hit her.  This was aimed at me: we both know it was.  You’ve never stopped from telling me the truth before, Callie, why stop now?”

       Callie shook her head and reached down to touch Vanessa’s uninjured hand.  Her blue eyes were teary as she focused on Vanessa’s still form and Joe sighed.  She would know he told the truth.  This was his fault.

       “You weren’t there,” Callie turned to him and touched his shoulder.

       She reached out a hand to wipe one of Joe’s tears and suddenly he clung to her, holding her as they both cried together for a moment.  His greatest adversary as well as a good friend; perhaps their friendship was only possible when Callie was not dating his brother.  Whatever the case, Joe was glad that their animosity was gone.

       “I should have been there,” Joe whispered back to her. 

       “You can’t be everywhere at once,” Callie said.  “Joe, you and Frank go through this anytime one of you gets hurt or when Mandy or your father gets hurt or when one of your friends gets hurt and the truth hasn’t changed yet.  You can’t be everywhere at once.  I had to learn that myself and I didn’t until after I left for college last year.  Frank can’t be everywhere at once and he couldn’t be what I wanted him to be, what I thought I could make him to be.  He’s Frank Hardy and anyone who loves him, loves him as he is.  I found, in the long run, I couldn’t.  And I would have been harming him if I had tried.”

       Joe looked completely surprised to have heard such a confession from Callie Shaw.  She had never once before admitted that she might, herself, be at fault in her relationship with Frank.  Before it was always about Frank, about his cases, about his relationship with Joe and Callie had not been able to stand that.  Even council by Mandy had not helped; Callie saw it only as Mandy siding with her brothers. 

       “Don’t be so surprised,” Callie said.  “I’m 20-years-old now, I’ve had time to grow up and to, well, consider things.  That and I have a very down-to-earth roommate, a roommate who rather very much put things into perspective for me.  I’m not completely bull-headed you know.”

       Joe chuckled and sat back down in his vacated chair and motioned for Callie to pull up the one that Andrea had been sitting in before.  She did and they both sat quietly for a while and listened to the machines monitoring Vanessa’s life signs beep and boop and quietly work along.  The thought that Callie Shaw grew up boggled the mind; then again, many would have said the same thing about Joe.  Both of them often butted heads merely because they were too stubborn to cave in to the other.     

       “I wouldn’t have handled it, you know,” Callie said a moment later.

       Joe looked at her in surprise again.  He had almost forgotten she was there.  She sat beside Vanessa’s still form, her brown eyes looked straight at Vanessa, though and not at Joe at all.

       “Handled what?” Joe asked in surprise.

       “Frank,” Callie answered simply.  “I wouldn’t have handled his blindness well at all.”

       “Oh,” Joe said.  “I don’t know that any of us have handled that well.”

       “Except Samantha,” Callie said, softly and she looked at Joe with a new blaze in her eyes that reminded him of the old days. 

       “Callie,” Joe said, uncomfortable.  “Don’t ask me to make a choice between you and Samantha.  She’s Frank’s girlfriend now, she’s the one who has kept Frank together since he lost his sight.  We’ve done it as a team but he turns to her and she accepts and leads and I owe her for that if for nothing else.”

       “I’m not asking you to choose, Joe,” Callie said.  “I’m stating a fact, a certainty, something I know for myself.  If I were still Frank’s girlfriend when he lost his sight, I wouldn’t have stayed.  I wouldn’t have had the maturity; I don’t have the maturity now to stick it out.  I don’t want to be shackled down to something like that.  I don’t mean that in a mean way, please don’t get me wrong.  I’m just stating another fact.  Frank is with the right person.”

       Surprised, Joe nodded in agreement.  He looked away from her for a moment and then back at her as he ran a hand through his hair.  What could he say to such a bold statement of honesty?  He couldn’t condemn her for it, he couldn’t even fault her for it.  Everyone who knew Frank wanted some miracle cure to suddenly come along to allow him to see again and even the strongest person looked away sometimes, because they could not handle a look into the eyes of a person who could not look back.

       Joe steepled his fingers and rested his chin on the top while he closed his eyes.  He turned aside to quickly wipe his tears again and then put on a brave smile before he faced Callie.  She stared quietly at Vanessa, a haunted expression on her face.

       “You aren’t… alone now?” Joe asked with uncertainty, unsure how to ask what was on his mind.  “You have a boyfriend now, don’t you?  Someone back in San Francisco?”

       Callie relaxed and smiled the most serene smile Joe ever saw on her face before.  She nodded once, a short nod of her head as she relaxed again and her eyes lit up as never they had before.  Joe knew that look; he saw it on Vanessa and Mandy and Samantha and even on himself. 

       “His name is James,” Callie said with a nod.  “James Turson.  He plays tennis and majors in business.  I guess… I know I’m in love with him, Joe.  And…”

       Callie bowed her head.

       “He doesn’t scare you,” Joe finished.  “Or at least you’re never scared if he’s going to come home?”

       Callie nodded without looking up again and Joe reached out to touch her knee.

       “Callie,” he said softly.  “I’m sorry that you and I… that we never really got along when you were here.  Don’t be ashamed that you were scared or that you felt left out or… or anything else.  I’m glad that now, here, we can be friends again.”

       Callie squeezed his hand and nodded.  “Me too, Joe.  I’m glad too.”

      

Sunday, October 15, 2000 (12:00 pm)

 

       “GET DOWN!” Mandy screamed again a moment later and she pushed Connor and Frank and Samantha to the ground as three more arrows flew past them, all of them scattering, two of them thudding off of nearby cars and another off of the nearby tree.  Connor peeked his head up and saw other members of the church scatter.  Some of them raced back into the church while others raced for their cars or ducked down beside cars, bushes or behind the door.  What maniac shot arrows at people who were going to church? 

       “Stay down,” Mandy ordered softly as she pushed Connor’s head back down when lifted his head to take a look around.  “We don’t know that they’re done firing yet.”

       True, Connor thought morosely.

       He saw her as she scooted away and ignored her own advice to stay down.  He sat up again himself.  The whizzing sound the arrows made was replaced by the cries and fervor of the terrified congregation of the church. 

       Mandy startled Connor a moment later when she appeared out of nowhere.  She took Connor’s hand and held onto it as she kissed his cheek and they looked around.  Samantha and Frank were back on their feet now, Frank’s head cocked slightly sideways as he tried to make sense of what was going on around him, without the ability to see it.  Connor sighed again and scratched at the top of his head while he leaned over to kiss Mandy’s forehead.

       “I prefer those somewhat lower,” Mandy said, her blue eyes sparkling mischievously.

       Connor chuckled and relaxed.  If she could joke, they were truly out of danger, at least for the moment.

       “What was that about?” he asked her.

       “I don’t know,” Mandy commented.  “Someone was either trying to kill us or scare us.  If they, he, she or it, were trying to kill us, they, he, she or it had very bad aim.”

       Connor chuckled.  “Take that personally do you?” he asked.

       “If a person is going to fire an arrow I expect them to have some clue of what they were doing,” said Mandy.  “And whomever shot these shot them carefully I think.  Not to kill but to scare, to frighten us.”

       “Is it an attack on the church?” Connor asked, incredulous.

       Mandy shook her head.  “It was on us.  Someone still wants us.”

       Connor frowned at that and shook his head again.  “Mandy… what do you mean?”

       “I don’t know,” Mandy sighed and turned away from him.  She wrapped her arms about herself and Connor went to hold her, wrapping his own arms around her as well.  “It’s like an attack us, on our life, on who we are as individuals and as a family.”

       Her blue eyes looked imploringly on Connor for just a moment, then passed into peace and acceptance one normally expected when they looked into his eyes.  She continued.

       “The attack on Frank, the car hitting Vanessa, the arrows – its someone telling us to stop, to give up, to become something else.”

       Connor frowned and rubbed at his chin.  Her logic sometimes confused him more than Frank’s did.  It seemed more than that to him; much more.  It was tragic and violent – these were acts of hate, not acts of convincing someone to do something, or, to stop doing something.

       “We don’t have enough information to know, for sure, what all of this is about,” Frank stood by Samantha a few feet away from Connor and Mandy.  “Or even enough information for a supposition, Mandy.  We can assume this is an attack to stop us but we don’t have enough information to really assume anything.  I made that mistake with Jase and Anna, I made assumptions it nearly got us killed.  We find the car, we trace it to the source, then we can assume.”

       Connor nodded his agreement as they waited for the sirens now heard in the distance to arrive.  Frank and Sam stood quietly, one of Frank’s arms lightly about the top of Samantha’s shoulders.  Sam rested her head on Frank’s chest and they whispered quietly to each other, as ever composed, though Sam looked still worried, about Vanessa probably and Connor could not be sure what Frank hid behind the dark glasses he wore.  Connor knew Frank well enough, however, to know that his roommate’s mind was blazing along at a hundred miles a second as he formed a plan for them to follow in this latest mystery.

       Last semester, Connor recalled, I had no idea what to think of being ‘Frank Hardy’s roommate.’  I found him to be quirky, ultra-intelligent and very down to earth.  The big half of a detective duo was human after all.  The mysteries he and Joe solved last year seemed so harmless and benign.

       This year – I wonder if this is what life was really like for them?  I wonder if they were always in this kind of danger before or if this the exception to the rule?  I wish I knew for sure.  Frank doesn’t talk much about past cases unless I ask and I don’t like to pry.

       Mandy squeezed his hand again and Connor came out of his train of thought to look at her.  Every time he looked at her, Connor couldn’t help but think he found the prettiest, smartest and most fun girl on campus.  She very much made him happy and he found he did more for her than any of his previous girlfriends. 

       That, he thought with a half-smile.  Includes Betsy Salinger, head cheerleader and all-around popular hanger-on who wanted attention without giving it.  Betsy Salinger who thought I was insane for coming to a ‘backward university in the middle of nowhere.’  Here’s to you, Betsy Salinger.  Ha!

       Their parting proved fortunate.  Connor chuckled grimly as he looked over at Frank and Sam again, then to the road as a police car pulled up.  Mandy straightened and took hold of Connor’s hand and held it tight.  Her blue eyes watched the police officers climb out of their cars and walk toward them.  She relaxed slightly when a plain car pulled up and Detective Con Riley got out and walked toward them.  Frank had that sideways, confused look again, this time probably while he waited to find out ‘just what was going on.’

       “Frank, Mandy?” Con spoke to the two he knew the best first. 

       “Hi, Detective Riley,” Mandy called out to him.

       “We got a call about arrows?” Con asked, definitely questioning, as if he didn’t believe what he heard.  “Someone was shooting arrows at the church?”

       “Specifically at Mandy,” Connor said suddenly as a vivid memory came to him.  “Three of them just barely missed her, sir.”

       “Did you see who shot them off?  Or where they landed?”  Con asked.    

       The other officers were questioning the other members of the church.

       “From there,” Mandy pointed to some foliage along the front of the church, including a row of very tall oak trees.  “I’d say one of those trees.  I didn’t really see who.”

       “They landed there, there and there,” Connor pointed to the places he saw the arrows land.

       “Mandy,” Frank interrupted.  “You said you didn’t really see who.  What did you see, then?”

       Mandy chewed lightly on her lower lip and frowned as she looked back toward the trees.  She closed her eyes a minute then opened them.

       “A jacket,” she said.  “Tweed, brown.  And… I think… I think I saw… silver.  A mask I think but I’m not really sure.”

       Con wrote some notes down in his pad as Connor hugged Mandy.  Con waved several officers over to collect the evidence (the arrows) and others to check the trees.  Mandy pulled free of Connor long enough to go and check out some of the arrows.

       “Brown tweed,” Connor said as he walked over to Frank and saw that his roommate looked very thoughtful.  “Not much to go on, Frank.”

       “More than you think,” Frank said as he rustled his dark brown hair. 

       “Frank, I hate to burst your bubble, but there are probably a few million brown tweed jackets in existence.  How can that be a clue of any kind?  I probably have three.”

       Frank smiled his most enigmatic smile, the smile that made Connor most want to smack Frank.  Connor wondered just what was going through Frank’s head and he turned to watch Mandy with the police officers.  She knelt down by a brush in front of the church and motioned to an officer.  One of the officer’s crouched by her and, with rubber-gloved hands, reached into the brush and came out with something too small for Connor to see from where they stood.  Whatever it was, however, made Mandy very agitated.  She was gesticulating wildly with both hands and she often pointed to the object in the officer’s hands.  She whispered, however, so Connor could not hear what she said.

       “It’s a feather,” Frank said, from out of nowhere answering Connor’s unasked question.  “She says it’s a feather – from one of her own arrows.”

       “How do you know that?” asked Sam.  “I can’t make out anything she’s saying.”

       “I can hear her,” Frank said.  “At least well enough to make out most of what she’s saying.  She’s explaining to officer McGwire that the feather has the same silver-flecked paint along the tips she uses on the feathers for her own arrows.  She fletches her own, you know.”

       “But how can you hear her?” Sam demanded again.  “I can barely hear a light dullish murmur!  I can’t make out any words.”

       Frank smiled again and shrugged.  “I guess I’m used to… listening harder.  The doctors said it might happen, that my other senses would start compensating for my sight.  It seems it’s true.”

       “Should we start calling you Daredevil, Mr. Murdock?” Connor quipped.

       “Oh ha, ha,” Frank scratched his head.  “Tell everyone my secret identity, Parker, and I’ll have to tell everyone you’re Spider-man.”

       “You’ve both lost it,” Mandy came back.  “Completely.”

       “Mandy,” Frank turned toward her.  “What did you find out?”

       “I found out,” Mandy said in a voice gone cold.  “That someone has stolen my fletching pattern and Frank…”

       Mandy touched Frank’s hand and pulled him close.  Her voice went, if possible, even more cold and Connor shivered.

       “It was Uncle Derak!”

The Hardy Boys belong to Simon and Schuster and the Stratemeyer Foundation. I've only borrowed them to play with for a while but I promise to return them whenever I've finished with them.  (I make no promises as to condition, that's entirely up to them).  I promise, I'm only writing for fun and I'm not making a single dime off of this (unless you count personal fulfillment).