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Dave tapped on the office door, just above the plaque that read ‘Detective Wuornos’.
"Garland?" Vince said as they walked in. "Gloria said you wanted to see us?"
Garland looked up from some paperwork, equally grateful for and confused by the interruption. "She did?"
"OK boys, listen up," said Gloria, walking into the office and closing the door behind her.
Garland, Vince and Dave shared a surprised look with each other.
"Gloria?" said Garland.
"Don't worry, the Troubles aren't back," she assured them, the concern visible on their faces. "But they will be. Won't they? 27 years time and we'll be right there dealing with it all again. Or some other poor buggers will," Gloria said, realising even the youngest of them would be about retirement age come the year 2010. It sounded too far away to ever happen, but of course it would come around eventually.
"You say that as though you think we have a choice,” said Vince. “Do you think we can interrupt the cycle?” They'd attempted that before, when they'd tried to blow up the Barn so that Sarah wouldn't have to go inside. But they'd never tried disrupting the cycle from this stage in it, between the Troubles.
"Well, not exactly. But maybe we can prepare."
"How so? It's not like we know what's going to happen," Vince pointed out.
"We know some things,” Gloria said. “Some patterns. We know how some Troubles work. Like, the Crocker Curse."
All three men scowled at the Crocker name.
"Simon's dead," Garland pointed out.
"Yes but his son, how old will he be next time around?"
The scowls turned to frowns of realisation: Simon Crocker might be out of the picture, but the Crockers had been in Haven for a long time, and as far as any of them knew, every generation of Crockers had had the same Trouble, and all of them had used it to kill Troubled people. And the next time the Troubles came around there would be another Crocker generation there too; ready to do the same again.
"And there might come a point where we need him," Gloria added. "The Crocker Curse exists for a reason; some Troubles are so awful there's no other way to deal with them."
"And when he gets a taste for it, like Simon did, and starts killing the rest of us just for fun?" came Garland's retort.
"What are you suggesting then?" Dave asked him. "It's not like we can just stop his Trouble from activating when he grows up!!"
Half-serious, remembering the viciousness that Simon Crocker had shown to all of them, afraid for what the next Crocker might grow up into, and half-considering the ways in which one death can sometimes save hundreds of others, Garland pointed out, "We could make sure he doesn't grow up.”
"No," Gloria said, with the kind of finality that simply ended the possibility of discussing killing a child before it had really begun. "What we can do, is make sure he grows up well ."
They all looked at her with enough curiosity that she carried on.
"The last thing we want, come the year two thousand and ten, is a bitter, traumatised young man with addictive tendencies and no reason not to take advantage of the high that Troubled blood gives him. But that's what we're likely to get if we don't do something to stop it now. Simon wasn't exactly a model father, and the kid was there when he died; that's two lots of trauma to deal with already. And I looked up his mom; can't find where she is and there’s no indication of a Trouble, but she's an addict too - so even if she turns up again she's unlikely to be much help to him, plus all of that's another layer of trauma for the poor kid to deal with. And if he's inherited his mom's addictive personality along with his dad's Trouble, well then…." she let the sentence hang.
"Then that's the worst possible combination," Garland realised. Generations of Crockers had given in to their Troubles’ high. A Crocker with an addictive personality and trauma to run away from would have more reason to give into it than most.
"Yes, it is. Especially if he's left to deal with it all on his own," Gloria added.
"Does he have any other family?" wondered Vince.
"Not that I can see," Gloria said. "I've been looking into it all week, checked with the police records too. Some half-brothers maybe, on the other side of the country, but there's no reason to think that side of the family's likely to get involved; if they wanted to raise him they'd have taken him in by now."
"So … what then?" Garland asked. "If his father's family don't want him and his mother isn't around to raise him then … what?"
Gloria looked at them all in surprised frustration. She hadn't expected she'd have to spell it out to them quite so clearly.
"What was it you said to me once?" she said to Vince. "' It takes a village to keep a secret' ? That's the Haven version of what's probably a much older saying: 'It takes a village to raise a child'. Well, the Crocker kid needs raising, and he needs raising right. Maybe none of us are in a position to take him in officially to live with us, but he needs a village around him, looking out for him whoever he lives with."
The three men looked nervously at each other, and she thought maybe they were starting to get some idea of her meaning.
"No one else is going to do it. If he gets taken into care they won't have any idea of what he's been through, what he's dealing with, or what's at stake. He'd probably just get traumatised all over again. He needs people around him who know what happened to his father, who know about the Troubles, who know this town. He needs to be raised by a village, the right one. That village? It has to be us. The four of us at least, and anyone else we can think of too."
She paused, expecting outraged objections. But none came, so she carried on. "Even if his mom turns up and he lives with her, the four of us need to make sure we're in his life. Look out for him, talk to him, check in on him. Offer him a Saturday job at the Herald," she suggested to the Teagues. "Check in on the situation at home," she suggested to Garland. "And don't send an officer, go yourself. Every single week if you need to; make sure he's ok.'
There was a beat of quiet while they took this in.
"And what will you do?" asked Vince.
"I'll think of something. Maybe I’ll start a youth club, I don’t know. I don't think it matters too much what we do, just that we do. We just need him to know he can talk to us. To know that he has someone. That he's part of this place. And that his place cares about him - for him , as a person, as a kid; not just for his Trouble as a Crocker."
Garland nodded then, realisation dawning on his face. "That was Simon's problem, he didn't spend enough time here growing up; he saw himself as better than Haven, not part of it. Thought he was better than Troubled people, that he could fix us."
"Plus, his dad died young too; he didn't get much of a childhood I don't think," added Dave.
"Right," agreed Gloria. "With this kid… We can't let that cycle repeat itself. We have to let him know he belongs here. We have to teach him to connect with people, we have to connect with him. We have to give him the childhood he deserves."
The three men nodded. She made a convincing case, but even if she hadn't, it was obvious from the way she spoke she wasn't going to let this go.
"Very well," said Vince, and Dave nodded his agreement.
"Fine," said Garland. "A village huh? Let's be the village the Crocker kid needs."
“Duke,” Gloria pointed out. “His name is Duke.”