youngblood // p. hockstetter // 0.1

//twenty-six

•••

"Please repeat your statement Miss.Fennler"

"Yes sir" Rosemary shifted slightly on the couch, her hands sweaty from the humidity of the room. Sat alone in the lounge room with Officer Owen Thomas, he watched her shift before she said near the exact thing she'd made Patrick memorise from start to finish the night they threw Mark Tuedin's corpse into the river by Henry Bower's house.

"Around two o'clock I went to look for my older brother because we were supposed to leave earlier together and Mark said he'd come with me because he wanted to go talk with the boys I was looking for" She inhaled slowly, intentionally as the officer looked at her from his notebook. "We got to the trees at the bottom of the hill and that's when Mark told me the boys where doing...." She fidgeted, obviously uncomfortable. "...inappropriate things, which I knew Jude wouldn't be doing. So I left to go back up to Henry's house and Mark went-" Rosemary's voice cracked slightly as her eyes shone in a glass like state, "-the other way" Clutching her hand over her mouth, her shoulders shook as tears slid down her face and hit her white summer dress. "I should've gone with him! Or given him the torch or something!"

"Miss.Fennler, I can assure you this is not your fault" He leant forward, offering her the tissue box as he gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

"But I was the last person to see him wasn't I?" She stared at him, her eyes red and her lip trembling as she sniffled. "Before he-" She sobbed again, her face pressed into the tissues as she heard the door open.

"I heard crying" Jude was by her side in an instant. "Hey" He sat beside her, pulling her into his side as he cooed and hushed her, his fingers stroking her scalp gently.

"I think I'm done here"

"Yes, you are" Jude said irritably against her scalp, sending Officer Thomas a slight glare.

"Jude!" Nate scowled at Jude's abrupt rudeness as he appeared in the doorway where Jude had entered. "Good luck in your investigation sir. We hope for all the best" Nate smiled at the officer as Jude nodded behind Nate.

"You know the way out Officer" Jude practically spat at Mr.Thomas who sent Jude a disapproving stare as he stood and was guided by Nathaniel to the front door where he profusely apologised for Jude once more before the room was engulfed in silence only broken by Rosemary's occasional sniffles.

Turning sharply, Nathaniel walked slowly yet purposefully toward the pair. "Are you okay Rose?" He asked gently, his voice sincere.

She nod after a moments hesitation. "Yeah...I just..." Sighing, she put her head in her hands and rubbed her eyes. "...I'm fine..."

He was once again silent as Jude stroked soothing circles onto her back before his attention turned to Jude. "You. Me. In the garden. Now"

Leaving her side, Rosemary watched Jude's back and his singlet that clung to it with sweat as he disappeared with Nate outside. Resting her back against the couch, she sighed and kept the tissues to her face until she heard Officer Thomas' car pull out of their driveway.

She grinned, glancing at the tail lights of his car as she stood and grabbed her school bag from the kitchen table. Even from there she could hear her brothers screaming at each other as she pulled out her summer homework and her stationary.

"He made her fucking cry!" Jude justified, causing the smallest of grins to pull onto Rosemary's face.

"That doesn't mean you have the right to insult a police officer!"

"Insult him? I was about five seconds from knocking his two front teeth out!"

As she had many times before, she tuned the pair of them out and focused on her English homework. Holding the article she'd chosen specifically to analyse, she begun listing techniques and quotes from the first paragraph. Rosemary found it incredibly interesting as it focused on someone she considered at least somewhat like herself; Theodore Robert Cowell. In twenty minutes she finished, still accompanied by her brothers' screeching as she stared at the man whose picture had been printed into the front of the papers.