Wyatt was in the kitchen, making breakfast for Mona, Scarlett taking care of their son upstairs. Mona was seated at the table, reading a small chapter book while Wyatt stood at the stove, cooking pancakes. To Wyatt, this was heaven. There was nowhere he'd rather be than here, at home, making breakfast for his daughter. He glanced over his shoulder at her and smiled to himself. Mona represented everything right he'd done in life, the culmination of a million small, good decisions.
"If these animals can talk, why can't people understand them?" Mona asked.
"What are you reading?" Wyatt asked.
"Charlotte's Web," Mona said, "and the animals all talk to one another, but none of the humans ever overhear them or understand them? Are they speaking a secret animal language?"
Wyatt laughed as he flipped the pancakes onto a plate and walked them towards the table, setting them in front of her.
"I don't know, but that's good that you're asking the important questions when it comes to childrens literature," he said. He sat down, coffee mug in his free hand, as he watched Mona bookmark her spot in her book, then pour syrup onto her pancakes and start to eat. Wyatt didn't have any plans for the day. He wasn't going into the office, he wasn't meeting with anyone, and all he really intended to do was spend the entire day here, at home, with his family. Scarlett entered, their son on her hip, and kissed the top of Wyatt's head as she passed by and headed to the fridge for a bottle. Just then there was a knock at the front door and Wyatt, sighing and rolling his eyes, stood up to go answer it. As he tugged the front door open, there, in a charcoal grey three piece suit with a trilby atop his head, stood an orange haired man.
"Hello," the man said brightly, "hi, I'm Ricky Loach."
Ricky held his arm out and Wyatt hesitantly shook his hand as he lifted his coffee mug to his lips and took a sip.
"What can I do for you, Ricky?" Wyatt asked.
"Oh, well, uh," Ricky said, "I'm, I'm actually here on behalf of the Loggins Aircraft Company. I'm doing some legwork for them in regards to the recent crash. It says here you're friends with the only survivor, one Kelly Schuester. I was hoping I could ask you a few questions regarding Miss Schuester?"
And that was when Wyatt knew his free day was gone.
***
Calvin was in his shed with Rachel. Calvin was standing over the workdesk and soldering something while Rachel sat away, with her own pair of goggles on just in case, while she ate from an enormous open bag of chips. The radio was on full blast, and neither one was interested in having a conversation, instead opting to happily just be there in silence, enjoying eachothers company. Just then the door to the shed was knocked loudly, and Calvin sighed. He stopped soldering, put down the gun and headed to the door, opening it, only to find Wyatt standing there.
"Hey," Calvin said, "what are you-"
"Do you have any idea how much you've fucked us, cause it's a lot," Wyatt said, entering and then noticing the goggles before asking, "...did I interrupt some kind of steampunk convention?"
"Just doing some metalwork," Calvin said, "it's relaxing."
"It's surprisingly fun to watch," Rachel said, "it's like watching those shows on TV where people drive trucks for a living. This is someone's job, how wild is that? People get up and actually DO things on a day to day basis. Wild."
"What's going on?" Calvin asked.
"An airline investigator came to my house this morning," Wyatt said, "asking about Kelly. Asking about my relationship to Kelly. Because now they're uncovering pieces of the bomb from her bag and painting her as an accountable party. The bomb YOU built and stuffed in there."
An uncomfortable silence filled the shed.
"...yeah," Calvin said quietly, "yeah, I was worried this might happen. So what did you say?"
"What could I say? I just said I knew Kelly from highschool, and otherwise I don't know her well at all. Just that she's a friend of a friend, which means-" Wyatt said, pointing towards Rachel now, who had pulled her goggles up on her forehead, adding, "he's gonna come to you next. Right now our biggest priority is to ensure that Kelly doesn't get pinned for this. She didn't do anything wrong. She was just trying to do her job."
"I think we'd better have a lawyer present," Rachel said, and Wyatt knew just who to call.
***
"So," Ricky said, sitting on Wyatt's couch, Wyatt in a lounge chair across from him, still drinking his coffee; Ricky pulled his hat off and set it beside him, continuing, "what is your relationship to Miss Schuester?"
"Not much of one, really," Wyatt said.
"Says you were one of the first ones at the hospital to see her. Doesn't sound like not much of one," Ricky replied.
"Well, she's a friend of a friend from highschool, I more went to support my friend, you know? Be comfort for her. But as far as Kelly and I are concerned, we'd met maybe twice? Three times total? I'm not saying we don't know eachother, but we know eachother about as well as, say, someone who lives in a dorm with another student. We're cordial, but otherwise, yeah."
Ricky laughed as he wrote something down on a piece of paper.
"That's fair," he said, "I remember being in college and never talking to my dormmate. They were just kinda there, you know? So you don't know Miss Schuester well, okay, but can I ask you about some of your interactions with her? Maybe, perhaps, of what your impression of her might be? She's a local weather girl, as you obviously know, but did she ever come across as, say...an impassioned fighter for nature? A sort of ecorights warrior?"
Wyatt laughed into his coffee, fighting back the urge to cackle like an idiot and do a full on spit take.
"Sorry, sorry," Wyatt said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, "I'm sorry, that's just...that's so stupid. What would...like...why would you even think that?"
"Because we found shrapnel and other pieces of what appear to be part of a homemade explosive in her luggage," Ricky said, and Wyatt felt his heart drop in his chest; Ricky continued, "she's on a plane full of people people fighting for the environment, under the name of a monster, and perhaps she had motive to stop them."
"But if she were a part of that belief system, why would she blow anyone up? Let alone I doubt she knows how to make a bomb," Wyatt said, "woman can barely use a knife and fork properly."
"Maybe she disagreed with the way they were going about things, or maybe she hated who they followed," Ricky said, shrugging, "listen, it's no secret that Oliver Bloom was a horrible person, and the fact that they chose to ignore that aspect of him in favor of worshipping his 'message' to save the planet is, between you and I, kinda fuckin' gross. Maybe she felt the same way."
Wyatt set his mug down on the coffee table beside him and sighed, crossing his legs.
"Listen," Wyatt said, "I've met Kelly like three, maybe four times total. So sure, I don't know her that well and maybe I don't know what she could possibly be capable of. Plenty of people lead double or even triple lives. But between you and me, from what little knowledge about her I've accrued, she doesn't strike me as the kind of person to do such a thing. As for finding pieces of an explosive device, yeah, that looks bad, very suspicious, but I'm willing to bet if you asked her to rebuild it, she would't know the first thing about how to do so."
"Then how'd it get there?" Ricky asked, shrugging.
"...I...I don't know, I'm just spitballing here," Wyatt said, stammering, "all I'm saying is she's a fucking weather girl, man. And, just as an added bonus, why would she board a plane she intended to blow up? How would that help her cause? Kelly isn't responsible for such a thing."
Ricky nodded slowly, jotting some other things down in his legal pad before shutting it and looking at Wyatt sternly.
"Yes?" Wyatt asked.
"Can I ask you a question?" Ricky asked.
"You've already asked a bunch, so what's stopping you," Wyatt replied, picking his mug back up and continuing to drink.
"...from the phone records," Ricky said, "it said she called you from the airplane before it crashed."
"She did, and she sounded terrified," Wyatt said.
"Well, yeah, that's what I was gonna say," Ricky said, "the airline records all in flight outgoing calls for posterity sake, and having heard it, yeah, she sounded legitimately, genuinely terrified. Which leads me to believe, personally, that you're right, and she had no clue that that thing was in her bag. Course I can't just present my ideas without evidence to back them up. If she didn't build it, put it in there, then who did? That's the question we're really after."
Wyatt nodded slowly, listening. He could turn Calvin in right now. He could pin Calvin for it, give him up for Grudin's death as well, and make this all go away, but...but he couldn't do that. He knew he couldn't. He wasn't that type of person. Besides, he was as partially responsible for Grudin's death as Calvin was, and he didn't want to risk going down himself for it. Wyatt sighed and shook his head.
"Guess you got a real mystery on your hands, don't you?" Wyatt asked, and Ricky smirked.
"Luckily for me," Ricky said, "I'm very good at solving puzzles."
***
"Okay, for the final time, I'm an ecological lawyer," Celia said.
She and Wyatt were standing just outside the shed, Calvin and Rachel inside talking amongst themselves. Celia had her arms crossed, looking clearly annoyed at having been called down here. Wyatt, his hands on his hips, didn't look too pleased himself to be dealing with this situation on what had previously been, just an hour before, his day off.
"The investigator says she might've been doing it for the sake of the environment, can't we spin that in a good way?" Wyatt asked, "I mean, here's the thing, I don't want Kelly to go down for this, she's totally innocent, but maybe Calvin would agree to take the hit, and we can say he's just...a nature lover. You're a defense lawyer fighting against big businesses hurting the planet, can't you do your magic?"
"First of all, to assume it's that easy is ridiculous, secondly, the kind of cases I work on are about paper companies overshooting on their estimations, not people blowing up planes to save the world from even nuttier nature preservationists, okay?"
Wyatt sighed and sat down on the wooden picnic bench in the backyard. Celia sat down beside him and put a hand on his back.
"Frankly," Celia said quietly, "I think, and this sucks to say but...I think she needs to know."
"She can't know," Wyatt said, chewing on his thumbnail, "she can never know. If she knew..."
"If she knew, she could more easily defend herself if anyone comes after her," Celia said, "but you said it yourself, even this investigator doesn't think she's remotely responsible. Right now they're running in circles with no real leads. The worst thing we can do for her is pretend we know nothing. Besides, she wouldn't hate you, you were unaware of what Calvin did, and you tried to beat the shit out of him for it afterwards."
Wyatt nodded, slowly realizing Celia was right. He was backed into a corner, and Kelly had to finally know. He sighed and looked at Celia, who just smiled warmly at him and pulled him into a hug. Wyatt cried on her shoulder while she rubbed his back, reassuring him he'd be okay.
"this was my day off," he whispered.
"Yeah, me too," Celia replied.
***
Ricky walked through the doorway and stopped on the front porch, turning back to face Wyatt.
"Yeah?" Wyatt asked, "anything else?"
"Just give me a call if you have any other ideas or information," Ricky said, handing Wyatt his card from his coat pocket, adding, "ya know, it's weird, people can be doing noble things, truthfully the right thing, morally, but if done in a way that's viewed as wrong, their entire purpose can be twisted. Suddenly what was seen as heroic is seen as monstrous. I'm all for saving the environment myself, but not at the expense of blowing people up, even if they were self proclaimed nutjobs."
"Morals are tricky," Wyatt said, "that's why so many polticians don't last long."
"Wyatt," Ricky said, smirking at his statement, "I'm just letting you know...I might not be the only one asking about this. There might be others coming forward. Insurance companies. Detectives. Whatever. Just know that I'm on your side, pal, I wanna help get the right person for this, not the wrong one. If you're gonna trust anyone, trust me, cause, if you don't...who knows what could happen."
Wyatt furrowed his brow and pocketed the card.
"Is that a threat?" Wyatt asked.
"More like a..." Ricky said, shrugging, "a warning, I guess. Have a good afternoon."
With that, Ricky Loach turned and walked off the front porch. Before he knew it, Wyatt was upstairs, getting dressed, and racing over to Calvin's. And now...now after being at Calvin's, he found himself heading somewhere else. It was time for Kelly to know the truth.
***
Kelly was laying on the couch, watching TV and eating pretzel sticks out of a large bowl when the front door opened. She watched as Wyatt came around the side of the wall and entered the living room, and she immediately perked up, muting the television as he sat down.
"You know, the front door is unlocked, any old weirdo could just come in here," he said.
"Any old weirdo did," Kelly replied, winking, making him smirk.
"Where are your folks?"
"At work," Kelly said, "what's up?"
Wyatt shifted uncomfortably in his seat and sighed.
"Kelly," he said, "...today I had someone from the airline come and meet with me. He asked me about you, about the plane crash. He said they founded pieces of an explosive device within your luggage. Thankfully he doesn't buy that you put it there, but..."
"...a bomb? There was a bomb in my shit?" Kelly asked, sounding surprised and scared simultaneously.
"Yeah," Wyatt nodded, "a bomb. A homemade bomb. And, uh...don't worry, I mean, I told him you obviously had nothing to do with it, you can barely work your oven, and like I said, he doesn't believe for one second you were remotely responsible for such a thing, but..."
Wyatt looked down at his feet as Kelly shifted, sitting upright as best she could, looking anxious.
"Wyatt?" she asked softly.
"We need to talk about Calvin," Wyatt said.
Everything came out from that point on. Grudin. The Evergreens. Brighton. Calvin's past and his obsession with bomb making. By the end of it all, Kelly was aghast, and Wyatt was sobbing, apologizing, but Kelly didn't blame him for one second. Kelly never would. She knew Wyatt now, she knew he was a good man and would never willingly hurt her, and if nothing else, she seemed grateful for having been told the truth. Wyatt promised her that she'd be protected, would never be blamed for anything, she was a total and complete innocent who, thanks to Calvin, had been roped into their nonsense, and Kelly felt appreciative to be kept safe.
"This is...ridiculous," Kelly muttered.
"Yeah, it's been a hell of a few months," Wyatt replied, wiping his eyes on his shirt sleeve, "but, ya know, I'm gonna do my best to continue to keep things together, make sure nothing gets any worse, and-"
"And what about Calvin?" Kelly asked, "he's clearly unhinged. If he blew up a plane, what will he do next?"
Wyatt had been asking himself that very question, just as had Rachel asked him as well the day of the crash. Just as Celia had once inquired the day they shredded those pictures and files down by the riverbank. Wyatt knew Calvin himself was a ticking timebomb, ready to go off and take everyone around him with him, and what do you do with bombs? How do you save those who don't deserve to be blown to smithereens?
You defuse them.
"If these animals can talk, why can't people understand them?" Mona asked.
"What are you reading?" Wyatt asked.
"Charlotte's Web," Mona said, "and the animals all talk to one another, but none of the humans ever overhear them or understand them? Are they speaking a secret animal language?"
Wyatt laughed as he flipped the pancakes onto a plate and walked them towards the table, setting them in front of her.
"I don't know, but that's good that you're asking the important questions when it comes to childrens literature," he said. He sat down, coffee mug in his free hand, as he watched Mona bookmark her spot in her book, then pour syrup onto her pancakes and start to eat. Wyatt didn't have any plans for the day. He wasn't going into the office, he wasn't meeting with anyone, and all he really intended to do was spend the entire day here, at home, with his family. Scarlett entered, their son on her hip, and kissed the top of Wyatt's head as she passed by and headed to the fridge for a bottle. Just then there was a knock at the front door and Wyatt, sighing and rolling his eyes, stood up to go answer it. As he tugged the front door open, there, in a charcoal grey three piece suit with a trilby atop his head, stood an orange haired man.
"Hello," the man said brightly, "hi, I'm Ricky Loach."
Ricky held his arm out and Wyatt hesitantly shook his hand as he lifted his coffee mug to his lips and took a sip.
"What can I do for you, Ricky?" Wyatt asked.
"Oh, well, uh," Ricky said, "I'm, I'm actually here on behalf of the Loggins Aircraft Company. I'm doing some legwork for them in regards to the recent crash. It says here you're friends with the only survivor, one Kelly Schuester. I was hoping I could ask you a few questions regarding Miss Schuester?"
And that was when Wyatt knew his free day was gone.
***
Calvin was in his shed with Rachel. Calvin was standing over the workdesk and soldering something while Rachel sat away, with her own pair of goggles on just in case, while she ate from an enormous open bag of chips. The radio was on full blast, and neither one was interested in having a conversation, instead opting to happily just be there in silence, enjoying eachothers company. Just then the door to the shed was knocked loudly, and Calvin sighed. He stopped soldering, put down the gun and headed to the door, opening it, only to find Wyatt standing there.
"Hey," Calvin said, "what are you-"
"Do you have any idea how much you've fucked us, cause it's a lot," Wyatt said, entering and then noticing the goggles before asking, "...did I interrupt some kind of steampunk convention?"
"Just doing some metalwork," Calvin said, "it's relaxing."
"It's surprisingly fun to watch," Rachel said, "it's like watching those shows on TV where people drive trucks for a living. This is someone's job, how wild is that? People get up and actually DO things on a day to day basis. Wild."
"What's going on?" Calvin asked.
"An airline investigator came to my house this morning," Wyatt said, "asking about Kelly. Asking about my relationship to Kelly. Because now they're uncovering pieces of the bomb from her bag and painting her as an accountable party. The bomb YOU built and stuffed in there."
An uncomfortable silence filled the shed.
"...yeah," Calvin said quietly, "yeah, I was worried this might happen. So what did you say?"
"What could I say? I just said I knew Kelly from highschool, and otherwise I don't know her well at all. Just that she's a friend of a friend, which means-" Wyatt said, pointing towards Rachel now, who had pulled her goggles up on her forehead, adding, "he's gonna come to you next. Right now our biggest priority is to ensure that Kelly doesn't get pinned for this. She didn't do anything wrong. She was just trying to do her job."
"I think we'd better have a lawyer present," Rachel said, and Wyatt knew just who to call.
***
"So," Ricky said, sitting on Wyatt's couch, Wyatt in a lounge chair across from him, still drinking his coffee; Ricky pulled his hat off and set it beside him, continuing, "what is your relationship to Miss Schuester?"
"Not much of one, really," Wyatt said.
"Says you were one of the first ones at the hospital to see her. Doesn't sound like not much of one," Ricky replied.
"Well, she's a friend of a friend from highschool, I more went to support my friend, you know? Be comfort for her. But as far as Kelly and I are concerned, we'd met maybe twice? Three times total? I'm not saying we don't know eachother, but we know eachother about as well as, say, someone who lives in a dorm with another student. We're cordial, but otherwise, yeah."
Ricky laughed as he wrote something down on a piece of paper.
"That's fair," he said, "I remember being in college and never talking to my dormmate. They were just kinda there, you know? So you don't know Miss Schuester well, okay, but can I ask you about some of your interactions with her? Maybe, perhaps, of what your impression of her might be? She's a local weather girl, as you obviously know, but did she ever come across as, say...an impassioned fighter for nature? A sort of ecorights warrior?"
Wyatt laughed into his coffee, fighting back the urge to cackle like an idiot and do a full on spit take.
"Sorry, sorry," Wyatt said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, "I'm sorry, that's just...that's so stupid. What would...like...why would you even think that?"
"Because we found shrapnel and other pieces of what appear to be part of a homemade explosive in her luggage," Ricky said, and Wyatt felt his heart drop in his chest; Ricky continued, "she's on a plane full of people people fighting for the environment, under the name of a monster, and perhaps she had motive to stop them."
"But if she were a part of that belief system, why would she blow anyone up? Let alone I doubt she knows how to make a bomb," Wyatt said, "woman can barely use a knife and fork properly."
"Maybe she disagreed with the way they were going about things, or maybe she hated who they followed," Ricky said, shrugging, "listen, it's no secret that Oliver Bloom was a horrible person, and the fact that they chose to ignore that aspect of him in favor of worshipping his 'message' to save the planet is, between you and I, kinda fuckin' gross. Maybe she felt the same way."
Wyatt set his mug down on the coffee table beside him and sighed, crossing his legs.
"Listen," Wyatt said, "I've met Kelly like three, maybe four times total. So sure, I don't know her that well and maybe I don't know what she could possibly be capable of. Plenty of people lead double or even triple lives. But between you and me, from what little knowledge about her I've accrued, she doesn't strike me as the kind of person to do such a thing. As for finding pieces of an explosive device, yeah, that looks bad, very suspicious, but I'm willing to bet if you asked her to rebuild it, she would't know the first thing about how to do so."
"Then how'd it get there?" Ricky asked, shrugging.
"...I...I don't know, I'm just spitballing here," Wyatt said, stammering, "all I'm saying is she's a fucking weather girl, man. And, just as an added bonus, why would she board a plane she intended to blow up? How would that help her cause? Kelly isn't responsible for such a thing."
Ricky nodded slowly, jotting some other things down in his legal pad before shutting it and looking at Wyatt sternly.
"Yes?" Wyatt asked.
"Can I ask you a question?" Ricky asked.
"You've already asked a bunch, so what's stopping you," Wyatt replied, picking his mug back up and continuing to drink.
"...from the phone records," Ricky said, "it said she called you from the airplane before it crashed."
"She did, and she sounded terrified," Wyatt said.
"Well, yeah, that's what I was gonna say," Ricky said, "the airline records all in flight outgoing calls for posterity sake, and having heard it, yeah, she sounded legitimately, genuinely terrified. Which leads me to believe, personally, that you're right, and she had no clue that that thing was in her bag. Course I can't just present my ideas without evidence to back them up. If she didn't build it, put it in there, then who did? That's the question we're really after."
Wyatt nodded slowly, listening. He could turn Calvin in right now. He could pin Calvin for it, give him up for Grudin's death as well, and make this all go away, but...but he couldn't do that. He knew he couldn't. He wasn't that type of person. Besides, he was as partially responsible for Grudin's death as Calvin was, and he didn't want to risk going down himself for it. Wyatt sighed and shook his head.
"Guess you got a real mystery on your hands, don't you?" Wyatt asked, and Ricky smirked.
"Luckily for me," Ricky said, "I'm very good at solving puzzles."
***
"Okay, for the final time, I'm an ecological lawyer," Celia said.
She and Wyatt were standing just outside the shed, Calvin and Rachel inside talking amongst themselves. Celia had her arms crossed, looking clearly annoyed at having been called down here. Wyatt, his hands on his hips, didn't look too pleased himself to be dealing with this situation on what had previously been, just an hour before, his day off.
"The investigator says she might've been doing it for the sake of the environment, can't we spin that in a good way?" Wyatt asked, "I mean, here's the thing, I don't want Kelly to go down for this, she's totally innocent, but maybe Calvin would agree to take the hit, and we can say he's just...a nature lover. You're a defense lawyer fighting against big businesses hurting the planet, can't you do your magic?"
"First of all, to assume it's that easy is ridiculous, secondly, the kind of cases I work on are about paper companies overshooting on their estimations, not people blowing up planes to save the world from even nuttier nature preservationists, okay?"
Wyatt sighed and sat down on the wooden picnic bench in the backyard. Celia sat down beside him and put a hand on his back.
"Frankly," Celia said quietly, "I think, and this sucks to say but...I think she needs to know."
"She can't know," Wyatt said, chewing on his thumbnail, "she can never know. If she knew..."
"If she knew, she could more easily defend herself if anyone comes after her," Celia said, "but you said it yourself, even this investigator doesn't think she's remotely responsible. Right now they're running in circles with no real leads. The worst thing we can do for her is pretend we know nothing. Besides, she wouldn't hate you, you were unaware of what Calvin did, and you tried to beat the shit out of him for it afterwards."
Wyatt nodded, slowly realizing Celia was right. He was backed into a corner, and Kelly had to finally know. He sighed and looked at Celia, who just smiled warmly at him and pulled him into a hug. Wyatt cried on her shoulder while she rubbed his back, reassuring him he'd be okay.
"this was my day off," he whispered.
"Yeah, me too," Celia replied.
***
Ricky walked through the doorway and stopped on the front porch, turning back to face Wyatt.
"Yeah?" Wyatt asked, "anything else?"
"Just give me a call if you have any other ideas or information," Ricky said, handing Wyatt his card from his coat pocket, adding, "ya know, it's weird, people can be doing noble things, truthfully the right thing, morally, but if done in a way that's viewed as wrong, their entire purpose can be twisted. Suddenly what was seen as heroic is seen as monstrous. I'm all for saving the environment myself, but not at the expense of blowing people up, even if they were self proclaimed nutjobs."
"Morals are tricky," Wyatt said, "that's why so many polticians don't last long."
"Wyatt," Ricky said, smirking at his statement, "I'm just letting you know...I might not be the only one asking about this. There might be others coming forward. Insurance companies. Detectives. Whatever. Just know that I'm on your side, pal, I wanna help get the right person for this, not the wrong one. If you're gonna trust anyone, trust me, cause, if you don't...who knows what could happen."
Wyatt furrowed his brow and pocketed the card.
"Is that a threat?" Wyatt asked.
"More like a..." Ricky said, shrugging, "a warning, I guess. Have a good afternoon."
With that, Ricky Loach turned and walked off the front porch. Before he knew it, Wyatt was upstairs, getting dressed, and racing over to Calvin's. And now...now after being at Calvin's, he found himself heading somewhere else. It was time for Kelly to know the truth.
***
Kelly was laying on the couch, watching TV and eating pretzel sticks out of a large bowl when the front door opened. She watched as Wyatt came around the side of the wall and entered the living room, and she immediately perked up, muting the television as he sat down.
"You know, the front door is unlocked, any old weirdo could just come in here," he said.
"Any old weirdo did," Kelly replied, winking, making him smirk.
"Where are your folks?"
"At work," Kelly said, "what's up?"
Wyatt shifted uncomfortably in his seat and sighed.
"Kelly," he said, "...today I had someone from the airline come and meet with me. He asked me about you, about the plane crash. He said they founded pieces of an explosive device within your luggage. Thankfully he doesn't buy that you put it there, but..."
"...a bomb? There was a bomb in my shit?" Kelly asked, sounding surprised and scared simultaneously.
"Yeah," Wyatt nodded, "a bomb. A homemade bomb. And, uh...don't worry, I mean, I told him you obviously had nothing to do with it, you can barely work your oven, and like I said, he doesn't believe for one second you were remotely responsible for such a thing, but..."
Wyatt looked down at his feet as Kelly shifted, sitting upright as best she could, looking anxious.
"Wyatt?" she asked softly.
"We need to talk about Calvin," Wyatt said.
Everything came out from that point on. Grudin. The Evergreens. Brighton. Calvin's past and his obsession with bomb making. By the end of it all, Kelly was aghast, and Wyatt was sobbing, apologizing, but Kelly didn't blame him for one second. Kelly never would. She knew Wyatt now, she knew he was a good man and would never willingly hurt her, and if nothing else, she seemed grateful for having been told the truth. Wyatt promised her that she'd be protected, would never be blamed for anything, she was a total and complete innocent who, thanks to Calvin, had been roped into their nonsense, and Kelly felt appreciative to be kept safe.
"This is...ridiculous," Kelly muttered.
"Yeah, it's been a hell of a few months," Wyatt replied, wiping his eyes on his shirt sleeve, "but, ya know, I'm gonna do my best to continue to keep things together, make sure nothing gets any worse, and-"
"And what about Calvin?" Kelly asked, "he's clearly unhinged. If he blew up a plane, what will he do next?"
Wyatt had been asking himself that very question, just as had Rachel asked him as well the day of the crash. Just as Celia had once inquired the day they shredded those pictures and files down by the riverbank. Wyatt knew Calvin himself was a ticking timebomb, ready to go off and take everyone around him with him, and what do you do with bombs? How do you save those who don't deserve to be blown to smithereens?
You defuse them.