OUT OF THE PAST
"You so deserve this, Maggie."
Maggie waved away the compliment with her french fry. "I had a lot of help to get here. Including you, Rache."
Rachel smiled at her friend. "C'mon. You rule, girl, and you know it! This is so great! You'll send me lost of postcards and bring me lots of stuff, right?"
"You bet. Only the best in cheap, tacky souvenirs."
"How's Greg handling this? Afraid you'll be swept away by some Latin hottie?"
"Naw," Maggie laughed, and then became thoughtful. "He's a great guy--he said if this is it for us, the real thing, we'll be together when I get back. And, after all, he's been with me through a lot, and, well…" Maggie stopped. "Well, he's with me, and he treats me great, and he knows a lot about me...He's great..."
Rachel laughed. "Well, he's lucky too. He's got...Maggie, what is it? Is something wrong?"
Maggie's face had suddenly darkened, and a flurry of emotions swept through her eyes, ending with a combination of acceptance and calm. Rachel reached across the table to take her friend's hand.
"Maggie? What is it? What...?"
"I ... just see some people I, yea, I know, knew them..."
Rachel became furiously protective. "Bad people? People who..."
"Oh, no, no, not at all," Maggie said quickly. "Good people...very, very good people."
Rachel studied her friend carefully. "You're sure? You're ok?"
"Yea, I'm good. Really...hey, don't you have a meeting you're late for?"
"Oh, damn, yea...I gotta go..." Rachel started to gather her things, but stopped to again look closely at Maggie. "You're sure you're ok? I can stay, walk you home?"
"No," Maggie gave Rachel a reassuring squeeze of her hand. "I'm great. I'll call you tomorrow...we can get together again before I go."
"All right." Rachel stood up, and gave Maggie a hug. "But you call me if you need me, you got it?"
Maggie hugged her back. "You got it. You got me for the rest of your life."
Maggie watched her friend walk out of the diner, and then turned her attention to the two figures at a table in a far corner of the restaurant. Was it them? It had been nearly four years after all, and all she could really see were their outlines. But she knew she would never forget the two people at the center of the horror that invaded her life. Maggie steeled herself, stood, and walked towards the back of the diner.
"It's them...it's them," she thought. And then, "They seem so sad...
Alex Eames tried to focus on her tuna melt. "Eat," she thought. "You have to eat." Every bite stuck in the lump in her throat.
"I thought you were hungry, Eames." Bobby Goren's soft voice broke into her thoughts.
"Yea, I thought I was...it's been a while since those egg rolls...Maybe I ordered the wrong thing..." Alex shot for a light tone, but felt she had failed miserably.
"I wonder who first had the idea of melting cheese on tuna anyway?" Bobby was also trying for a lighter atmosphere, and had even less success than Alex.
Silence descended over their table. Bobby poked at his omelet and pancakes while Alex tore her sandwich into smaller and smaller pieces. If they had shared their thoughts, they would have been stunned at the similar tracks of their minds. Alex's mind raged at the selfishness and sheer gall of the two lovers who had let nothing stand between what they wanted, while Bobby's was haunted by the image of a confused, grief stricken young woman carrying the urns containing her parents' remains.
"Does it ever feel like we're doing nothing, Bobby?" Alex wasn't sure that she'd spoken out loud until Bobby answered her.
"What..." He came back from inside his head and gave her a confused look.
Alex took a deep breath and plunged on. "It's just...the bad guys keep coming...we keep catching them...you keep understanding them...Carver keeps making deals and doing stuff in court...and Deakins keeps handing us cases...and there are more robberies, and more murders...more kids losing their parents, parents losing their kids." She ripped another piece of bread. "Sometimes I don't think we're doing any good at all."
"Sometimes I...we...come close to doing more bad things than the people we're after." Bobby thought of the woman who had barely escaped being tortured to death after he had used the press to smoke out a serial killer.
"Damn it, Bobby!" Alex slammed her hand down so strongly that people from several nearby tables started. "We are not," she said softly and hissing through her teeth, "murders and sickos and..."
"Maybe not," he replied, "but we lie and manipulate and cheat and put innocent people in danger..."
Alex glared at him. "So, what are supposed to do? Give up? Roll over? You're the genius on human nature in this team, right? What are we supposed to do? What's it all for?"
Her voice was full of more bitterness than Bobby had ever heard, and he had no idea of how to react. He was used to Alex providing support and sanity. For him to be in the position of providing the stability in their partnership was foreign territory. It didn't help that Alex was voicing some of his greatest fears--that the talents that he had and the work that he did was worthless--that he was ultimately and at his core, no better, perhaps even worse, than those he pursued relentlessly.
"I don't know," he mumbled. "I don't know what we're supposed to do...I don't know what it's all for…"
They fell into a dark silence. Suddenly, Alex moved slightly forward. "Someone coming towards us," she whispered. "A young woman--18,20 maybe--I think she's been watching us. She was with another girl--black, same age. I don't think she's a threat..."
Bobby nodded. He sensed the woman's approach before she stood at his side.
"Ms. Eames? Mr. Goren? I don't know if you remember me, but..." Her voice was hesitant, but strong.
Bobby turned in his chair to get a better look at the young woman—girl really—next to him. His innate politeness told him to stand up, but there wasn't enough room in the diner's cramped corner. He and Alex studied the young woman with experienced eyes. She was, as Alex had noted, about 18 to 20 years old, tall, slender, with short blonde hair. As both detectives spun the folders of their mental files and tried to remember her they noted that she seemed to have no idea of how beautiful she was. She moved gracefully, but with an air that suggested that that grace was something new to her. Alex remembered that feeling—it had happened to her the summer when she was 17, a realization that she actually had control of her body and that the opinions of others, especially teen age others, didn't matter all that much. Alex guessed that the young woman in front of her was still processing this knowledge and that the knowledge had come at a steep price.
Bobby, of the encyclopedic mind and memory, found the name just before Alex. "Colter," he said. "Meg..Maggie Colter?"
Alex shivered. Memories flooded her mind. That case—the one of the loan shark enforcers who kidnapped and raped the wives and children of unfortunate men who couldn't pay off their bills. The case where Alex found a gun aimed at her. The case where Alex aimed her gun and killed a man. It was a clear case of kill or be killed, and he was a very bad man, but it still haunted Alex. It haunted Bobby as well. It haunted Bobby that he hadn't been able to convince the father to trust him before his family had been terrorized and his daughter raped. It haunted Bobby that he had been forced to confront a fragile and traumatized child and make her relive the horrible attacks on her. It haunted him that he felt it necessary to pour salt in Alex's still open wounds to free that child. In a deeply hidden corner of his mind, Bobby knew that what haunted him most was the sight of a man leveling a gun at Alex Eames.
Standing before the detectives, Maggie realized she had no idea what to say to them. "Maybe this wasn't such a good idea," she thought. "Maybe I'm just bringing up bad memories…" Ms. Eames, after all, had to kill someone…and had almost been killed. But Greg and Rachel both told her she had good impulses. And one of her therapists had told her to always go with the true and simple. "True and simple," she thought, and took a deep breath.
Maggie realized that an uncomfortable quiet surrounded her and Ms. Eames and Mr. Goren. "You remember me, really?" she said to end the silence.
"Yes," Bobby said. "But you've changed…you're…beautiful…" Bobby suddenly felt awkward. This girl was, after all, young enough to be his daughter. And the thought flew through his mind that he would be proud if she was.
"Detective Goren is attempting to say you've grown into a beautiful young woman," Alex said. She was enjoying Bobby's embarrassment, and she meant the compliment.
Maggie blushed slightly. "That's what Greg tells me," she said shyly. "But when people smile at me I still expect it to be because I've got something in my teeth."
"Greg—a boyfriend?" Alex asked. Across from her, Bobby seemed to be trying to juggle several complex thoughts at once.
"Yes," Maggie said, and in that reply Alex heard gratitude, understanding, and love. She wanted to know more about this Greg. She wanted to know more about Maggie.
Bobby, with his Alex radar, picked up on her interest. He reached over to pull up a chair from an empty table. "Would you like to join us?" he asked.
"Oh, you're having your dinner…I don't mean to intrude..well, I guess I did, if I'm honest, but…" Maggie was flustered.
Alex glanced down at her plate. "You may not have noticed," she said wryly, "that we're destroying more food then we're eating."
Bobby smiled, and then looked up at Maggie. "If you have to be somewhere, we understand," he said. "But you'd keep us from having to go back to the office for a while."
"Happy to oblige," Maggie replied cheerfully, and took the extra chair.
Maggie had approached the detectives without a plan or purpose, but for the next hour she told them of the last four years of her life. She needed to tell them, and it seemed to her that in some way they needed to hear it. She told them of regaining her life, of how a therapist suggested she talk to others with her experiences. How that led to work with women's shelters and with abused children and teenagers. How she graduated near the top of her high school class, and won a scholarship to Columbia. She didn't leave out the bad things-her parents' divorce, her father's inability to look her in the face, her sister's anger and fear, and the nightmares she still fought. But it was the good things she stressed—meeting Greg at a survivors' network meeting, the friends like Rachel she had made, the trip she was about to make to Latin America to do volunteer work with an international women's organization.
"I could've gone to Bosnia," she said. She paused. "But…I'm not quite ready for that…"
Bobby gently laid his hand on hers. "That's understandable," he said softly.
Alex looked at Maggie with awe. "You're a remarkable woman, Maggie."
Maggie smiled at her. Her purse began to ring and vibrate. "Oh," she said. "Please, excuse me…" She checked her phone. Maggie looked up at Alex and Bobby. "I'm sorry—I didn't know how late it was—that was Greg—he's probably wondering where I am—I've got to go."
The diner was nearly empty now. Bobby stood up to let Maggie out. Maggie stood up, and looked from Bobby to Alex.
"Look," she said. "I didn't mean to bore you with my life story…" Bobby and Alex tried to wave away Maggie's concern. "What I wanted to do…" Maggie stopped speaking and then stepped over to Alex and hugged her. She stepped back, and repeated the hug with Bobby. She then walked away, leaving two slightly stunned New York City Police Detectives in her wake. Maggie stopped, turned, and said, "I wanted to thank you for my life." And then she was gone.
Bobby sat down quietly. He looked at Alex. "Maybe she's what it's for," Bobby said. "Maybe we're doing what we're supposed to do, and it's for Maggie…"
"One life," Alex whispered. "Just one against so many..."
"No," Bobby shook his head. "Not one life…it's that one life, and all the others it touched, and touches, and will touch. And the lives those lives…"
Their phones rang in unison. Alex looked at the display, and then at Bobby. She smiled.
"Ready to save some of those lives, Goren?"
THE END.