Disclaimer: I don't own anything when it comes to Rizzoli and Isles that all belongs to the respective copyright holders.
"Grandma?" the teenager called to her from a couple of rooms away.
"What is it Jamie?" she asked turning her head in the direction she heard the call coming from.
"I found this old album in one of the boxes and I wondered what you wanted done with it?" the girl asked, entering the room and approaching her grandmother with the book.
Jane held out her hand and took the old photo album from her granddaughter. She flipped open the cover and started looking at the photos within. "I haven't seen these in close to twenty years," she said with a voice that told Jamie she was miles away, reminiscing over the story that was playing out in the photos on the pages in front of her.
The photos started when Jane was just a toddler. They had obviously been taken by her mother, except for the few that included her mother in them. Her father must have actually picked up a camera and taken them himself.
She reverently touched the page as she thought of her parents. They had passed on years ago, but she still loved them as much now as she did back then. Tears welled in her eyes, but she fought them off not wanting to startle Jamie with her crying. She had always been the tough grandma.
Jane flipped through a few more pages and reached her preteen stage. These photos had been done after she'd hit her growth spurt during the summer. She was nearly a foot taller than the other girls in her class when she returned to school that fall. Plus her mother had to let out the hems on her skirts for school so they would be appropriately long enough for the Catholic school she attended.
"Wait, what's that one right there?" Jamie asked just before she got ready to turn the page.
"Which one?" she asked for clarification of which the half a dozen that were held on that page the girl meant.
"That one right there."
"Oh, that one," Jane said chuckling a little. "That one is me when I was about 12 I think; which would make your great uncle Frankie about ten and your great uncle Tommy about seven. Your great grandfather Frank, or Pop as we always called him, wanted us all to have experience working with cars. So that's one Saturday where he had us all outside showing us different things parts of an engine and how to fix it if different things were wrong with it. Frankie and I are so dirty because we enjoyed mechanics, but Tommy is rather clean because he didn't have a very long attention span at that age so he mostly ran around the yard and handed us tools when we asked for them.
"You're great grandmother thought it would be cute to get a picture of us looking like little grease monkeys and thought that me holding that old dirty wrench would add a nice touch. I didn't think it so cute, and I was about to outgrow wanting to learn about engines, so that's why I've got a half smile half scowl thing going on there."
Jane flipped through a few more pages of photographs. She was in high school now, the different dances her mother insisted that she go to. The shot of her in her dress at senior prom and then a few shots of her high school graduation. Up next came her academy graduation. Frankie must have taken that one since it was one of the few with her and Ma and Pop in it from those days.
On the next page came a photo of her and Frankie both in their uniforms together. That would have to have been just after he had graduated from the academy and just before she passed the detectives exam and moved up rank.
She halted when she came to the next page of photos. Again she reverently touched the page and this time Jamie noticed the tears that welled up in her eyes. "Are you okay grandma?" she asked.
Jane simply nodded in response.
"Who are they?" Jamie asked so quietly that Jane nearly missed it.
The photo was of Jane and her partner Detective Barry Frost and their boss Sergeant Detective Korsak. Jane half sat on the corner of Korsak's desk with one leg supporting most of her weight and the other a dangling a few inches off the floor. Her arms were folded across her chest slouching just a tiny bit. Her eyes looked hard, but the smile on her face gave away that she was genuinely happy. Korsak and Frost flanked either side of her.
"My partners," she said after taking a few moments to make sure her voice would be stable enough to tell Jamie about the photo without cracking. "My favorite partners, I should say. I had a few after them, but I never liked them quite as much as I did these two guys.
"The one on my right in the photo was Sergeant Detective Korsak. He was my first partner when I started in homicide," she explained. "I got hurt once and had to take a leave of absence for a while to heal and after that I got my second partner Detective Barry Frost, the one on my left. Not long after Frost and I became partners Korsak was promoted so he became our boss so we all worked together on cases."
She didn't want to have to explain all the circumstances behind getting Frost as a partner to her teenage granddaughter. She had long ago come to terms with everything that happened with Hoyt and after all these years the scars on her palms had faded to small spots that were nearly completely hidden by the wrinkles that resided on her aged hands.
Everything that happened in her days of being a Detective seemed like they were in another lifetime at this point. It was everything to her back then, but she had let many happier things fill up the places that all her Homicide work used to reside in.
"They were great men," she continued. "Back when I started in Homicide there were 13 Detectives including myself and I was the only female of the bunch. Most guys were sexist and didn't think I belonged there, but Korsak always thought I had great potential and always treated me with the same respect as he did everyone one else in the unit. And they always had my back, always. They both saved my life a couple of times and I theirs. It's what you do with your partners."
She flipped to the next page of photos and Maura started showing up in them. Jane loved seeing that smile. Jane slowly flipped through a couple more pages watching the story of their friendship blossom into a romantic relationship between them in the photos. She stopped when she flipped the next page.
"This one here is my favorite one," she said to Jamie. "This is me and Nana just after we had said our vows. It's one of the happiest moments of my life."
Jane closed her eyes and in an instant she was back on that day so many years ago. Once again she was standing in front of an aisle in front of the few family and friends they had asked to attend, waiting on the bridal march to start so she could see what Maura looked like in her wedding dress.
Jane opened her eyes returning to the present with Jamie sitting on the arm of the chair looking over her shoulder. She looked back at the photo once more. It was their second official photo of them as a married couple. The photographer had taken it just after they had been announced to their guests and kissed. (The kiss had been their first official photo.) They were looking deeply into each other's eyes. Jane remembered that moment like it was yesterday.
They had kissed and as they started to pull back from one another they halted, with their arms still wrapped around the other and their foreheads nearly touching, and just looked at each other with all the love and adoration that was within them. The world fell away and time stopped for that moment as they just looked.
"You can't tell it from the picture, but it was actually pretty warm for a June day. More so than we expected when we set the date. Before we fell in love with each other we once talked about our dream weddings. Nana's was to be married on the side of a volcano in Italy and mine was in Fenway Park wearing a baseball jersey. But when the time came we decided that we wanted to go small and only have our close friends and family attend. So we ended up getting married in the backyard of the house in Beacon Hill where we lived. We're standing under a gazebo we had made and brought in for the wedding and decorated with fresh flowers that we picked out. I was so nervous waiting underneath it for her to make her way down the aisle. But when I caught sight of her headed for me with that amazing smile on her face I was so proud to be able to call her mine." She fell silent once again for a few moments.
"This was just after we kissed and as I looked into her eyes in that moment I don't think I've ever seen a more beautiful pair. They were the most amazing hazel color you've ever seen. They had the perfect balance of green and gold. I never wanted that moment to end." She had to stop as tears seriously threatened to spill over this time.
Jane sniffed and then cleared her throat. She flipped over the last couple of pages in the album that had been from the first couple of years of her and Maura's marriage together and then closed it. "Well that's it. That's the story of my life. Most of it anyway; right there in black and white as the old saying goes."
"I hope I get to have a life as amazing as what's shown in those photos one day," Jamie said her.
"You will JJ. Don't you worry about that. One day when you're my age you'll have albums just like this one filled with photos and memories. And one day you'll get to show it your granddaughter and tell her all about all the things that happened to you in your life," Jane said smiling up at her granddaughter.
"Love you Grandma," Jamie said to her as she leaned over and placed a kiss on the old woman's cheek.
"Love you too JJ," she said holding out the album to her granddaughter. "Why don't you go put that in my room on the table next to my dresser. I want to show it to your Nana when she gets home and then you and I can head outside to join your parents and brothers for that baseball game."
"Okay," Jamie replied as she took the album and headed off for her Grandma and Nana's bedroom with it.
AN: So, I just want to thank y'all for reading. I actually wrote this about a year and a half ago, but didn't want to publish it then. Well I'd kind of forgotten about it until I was on vacation and was listening to karaoke and this woman stood up and started singing the song In Color by Jamey Johnson. This piece was inspired by that song and while I'm not completely happy with the way I have written this I kind of felt like hearing that song out of the blue like that was some sort of sign so I am sharing it with you. So, I may take this one down after a while and rework it or something, but for now it's all yours. Thanks again for reading and please feel free to leave a review and tell me what you think!