Chapter 1

"This morning, with her, having coffee."

-Johnny Cash, describing paradise

Jane finished making the bed, just the way Maura liked it, and went down to the kitchen. Her lovely wife was busy working her complicated espresso machine, smiling to herself in anticipation. Jane took in the snugly fitting dress Maura had on and gave a low whistle.

"You're looking extra breathtaking today," she remarked, wrapping her arms around Maura from behind.

Maura leaned back against her. "I know you like this dress on me, so I thought I'd wear it today, since it's a special day."

"Mmm." Holy shit, what's special about today? Maura turned in her arms and kissed her. Think! What is today? It's the seventeenth, so that means—"Yes, our six-month anniversary!"

"We've been married half a year now," Maura said happily. "Although technically it's not an anniversary, because the word 'anniversary' comes from the Latin 'anniversarius,' which means 'returning yearly,' and it hasn't been a whole year yet. Anyway, I made us reservations at Mauricio's tonight. Maybe before we go, you can change into something that will take my breath away?"

"Do I have anything that does that?"

"Yes."

"Well, get it out and I'll wear it. I never look as good as you do though."

"You do to me." Maura turned back to her espresso machine.

Jane glanced at her watch. She supposed she could stand to wait for Maura's espresso instead of making her own coffee. "You want an omelet?" she asked, crossing to the refrigerator.

"Yes, please."

Jane pulled the ingredients out of the well-stocked fridge—very different from when she lived by herself—and started on two omelets, veggie for Maura and bacon and cheddar for herself. This was one of her favorite times of day: the quiet mornings before work, on days when they had gotten up early enough not to have to rush, when Maura was busy with her coffee porn and everything was peaceful. Jane loved to watch Maura when she was concentrating, whether it was in her lab or here in the kitchen. She especially loved it when Maura stuck her tongue between her lips while focusing extra hard. Seeing her do it now, she couldn't help but chuckle.

"What's so funny?" Maura asked.

"Nothing, you're just really cute when you stick your tongue out like that."

"I'm not sticking my tongue out!"

"You were, just a second ago. You always do when you're concentrating really hard."

Maura frowned. "I do not!"

Jane laughed. "You obviously don't realize you're doing it, but you do. You even do it when you're fucking me!"

"Really?" said Maura is dismay.

"Oh, don't start getting self-conscious because I mentioned it," Jane told her. "I think it's adorable, and I would be really sad if you stopped doing it." She flipped the omelets onto plates, turned the stove off, and walked around the counter to plant a kiss on Maura's head. "Now eat your omelet before it gets cold."

Maura smiled at the kiss, poured two cups of espresso, and sat down at the table with Jane, humming contentedly to herself. Jane watched her reading the newspaper, taking a mental snapshot of the moment, as she often did. She and Maura had experienced plenty of excitement in their time. They'd solved many a difficult murder case together, been on exotic vacations, even combined two wildly different wedding fantasies into one big dream wedding. But it was the quiet moments like this that Jane actually lived for.

Jane sometimes felt like it was reckless to love someone as much as she loved Maura. It made her feel vulnerable. Too much of her own happiness depended not only on Maura's presence, but on Maura's happiness as well. If anything happened to her, Jane would be destroyed, and everyone knew that. She had hoped, in a way, that settling into married life would make her love for Maura a little quieter, that she could feel the sort of calm love for her that she did for her family, but it hadn't worked out that way so far. It only seemed to grow stronger over time, and she couldn't do anything about it. Not only was she incapable of loving Maura any less, but she knew how much Maura depended on that love. She deserved it so much, and no one else was offering.

XXX

When she got to work, Jane slumped at her desk and immediately did a computer search for flower delivery. She was browsing a local shop that advertised same-day delivery when Korsak walked in.

"You been fighting with Maura?" he asked, glancing at the screen.

"No, not at all. I'd just forgotten about today being our six-month anniversary, or whatever the hell you call it. I gotta send her something so she doesn't notice that I forgot."

Korsak chuckled and walked to his desk. "It's nice to know it isn't only men who forget anniversaries."

"I didn't totally forget; I just failed to plan in advance this time. It's the first time this has happened to me. I think it'll be easier when we only have to celebrate once a year instead of every month. I mean, people don't do monthly things after the first year, right? She's not going to be making a big deal someday that we've been married three hundred forty-six months?"

"Normally I would say no, but you did marry Maura, so it's possible."

Jane groaned. "Why won't they let me send Belgian chocolate-covered strawberries for same-day delivery?"

Korsak shook his head, amused. "You should have been paying attention to the date yesterday." He started in on his paperwork, which was all either of them had scheduled for that day. It was technically good news, because it meant there hadn't been any new murders, but a day of paperwork was enough to make Jane want to commit murder.

"I'm putting an alert in my phone for next month. Three days in advance, just to be safe." She opened her phone's calendar app and saw a reminder for that afternoon. "Crap, I forgot Hawthorne's kid is coming to see me today. She needs to interview a cop for some sort of school project."

"Why isn't she talking to someone in his department?"

"They don't have any women. She specifically asked for a lady cop."

"And they couldn't find one?"

"Very funny. So anyway, I have until school lets out to think of what I'm going to say to her that's honest without sounding completely jaded."

Jane barely knew Officer Hawthorne, as he was relatively new to the BPD (a transfer from somewhere, she couldn't remember where) and didn't work in her unit, but there had been stories about his tragic past floating around ever since his transfer. She knew he and his daughter were the only survivors of a house fire a decade ago that had claimed the rest of the family. Local authorities believed the fire had been deliberately set, but they had never found the person responsible. The girl would have been five or six at the time. Jane wondered how much she remembered of the fire.

When she got the call from the front desk that afternoon that she had a visitor in the lobby, she was more than happy to abandon her paperwork and go down to meet Haley Hawthorne. The teenager wasn't quite what she was expecting. Generally when a kid wanted to interview a cop for school, it was because they wanted to be a cop someday, but it was very difficult to imagine Haley in that line of work. She was almost unbearably shy, with her willowy frame folded in on itself and blonde hair falling in her face. She would glance nervously at Jane with her big brown eyes (well, one of them; the other was behind her long hair) and then look away quickly as if she had done something wrong. Jane tried to chat with her on the elevator ride to the third floor, but her questions were met with single-word answers.

When she arrived in the bullpen with her charge, she was surprised to see a large and very colorful bouquet of flowers on Frankie's desk.

"Um, do you have a new girlfriend, or is Ma sending you flowers at work now?" she asked him.

Frankie's nervous glance in her direction was similar to Haley's expression. "Turns out they're for you," he said, hastily passing her the card that accompanied the flowers.

"From Maura, right?" She stuffed the card in her pocket. Based on the deep shade of red Frankie was turning, she surmised that whatever Maura had written was best not read in front of people.

"Yeah," he said, looking down at his desk.

"So what are you doing reading my card from Maura?"

"Look, after you left some guy showed up saying he had a flower delivery for Rizzoli. He didn't say which Rizzoli, and I was the only one here. So I took them and checked the card to see who they were for."

"Who the hell would have been sending you flowers?"

"I don't know! It could happen!"

Jane carried the flowers to her desk, chuckling. Knowing Maura, she'd probably written out in detail what she planned to do to Jane's vagina tonight. Maybe having to read that would teach Frankie to mind his own damn business in the future.

She pulled up a chair for Haley and sat down at her desk, watching the girl pull a folder and notebook out of her backpack. Haley went through a list of standard questions off of a worksheet. They were pretty dry stuff, like, "Why did you decide to become a police officer?" "What do you like most about your job?" "What is the most challenging part of your job?" At the end of the list was a more interesting question that Haley had added herself: "Is it hard to get respect as a female cop?"

Jane liked this question. It meant that Haley was actually at least somewhat interested in the profession, and it explained why she wanted to talk to a woman.

"Sometimes," she admitted. "In the Academy, and when I first started, and again every time I moved to a new department, I felt like I had to try twice as hard to earn everyone's respect as I would have if I were a man. Every time I made a mistake, showed fear, or failed to catch a suspect, there were people who assumed it was because I'm a woman. So I had to learn to be fearless, never make mistakes, never let anyone get away from me. Now I've been in Homicide for years, and I've pretty much earned my colleagues' respect, but I still run into people in the field who don't take me seriously as a cop because I'm female. Even women, sometimes."

"So how do you get them to take you seriously?"

"Well, the gun helps." She studied her charge carefully. "So are you thinking about being a cop when you grow up?"

Haley nodded. "I want to save people."

Like she couldn't save her family. "Good for you."

"Do you?"

"Do I what?"

"Save a lot of people."

Jane leaned against her desk, pondering the question. She had to admit, when she was Haley's age, she'd had the same vision of what being a cop would be like.

"The thing is," she began carefully, "when you work in Homicide, you never really know how many people you're saving, or who they are. There are situations where you get to an intended murder victim while they're still alive and you're able to protect them, but more often you're just putting away bad guys who might or might not kill again if you didn't. And you hope, when you put them away, that you are saving people's lives in the process. But there's no way of really knowing, most of the time. You just have to believe that you've made the world a slightly safer place." Jane looked up to see Hawthorne coming into the room. "Here's your dad," she said, smiling at Haley. Haley began hastily putting her things back in her bag.

"Thanks for helping my girl with her homework, Detective Rizzoli," he said, smiling at them both. He pulled a dollar out of his pocket and handed it to his daughter. "There's a soda machine down the hall, to the left," he told her. She ran off and he turned back to Jane. "Secret admirer?" he said, indicated her flowers.

"Not so secret," she told him. "I've been married for six months, as of today."

"I didn't know you were married," he said. "Who's the lucky guy?"

She reached around the flowers and pulled out the framed wedding picture she kept on her desk, showing her and Maura at Fenway.

"Is that the medical examiner?" he asked.

"Chief medical examiner of the Commonwealth," she said proudly.

"I've never met her, but I think I've seen her around. Heard people talk about her."

"Good things, I'm sure," said Jane sharply. She knew people talked about Maura's eccentricities behind her back, and she did her best to squash such talk.

"Of course," he said with a wry smile. "Anyway, better go find my daughter. Thanks again, Rizzoli!" He took off, passing Maura as she came in, although he didn't seem to notice her. Maura made a beeline for Jane, carrying the box of Belgian chocolates Jane had ordered for her.

"I got the flowers and chocolates you sent me," she said excitedly, as if it were the first time Jane had done such a thing. That was the thing about Maura: no matter how many times you did something for her, she was still just as thrilled as the first time. Nothing ever got old.

"And I got yours," said Jane, motioning towards the bouquet next to her computer. "I haven't read your card yet, but Frankie did, and it must have been something good because he's traumatized."

Maura's jaw dropped. "Why would Frankie read it?" she asked, glancing towards her brother-in-law, who was pretending to be too busy to notice Maura. "It was only meant for you."

"Yeah, well, the dork thought someone might have sent him flowers. I was out of the room."

Maura sat in the chair Haley had vacated. "Would you like a chocolate?"

Jane took a chocolate. "Maybe you should offer one to Frankie too," she teased. Maura started to get up to do exactly that, but Jane pulled her back down. "Kidding," she said.

Maura bit into a chocolate. "So who was that man you were talking to? I didn't recognize him."

"He's Hawthorne from Special Operations. He transferred after we were married, I think. He's moved around a bit. Sad story, really. He used to be military, and about ten years ago he did a tour in Iraq for like a year or so. His son was born while he was gone. He finally got home, got to meet his son for the first time, and then a few nights later, the house burned down. He was able to get his little girl out, but his wife, his sister, and his baby all died. And there might have been a third kid, but I can't remember for sure. Anyway, he decided to become a cop after that. Probably didn't want to have to be away from his daughter, since he's all she has left."

"That's so sad! Imagine getting your family back and then losing them again almost immediately."

"I know. It sucks. I don't think they ever found out who started the fire, either."

Maura thoughtfully picked up another chocolate. "So, you can read the card now."

Jane took the card out of her pocket and slid it out of the tiny envelope. Maura would have gotten a typewritten card with her flowers since Jane had ordered online, but this card was, of course, written out in Maura's flowing script.

My beautiful Jane-

So far you have given me:

6 years of friendship

2 years of romance

6 months of marriage

And, as of this writing, 514 orgasms.

I look forward to seeing all of those numbers rise through the years.

I love you more each day.

-Your Maura

Jane's eyebrows raised. "514? You've been counting?"

Maura shrugged. "I like to quantify things. But I wrote that a few days ago. The number is 517 now."

"I can't wait to see what you do when we break a thousand."

Maura's brow wrinkled. "Well, those are just the ones you've given me. If I add in the ones I've given you—"

"Maura." Jane put her hand over her wife's. "Let's finish this conversation at home."

"Oh. Right."

Jane squeezed her hand. "You're very sweet. And very, very direct."

Maura smiled. "I'd better get back downstairs. I'll see you in an hour!" She gave Jane a chaste peck on the cheek and hurried off.