Disclaimer: Again, I am merely borrowing Harper Lee's wonderful world!

A/N: I'm not going to lie, it was probably a mistake that I started this… I'll give you a fair warning that my updating will most likely be very erratic at best. However, I had this idea burning in the back of my head for a little while and I figured I might as well start it before I lose any inspiration (plus this allows me to be creative while school's in session). This first chapter is a little slow, but I wanted to lay a foundation for the rest of the story, so the rest will (hopefully) be more exciting than this! I hope you all enjoy, and I'm just going to apologize in advance for how slowly this will be updated :).

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When the telephone rang at half past three in the morning, Jean had been awake to answer it. In fact, due to Jeremy's bout of the flu, she hadn't been able to get a full night's sleep in nearly three nights. Jeremy, who was usually a healthy and lively little thing, demanded to be held at all times and would only sleep if his head was nestled in his mother's chest while she rocked him. For the first eleven months of his life he had never had any bouts of illness like this, so Jean preferred to spend sleepless nights with her son rather than allowing his illness to get worse.

She couldn't help but to be irrationally angry when the phone rang that night (well, morning) because Jeremy had just fallen asleep and the shrill ring from the phone had probably hurt his ears, making the poor thing cry. Sighing, she hoped the phone hadn't awoken her husband (who needed to get up for work in just a few short hours), Jean bounced her baby on her hip as she made her way to the phone. Hastily, she picked up the receiver and pressed it to her ear. "Yes?" She asked impatiently, though she instantaneously felt guilty afterwards.

"Sorry ma'am," the operator said on the other line. "You got a call comin' in from Montgomery, do you want to accept it?"

Now Jean was confused. It was unlike her mother, aunts or sisters to call at this absurd hour and she couldn't help but to think that something might be wrong. "Yes, I'll accept it." She said slowly. "Thank you." She added quickly, hoping it would make up for her previous spell of rudeness.

There was silence for a few moments before she heard the two lines connect. "Finch residence," she said, trying not to sound tired.

"Eugenia?" Her mother asked, though she had to have known it was her second daughter on the other line.

"Yes, mama?" Jean asked, finding herself becoming alarmed.

"Did I wake you?" Edith sounded different. Had her mother been crying?

"No, mama." Jean quickly explained. "The baby's sick."

"Poor thing," Edith Graham said slowly before sighing sadly. "Honey, listen…"

"What happened?" Jean asked, a pit of nervousness formed in her stomach. Her mother sniffed.

"Charlotte," Edith said slowly. "Honey, Charlotte's dead."

A harsh gasp escaped Jean's throat, startling Jeremy once again. Probably sensing that his mother was upset, Jeremy began crying again. Biting her lower lip, she leaned herself against the wall and didn't even attempt to calm him down. "Mama, how?" She asked. While she was still in shock, she couldn't yet bring herself to cry over the death of her older sister. She was simply too shocked.

"I'm not sure," her mother said, her voice cracking. "I'm at the hospital with your Aunt Bea now, but there's nothin' they can do for her. She was gone by the time they brought her in."

Jeremy cried louder as Jean shut her eyes, hitting her head against the wall. "I don't get it," she said stupidly.

"They think she had a heart attack," Edith said bitterly. "I was stayin' with her and the girls because Clara and Libby are sick—they must have what the baby has, and I reckon she was goin' downstairs to get something when her heart gave out and she must've nearly snapped her neck on her way down." Edith's voice sounded strained with emotion, as though she desperately wanted to cry but couldn't bring herself to do it. The thought of her mother, who had always been the pillar of strength in Jean's life, breaking down into tears was enough to make Jean cry. Resting her chin on Jeremy's head, Jean sniffed. Tears fell from her eyes, but seeing that she had no free hand to wipe them away she was forced to let them run down her face.

"Don't cry," Edith said quickly (almost harshly), though she was actually trying to soothe her daughter. From down the hall she heard her bedroom door creak open. Atticus was awake. Desperately, she tried to wipe her face with her shoulder. Jeremy continued to cry louder, and at that moment she felt bad for her baby. He was sick and tired and probably just wanted to be rocked and here he was being forced to stay awake. Looking down the hall, she saw Atticus groggily making his way towards her, looking confused as to why she would be on the phone at this hour. As he got closer and noticed her crying, he looked alarmed.

"What happened?" He mouthed to her as he quickly took the baby in his arms. Though Jeremy was still discontent, his crying had stopped. Quickly, Jean wiped at her eyes.

"Are you still there?" Edith asked.

"Yes," Jean replied, clearing her throat. "I'm here."

"I know the baby's sick, but I need you to come as soon as you can." Her mother said grimly.

"We'll leave as quickly as possible." Jean said. Though she was looking straight ahead at the wall, she noticed Atticus watching her, a perplexed expression on his face.

"I need to call Louise." Edith said, sighing.

"Do you want me to do it?"

"I think I should." Edith said. Jean sighed at length, and before she went to hang up the receiver, her mother cleared her throat again. "Eugenia?"

"Yes?"

There was a pause on the other end. "I love you."

Jean felt bad for being so taken aback by this. Though Edith never said it much, Jean knew her mother loved her—the fact that she felt inclined to say it made Jean feel uneasy. Swallowing, Jean pressed her fingers against her eyes. "I know that," she blurted out without thinking. Quickly, she coughed. "Mama, I love you too." She added quickly, hoping she hadn't hurt her already vulnerable mother. Edith hung up the receiver and Jean spent a moment listening to the silence on the other end before hanging her phone up. Sighing, she rubbed at her eyes. She hadn't realized how tired she was until then.

"Sweet?" Atticus asked carefully. "What happened?"

"Charlotte died," she responded matter-of-factly as she attempted to make her way to their bedroom. Using his free hand, Atticus prevented her from going any further.

"What?" He asked, no longer sounding tired. Resignedly, she rested her head on his chest. She could feel the warmth of his hand running up and down her back, yet she still shivered under his touch. Maybe she was coming down with whatever the baby had. Or maybe she was just so sad everything was cold to her.

It had been so long since Jean had felt the sting of grief associated with loss. It had been so long since her last miscarriage, and seven years since her nephew died, but she had allowed herself to become naïve again. The immense amount of joy that came with her marriage and the birth of her son overpowered any feeling of grief and sadness she had once felt in the past. The happiness she now had in her life left her completely unprepared for this moment.

Jean hardly considered herself religious, but maybe this was a way of God telling her that she had been too happy and had become delusional. Maybe Charlotte's death was a warning of sorts; one telling her she better be careful or else she could lose far more than she already did.

"I need to go," she nearly croaked, lifting her head up. Atticus kissed her forehead.

"It's four in the morning," he told her. "Try to sleep some and we can leave for Montgomery once you wake up."

She swallowed and shook her head, fresh tears burning the backs of her eyes. "No," she said insistently. "I need to go now."

Her husband gave her a sympathetic look. "Sweet," he said warmly, his hand still pressing against her back. Although Jeremy had stopped crying, he had not been able to find comfort in his father's arm and began to whine out of discomfort. "Jeremy should sleep for a few hours before we go anywhere."

He was right. What kind of mother would she be if she let her son grow sicker and sicker when she could've given him the rest he needed? She sniffed, and nodded in agreement.

"Give him to me," she said, attempting to take Jeremy. "I'll rock him some more."

"Get some sleep," he told her gingerly, pressing her against him. "I'll take care of him."

She wanted to object, but found she was too tired to do so. Grimly, she nodded again as she drowsily attempted to break away from her husband. He gently held her for a few more minutes, and before he made his way to Jeremy's nursery, he put two fingers under her chin and tilted her head upward tenderly. "It'll be fine," he told her before kissing her. "It will all be fine."

She gave him a pathetic sad smile before agreeing with him and retiring to their room. She lay herself down on the bed and closed her eyes, but couldn't sleep.

Jean tried to remember the last time she saw Charlotte laugh. Something deep within her wanted to say that her sister hadn't laughed since before Simon died, but she thought that had to be an exaggeration. Charlotte had to have laughed at something in the seven years since her son died. Why, she had two little girls who were full of curiosity and always doing something—Charlotte had to have laughed at something they did. There had to have been something that gave Charlotte joy even after Simon was taken from her.

Before having Jeremy, Jean really couldn't empathize much with Charlotte about the loss of Simon. Jean herself had been very torn apart by Simon's death (she was the one who had been watching him—how could she not be damaged?), but her pain was very different than Charlotte's. Jean watched Charlotte deteriorate and become a shell of the woman she had once been and Jean couldn't help but to be frustrated at that. "She lost a child, Eugenia." Her mother would say to her time and time again after Simon died, but Jean still couldn't understand why her sister was behaving the way she was. As the years passed and Charlotte's grieving still persisted, Jean wondered why her sister couldn't at least find joy in her two living children.

And then Jeremy was born.

Until his birth, Jean didn't think she wanted children. She didn't think she was responsible enough to be the most important person in a child's life, and she frankly didn't think she could trust herself raising a child. But she was young then. Young and stupid. Thankfully, as she grew older she found Atticus and he was able to help her forego a majority of the guilt and anxiety she felt regarding Simon, and she found that she actually did want to have children.

The moment she took her son in her arms, she fell in love. She also came to understand why Charlotte's grief for Simon was so strong even after six years. Jean realized that the love a mother has for her child is the strongest form of love there is, and when they're taken from you it's the worst form of heartbreak there is. If anything had ever happened to her son, Jean would be inconsolable, she would be like Charlotte. It didn't matter that she had Atticus, if something took her baby away from her she would never be the same again. Having her own child gave her a whole new understanding for her sister, and she came to have immeasurable respect for her.

The only thing is, Jean never told Charlotte this. In the past year since Jeremy was born, Jean never took her melancholic sister aside and told her how she suddenly understood Charlotte, and how it was okay that she was grieving because this was a heinous wound that could never be healed.

And now she couldn't tell her.

She never expected Charlotte to die so young. Though she never said this aloud, something deep within her knew that her sister probably welcomed death when it came. She knew that her sister had spiraled into a depression so deep that even her two daughters couldn't bring her out of it no matter how hard they tried. It didn't make matters any better that her husband basically abandoned his family after his son's death and that there were nasty rumors circulating around Montgomery that he had found himself a mistress wherever he went. After losing so much, Charlotte probably figured that she was going lose everything else she had so she refused to attach herself to anything anymore.

Her mother had said it was probably a heart attack that killed Charlotte, which made Jean think of her father. Rowan Graham died of a heart attack in his backyard when Jean was ten. Her sister Louise had been the one to find him, and when she realized something was wrong she of course came running to Jean. Jean could imagine his lifeless body lying in the backyard. Sighing in frustration, she pressed her thumbs into her eyes to get the image out of her mind.

She wasn't sure how long she had been laying there when Atticus came to the bed. Not knowing whether she was asleep or not, he slowly eased himself into the bed and turned on his side so he could look at her. She removed her hands from her face and looked back at her husband. "Jeremy?" She asked, her voice sounding dry.

"I got him to sleep, though I'm not sure for how long." He told her. "Did you sleep?"

"I don't remember Charlotte laughing." She informed him, ignoring his question, as he rested his hand on her head.

"You're just tired," he told her as she buried her head in his chest. "I'm sure you'll remember, soon."

Stiffly, she shook her head. "I don't even think Libby ever saw her laugh." She responded in a muffled voice.

"Maybe you weren't there to notice," Atticus suggested, trying to be helpful.

"Maybe." She replied tiredly, though she really wanted to disagree with him.

"You should get some sleep, sweet." He told her.

"My mother sounded awful," Jean observed.

"I reckon she has the right to."

"I wonder what Charlotte was doing."

"What?"

"She fell down the stairs when she had her heart attack," Jean informed him. "She nearly broke her neck…I wonder what she was doin'."

"That's something we won't get to know, sweet."

"I don't think I can believe she's gone 'till I actually get to Montgomery."

"I'm sorry, sweet." Atticus says as she attempted to bury her face deeper into his chest. She didn't answer, instead she inhaled the scent of Atticus' shirt. In the nearly four years that had passed since she married him, that smell became so familiar to her. It became home. Atticus Finch steadily entered her life, and once she was fully immersed with him, she found that she couldn't imagine her life without him. She didn't want to imagine it.

As a child, Jean wasn't one to fantasize about her wedding or married life like other girls her age did. She never had the goal of finding herself a husband and having babies… it just happened. But it didn't happen in the way she expected it to. She watched as the girls in her neighborhood and the girls she went to boarding school with found young, strapping husbands who instantly made these women their trophy wives. She lost count of the number of teas and lunches she went to where the women rambled on and on about how they took great joy in catering after their husbands and being shown off like some sort of prized possession. Jean couldn't help but notice that these women were always expected to be seen but not heard. They were raised not to have any opinions and to always be obedient towards their husbands. Jean detested it.

However, though she didn't want that type of life she couldn't help but to expect it. Her youth was spent with a broad boy named Emmett, who was the stereotypical man in the fact that he always wanted to appear tough and always tried to parade Jean around as if she was some sort of item (she was proudly too stubborn to let him do so). Despite the fact that he frequently drove her mad, she always thought she was going to marry him. It wasn't until the year Simon died and she and Louise were assigned to take care of their ailing grandfather did she even begin to realize that her life wasn't confined to being some man's "pet".

She didn't come to realize how relieved Atticus made her feel until she married him. In many senses, her husband was old fashioned (though at the same time he could hardly be compared to the men her own age). He slowly let her in his private world, and courted her for nearly a year before he proposed to her. Despite the relative haste he took in asking for her hand in marriage, it took him nearly four years to marry her. Though he didn't give his reasons for waiting to marry her, Jean suspected it was because she was so young. She was only twenty-one when he proposed, and she thought that maybe he wanted some time to see if he was going to be marrying a woman or a child (in hindsight she couldn't blame him—the year they got married was the year he turned forty, after all). Within the four years where she was confined to Montgomery, waiting for him to come on the weekends or whenever the legislature was in session, Jean found that her love for him grew with each passing day.

Maybe it was because he didn't treat her like an object. Even before they were married he always appreciated her opinions and input no matter what the subject was. Whenever he brought her to a social gathering, whether it be in Montgomery or Maycomb, he never hovered over her in an overbearing way. He never treated her like she was some lower-class citizen who was only created to stand by his side and look pretty. Unlike other men, Atticus Finch allowed his wife to be herself unapologetically—in fact, he would be gravely upset if Jean dumbed herself down to please others. Within her marriage Jean found that she was able to grow rather than be hindered and while she found herself fulfilling some of the more conventional roles a wife takes on, it was because she wanted to, not because Atticus forced her to.

She felt the warmth of his hand move towards the small of her back and in response she wrapped one of her arms around him. "Did I wake you?" He asked softly, almost sorrowfully.

"I'm not asleep." She mumbled softly (though maybe she had dozed off for a few moments).

"You," he started, but then he stopped himself. She knew he was going to tell her that she should probably get some sleep, but he usually was not one to tell her what to do. "We'll leave when the baby wakes up." He amended, and she couldn't help but to smile.

"Thank you, sweet." She mumbled before dozing off once again.