Maura Isles hasn't spent this much time staring at the inside of a toilet bowl since she was young, single, and had contracted malaria in Sub-Saharan Africa. Her supervisors had shipped her back to the states with a list of medications and a pro-rated stipend for the time she spent working in the hospital, there. She had recovered alone in the quiet of her Boston apartment, her deadly (and charming) combination of humility and stubbornness stopping her from telling anyone she knew that she was sick. She had emerged a few weeks later, and nobody could tell she was any worse for wear.
But that was a lifetime ago. Now, the smell of bleach seeps into her nostrils as she dry heaves and coughs into the porcelain bowl. She closes her eyes and rests her forehead on her arm.
"Babe?" Jane calls from the bedroom.
Maura groans into her lap.
Jane saunters in, sighing. "Again? I knew we should have stayed home." She kneels behind her wife and rubs her palm around her back.
"It's okay. There's nothing left," Maura croaks. "The norovirus should leave my system in the next 24 to 48 hours, and then I'll-" She interrupts herself to heave into the toilet again.
"Shh..." Jane takes the hair tie from her wrist and pulls her wife's hair into a loose ponytail.
Dylan creeps on her tip-toes through the doorway, and neither of her parents see or hear her. She stands in a pink tankini with a frilly skirt that circles her little hips. Her bed hair is pressed flat on one side, and is a forest of tangled curls on the other. In a burst of energy, she leaps forward and squats next to Maura.
"HOLY-" Jane jumps.
A devilish grin sneaks onto Dylan's face.
"You scared me, you little ninja!"
"I know. Why is Mommy still sick?" Dylan's places her hand next to Jane's on Maura's back and mirrors the circular motion.
Maura's voice is weak. "Viral gastroenteritis typically takes a few days to pass through the system."
Dylan blinks at Jane.
"She'll be better soon," Jane says.
"But I want to bury Mommy in the sand."
"I know," Jane mirrors her daughter's pout. "I want to bury Mommy in the sand, too, but she needs to rest again today. Do you know what, though?"
"What?"
"Nana will be here later and I bet she'll let you bury her in the sand."
Dylan's entire face rises for a second and then immediately falls again. "But I want to do Mommy. She hasn't even gotten to wear her pretty new bathing suit yet."
Maura lifts her head off the rim of the toilet and turns to face her girls. Dylan curls into her lap and fingers a button of the silk pajama top. Maura links her fingers around Dylan's bottom and looks at Jane over the mess of curls.
"You should take her. I'll be okay. I still have that stack of articles that I didn't get through yesterday. And Angela will probably be exhausted from the plane ride when she gets in. I don't want to make her take Dylan as soon as she arrives."
"You sure?" Jane asks. "Can you eat yet?"
"Not yet. Maybe by the evening."
"Can we do anything for you before we head out?"
"I really should be drinking an electrolyte solution with sodium and potassium."
Jane blinks.
"Pedialyte."
"One Pedialyte, coming right up." Jane stands and holds out her hands. She lifts Dylan into the air, her legs flailing for a second before landing on the ground.
Dylan turns and holds her hands out to Maura, the way Jane did to her. Maura smiles, holds Dylan's little hands and lifts herself into a standing position, with Jane's hand eventually grasping her elbow.
Dylan groans, gasps, bends over out of breath. "You're heavy, Mommy."
Maura smiles as she turns to the sink, "And you're strong, little lady."
The sun is high the sky by the time Maura feels well enough to get out of bed again. She finds the Pedialyte in the refrigerator door and settles into the window chair in the master bedroom, where memories overwhelm her senses. It was near this time of year the first time she brought Jane here, to the beach house. She leans her head against the glass, feeling the warmth from the sun on her face, and closes her eyes to the memory.
Maura placed her cell phone on her desk between where she and Jane sat. "A pipe burst in my beach house. I have to catch a plane to Miami Beach, Florida, as soon as possible. I'd hate to call in Pike, but there's really not-"
"Wait. You have a beach house in Florida?" Jane's face went blank.
"Yes."
"Why have you never mentioned this before?"
"You never asked. I rent it out most of the year. It's an excellent source of supplemental income." And then a thought crossed Maura's mind. "Do you want to come with me?"
"To your beach house in Florida?"
"Why do you keep saying it like that?"
"Because you-" Jane paused as she registered Maura's original question. "You're inviting me?"
"Yes. It could be fun! Plus, you know about plumbing, which would really help me. I haven't actually been down since I bought the place a couple of years ago. And when was the last time you took vacation?"
"Um. Never?"
"Precisely."
They had arrived to three inches of dirty water soaking the entire first floor of the building. The floors needed to be stripped and some of the cabinets and furniture needed to be replaced. The walls needed to be dried and painted. It was a project, but Maura was determined to finish it within the week—and when Maura was determined, she always succeeded.
The house was between renters at the time so Maura and Jane stayed in the master room upstairs, which had its own functioning bathroom and an ocean view. The two women spent a week in that beach house. Days dragged. They talked to contractors, stared at fabric and color swatches, consulted interior designers, supervised plumbers—all things that would have Jane beating herself over the head if it weren't for the nights, which fueled them both.
During their nights at the beach house, hours passed in minutes. They explored each other with a kind of abandonment they had never felt before—without the exhaustion from work, the stress of responsibility, the pressures from family, the fear of murderers roaming the city. They strolled the little beach town, hand-in-hand. They ate somewhere different every night—from the fancy fish restaurant on the end of the pier to the taco stand on the corner, which served its food in greasy paper containers.
The night before they left to fly back to Boston, the women had walked down to the beach. The night was chilly and the only people they passed for ten minutes was a middle-aged couple, hand-in-hand, just like them. Jane gave Maura her jacket, but a few minutes later, dared her to put her feet in the water. They left their shoes in the sand and ventured into the Atlantic. Waves crashed against their calves and Maura clung to Jane like without her the tide would whisk her away. Jane held her tight. Together they stood, knee-deep in the ocean, and kissed like it was the last night of the world, like nothing in the future would matter the way they mattered to each other right then, that night.
Maura remembers it, now, as she squints her eyes into the sunlight blur of a beach from two stories high. She remembers sitting on the window seat, after hours of love-making, and looking at the stars while Jane read out loud to her from the bed. She remembers the sleepy rasp in Jane's voice as she read the words, "I have waited for this opportunity for more than half a century, to repeat to you once again my vow of eternal fidelity and everlasting love." She remembers Jane tossing the book aside after reading that sentence, and begging Maura back to the bed. She remembers thinking her life couldn't get any more perfect than it was in that moment.
After a couple of minutes, Maura makes out a tiny Jane and an even tinier Dylan, standing hand-in-hand near the water. Jane is wearing a navy blue, sporty two-piece Maura had found at the sporting goods store, and Dylan is wearing a Red Sox baseball cap with her pink tankini.
Maura watches as Dylan tugs Jane's hand away from the water. A wave crashes in and Jane holds her feet in place, Dylan pulling with all her might, her little feet digging into the sand. When the water is inches from their toes, Jane gives in and sprints up the shore with her daughter. Dylan screams and Jane laughs as they approach the water to do it all over again.
She had thought her life was perfect—that it couldn't get better.
She had been wrong.
Down on the beach, it's the kind of hot that they only hear about in Boston. Sweltering humidity has Jane and Dylan popping grapes and downing Gatorade like they're going out of style. By the time the shadows lean East, Jane is dehydrated and exhausted from the heat and the sun, and the six-year-old perpetually tugging on her hand.
"Why don't you build a castle while Mama lies down for a little bit?"
"Okay!"
Jane watches her daughter dump the plastic toys into a pile a few feet from their towels, and then collapses with her eyes closed.
It feels like only minutes have passed before Dylan is poking her arm with a nerf ball. "Mama? I wanna play catch!"
"Why don't you ask that little boy who was playing down the beach if he wants to play catch with you?" Jane asks with her eyes closed.
"What little boy?"
"The one who was telling you about the sand crabs."
"Oh. They went home already. Will you play catch with me?"
Jane groans, and opens one eye, wondering how long she had been asleep for. "Okay, baby. Just give me a minute to wake up."
"Farther!" Dylan is yelling.
She is the most coordinated six-year-old Jane has ever met, but she would be lying if she wasn't afraid her daughter would miss this next throw.
"Hands up, okay? Triangle!" she urges again.
"Triangle!" Dylan yells back. She jumps up and down and then holds the triangle over her head and waits for her mom to toss the ball
And Jane does it. She releases the nerf ball from behind her head and squints into the sun. The ball lobs between the two of them. Its trajectory twists a little in the wind, and Dylan refocuses underneath it. The ball hits her fingers, but slips right through them. It smacks her in the face before bouncing to the floor.
Jane pauses, trying not to react—a lesson in "not freaking out," which she had learned the hard way.
Dylan looks at her, eyes wide and filling.
Jane walks towards her daughter. "You okay, sweetie? That was a long one. You did a really good triangle."
Dylan sniffs. "Ow. That hurt." She covers her mouth with her hands as a couple of tears fall.
Jane plops onto her knees so the two are eye-level. "I know, baby. You're being really strong right now." She pulls Dylan's hands from her mouth and asks, "Can you move your lips?"
Dylan makes a fishy face, and Jane can't help but smile. "Can you stick out your tongue?"
Dylan obliges, and then finally grins. And when she grins, Jane's jaw drops. Dylan's face sobers. "What?"
"Um. Wait. Smile again?"
Dylan smiles all lop-sided and says through her teeth, "Do my teeth look pretty?"
"Did you have a loose tooth?"
"Ya!" Dylan says. "This one!" She pops her tongue through the gap in her teeth, and her eyes widen. "Is it gone?! Did it fall out?!"
Jane is laughing, "Yeah, Dill! You just lost your first tooth!" She holds up her hands and Dylan high-fives them.
Jane stands and combs the sand for a minute while Dylan hops from foot to foot, dancing in a little circle, saying, "I lost a too-oooth, I lost a too-oooth."
Jane mutters to herself, "Oh, man, your mom's gunna kill me."
The front door swishes open, and a pattering of footsteps follows.
"Shhh," Maura can hear Jane saying. "Indoor voices, okay? Mommy might be sleeping."
"Okay," Dylan whispers, not so quietly.
Maura closes her eyes and waits for them to come say hello, but falls asleep and awakes to clinks of metal on metal in the kitchen. She hears Dylan humming. She sits up in bed.
A few minutes later, her girls appear in the doorway. Dylan climbs onto the bed and sidles up to Maura with her lips clamped shut. Jane follows closely with a tray of food.
"Hi, sweetie," Maura says. She kisses the top of her daughter's head. "Did you have a good time at the beach?"
Dylan nods vigorously, and then can't take it anymore and bursts into laughter, exposing the gap in her teeth.
Maura's mouth drops and her eyes widen. "You lost a tooth!" she exclaims.
"Mama knocked it out!"
Jane slaps her palm to her forehead, cringing. "Dylan! You weren't supposed to say that part!"
Dylan giggles so hard that she clutches her stomach and falls over. She rolls down the bed, away from Maura.
"Wait. What?" Maura asks. "Please tell me I heard that incorrectly."
Jane shakes her head. "It was the S-T-U-P-I-D nerf ball. We went long, and… it was a little too long."
"I know what you spelled," Dylan says from the foot of the bed. "You spelled—"
"Dylan," Maura interrupts her. "Sit up, please. Let Mommy look at your mouth."
She walks on her knees back to Maura and opens her mouth, bouncing a little, impatiently.
"I already looked at it," Jane says. "She's fine. She didn't even taste the blood, and she barely cried."
"How much blood was there?"
"A tiny amount. Like, almost none."
Dylan makes a grunting noise with her mouth open and Maura drops her hands from Dylan's jaw. She places a sucking kiss on her daughter's left cheek and releases her.
"Do I get to see the tooth fairy now?" Dylan asks.
"Uhhh…" Jane looks at Maura.
Maura looks at Jane. She widens her eyes and lifts one shoulder as if to say, "I don't know?"
"Well," Jane says. She sits on the edge of the bed, and at the same time she sits, the air pressure in the room shifts as the front door opens downstairs. "Nana's here!" Jane yells.
Dylan squeals, "Nana!" Her parents watch her run out of the room.
"Close call," Jane says.
"We'll have to discuss that one later," Maura agrees.
Jane hums and takes in her wife for the first time all day. She rests her hand on Maura's duvet-covered knee. "How are you feeling?"
"Better. I've kept the Pedialyte down, and I slept for a few hours."
"Good job!" Jane acts overly excited.
Maura smiles. "Thank you. It's a good thing my body is otherwise healthy, or it could have taken me up to twice as long to heal."
"Think you can handle some soup?"
Maura's eyes travel to the tray of food. Soup, a glass of water, a napkin, a spoon, and a little purple flower.
"Dill picked the flower. And stirred the pot."
Maura smiles. "Thank you. I'll try to sip the soup."
Jane leans in for a kiss, but Maura puts her finger between their lips. Jane grunts and follows the finger to her wife's cheek. But she doesn't stop there. After the one on Maura's cheek, she moves up to her forehead, and around to her other cheek, down to her chin, up to her nose, back to the cheek. And again. And again. And again.
Maura closes her eyes and soaks them in. She can hear Dylan talking excitedly to Angela, downstairs.
"I miss you," Jane mutters. She rubs her thumb across Maura's cheek, and then drops it to her hand.
"I miss you, too," Maura says. "When I'm better, and I mean completely better, I promise to let you exchange whatever bodily fluids you would like with me."
"Yeah?"
Maura crosses her finger over her heart and kisses it, the way Dylan taught them to do when they wanted to make a promise. She holds her hand up, and Jane plants her lips on her wife's fingertip.
"JANIE! MAURA! WHERE ARE YOU TWO?"
"You HAVE to give her money from the tooth fairy!"
Jane makes a shushing noise. "Ma, you're gunna wake her up. Just. Shh."
Angela says a little quieter, "I'm sorry, but you just have to. You don't want her growing up without any sense of imagination or—or, fantasy."
Jane had been doing all of the arguing up until this point in the conversation, but Maura finally speaks up from where she sits nestled into the couch. "Dylan has a great imagination, and I don't think telling her that fairies don't actually exist will suddenly stop her from day-dreaming, or being creative, or fantasizing. Besides, I never believed in the tooth fairy—or Santa Claus, for that matter—and I turned out just fine." She holds up her hands, as if to prove a point.
"Mmm, debatable," Jane says under her breath.
Maura throws her a look.
Jane winks back. "But I agree with you. We should tell her the truth. Finding out the tooth fairy wasn't real was traumatizing for me. It's better she find out now, before she gets her hopes up."
"She already has her hopes up!" Angela says. "When I put her to bed it was all tooth fairy this, and tooth fairy that."
"Ma, you didn't…"
"I didn't what? What was I supposed to say? Sorry, honey, the tooth fairy doesn't exist?"
"Well," Jane and Maura exchange a look, "Yeah, actually. That would have been perfect."
"Or," Maura adds, "You could have explained that one of the origins of the myth of the tooth fairy was to provide comfort for the child in his or her time of loss. And then you could have made sure that she understood that another tooth was going to grow in soon so that she didn't need to worry..."
"That's depressing," Angela says with a straight face. "And it's too late now. Go give her a few dollars."
"Ma, please don't speak to Maura like that."
"I'm just being honest. But, fine then." Angela turns to Jane. "You go give her a few dollars."
Jane looks over her mother's shoulder at Maura.
Angela is already digging through her purse, which sits on the kitchen counter. "Here. One of you, just go do it. If you won't, I will."
Maura lifts her hands in surrender. She had learned to pick and choose her battles with Angela, and this was not one she was willing to lose sleep over.