A/N: A little something, I came up with last night after watching the first part of the Jordan/Vegas crossover. The story has nothing to do with the crossover; I just came up with it after. There is no scheduled time where this story could fit into, except the unforeseen future. Please remember to enjoy and to review; I live off your criticism like a leech off your blood.
Disclaimer: I do not own Crossing Jordan, the show and its respective characters yadda, yadda. I, however, apparently own the creation of Emily-Jane (which sounds disgustingly like Mary-Jane but I couldn't help myself)
Monster in the Closet
"Mommy, mommy," I called seconds between, "mommy?" I knew she would wake and come eventually as she had done every other time I called. "Mommy," my voice was calm, despite my anxiety. Toned like a doorbell piercing the night.
In the dark, she came to me, robed in sleep. Her eyes, drawn like curtains. "What is it darling?" she yawned. I can still smell her sweet motherly scent as she enveloped me with comfort, wrapping her arms around my small body.
I whispered into her ear, "There's a scary man in my closet."
Her thin lips curled into an amused grin, as if I had been dreaming, or if, by man, I meant monster. I was so innocent though, I did not catch the glint of fear in her eyes until remembering this moment far into the future. "Go get your daddy and tell him to come here. I'll stay here and fend off the evil spirit."
She was so brave. I could not get to sleep unless I had her protection. She was willing to stay in that room alone. "He's a man, not a spirit mommy," I reminded her, scooting off my bed. I made a wide, but fast, arch around my closet, and ran down the dim hall to my daddy's room.
"Daddy, wake up," I whispered and shook him slightly. I knew this would do the trick because one day, I had shaken him violently and jumped on the bed yelling and banging pots in his ears, he told me I could have waken the dead and then he taught me how to wake him.
"What is it honey?" He asked groggily.
"There's a man in my closet and mommy needs your help telling him to go home." My father never could hide his emotions as well as my mother. He leaped out of bed and went to his closet. He reached to the top shelf and took his gun down from inside a box. I watched in shock and intent interest as he loaded it in front of me, something that he had never done before and never did after that night.
Like an unspoken bond between them. He knew there was serious trouble just by her needing his help.
He gave me instructions, "Honey, I want you to stay right here and call 9-1-1. You remember how to do it right?" I nodded. "Get under the covers." He left the room, closing the door quietly behind him. I began fulfilling his orders. When my father told me to do something, I did it because he did not give me such important jobs very often. I felt a sense of accomplishment as I reached for the phone.
I was only six but my father had felt it important that I know what to do incase of an emergency. He was a cop after all. After that night, he came to father-daughter day at my school; he told my classmates how important it was to know 9-1-1.
"This is Nadine, please state your emergency."
I did not know what to say, he had told me to phone 9-1-1, not why. "There's a scary man in my closet and my daddy told me to call 9-1-1," I reiterated proudly. I remember being calmer than I should have been, as if I found the entire situation funny. Though I knew, there was a stranger in the closet, to phone 9-1-1, when my daddy could take care of the situation, seemed silly to me. "We live at 4236 Suffolk Street."
"OK sweetie, just stay on the phone, I'm sending the police right away. Can you tell me your name?"
"Emily-Jane Hoyt. I was named after my grandmothers."
"OK Emily-Jane, where are you? Are you in a safe place?"
"In my parents' bedroom, underneath the covers where my daddy told me to stay," I replied obediently.
"And where are your parents?"
"They're in my bedroom with the man in my closet. My daddy took his gun with him."
"Are you, or is anybody in the house hurt?"
"I don't know I'll go check," I put the phone on the bed and opened the door a crack, afraid to go any further. The soft light from my bedroom filtered out into the hallway. I could hear voices in my room, calm, voices about a knife. I could hear my mommy. I ran back to the bed and under the covers. "I don't think my mommy and daddy are hurt."
"Emily-Jane, just stay on the phone with me," Nadine said, with a hint of relaxation in her voice.
"OK."
"Do you have any brothers or sisters?"
"No, but I have a cat named Oreo."
Nadine laughed a little, keeping the situation light to keep me calm, "I'm sure Oreo is fine. Can you hear sirens now, Emily-Jane? The police should be there soon."
Sure enough I could hear them screaming down the street. I peeked from under the covers and found the walls bathed in red and blue light. "Should I go downstairs and let them in?" I asked. They banged on the door, trying to gain entrance to a locked door.
"No dear, just stay where you are."
There were so many noises for my small mind to comprehend, the police at the door, the screaming from my bedroom, the sirens, Nadine, the yelling, and then gunshot. Like a firecracker erupting in the next room, the sound shook the mirror on the wall.
I began to cry. Nadine, over the phone, tried to comfort me. "Mommy…" I cried, but she never came.
This is the hardest time of year for me, October. The autumn leaves, though beautiful, remind me of the night she fell. The season never yields the fondest memories. That night, the funeral, moving, whispers of "poor girl, and what about him?" behind her back. At the time, I only understood one thing, I had lost my mother and she would never be coming back.
I put her picture back on my dresser where it belongs. I can scarcely remember her now, if it were not for that image, I would not even remember her face. I recall the comfort in the night, her calming presence before the storm. Damn I miss her.
I remember her hair the most, I think. Her dark ringlets framing her pale face, wet from the tears of my short childhood. The smell of her conditioner gave me a sense of comfort, until my dad stopped buying it. I had always wished for hair like hers.
My father says I have her eyes and her thin lips. Everything else I inherited from him. I think he rather resents that I am not a carbon copy of my mother, as most fathers wish their daughters to be, I suppose.
My aunt Lily, (no relation, I just call her my aunt) once told me about the romance my parents had shared, when I was old enough to appreciate such tales, of course. After years of not too careful deliberation, they finally hooked up. At first, I could not understand their stubbornness, until I found that I had inherited a lot of it. Having two stubborn parents made for one incredibly stubborn child. My father admitted on more than one occasion that I was harder to handle than my mother was. I felt pride in the accomplishment.
She was nearly forty when I was born; my father was slightly younger. The apple of her eye, he used to tell me stories. About how she would rock me to sleep when I was a baby, and every noise I made she was right by my side. If I called, she would come. For a while, I felt guilty as if it was my fault she was dead.
I had not been lying. There really was a man in my closet that night. He had come in through the window with unknown intentions. I woke and immediately began calling for mer. He slipped into the closet, perhaps with the plan of a surprise attack in mind. I wonder, now, why he did not just shut me up then, a mystery that I never will solve.
A long time after the events of the night, I finally goaded my dad into telling me what had happened. I had a right to know exactly how my mother died. I convinced him by telling him I would find out through other means; anyway that I could. I threatened to check her autopsy reports or have her body exhumed. He told me he would disown me.
My mom tried to talk some sense into the man in my closet. She did not go near the closet, she merely told him that she knew he was in there and advised him to come out. He did not budge.
Enter my father with his gun. He flicked on the light and ordered, "Alright, buddy, I am Detective Hoyt from the Boston PD, come out of the closet with your hands in the air, nobody needs to get hurt. The police are on their way. Come out of the closet."
They were definitely not in a situation where they could barge their way in and overpower him. He found himself trapped like a rat in a dark cage. They did not know how big he was and he had a knife. My dad was a cop with a gun he only used in necessary occasions.
My dad did not like to go into the details of watching his wife die, but he said that the man burst from the closet in an attempt to escape and he stabbed my mother. Perhaps he thought he really could over power both of them and escape through the window. He did not get very far, my father shot him once, close range into the head, with the knife still embedded under my mother's ribs.
She died in hospital after sustaining life support for a week. Her life had been difficult and she fought until the day she died. She left my dad. She left me.
My mom's friends at the morgue were not able to perform an autopsy on her for emotional reasons. My father understood and sent her to a different office, a colder, darker place where they would not carefully examine her, where they would not understand how important it was for her to know the reason this had to happen.
Her death had struck mortality into the closest people she worked with. Sure, they had performed autopsies on a few of their coworkers, but none as close or as vibrant in personality as my mother, Jordan. Garret retired early, realizing his true potential, he became a jazz man. He was like another grandfather to me. Nigel Townsend, an unrelated uncle, loved his technology; he now works as the main man, creating software to help make medical examiner's lives easier. Uncle Buggy, as I call him, became a pediatrician. He lost the cold grey complexion he had gained during his stay at the morgue for nearly fourteen years. My darling aunt Lily, she stayed the longest, making it her goal to provide spiritual support to the mourners that needed her. She saw the next Chief ME and group of rookie medical examiners. She could not take their lack of concern. She now works with disadvantaged children, improving lives, as is her calling.
My dad, however, could never stop being a cop. He only took a long leave of absence and a change of cities.
He could no longer stand living in the same house that my mother died. He would not let me into my room, not even after the house sold. I slept on the floor of his bedroom and he moved some of my clothes into the hallway closet. The blood had stained the carpet, the walls and even some of my things. He threw those things out and replaced them with new things, disregarding my opinion on the matter. Some people told him he was obsessive.
He did receive some professional help, which helped him formulate a plan for the rest of our lives.
We moved away from Boston, far from Kewaunee nowhere near Los Angeles, Vegas, or any other place that reminded him of her. He found a nice medium in Denver Colorado, even though I hated it. It was too mountainous on one side and flat on the other. Denver did not have an ocean and the skyscrapers were not worthy to be called so, at least not until I became accustomed to my new home.
He was determined to be the father his never was. We talked daily and he taught me things he did not necessarily want to teach me. During my childhood, he found time to play with me in-between school, daycare and dinner. During my teenaged years, much to my distaste, he strove to be an active part of my life. On my wedding day, I was proud to have him walk me down the aisle.
Until he died, my Grandpa Max came to visit often. It seemed that there was always somebody staying in our home. They brought with them my mother's spirit, from Boston. They brought the happiness that my father tried to enforce on me. They taught me things that he could never have. They taught me to dream again.
He expected me to follow my parent's example; instead, I chose my own path. Much to his aversion, I did not become a doctor or a police officer, though I had the intelligence and the skill to excel in both those fields, I left home in my twenties. I do not think he has ever forgiven me for leaving him. He expected me to stay with him in Denver until he died, giving him the comfort my mother could have. However, I had dreams to follow. I wanted to be an actress on Broadway and that was something that Colorado could never produce.
My dad has retired now. I know he regrets handing his gun in for an easier life. Grandpa Max talked him through it before he died; something his father never got the opportunity to do. I think that if he could, my father would have chucked bad-guys in jail until the day he died. Now, he just has to find something else he enjoys doing until he can join my mother again.
At times, I thought he should have remarried to make our lives a little easier. I even went through a stage where I was trying to set him up with my best friend's mom so that we could be sisters. Then I realized how much he missed her; holding her picture in his hand on lonely nights, repeating those same stories he loved telling about her. He had fought to be with her and no other woman could have replaced that feeling. I wonder if he feels similarly about me. What would he do if, one day, I were gone?
I only understand now, that he would die if I were not in his life. I know that because I am pregnant with my first-born and I feel the same way, even now, his life is just beginning. It is an exciting time for my husband and for my father. He flew up to Boston, where I live, for the first time since he left.
I want to watch my child grow into adulthood; to give him opportunities with a mother that I never experienced. Before she died, my mother must have felt this way. She cherished me so much, because her mother had not been there for her. After her death, my father had acted the same way, acting as both mother and father to me, just as his father had done. I want my child to know and remember both parents.
However, some days I am not so sure. At times, I fear that my family cursed, to losing parents through disease and violence. I may wish for the opportunity but if this blight has its grip on me, I cannot escape it. My child and his child shall be doomed forever not to know the love of two parents simultaneously. This fact hurts me more than words can express.
Until that time, however, I will love him, care for him, and give him everything a mother is entitled to give her son. I will rock him to sleep and come when he calls. I will even fend off the monsters in his closet.