Here's a little story to fill in the missing Danny/Lindsay moments eluded to in episode 8 of this season (Late Admissions) when Lindsay returns home to Montana to attend Daniel Katums execution. It obviously has spoilers, I suppose, of that episode and I tried to work with those things that I felt intentionally spoke of more... let me know what you think!
Danny watched his wife. It was getting late. He'd come in as she was sitting down to dinner with Lucy, and he'd watched as she carried on small talk with her daughter. There was a bath, and then a story. He cleaned the kitchen and waited. He let her have her time with Lucy, knowing it would settle her.
But that didn't mean she was settled.
So he watched her, and he waited as she took care of the menial tasks of picking up the bits and pieces of Lucy's evening adventures their little girl had missed on her own.
He'd walked part of this road with her before, several times. From the moment she'd pulled away from him years ago, trapped in the middle of the memories as she'd prepared for the trial. He hadn't understood then, not the need she'd had to walk the path alone, or the extreme loss she'd never filled. He couldn't truly understand it now.
But he understood her.
She didn't talk about that night, not since the middle of high school when she'd had enough of her therapist. He only knew about those episodes because he'd read every single on of Daniel Katum's appeals. Suicide watches, drug scares, crazy summer teen camp away from home.
Or at least an application to one that her mother had filled out on her therapist's recommendation.
She'd never once said his name, not even at the trial.
Instead, she talked about those three friends; of Kelly and Caroline, and in particular, Lucy.
That first night in Montana, she'd introduced him to her family, had dinner with them—a blessed, normal dinner, she'd said. They didn't mention the trial or the man. Her father told him later that they'd learned the hard way. Lindsay didn't mix Katums into any other part of her life.
And that night, she'd walked him outside and coaxed him to lay down with her under the stars—in full view of the house, and her father—and told him her first story of Lucy.
Lindsay was the ever practical, but it was her memory of Lucy that made her a dreamer.
He smiled a little, even now. Lindsay would never admit to being a dreamer. It wasn't easy for her.
Because of Lucy, she'd moved to New York, and Danny would be forever grateful to her friend.
Lucy.
"You might as well go ahead and say what you want to say," Lindsay said as she pushed up from the floor her hand closed around pits of Lucy's play. "I know Flack called you."
"What's there to say? You obviously aren't going to say anything."
Her lips pressed tight she started to walk passed him. Danny reached out, snagged her arm. She came back as he tugged, but he saw the struggle in her eyes.
He wouldn't force her to talk about it.
"Flack told me that you got a call. That you shut down after—hey," he turned her toward him. "My words, not his. It worried him enough that he checked your caller ID. Would you have told me?"
The look in her brown eyes as she lifted them to his didn't surprise him. There was defiance and there was guilt, plus a huge dose of weariness.
And there was the woman he loved with all his heart.
"Relax. I know you, Montana."
She shook her head. "Don't use that tone with me, Messer. You called my father."
He lifted a brow. "No, I checked the public record like I do every time Daniel Katums is up for appeal. I read what you do, because I need to know what he's said this time, how he's tried to twist your life—the life he impacted—into something that he thinks will save his sorry ass. I do it because I need to know, Lindsay. I need to know what I know you can't tell me. I love you."
He could have told her a dozen things. She didn't have to walk this road alone. It wasn't her fault. She couldn't have saved them, and he could only be grateful she hadn't tried. It didn't make her a coward or anything less than the best person he'd ever known.
Instead he opened up her hand and stared at the little pig and purse that had somehow intermingled in Lucy's play. He lifted the pig, unable to stop the smile.
Then he lifted his eyes to Lindsay's, and there was the smile he'd needed. It wasn't sad and it wasn't lost.
Daniel Katums had lost his final appeal. The judge had scheduled the execution.
She would go.
And she would want to do it alone.
~ny~
"I'm just saying," Danny watched her pack, "We could go, hang out with your dad."
"Do some fishing?" Lindsay asked, without turning around.
"If that's what you want."
Lindsay shook her head. "You wouldn't go ten feet from my dad's boat after the last time."
"I'm not afraid of the boat."
"I'm not...'
And looking into her blue eyes, something inside of her clenched. They were beautiful eyes, her man's eyes, and eyes that Lucy, Caroline and Kelly would never see.
For the moment she was back on the floor in the bathroom, the water was running above her.
The shots still echoed.
And their faces.
Their faces ...
"Lindsay..."
She closed her suitcase and pulled the zipper around to secure it. "I have to do this on my own."
"Do you?" she felt his hands on her arms, her teeth clenched as he turned her around. There was anger there in his eyes–that he couldn't protect her.
That she wouldn't let him.
"You've done it on you own. You've faced the demon time and time again. You brought him down in court. You don't have to do this. Not alone."
But she hadn't done it alone before. She'd faltered, the words struggling to come out of her. She might have failed them if Danny hadn't arrived.
She wanted to face the man who'd killed them. She wanted to do what she hadn't been able to do the last time.
The realization dawned in Danny's eyes. She hadn't told him and she hadn't discussed it. She knew he would guess on his own, and she'd thought he already had.
But he wasn't going to stop her, Lindsay promised herself as she tugged her suitcase off the bed and walked away from her husband before he tried.
"You're going to go see Katums," Danny said, then cursed as she walked away. "Dammit Lindsay, what is that going to prove?"
That she could, and she would, stand up for those lives that still meant everything to her.
~ny~
He was dead. There would be no more appeals, and no more updates.
And for the first time Lindsay knew that he'd at least felt one small moment of regret and loss for the lives that he took.
She wasn't sure she could call what she felt relief, but she felt something else. Something more.
She'd moved mechanically after the execution. She'd said goodbye to Lucy's mother, showed her pictures of Lucy, and promised to start sending more. She'd driven her rental to the Bozeman airport, turned it in, and made sure she was there to meet the final flight to Denver. She texted her dad that she was at the airport, knowing that they would talk later, about other things, but never really about this.
But she stopped just short of texting Danny.
She needed more. For the first time since walking out on him the day before, she needed his voice.
His sexy voice answered after the first ring. "Hey."
"Hey," she smiled as she said it. "You still at work?"
"No, I got out in time to pick Lucy up from school. We went by the library."
"The one on Fifth Avenue?"
"She's your daughter. She wanted to say hello to the lions for you."
Lindsay smiled, unable to stop herself. She thought of Lucy, her friend and confident of her youth, and thought that maybe she'd been able to pass down a little of that Lucy's spirit to her baby girl. Still, it was Danny who had made her dreams, and Lucy's today, come true. She was sure it had been his idea to see the lions, or at least his prompting.
"Did she go to bed okay?"
"Made sure she was good and tired. And promised her that her mommy would be home tomorrow."
She could imagine the exchange.
When I wake up, will Mommy be here?
I don't know, Danny would say, you sometimes wake up really early. He would tweek her nose and make her laugh. But when you wake up in the morning, it will be the same day that mommy will be home, so you have to sleep through until morning.
"The flight from Denver is on schedule. I should get in New York at 4:30, and hopefully be home by 5."
"You feeling like going in still? You're in at noon, but I could—"
"I'm fine, Danny," she told him softly. "I can't talk about it ... not here and over the phone—"
"I get it, Lindsay," Danny interrupted. "And I knew before you left. You'll take a couple of days to process it, but you'll talk to me. In your own time. This is different."
"Yes," she acknowledged. "I never have to worry about Daniel Katums ever again."
"No—" he said, and by the tone of his voice she knew he understood that she'd just said his name for the first time, and that it was different.
"Be safe," Danny told her. "Get home to me."
Lindsay smiled. "Headed that way."