Her Name
Chapter one – Olga
Her name was Olga. She had long blond hair that smelled of cherry and a scar – almost invisible – just behind her right ear. I never got to know what had happened – how she had got it – but I remember our nights when we used to cuddle together and I would stare at it, somehow fascinated.
She had four brothers – tall, intrepid – who used to reign in masters over the neighborhood even if they had moved in last; at the end of our street. If they were all born in America, they had caught the same accent – an Eastern European one – as their parents who came from Croatia. The mother was shy and barely spoke English. The father was rather discreet.
She had taken my hand on a bright summer day while the sun was embracing our skin in a comforting torpor and the asphalt was so hot that we spent hours in the shadows of an old oak tree.
"Come with me."
We had walked for a while passing empty streets before going down to the river by the wooden bridge. The vapors of the running water cooled the air and I shivered silently. I never asked where we were going to. For whatever reason, I had trusted her since the very beginning. Almost blindly. She stopped by a weeping-willow and took me there, behind the heavy curtain of green leaves.
We sat there and didn't move for a while, didn't speak. Just listening to the water running down a few feet away and the quiet murmur of the main street traffic.
And during all that time, she didn't let go of my hand. She was holding it tightly; firmly. The heat of her skin embracing mine reassuringly.
She kissed my cheek. Without any warning. Surprised and somehow mesmerized, I turned around to face her and against all expectations, I smiled. My heart was beating fast in my chest. I could feel its loud rhythm against the cotton of my summer dress and the way it made me shake uncontrollably.
Then she captured my lips in a stolen, innocent kiss.
We were six years old. It probably lasted a couple of seconds only and yet... I have never forgotten about it.
…
She loved routines. Always the same gestures, the same journeys. There was something comforting about it that rocked her peacefully, like the lullabies she would have loved listening to as a child.
Always the same people.
Always the same lies.
Take a deep breath, Maura. And smile.
But as much as she had a thing for well-known environments, the unplanned had its charms; like some sort of seduction game that came out of the blue. It was exciting and brought adrenalin to run through her veins at a high speed. It was addicting too.
She passed the door of her office and turned the lights on. The floor was quiet and empty. Cold. Repressing a shiver, she went to sit at her desk and opened the files she had left there the day before. Only a few articles she had printed about new studies. No case whatsoever.
She hated when it happened. Not only did the days seem to last forever but it gave her even less of an excuse to make it up there, to her office.
Her office...
Jane's office, of course. Who else could it be?
Whenever the doors of the elevator opened on the upper floor, she could smell coffee wrap her right away as the daylight passing by the large windows almost blinded her after having spent so much time under the artificial rays of gloomy neon by a dead body. A perpetual, literal renaissance.
Coming back from the dark kingdom of death to the brightness of life.
And seeing her there. Coming and going; either plunged in a case or gladly killing time with her colleagues. Jane...
Jane...
As the sound of the name echoed in her head, Maura closed her eyes and abandoned herself to what had now turned in a routine as well. The fantasies were always blurry. Nothing special was happening in them but Jane's face appearing before her eyes and everything seemed so calm. So quiet.
A double-date. She is going to hate it but yet she will abdicate and say yes. She always does, with me. Always. She can't resist, not to me.
A smirk softly embraced her lips at such a thought but soon enough a wave of bitterness swept it away and she swallowed hard. She wasn't one to be fooled. She knew the game and its rules for too many years, now. And she played along because it was vain. The rest was vain. And too risky, perhaps.
"Doctor Isles?"
She opened her eyes and smiled peacefully at the young intern who – shyly – had stopped by the door of her office; not daring to walk in without her very own permission.
Yes, that's what she was for everyone: Doctor Isles, Commonwealth of Massachusetts' Chief Medical Examiner. A brilliant woman who led a successful yet dull life.
"Come in."
A dull life. Too expected. Boring, just like her personality. Since her earliest years, people had seen her like this. Only a few ones had got to know who she really was but like these shameful secrets people bury within themselves, none of them had yet revealed anything.
Appearances are tricky.
"I was wondering..."
The intern was young, lacking experience and self-confidence. Dancing on his feet before her desk, he reminded her of these kids who came to you in order to confess their guilt about something stupid. A relation of power and dominance between the adult who owns the knowledge and the novice who still has to learn everything.
She wasn't sure to enjoy it, in all honesty.
"May I accompany you on the next case?"
Taking her time to reply, Maura cast a glance at her African masks. There was a time when she used to contemplate them for long minutes, admiring the work that had been done on them. Lately, she had almost forgotten to their presence by her desk.
"We will have to ask Detective Rizzoli."
Jane would hate that, which automatically made Maura smile. She loved teasing her friend, going on her nerves. Somehow, it made them feel closer. And that was something she simply couldn't decline offering herself.
Since all the rest was prohibited.