Chapter Two
Becca stood in the dirty restroom at the bus terminal and ran her hands under the cold water. She looked at her reflection and tried to smooth the flyaways of her blonde hair. It was straight, limp and thin. She used to have lovely hair. Her father used to stroke it gently as she was falling asleep and tell her fairy tales of princesses and unicorns. She took a deep breath and exhaled shakily. She was going to do this. She took another deep breath and squeezed her eyes closed and then she looked at herself again. The dark circles were prominent and her eyes were sunken. Her teeth weren't great either, but she knew that was the least of her problems.
After she left the bus station, she walked past the junkies in the alley. She forced herself to hold her head high and keep looking forward. She needed to do this, and she couldn't do it if she wasn't clean. It had been the worst hours of her life but she had done it and now she was clean and if she didn't get to his apartment clean, she knew she'd kill herself. She had nothing else.
She didn't know if he'd take her in. Her mother wouldn't, that much was certain. She had stopped there first. She turned her away, telling her she had spent too many nights praying, too many nights trusting her baby girl was clean, too many nights at police stations, hospitals, homeless shelters. She'd put her mother through hell. She would love her until the day was done, her mom said, but she couldn't house the girl. She just couldn't have her home, never knowing if she'd wake up, if she'd have to call an ambulance, if she'd disappear. Her mom was smart; she knew the allure of heroin would take her again.
This time had to be different, she told herself. It just had to be.
She hadn't seen her father since she was fifteen. He had left home when she was eleven and, for a while, the every other weekend routine worked well. But then he got busy and he met Ruby and it was clear she didn't like having a young one in the home. Her dad insisted, though, and she appreciated that, but he still stayed with her and that made her mad. He was a good father, but he drank more than he should. And she knew that had a lot to do with her parents' divorce. At the time, she took her mother's side; her father was too kind to argue with her and tell her the truth.
But she was a smart girl and as she got older, she realized her mother wasn't innocent either. A marriage disintegrated and sometimes it was no one's fault and sometimes it was everyone's fault. She was lonely so she found friends where she shouldn't and she caused trouble. She refused to go to school; she refused to see her dad; she ran away; she tried drugs.
In retrospect, everything else had been resolvable. She could have re-enrolled in school. She could have patched things up with her dad. She could have come home. But she could never stop the drugs and that had been her downfall. She was homeless most of the time. Sometimes she had a place to stay. Sometimes she did things she shouldn't to have a place to stay. That was mostly in the winter. But she didn't have a job. She didn't have a degree. And now her time was running out.
She took a deep breath as she stood in front of the brownstone with numbers that matched the ones on the index card in her hand. Her dad lived here. Had lived here for three years, according to her mom. She wondered if he expected her. Had her mom called? Would Ruby be there? Would he let her in? She rest her hands on her belly and wondered if it was too late.
Things just had to work out. He was her last resort. And so she rang the bell.
Mac swayed on the balls of his feet as he stood in the elevator. He was impatient to get back to work after a twelve day vacation, the third he had taken with Christine in their four year marriage. He was running late for his first day back, the quick meeting before work had delayed him longer than planned. He expected chaos to greet him, so he wasn't surprised when he stepped foot into the Lab to see three lab techs actually running from Trace to DNA, Jo's desk overflowing with more papers and files than he thought possible, a note taped to Danny's office instructing him to find Jo ASAP. Without seeing a single member of his team, he crossed the hallway to his office. He had to kick a few boxes out of the way to get to his desk and he reached down to see who had requested them. He scowled at learning the request had been made by M. TAYLOR. He didn't remember what had been on his docket just before he left. He hung up his coat and then booted up his computer; he'd figure it out.
He glanced at his cell phone as it buzzed. Have a good day. I miss Italy! XOXO
He replied quickly, Me too. Ti amo. See you later.
His first order of business was to send an email summoning his team for a meeting. He stifled a yawn, still recovering from jet lag. The vacation had been exactly what the couple needed. He had never been to Italy despite his wife's love of the location. They had spent exactly twelve hours doing typical touristy things, visiting famed museums and quizzing each other on matters not thought of since college art history. And then Mac and Christine abandoned the city for a stay in Tuscany, taking long bike rides in the countryside, enjoying delicious meals in tiny villages and making love every night. They had come home refreshed and renewed. Having proven that the two of them were more than happy by themselves, memories of a failed adoption had started to fade well into their past.
"Did you go to Rome?" Lindsay's voice interrupted Mac's thoughts. The team was assembling. Mac shook his head.
"How about Sicily?" pressed Danny. Another shake of his head.
"Venice?" asked Hawkes.
"Florence," Mac informed.
"Just Florence?" Flack asked in disdain.
"No, not just Florence," Mac said, a smile in his eyes. "We flew there and then we biked in Tuscany. And that's it." He tolerated a bit of ribbing from his team at his lack of detail before he directed the discussion towards business. He sought information, remembered why he had these files in his office, got Adam started on scouring the files, pressed Danny on closing a cold case, asked Flack to work with Philly police on a potential missing persons case, sent Hawkes down to the morgue to discuss an autopsy with Sid, let Lindsay close down a hunch she had with a comparison of several DNA profiles, finally leaving him alone with Jo.
"So, four new cases," he commented. She nodded. "Well, seems like you have them under control."
"You lie like a rug, Mac Taylor," Jo teased. "I don't have anything under control, and you know it. That's why you came in here, and in a matter of fifteen minutes, you have your team working productively on concrete leads. We'll probably close three of them in twenty-four hours."
"Would be nice," he replied seriously.
She smiled tenderly and then, as if it had been on her mind for a while, she asked quietly, "You doing okay?"
"Sure," he said quickly. "Why do you ask?" he countered, easing his way into his desk chair.
"You seemed off in the weeks before you left for Italy," Jo asserted. Mac rolled his eyes. "Okay, you're probably right. It was nothing. I was the one off," she retreated. "Dealing with Ellie and her plans to change colleges every other day is enough to make any mother nutty. Last week, she wanted to transfer because her boyfriend is moving to Idaho. Can you believe that?" Mac arched an eyebrow. "Thankfully, he dumped her. Very dramatic scene, I understand." Mac chuckled a little at her tales of woe. "Christine okay?" she asked suspiciously.
Mac set his coffee onto the desk and extended his legs, amused that his second-in-command wouldn't let it go. There was a time that would have irritated him, and, to be fair, if anyone else had pressed the point, it would have irritated him. But Jo was different, she was more perceptive than the others, and she cared about him and Christine more than the others. So she could press all she wanted. But it didn't mean he was going to confide in her. He held his hands up in defeat. "Jo, we're good," he insisted.
"Alright," she said, remaining in his office. They sat in silence for a few moments, and Mac wondered if she really would let it go. Suddenly, Jo took the opportunity to catch Mac up in further detail on their caseload. She spoke of a new technique she had read about, Mac asked to see the journal article, he confided in her about a budget cutback, Jo made some suggestions. The professional rapport was obvious and irreplaceable. It was good to be back at work.
Sid took a deep breath as he looked at the body on his gurney. He pulled the chart to review and adjusted his glasses. Jane Doe. No age. No address. No name. He frowned and did a preliminary examination. Track marks up and down her arms, even between her toes.
"Sid," Mac's voice boomed as he entered the morgue. "What do you got?"
"First of all, welcome back." Mac nodded in acknowledgement but didn't offer any details. Sid reached out as if to shake Mac's hand, but the boss of the Lab bypassed Sid's gloved hand and instead reached into his lab coat for a pair of his own latex gloves. He held them up towards Sid and shook them. Mac didn't shake gloved hands. "Of course," Sid smiled. "But welcome back anyway."
He apprised the body and then prompted the Medical Examiner. "I'm afraid I don't have much," he answered. Sid stood still a moment, almost in respect, and then he pointed at the track marks. "She likely OD'd," he said bluntly. "The tox panel is pending."
"Foul play?" Mac asked.
"Does heroin count as murder?" Sid asked in response.
"More like suicide," Mac retorted.
"Well, I doubt this will add to your case load. That's my educated guess anyway," Sid repeated, "Although even an amateur would guess at a drug overdose." Mac nodded, his hands clasped in front of him as if he was debating whether to touch the body. After a moment, Mac reached for the girl's arm and looked closely. "Does she have an unusual amount of bruising on her arm?"
Sid hesitated before replying, "It's a lot, but not outside the norm for repeated drug use." Mac nodded, still considering her arm. He tilted his head so he could look on the underside. "I'm waiting for the tox panel to let me know how much she's been using. When we open her up, we'll see what the internal damage is and that might give us more information." Mac nodded as he replaced the arm. Sid shook his head and then said wistfully, "It's a shame really. She could have been a pretty girl."
Mac shook his head. He started to leave the morgue and then turned back to face Sid. Still walking backwards towards the elevator, Mac tossed the gloves in the garbage can and pointed at Sid. He announced with a smile, "Jo told me your daughter moved back home."
"She did," Sid said animatedly, his eyes lighting up. "Oh Mac," he said with a smile. "You don't know how good it was to sit and have dinner with her last night. We just talked and talked like old times." Mac smiled at his friend's excitement.
"How old again?" Mac stopped as he waited for the elevator. Sid approached Mac as he kept talking.
"Nineteen. She's nineteen. And that makes me …" Sid wrinkled his nose and admitted, "Old, I guess."
Mac shook his head and clapped his friend on the shoulder. Time aged them all. "She's going to school, right?" Mac pressed.
Sid chuckled a little but shook his head. "No. I'd hoped she'd enroll somewhere, but right now, she's taking a break. And living off her old man." Mac laughed too and then Sid added in conclusion, "You know kids these days." Mac smiled again and waved at his friend as he stepped into the elevator.
Becca sat at the counter and watched her dad sway to the music as two steaks browned in the pan. "You still like music from the sixties," she commented, lifting the can of Mountain Dew to her mouth. She was thirsty, but not interested in the carbonated water her father had offered.
"Never stopped," Sid replied seriously, turning to the steaks. He used a fork to pierce one of them and flipped it in the pan, the sizzle and oil flying into the air. Becca rest her hands on her expanding belly and Sid nodded towards her, "How did your appointment go?" Becca shrugged as if to tell him it wasn't his business. His eyes clouded over for the briefest moment, before he turned way from her and practically sashayed across the floor to the beat of the music. One corner of Becca's lips pushed upwards in amusement. He opened the refrigerator and took out a plastic container of mushrooms. "Are you still the only child in the world that likes mushrooms?" he smiled.
Becca shrugged, not responding, the smile already gone. She picked at the threadbare t-shirt that stretched over her stomach and then she kicked her legs out and saw the black toenail on her left foot, the barely-closed over wound on the bottom of her right. Her jeans were stained and didn't fit her well, but her dad didn't even notice. She closed her eyes and took a shaky breath.
Just because she was living here didn't mean things were going well. He was too happy, Becca thought. Too excited to get to know her "as the adult she was", too welcoming with a bedroom all to herself, too willing to act like the father he never was by buying her clothes (which she left in the bags), making breakfast (which she left on the table), giving her a bus pass (which she grudgingly accepted when he wasn't looking), making her an OB-GYN appointment (which, she decided, was downright creepy).
But still she took three buses to the Manhattan high rise. He couldn't have known what it would feel like to sit in a waiting room with all the rich, stay-at-home skinny-mini's in their Pea in a Pod maternity clothes. Her sunken eyes and the way she had pulled her long sleeves over the bruises on her arms made her stand out immediately. Not to mention that she didn't even own any maternity clothes, instead settling for stretched out shirts and jeans a size too big that she got from the Salvation Army. She looked like a homeless person. Who was she kidding? She had owned that label so long that she still felt that way.
It had been nearly a disastrous appointment, and she wasn't sure she was going back. She definitely wasn't in the mood to share with her father that she had been lectured by the know-it-all OB-GYN who couldn't fathom why it was that she was having her first appointment at seven months pregnant, and why in the world would she decline necessary services like an amnio. Didn't she know she was practically the definition of high-risk?
But her dad had found the doctor at a private clinic, and she was willing to see Becca as a favor to him, even though she didn't even hold a welfare card yet. And if Becca had been tasked with finding her own doctor, she knew the best she would get would be at the free clinic on the wrong side of town, forcing her to walk past her greatest temptation.
Becca looked at him as he tried to sautée the mushrooms the way she liked them when she was nine – an entire lifetime ago. And she felt sorry for him; he was trying, she knew, and so hard. He had asked only one question about the appointment, and when she declined to answer, he had simply moved on as if it didn't matter. But she knew it meant the world to him.
Becca finally smiled and said, "I still like mushrooms, Dad." He nodded excitedly at her interest and then she added, "My doctor said I need to focus on good nutrition. I'm underweight and …" Sid furrowed his brow and turned to lean on the counter, anxious to hear all the details. She looked at her father and wondered if she could share it all – the blood tests for Hepatitis and HIV, the referral to an actual, honest-to-God shrink, the lecture that she enroll in a real rehab program, the panic at the thought of one more stay at a hospital with bars on the window and double-locked doors, the way her hands couldn't stop shaking when she held the blade against her arm, the way the tiny line of blood calmed her and made her feel human.
She looked at her father, so earnest and interested, as he set out two of his finest plates. A Viking gas stove cooked twenty dollar steaks, a small pan sautéed mushrooms in olive oil and garlic. He poured water, added lemons, and squeezed her shoulders tenderly as he passed by. A week ago, she lived beneath a bridge. She didn't know if she should cry or laugh.
Instead, Becca shrugged and said, "The appointment was fine. I go back in another week."
Mac lay on his back as he caught his breath. Christine lay perpendicular to him, near his feet, a position she wasn't sure how she had arrived at. She didn't much care, her heart still beating quickly. Before she thought better of it, she announced, "We couldn't do this with a baby." Then she winced. Why had she said that? The first statement in nearly two months about the pain they had experienced together.
"Sure we could," he replied fast, seemingly unaffected by the topic. She was glad for that; she didn't need to walk on eggshells with him. "We'd just have to lock the door," he said, a pointed reference to the fact that their bedroom door currently was open to the living room.
She waited a moment and then decided it was time. Time to discuss it again. "Sometimes I think we should try again." She didn't look at him, but saw him nod in her peripheral vision. It wasn't his opinion, it was acknowledgement of hers. "What do you think?" Mac didn't reply. Instead, he stood up and reached for his pajama bottoms. His hand reached out and tickled her stomach as he passed and she jerked away instinctively. He chuckled a little as he headed for the bathroom. She turned onto her stomach. "You didn't answer me," she called coyly. "What do you think?" she repeated.
"I think I need a shower," he announced.
Christine followed him into the bathroom. She wrapped a towel around her and sat on the closed toilet while he got the water ready. He moved silently, considering his thoughts. As soon as he stepped in, she tucked her hair behind her ears and continued, "I just look at my family and all those kids, and I want to have a big family surrounding us when we get old."
"We're not going to have a big family," Mac said matter-of-factly from inside the shower. "If we were to do it, we're only doing it once. And say it takes a year," he said practically. "I don't think we want to be any older than that for a baby." She twirled her wedding ring around in a circle and nodded. He was right, of course. "Here's my hesitation," he said clearly. He popped his head out and asked, "Do you want to come in here?"
She laughed but agreed. Mac always showered after making love. At first, it had almost offended her, but she soon realized he always wanted to be ready to leave for work at a moment's notice. He didn't always get the luxury to linger in the shower after a page. He preferred a clean body in clean pajamas so he could put on clean clothes before going to work. All that for dead bodies, Christine had teased more than once. Mac moved aside for her and she stepped under the hot water. "What's your hesitation?" she asked.
"My hesitation is that we'll do this again and it'll fall through. The last thing I want is you and I to dedicate another year to this as if it's the only thing that matters. And if it falls through again – and it can," he emphasized. "If it falls through, I want us to just accept our lives and move on and not regret going through it." She nodded; she agreed. The hot water slid down her face and soaked her hair. She pushed it back from her eyes and nodded confidently. She was sure they could do that, couldn't they? Just one more time and then … He interrupted her thoughts softly, "But I'm still not sure." She blinked the water out of her eyes and then tilted her head, trying to understand him. Mac was always thoughtful, yet decisive. He wasn't one to contemplate a matter for months on end, so she was surprised, frankly, that he was hesitating.
"But don't you –" She moved out of the shower stream so she could see him without the water filling her eyes.
"Here's the thing Chris," he interrupted, standing face to face in front of her. The hot shower pelted his chest and ran down his body in rivulets. "Going through this process makes us feel like we're missing something. Like we need a child to be a family." She breathed out as she heard what he was saying. He reached for her hands. "And more than anything, I want to feel – and I want you to feel – that if it were just you and me on a desert island, our lives would be complete." He blinked and then said somewhat bashfully, "And I think, after Italy, I feel that way again."
She smiled as she wrapped her arms around his neck. "I love you, Mac Taylor."
Christine sat at her regular seat at the long dining room table and tried to control her breathing. Last night's conversation meant they were putting all thoughts of babies on permanent hold. Mac made sense. He was logical and practical. and he understood what the stress would do to the next year of their lives. And it might not work out anyway. But he also spoke from the heart. He wanted the life they used to have; the one they planned for when they got married; the one that meant they could travel when and where they wanted, eat at restaurants that didn't serve hot dogs, make love when they were in the mood, sleep when they were tired. And hearing him talk that way brought it all back for her. They used to have shared dreams about the future, and those dreams had not included another member of their family. She missed those dreams.
So why did this bombshell at their Sunday afternoon dinner make her question everything all over again?
Mac's hand slipped into hers from beneath the table and he squeezed. She squeezed back. The topic bothered him too. She could barely breathe, but nobody else spoke as their eighteen year old niece continued. "The baby's due in November. And before anyone asks, I'm planning to keep it." Christine's breath hitched. Out of the side of her eyes, she saw Mac look at her; he was checking that she was okay. She clenched her jaw and finally dared to peek at her brother. Sam was looking at his hands in his lap; His wife, Emily's eyes were full of tears. Emily stole a quick glance at Christine but when they made eye contact, her gaze flitted back to her daughter. Christine looked at Mac. He was chewing his bottom lip.
After dinner, Emily and Sam and the family left early while Christine helped in the kitchen with her mother. Nobody spoke, the mood solemn and morose. Finally, her mother said, "She could change her mind, you know."
"In what way?" Christine asked wearily.
"Maybe she'll want someone to raise her child. Maybe she would ask you and M –"
"Mama," Christine interrupted. "Don't meddle in that," she ordered quietly. Her mother blinked. "Please, Mama. This is hard on Sam and Emily. This is hard on Laura. And Mac and I will not go down that road with our own family."
Her mother nodded, surprised at Christine's statement. "But don't –"
"Mama," Christine said sharply as Mac entered the kitchen. "Don't go there."
Mac stood behind Christine and reached up to massage her shoulders. She reached up with soapy hands and squeezed his. He kissed the top of her head and whispered, "Let's go home."