"Isles."

"Maura, it's Angela." The voice coming over the phone was tense, but not in the same way it had been for the last few weeks. Formerly, the habitually hoarse woman had sounded scraped, wrung, and hung dry, robbed of everything but the ability to keep trudging long past the point of reasonability. Maura had felt the same, despite trying never to sound that way. With those three words, Maura identified something new in her best friend's mother, now her own friend as well. It seemed that something had filled her up entirely again, so full that she might rupture from trying to hold it all inside.

Maura's heart leaped. "Lei è sveglio," said the doctor, cell phone held to her ear by the helpful Vince Korsak, since her own hands were covered in fluids from the intestine she was examining. She's awake. Using Italian would, she hoped, avoid having Jane's former partner get his hopes up if Maura was mistaken; but for once, she knew already that she wasn't wrong, even before Angela's affirmative reply. "I see," she continued in more normal tones, bending back over the body lying open before her. "Would you suggest that I come immediately, or wait?"

"Somebody's there, huh? Is it Vince, or Frost?"

"The first," Maura replied cautiously. The two of them had developed an ability to understand one another, at least a little, as Maura had opened her guest house to Angela, largely due to having bonded over their shared pain at the uncertainty faced by Angela's daughter, Maura's best friend. "Have you discussed...?"

Angela's nigh-explosive joy was tempered somewhat. "We don't want to tell her about the divorce until she's feeling a little better. Frankie knows to keep his mouth shut. Are you going to be okay about that? I know about your little problem."

Maura hesitated. Could she conceal anything from Jane, when it came down to it? Probably not, but then again, she had done so before. "I don't think there would be any reason to bring it up."

"Good. Come after you finish up whatever you're doing. Frank, Frankie, and I are taking turns going in there. It'll be your turn whenever you get here. You don't want to talk to her right now, anyway."

Maura's deft fingers paused in their scalpel work, and she tilted her head, not that Angela could see it. "Why?" Beside her, Vince switched the phone into his other hand, looking elsewhere to give her what privacy he could for whatever this call was about.

"Because she's being a pain in my ass right now! She's bullying everybody about toothbrushes and baths and dental floss. Can you believe that? All her life, I tried to get her to floss, and it doesn't work until she gets shot!"Angela's exasperation was tempered by laughter, which the caramel-haired medical examiner quickly found herself joining, much to Korsak's surprise.

"I'll wait," Maura replied as she reined in her laughter. But as she nodded to Korsak to hang up the phone, the laughter returned – loud, big laughter from deep within herself, rising up as a bubble from the depths of a vat of molasses, slow and sweet, pushing up tears ahead of itself as Maura's body, leaning heavily against Vince Korsak's rounded belly for support, remembered what mirth felt like.