When Maura is sure that it's love, she invites Emerson out to lunch with the intention of getting her approval before officially dating Jane.

She takes them to Del Frisco's on the water, and their table looks out onto the channel, and Emerson puts her napkin on her lap and looks up at Maura and says, "I had another mother before you showed up. She walked out on us when Colby was seven days old."

Maura, who is about to take a sip of her water, merely freezes, looking at her dining companion with what she can only guess is the most base form of shock.

"I-"

"Mama says she was really sick. That she had to go to get better, but she never writes or calls or sends anything. Do you think that if she was dead, Mama would tell me?"

Maura waits a beat to see if this is a genuine question.

"Yes," she says when Emerson continues to stare at her. "I think she would tell you."

The waiter takes their orders, the steak for Maura and a caesar salad with salmon for Emerson.

"You brought me here because you want to bribe me into liking you, right?"

This time Maura has already taken a sip of water, and she chokes on it. It is the perfect cliche. Emerson looks pleased with herself.

"I'd...I actually thought that you already liked me," Maura says honestly.

Emerson's smile vanishes. "I won't," she says, baring her teeth in an awfully Jane-like way. "I won't anymore if you date my mother."

So they finish eating, and Maura takes Emerson home, and three days later (so as to not make it seem as though Emerson has called all of the shots), she tells Jane that she wants to just be colleagues.

Watching Jane's face close up on her like the boarding up of a window will remain one of the hardest things Maura has had to witness. For the next fifty two days, they work cases during the day and go home alone each night. If Emerson tells her mother what she and Maura talked about at the lunch, Jane never lets on.

Maura sees Emerson once when she and Colby come to the precinct on a school holiday. It hurts to see how much she has grown, and how long her hair has gotten. Each of Colby's new phrases punches straight to the middle of Maura's ribs.

But she smiles and tells them they look happy, and then she retires to the morgue.

On the fifty third day, Maura receives a phone call from Jane's number and picks up to hear Emerson's voice.

"Are you alright?" Maura asks, her heart beating fast. "Emerson, is everything okay? Talk to me, darling."

"Don't you miss me, Maura?" the teary voice on the end of the phone cuts the doctor's heart in two. "Don't you even miss me at all?"

Somehow, Maura is in the car, turning left at the end of her street.

"I've missed you so much, love. I'm on my way is that alright? I've missed you like a part of myself."

Emerson meets her in the driveway.

.

There is a sad, little playground near the parking lot where Maura meets Aminah every day, as they pull into their usual parking spot, Maura turns to Emerson and tries to smile.

"Emerson, will you take Colby to play over there for a moment while I speak to Aminah?"

Emerson frowns, surprised. "What?"

"I want to talk to Aminah," Maura repeats. "Just for a moment, will you take Colby to play on the swings while I do?"

Colby cranes his neck, trying to see out the window. "Swings?" he asks, perking up.

Emerson narrows her eyes. "What's going on?" she asks quietly.

"It isn't anything to worry about," Maura says, sidestepping the direct question, "but it's not a conversation I want to have in front of you and your brother."

"If it's about us," Emerson says evenly, "shouldn't we get to listen?"

Maura sighs. "It isn't really about you, Emme," she says, seeing Aminah's car pull into the lot. "It's very difficult to understand, but...I promise I wouldn't do anything that wasn't in your best interest."

And after a long, silent moment in which the two simply stare at each other, Emerson turns and gets out of the car.

"C'mon, rolls," she says to her brother, lifting him from the car, "let's go get tetanus." She glances over her shoulder as Maura gets out of the driver's side.

"Mom?" Emerson calls.

"Yes," Maura answers, loving the word in the teenager's mouth.

"You bring us here because Ma can't, don't you."

It isn't a question really. Maura looks up to meet Emerson's gaze, nodding.

Emme nods too. "Okay." she turns away. "Leave the bag," she calls over her shoulder.

"I'll grab it on my way back."

.

Korsak comes to get her in the middle of the day. She and Jane are not working the same case, and she is up to her elbows in the chest cavity of a Jane Doe when he enters.

She looks up at him, and his expression has her pulling off her gloves without being asked to do so. She doesn't ask what is wrong, or what has happened, just follows him out to his squad car and gets in.

The crime scene is downtown, a female drug addict slumped against a brick wall in a back alley. Korsak holds her back when she tries to get out of the car.

"She thought it was her ex," he says, continuing more quickly so she can't interrupt. "It's not. I think she's just shaken up...she didn't ask us to call you but...I've never seen her get so close to a panic attack before."

Then he lets her go.

Jane is around the corner, squatting with her hands in her hair. When Maura kneels beside her, she sees that Jane is shaking, her breathing coming hard and fast.

"Darling," she murmurs, reaching out to feel for the detective's pulse.

"S-she looks - it - she-she looks just like her." Jane's words bite off at the end like she's freezing.

"Take a breath," Maura says gently. "A deep breath."

"She just left him. He was all alone in the hospital for two days before they t-t-told me. She just walked away from them. How could she just…"

"Jane."

"We can't leave them. You can't leave us, Maura. Promise, me. Please."

Maura doesn't make this promise. Jane takes her hand.

"Just breathe now, love," she says softly.

"She could be dead, Maura." Wild brown eyes swing up to meet her own.

"She could be dead, and I wouldn't even know."

.

"You think she's a saint." Aminah doesn't even let Maura open her mouth. She crosses her thin arms over her chest and fixes Maura with her dark, angry eyes.

"Excuse-"

"You think she's a saint, and you think I'm trash."

Maura shakes her head. "I barely know you," She begins, but Aminah cuts her off again.

"Those are my kids," she says. "I have a right to see them."

"You are seeing them," Maura snaps. "No one has told you that you cannot see them."

"I deserve to have them just as much as she does."

"And if you hurt them all in the process?" Maura asks, feeling her anger rising. "If you take away the feeling of stability and love that we've worked so hard to create-"

"I love them," Aminah says, although Maura does not hear conviction. "I deserve them. And if Jane feels a way about it, that's not my problem."

"You cannot use them to hurt her," Maura says, believing she has the full measure of this woman now.

Aminah's glare is something fearsome. "I can hurt her in whatever way I please," she growls. "I can-"

"NO," Maura says, overpowering Aminah for the first time. "No! Look over there," She points to the swing set, where Emerson is pushing a giggling Colby back and forth.

"Look at them!" Maura hisses. "They are why I'm here. They are not objects. You don't get to use them as though they are simply pawns in your plan of revenge. You don't get to take them from us every weekend and then ignore them like they are dolls."

Aminah sputters, but Maura has begun, and she finds that she cannot stop.

"Emerson was ten when you left, Aminah. Do you think she didn't understand what was happening? Do you think that she didn't miss you? That she wasn't forced to grow up."

"Jane left her too," Aminah says. "She left both of them."

"Jane almost died," Maura says furiously. "Jane brought down a serial killer and almost died."

"And that absolves her of how incredibly shitty she was?" Aminah yells. "I was pregnant with her son, and she didn't give a fucking shit. She wouldn't look at me. She wouldn't touch me. She spent all her time and energy making sure Emerson was happy, making sure Emerson was safe. She drank all the time. She didn't come home, and when she did…" Aminah trails off, looking at nothing.

"So I gave her what she wanted and I walked away." The other woman glances up at her children. Emerson is watching them, her face a mask of anger.

"I thought she would come after me," Aminah says, her voice so quiet that Maura doesn't know if she's heard correctly.

"I thought she would come and get me, and we would...I...but she just let me disappear."

"You were an adult," Maura says, though the mad anger from moments ago has passed. "You are an adult, and they are just children. You cannot blame her for choosing them. You shouldn't."

And Aminah looks up at Maura then, her eyes wide and slightly shiny in the fading afternoon.

"But I do," she says boldly. "I do blame her, Dr. Isles."

Jane cross-legged on the couch, head bowed. "I was weak," she says. "I was...scared."

"It was years ago," Maura says quietly.

"My job hasn't changed."

"You have," Maura counters softly. She leans forward to put a hand on Jane's knee. "You've changed, Jane."

"It was hell, for her, I think. I...she...I think she thought we were forever."

"It's okay that she thought that, and it's okay that it wasn't."

Jane presses her fingers together. "I've changed," she whispers, a reminder to herself. "I'm different now."

"Yes."

Jane looks up at her, eyes wet but determined. "I think we could work though," she says. "I...want us to."

Maura closes her eyes and lets those words fill her up to overflowing.

"You can't use them," Maura says. "I don't care what you've been through or how much you hate Jane. You cannot use our children to get back at her. I won't let you."

Aminah blinks. "You love Jane enough to threaten me?"

Maura shakes her head. "I love my family in its entirety to see that you are still woefully misguided. You have suffered, and you are still hurting, but that in no way justifies the pain you wish to cause others."

"She put her fist through the wall once," Aminah says, watching Maura's face. "She put her fist through the wall six inches from my head. And the next day she comes downstairs, hungover as fuck, and she says, 'where did that hole come from?"

Maura sighs. "Aminah."

"That's the woman you're protecting. That's the woman you think deserves all you give her."

"No. It isn't," Maura says calmly. "It's the woman you left, but it's not who she is now."

Aminah just scoffs.

The last box is one labeled "Albums." it sits at the door to the basement for almost six months, unopened and unmoving.

Jane and Maura return from work one evening to find Emerson sitting next to the unopened box, elbows on her knees, just looking.

"Hey, kiddo," Jane says, hanging up her jacket and coming to squat next to her. "Whatcha doin?"

"I'm not going to write her anymore," Emerson says. "It's stupid."

Jane eases into a sitting position. "It's not stupid," she says quietly. "I'm sorry she hasn't written back."

"Maybe it's not even her email anymore. Or maybe she just doesn't want to talk to me." Emerson scowls at the cardboard box. "I hate her."

"No you don't," Jane says.

"I do," Emerson insists. "I do."

Jane sighs. "I hope not," she says softly. "Hate is a really hard thing to forget."

Emerson looks at her mother, questioning.

"Feeling hate, learning to hate other people? It's really dangerous," Jane continues. "It starts to eat you up and take you over, and soon you don't know anything else. Soon you start to hate stupid things like...the light that always turns red at the end of the street, or the woman in the cafeteria who forgets your name every day…" Maura watches Jane hesitate for a millisecond. "The people who are just trying to help you."

Emerson looks at her. "Is that how you felt when you were sick?"

Jane glances at Maura before nodding. "And before sometimes too. I had to forget all of the mean and ugly stuff I'd learned. I had to replace the entire set in my head. It was really hard."

Emerson looks into her lap. She is fourteen in two weeks, and her features are beginning to thin into the teenage version of her mother; a little sour and hinting at beautiful.

"You figured it out," she says.

Jane nods. "You helped," she answers, smiling when Emme looks up at her, surprised. "Yeah. You and Colby and Maura. You all helped me unlearn that lesson."

Emerson is quiet for a long moment.

"I don't want to look at these albums yet," she says.

"Okay," Jane replies.

Emerson leans against her, a show of affection that is rare these days.

"But let's not move them yet."

Jane looks surprised when all three members of her family come back in the door that evening. Emerson gives her a little smile and then heads up to her room, tapping at her phone as she goes.

Colby jumps into Jane's arms, hugging her.

"Hi, Mama!" he says.

"Well hello!" she says, looking over his head at Maura. "What a nice surprise."

"I'm a present!" Colby giggles. "I'm a surprise present!" He squirms down and goes over to the refrigerator. "Can I bite an apple?"

Jane smiles, helping him pull the door open. "Sure, Mr. Present," she says.

It isn't until almost an hour later that she gets the chance to question Maura.

"I'm not going to have to hide a body am I?" her smile is only half joking.

"Please," Maura says, pretending to be wounded. "If I'd committed murder, do you believe you would need to help me hide the evidence? There is still an Easter Egg in this house that no one can locate."

Jane laughs. "Touche."

"She's coming for dinner tomorrow," Maura says, and although Jane tenses noticeably, she doesn't respond immediately.

"Oh..kay."

"We spoke. And we decided that it's time she unlearned a couple of lessons."

It takes a few seconds for Jane to place the memory that those words evoke, but when she does, she smiles faintly and leans back so that she can put her arm around Maura.

"I know a really good teacher," she says.

"Two really good teachers," Maura amends.

"Four," Jane counters.

And Maura laughs. "Touche."