Hello again! Sorry this is a week late, a) I had a very hard time choosing a quote from all the wonderful suggestions (thank you!) and b) I wanted so badly to get this right. Thank you to Anara who provided this quote, I'm not sure if the story is actually directly relevant to the quote but I hope you like it!
I don't own the Mentalist. Never have.
Chapter Three
"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever." -J. Keats
She knows exactly where it will be. From under the bed she drags out a large box, its edges scratching against the floorboards and the book observing her silently from the top of the pile. Her fingers clasp around the familiar binding and it falls open habitually to the page she's after. For a moment, as always, she pauses to wonder how her whole life could possibly be defined on this one page. A beginning, a middle and an ending.
Her fingers brush over the first daisy, the petals frail under her touch and with a jolt she is sixteen again.
Teresa's father again bellowed her name, and again she prayed for the lock to hold. Through the door, the ceaseless pounding of his fists had numbed her back but the pain found other ways. It was an ache in her bruised cheek, it was a stinging in her eyes from tears she thought she'd exhausted. Through her bedroom window, the night was black; Teresa knew his rampage was loud enough to wake up the boys, but fear had stolen her voice and he wouldn't listen to her anyway. He never did.
It took Teresa a few long seconds, encased in her own panic, to recognise the silence. Slowly, she stood on shaky legs and wondered if, in her father's drunken stupor, he'd forgotten the cause of his anger and stumbled away. It was a hope that sparked for the briefest of moments, before a deafening bang shook the door and she threw herself backwards, screaming. Teresa reached her closet in a matter of seconds; shutting herself in, she felt for the light switch and sank to the ground in a mess of emotion. She could still hear him shouting through two doors. She could still hear her heart.
Subconsciously, she reached beside her for the leather scrapbook she'd owned since she was ten. It knew her intentions and opened to the last used page, where there was a photograph and a single daisy pressed between the paper. Teresa's mother smiled out at her and a familiar grief seeped to the surface, lingering for just a moment on her skin. But the smile also enveloped her, soothing much of her fear and fading her father's yelling to irrelevance.
The daisy was as beautiful as on the day her mother had picked it. Yet Teresa wanted more than anything to toss the flower out her window, let it float and dance along the breeze and not be bound by such a thing as life.
As the second daisy grazes against her skin, so do the fragments of a day she still can't quite make herself believe. Even now, almost a decade later, she wonders if she really just imagined it all along; after all, the story has never been sad enough to pass for reality. Death should have claimed more than one life, but it didn't. It should be pain and anguish that haunts her, that stares up at her now from the bloodied flower. But it's not.
She doesn't really know what it is, but it's always given her hope.
Their cars gathered in the dusty distance like a swarm of vultures, thirsty for the story they would inevitably find. As the black spots grew into definite shapes, Lisbon dazedly knew she should prepare for their questions but realised that she had no hope of answering them. No hope of writing their articles. Not when the only thing she recalled of the past hour was the blood.
'How do they always know where we are?' she asked Cho, but it was a rhetorical question and he knew it.
'I'll handle them,' he told her and she smiled in gratitude before abandoning him there on the front line, slightly guilty. Tomorrow, she would buy him a drink. Tomorrow, she would buy everyone a drink.
He was exactly where she'd left him, just as blank, just as numb. Just as drenched in blood, patches of sickly red that stained his clothes and darkened his hair and shone like glass in the sunlight. Lisbon went to catch his eye but he'd closed them, looking for all the world as if he were asleep. Fitting, she supposed, because whatever darkness he'd dreamt of on his couch couldn't have been far from this.
'Jane,' she breathed, and he opened his eyes but didn't seem to see her. Behind Lisbon came the thud of car doors as the reporters arrived, and she swallowed hard; she had to get him away, anywhere else but in their firing line. She didn't use words or expressions; she simply grasped onto his hand and gently tugged. Dazedly, he began to follow her. They couldn't escape through her car-it was now trapped in the midst of the media-so she pulled him around the side of the house and prayed that the body had been removed.
It hadn't. Through the discreet side door, two local policemen wheeled out a half-open body bag on a stretcher and Jane's grip on her hand tightened, his fingers beginning to shake. Her eyes fell on the body of John Reginald, on his wide, staring eyes and the three bullet holes in his heart, and her own grip tightened too. It wasn't anger or sadness that filled her, but a morbid sense of closure; after a lifetime of painting red smiles for other people, Reginald at last had his own.
Lisbon led Jane past Rigsby, Van Pelt, some more policemen and the old farmhouse quickly fell behind them. She didn't stop to consider where they were going, only that they were going and with every exhausted step the pain seemed to melt away a little more convincingly. When she couldn't hear the media anymore, she stopped; they sank to the grass with the old fence against their backs, silently taking in the scene. From here, Lisbon could see no person or car and the house looked as if it were on a postcard. Quaint and cosy, alive in the lushness of the countryside. She couldn't imagine something so bloody and dark happening in such an innocent place. Then again, this morning she couldn't have imagined something so bloody and dark happening at all.
Jane had lost his words the moment Reginald's body crumpled to the ground. Lisbon didn't know when he would find them again, but knew he would be furious with her when he did. After all, they were her bullets in Reginald's chest. Her anger, perhaps not so great or dangerous as his but enough to pull the trigger, so much more than enough. She'd stolen his seven-year tirade. And she expected hatred, as cold and frightening as she deserved. It was a moment Lisbon dreaded, but she found that enduring his silence was worse. Glancing down at her hands, she noticed for the first time that her fingers were streaked with his blood, and she wondered whether this was how it had always been. His life, hers. Not quite so dark, of course, but just enough to keep her trapped there beside him until the sun came out. If it ever did.
It took her many minutes to notice that the ground was dotted with daisies, and a memory poured from her before it could be suppressed.
'When I was a kid,' she began, 'my mother would always tell me this story about a little girl who had her own garden.' Jane kept his eyes on the house, but interest flickered on his face and she took that as her cue.
'In this garden, there was every flower you could think of except for daisies. And they were her favourite.' Lisbon spoke as if to a six-year-old, baffled by herself. What was she doing, telling childish tales to a man who'd just been through his darkest hour? But she couldn't stop. 'The little girl wanted daisies in her garden more than anything, because without them the garden wasn't complete. She knew that there were flowers in the woods across town, so one day she went and picked a bunch of wild daisies, almost bursting with excitement when she thought of how beautiful the garden would look with the flowers planted there.' Lisbon gently pulled a daisy from the ground, her fingers smearing the petals dark red.
'But on her way home she spotted a man who looked sad, and when she asked him what was wrong he told her that his sister was sick. The little girl felt so sorry for the man, so she gave him one of her daisies to cheer him up. Then she saw a little boy who was sad because his dog had ran away, so she gave him a flower too.' Lisbon twirled the stem in her hands. 'The further she walked, the more sad people she met and the more daisies she gave away, until she was nearly home and there were none left to plant in her garden. This made her sad, but then she looked behind her and all she could see were flowers and people smiling. And she realised that her garden didn't need daisies to make it beautiful, because it already was.'
As her words fell to silence, Lisbon found herself almost scared of glancing over to Jane. Hoping beyond hope that her mother's story had dented his numbness, partly because that numbness looked terrifying on him and partly because she had nothing else to offer. What he needed was childhood comforts, a hug and a warm blanket of reassurance to keep away the cold. But she wasn't a mother.
'What does it mean?' he asked suddenly, and it took her a moment to register that he'd spoken. Little by little, a cautious relief seeped into her.
'Well, I always thought it was about giving,' she answered honestly. 'But now, I think it means that sometimes things can be incomplete and complete, at the same time.' She was brave enough to face his gaze now, wondering if he understood the true meaning of her words and shocked by the glint in his eyes.
'It's an oxymoron,' he informed her with a smirk.
'Shut up, it took me twenty-five years to think of that.' And his laugh in response was one of the most beautiful things Lisbon decided she'd ever heard.
She spent months and months braced for the hatred, but it never came.
As she comes to the last daisy, she can feel a soft smile creeping over her. The flower is the newest on the page, and unlike the other two it isn't a symbol of death. It does not bring forth flashes of pain or fear, but the happiest and simplest memory of the three. A brief moment in time she keeps with her always, in case one day she can't remember anything else.
'Checkmate!' Della's exclamation echoed around the hospital walls as she set down her bishop. Leaning back against the frame at the end of the bed, she clapped her hands together in triumph.
'You know I just let you win, right?' Teresa hadn't done anything of the sort and was immediately greeted with a piercing stare, far too knowledgeable for a five-year-old. She could almost see the gears of Della's brain ticking over.
'You're lying, Mommy,' she announced after a moment, and Teresa sighed. She was far too much like her father. But before she could voice this observation, her stomach suddenly thumped from the inside and immediately her words fell away. Something told her that by now she ought to be familiar with the sensation, but try as she might her heart still leapt every time.
'What is it?'
'Come here, honey,' she murmured and the bed creaked softly as Della scrambled across. Taking her tiny hand, she laid it on her stomach and together they waited. Teresa watched her face as the baby kicked again, heard her gasp and smile as the wonder washed across her features. They met each other's gaze and for not the first time Teresa was startled by the colour of her daughter's eyes. Not simply blue, but the most beautifully pure of blues; she'd always imagined that this had been the true colour of Della's father's eyes, before hatred and pain had irreversibly stamped out the innocence.
'I hate to interrupt,' smiled the nurse in the doorway, 'but this came for you just now.' Teresa went to ask why anyone would send anything if there was nothing to celebrate or condole. But then she realised what the nurse held in her hand, and slowly but surely her smile spread into a grin. She'd convinced him that sending their current murderer to jail was significantly more important than being beside her for a few meaningless tests. But he found ways, like he always did.
On the bedside table, the nursed placed a single daisy.
'You shouldn't be sitting down, you know. You'll get creases in your dress.' The voice pulls Teresa out of her recollective daze, and she glances over to Minelli in the doorway.
'My legs were tired,' she reasons with a smirk and he sighs in exasperation, before his gaze falls to the scrapbook in her hands. He's seen it before, all too aware of what it means to her and he glances down at his hands.
'For what it's worth,' he says after a moment, 'I think any mother would be proud of you today.' His words sweep through her warmly, and she lends him a smile.
'Thanks, Virgil.' As she closes the scrapbook, movement flutters from behind Minelli and two children all but leap into the room, shining with anticipation. A second after them steps Grace, predictably stunning in her simple green gown.
'Mom, you look like a princess!' Della exclaims, her blonde curls somehow restrained into a soft ponytail.
'So do you, honey,' Teresa smiles, as little Oscar clambers onto the bed beside her. 'And you,' she sighs, 'what have you done to yourself?' She straightens his tie and attempts to pat the dirt off his suit. He grins up at her with the amount of excitement only a three-year-old could manage.
'I saw Daddy,' he whispers, like it's a secret.
'I bet he doesn't look as handsome as you,' she replies and he giggles.
Minelli extends a hand and she takes it, pulling herself back onto her precarious heels. While she still fights for balance, Grace steps forward and smoothes the back of Teresa's dress, arranging the train, checking the daisy pinned to her hair. When today is over, she will open her scrapbook again and the flower will adopt its rightful place beside the other three. Four symbols of life, silent upon the page and yet they tell her everything.
'How are you feeling?' asks Grace. Teresa goes to reply that everything's fine, but then Minelli checks his watch and straightens suddenly.
'Time to go,' he announces, and as Del and Oscar almost bounce towards the door Teresa's stomach drops from under her. Suddenly, her calmness is replaced with the powerful urge to turn and run in the opposite direction, stopping for nothing until she falls off the face of the earth and the world stops looking for her.
'Terrified,' she manages to say. Grace lends her a knowing smile, and Teresa recalls the near panic attack Grace experienced at her own wedding. It doesn't help the situation at all. As they slowly make their way down the hall, she remembers how her and her mother used to pass the time by dreaming about her wedding, about how one day she would meet a man who made everything else fade away. It had all sounded lovely back then, but her mother had forgotten to mention how utterly frightening the concept was, of giving a little bit of yourself to someone. Teresa's hands begin to shake of their own accord.
'Stop worrying,' Minelli says beside her.
'Easy for you to say,' she mutters under her breath, but then he holds out his hands and she sees that he's shaking too. Wordlessly, she clasps onto his arm and suddenly Grace halts the procession from the front; gently, Della tugs Oscar into his position and the world slows to a standstill. In the silence, Teresa stubbornly suppresses her urge to throw up, every inch of her visibly shaking now, almost painfully. As the piano begins its wordless speech, the doorknob turns from the other side and she takes her last deep breath.
The first thing she notices is the room, its transformation hitting her like a hurricane. Yesterday it was a living room, but today it hangs in soft cascades of white and green, the colours dotted with daisies in the most beautiful of ways. Behind the priest, the glass doors open outward to a view she is still not used to after nine years.
The second thing she notices are the people, the groomed faces which lay their gazes on Grace, then Del and Oscar and then on her with a hush. A number of faces find her through the rest; she sees her brothers, Tommy and Pete and their families, Jim whose fingers drift over the piano keys. She sees Cho and Rigsby in the front row, Rigsby's awe and Cho's usual indifference painted over with something she doesn't recognise. Teresa supposes that their familiar faces should provide at least some comfort, chase at least a little of the fear away, but she only shakes even more.
But then she sees him.
He stands beside Danny, looking for all the world like he is calm but she's long since learnt to see past it. As their eyes meet Teresa watches him change, watches the doubt shrink and the light find his eyes and that beautiful smile crash over him, sending a warmth over her skin. Suddenly, they are the only two people in the room, and she realises that this is how it has been all along. His life, hers.
And she stops shaking.
Thank you for reading, please review! Also, quotes?
TAJ :)
