Author's Note: As I post the final, concluding chapter to this tale, I must give credit where it's due. It was my good friend LW who coined the term "cuddly sleeper" and who allowed me to use it here. It was the wonderful writers employed by FOX who created these characters and who have agreed (oh-so-generously) not to sue me for borrowing them. And, finally, it was the useless Nielsen and network honchos who canceled the show. (To quote Lightman himself: "Bunch of plonkers!") Still, the stories live on here.
For those who have reviewed and supported so far, thank you! (The bunny slippers reappear here just for you.) Want to share thoughts on the conclusion? Click that little tabby do at the bottom. Cheers!
Just to be clear (in case there is any lingering doubt), the first and second times that Cal and Gillian slept together, they slept together. That's all. Yes, there were two people with two bodies and four hands between them, but there was no inappropriate touching of any kind. Four eyelids? Closed over unconscious eyes. Completely platonic.
It was sleeping together, not "sleeping" together. Got it?
Yet no matter how many ways Cal and Gillian explained it to a ready-for-school Emily (and her suspicious facial expression – one that Cal observed made her look more like her mother than ever) the next morning, she clearly wasn't buying their logic or their carefully crafted arguments.
Cal ultimately concluded that, for a supposedly forward-thinking teenager who had already misplaced her own virginity in (what he still hoped was just) a thoughtless accident, she was being very closed-minded on the matter.
Sure, it looked suspicious and - to be fair - if he had been the one in the standing at the kitchen island sipping orange juice while Emily and Willie ("Liam, Dad!") came downstairs in a similar state of rumpled haziness to the one that Cal and Gillian arrived in, he would have hit the ceiling in no time flat. (In fact, he probably would have blasted himself all the way through the ceiling, the roof, and wound up back in London.) But Emily was a teenager and he and Gillian were adults and that should have been enough to end the conversation right there, full stop.
(If she had been anyone but the daughter of a high-powered attorney and a human lie detector, they probably could have too.)
What was probably the most unsettling part of the whole thing, however, was that, while she clearly believed that more than just sleep had occurred in his bedroom the previous night, Emily wasn't upset about it. She didn't even debate the shades of gray surrounding the idea of "sleeping together." In fact, it was the strangest argument Cal had ever had with his daughter – or anyone, for that matter. She wasn't disappointed in him or angry at the two of them. She wasn't betrayed, ashamed, or even seemingly surprised. Instead, she was rather matter-of-fact about both the situation and her disbelief that it was "just sleep, Em." So instead of having a traditional father-teenage daughter argument with screaming and arm waving and door slamming the way people did on television, they simply talked.
And in the end, Cal and Gillian could see that Emily left for school still believing that both times counted – which meant that he then spent the better part of the morning attempting to figure out where it had all gone wrong. How could Emily (who was usually quite logical and sensible) not understand that sometimes it was just impossible for people to sleep alone? Some people slept better with someone there to hold onto them and vice versa.
Cal, in particular, was what Zoe had always referred to as "a cuddly sleeper." (Actually, she'd referred to him early in their relationship as a "horrifically cuddly sleeper." By the end of their marriage, she'd shortened it to, "Don't touch me.") He couldn't help it, though – noted for a significant lack of respect for personal boundaries when he was awake, he was practically a human creeper vine when asleep. It was an unconscious behavior (literally), but it made for some occasional awkwardness in his marriage because Zoe was the antithesis of a cuddly sleeper – a fact which Cal later realized was probably the first nail in the coffin of their entire relationship. (He really should have seen the end coming on the morning he woke up hugging a pillow that she'd slipped between the two of them to serve as a buffer).
And to think all of the so-called experts said that opposites attracted.
Gillian, as it had lately turned out, was likewise a cuddly sleeper. (Perhaps even horrifically so.) Though she wasn't quite creeper vine level like Cal was, there was a certain tenacity in her unconscious latching – and an added peacefulness to both of their sleep patterns when her limbs were tangled with his.
It's rather funny, really. There is a certain level of intimacy required for two people to sleep together in the literal sense – perhaps even more so than is required for them to sleep together in a more Biblical fashion. (Cal and Zoe never had any problems with that part of their relationship, to be sure - before, during, and even after the collapse of their marriage.) But sleep compatibility is on a whole different plane altogether. It requires that the two people involved be absolutely comfortable with one another. They must find complementary body positions, achieve the same breathing rhythm, and reach the same approximate body temperature so as to remain comfortable for an extended period of time.
The two times they slept together (neither of counted in the traditional sense, of course), Cal and Gillian discovered they were capable of all three.
Despite the individual traumas that precipitated both instances of said shared slumber, in the morning when they awoke – legs intertwined, her head on his chest, their arms wrapped cocoon-like around one another – both ultimately concluded that they felt rested. There was no awkwardness in their friendship or their working relationship even though they'd clearly crossed the line that Gillian held in such esteem. (Apparently trauma trumped the line – a fact for which both were glad.) What's more, during the night there were no strange nightmares, no night sweats or instances of recalling the horrible incidents as vividly as if they were happening all over again that tended to happen under such circumstances. There was just a peaceful blanket of sleep that enveloped them, a blissful amnesia that allowed them to begin the recovery process.
But there was no explaining that to Emily, who preferred to draw her own conclusions.
So when Cal's (once again) bunny slipper-clad feet padded down the stairs just after 7:00 the next morning - Gillian close on his heels and both wearing identical versions of black crewneck sweaters out of Cal's closet to ward off the morning chill – the teen took a final swig of her juice, deposited the glass in the sink, picked up her school bag, and quirked one carefully shaped eyebrow in their direction:
"Sleep well, guys?"
From behind not-yet-caffeinated eyes, Cal's retort was hardly a retort at all, just dry and lacking in sincerity: "Very well. Thank you for your concern, love."
"Mm-hmm," she said, eyes flashing with a mixture of interest and pure, unadulterated "gotcha."
She stood between Cal, Gillian, and the coffee pot – a dangerous place to be – and Cal felt himself lurch toward her with a somewhat threatening step before Gillian's hand caught his shoulder to stop his forward momentum.
Emily continued to stare them both down fearlessly.
"Is there something you'd like to share with the class then?" Cal asked his daughter, head tilted sideways as he peered directly into her eyes while he challenged her to ask the question so clearly on her mind. (Even lack of caffeine couldn't suppress his ability to read her face when it was so legible.)
"Nope," she replied quickly, her stance indicating a lie but her face clearly telling both adults that she was willing to overlook all appearances of impropriety – no doubt in exchange for a favor to be named at a later date.
Gillian spoke at last. "Thank you for making the coffee, Emily."
"You're welcome," Emily told her sincerely – clearly mindful of Gillian's terrible state the night before – then, with a sly look in her father's direction, added, "I figured you guys could use it – you know, 'cause it was a long night and all…"
With the question now hanging openly in the air, Cal stayed true to character and quickly decided to shoot right past non-defensive explanations, march himself up to the coffee pot, and announce in a voice brighter than his rumpled state belied, "I didn't have sex with Gillian, Em. We shared a bed last night. End of story. Aren't you late for school?"
Gillian's sharp intake of breath indicated that, while she'd seen his off-handed remarks coming, they'd still struck a chord with her.
Emily looked directly at her as though for confirmation of his tale – and Gillian's usual professional veneer slipped.
"I… I didn't really want to be alone last night, you know?" Gillian told her, fumbling. "It wasn't anything… It was... It was like the last time…"
Emily's eyes widened in shock for the first time all morning and her head whipped back around to look at Cal to gauge his reaction – which, as it turned out, was merely to wipe a tired hand across his eyes and into his pillow-squashed hair with resignation. He very obviously had not wanted the conversation to veer into this particular territory.
"You guys slept together before?" Emily appeared to be stifling something between a laugh, a yelp, and a separate, sarcastic comment.
"We slept together," Cal said succinctly, sliding a full mug across the kitchen island to Gillian before filling his own. "We did not sleep together. There were two times – last time and one time before that. That's all. Got it?"
"It's not like it counts," was all Gillian could think of to add and Cal gave her a withering glare that clearly said, "Not helping."
To Emily, he asked with more brightness than he felt, "Should you still be here or should you be off by now?"
"I'm going," she grinned at him in a manner that was nothing short of victorious. She turned and headed for the back door.
She was closing it behind her when he added, "Oi – we're tellin' the truth, Em!"
"If you say so," was her noncommittal response as she vanished.
Cal turned to Gillian and leaned back against the counter. "'It's not like it counts?' What the bloody hell was that?"
Gillian shook her head, clearly embarrassed. "I have no idea. It was all I could think of to say at the time."
"The sensible one, the one who's good on the spot and she comes up with 'It's not like it counts,'" he muttered absently to himself as he sipped his coffee, brain still wrapped up in thought. Then to her, he said, "I tell you what, though - I must be having an off morning, Foster, because I have no idea if she believed us or not."
Gillian admitted to equal confusion. "I couldn't tell either."
"She didn't seem upset," he mused. "No markers for anything like anger or betrayal that I could see."
"Me neither," Gillian concurred, the caffeine slowly putting her back on her game and the scientific conversation assuaging both of any lingering embarrassment they felt over the morning's topic of conversation.
Cal sighed and continued to sip his coffee. "Then I'm really having an off morning because I have no idea what that even means."
He began to piece it together, of course. In characteristic Lightman fashion, his brain refused to let go of the question, instead preferring to grab it by the jugular and wrestle it into submission while he simultaneously helped Wallowski unravel the mystery surrounding Claire's murder. (And they said men couldn't multitask!)
Of course, Wallowski didn't exactly see Cal's inserting himself into the middle of what had now become her investigation (thanks to him, ironically) as helping, per se. Interfering was probably a better word for it, judging by the expression on her face when he wandered into Claire's apartment, saw her examining the bloodstain on the wooden floor, and asked, "So, what're you looking for Detective?"
She told him: "Some people read faces, I read crime scenes."
It was a dig but he let it go and proceeded to wander over to Claire's sofa while Wallowski examined the opposite wall for clues. Spotting an overturned photo on the end table, he gave a small smile, shoved his hands deep into his pockets, then flopped himself dramatically backward onto the couch, lower limbs flailing loosely on impact.
"You read this yet, Detective?"
She approached, noted the photo, then shook her head, confused.
"How do you reckon Grandma ended up face down by the sofa?" he wanted to know, tone coy.
Wallowski shrugged. "Knocked over in the struggle."
Slightly disappointed in her sudden lack of ability to "read a crime scene," Cal resorted to reinactment. He grabbed the detective's lapels and jerked her forward onto his lap as though suddenly overcome with romantic feeling.
"Wha-?" Wallowski yelped in surprise. "Okay…"
Her face changed then and Cal caught something behind her eyes – attraction that she was trying to hide and, amusing thought that was, such a response clearly indicated she still wasn't on the same page with him as far as the investigation was concerned.
The look was like catnip to him, however, and he decided to play it out:
"What?" he feigned shock and embarrassment. "In the middle of a crime scene? Foster'd kill me."
"Not if you don't tell her," the veil in front of Wallowski's eyes dropped and Cal felt himself swallow hard all of a sudden.
Hers was certainly an unexpected reaction... More importantly, though, how had Foster's name even come into it in the first place? Where had that come from?
"Seriously?" he asked her, dubious.
"Are you smoking crack?" she retorted, her tone a verbal slap to the back of his head.
He faltered a bit, mind still stuck on how he had brought up Foster in the middle of everything. Since when did Gillian (or rather, the idea of her) have any bearing on who he propositioned?
"Right. Yeah. No…? Yeah," the words tumbled over the top of each other before he regained his composure and returned to his reconstruction of the murder scene. "Bear with me – you're gonna love this one."
He grabbed her lapels again and pulled her into kissing range. Looking deeply into her eyes, he told her, "You're Claire."
Wallowski looked at him, then to the photo, and back to him. Realization dawned: "Claire had sex before she was killed."
"Oh my God you're good," he said sarcastically.
"Don't I know it," she told him slyly, the attraction flickering again in her eyes. She paused, then leaned in closer, breathed deeply, and whispered, "Let go of my jacket, Lightman."
"Right then," he grinned, releasing her and then finding his own feet.
But all the way back to the office, all he could think of was Gillian.
To a certain degree, it was natural, he supposed. It was her former client and friend who had been murdered and, because something bad had happened to Gillian, it had therefore happened to Cal too. They had a murderer to catch. That was what The Lightman Group helped law enforcement agencies do – and he and Gillian were The Lightman Group, no matter what that plonker Loker thought. So to be at the crime scene working on a case that was personal to Gillian meant that she was foremost in his mind. That was all.
It had nothing to do with them sleeping together, of course. It couldn't. After all, it had happened twice now and neither time counted.
Still, after Emily's reaction that morning and then the strange encounter with Wallowski, Cal was beginning to doubt even his own assertions on the matter.
Now, if everything he felt was tied to Claire's murder, then catching Zach Morestein and sending him off to jail should have ended it. In fact, Cal figured it probably would. They'd get Morestein arrested and he and Gillian could go back to normal. The line would return, they'd sleep in their own beds at night, and that would be the end of it. And then he could go back to flirting with whatever women he wanted and Gillian's name wouldn't come up anymore.
But it didn't work that way this time. Catching Morestein wasn't enough to end it for Gillian - and because it didn't end for her, it didn't end for Cal either. He stood in Gillian's office doorway, watched the expression on her face as she pulled a child's beaded necklace out of a box, and realized that this time, catching the bad guy wasn't enough. It wasn't even enough to sit down on the sofa, put an arm around her while she told the story of her relationship with Claire as a child, and reassure her again that she'd done the right thing.
But it was a start.
Later, Cal tried to find closure by making a few phone calls, then visiting Morestein in the lock up to tell him about the arrangements he'd made for the young murderer on Gillian's behalf. Instead of prison, Morestein would be sent upstate to a mental hospital where, Cal explained, Morestein would be treated differently: "Now, prison will only take your freedom. But that hospital – the pills they give you – they'll take your mind. Make no mistake: Doctor Foster will make sure of that. Personally."
But, satisfying though that was (and he enjoyed it quite a lot), by the time he reached home that night, he still couldn't get Gillian out of his mind, nor could he excise the image of Emily's facial expression when she'd watched the two of them come downstairs together. He'd expected disbelief or embarrassment to wash over the teen's face – but not acceptance. Not delight. And the more he recalled the moment and realized what he'd seen, the more he realized that Emily was actually happy with her conclusion that he and Gillian had slept together.
Moreover, she wasn't through with the conversation that had started in the kitchen in the morning. He'd thought maybe she would let it go, but as they sat side by side on the couch after dinner, the words, "I have a question" indicated he couldn't have been more wrong.
"Uh-oh - what's that look mean?" he was instantly suspicious. True to her DNA, Emily never just "asked a question" – there was always subtext to her line of inquiry, no matter how seemingly innocent she started off.
"Gillian." Yep, here it came: "Do you love her?"
It was a fair question, to be sure, but it was also one loaded for bear.
Still, he couldn't lie. And he decided quickly that he wouldn't. Besides, the situation didn't call for it.
"Of course I do, darling," he told her, using his best reassuring father tone in an effort to smooth the whole thing over. "Of course I love her."
"No," Emily shook her head. He could tell that she wasn't going to allow for smoothing - her brain had the same pit bull mentality that his did and she had this particular question by the throat. "I mean really love her."
He looked away then because she had lobbed this question right into the heart of him and he knew he couldn't brush it away. And when it landed deep inside and registered, he realized what had happened in the kitchen that morning and what had happened in Claire's apartment with Wallowski, then later in Gillian's office were all part of the same puzzle. Not being a puzzle assembling expert, of course, it had taken until this moment for Cal to realize that he was holding the last two pieces in his hands and just needed to snap them into place:
He'd slept with Gillian twice and neither time counted. But what he had only just realized (with a little teenage prompting) was that he wanted it to count. He wanted her there all the time and wanted sleeping with her to count for something – for everything. In fact, he didn't want to sleep without her anymore if he didn't have to.
Bloody hell. What a picture that turned out to be!
It was a long moment before he was able to give Emily an answer to her question. His voice was soft when he did: "Yeah."
Again, there was no surprise on her face, only acceptance – and maybe a touch of concern for him, for his happiness. She moved closer, curled into his side, and asked, "Then what are you waiting for?"
Once again, he allowed the question to register and, this time, instead of one answer coming into his mind, he was flooded with possibilities. She's my best friend – I can't lose that. She's too good for me. She's drawn a line and we're not allowed to cross it. I'm terrible at relationships. She's terrible at relationships. We're terrible at being friends half the time. We'd kill each other. I drive her crazy. She drives me crazy. We drive other people crazy when we're together.
He finally told Emily, "I don't have an answer to that one, love," rather than admit that he suddenly had too many answers and was afraid to admit the truth – that, having realized that sleeping alone no longer held any appeal for him and that there was only one person he wanted to sleep with ever again, he had no idea how to go about remedying the situation.
He needed a puzzle-assembling expert. Again.
Emily clearly concurred. She sat forward and looked him in the eye: "If I were you, Dad, I'd start to work on one."
"What would I do without you to run my life for me, Em?" he changed the tone of the conversation to teasing and she grinned, allowing him to deflect the subject at last.
"It's a good thing I'm here," she told him, "because when you're old, I'll put you in a really nice retirement home."
"What? I don't get to live with you?" he protested. "That's a knife right through my heart, Em. That's cold, that is."
She chuckled and kissed his cheek. "I'm going to bed. We can negotiate some more on your future care in the morning."
"It'd better be someplace posh," he said to her retreating back as she headed upstairs. "Lots of nurses at my beck and call." A pause, then he added, "Good-looking ones!"
The house fell silent as she vanished into her room and he took his time shutting off the downstairs lights. It was nearly eleven and the hum of the refrigerator echoed emptily through the kitchen as he rinsed a tea mug absently at the sink, then moved to lock the back door. It was as he did so that he noticed a set of headlights sweeping across the driveway – an occurrence that, after the events of the past few days, made him instantly suspicious.
A quick listen upstairs revealed nothing but silence from Emily's room, so he cautiously opened the door and peered into the darkness – only to discover that the car was a familiar one and that his heart started to beat faster when he recognized it.
"Oi, Foster – what're you doing here?" he hissed into the darkness, once more listening upstairs to discern if Emily had been awakened by the car door or by his voice.
Gillian stood before him in the glow of the kitchen light, her face still drawn and tired from the events of the past few days, hair pulled back into a ponytail while her hands were shoved into the pockets of her trench coat. Yet in some ways, Cal had never seen her look more beautiful.
She looked down at her feet, awkward and embarrassed, then back up at him and finally said, "It's going to sound silly."
But it wasn't going to, he knew. He could read it on her face before she had formed the words on her lips and he knew he wasn't the only one who had spent the evening working on a jigsaw puzzle.
"It's not silly," he told her, reaching out to pull her to his chest. She seemed surprised at first, then seemed to remember exactly who she was dealing with and her arms wrapped around him while her chin came to rest in the hollow between his shoulder and his neck. After a moment, he felt her sigh.
There was a little fight left in Gillian yet, though. She whispered, "I probably shouldn't be here…"
He pulled back to peer into her face. "You got another date then?"
She grinned at his silliness, then shook her head. "You know what I mean, Cal. What about Emily?"
"You let me worry about Emily," he cut her off. "She's got us all figured out anyway."
"You're probably right about that," Gillian agreed.
The look that passed between them silently then was brief and fleeting, but both understood it fully. It was the last piece of a very large and complicated puzzle snapping into place and it was also the scattering of pieces for a new puzzle, one with a color scheme that would no doubt shift and change as they began to assemble it.
But no matter what, there was one important thing that both agreed on: This time counted for sure.
FIN