"Your hands shake."
Molly looks up in surprise. They've been walking in silence for almost an hour.
"Did they do that before?"
Molly looks at her hands, then back at her companion. "No. Just a nervous tic, I suppose."
His eyes narrow in concentration, and he stops walking. "Are you nervous now?"
"Nah."
"But your hands are shaking." Sherlock doesn't mean to pry or nag, but he's caught hold of a mystery that actually interests him. "If you're not nervous, and it's a stress-induced phenomenon..."
Molly closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and relaxes her shoulders. She opens her eyes, and looks critically at the tall man before her. "They don't know. They didn't notice enough to ask."
He smirks, for the first time in almost a year. "They aren't me."
Molly laughs, genuinely laughs. "Yeah, I guess."
"What don't they know?"
"Lots of things." Molly shrugs. "They don't know I hate opera, or that every Tuesday I play poker down at the docks. They don't know I have asthma, or that I have no fewer than four bottles of hairspray in my bathroom."
"But your hands. What don't they know there?" Sherlock is too fond of Molly to be frustrated, but not for lack of trying.
"There was a man. A bad man, I suppose, but that didn't really matter. I loved him and he loved me and Toby hated him. He taught me how to gamble, and how to cheat at it. He brought me wildflowers once a week . He once tried to make me a cake, for my birthday. It didn't work, but all the same." Molly pulls her coat around her, and starts walking again.
He follows. "And then?"
"And then he was killed. I saw it coming, from miles away, and I think he did too. He might have been bad, but his boss definitely was, and that got him a shot through the heart in an abandoned warehouse." Molly lights up another cigarette. "I hated him for it, for a while. But then I figured, he had it coming, and he didn't feel to terrible about dying." Molly laughs dryly. "It's funny, working with the dead so much, I like to think I know their minds, their intentions and regrets."
He watches his companion in silence for several blocks. "It scared you. You were too close to the edge."
Molly smiles. "You and me both."
Molly takes him gambling the following Tuesday. He loses lots, but Molly wins more, and she returns to him his starting cash. She makes a quip about detectives and cheaters, but he doesn't remember it later. After that, he declines to rejoin her.
They strike up a comfortable new banter, much more morbid and dry than before. He likes this new Molly, likes the bawdy jokes and the cheating, but he misses her innocence. He wonders if she does, too.
John brings his baby, named Hannah, around to the flat. He has a jolly time following her around as John naps on the sofa, and teaches her to open the refrigerator.
He gets a scolding for this, the next week, but it was rather worth the trouble.