Saturday afternoon at Barney's was always slow, which is why Fusco had suggested the bar as a meeting place when Carter asked to see him.
The last time the partners had visited the watering hole, they had been celebrating the successful wrap of a thorny case that had chewed their asses for months. Erasing that one from the board was a surprising achievement, according to the captain's smarmy little speech congratulating them in front of the whole squad. Fusco felt their hard work and smart digging deserved a bit more than that grudging praise, but he wasn't going to complain and Carter let the faint insult go too.
Satisfaction was best enjoyed in private they agreed, so the partners felt justified in knocking back a few shots at Barney's when they shoved off from the precinct that evening.
That time it had been a short glass of neat bourbon for her and a perspiring tumbler of tonic water for him.
He was a little over a year on the wagon and her brief nod in narrow-eyed approval of his drink choice was its own reward. It mattered to him that Carter saw he had changed, gotten better than when she had first taken him on as a partner. It mattered a lot.
So when she called him Saturday morning while he was sorting his first load of laundry and mumbled a request for a face-to-face meeting, Fusco thought of returning to Barney's.
This time she ordered a tonic water to match his, a limp lime twist dressing it up.
He noted the change in her drinking habits and knew it fit with other clues he had pieced together over the previous four weeks. He wondered if this was going to be the moment when she finally let him in on her big news.
He tried to school his face so that he could look just the right amount of surprised – not horrified or anything, but leaning a little bit toward dismayed. He didn't want to give her the prissy maiden aunt pout. But maybe seeming too cool like some zoned-out hipster was not the way to go either.
As he pondered his options, Carter took a short sip, frowned at the tonic's bitter taste and then came out slugging, just like she always did.
"Look, Fusco, I want you to hear this from me straight."
Then she paused to take a big gulp of air and plunged on.
"I'm pregnant. About eight weeks now. It's…well, that's all there is to say, I guess."
Her resolve frittered away and she stuttered to a halt, her gaze pinned on the glass in front of her. She didn't take another drink, just fiddled with the drops of condensation winking on the glass, keeping her hands busy and her eyes averted.
Even though he knew what was coming, the reality of Carter's situation landed harder than he expected.
She was stuck in a harsh place – the toughest fix a woman cop could get herself into. He hoped she wasn't completely alone, but she sure was vulnerable and from the looks of it she was hurting too.
He wanted to assess how isolated she really was, so even though the next question was sort of blunt, he had to put it out there.
"You and… well… and the vigilante, then?"
Somehow all those snickering titles like Wonder Boy or Bane of My Existence didn't really fit a conversation about an unplanned pregnancy.
"Did John…?"
Fusco shot her a look of indignation and she didn't finish her question.
"John didn't tell me anything."
"You knew?"
"Yeah, I knew you and him were a thing. A while ago, actually."
After all, he had been the one forced to drag her away from Reese when the man was wired up to a bomb vest. He had borne the brunt of Reese's protective instincts concerning her welfare, leading up to their most recent confrontation right here in Barney's a few months back.
So yeah, he had eyes; he had figured it out, thank you very much.
"But… this?" She looked down at her body and he felt a heated wave of sympathy rush up his neck.
"Hey, I been around that block before, ya know. I remember how it goes."
Early on he had noticed the shortening of her stride, the looser sway of her hips, the increased flex in her knees. At first he just took these as little signs that she was getting busy between the sheets on a regular basis.
But then more things changed and he revised his conclusion. He noted that she took extra care going down stairs, that her lips looked chapped and creased, that the depressions under her eyes had turned cement gray. Her skin, usually glowing, looked pasty, like she'd been dipped in dust. Carter was rarely ill, never called out sick, and always kept her female complaints hidden. But this kind of special sickness he recognized right away.
Her changed appearance reminded him of how stunned his Anita had looked when they found out she was expecting.
It was more than thirteen years ago now, but he still remembered the faraway gaze of quiet panic that seemed permanently painted on Anita's face those first two months.
He was making a probie's salary, Anita's bank teller wages hadn't risen in three years, and repairs to the Dodge had torpedoed their skimpy budget. They were saving dribs and drabs for a down payment and had wanted to try for a baby in another year or two, when the tight money situation would surely ease up a bit.
Instead, Anita got pregnant, he got blindsided, and their marriage took the hit.
Unplanned, but cherished, that was how Lee had come into their life. An accident, one that permanently tainted his relationship with Anita, but such a happy gift all the same. The divorce still hurt, sure, but he would trade that marriage for Lee any day of the week.
Now he needed to know where Carter stood with Reese. He had sensed a rift between them in the spring, a chill in the relationship. But it must not have been all that cold of a cold war seeing how it turned out now.
"John already know about this?"
Carter nodded slightly, looking straight at him for the first time since they started talking.
"I told him two days ago."
She lifted her eyebrows and a kind of sad half smile tilted her lips.
Fusco needed to erase that anxious gloom before it overwhelmed the both of them.
"If you want me to hit him for you, just tell me. But you'll have to hold his arms."
She laughed then, a croaking grunt that sounded so much like a sob that the two of them glanced in opposite directions as if they had choreographed the evasive movement.
Saving them, the waitress rolled by just then to ask if they wanted refills for their drinks. Their eagerness for more tonic water must have goosed the girl, who hurried back on the double with the glasses topped off to the brim.
Fusco hoped they were done with the tough topics now, the big news already out on the table.
But after Carter took another gulp and then snagged the lime twist between her teeth, he sensed she had more to say. She pulled the rind from her mouth, pinching it so hard it split in two.
Then she finally came out with it:
"Fusco, I don't see how I can keep this baby."
He sucked in his breath.
He thought she was going to ask him about the advisability of an abortion.
But partners weren't supposed to have that kind of conversation. This wasn't a confessional and he was no priest.
Partners were supposed to talk about pensions and informants and promotions and autopsy reports and crooked lieutenants riding your ass. Professional stuff, tough things with fair solutions and results you could count on if you had each other's back.
Partners weren't supposed to talk about the other stuff. Like getting rid of babies. Or riding herd on the feral ghost you were hoping to tame. Or mending your trampled heart when everything went sideways and the taming didn't stick.
He had no answer to solve the question of Reese and he hoped like hell she wouldn't ask him for one.
So his release of breath came out a lot like a relieved gust when she took the conversation in a different direction.
"I know work is going to change… for the both of us. Not yet, but in a few months, whenever regs say I have to ride a desk."
She wrinkled her nose at the prospect of being corralled in the precinct house. He thought her downward half-grin looked shy, like she was trying to apologize for some kind of inconvenience she was throwing at him. So he took her line and tugged on it.
"Yeah, Carter, you know this means I get stuck working with Olson again."
"Detective Happy?" Her eyes squeezed in merriment.
"Yeah, that asshole has rocks for brains and soft-boiled gnocchi between his legs. A menace coming and going!"
They both laughed and in the altered atmosphere he hoped he was off the hook: Abortion talk sidestepped; relationship mess scooped up and tossed.
He felt safe once more. And she did too it seemed, because she brought up the pregnancy again.
"Fusco, there's no way I can raise this baby. You know that…so…"
She paused and took another gulp of tonic to wet the words that rushed out next:
"I'm thinking about adoption. Some days that's the only way that makes sense to me. Find some nice couple somewhere and give him to them when the time comes. But then I think of this kid coming into the world with so many strikes against him, I just don't know about trusting some stranger to raise him right."
She shuddered to a halt abruptly and Fusco thought she took the next sip of tonic to cover up the trembling he could see in her lower lip.
"Him, hunh?"
"Oh, I don't know that for a fact yet. It's just how I imagine the baby right now. Next week, it'll be back to a girl again."
She hunched her shoulders against the tide of emotions and then shook her head.
Fusco hoped to God she wasn't going to start crying on him. He flung his eyes around the bar looking for the waitress, for a customer, anybody who was female and had a good stack of Kleenex in her purse.
But then Carter seemed to pull herself up, her eyes welling, but tears holding. So he grabbed one of the paper napkins stuck between the ketchup and the salt shaker and shoved it across the table towards her, just in case. This gesture, feeble as it was, seemed to encourage her, so she kept going with her tender thoughts.
"I don't have a clue about how to find an adoption agency or anything."
"Me neither, never thought about it, really."
Fusco paused, the silence not as dark or scary as he feared it would be.
His heart was rising in his chest, threatening to rattle right out of his mouth as he stared at her. And a wire band seemed to tighten around his head too. Pressing the truth into him, whether he pushed back or not.
It was clear now. They were in this fix together, all three of them.
He didn't know how her crisis –- their crisis –- had become his too. But it damn sure was.
Maybe it started on that lonely highway in Oyster Bay when Reese chose not to execute him even though he should have. Or that day Reese set up his transfer to the Eighth and partnered him with Carter. Maybe it was the second he pulled the trigger to save Reese from the HR captain who would have pistol whipped him to death.
Maybe in truth, it was some smaller, forgotten moment when their fates had become so tangled up that he couldn't tell where one thread ended and the others began. But he knew this attachment was the truth, as sure as he knew his own son's name.
As he thought his way around that development, he could feel the nose of a solution poking out of the darkness at him.
"But you know who might have a clue here? Four-eyes. He might be able to help us outta this jam. I bet he's got sources where he could get information on potential adoptive parents, agencies, lawyers, stuff like that, people who handle those kinds of arrangements."
"Harold? You think so?" Her bright eyes and flickering dimples signaled this idea struck a chord.
"Yeah, sure. Why not? Just don't look for me to hold your hand or something during that particular little chat. You're strictly on your own with Glasses."
He didn't add that he wasn't sticking his neck out to wrap up Reese's business, not after he had spent all summer wrestling with that slippery shark.
Advice was one thing, a little hand holding he could do, but getting out in front by going straight to the boss? Not in a million years.
He figured the nosy little grind would be pissed to the highest level of pissivity at evidence his precious ops had skipped the rubbers when they knocked boots.
Finch was fussy and careful, a stickler for planning, even when he was bending the law like a pretzel. Fusco felt pretty sure there was no way sex and its messy fallout fit into the man's mission statement.
But Carter didn't act worried. In fact, her upturned lips and warm eyes said she was satisfied with his suggestion to consult with Finch, a concrete step she could take as she waded forward into these uncharted waters.
They finished their drinks in two more slugs each and while he took off for the head, she dropped a couple of twenties on the table to cover the tab. She had invited, after all.
The bone-white afternoon sun was still high as the partners separated on the sidewalk in front of Barney's. But Fusco felt a refreshing breeze whispering across his neck as he reached the corner.
Maybe the summer's relentless pounding was easing off, just a little.
