Chapter Four — There Ain't a Reason the ME Should Be Alone

At least the snow had stopped. Jane hunched in her wool coat, watching the plow remove inches of the wet, slushy, heavy stuff. The cold air was a relief after almost a week of oppressive humidity. "You sure we can't share a cab?" asked Gabriel Dean, a unlit cigarette dangling from his lips unattractively. Then again, he did everything unattractively.

"I'm sure, Dean." She sat on her suitcase. "My ride's coming, and we're not going your way."

Dean hesitated. "Listen I just—"

"No. Nuh uh, Dean. Go get a cab to your nice little hotel room and get drunk. I'm going home, and I really don't want to talk to you any more today." Five hours on what was supposed to be a three-hour jaunt, with enough circling to make any carnival goer puke, was enough. The plane was filled with delayed vacationing refugees, trying to get back home before Christmas, so she hadn't been able to get switched to another seat far away from the man.

He coughed, a little embarrassed. "I was going to say come by the offices after lunch. You're probably as tired as I am."

Jane glanced at Dean, looking for more meaning in that offer. Finding none, she agreed, and watched him leave. "Come on, Ma, I'm freezing," she muttered, turning to look back at the trickling line of cars. Already she was tired of being cold, though not enough to miss humidity.

Seconds later, her mother showed up. The racing stripes on the car brought a smile to Jane's face, and she quickly tossed her suitcase into the back. "Was that your FBI guy?" asked Angela through her open window, pointing down at the line of cabs.

"He's not mine, Ma. I ran into him in the airport."

"He's cute," Angela noted, then paused. "Well. He looks like he kind of used to be, sometime. Anyway, you want to stop off at a diner for a bite, or just go back to your place?" Already she was unlocking the passenger side by leaning over the center console. The one that lined right up with that snazzy (idiotic) red racing stripe down the middle. Giovanni was a good boy, she reflected, but his taste level left something to be desired. At least he had good manners, though. Too rare, in that generation, and it was probably only going to get worse with the upcoming ones.

Jane gave her mother a skeptical look. "Uh. Actually, can we go to Maura's? I'm not hungry." The flight attendant, while unable to swap Jane's seat, did slip her extra peanuts. Not to mention the two hour delay before they took off meant a nice dinner at the in-airport Chili's on the FBI's dime. Jane buckled up and exhaled, trying to will her body into a state of relaxation and courage.

Despite ostensibly paying attention to the route out of the airport and back towards the city proper, heading west, the general direction of Maura's home, the elder Rizzoli woman took a sneaky glance at her daughter, who was preoccupied with the lights that illuminated the tunnel from the airport. "Suit yourself," she agreed. "Makes it easier for me, anyway, since I've got to wind up there anyhow." A good ten minutes or so went by before she asked, "You got enough to wear? Need to stop off at home for anything?"

"All my clean stuff's at Maura's anyway, Ma," sighed Jane. The drive was slow going as they followed the plows down I-90. Normally she'd have suggested another route, but at least the tollroad would be plowed today. "Did she get... Is she doing okay, Ma?"

Angela's shoulder lifted and lowered in a very European shrug, the way her mother's had, and her grandmother's, great-grandmother's, and anyone else who would normally follow it up with don't worry about me, I'll just sit here in the dark alone. "Eh. Last night was really bad," she allowed, "but tonight she was in bed by eight-thirty, and I haven't heard anything yet. You should check on her when you get in." She put on her turn signal; somehow she'd gotten herself into a turn lane, and now wouldn't you know it, someone was coming up on her right and she couldn't get over where she was supposed to be. "Look at that," she muttered, slowing way down to let the trucker go barreling past, and then went over one lane. "Not one more car on the road but me, and somehow he thinks he's got to screw me over to get where he's going. There's enough road for everybody, jerk!"

Jane laughed softly at her mother's antics. "Pretty empty after midnight. Kind of peaceful. Makes you forget there are evil people out there." Turning away from her mother for a moment, Jane swallowed. "Ma," she started in a quiet voice. "It's my fault Maura's been having nightmares." Unlike earlier that day (or really, the day before, but only by a couple minutes), this time Jane was choosing her words carefully and not letting her emotions get the better of her. "We had a fight, and then I went out of town. And I'm not there for her when she needs me all the time."

"Did you do the thing that gives her the nightmares?" Angela wondered, unaware that in fact, Jane had done... some of it. Or been there. Or been integral to the incidents. But apparently she intended the question to be rhetorical, and as she was driving, missed her daughter's guilty wince. "Look, you can't be there for somebody all the time. Even if you want to be, it's not possible. You have to just do your best, and say sorry when you mean it."

Now was not the time to explain the whole Hoyt thing. More than likely, Angela would catch on to how stressful Jane's birthday had been that year. Nope, not gonna go there. And now was not the time to avoid the subject. Jane took a deep breath. "Yeah, but a — I'm supposed to be there for my girlfriend, Ma." She glanced at her mother. "I'm in love with Maura, Ma."

The car lurched forward as Angela slammed both feet onto the brakes, and Jane's hands slapped the dash to brace herself for an impact that never came. The one car on the road within a mile honked and drove around as Angela shouted at Jane, "You must think I'm some kind of idiot!"

Jane froze, eyes locked on the road ahead.

"You stay over at Maura's about four nights a week," Angela continued, less forcefully but not less loudly. "Do you think I don't know she's at your place at least one of the other three nights? You think I can't count the number of dinner dishes in the sink and the dishwasher when I go to get my breakfast? You think I don't see all your clothes in the wash when I go to the main house to do my laundry? I bet you think I don't even know what those sheets smell like, young lady."

Jane turned white, then red, as Angela pulled over to the side of the road and started shaking her finger. "You think I don't see the shadows on the shades in her room? I can tell the difference between long hair and short, Janie, and between a visitor with boobs and a visitor without them. And let's not even talk about some of the other stuff I've seen outlines of." Jane went white again; she'd known those objects would get her into trouble one day. "And the way you look at each other! It's like she's all your birthday cakes rolled into one, and you can't wait to get some of that frosting. A mother knows, Janie! I can't believe you make that poor girl hide like that. Especially when you're not any good at lying! Sleepovers, my eye. You are not subtle, Jane Rizzoli!"

Her mouth hung open in abject shock at her mother. Jane found she could excuse her mother's spying, and her chastising, because of the most important fact: her mother wasn't telling her she was going to hell. "That's why I'm telling you, Ma," Jane managed, her voice still small and quiet. She turned in her seat to look at Angela, "I'm sorry I lied to you, and I'm sorry I didn't tell you, but I wasn't ready. I was really scared about what everyone'd say and think and... I'm not making an excuse, Ma, I'm just explaining. I can't make up for making Maura hide us for a year, but I can do better. I'm trying like you don't know, Ma."

This was the story of Jane's life, though. Any time she'd wanted something badly enough, she'd had to lie about it and hide it from her family.

When Jane was twelve, she knew she wanted to be a cop. They'd had a stupid career day, and Joe Grant (then called Joey) had thrown spitballs at her all day. First they'd seen a fireman, then a nurse, then a teacher, and finally a cop. Everyone had seen cops before, last year they'd dragged out some ancient Officer Friendly. But this year, this year everyone in the entire class shut up the second the officer walked into the room.

Officer Sally Gribbs.

A female cop.

Never before had a woman in Jane's life commanded such attention and power. Here was the answer to the elusive secrets her mother hinted at with regards to female power. It wasn't beauty, or grace, or even getting a man. It was standing right there, with a gun and an attitude. For a tough Italian girl from Revere, a girl who hated humiliation above failure, the idea that she could be someone behind that badge was more than attractive.

When she announced it that night at dinner, Frankie had jumped up to say him too, and their parents ignored it. Being a cop was a phase Janie would go through, like Tommy wanting to be an astronaut, or Frankie (last week) wanting to be cowboy. She'd get over it and forget it and be a wife, just like Angela. Except she never did. Jane grabbed hold of the dream and used it to shape her life.

Within a year, she shed the epithets 'Roly Poly Rizzoli' and 'Frog Face,' and got more people, more new people, in the school to call her 'Punisher.' She played sports, she worked harder in her classes, and she never let anyone stop her. Hell, Jane Rizzoli even got into BCU. What she didn't get was a scholarship, so it was crappy community college for her and then, horror of horrors, she signed up for the police academy.

Wisely, Jane had moved out, into a crappy apartment she shared with two other girls in her college, when she'd signed up to be a Police Cadet. She wasn't a 'real' cop, but the three years she spent working there, and going to school for a grounding in the law, gave her a leg up on any other applicants. Cadets were picked second, after legacies, if too many people applied for BPD. Jane had never wanted to be a lawyer, but she had to admit the intro classes were interesting. For three years, though, she never told her parents what her 'part-time' job was. She just told them she didn't need them to pay for classes, or her rent, and it probably would have been fine if it hadn't been for a baseball game.

She'd just been directing traffic after the Red Sox/Yankees game, when her mother's shrill voice pierced the late afternoon heat. "Janie! What are you doing?"

Of course. "Working, Ma, we'll talk later."

"Later? You want to explain why you're dressed like a cop?"

Horns honked and some people were shouting, "Ma! You're holding up traffic, come on."

Her father had helped usher the family along, but that Sunday, dinner was an explosion. Angela Rizzoli was not happy to find out her daughter had kept this secret for three years, that she was wasting her college career, that Jane was risking her life. It was the most uncomfortable dinner they'd ever had.

"You're going to get shot and killed," insisted Angela, slapping potatoes onto Jane's plate.

As Jane scooped up half her potatoes and put them on Tommy's plate, she explained, "I will not, Ma. It's not as dangerous as those Kellerman books you read make it out to be." With a measure of delight, Jane watched her mother blush over the public recognition of her guilty pleasure. The Kellerman books, Faye or Jonathan, were more about fantastical situations than actual crimes. Sensationalist mystery, and not even good ones at that. Angela and Carla Talucci loved them, probably for the smut, if they were the ones Jane was thinking about. "Besides, more people die in car accidents."

With a splat, too many slices of roast hit Jane's plate, and no greens. "So why didn't you tell us before? Huh? You're ashamed, that's why!" Her brothers and father hid their faces and ate, Frankie snagging some of Jane's extra meat while Jane reached for the vegetables. "Frankie, stop eating Janie's food! Janie, don't reach across the table."

"Come on, Ma! Stop giving me so much fatty food! Pass the salad, Pop?" Silently, Frank Sr. handed the salad over, and Jane piled some on. "I didn't tell you because I knew you'd just yell at me. Ma, I really want to do this." Jane made sure not to raise her voice, in part because her mother told her not to shout so much (it wasn't feminine), but more because she felt being calm would help her case.

"You don't even know what you're really getting into," cried Angela.

"Does anyone, Ma? Come on, did you know this would be your life when you married Pop? Nobody knows what's next, but I want to do this."

It was so hard to explain to her mother that Jane felt like the forgotten child so often. Overshadowed by her younger brothers, who got the majority of their parent's positive attention. Jane knew her parents loved her, that was never in doubt, but it always felt like they wanted her to be something else, an invisible woman in an invisible job. Buried alive and never listened to, without identity. What Jane wanted was to be noticed, to be known and respected for being something bigger than just a woman, more than just that one thing.

And the more she worked as a cadet, the more she worked when she joined the force officially, just a few months after her fight with Angela, the more Jane got angry. The anger was fuel to her fiery passion to do this. She couldn't stand back and watch people be discounted or ignored for any reason, and that led her to be their advocate, as a patrol officer, in vice, and later as a detective in homicide.

She grew strong, more assertive (much to Angela's dismay). She stopped kowtowing to the way girls were supposed to be, and was independent. She even remembered, clearly, the last time anyone in BPD called her a nickname.

Joe Grant bounced into patrol as Jane was getting the morning announcement ready. It was her turn, her first turn, to give the morning's announcement. Nervous and excited, she'd agonized over it all night, and gotten in early. And here was Joey. "Hey, it's Roly Poly—"

"Stop it right there, Grant," she'd snapped with such ferocity that Joe did come to an abrupt halt. "I don't ever want to hear you call me that again. In fact, I want you to make it your personal mission to assure me that I never hear Roly Poly, Frog Face, or any other nickname you've ever heard me called, ever, from any police officer."

For a second, Grant was terrified, but then he smirked. "Or what, Rizzoli?"

Jane lowered her voice. "Five letters, Joey. Five letters." He looked bewildered. "N. K. O. T. B."

Now Joe Grant turned white as a sheet. "You said you threw that tape out!"

Jane took great pleasure in hissing, "I lied. Now you do it, or I bring it in and play it next time I do morning announcements. Capisce?" She still used that horror-filled expression Joe wore to keep her warm at night.

The rush of memory came to a halt when Angela added, apropos of nothing, "By the way, you should close the windows tonight."

"Nah, it's still warm," Jane said absently, still not quite having gotten her feet under herself, so to speak. "Maura likes the fresh air. I mean, um... Well, okay, no, that's exactly what I mean." Jane regarded her mother curiously, cheered momentarily by the buoyant feeling of being able to tell her mother that Maura liked their window open. Why didn't anyone tell her how great it felt to be out? "Why do you care if we have the window open?" We! She got to say we!

Angela lifted her chin and smiled as she eased back onto the road, anticipating the fun she was about to have, finally, at her daughter's expense. "Because Maura's bedroom window faces my bedroom window. I can hear her." And now for the coup de grâce. Angela had been saving up for an occasion to deliver it. "You know, if you really didn't want to be out before, you might have wanted to see if she could avoid saying your name."

Had there been anything in Jane's mouth, she would have spit it out on her mother's dashboard. Instead, she choked on her own tongue and barely managed a high-pitched squeal of "Oh my Gaaaaaaaahd," before shrinking in her seat. Angela's cackle accompanied them all the way home.

Jane slipped into the house quietly. It was too late at night (or early in the morning? What was midnight anyway?) to consider waking up Maura to talk right now. There was a routine to be followed as soon as she'd removed coat and shoes, a routine that she had devised over the last umpteen years of her life, wherever she slept. First she checked the windows and locks, the security system, and the stove. She looked at the furniture, assuring everything was in its place. Jane checked the dishwasher, so all the dishes would be clean in the morning, and the water and food dishes for the pets. Being December, Bass and Jane's little tortoise were hibernating, so she checked that the temperature was correct before finding Joe curled up in her bed nearby the door to the tortoise den, as if guarding the reptiles. Then, finally, Jane made her way to the bedroom where Maura was sound asleep.

Curled up into as compact a form as possible, Maura faced away from Jane's side of the bed, and her face was scrunched up in serious dreaming thought. I wonder if you dream of science, mused Jane as she quietly checked the closets and under the bed for boogie men. She followed the same routine at her own apartment, and Maura had never made commentary on it, simply watching Jane go through her process.

Not wanting to wake up Maura, Jane put her gun in the drawer, but not her lock-box yet. Technically it was against policy, but Maura looked like she could use the sleep, and the sound of the box locking always woke her up. Jane also didn't attempt to unpack, just abandoning her suitcase by the door and dumping her smelly travel clothes in the hamper. She could deal with the rest later, and with a measure of her regard for Maura's need to sleep, Jane went into the bathroom and closed the door before turning on the light.

From the sound of things, Maura slept through it all, and Jane went to take advantage of the sybaritic bathroom. Just over a year of kinda-sorta living with Maura had created other changes in Jane's ablutions. First was using words like 'sybaritic' and 'ablution,' but also was paying greater attention to exfoliating, moisturizing, and shaving even on days you pretty much knew there wouldn't be sex, because being sexy for your girlfriend was nice. Using Maura's froofy, fruity smelling body scrub was nice for Jane too, though she'd never admit it. The smell was comforting, and reminded Jane of Maura all day long.

The water was having a good effect on Jane, relaxing the tension brought on by a cramped flight in steerage. You'd think that WitSec would spring for something better than JetBlue and their crappy peanuts, or at least something where Jane could stretch her legs out. Not to mention that it'd been an hour in the car with Dean (who wanted to share a ride to the airport) and then what the GPS swore was a 30 minute drive to Brookline turned out to be another hour with her mother.

No, no, no. Now was not the time to get all tense. Jane washed the shampoo out of her hair, conditioned, and let the wall jets of the shower pummel away her stress. God, that was nearly as nice as Maura's massages. It was as she was washing the conditioner out that she started to drift off. Absently, quietly listening to the sounds of the house and zoning out just a little, Jane was finally, really, relaxing.

Maura's shrill shriek shattered the night. "Jane! No!"

The shout snapped Jane out of her shower-induced drowse. Forgetting everything, including her attire, Jane slapped the water off. Slipping on the tiles, she banged her hip, hard, on the shower wall before running out to the bedroom. For once, she was glad she hadn't locked her gun away. Snatching the Glock up on a dead run she took up a shooter's stance at the foot of the bed.

"Maura! Get behind me. Where is he?" She carefully swung her gun side to side, looking for an intruder.

"Jane?" asked a bewildered Maura. "Is... Huh?"

"It's okay, I'm here. Where is he? Or... whatever it was." Every nerve in Jane's body was fired up. Fight or flight had kicked in, and she was ready to take down a charging rhino.

The reply behind her was like being doused with cold water. "It was a dream," Maura said, her voice small.

The water from Jane's hair dripped down her back and she was, abruptly, aware that she was standing in the bedroom, bare-assed naked, with a gun. "Well. This is a little embarrassing," muttered Jane, lowering the gun. Once her heart rate returned to normal, she turned on her nightstand light, ejected the clip and locked her gun away. Then she sat on the edge of the bed and studied Maura, who blinked in the sudden light and studied her in return.

"Welcome home," said the woman on the bed, soaking in her own sweat, voice weak in acknowledgement of the awkwardness of the moment. "Thank you for waking me up out of that."

"That was waking you up out of it?" Jane pushed her dripping hair out of her face. "You know what, this is stupid. It's not like we're not gonna change the sheets in a minute anyway." And with that, Jane scooted in and wrapped her arms around Maura, hauling her in for a fairly wet hug.

Though she didn't expect to, Maura held Jane tightly enough to give away the exact strength of the nightmares in which she had been trapped. "Oh, Jane," she sighed in relief, "I'm so glad you're back. Even though you're all wet and will probably get cold." She sat back, keeping her arms loosely around her lover. "Why don't you finish drying off, and I'm going to get a shower. I feel clammy." Nightmare sweat just didn't feel right. She'd been overheated with too much blanket and too much thrashing. One kiss for Jane's shoulder, and then Maura stood, sheets dragging a bit as she freed herself from them. On the way to the shower, she cracked the window, hoping to let some of those dreams just leave, and take the smell of fear with them. "Be right back."

"Keep the door open, will you?" asked Jane, following for a moment to collect her towel and erect a monument out of her hair. "I'll fix the sheets while you're in there." Blanket and top sheet were ruthlessly ripped off the bed as Maura turned on the shower, and Jane thought a second too late, "Oh crap, Maura I was using opera setting!" The reference was to a commercial for the luxury/spa setting in the shower, with jets blasting from spouts in the walls and ceiling. In the commercial, the installation man was 'testing' the shower and practicing the most improbable operatic aria (by a soprano; he was lip synching, but after all, if you can't lip synch in the shower, when can you?).

The answering yelp of, "AACK! Yes you were!" was followed by the beeping of Maura changing the shower's program.

Jane couldn't help the smile on her face. "Sorry." She paused, looking at the sheets. Change 'em now, or change 'em after sex? God, I don't know which is worse. Yes I do. And with that, she stripped the bed completely, even the duvet cover, and pulled out the next set in the rotation. Jane also took a glance at Maura in the shower and closed the bedroom window. "Can I come in?"

"Always," Maura replied, wet through but finally smiling, as the water jets and Jane's presence combined to relax her. "But you are slightly overdressed for the occasion, unless you actually plan to put on pajamas and go to sleep right now. Which," she added as she massaged shampoo into her scalp, "you'd better not."

Undoing her hair monument, Jane picked up the bottle of leave-in conditioner, "I was actually thinking maybe I should stop my hair from attacking you." In doing so, however, Jane's newly bruised hip was aimed at her girlfriend.

The sultry offer to get in and join her died on Maura's lips at the sight of Jane's injury. "Was that the bang that woke me up? Jane. Get in here and get that warmed up." So... togetherness, but not shower sex. "And then I'll put some arnica on it for you." And then, though she didn't say so, sex would be very gentle. She knew how to treat an injured girlfriend, especially one who had heroically dashed out of the shower to shoot the monsters beneath her bed.

Jane followed Maura's gaze to her already purpling hip and sighed. Nope, it was not going to ruin tonight. Leaning on the divider between shower and the rest of the bathroom, Jane smiled. "I have a better idea. How about you come out here, warm me up, and you can rub whatever you want? I changed the sheets."

It was, as it turned out, a much better idea.

Wonder what else Angela knows? Review to find out!

The shower commercial can be found at http:/youtu[DOT]be[SLASH]wyrqog70QsU