Notes: Thanks for hanging on for the dinner, I hope I did it justice. Also still bemoaning the overtime thing, but rejoice! I'm on vacation for the next week and fully plan to crank out a little more frequently. As always, please read, review, and enjoy.


Sharon sighs as she climbs out of the cab in southwest Brooklyn, turning around to pay the cabbie before looking at the house before her. It was a simple brick row house wedged in between an entire block of row houses. It didn't have a front yard, but there was a small gated off area where a few trashcans and a couple bikes were locked up. She could see the lights on and people moving about the house through the front bay window. It looked exactly like she had pictured when Andy had told her about it.

Her fingers wrap tighter around the neck of the bottle of wine in her hand before she climbs the stairs wincing with every step. It was only Wednesday and she was ready to count this off as the worst week of her life. She wasn't doing well with leaving the kids, especially for a conference where she had been catcalled and sneered at within an inch of her life. And then that morning while walking down 53rd street her heel had caught in a grate on the sidewalk, pulling on her already injured ankle painfully and making her twist it even more.

She'd made it through the first couple sessions of the day before leaving a little before lunch to go to the emergency room and have them look at it. After a few hours and a couple x-rays she'd been sent home in a boot with some mild pain killers and told not to walk on it too much. So instead of taking the subway over like had been noted on her message from Andy's mom, she'd ended up having to splurge on a cab.

Sharon bites her lip before lifting her hand and knocking on the door. Her eyes widen a fraction when it's immediately pulled open before an apprehensive smile spreads over her lips as she looks at the bubbly brunette on the other side of the door. From what she could recall from the few pictures of his family she had seen she was taking a guess that this was Katherine.

"Sharon?"

"Yeah," Sharon nods, her smile transforming from apprehensive to a little warmer, "Katherine?"

"Kate, please," Kate corrects, opening the door wider for her to step inside. The door opened up into a small entryway, similar to how her own house was set up. There was a table and coatrack inside the door, pictures littering the table instead of the decorative key bowl and vase they had. Sharon could hear murmurs of conversations in the living room and kitchen, "My little brother is the only one that still insists on calling me by my full name. Did you find the place okay?"

"Yeah I ended up taking a cab," Sharon says, thanking Kate as she takes her coat from her before hanging it up. Sharon turns and hangs her purse on the same hook as well when Kate finally looks down and notices the boot on Sharon's foot.

"Oh no! What happened?"

"We went skiing at my parents' new timeshare and I fell the other day going down a run. It hurt a bit but wasn't too bad, but I tripped earlier today and made it worse," Sharon shakes her head as she looks down at the boot on her foot, "It's been a long week already. I am definitely ready to go home."

"You should have called we could have had someone come pick you up."

"It's fine," Sharon waves her off with a smile.

"Well I've been trying to talk them off the ledge a little bit," Kate says as she walks Sharon further into the house, "Honestly the girls and I aren't too terrible. It's cliche, but my mother still considers Andy her little boy. She says he takes after our father a little bit too much. And she worries about him."

"That can't be too terrible can it?" Sharon asks.

"Dad had a bit of a drinking problem for a while," Kate answers, "He wasn't a stranger to the occasional indiscretion either. Not that Andy is a womanizer, but you know..."

"Yeah, I do," Sharon says offering a small, sad smile.

"Let me take you to the kitchen, Mom is almost done with dinner," Kate says, cruising Sharon past the living room and into the kitchen. Contessa "Connie" Flynn was standing at the stove stirring a pot of sauce that was on the front burner as pasta bubbled away in two pots on the back ones. There was already a salad and bread laid out on the large dining room table on the other end of the open room, place settings already set out as well.

Sharon's eyes quickly scan the kitchen before landing back on Connie. The matriarch of the Flynn family was taller than she expected. She'd assumed that Andy had gotten his height from his father, but his mother stood a good couple inches over her as well. She was dressed in a deep maroon dress that brushed past her knees with small white polka dots all over the fabric. Her hair was pinned away from her face in a low bun, the black locks tinted lighter with streaks of grey running through them as a few stray curls drooped in front of her face. There was a cross hanging from her neck, very similar to the one from Andy she was wearing herself.

"Mama," Kate says as she walks over and puts a hand on her mother's shoulder, "Sharon's here."

"Go tell everyone to get ready for dinner," Connie replies, smiling at her daughter before turning her attention to Sharon, "I'm glad you were able to make it. And you brought wine too."

"Andy mentioned it was your favorite," Sharon says as she sets the bottle on the counter, "I figured I could at least bring something."

"It's very nice of you," Connie says as she takes a look at the label before turning off all of the burners and lifting one of the pots to drain, "What did you do to your foot?"

"Apparently this has been my week for clumsiness. I had an accident skiing on Sunday and I tripped earlier today so I finally went to the doctor and they gave me this."

"Take a seat, you don't have to stand," Connie nods towards the table. Sharon hesitates for a moment before she steps over and pulls one of the chairs out, sitting down. Connie gets the pasta drained out and loads it into a large bowl before spooning sauce over the top and starting to mix it, "Andy says you work with him."

"Yes," Sharon nods, "We work in different departments, but yeah, I've been with the LAPD for a little over 10 years."

"How did you two meet?" Connie inquires.

"Ah…at a bar," Sharon says as she looks down, "I had gone out for a drink with my partner and Andy was out with some friends of his from work. We got to talking…football initially, surprising enough. We just kind of hit it off."

"Andy can be quite the charmer when he wants to be," Connie comments as she transfers the pasta over to a serving bowl before bringing it over to the table, "Sometimes, I'd say its one of the less than admirable features he inherited from his father."

"When exactly did he mention me for the first time?" Sharon asks as she shifts out of the way.

"I heard your name here and there over the years, generally when he would talk about work," Connie describes, leaning against the counter as she wipes her hands off a kitchen towel, "He never mentioned your relationship until recently, I didn't know about Emily and Ricky until…six months ago or so."

"I'm sorry," Sharon frowns, "I…I assumed he told you."

"He feels guilty," Connie shrugs, "He feels guilty that he's made terrible decisions in his life just like his father. Andy always swore he was never going to turn out like Patrick."

"He never talks about his dad," Sharon says.

"He wouldn't," Connie says cryptically before calling everyone in for dinner. Sharon scoots further into the table and pays attention as Connie points everyone out to her as they fill in around the table. She could easily pick out his sisters, the four of them looked almost exactly like their brother, tall, dark hair, dark eyes. Spouses were introduced along with the kids and Sharon could see why such a large table would be needed. The kids get sat at their own table, the only one joining the adults being the young baby boy in Sophia's arms. The parents quickly making plates for the little ones before sitting down at the larger table.

"How old is he?" Sharon asks as Sophia takes a seat next to her, her husband on the other side.

"Just a couple months. Mom said you and Andy have two?"

"Yeah," Sharon nods smiling as the baby throws her a wide grin. She could have sworn she was looking at a carbon copy of Ricky, "Emily just turned five in August and Ricky is one and a half."

"Do you have pictures?"

"A couple in my purse, I can get them out after dinner," Sharon offers, before looking across the table at Connie, "Has Andy sent you any?"

"No," Connie shakes her head. Sharon rolls her eyes before shaking her head.

"I have plenty of extras at home, I'll send some over when I get back," Sharon assures her, thanking Allegra as she passes the bowl to her. She spoons some of the pasta out onto her plate before passing it along. Most of dinner is spent with the rest of the family quizzing her about herself. Where are you from? What do you do? Where did you go to school?

By the end of it all Sharon wasn't sure she'd had such a thorough background check in her life, even when she had initially applied to the LAPD. After dinner Sharon makes her way to the coatrack to grab her purse, getting her wallet out before pulling out the few pictures she had of Emily and Ricky. She brings them back to the kitchen, wincing as her ankle throbs before taking a seat at the table. She hands the pictures across to Connie before settling in her seat and taking a sip of her wine.

"That's what I have with me," She says, "The top one is just from the Christmas we had with Nicole and Charlie."

"They're adorable," Connie comments, looking through the pictures and handing them off to her daughters to look at, "I see Andy but I see a lot of you too."

"Emily definitely takes after him with her temper sometimes," Sharon comments with a smile.

"She does ballet?" Maggie comments as she looks at the picture from Emily's recent dance recital.

"Yes, she's been taking lessons since around the time that Ricky was born," Sharon tells them, her insides relaxing for the first time since she'd gotten there, "She loves it. Takes to it like a fish to water."

"So Emily's in kindergarten and Ricky is..."

"They both go to St. Joseph's. Ricky goes to the day care, Emily goes to the school. Em went there for preschool and day care as well. It's just a few blocks down from the station, so it's easy to drop them off and pick them up. Sometimes Andy goes down over his lunch if he's working late," Sharon says with a small shrug and a smile. She spends a little bit of time talking about the kids before the girls begin to excuse themselves for the evening. Soon she finds herself alone in the kitchen with Connie staring into the bottom of a glass of red wine. She takes a sip and lets the liquid roll over her tongue, she couldn't deny that her boyfriend's mother had good taste in wine, it was definitely one of the better reds that she had tasted.

"I'm not going to yell at you," Connie says as she clears the table, stacking the dishes into the sink before starting to box up left overs.

"I didn't think you were," Sharon says as she finishes the wine in the glass before pushing herself up from her chair and pushing it in. She winces as she puts weight on her ankle, leaning over to her other leg with a sigh as she walks over to the sink, setting her glass with the other dishes before starting the water. She soaps up a sponge and starts to wash as she talks, "We know that what we did, how we went about things wasn't the greatest. I'm sorry that Andy didn't say anything to you until recently. I'd just assumed that you were upset with him."

"Now I am," Connie laughs as she puts food into the fridge, "It's the guilt isn't it? Just sitting there in the back of your mind all the time."

"It never goes away," Sharon says as she works, putting the rinsed dishes in the dryer.

"No it doesn't, just gets quieter over time," Connie says as she steps up next to the red-head, helping her work through the dishes, "When Andy's father started drinking even though he was the youngest, he was the only boy. He always made sure to protect me and his sisters. I always wonder if he wouldn't have fallen down the same path as Patrick if I had just taken them and left."

"People didn't do that then...lot of places they still don't."

"That's why Andy never talks about him," Connie shrugs and sighs as they finish washing the dishes. Sharon rinses her hands off and dries them on a towel, "I'm glad you came tonight, no matter how hard my son tried to make sure it didn't happen."

"I will talk to him when I get home," Sharon says with a laugh and a shake of her head, "Maybe we can bring the kids out this summer."

"I'd like that."


[TBC]