Chapter Nine
Family Reunion
Rick and Kate spent the balance of the weekend preparing the loft for the second arrival of Jessica Bennet. In between her manic bursts of cleaning, sometimes rearranging the living room multiple times, Rick could tell that Kate was worrying about something, and given how much she had been chewing on her lower lip he could tell it was really eating at her. He wanted to help her, but he knew she wouldn't open up to him until she was ready, just like she always did. She was on the verge of tears when she finally came to him.
"Have I wasted my life?" She asked. "I spent nearly thirteen years obsessing over a murder that never happened. I feel like such a fool."
"Kate...no..." Rick breathed, pulling her into a tight embrace. "You had no way of knowing at the time, if the parts of her story she told me were accurate even she didn't know who she was back then."
"But I gave up almost everything to chase this," Kate replied, tears spilling unbidden down her cheeks and her breathing began to hitch, "I...I killed people chasing it...I almost died chasing it...and...it was all...it was all...for nothing...nothing!"
Kate broke down sobbing quietly in his arms as Rick eased them both down onto the couch, pulled her into his lap and rocked her gently, running his fingers softly through her hair, not knowing how to fix this, how to make it better, so he did the only thing he could do. He just held her.
The rest would be figured out when Johanna Beckett made her appearance on Tuesday. He knew in his heart, that this wasn't going to be a very happy reunion...for any of them. Any meaningful relationship with Kate's mother would simply have to be built carefully over time.
4:30 PM Tuesday afternoon.
Jessica Bennet (aka Johanna Beckett) was due to arrive shortly and Kate was quietly freaking out. Rick was doing his best trying to calm her but was making little progress on that front, so he finally resorted to bringing her the anti-anxiety pill, which for once, she took without complaint.
Jim was supposed to be arriving soon as well and Kate was worried about his reaction to Jessica, concerned that being face to face with her might set off a relapse. She had his Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor on speed dial just in case.
Martha was in the guest bathroom putting on her makeup. When she was finished she slipped the Walther PPK out of her purse and checked the action, before engaging the safety and returning it to her purse. Though Richard Webb, himself had (tentatively) vouched that Jessica was not a danger to them, something about the woman simply rubbed her the wrong way.
She could never have done what Jessica did. She knew through painful experience how it felt to be the one left behind. She could not even entertain the notion of inflicting that pain on another human being, much less the people she loved the most. It quite honestly insulted all of her sensibilities as a mother.
She did not envy the woman, not one tiny little bit, she had a lot of fences to mend. Richard Webb was certainly not done mending all of his either, but she did give him points for trying.
Her final verdict on Jessica Bennet would hang on how she handled herself in the next few hours. Even the best case scenario she could come up with did not predict this ending well. There was too much emotion involved, too many unknown variables.
'The woman had better be able to handle initial rejection with at least a certain amount of grace,' Martha mused to herself, 'or this was going to end very badly...for everybody.'
Fifteen minutes later
Jessica Bennet had just entered the lobby when she saw a familiar face talking with the doorman and a particularly large gentleman of obvious Russian origin. It would seem that Agent Rodgers wasn't taking any chances on her slipping past the doorman like she did last time.
"Not one of my better impulse decisions in light of how Katie reacted." She thought to herself, not realizing she had whispered it out loud.
Jim Beckett turned at the sound of her voice and blanched at the sight of her, like he had seen a ghost.
"J-Johanna?" He breathed, recognizing her immediately. "Rick told me you...were alive, but I...I couldn't bring myself to believe...not after so much time.."
"Jim..." She whispered, putting out her hand, which he took in both of his, "you look much better than the last time I saw you."
"What the hell happened to you, Jo?" Jim asked, pain and more than a little anger evident in his tone and expression, though he didn't release her hand from his, almost afraid she would disappear again.
"Jim...I..." she began, fighting back tears she had sworn she wasn't going to cry, "I know you want...no you need...answers...and you deserve them, but...Katie needs to hear this too, and this is very painful for me, and I'm not sure I have it in me to do this more than once."
This seemed to calm Jim a little and he schooled his features as if in a courtroom "Okay Jo, until we get upstairs then."
"I promise, Jim," she said quietly, "soon you'll know everything, for better or for worse, and so will Katie and Rick."
Jessica was not looking forward to this discussion at all, as it was going to dredge things up she would rather keep buried, but she knew it was necessary if she wanted any kind of relationship with her daughter.
She knew parts of it were going to hit her husband, Rick where he lives, but that secret had been gnawing away at her conscience for over a decade, he deserved to know the truth about what happened to Alexis. She hoped he didn't ask too many questions, because she had just promised Jim she would be completely honest, and she couldn't back out on that promise now. Some of the secrets she kept were not necessarily hers to reveal. But she would cross that bridge when she got to it.
"Miss Bennet." Said the mountain of a man in a thick Muskovite accent, with not a trace of malice in his tone. "You are early. I call upstairs to tell them that you are here. You will behave this time..be kulʹturnyy da?"
"Da, Sergei, ya budu khorosho, ne volnuytesʹ." (Yes Sergei, I will be good, do not worry) Jessica replied in fluent unaccented Russian.
"I see you and Mr. Beckett have met." he stated to Jessica. but whispered to Jim, "Is okay, da? " he asked Jim.
"Everything is fine, Sergei, thank you." Jim replied
They were saved from further awkward conversation by the arrival of the elevator, which Sergei motioned them toward.
"Bennet?" Jim asked, an eyebrow raised.
"Jessica Bennet is the name I've been going by the last sixteen years. It's a long story."
"I'm sure." He replied as the elevator doors slid shut.
When he was sure that the elevator was completely away, Sergei stepped out of earshot of Eduardo the doorman, pulled out his cell phone, and dialed Richard Webb's private line.
"Richard, it's Sergei. She's here and she already met with her husband." He said in clean, unaccented English.
"Thank you, Sergei, old friend. Keep me apprised of any developments, Hawk is on station nearby if things get out of hand and you need to pull her out, but I don't expect much more than some heated family drama."
"Of course, my old friend, if you are back in New York next week, my granddaughter has a violin recital. She is very good...even by Russian standards, though I do admit to some bias on the matter."
"Thank you, Sergei, if my duties permit I would love to."
A short time later
Jessica had known this was going to be hard. The beginning of her story had been the hardest, as she had very little memory of how this story started, so many of her memories of those early days surrounding her transformation were simply...gone. Kate seemed to soften a little and so had Jim to learn that this was something that had been doneto herand not a path she had chosen.
She could see the mild horror in her daughter's eyes when she recounted the murders she had committed while she was another person entirely, how she and Rick had found certain names familiar, Hal Lockwood and Dick Coonan, being chief among them. The split second when Rick and Katie turned and looked at each other when those names were mentioned spoke volumes.
Martha was watching the whole time, as if she already knew the story and was merely assessing her delivery and performance as if she were critiquing one of her acting students. Webb had obviously filled her in, then swore her to secrecy. At least the bulky purse she kept the Walther PPK in was nowhere in sight.
It was when she got to the part about Alexis, the sad, sick little girl who cried out her mommy. The one she had been ordered to kill, but couldn't. The one who had changed everything, made her see that what she was doing was wrong, that it wasn't her, that she noticed she had truly gotten Rick's attention.
'He really didn't know' she thought to herself.
The completely stricken look on his face when she got to the part of the story where she had arrived at the hospital too late, when she saw them leaving the hospital, and she knew that Alexis was going to die that night. That haunted, crestfallen, broken look on his face tore her heart in two.
Even through his tears, she could tell that he was grateful that she hadn't gone through with it, couldn't go through with it, that she had at least tried to protect his daughter when he couldn't. She saw Kate grab his hand and squeeze it lovingly in a show of support, tears in her own eyes, and a little anger too for what had been done to the man she loved.
She paused her story long enough to watch the two of them together, tears in both of their eyes, their hands clutched together, foreheads touching, as if each was drawing strength from the other, simply through physical contact. Kate's barely audible whispers of comfort to her husband as he openly mourned the daughter who had obviously been his entire world. A world William Bracken had shattered thoughtlessly for his own selfish ends without a care for the damage it would cause. Little knowing he was forging the instruments of his own doom.
It was Rick's turn to comfort Kate, when she got to the meeting with Roy Montgomery.
"I'd always assumed he was being blackmailed by whomever was behind this," Kate said, tears in her eyes, her former mentor redeemed a little in her eyes, "that he was secretly helping them stay hidden to keep me safe, but he was doing it for you? He knew?"
"Yes, Katie, he knew," Jessica replied. "but I swore him to secrecy, begged him to help keep you safe. Told him how to approach getting you to stop by allowing you to fail, letting you see for yourself how futile the search was. He didn't tell me he knew it was Senator Bracken though. Obviously that was the information Roy used to keep him at bay."
When she got to the part where she had dragged Jim out of the bar and set him on the road to rehab she truly caught Jim's attention
"That was real?" Jim asked, his voice barely above a whisper, "I'd always assumed it was a hallucination, a whiskey induced dream..." He trailed off, unable to continue.
"I knew I couldn't go back yet...not without putting you both in grave danger." she told him gently, "I knew Katie was going to need you too much to let you self destruct, and I hoped to come back one day when all of this was set right. I'm sorry it took me so long."
It wasn't until she got to the end of her tale that she was met with hostility, when she had broken Senator Bracken out of prison and killed him. Most people had been all too willing to believe that he had been killed by one of his former mercenaries. Kate practically seethed over what she had done.
"Mother...how could you do that?" Kate hissed at her, her eyes alight with fury, "I wanted justice...I wanted him to pay for all of the harm he had caused...not vengeance...not a bullet in the head. I wanted him to stand trial for what he did, to be convicted, to spend the rest of his life in prison, knowing he had been beaten. That he had lost."
"Katie, I couldn't accept that," Jessica replied, "he might have found a way to wriggle out of it, that his father, with all of his money and connections would get him out and then you would never be safe. He was a small, petty, vindictive man, look at what he did to me. He would have never left you in peace, and I wanted this to be over."
"Mother, what happened to you?" Kate hissed at her, "You used to believe in the law, in justice..not revenge."
"I'm sorry, Katie, but I'm just not that person, I don't believe in blind justice anymore."
"Except Richard Webb had that handled. As a matter of fact he had expressly ordered you not to harm William Bracken. He and Bracken's father had a deal, and you broke it." Martha finally stated angrily. "What you did very nearly backfired! If it hadn't been for Richard's quick thinking, what you did could have killed us all!"
"It's easy to say that now, knowing what was going on, but Rick's father played his cards too close to the vest. A few of us thought he was merely being sentimental, not finishing Bracken because of his friendship with his father. That he wasn't thinking clearly, so a few of us decided to deal with it for him, so he wouldn't have his godson's blood on his hands. We thought we were doing it for him."
"My what?" Rick sputtered for a moment, "Richard Webb is my what?"
It took Jessica a moment to realize what she had just blurted out without meaning to.
Rick looked angrily at his mother and said, "You knew?"
"Yes, Richard, of course I knew, I slept with him." Martha said, "I was angry with him when he first contacted me when he first enlisted you to help him, he had disappeared for forty three years, but I wanted him to come to you himself. This is unfortunate."
"Unfortunate that I know the truth after all these years?" Rick said icily.
"No, Richard, unfortunate that you had to find out this way, when he isn't here to defend himself. In spite of everything, your father is a good man, he wants to connect with you, but he just isn't sure how without hurting you even more."
"Did he know about Alexis, mother?" Rick asked,
"Not at the time," she whispered hoarsely "he found out later, shortly after you and Kate were blown up in your Suburban. He came to see you in the hospital, that was when he told me about it."
"And Jessica's involvement?" Rick asked harshly.
"This was the first I'd heard of it, Richard, I doubt even your father knew." Martha responded.
"He didn't." Jessica interjected. "I was too ashamed of my involvement in that to tell anyone about it until today...I'm sorry I hurt you, but you deserved to know the truth. When she looked up at me and said "Mommy" it just broke my heart, she was such a beautiful child and I'm so sorry."
"I think that has been enough for one day, for everybody" Kate said shakily, "mother I think it's time for you to go for now."
The word "mother" seemed foreign to her lips, she needed time to process everything, to spend time alone with Rick to help him process everything that had been thrown at him. He was trying valiantly to hide it, but what he had learned about the true manner of Alexis death was eating at him, she could tell.
"I'm sorry Katie," Jessica said, "I want to have a place in your life, in Jim's life. I'll be available whenever you need me, for whatever you need. Please don't hate me." She was practically begging.
"I want that too, mother, and I don't hate you. but I have a lot to process. It's going to take some time." Kate replied.
"Okay, Katie, I understand." she said, bowing her head sadly. She pulled a State Department business card from her pocket and gave it to her. "All of my numbers are on it. My personal cell, email and home number are written on the back. If you need anything, anything at all, even if it's to scream obscenities at me in the middle of the night, don't hesitate to call me."
"Can we go someplace for coffee?" Jim asked her, "Katie may need some more time, but I'm not ready to let go of you just yet."
"I'd like that." Jessica replied, and the two of them headed toward the door.
As soon as the two of them were gone, Martha headed upstairs, sensing that Rick and Kate needed some time alone. As soon as she closed the door to her guest room, she sent Richard Webb a text.
Richard knows
Rick and Kate changed for bed, neither were much in the mood for conversation, they just wanted to curl up in bed together and be there for each other. They both finished their evening routines quickly and with little fanfare before climbing into bed and settling into each others arms. The stress and revelations of that evening left them both drained beyond words. In the comfort of their warm, safe cocoon they both relaxed and quickly drifted into a deep peaceful sleep.
They would talk in the morning.
