-9-

The next morning they met for coffee with Alex's old boss, who had been a friend as much as a supervisor. Alex was feeling great, all of this going better than she'd had any right to expect. But she knew that there was one more person she had to see, and she'd still done nothing about it, hadn't been able to decide how to approach it. Finally, after a late lunch, she looked at Liv across the cafe table and said, "I have to do it. I have to do this, so we can be done here, and we can go home."

"Okay, babe," Olivia said. "Do you want me to call her?"

"No, I don't think so," Alex said, deciding it only in the second that the words came out of her mouth. "I'm going to go to her house, and knock on the door, and take my chances that I say the right thing."

"Do you want company?" Olivia asked, hoping Alex would say yes. She didn't know if this would go nearly as well as the other reunions had, and wanted to be there for Alex. But the attorney wanted—needed—to do this on her own, and she told Olivia.

"Liv, I left here with no explanation to her," Alex said. "At least I left the neighbors a note—she got nothing. I have to go there and just take whatever comes. I owe it to her to go there alone, I think."

Olivia didn't like it, but she couldn't argue with the logic. She tried to put herself in Danielle's shoes. She, at least, knew what happened to Alex when she'd gone into the program the first time. Even if she hadn't, if Alex hadn't forced Hammond to let her see the two detectives, she'd have believed Alex was dead, and mourned her. If Alex had just vanished, though, and left Olivia without a clue as to what had happened? That would have been undeniably—perhaps, unforgivably—hard to take.


Olivia decided to go to the art museum, to pass the time, and Alex headed off to Danielle's house. She cruised the street a couple of times, feeling comfortingly incognito in her Mercedes with its tinted windows. It was a far cry from Sarah's ride, which had been a little two-door of some design so nondescript that Alex couldn't recall the name of it. Everything about this trip, even the parts that had already gone well, felt like some sort of masquerade or costume party. And Alex had thought she was prepared for that, but here in the thick of it she was horrified to realize that she couldn't tell who was playing dress-up: Alex, or Sarah?

Finally, on the third pass around the block, she saw Danielle pull up in her car, park in the driveway, and let herself in the front door. Alex parked a couple of houses down, and walked slowly back to the blue house with the blue car and the tidy front yard. She walked up the steps, and rang the bell, heard footsteps in the house heading toward the door. She knew Danielle was probably looking out at her before opening the door—who doesn't, these days? No one just visits any more, just shows up at your door without calling first. And only then did it occur to Alex that Danielle might not open the door. God knows she'd have to think it over if the situation were reversed.

Finally, the door swung open and Alex stepped back to allow the screen door to open outward, toward her. Danielle just stared for a full minute, and Alex just stared back, not knowing what was the right thing to say. Emily Post hadn't covered this in the etiquette guide, really.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," Danielle finally said. "It was you."

Alex just nodded, not sure if she was hearing anger or shock or disbelief. Probably all of the above. She said, "Can I come in?"

"This, I've got to hear," Danielle said, and stepped aside to let her into the house.


They talked for three hours, and Alex explained, and explained again. Danielle was angry, and shocked, and pretty much every other thing one might expect in a situation so bizarre that it was laughable. They laughed, and talked, and cried a bit. But every so often during their talk, Danielle's fury would flare up. She was mad about Alex leaving with no explanation, to be sure, but seemed just as mad that she hadn't been honest when they'd run into each other last fall.

"Sar...Alex, it's not that it happened. As much as this all sounds like a fucked-up Lifetime movie, I admit it's all too crazy for you to be lying. So, yeah, you had to live a lie, to save your life. I get that," Danielle said. "But when they came to take you back to New York, you were safe, right?"

"Yes, I guess I was," Alex said. "Though I'm not sure I believed that, not at first."

"You could have told me, left me a note, sent me a goddamn singing telegram. I was worried sick, and confused."

"And pissed," Alex offered.

"You know what? No," Danielle clarified. "Not at first. Because I was scared, and the Sarah I knew never would have left with no notice. It's not like I even had reason to suspect you'd done it to break up with me. Things were good between us, and you know it. I thought something was bad wrong."

"I'm sorry, I really..."

"You keep saying." Danielle cut her off. "You keep saying you're sorry, but what you did was inexcusable, really. I had to find out from your neighbor, when I had to beg the police to meet me at your house to do some bullshit they called a well-being check. I meet them there, and listen to some line of crap about how I have no legal standing, can't report you missing, and on and on. They finally go in, and I'm standing out there, hoping they don't come out and tell me you're dead."

Alex looked stricken—had no idea Danielle had gone through that—but couldn't speak. How do you respond to that?

"Finally, this asshole cop comes out, tells me that you're just out of there. Everything of a personal nature is removed from the residence, ma'am. Your girlfriend flew the coop on you," Danielle remembered. "Your neighbor sees this, must recognize me or something, and comes over and tells me she got a note, some family emergency, and you're gone. And that's when I got pissed. I mean, what the fuck, Sarah?"

"Alex." She said this reflexively, automatically, but realized a second too late that maybe she shouldn't have.

"Fuck Alex," Danielle shouted. "I don't know Alex. Sarah Clarke did this to me, and I'm telling Sarah that I didn't deserve that."

Alex had weathered the storm as long as she could, feeling bad for hurting Danielle—again—after so much time had passed. She'd known she couldn't move on herself without apologizing, even if the apology wasn't accepted, or forgiveness might not be offered. But she'd lived so long with her own failures in all this mess, tried to right her own mistakes, and tried to get back everything it had cost her. She'd forgotten how angry she was—how truly full of rage she was that so much had been taken from her, that she'd been for even one moment a person who would hurt people she cared about.

"You're right, you didn't, no-one fucking deserves that," Alex was shouting now, too. "I didn't deserve to be shot, to be taken from my friends and family, to be taken a second time from a life I'd managed to make when I didn't think I had enough strength left to make a fucking sandwich. There was no Sarah, Danielle, there was just Alex, pretending to be someone else."

"If there was no Sarah, then I guess I was sleeping with a ghost," Danielle retorted. "How the fuck is that supposed to make me feel?"

"I have no idea," Alex admitted. "Some son of a bitch took everything from me, and then I just proceeded to take that pain and spread it around. I never meant to hurt you, I didn't. But when someone showed up at my door and said I could go home, and see my dad, and see the woman I loved, and be called by my real name, I couldn't not go. I should have told you. I should have told you then, I should have left you a note, or called. I should have told you when I saw you in December, but I just froze."

"There was someone, then," Danielle said. And it seemed to Alex that sometimes, maybe the most any of us can do is tread water, and absorb only the parts that are about us. When there is so much pain in something and it breaks into a thousand pieces in your hands, you can only pick out the slivers and shards that are cutting you, and everyone else has to fend for themselves.

"Yes, and no," Alex said. There was Olivia, but there wasn't, and how could she explain that? How could she explain that she'd been willing to leave Danielle without hesitation, to go back to New York for a what was really only a glimmer of a chance at something, anything, with Olivia?

"Yes and no?" Danielle asked incredulously. "What the hell does that mean? You've lied to me enough, so just say it. Yes, there was someone. You loved someone else, while I was loving you.I knew then that you were never really mine, not 100%. I just couldn't figure out who, or what, had a hold on you."

"We worked together," Alex began, desperate to explain how she really had no choice, how it had killed her to be away from Olivia, and to know that she was probably sitting in a rented home in a fabricated life, missing someone who might not even love her. She didn't want to wield it over Danielle like some kind of weapon—just wanted her to know that it was something real, and important, and that she hadn't hurt her intentionally, or for nothing. "She was there when I..."

"I don't want to hear it," Danielle said, cutting her off. "I really don't. I think you've told me everything I needed to know."

Alex had often been accused of being cold, and aloof. It was a perception she was aware of, even encouraged when it suited her purposes. In reality, she was anything but. She felt as pained now for what she'd done as she had felt then, eight years ago. They said their goodbyes, and Alex drove back to the hotel, not sure if this had done what she'd needed, but knowing it was over, and she'd never have to do it again.


She called Olivia from the car.

"How was it, honey?"

"I'm done here," was all Alex would say. "We need to leave first thing in the morning."

Olivia didn't know how to take that. "Okay," she said gently. "Did you have dinner?"

"No, I'm not hungry," Alex replied. "I'm going to take a shower, and sleep, and when I wake up in the morning I want to leave here and never come back again."