CHAPTER TEN
The weather is beautiful and the brunette hasn't taken a day off in a long time. Too long. So their family trip out to Phillips Park is a much needed break for all of them.
Jane's cry can be heard across the clearing as she plays ball with the kids. "Heads up!"
It causes a chuckle from Maura because, as much as she enjoys sharing in the boys' activities, they have discovered she isn't exactly cut out for swinging a bat. Happy just to watch from a distance just beyond the tree line, she returns Jane's smile whenever it is thrown her way.
Turning burgers on the grill, the blonde has spent the last half hour or so getting reacquainted with Barry Frost. She's listened intently as he spoke, focusing herself more on the food, allowing him the space to occasionally let slip tidbits of information about Jane along the way.
There is still an amount of awkwardness and tension between the two women that she can't explain, but it wouldn't be fair to ask direct questions of Jane's best friend when she could ask the woman herself.
Jane looks over again, like her ears burn every time the man talks.
"We went through the Academy together, worked great together. Used to call her Roly Poly Rizzoli," Barry chuckles as Maura turns to him, mouth open in mock horror. "She used to call me Puke Boy though" he adds, leveling the field of embarrassing confessions. "That's how I ended up in Cyber Crime, couldn't stick it in Homicide." The mention of his career gets an impressed nod and she's good enough not to tease him for his failures.
"Now, Barry, when did we date?" Maura asks brightly, genuine curiosity voiced without any judgment.
Setting his beer down on the picnic table, he takes a deep breath but is saved from answering when Jane jogs over to them, taking a break from their unofficial Rizzoli little league and grabbing a beer from the cooler.
"Let's eat!" she proclaims, but the roll of Maura's eyes suggests she's a little premature on that front.
"It might be..." Barry tries, following up with Maura's inquiry, not wanting to seem rude by ignoring her direct question, but Jane cuts him off.
"Shouldn't we talk about the golf course?" She winks, a subtle indication that as far as she is concerned this is a much safer territory.
"Yeah," he nods as long tan legs curl under the table opposite before the edge is used to remove a beer bottle cap.
"The guys with suits come down in a couple of weeks," she says, reminding her friend of their looming deadline. It's no use having a potential investor if they don't have anything to present.
"What do you think about this, huh… 'Sink 'Em and Drink 'Em' - holes based on famous breweries?" he offers.
"I think what I thought yesterday," she frowns, shaking her head. "It's a lousy idea."
The entire plan is worryingly incomplete given this is the extent of their joint creativity. The brash comment is taken in good humor though. "I thought you'd change your mind now you're sober."
Silver tongs turn hotdogs as Maura chimes in, "What about other places? Foreign places."
Two heads turn to the woman who still has her eyes on the food. "What do you mean? Like France?"
Her accent is exquisite and there's barely a pause before Maura replies, "Mais oui! La Tour Eiffel, comme c'est jolie!" She gasps and her body freezes, eyes staring straight ahead. "I speak French!" she breathes with wonder, talking to herself as Jane and Barry look on with surprise. "It just came out. Do I know what I said? Yes, I do." Her facial expression morphs every second, from shock to confusion to realization to suspicion, eyes narrowing as her brain works. "I must have learned that in Paris. When was I in Paris? In the Navy."
Jane nods fervently, eyeing Barry to do the same. "The Navy," she repeats, cementing the idea. It's a very good explanation even if she hasn't conjured it herself this time.
"Well, it's a stupid idea in any language," Barry pouts. "Besides, we're building these things in America."
"Wait a minute," the brunette says, grabbing her jacket and pulling a notebook and pencil from the pocket. "This isn't a bad idea. We could invent some wild things here." She turns to Maura, waving a hand in encouragement. "Go on."
Grill tongs are waved through the air as she thinks on her feet, "Well, like, uh... the Taj Mahal, Seven Wonders of the World."
Totally onboard, Jane bounces in her seat with excitement. "Bring the Seven Wonders to the people of Swampscott," she enthuses.
"Well, we gotta bring it in for a price," Barry murmurs. It won't help if they get stuck on an idea that they can't deliver.
"I can bring it in," Jane replies confidently, smiling at the man before turning fully to address her wife. "But can you draw me some pictures so I can see what you mean? Maura?"
The blonde is distracted, watching their eldest boy talk to a young girl a short distance away from the wooded picnic area.
Jane removes herself from the table and sidles up to Maura, coming to stand right behind her shoulder. Last time she checked the kids were still playing ball, why they were milling about now she wasn't sure. "What's this?"
"Travis found a girlfriend," Maura whispers over her shoulder, turning her head slightly to reveal an affectionate smile.
Jane's eyes are on Maura's face, watching the woman watch their children. It wouldn't take much to slip her arms around a trim waist, she thinks, push her nose into blonde hair and inhale... The experience is strange and yet the pull feels entirely natural.
"Hey, Trav! Don't knock her up!" yells Andy, suddenly splitting the peace and quiet of the park.
"Very funny!" Maura drawls, pointing her tongs in his direction as Jane backs away. "Watch your..."
"Oh, Mom!"
"Yeah, 'Oh, Mom!' Watch your language!" she chides, all no nonsense parent as his shoulders slump.
Getting back on track, Jane sits at the table once more and picks up her pencil. "Pick a wonder."
"Stevie Wonder," Barry replies, closing his eyes and moving his head to and fro. Maura laughs loudly and he grins.
"Give me a wonder," Jane repeats, to Maura this time, rolling her eyes at Barry's inability to take this seriously. "One wonder."
"There's Mount Rushmore. The Parthenon."
"Parthenon, right." Jane's never heard of it but she's writing everything down and will look it up later. She'd ask Maura but suddenly she's reluctant to appear uneducated in the blonde's eyes. She's not about to admit why it matters.
"St Basil's, the Russian cathedral. Grand Canyon," Maura continues, counting off on the fingers of her free hand as she turns hotdogs again with the other.
"Everybody'll love that!" Barry exclaims at the one American landmark he recognizes. Jane's enthusiasm is contagious and within moments he's excited at the possibilities.
"Egyptian pyramids. The Eiffel Tower."
Leaning over the table, Barry takes a good look at Jane's notebook to find her scrawled notes are punctuated by several very rough drawings of statues. Being negative is not Barry's intention but as the partner in this little dream of theirs he has the job of grounding her occasionally. "It's gonna be expensive and it needs to be weather proof."
Something in the way Barry looks at the paper makes Maura curious and she crosses over to the table to see for herself.
When she leans down over Jane's shoulder, full lips moving right next to a hot ear, the brunette stops breathing.
"Fiberglass," Maura states simply before moving back to the grill. Two sets of eyes narrow intently in her direction, forcing her to elaborate. "It's cheap, lightweight, easily molded into complex shapes. It's less brittle than carbon fiber composites and its bulks strength often exceeds that of many metals."
Barry throws a look at Jane that clearly says 'how does she know that?' but the brunette just shrugs, used to it.
A blush rises on Maura's cheeks from the brightness of her wife's beaming smile.
"It's perfect!" Jane says, still smiling. The relaxing day, the warm weather, the winning idea, the beautiful woman... It's all perfect.
oOo
The dining table is covered in large pieces of paper, crayons and pencils strewn everywhere. Maura and the boys have been sketching her miniature golf suggestions ever since they got home from the park. It's the quietest and most cooperative they've ever been to her knowledge.
They really are wonderful. Well behaved, too, if the mood strikes, which thankfully is getting to be more and more often as the days and weeks pass. She smiles before letting out a tired sigh. "Let's clean up for an early dinner."
Small hands pitch in, layering sheet upon sheet and scooping up their coloring supplies to pack them away.
Andy leans into her lap, and she instinctively wraps him up in her arms, pulling the rest of his weight from his chair to hers. "Isn't Ma gonna eat with us tonight?"
"No," she breathes, running her fingers through the hair at his temple. They'd had such a good day it had felt like a shame for it to end prematurely with Jane's unexpected departure. Disappointment had filled her, surprisingly, upon finding out Jane would rather spend the evening with her friends than her family and it seeps now, unbidden, into her words. "She had to go out, darling. She had to go bowling."
"Really?" says Travis, raising a doubting eyebrow that's uncannily like his mother's. He points to the laundry basket by the bedroom door, piled high with clean clothes that Maura has yet to find time to put away. On top sits Jane's bowling bag. "It's pretty hard to go bowling without a bowling ball."
She's perfectly aware that being without her own personalized bowling bowl will not prevent Jane from participating. The outing is still perfectly plausible. But Maura wants to deliver it anyway, for her own peace of mind.
Rushing straight out of the house isn't an option, so she feeds, bathes, and puts the kids to bed while she mulls it over. Heightened emotions can make people act irrationally and that's the last thing she wants to do. It still doesn't feel irrational hours later as she leaves the house.
oOo
It's heavy, not just the bowling bag but the worry that Maura also carries as she trudges forlornly through the Swampscott Bowlarama parking lot.
Jane isn't inside.
No one who knows her wife is anywhere to be found, except for the friendly server behind the counter. Jane is a regular, the woman had said, so the existence of the bowling bag isn't a total lie, even if the brunette apparently hasn't been in for a while. Her suggestion to 'check down by the dock' throws Maura even further for a loop.
Would Jane cheat? Does that explain it, the tension and the distance between them? Was it always this way?
Jane is always very fond of excuses, deflects a lot when it comes to talking about their life before Maura's amnesia.
It hurts, to be honest, unreasonably so. She still doesn't know exactly who she is but she's learning. And life isn't half as bad as she first thought. She quite likes it, in fact, is starting to feel... happy. Content almost.
To think she might be unhappily married and somehow unaware of it causes a lump in her throat.
Is she so unlovable that her wife would skip out at night to see someone else? Or is it a recent development, only since the accident? Has it changed her so much that Jane can't love her anymore?
Her sadness deepens as she continues to search. Of all the revelations she has experienced recently this one hurts the most, raises the most questions. It's clear she doesn't know Jane, not properly as a wife should, and that part of it is due to the walls Jane has up around herself. Maura wonders if those walls are her doing.
As multi faceted as Jane is, she finds the parts exposed more recently are parts that she likes. Certainly there are things that indicate why she would have fallen for Jane in the first place. She's been trying so hard to be happy, to fit back into their life as it must have been before her accident, that being made aware of her own ignorance and Jane's potential deceit is galling.
She doesn't want to be angry, doesn't want to jump to conclusions. She just needs answers.
oOo
She finds them at the dockyard.
After parking the car, she lugs the bowling bag from the passenger seat and stalks off into the night.
Once through the parking lot she turns a corner and passes by the small harbor, following the sound of distant voices. Scared and trembling slightly, she passes through shadow after shadow thrown by the floodlights that hang off the side of the warehouse. 'Fertilizer Plant' the signs says and she wonders why on earth people would work down here at night.
This is the only bit of activity in the whole area and, though she'd rather be at home watching her beautiful boys sleep peacefully, her feet keep moving towards it.
At the next corner she stops. Hanging back in the shadows feels ill advised, dangerous, but she wants real, hard evidence if she's going to confront Jane about her lies.
Her nose scrunches up in disgust as the smell that she'd not noticed until now hits her all at once. She stands watch as the scene becomes clear, observing several men as they complete a business transaction in a small loading bay.
"Scott Murphy?" asks the man in the overalls and the customer nods. "Can I see your invoice?"
Something is checked off the paper with a pen before he turns, giving instructions to someone out of sight behind the customer's truck. "This ain't your average pile of fertilizer here. No, siree. This here's a special blend. Fish heads, shrimp skins, crab claws, earthworm droppings..."
The description makes Maura green. It certainly explains the foul smell that hangs in the air. It's so strong she thinks it might take two cycles to wash it out of her clothes.
"I don't wanna know," the customer dismisses, pulling several bills from his wallet.
The man in the overalls disappears as another person comes around the back of the truck, hauling a huge sack on their shoulder.
A small gasp escapes Maura as she presses a hand to her chest.
Jane.
She has her dark ponytail tucked into a khaki cap and the shadows partially hide her face. But the raspy voice is unmistakable as she drops the load into the pickup, "Here you go."
There are several more bags after that, reasonably fifty or sixty pounds each, Maura guesses, and by the time Jane is done she's breathing hard. The brunette removes her cap and shoves a hand under the bottom of her t-shirt, lifting it to wipe at her sweaty brow. The blonde catches a glimpse of tanned, firm abs, a sheen of moisture glinting under the floodlights before another truck pulls up and blocks her view.
The man in the overalls shouts, "After this one you get to shovel fish guts! I need thirty more bags filling before you leave!" Every word sounds amused, as if he's reveling in Jane's discomfort.
Maura's heart sinks into her stomach as she hears Jane's weary and despondent reply, "You got it, boss."
Backing up around the corner, coming to rest against the wall, the blonde closes her eyes and lets out a shaky sigh.
She feels warm. Everything inside of her is warm, unlike moments ago when ice seemed to be the main component of her veins, dread worming its way through her organs. It sets her on fire to think her wife would do this, would take on a second job and an unpleasant one at that, would put herself through this for her family. Their family.
Maura marvels at the woman's physical strength, at her sacrifice and dedication, but still she worries. The questions that swirl in her mind now are no longer about Jane's romantic motives or agenda. They centre around Jane's pride, around her own behavior as a partner, and the reasons why Jane might decide she couldn't come clean about something as banal as working for a living.
Maura's disappointment grows, but Jane is no longer its target.
As she makes her way back to her car there's a tiny spring in her step. All thoughts of Jane cheating are gone. She might be lovable after all. But now she has another problem. Clearly it bothers her wife enough to keep secrets, and she swears to herself that, while she won't confront Jane about it or reveal her awareness of the brunette's nighttime activities, she will be more supportive. Doing her share and making them feel like one, cohesive family unit, worthy of honesty and confessions no matter how embarrassing, will be a responsibility she gladly owns.
Jane once said she was proud of her. Tonight the opposite is also true. One more facet of Jane Rizzoli that Maura really likes.