Author's note: Thank you very much for all your reviews and messages!

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Chapter Ten – Missed Out Opportunities

"You take a bait... C'mon, it's not gonna eat you! Then you hang it on the hook... Watch out. Don't cut yourself. Then once everything's ready, you bring it in the waters like that and you wait."

That was the reason why Jane didn't want to go fishing. They would have to wait – for hours maybe – before something to rise the bait if that ever happened at all. It was utterly boring.

But then Maura had insisted so much on going fishing on the lake that she had ended up accepting. Seeing Maura smile brought a lot more warmth to her heart than any gorgeous sunset she admired from their covered porch every evening. The feeling that inhabited her by then was indescribable, too strong for words. Too shameful too.

"Do you think we have a chance to fish a trout?"

Maura's excitement had embraced them as soon as she had opened her eyes in the first hours of the morning. It brought a certain uniqueness to the grace of her features, an invisible lightness that showed up with subtlety.

She was glowing.

Jane on the other hand had succumbed to more pessismitic thoughts. Not sharing Maura's natural joie de vivre, she was convinced that her friend would be utterly disappointed if they didn't come back to the cabin with anything which – in all fairness – had a big chance to happen in her humble opinion. Their lack of fishing knowledge was embarrassing.

Dan's loud laugh broke the silence that reigned over the lake, his joyful voice echoing in the distance above the crown of the trees and the summit of the mountains.

"Only one trout?! We need at least four of them or else what are we going to eat for dinner?" His frown put a definitive end to Maura's question. "I usually come back home with six or seven trouts myself."

Maura nodded appreciatively - a bit intimidated - and let her eyes wander on the peaceful waters of the lake.

It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining and a multitude of birds were singing. A couple of boats had jointed theirs now, each of them keeping a reasonable distance from the other. Fishing was almost a spiritual retreat. It was a quiet activity. People didn't come to socialize with others. Dan had been nice enough to accept them on his boat for the day.

"So are you enjoying your stay at Moosehead Lake?"

Dan's cheerful temper tended to take Jane aback. He belonged to this category of people that nothing ever seemed to hit; these people who always found a positive point no matter what they were going through. The admiration Jane had for them dangerously flirted with a deep incomprehension.

Why couldn't they be sad from time to time too? Why did they always wake up so happy? It was unfair compared to the rest of the population; compared to herself.

"Very much so, thank you for asking."

-You envy them, don't you? You envy them for the vitality they show, for the strength they have when facing issues? You wish you were like them but you aren't. You envy them so much that you end up hating their positivity and this makes you feel bad; bad about yourself.

-But isn't it fair? I mean... They know how to be happy. Why can't I do the same?

-Of course you can, Jane. You simply have to find out the way to get to this state of well-being. You aren't there yet but every day that passes by brings you closer and closer to this state of mind you are dreaming about. Don't give up yet.

"You don't miss Boston? Martha and I used to live there but the big city way of life was never made for us. Coming here was like a renaissance. Best decision we've ever taken in our life."

The innocence of Dan's question found a cruel - unintentional - echo in the awkward tension that started to build. Maura stared at Jane. If it weren't for her hands that were clutched so tightly to the fishing rod that her knuckles had turned as white as the snow, she could have fooled anyone. Her face was impassive. Pain didn't show through it. Panic either.

"Maybe a bit."

The whispered confession exploded loudly in Maura's head. It was the first time that Jane accepted to talk about Boston and the life she had left behind; all the people who belonged to it. The first time she admitted to miss all of this.

Her voice hadn't shaken - she had found the strength to speak out - but the words had slowly embraced her lips before rising in the air in a timid whirl as if she didn't dare to admit a couple of things.

"But not enough for us to come back there yet."

Everything fell down like a souffle. The glimpse of feelings Jane had showed disappeared right away, probably destroyed by the invisible force of her regrets.

"Oh my god! I got something!"

Jane gladly welcomed Maura's hysterical scream. Their fishing trip didn't have to turn into some sort of indirect therapy. She had no way to escape from it on the boat. The space confinement was oppressive whenever their conversation took a personal – sensitive – direction.

"Looks like you do! Use the reel. Is it heavy?"

Maura's fishing rod was now bowing under the weight of whatever was at the end of the hook. Dan ran to help her while Jane remained on her seat, disarmed and fascinated.

For some reason, the scene made her think about one of Norman Rockwell's paintings.

The visible effort on Maura's face was almost caricatural. The red cheeks, the sweat. The slight terror in her eyes mixed with the excitement of having caught a fish. Jane's chest got shaken by a wave of giggles until a big – wriggling – trout suddenly emerged from the waters and passed above her head before landing loudly on the floor of the boat.

The surprise succeeded to her laugh.

"Holy crap, Maura. You actually got a fish."

"What did you think I was going to fish? A corpse?"

The confusion on Dan's face simply echoed Jane's surprise to see her friend use irony. He had no idea whatsoever that Maura was a medical examiner. The allusion to dead bodies was probably disturbing for him; very odd, to say the least.

Maura grabbed the fish and made a few steps backwards.

"May someone take a picture of..."

Her scream disappeared in the loud splash that her body made as she fell down in the waters of the lake. Jane rushed to the spot where her friend had gone overboard and looked down at the waters.

If the swirls were still visible, Maura's figure had disappeared. Something pressed against Jane's throat, a violent mechanism that prevented the air from filling her lungs properly. She tried to catch her breath. In vain. Her vision turned blurry. She was panicking.

"Where is she..."

It couldn't be happening. She couldn't lose Maura. Not now. Never, actually. Once the wave of panic took possession of her whole body, Jane succumbed to an uncontrolable shaking.

If Maura dies then I lose any reason to still be alive.

Her heart opened in two, releasing the fury of a pain she had never felt before. It was nothing compared to what she had experienced after shooting Hannah dead. It lay even deeper; as if her own soul was piercing through her burning skin to leave her body and to disappear thorugh an invisible smoke in the air.

And then Maura reappeared.

Dan helped her climb back on the small boat. His laughter owned an insolence Jane couldn't help adoring in spite of everything. Maura was safe. Soaked wet but safe. She knew how to swim anyway and the waters of the lake weren't very deep. It was a harmless fall but the mere fact of seeing Maura disappear from her eyes within a second had stirred up something in her chest that wouldn't go away, something just as oppressive as the nightmares she had.

-Why are you afraid of love? Because of its strength? Of the life symbol it carries?

-No.

-Then why?

-For the fear to see it disappear the moment I dare to abandon myself to it. Yet it's all I deserve, after all. It's all one deserves when stealing the life out of someone who never asked for it.

"I let go of the trout."

Disappointment rose in Maura's voice and made Jane's heart ache. The anger stirred up by her immense fear had just been swept away by a borderline empathy. Unless it was another kind of feeling; something deeper, more intimate.

"Don't you ever dare to do this to me again."

For once the heat emanated from Jane's body and not Maura's as she approached a hand from her friend's cheek to caress it. Her dark eyes met with Maura's hazel ones. Words weren't needed.

They understood each other, every single ounce of feelings that passed underneath their respective skin.

A surge of care – something that almost burnt – rose in Jane's chest then went to settle in her lower stomach as she bent over and planted a kiss at the corner of Maura's lips. Her move barely lasted three seconds but the moment she emerged back from it, Jane realized how alive she could be.

"Come over here, Little Mermaid. You're shivering."

Maura's soaked wet tennis shoes made an odd – rather funny – sound as she walked towards Dan who was holding a small blanket.

"Never had she danced so beautifully; the sharp knives cut her feet, but she did not feel it, for the pain in her heart was far greater."

Hans Christan Andersen's words began to dance in her head. She cast a glance at Jane who had remained on the very far end of the small boat. The kiss had stirred up a land of powerful feelings that were now shining on her heart. Sadly gray clouds appeared on her land of hopes and a deep pain began to reign over the ruined kingdom of Maura's feelings for knowing this would never happen again.

She pushed the thought away as we shut down a music box to make the plastic ballerina stop twirling. She smiled at Dan.

"Did you know that the real name of the little mermaid was Ondine? One more time, Disney took the liberty of changing it."

Ondine and her impossible fantasies of a life that would never be. Ondine and her fatal dreams.