Quick reminder for everyone who reads: English is not my first language, so I tend to get things wrong every now and then. I suspect there are a few mistakes, especially in this chapter. Plese bear with me.

And even though I don't reply to every comment I get individually, be sure that I love every single one of them.

ON WITH THE STORY! :D

Henry felt deeply nervous. He had not heard from Jo since she'd stopped by yesterday noon. And while that had gone well – to a degree – it was now almost four in the afternoon the following day, and still not a word from her. And he just didn't know what to make of it. It could be as simple as her being busy with the case. It was, after all, not your run-of-the-mill case; dismemberment of that scale was something exceptional, even in New York City.

Also, they hadn't seen each other every day prior to his big revelation, so why was he getting nervous about it now? Maybe this just only meant that everything was back to normal.

Or maybe it was something else entirely. Maybe she... Maybe... But no, she wouldn't do anything that would drive him away from this job. He loved this job, and she knew it. It gave him a satisfaction that somehow being a physician never had. And Abe, of course. If he had to leave the OCME, he likely would have to leave New York altogether, just to be on the safe side; and he couldn't do that. He couldn't leave without Abe, and Abe was too old to leave New York.

Henry swallowed a bout of rising panic. Still a strange concept that his son was getting too old for things. The one piece of life experience he would never share with anyone.

But no, he reassured himself for about the hundredth time. She would never do that. Not least of all, because if she had anything like that in mind, he would already be packing, not sitting around in his office, brooding over things that were, in all probability, stupid.

Then again, she might have decided to take her distance after all, despite the short visit yesterday. Which would still be not half bad... but neither would it be half good. Being partners with Jo, solving crimes, that had become the main appeal of his job.

"Doc?" Lucas stuck his head through the door.

"Yes, you may leave early," Henry answered offhandedly, his focus still on his uncertainty regarding Jo.

"No, actually, a body just came in."

Henry looked up. "Well, this is a morgue, Lucas, it's been known to happen, no reason to get all excited about it."

"Yeah, but this is one you'll like. Found half burned in an abandoned car in an abandoned lot. Probably didn't die in the fire." He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.

Henry scowled half-heartedly, before he hastily got out from behind his desk. Lucas knew him all too well. Outside in the morgue a black body bag was lying on a gurney.

"Why weren't we called to the site? A half burned body in an abandoned car, those are highly suspicious circumstances. There should have been an ME on site."

"Says here, there was an ME at the scene," Lucas read off the chart that had come with the body. "Oh, now that explains it all. It was Washington."

They shared a mutual, long-suffering glance.

"I don't get, why they don't just finally send him off into retirement," Lucas said. "He's really getting too old for the job, more interested in his own comfort than anything else."

"Oh, age has nothing to do with it," Henry contradicted. Ever since he'd passed his first hundred years, he felt compelled to defend age, whenever it was used as an explanation – or excuse – for something. "Dr Washington is just simply inadequate as a medical examiner."

"You said it, Doc."

"Yes, and now that I've said it, let's see what we have here." Henry reached for the body bag, but before he pulled it open, he looked up with a mischievous glint in his eyes. "And what Dr Washington has overlooked."

The heavy, somewhat sweet smell of burnt flesh mixed with the smell of coal and ash permeated the morgue. Lucas bent away instinctively, Henry only turned his head to the side a bit. He had learned to ignore the smell of burning humans in 1945. The smell had hung in the air surrounding the KZs long after the crematoria had gone cold. It had clung to every fibre, every nook and cranny. Sometimes he thought he could even smell it in people's hair. One had to learn to ignore the smell in order to keep sane.

"Doc? Mysterious, burned Jane Doe?"

Henry snapped back into the present. "Right." He looked at the clock, then back at the body. The state she was in, she would require a lot of work. The autopsy would take at least three hours. That would make him come home late and miss dinner. Abe would be disgruntled if he missed dinner... "Maybe we should leave this until tomorrow."

"Really?" Lucas sounded disappointed.

"Really. Dr Washington obviously has no interest in her - or she wouldn't be here - therefore she will still be here in the morning. Now let's just have an early day off, shall we?"

"Whatever you say, Doc, you're the boss."

"++"

Jo argued with herself whether to call Henry or not. She wanted to, but she had no reason to. And she had never called him without reason; or at the very least something she could use as pretence. But today there simply wasn't anything.

Except for the obvious.

Too bad she had always been having problems with the obvious, and she couldn't just give in to it now, she just couldn't.

"Damn you, Henry," she muttered, sitting behind the steering wheel of her car, staring out across the parking lot, wondering which way to go: home to have another pathetic evening all by her lonesome, or call Henry and maybe get a dinner out of it cooked by Chef Abe.

But since Henry had told her about himself, things had turned a bit more complicated... Did she put pressure on him if she showed up just like that? Or was he waiting for it? Was she conveying rejection by not calling? And why was she even pondering those questions? After yesterday noon she had thought that they were back on track. Apparently not.

God, it was hell.

She had known from the start that being friends with Henry would be difficult, but she had never thought it would be that difficult.

Henry had no problem asking Abe for advice when it was about something modern, a piece of technology or trivial knowledge. He decidedly hated it when it was about interpersonal things. He had 235 years of life experience, for God's sake, he had had many, many relationships in many, many variations. He should have figured people out by now.

"Oh, come on, again?" Abe all but whined, when at dinner Henry once more pushed his food around the plate instead of eating it.

"I'm sorry," Henry apologised and put his fork down. "But..." He rubbed his forehead. He hated asking Abe for advice.

"What? The case? Another case?" After what might have been a rhetorical pause: "Jo?"

"I haven't really had a chance to talk to her since... since I told her."

"I thought you were working on that case together?"

"We are, such as it is."

Abe raised his eyebrows at that.

"Our contact has... diminished. Yesterday a quick visit for lunch, today nothing. Not one word. What have I done wrong?"

"You haven't invited her for dinner."

"What?"

Abe sighed as he abandoned his own dinner plate. "Dad, how can you be so old and still so clueless?"

"I must be dense, I guess."

"Or too reclusive. This is exactly why I keep telling you to go out there and live your life! If you shut yourself off from people, they will develop and you won't, and sooner or later there will be no common ground anymore, and then what will you do?"

Henry snorted. He didn't know what to do now, he didn't need to wait for any kind of future, near or far.

"It's not too late to invite her over, you know?"

"It would take her an hour to get here, if she hadn't already eaten..."

"You know, that inviting her over for dinner wouldn't be about actual eating, right?"

"Of course not. But I don't want to impose on her. I have dumped an awful lot on her as it is. Maybe she just needs some breathing space, to, you know, work through it all."

"Now, that's a load of bull if I've ever heard one – sorry, Pops."

"I beg your pardon?" Henry sat up indignantly. This was exactly why he hated asking Abe for advice. He always developed allusions of grandeur; never mind that he more often than not was right about what he said.

"I said sorry," Abe wiped it away. "But tell me this: How is she supposed to work through it all – which, by the way is not all, as long as you don't tell her about the East River – when you don't help her? She has no point of reference from which to look at it, no frame within which she could work with it. She needs you to put it into perspective for her. It's easy for me, 'cause I've lived with this shit my whole life. But Jo, she's only had three days."

TBC