Chapter 20: Goodbyes & Dust

"Must you leave?" Maura asks for the eighth time since Jane arrived, her voice soft and wishful, hoping for a different answer than the seven times before.

Alas, she receives the same regretful head nod.

"I have to," Jane responds quietly, her whispered tone almost cracking as she looks into Maura's welling eyes. The tears are piling upon one another in Maura's bright hazel eyes, daring to fall and tumble down her cheeks to her trembling bottom lip. But for now they stay in place, resisting the natural urge to stream down Maura's face.

Jane bites the inside of her cheek to hold back her own tears, knowing that the second Maura releases hers, she won't be able to control herself either.

She darts her dampening eyes away from Maura's and looks down at where her hands are resting on Maura's hips, holding on in a possessive manner. She grabs on a little tighter.

"I love you," she says in a gentle tone, managing to bring her eyes to meet Maura's.

Leaning forward, she presses her lips against Maura's in a very light kiss, barely lingering longer than a few sacred seconds. Not wanting to pull too far away, Jane rests her bare forehead against Maura's.

"Stay," Maura says after a minute of silence has elapsed. Her voice is quiet, her tone not quite demanding, though it's apparent she's hoping that Jane will obey her wish.

Jane sighs and lets her eyelids fall shut as she moves her hands from Maura's hips to link around her waist in a loving embrace, pulling her a smidge or two closer. Though wishing she could say otherwise, the regretful words still fall from her lips in a barely audible tone, "I can't."

Maura breathes in deeply, attempting to hold her tears back as long as possible before she's forced to give up the fight.

Taking a ragged breath, she curls her hands tighter into the material of Jane's t-shirt. She takes up clumps of the cotton in her hands and holds on around Jane's chest, wishing her grip were enough to keep Jane with her.

"Don't go," she manages to whisper.

Jane opens her eyes at exactly the wrong moment, opening them only to see a fresh set of salty tears sliding down Maura's smooth cheeks.

"I have to."

"You don't."

"I do."

"But I don't want you to go."

Jane sighs and tries to place a smile of the tiniest sorts upon her lips, but no such expression will show. She takes her one hand away from Maura's waist and uses her thumb to wipe the stray tears off of Maura's silky smooth cheeks.

"It's only two months at the most," Jane reassures the troubled woman in her arms, trying her best to look on the brighter side of things.

Maura nods stiffly in agreement, her bottom lip hidden beneath her upper teeth in an attempt to hold back her tears. "But two months is a very long time, Ms. Rizzoli," she whispers in a cracking voice.
If she had said "Jane" she wouldn't have been able to control her tears any longer.

Jane sighs and cups Maura's cheek in her hand. "I know, I know," she replies with her head nodding subconsciously.

They're silent for several moments, the heavy summer air weighing down on them, as they hold onto each other in a few last sweet moments together, savoring each feature of one another with the hopes of photographic memory.

Maura's breathing suddenly halts, catching Jane's attention. Their eyes meet. There's a glint of hope hidden in the depths of Maura's eyes. "Take me with you," she says softly, a small smile seeming to work its way onto her lips.

"You want to come along?" Jane asks skeptically.

The smile on Maura's lips falters. "I-I… I can't," she finally responds.

"Why not?"

Their eyes meet again, but Maura quickly looks away, her eyes darting around the yard and settling on the house not even several yards away. "I can't," she says quietly, "Jane, two months is too long in the future."

You'll be there much longer than two months by next year, Jane thinks to herself, once again praying that the future is where Maura runs off. However, Jane nods her head understandingly.

"You're right," Jane responds softly, the harmless lie rolling off her tongue. "Hey, look at me," Jane whispers, taking her hand below Maura's chin and turning her head until their eyes undoubtedly meet. "It's only two months, Maura. Two short, little months… they'll be over before you know it, and then things will be back to normal."

Maura nods her head gently, her bottom lip once again sucked in beneath her upper jaw. "Two months," she repeats in a soft tone.

"Yeah," Jane says and glances away from Maura for a short moment, her eyes scanning the yard and then settling on the house next to them. She stares at the windows to see if there's any movement, but she finds none. Turning back to Maura, she says with a smile, "Come here…"

The brown locked girl leans forward, her eyes unconsciously falling shut and her lips falling open as she creeps her hand around to the nape of Maura's neck where she presses gently, quickly bringing their lips together. Not caring about the possibility of someone's wandering eyes catching sight of them, they escape into the kiss, all of their worries momentarily leaving them.

Jane keeps her hand at the base of Maura's head, her fingers absentmindedly getting lost in strands of Maura's hair as she also continually presses the young woman's head forward as to not allow her the chance to pull away.

However, Maura has no intentions of pulling away. She's too wrapped up in Jane's arms and too lost in Jane's gentle, loving touch to pull away. Her mind completely blanks on where they are: out in the open. It doesn't even seem to matter right now; unlike every other meeting they've had, where location was always a major factor.

The kiss lasts a fair minute, though it never did go too deep. It stayed chaste and bittersweet, nothing more than a savored moment between two lovers as they say their hesitant goodbyes.

Jane forces herself to pull away, hating each millimeter she puts in between her and Maura even though she knows they must be taken.

"I should be going," she whispers gently, watching as Maura slowly open her eyes.

Maura nods against her own wishes and replies softly, "If you must."

They say their final words and exchange a round of "I love you" before Jane finally gets up the nerve to take a step away from Maura, her arms leaving her waist and falling to hang at her own sides.

"Don't forget about me," she says as she backs her way all the way up to the water pump, backing into it with her heels. She glances over her shoulder and wraps her fingers around the handle, holding on in a familiar grip.

Maura manages a halfhearted smile as she watches Jane. "I won't," she promises.

With the jiggle of a handle, Maura squeezes her eyes shut as she sees the first traces of Jane vanishing right before her eyes, like something out of a tall tale that Mother would tell her as a bed time story when she was a child. The wind picks up around her, but after a few seconds everything seems to return to normal, and she opens her eyes to see the water pump in front of her completely vacant with no hints of a brown locked woman in sight.

Sniffling slightly, she forces her legs to walk the short distance back to the house to wait for two long months before she can be back in the safety of Jane's arms. Shuffling back to her house, being caught is the least of the worries on her mind.

Unfortunately, a pair of eyes was watching every second of their goodbye from the second story hallway window.

James continues staring straight out the window, his eyes wide with astonishment. His legs fail to carry him off to the safety of his bedroom even as he hears the stairs creaking slightly beneath the weight of someone's footsteps; undoubtedly Maura's. Though he knows it wisest to scamper off to his bedroom and leave the matter be, he remains glued to his spot; his feet planted to the carpet, his hands resting on the windowsill, and his nose only centimeters away from glass pane.

"James?" Maura's voice carries up the remainder of the steps as the older woman pauses midway up the staircase, her head raised and her cheeks shiny with tearstains. "What are you doing?"

James turns his head from the window and his eyes lock with Maura's. He's silent for a moment before responding, though he doesn't answer his sister's question. "Where'd Jane go?" he asks, keeping his voice low so neither Mother nor Father overhears.

Maura averts her eyes as she feels her cheeks heating up unavoidably. "She's going to her grandparents' house," she mumbles in reply as she shoves past her younger brother and into her own bedroom, where she shuts the door immediately.

The younger boy allows his eyes to linger on the closed door for a few more seconds before glancing out the window once more.

Sure, seeing his sister and that Ms. Rizzoli fellow kissing yet again shook him up a smidge.
But right now, that's the least of the wonders on his mind.

Right now, he's a tad more curious as to how exactly Jane vanished…

Jane nudges the guestroom door open with the toe of her shoe and drags in her duffel bag full of clothes and other necessities that she'll need for the main stay of summer at her grandparents' house. She drops her bags at the foot of the twin-size bed and shrugs the backpack off her shoulder and onto the mattress.

Releasing a heavy sigh she glances around the room, which seems to be completely untouched since the last time she was here at Christmas. "Same old, same old," she mumbles beneath her breath and takes a seat on the edge of the bed.

She leans her elbows on her knees and rests her forehead in the palms of her hands. It's going to be an agonizingly long two months, she already knows. Her grandparents are at the point where they should be in a nursing home, but they're much too stubborn to admit that they could use the extra help. They're both in their mid-eighties and they keep on living like they're energizer bunnies.

Despite their stubbornness, they do need help – even with simple everyday things. Translating to mean that basically Jane and her brother, Frankie, are going to be like hospice nurses over the next two months.

And the worst part of everything is the second Jane embraced her grandpa in a caring hug, she couldn't help but notice those similar features as she pulled away. He has that same stubborn chin as his father, James. And thinking like that only leads Jane's mind directly back to Maura.

"Do you miss her?" Frankie's young voice reaches his sister's ears while she's jamming the heels of her hands against her eyes, as if trying to rid of torturous images.

She glances up from her hands and settles her eyes on her brother as he walks the rest of the way into the room and perches on the edge of the other bed, opposite her. "Miss who?" she asks in a whisper.

Her brother rolls his eyes.

"You know," he says with a hidden smile, "that girl."

"W-what girl?" Jane asks curiously, unable to piece together that her brother knows about her and Maura. Of course, she's forgotten that evening when he barged in on them arm and arm.

Again, the young boy rolls his eyes with a typical teenager exasperation.
"That girl," he repeats his own words, his tone slightly embarrassed to be talking about such a thing with his sister. "The one with the blonde hair… Maura? Or something like that?" His sister nods her head stiffly. "Do you miss her?"

There's a heavy sigh that echoes throughout the room and then Jane has her hands jabbing into her eyes once again. She attempts a casual shrug, but such a movement goes unacknowledged in her present position, all slumped over.

An entire minute goes by before she finds a trace of her voice to respond, "Kind of, I guess."

Frankie giggles lightly upon seeing a blush creep up his sister's neck. "That's cute," he says in between his laughter, never before seeing or hearing his sister care about someone enough to admit to missing them. "Is she going to come up here and visit over the summer?"

His sister shakes her head, regrettably. "She can't," her voice peeps up in response.

"Oh." There are a few moments of silence before Frankie speaks up again. "Is she your… your girlfriend?"

Jane pauses her process of repeatedly ramming her fists into her eye sockets. She takes a moment and raises her head only to rest her chin into her cupped hands. She breathes in deeply and releases a long exhale before meeting her eyes with Frankie's. With a halfhearted smile adorning her lips she replies in a soft tone, "Yeah, she is."

Frankie's cheeks heat up to beet red and he ducks his head slightly. "You're gay?"

"Guess so," Jane responds plainly. She never was before, but it's not like she can deny it now. And claiming to only be gay for one person is just a way of lying to yourself, in Jane's opinion.

Her brother giggles yet again. "Does Ma know? Have you told her yet?"

Sighing and allowing her eyelids to fall shut she replies tiredly, "No, not yet. I haven't found the right moment yet."

"Oh."

"Knock, knock," a voice sounds at the doorway with a gentle rasp on the already open door as their grandma enters the room with a warm grin scrunching up her wrinkled features.

Jane and Frankie both turn to look at the door, greeting their grandmother with big smiles as she slowly makes her way into the room with her slim cane that doesn't seem to be doing much good.

Jane moves her backpack toward the wall, making room for her grandmother, and helps the older woman gently take a seat on the edge of the bed.

"What's up, Grandma?" Jane asks as she takes her seat again, frowning at how worn out she looks just from the short trip to the guestroom from the family room.

The older woman releases a tired sigh and shifts on the mattress, setting her cane to lean against the foot of the bed. "Oh, Grandma's getting old," she says with strangled laugh, smiling lightly. "But Grandpa wanted me to break the news to you two myself. He doesn't want to be the bad guy this year."

The grandkids immediately smirk, knowing exactly what she's talking about: their summer jobs.
They don't get to laze about their grandparents' house every summer. They're young and healthy, in the perfect condition to be put to hard labor.

"What's the verdict this year?" Jane asks, slightly dreading the answer. There have been some pretty demanding jobs in the past few summers.

"Oh, nothing to get worked up over," their grandmother replies, patting Jane's knee reassuringly. "We thought that this year you two could help with cleaning out the basement. There are so many knickknacks down there…" she trails off into a merry chuckle, shaking her head humoredly. "Your grandfather is such a packrat, but he'll never admit to it. You know him, too stubborn to admit he's stubborn." She lets out a gentle laugh. "Do you think you can handle it?"

"We'll manage," Jane responds, "as long as it's not identical to the shit—… junk in the attic."

Her grandmother sends her a slight glare, silently warning her of her language before she replies. "It's not nearly half as bad as the attic was. The attic was all my old, forgotten knickknacks. The basement is full of your grandfather's things. And his knickknacks are much more interesting than mine. He has artifacts from when he was a child and boxes and boxes of stuff from his father—"

"He has some of James' stuff?" Jane asks, interrupting her grandmother and causing all the eyes in the room to fall on her.

Her grandmother creases her brow in slight confusion, turning to look at her granddaughter. "Things of your great-grandfather's, yes," she replies, her tone bewildered. "How'd you remember his name? Were you studying genealogy in school?" She laughs, clearly joking.
Jane laughs and shakes her head. "Nah, it's just… something I know," she responds lightly, thankful that there's no curiosity as to why she acted so interested. "So how soon do we need to start doing that?" she asks, changing the subject.

"As soon as you'd like," her grandmother says with smile, "you have all summer."

Jane held out a few days, almost a week, taking the time to get settled in for the following months. She didn't want to be thinking about Maura and it seemed that if she got anywhere close to the basement that's exactly where her mind ran off to.

On day six of being at her grandparents' house she found herself downstairs in the basement during the midafternoon, sheltered from the heat and sun, and instead she's lost among endless, untidy piles of boxes upon boxes. Some are stacked nicely while others look like a miniature leaning tower of Pisa. But one thing is the same no matter where the placement; everything is covered in a lovely layer of dust.

Jane pulls a little chain to turn on one of the overhead lights, illuminating a good portion of the basement. She releases a sigh, unable to decide where to start in this mess, and flips open the lid of the box closest to her. Waving her left hand in front of her face she coughs as a cloud of dust flies from its resting position and attacks the air around her. She coughs until the air is, for the most part, once again settled.

Taking a step closer she peaks into the open box and frowns at the contents.

Toys.

It's full of nothing more than broken, vintage little kid's toys. And from the look of it, they seem to be her mother's versus her grandfather's. Unless, of course, her grandfather used to be fond of knock-off Barbie dolls as a child.

Jane smirks and tilts the box back to look at the side of it in the light, and sure enough, scrawled in bright red sharpie it says: Angela's toys.

That's definitely not what's looking for.

But if one box is labeled does that mean the others are, too?

Jane reaches to the shelf behind her and picks up the flashlight she had brought down. Leaving the box open, she switches on the flashlight and looks at the visible sides of the rows of boxes until her eyes fall on one with the word she's looking for.

She turns off the flashlight and throws it aside before lifting the flaps of the box.
She immediately looks in, but to her disappointment there's not much to see.

"Why are you already doing this?"

She drops the framed photographs of her grandpa as a child back into the box and looks over her shoulder as her little brother comes skipping down the basement steps, switching on excess lighting in the process. His flip-flops make shuffling sounds on the cement floor while he walks over toward his sister.

Jane lets out a sigh and shrugs, turning her attention back to the box full of photographs. Picking up a family photo from when her grandpa was a child she responds, "Nothing better to do."

"So you'd rather be down here in this dust playground?" he asks and lifts himself up onto a fairly sturdy stool, running his finger along the top of a closed box. Raising his finger up toward his face, he grimaces at the thick layer of dust covering his skin. "Gross."

"It beats being out in the heat," she mumbles and moves the entire box on top to an empty space on the ground. She opens the box underneath and grunts as she sees a pile full of reminiscent baby clothes. "Grandpa is such a packrat… why would anyone want to keep all this shit?"

Frankie giggles and jumps off the stool, opening the lid to a different box not too far away. "And Grandpa apparently likes teddy bears," he says with a laugh, pulling out a stuffed animal from the box he had opened. "Ew, it smells all old and musty—"

"Let me see that," Jane interrupts after glancing up from the box beneath her hands, her eyes falling on a familiar teddy bear. She grabs the stuffed animal out of her brother's grip and looks at it closer, her eyes widening as she touches the blue fur as if it's gold.

Frankie laughs at his sister's astonishment before turning back to the box. "Does Janie like the teddy?" he asks in a babyish voice.

"Shut up, I just…" she trails off, realizing she can't tell him that she got this same exact bear for Maura a couple weeks before. And it is the same bear, despite its slightly worn and torn look. She shakes her head and lets her hands hang at her side, the bear still tightly gripped in her left hand. "Where'd you find this?"

"In here," Frankie replies with a cough, waving away a cloud of dust. "Ooh, what's this?" he asks after moving aside a little stack of papers. He reaches his arms deep down into the fairly large box and pulls out a leather-bound book. Undoing the knot and pulling the strings apart, he opens it to the first page.

"What is it?" Jane asks softly, watching her brother grin as he takes a seat on the stool yet again, the small book held in his hands.

He giggles lightly and closes it, holding it out for Jane. "I think it's, like, a diary or something. It looks like some little kid wrote it. Here, look."

Jane places the teddy bear on top of a stack of closed boxes and takes the closed book from her brother. She runs her fingers across the leather covering, flipping it over once in her hands. It looks old and the corners are dented, as if having been shoved into little hiding spots far too many times.

Leaning back against a foundation beam, she flips the front cover out of the way and angles the book so she can read it in the dim overhead light.

Her brother was right; it does seem as if a little kid wrote it.

The penmanship is angled and scrawled and fairly large, like when a child is first learning to write in between borders.

Reading over the first page, the subject only seems to further prove the fact. She laughs at the childishness of the first entry, the child having written about the toy that his mother wouldn't let him get when they went to town and how mad he was at her. He honestly portrayed his mother as an equivalent of the devil.

"What are you laughing at?" Frankie asks, swinging his dangling feet back and forth from his position on the stool.

Jane looks up from the page, slightly startled. "It's like a little kid's journal," she replies with a short laugh, as if that's enough reason for her laughter. Subconsciously flipping the page she adds on, "It's ridiculous."

"Okay then," Frankie says and jumps off the stool. "You have fun with that, I'm going back upstairs."

Jane merely nods in a silent response as she hears her brother shuffling back up the steps, her attention somewhere else entirely. She skims the next few pages, laughing to herself at the ridiculous journal entries. As she turns the next page she notes the chunk of torn out pages, their edges still intact with the ragged rips as nothing more than a faint memory.

She runs her fingers over the batted edges before allowing her eyes to fall on the next entry. However, this entry is different than the previous. The handwriting is neater and this time there's a date written at the top of the page.

"Ah!" Jane nearly shouts and jumps as she feels a light ticklish feeling on her cheek. She smacks the little creature away and it falls to floor alongside the journal. She calms her breathing and kneels down to pick up the book, muttering, "Stupid bug," beneath her breath. She sighs heavily and lifts the book by the front cover. The pages of the journal fan open as she stands back up and a strip of paper falls from the journal and flutters to the ground.

Jane leans back down and picks up the object. It's a folded slip of paper, fairly hard – like a kind of cardstock. The folded edge of it looks as if it's been smoothed down until it was as thin as it could possibly be.

Standing up once again, she places the journal on top of a box and looks down at the folded strip of paper in her hands with a look of confusion overpowering her features. She leans against the pole in her previous position and snakes her fingers in between the two edges to unfold the paper.

Her breathing catches in her throat.
The paper begins shaking, following the movement of her hands.
She blinks several times, unable to believe what she's seeing. It's almost too unreal.

She glances down at the paper once again, but it hasn't changed. It's the same as it was two seconds before; the strip of pictures from the photo booth at the carnival a couple weeks before. Each and every one of the little squares shows a cute flash of Maura and Jane together.

Her heartbeat quickens as she realizes where the paper was. James' journal, she thinks to herself, the words blaring in her mind. She scrambles to grab the book, the photos still hugged between her fingers as she flips through the pages until she comes to later entries with more "recent" dates.

"1908, 1908, come on, come on," she whispers, turning page after page until she finds a match. "March 20, 1908! Yes!" She skims her right index finger down the page, her eyes scanning from left to right, her lips moving to form the words, and her voice occasionally saying useful mutterings aloud. "Maura brought a strange girl home yesterday… She mentioned something about not being able to get home… Maura let her stay the night… Mother and Father visiting Great-Aunt… Come morning, she was gone…"

Jane flips the page, her eyes still frantically running along the page, her fingers and palms sweating against the leather cover as the photos tremble in her weak grip. The next several entries she barely minds any attention to, finding it pointless to read over James' opinions of Maura's apparently quite often conversations about meeting Jane.

She pauses as she gets to the later entries, dated in late spring. She skims the first couple lines of one of them and then decides to read the entire entry, word for word. Her heart races the whole time.

May 22, 1908

I knew Maura has been getting close to that Ms. Rizzoli fellow, but I never imagined they could be that close. I saw them run off into the forest earlier today and I followed them, thinking that perhaps Maura was showing Jane the small stream that's not too far away. I shouldn't have followed them. I shouldn't have.

There was no stream. They were "roughhousing" as Maura claimed. She made me swear not to tell Mother. I won't, but it would be pointless to rat on something she wasn't doing. They weren't roughhousing at all. I watched from behind a tree. They kissed! It was so gross! Two girls? Kissing? Is that even right? I've only ever heard and seen boys and girls kissing. I'd ask Mother, but I'm afraid she'd want to know the reason as to why I'm so curious.

I asked Maura, though. She said that to some people, it's wrong. I asked her if she's like that; if she likes girls.

She said no.

She lied. I know she did. I know what I saw.
I saw her kissing Jane, I heard them talking.

If some people find it so wrong, then why is she doing it? And why is she hiding it?

Jane sighs and tries to slow the intense beating of her heart. James knows, and he knows more than they thought. That alone is reaching more than enough to make Jane freak out.

"Janie! Lunch is ready!" her grandmother's voice travels down the stairs and reaches her ears, bringing her mind springing out of her thoughts. She jumps in her spot and smacks the books shut. "Janie, are you down there?"

"Yeah, yeah, coming, Grandma!" she calls back and slides the photos back into the journal. Glancing around the messy basement she shoves the leather-bound book back into one of the boxes and dashes up the steps, leaving behind the journal and praying that her thoughts will stay behind with it.

Jane was not lucky, though. Her thoughts wouldn't stay behind, stored in the basement. Instead they plagued her mind the entire afternoon and evening, constantly popping up and making her leg jiggle in anxiety of what else James knows.

She even managed to sneak back down to the basement and back upstairs with the journal hidden behind her back as she walked past her grandparents.

And now she's staked out in the guestroom, leaning against the headboard with the book open against her legs. She flips through the pages, passing some entries she already read and discarding others that she doesn't really care about. She pauses momentarily on the entry she read earlier, but she turns the page quickly, skipping over a few when her eyes fall on one she can't avoid.

June 14, 1908

I am terribly confused. I was watching Maura and Jane saying goodbye earlier. They were outside, and I was watching from the hallway window. I turned away when they were kissing (that's still quite odd), but it was obvious they were saying goodbye to one another. (I asked Maura and she said that Jane is going to her grandparents' house for a while)

They finished their goodbyes and then Jane walked over to that water pump that Father has forgotten to fix. She looked as if she was about to try and use it to pump up some water, but I'm not sure if I blinked or blacked out, but the next thing I know she was gone.

She vanished from our backyard.

I'm positive my eyes were wide open, and it was as if she evaporated into thin air.

She was there one second and gone the next. Even if I did blink, that's not enough time for her to run off in the other direction. I've been trying to come up with a hundred different explanations, but none of them fit.

I swear she vanished.

I should ask Maura about that. She was down there with Jane, maybe she knows.

Though, she didn't seem too shaken up by it.

Jane freezes, her grip on the bottom corner of the page causing it to shake like a mini tremor. He can't know about the time travel, Jane reassures her mind, ignoring the warning signs popping up continually. But with the flip of several more pages, reassuring her mind is getting harder with every word.