Eighteen Months Later
...
Alone in her study, she runs her finger over the cryptic words scribbled out at the top of the small package in fading permanent marker.
"The truth takes time."
She feels a surge of bitterness. Sour purging her cells because of all times, now. Now that she can stand without the toppling claim of vertigo. Now that she can look into the mirror and see herself bright and alive. How come now she's getting the truth after years of grasping at straws? After years of needing something; any semblance of anything to hold onto? After a lifetime of needing answers just to try to piece together an identity, she gets a beacon of hope just as she doesn't need it anymore? Just as she has found herself and a family and a life one million times brighter than anything her father could give?
She has half a mind to just throw it out. No mysterious package could change the way she feels when Jane tosses a smile across the room. Or when Sophie reaches for her hand when they cross the street. When Charly runs right off the soccer field in the middle of the game to give her a high-five.
But there is another part of her that cannot move from this spot. Before her, in that tiny box is an opportunity for crushing disappointment or for the closure she's been looking for since as long as she can remember.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knows her father will not try to contact her again. It's what she wanted. However, she did not anticipate this coldness in her chest. The ache to see him each time she goes out grocery shopping or for a walk through the park. The deep pain in her chest when she remembers he put himself behind bars for her.
No.
This is how it should be.
This is best.
It is.
In truth, she knows that whatever is in this box will stay with her for as long as her father intended. And she needs to find a way to be okay with that.
She reaches for the package.
"Doctor?" The door swings open. She shifts her arms instead to embrace the child.
"Sophie," she says quietly into the child's hair, "are you alright?"
Sophie nods against her shoulder, small hands resting against her ribcage. There is a long pause before the child sits up, brown eyes clear yet unbelievably inexpressive.
"Charly says you're not Doctor o'more."
"I see."
"She says it's 'cause you don't go to work, so you can't be Doctor."
"Well," she sighs and shakes her head. Two days after the death of Detective Darren Crowe, she turned in her letter of resignation. Once a week since then, she's been seeing a therapist but has yet to reveal the true events of that dark night two years ago. She just can't talk about it. Any of it. Not even with Jane. "I'm still a doctor, Sophie. I just don't have a practice at the moment."
And it is doubtful I will find the will to return.
The child nods and squirms back to her feet. "That's okay. You don't have to be Doctor. You can‒"
"Doctor! Doctor!" Charly interrupts, smacking her little hand against the door twice. Jane scoops her off her feet before she can try for a third. "Doctor, we're gonna watch a movie! C'mon!"
"Yeah, we are. Why don't you go set it up, you little monster," Jane says, letting Charly down. "You too, Soph."
When the familiar sound of the girls' bickering starts up in the living room, Jane rolls her eyes but lets it slide. She takes a step into the study and shoves her hands into her pockets.
She eyes the boxes stacked all over the room labeled things like Maura's books, Maura's crazy-expensive telescope, and More Maura books. Exoneration really seemed to bring out her cheeky side.
"You sure you don't need any help with these." because we moved over a year ago, and you haven't unpacked a thing.
"Jane…"
"I know, I know," she holds her hands up and smiles. "I'm about to sit through like an hour and a half of talking chipmunks, so if you feel like joining us, we'll save you some popcorn."
"Oh, you better." She laughs a little, and it feels good, great. Amazing. "I'll be right there. I just… there's something I need to do first."
...
She takes a deep breath once she hears the muffled sound from the movie in the living room, and before she can fall into overthinking, she pulls open the side of the box.
A tape slides out.
The kind she used to record her autopsy notes with in college. There's nothing written on it except a date: Oct - 24 - 76. Just a few months after she was born. She wraps her fingers around it tightly as she begins to dig through the boxes around her for the old tape player she is certain she packed before the move.
...
Twenty minutes later, she finds herself in Jane's old truck pushing the tape into the player on the dash. The tinny sound system crackles, but she can make out the low thrum of voices.
She adjusts the volume.
Her chest clenches as she recognizes the voice of her father and a woman. Her mother.
"Oh, Patrick! You're scaring her!"
"No, I'm not. Look at her. She's smiling."
Soft laughter carries through the speakers, swirling around her. She shuts her eyes and tucks it away inside herself.
"She is! Oh, Miss Maura, is your daddy being silly?"
"No, she just knows who her family is."
White noise drowns her parents out for just a moment. She feels the tears pricking at her eyes and clogging her throat. This tape. This is all she will have.
"Hey, wait. Where are you going?"
"I have to go. Here, take her. I'll be back soon."
"But… Patrick, you just‒"
"Don't worry. I talked to my father. He's going back to Chicago once he's done here. He doesn't need me there… It'll be just like we talked about, okay?"
"Pat‒"
"Don't worry. It's almost over… Hope…"
She drops her head into her hands. She. has. a. name. She has a mother with a name and a voice and a laugh and…
Hope.
She can hear footsteps on the recording and movement. Like walking. Walking away. And in the very background just barely, "Patrick, wait."
"Patrick, please! Patrick!" Panicked. The doctor sits upright, heart thudding in her ears. The baby starts to wail.
"What's wrong?"
"Take her. Take her!"
The baby screams.
"Hope, listen to me. You need to breathe, okay? What's wrong."
"It's Her. It's Her. Her."
"Maura? What's wrong with her?" he is shouting, frantics escalating the volume of the recording. "Is she alright?"
"Not Maura. Her. It's red."
A strip of fire ignites along her spine. No no nonono. It's not possible. She wants to yank the tape free and unspool its insides. Then gut it like the lie that it is because it's. not. possible.
"Please, not again. Hope, I can't…" the baby screams again, clipping the speakers. "I thought this was over!"
"NO!"
"Hope. please."
"NO! NO! AWAY!"
A loud crashing noise blasts through the truck. The doctor waits, but there's nothing. Only the hum of the engine and the sobs that escape her.
...
She is unsure of how long she stays in the truck. Could have been just minutes after she collects herself. But more likely that not, by the time Jane pulls the door open and lifts her out, it's been hours.
She just barely holds the tape in her hands. What would it matter if she lost it at this point? Dropped it? Pitched it into the darkness? She pushes it into Jane's hand. "Please."
Jane nods, silently understanding to save her from herself. She presses a kiss to her forehead.
…
.
Another Six Months Later
...
One night smack in the middle of September, the small family crowds the kitchen. The smell of the third batch of cookies baking fills the air, masking the acrid scent of the first two batches banished to the trash.
The girls are loud and happy and beautiful: Charly smashes a ball of dough with her fists while Sophie delicately sprinkles flour all over the counter‒ and maybe just a little in her sister's hair.
Most days are bright like this. Lightness and smiles. Normality. Days she can lean against Jane's shoulder and count the inches the girls sprout as the months pass. Days she can feel the sun on her face like a beacon of freedom.
Good days.
Rare are the days the doctor is swept up in a dark torrent, stuck in her study, tearing through boxes looking for that tape. That cursed object she made Jane promise to hide from her. Days she can't tell the sun from the moon‒ it makes her dizzy to try and guess.
Those are the gone days.
But the doctor can feel herself healing. Slowly. Gently. But thoroughly and surely. And as she watches Jane and the girls stuff their faces with chocolate chip cookies, she feels a little closer to that golden light.
Her life, her family.
Beautiful. Whole. No monsters or red girls. No ice picks or smoking guns. Only broken scalpels and chipped detective badges. Twin comets and stars and a woman who shines brighter than the sun.
The doctor walks into the light.
.
We were kindred spirits, once pulled apart on an atomic level. I thought that because you reminded me of myself, you were my safety. A promise.
I didn't realize that my toxicity, the poison on my lips and in my veins, was yours too. You weren't my home. You were the dangerous part of me, all edges and no empathy.
I fell in love with my own monster, multa-paucis