Chapter 38: Minimizing

Laura slammed out the front door to the island house and marched across the porch towards the dock.

"I thought I made myself clear," she spit out over her shoulder at the determined Irishman nipping at her heels, "This discussion is over." She cut her hand through the air, emphasizing the statement. Remington had held his tongue until they'd finished eating breakfast , not that she'd consumed more than a few bites, then had resumed the argument they'd been having prior to the call from the girls.

"And, I believe I made myself clear when I said it wasn't," he reminded her. She growled and flicked a hand in his direction, impulsively changing course and veering for the sand. "This is beginning to feel eerily similar to the Laura Holt of old, who—"

"Oh, well, we can't have that, now, can we?" she retorted.

"No. No, we can't," he agreed, "Not when it means you issue a command and expect me to fall in line with no—"

"Ha! You're one to speak!" The reply caught him off guard, and he came to a stop while trying to deduce what it meant.

"What is that supposed to mean?" he demanded to know, his long strides quickly closing the gap between them.

"You! That's what I mean," she shot back. "You decide, on your own, that the Agency needs to be shut down—"

"Not the Agency," he interjected, "Merely the investigative side."

"The investigative side of the Agency is all I have left of Laura Holt!" she shouted, then with a wave of both hands in his direction, she spun on her heel, reversing direction. Thoroughly caught off the guard by the statement, he turned awkwardly, barely planting a hand in the sand to prevent him from planting face down in the sand. Righting himself, he scrambled after her.

"All you have left of Laura Holt?" he asked, lengthening each word in a mixture of confusion and astonishment.

"I was a nineteen-year-old math major when I decided I was done playing the game, doing what people expected of 'a young lady of breeding', as my mother used to say. 'Of breeding'?" She laughed. "I was born and raised in LA, which is about as far as you can get from New Canaan, Connecticut. I was sneaking out to watch The Byrds play at Whiskey A Go Go, using my fake ID to dance the night away at clubs on the Strip, not taking tea with the ladies or preparing for my coming out! " She looked at him. "I told you what I was like after my father left."

"Yes," he agreed. It was still so rare for Laura to speak of her childhood, that when she did, he was always eager to hear more about the girl he never knew. She stopped and crossed her arms around herself, protectively, rubbing at them as though suddenly chilled.

"Growing up, Mother, when speaking of Frances would use terms such as 'easy,' 'well-mannered,' or 'kind.' Me? I was 'overly sensitive', 'difficult', 'trying.'." She snorted a soft laugh, while gently nodding her head, a small smile tugging at her lips. Then she sobered and rubbed at her arms again. "For the first few months after my father left, 'trying' would be an understatement. But I'd found out two things about myself during that time: First, there is a big difference between rebelling by going dancing or drinking and losing your virginity in the backseat of a smelly car with a boy you didn't particularly like." She shrugged a careless shoulder at the admission, and her words paused.

"And second?" he prodded, after several ticks of the second hand on his watch. She blinked her eyes a couple of times as though coming back from somewhere far away.

"I didn't like myself very much. I'd always been a source of discord between my parents: I demanded too much from him; wanted to spend too much time with him; I refused to conduct myself as a young lady should and he permitted it, encouraged it, even. But I'd never purposefully gone out of my way to make them, or even myself, ashamed." A shiver went down her spine and goose bumps skittered over her skin, his watchful blue eyes taking note. "After that night with Marty, I…" she lifted a hand and dropped it, "…woke up. I realized no matter how much I rebelled, how poorly I behaved, my father wasn't coming back…"

"Is that… Is that when the panic attacks began?" he asked hesitantly, keeping his voice low, hoping only the question wasn't enough to make her stop speaking. She turned her head, studied his face at length, then returned her eyes to the water. With a sharp snap of her head, she acknowledged it was.

"When they first began, I overheard Mother speaking on the phone with my grandmother, in Connecticut." Her brow furrowed as she retrieved a memory that had been long ago been packed tightly away. When she spoke again, her tone was carefully neutral, a sign she was distancing herself from the emotions attached to those days. "First, I'd shamed myself, the family, and now I was being 'overly dramatic', wanting all attention on me, as though I was the only one that he'd walked out on. 'Poor Frances' should have been focusing on her planning her wedding, not having to keep an eye on me. It didn't matter to me that Mother had lost her husband, and had no idea how she was going to keep up with the mortgage payments, let alone put clothes on our backs and food on the table." She took a deep breath, let it out slowly. "What could I say? She was right. I hadn't been able to see past myself."

"Laura, you were a child," he soothed.

"That wasn't an option," she dismissed, sharply. "Mother was withdrawing more and more, would spend days not speaking, just sitting in her wingchair, a cup of tea in her hand or nearby, brooding, thinking… worrying. She didn't laugh, didn't cry… she didn't do anything. She was just there, numb with fear, so lost that even Frances couldn't get through to her. She was raised to be a wife, nothing more. She'd never had to pay a bill, call a repairman, or cut the lawn. That was a 'man's job.'" She walked away, pacing slowly. "The bills would arrive, and she'd just add them to the stack of other bills, lying unopened on my father's desk. The kitchen cabinets, the refrigerator were nearly completely bare: some yogurt, questionable cheese, stale bread, a few can of soup. The water heater broke." She laughed a soft, sad laugh. "We were fortunate it happened during the middle of the summer, because Mother didn't know what to do and for weeks we had only cold water in the house. But when the electric was turned off, something had to be done."

"And it was you," he concluded. He was flabbergasted. She'd never been able to hide the emotional scars caused by her father leaving, but he'd no idea it had gotten as bad as all that. He'd always envisioned a sad house, but a functional, upper-middle class one. That she'd only been a child herself, having to take on the load of the two adults who'd checked out?

"Yeah, it was. I hid the panic attacks, stopped talking about my father," she shared, then added ruefully, "And acting out."

"So you'd no longer be a burden," he concluded, softly.

"Yes," she answered, softly, shortly. She turned to give him a quick, sad smile. He swallowed hard when his inquisitive blue eyes met a pair of dull brown ones. "I dressed properly, spoke properly. I took the right classes in school. I cancelled the summer trip to France. B between the panic attacks and what needed to be done at home, I couldn't have gone, even if we could have afforded it. My dad had left some money in savings when he left and Mother had started a wedding account for Frances and I were small. Frances and I shut down those accounts, transferring all the money into savings. I sat down that night and wrote out four months of past due bills including the penalties and late fees, then the next morning went to the store and filled the house with food, cleaning supplies. There wasn't much left after that. But, my Gram sent Mother a stipend from the family's trust each month that would have paid the bills if not for my parent's credit card debt. Frances was working as a receptionist full time, saving money for her wedding and helping us out where she could…"

"And you?" he prodded, when she fell silent. She gave her head a shake, seemed to rejoin him.

"I babysat four, sometimes five, nights a week…" She snorted softly and gave him a wry look. "…Ran a paper route for the rest of high school."

"As in on your bike, a bag slung over your shoulders, and you—"

"Hurling them up onto doorsteps as I pedaled?" She laughed aloud, and nodded her head. "Yes."

"Tell me you were biking around in those skimpy little, bright colored shorts that were all the rage then," he pled, following her lighter mood. She gave him a saucy look.

"Oh, those and cut-offs that were even less generous with the material… At least during the summer," she teased. Her smile faded. She grew somber and turned her head away with a sigh.

"Was it enough?" he asked. She raised her brows.

"Yeah, it was," she replied. "By the time I left for college, the credit card debt was doable. Mother sold the house, and even after settling the remaining debt, managed to put a good amount into savings. She moved back to Connecticut to help with Gram, who was getting older."

"What happened at nineteen?" She glanced at him, as though surprised he'd remembered what she'd said.

"I don't know," she answered, pensively. "Maybe nothing more than I realized I was free. Frances was happily married, Mother didn't need me to keep things together any longer. I just sort of… woke up." She lifted a hand and dropped it. "I wasn't happy. I was a math major at Stanford because it was expected of me. In my Mother's eyes, if a woman went to college it should be for an 'acceptable' career choice: A bookkeeper, teacher, or a banker. Given my scholarship, I couldn't change my major, but I could change my career. Since the day my Grandmother had hired me to find her ring, I'd wanted to be a detective. I filled the elective slots in my schedule with classes in criminal justice, criminology, business administration and even took a psychology and sociology class – anything that might give me the edge on getting through the doors of a solid agency when I graduated. I started to go dancing. I went to protests, was even arrested," she laughed.

"Protesting Wellington Oil, if I remember correctly," he mused. She flashed him a quick smile of confirmation then became pensive again.

"I remembered how to be young, to be happy… how to follow my own path as my Grandmother had urged me to do. I learned how to—" She stumbled, unable to find the word or phrase.

"Live again," he suggested. She chewed on the word for a spell then shook her head, slowly, before looking up at him with a little more light in her eyes than had been there earlier.

"Breathe," she breathed. "I'd been holding my breath for so long, I'd forgotten how good it felt to take a breath without worrying the ceiling would fall in on me if I did." He nodded his head soberly.

"I can understand that. I've had a few such moments in my life," he commiserated, staring out over the water now himself. "The first time I'd ever experienced it was when Marcos and Elena took me in. When I no longer had to worry what threat each new day would bring, what shoe would next fall…" He could recall the instant he no longer felt like each day was something to be feared and, instead, had begun seeing the promise in the day to come. "I love them all the more for having allowed me that bit of respite."

"And would you willingly given them up on the off chance something might happen if you didn't?" she questioned, slanting her eyes towards him. He scowled at the parallel she'd suggested.

"It's hardly the same thing," he protested. "Marcos and Elena were like parents to me!"

"You're right, what you're asking of me is far worse. You're forcing me to choose between Laura Holt – private detective and your partner – and Laura Steele, wife and mother!" she answered, vehemently, as she started to pace. "As much as I love being Laura Steele, it can't come at the cost of that other part of me!"

"I'm terrified of losing myself in you. Of being swallowed up by you until there's no me anymore!"

He held a splayed hand over his lower face, the words that she'd once said to him coming unbidden to his mind, although how apropos they were. She'd once protected the Agency with all the feral ferocity of a lioness guarding her cub. Everything in her life from her tedious list of tasks to their personal relationship had been decided, first and foremost, with the Agency in mind. Since the year prior to their marriage, she'd willingly made one concession after another where the Agency was concerned, first taking time for them on a regular basis, then hiring staff to cover their decreased hours after Livvie's arrival, and, finally, cutting those hours even further to accompany Livvie twice weekly to dance.

And even then, she'd prioritized Sophie's needs over those of the Agency without so much as a blink.

She'd only balked when he'd suggested shutting down the investigative side altogether. He'd been blind… foolish… a buggering idiot. It wasn't as if she hadn't told him enough during their dizzying dance around one another that she was terrified of being consumed by someone else, their needs, their wants, their demands or of being shoved into the stereotypical role of wife and mother should she dare risk having it all. He'd even tested those waters a bit during the last year of their courtship.

"Supposing you had children? Just supposing. Would you intend to continue working? Or would you feed the little tykes breakfast in the morning and then rush off to a nice, juicy murder? I mean, would you call them up at school and apologize because you couldn't pick them up because you were being held hostage?"

"Are you saying a woman's place is in the home?"

He'd unwittingly played into her largest fear: Giving up piece-by-piece of herself, until there was nothing left.

Still…

"Laura, you must know I've no desire to turn you into someone you're not," he told her, as he cautiously made his approach. "It was, after all, Laura Holt's intelligence, creativity and mesmerizing temper which captivated me, kept me here." He stopped when they were nearly toe-to-toe. Pursing his lips, he gave her a goofy grin and wobbled his head. "Still does." He watched as the stress drained from her shoulders, and her eyes regained some of their glimmer. She shifted uncomfortably, feeling as though she should have known that, did know that but… She gave a nearly undetectable shake of her head, and looked up at him.

"I love being Laura Steele," she reiterated, then added almost regretfully, "But I love being Laura Holt, too." He nodded slowly, and shoved his hands into his pockets, resisting the urge to draw her to him.

"I'd have it no other way," he assured again. "I simply want to minimize the risk to our family." He looked away towards the water, and swallowing hard, admitted, "To you, Laura." He blew out a deep breath, his pulse racing merely at the suggestion. "I don't know what I would do…" He couldn't finish the sentence. When her soft palm guided his head forward to look at her, he didn't resist, but there was a long pause before his troubled eyes met hers.

"Do you think it doesn't scare me that something might happen to you, to one of our children?" She gave a short huff of surprised disbelief. "There have been times when I have been so terrified I couldn't move. But each time we wake up, life holds risks. It's not just the Agency. Anna, Dancer, Wally, Roselli, even Castoro. All people who have come after us even though our association with them began as personal, not business. Felicia, her threats now, that's personal as well. It's all unpredictable, unpreventable." He stared at her for several ticks of the second hand, trying to let her convince him. But he couldn't. He shook his head and took several steps away.

"Isn't that an argument, then, for eliminating the risks where we can?" he demanded to know.

"Minimize, Remington," she argued. "The only way we could eliminate risks altogether would be to shut the Agency doors altogether, pull the girls from school and move somewhere so remote that neither your past nor mine could find us. Then how do you defend us against accident, illness… some freak act of nature? And if that is not enough to make you understand, then maybe I should point out how many times on a security job that someone has wanted what we were protecting and our lives have been put at risk. Kessler and Neff during the very security job that made your path and my path cross! If you want to minimize the risk, the way to do that is not by closing the investigative side or leaving me out there with a partner who doesn't have your instincts!" He did a double take, as understanding dawned.

"Then, it's not so much a matter of my choosing not to know about what happens to you," he hypothesized, "It's that you hold me to blame that it happened at all." Her chin tipped upwards.

"Would it have happened if you had been there?" she challenged.

"Not if I could have prevented it," he retorted.

"Burton's a great investigator, but he doesn't have your instincts. He never saw the punch coming that took him down. You would have and absent that you would have known just by looking at me that you were about to be blindsided. " She stepped to him and lay her hand on his chest, a peace offering. "The answer isn't in closing the Agency or abandoning our partnership. It's in agreeing that we assess the risk of a particular case and determine whether it will be us or Burton and Celek who take it." Unconvinced, he rubbed at his mouth, while troubled eyes looked down at her.

"I don't know…"

"Remington, I'm thirty-five. It won't be long until nature makes it impossible for me to do the job any longer," she reasoned, then look up at him with hopeful eyes. "Let's have a little fun together while we still can. What do you say?"

There was a light in her eyes that he hadn't seen in far too long a time and he simply didn't have it in him to be the one to extinguish it. With a slow nod of his head, he dropped his hand from his face, and drew her to him.

"No unnecessary risks, Miss Holt," he breathed, pressing his cheek against her head, tightening his embrace.

"Same to you, Mr.—" She abruptly stopped speaking and stiffened in his arms, as she pressed up on her tiptoes to peek over his shoulder. "Sophie," she murmured, in response to the ringing of the phone inside the little house. Pushing herself away from him, she ran for the house and the phone.