Gail

"Crap!" Gail curses as she presses down too hard, causing one side of what had been a neat cylinder of wet clay to become— for about the eighteenth time in an hour— a misshapen lump spinning lopsidedly on the wheel in front of her.

She stares at Holly's mom, her eyes narrowed into a glare. This is Tasya's fault. This was totally her terrible idea.

Tasya looks over at Gail from her table and stops what she is doing. She leans forward, her arms folded in her lap, brush in hand. Her eyes are twinkling with the smile she doesn't commit to.

"Would it help, Gail, if I told you right now that you are probably not going to get this today?"

"I'm not?" Gail groans, sitting back, staring at the raggedy grey mass spinning round and round in front of her, mocking her with its lumpiness. Stupid clay.

"Well, You will get something, but you will not get the perfect object you want today." Tasya replies. "I guarantee it. So have patience."

"Well, now I don't even want to. You just ruined the ending, didn't you?" Gail grumbles, poking at the mess with her finger. "Haven't you ever heard of a spoiler alert?"

Tasya produces a small, unexpected chuckle. "I have, actually. But I just thought if you knew this that you might just, you know, relax a bit and enjoy the process."

"Yeah, but see, Tasya," Gail tells her, sitting up, holding her elbows above her head and stretching her back. "The process sucks. Plus I am not very good at being bad at stuff And I am pret-ty bad at this." She waves a hand over her wasted efforts.

"No you're not. You're learning." Tasya picks up her brush and dips it into the jar. "It took me three weeks to make a shape I was happy with when I first started. So you're not bad at it … yet." She looks over at Gail and smiles a slow smile before replacing her glasses and leaning over the bowl she is working on. "You're just a frustrated over-achiever."

"Oh, believe me, I am not an over-achiever. Ask my mother." Gail tells her, shaking her head and scraping up the lump of clay, re-shaping it in her hands like she has been shown.

"Ah, well if you are not one already, you were born and raised one and you will probably be one." Tasya tells her, dabbing at her bowl with a teeny little brush. She shakes her head again. "You can't fool me. I've been a teacher for well over twenty years. I know your type. I know all the types."

"Well, whatever" Gail says, shrugging. "The frustrated part is right, anyway."

"Just keep trying." Tasya says. "I am sure patience is a much-needed virtue in your line of work."

Gail doesn't tell her that she is right. That it is. And she also doesn't tell her that it is a virtue she got plenty of practice with these last few weeks while undercover. Mostly because she doesn't want to talk about it. But also because she knows Tasya will just come back at her with another supposedly calming piece of wisdom. It's all slightly frighteningly familiar. This woman seems to be just as good at ignoring— or simply being amused by— Gail's freak-outs and sass than Holly is. It's got to be hereditary.

After only a day or two in Montreal, and the last few hours spent solely in her company, and Gail is already seeing the similarities that exist between Holly and Tasya, particularly the mostly imperturbable, good-humoured calm. There are differences, though. You have to look more closely at Tasya to find it. On the surface, the tall brunette could seem stern, if you don't pay attention. Gail could certainly see the high school maths teacher in her when they met. Her face seems to set at serious and she doesn't seem to possess that ready smile that is so easily provoked in Holly— that is something Holly seems to get from her father. Tasya is different, slightly more reticent, and it has taken Gail until now to realise you source Tasya's warmth from her words and her actions, not the expression on her face. The smiles are rare, but the kindness is common.

Gail sighs a loud sigh. It is loud enough to provoke a chuckle from the woman in the loud floral shirt crouched over a wheel two places away, as she looks over at Gail from the annoyingly perfect round shape she has created out of her own piece of clay. Gail ignores her, leans back over the wheel, centring the mass again. She wipes the wheel with a damp sponge before stepping gently on the pedal again, feeling the clay skim cleanly and coolly past her fingers.

She is not sure how she ended up here, in this studio on the edge of the university campus, trying to learn how to work what is basically mud into non-ugly, useful shapes, and being the youngest person in the room by a good twenty or thirty years. Yep, Gail is an island of frustrated youth today adrift in a sea of annoyingly cheerful white-haired women— and the occasional man— industriously bent over potting wheels or glazing fired objects, crafting furiously as their retirements ebb away.

Well, Gail thinks, tilting her head, she does kind of know how she got here.

Because you can't say no to your girlfriend's parents when they invite you places.

That's the rules.

And although Gail knows she does not possess the best of social graces, there is a thing or two she knows about etiquette— and this is one of those things, unfortunately.

It started this morning with Holly's phone buzzing furiously on the bed stand next to her, a call that Gail, who had already been up for hours after sleeping away most of yesterday afternoon, had to wake Holly to get her to answer. From what Gail could gather from Holly's sleepy half of the phone call and from her frustrated, curse-laden rant after hanging up is that something had gone completely pear-shaped with a paper she co-wrote with a colleague from the lab. And now some big issue needed to be fixed before it can go to print in whatever geek journal it is supposed to be published in sometime very, very soon. This meant that instead of them spending the day doing something fun, enjoying what feels like Gail's first real day of her holiday, Holly has to sit there, back at the apartment on Skype, working through all the results with her friend from Ballistics and re-writing parts of the paper.

After a good half an hour of cursing and moaning (which Gail had to force herself to stop smiling at— she kind of loves it when Holly loses her temper. It's totally cute) about having to fix something that wasn't actually her mistake, and missing a day of her holiday, Holly settled in her father's study with her laptop. And Gail would probably happily have just laid around and waited for Holly to finish her work and watched television or read a book for the day or something, but instead she'd ended up here doing a poor imitation of a senior citizen and being really, really bad at pottery.

And all because she decided to be a good girlfriend and go into the kitchen to make Holly a cup of tea.

And because of that, two things happened—she learned two new things today: she learned how to do freaking pottery, and she learned Holly used to be a runner. Neither is life-changingly revelatory, but both played their part in making up the fabric of an unexpectedly random day.

When she walked into the kitchen and found Tasya in her chair in the corner, reading, Gail had to fight the urge to turn around and walk out. Holly's parents are lovely but she still feels awkward being in their house and helping herself to things. And even though they have already told her constantly, repeatedly to make herself at home, she feels weird doing just walking in and using their kitchen without Holly there. But telling herself the tea is for Holly, and not to be a weirdo, she'd bitten the bullet and walked in, flicking on the kettle and asking Tasya if she would like something.

Tasya shook her head, pointing at her full cup.

"Holly working on the paper?" she'd asked, pushing her book away.

"Mhm. Poor Holly." Gail set out two cups on the counter and dropped in tea bags. "She should just tell the guy who made the mistake to fix it."

"She can't." Tasya shook her head. "She has to know for herself that everything is fine. She's angry enough she missed this the first time."

"I know. But that's silly. She can't blame herself for his mistake." Gail spooned sugar into one cup and grinned, "And she tries to tell me she's not a control freak."

"Well we all are, aren't we?" Tasya said slowly. "With the things we are really dedicated to."

"Yeah, I guess," Gail agreed, leaning back against the counter, thinking of the all the obsessive effort she put into the trafficking case when she was working with Ola and Rick, and her attention to the tasks she was charged with. If she didn't have everything completely organised, every little detail worked out, it would dog her, even when she was away from work, until she got back in to work and got it right.

The kettle emitted a cloud of steam and then switched itself off with a loud purr. Gail poured hot water into the cups, leaving the tea to steep.

"That's just what she's like," Tasya said. "Holly is too diligent to ignore it."

"Holly's amazing," Gail agreed idly, scratching an itch on her neck and staring out the window. The sun from yesterday had vanished into a cloudy, steely grey of a day. Montreal looks just like Toronto from here, now.

She turned back around to find Tasya looking at her; an amused— and something else unreadable— smile on her face. For a second Gail couldn't figure out why. And then she realised what she just said. And then she blushed and looked straight back out the window, bashful.

"You know," Tasya told her, sighing and picking up her cup. "If I wasn't a teacher. I might have made the mistake of thinking every child was like Holly. In fact, I often think if I had a second child, I might have been in for a rude awakening."

"Why?"

"Because Holly never had to be told to work hard. She never really had to be pushed at anything. It didn't matter what it was, either; learning how to walk, or how to tie her shoes, when to do school work, her homework, her athletics, all of it. She just worked, unbidden, at everything."

"Athletics?" Gail frowned.

"Yes, she used to run."

"Really? She never said."

"Yes," Tasya nodded. "She was very fast. There was talk of her getting serious about it, that she could have gone for a college scholarship in the States somewhere later, but she stopped."

"Why?" Gail asked again, wondering why Holly never mentioned it. Holly has always told her she was un-sporty as a kid.

"She didn't want to do it any more." Tasya shrugged.

"And you didn't mind?" Gail asked, surprised.

"Why should I mind? It was her decision." Tasya said.

Gail shrugged thoughtfully, going to the fridge and pulling out a carton of milk. She thought of her own parents. If Gail had been good at something like a sport, there way no way her parents would have let her stop doing it. Her mother freaked out when she stopped doing ballet lessons in grade three. And she was awful at ballet— a fact she takes great pride in now.

"So Gail, what are you going to do today?" Tasya asked. "Now that Holly has to work?"

"I have no idea," Gail told her, pouring in milk and putting the carton back in the fridge.

"Tell me, have you ever thrown a pot?"

"Now," Gail picked up the mug for Holly and turned and leaned on the bench. "I am pretty sure you are talking about pottery. And although, Tasya," she said closing the lid of the milk with her free hand, "There are jokes I could make here; I am not going to do it. I am simply going to say no, I have never thrown a pot."

"Thank you, for that," Tasya chuckled. "Well, would you like to?"

And how do you say no?

So that is how she ended up here wearing a stupid white smock with clay in her hair and on her face and secretly beginning to kind of enjoy the meditative hum of the wheel and the feel of the so-far disobedient clay under her fingers. But Gail will make it obedient, she promises herself. She will. She takes a deep breath, leans over the wheel and focuses. She is going to make this damn thing before she leaves, no matter what Tasya says.

Holly

By the time Gail has washed and combed the clay out of her hair, it is early evening and Holly is finally done with dealing with the Great Forensics Paper Crisis of 2013.

And now she is grumpy with a case of good old-fashioned cabin fever.

It was not her plan to be stuck in the study all day, working with Alan on whatever epic mess occurred at his end of their last paper together. But that's what happened. And it was a mess that took eight solid hours of work to fix. Holly is not impressed.

She lies on the bed and watches Gail finish drying her hair. When she is done she brushes it up into a ponytail, fixing it with the elastic she has stored around her wrist like every girl who ever had long hair did.

"Gail?" Holly says, rubbing her eyes and yawning.

"Yes Holly?"

"Take me out somewhere."

"Okay," Gail says, agreeable, putting down her brush and turning around. "Even though I already put on my sweats," she sighs, pointing at the track pants she has borrowed from Holly. "And even though I am exhausted from all that craft today, I will change just for you."

Holly smiles. "Well thanks. You are the sweetest, most generous person alive."

"Don't get fresh, Holly," Gail warns her, pulling off the oversize t-shirt she is wearing. As soon as she is freed, she points a finger at Holly. "Or you can stay home with your parents and watch back-to-back news programs and, I don't know, antiquing shows."

"Okay," Holly tells her, smiling.

Gail pulls off the sweats and starts looking around for her jeans. Then suddenly, she looks over at Holly. She walks slowly toward the bed, smiling.

"Can't find my jeans," she shrugs, lifting her hands, faux helpless. "Are you sure," she climbs over Holly, sitting astride her legs and reaching back and undoing her bra and taking it off before leaning in to kiss her. "You don't just want to stay in bed?"

"Oh, I do," Holly tells her, running her hands up over and over her breasts and then pulling her down so she can kiss her again. "I really, really do, but," She pulls a face and tilts her head toward the noise in the living room, running her hand over Gail's back and wishing they were somewhere else right now. Anywhere else.

Gail turns her head and listens. They can hear the voices as clear as day. Her father and his friend have come in and are playing cards in the living room, just steps away. And Holly has no idea where her mother is, either. Somewhere in the flat, though.

Gail pulls a face and sits back up. "Yeah, that's probably not going to work for me either." She grabs her bra off the bed and starts to put it back on, frowning at Holly. Holly pouts at her, which makes Gail smile.

"Well, if I can't get laid, let's go have a drink," Gail sighs, taking Holly's hand and pulling her up from the bed.

Holly

So they go out for drink, settling into a booth in a small bar somewhere between Holly's parents house and the university.

Holly returns from the bar with a bottle of red, pours them both a glass of wine each, puts down a small bowl of cashews and settles on one side of the booth seat.

"Tell me about your day," she demands, taking a large sip of her wine. "And make it good. Mine was insufferable and dumb and bears never, ever speaking about again."

Gail looks at her and laughs. "Should I be a little worried that you kind of sound like me?"

"I really don't know," Holly shrugs, smiling. "So, tell me about your day."

"Okay, so, I went to the studio with your mom and I learned how to use the pottery wheel thingy and I made a … a vase, maybe? Or a cup?" Gail shrugs, kicking up her feet and resting them on the booth seat next to Holly. "Okay, I don't know, I made a kind of lumpy cylindrical thing."

Holly chuckles, resting her hand on Gail's ankle where her boot ends.

"And then we went out for cake and coffee with the Golden Girls. By the way, Holly, did you know all your mom's friends are like, eighty?"

"No, I did not know that," Holly laughs.

"Well they are." She pauses for a sip of her wine. "Anyway, it doesn't matter because I think she is onto something. And," Gail pauses for drama, leaning forward. "Holly, I think I have met my spirit animal."

"Really?" Holly smiles, enjoying Gail's spiel. This is what she needed after today. And she likes that Gail is not even trying to pretend she didn't enjoy this random day spent with her mom. And that is when it hits Holly. She thinks back to the night when Maya and Michael both unexpectedly came by the flat and Gail's social hand was forced and she had to get to know them, and it turned out to be fine. And now, an unexpected hang with Holly's mum and Gail copes— not just copes but seems to enjoy it?

She's finally figured it out. That's how you deal with Gail's social awkwardness. Just throw her in without warning. She always swims.

"Yes, her name is— get this— Edna." Gail grins, leaning forward as Holly mentally hurries to catch up. That's right, Gail's spirit animal.

"I mean, who is actually called Edna?" Gail says, clutching her glass. "Anyway she's kind of angry, and tells awesome stories and she swears like a sailor, even though she's ancient, and basically," Gail slaps her hands lightly on the table, "I aspire to be her."

"I am sure you will manage that just fine," Holly laughs,.

"Yeah, you know, Holly, I am starting to think maybe I missed my friendship calling." Gail lays her hands flat against the tabletop. "I mean, maybe I should have been hanging out with the senior citizens all along. I mean, these ladies are hilarious, Holly. Way more fun than my actual friends."

Holly ignores that bit. She is yet to figure out how much of the ire Gail delivers on her friends all the time is any part real and how much of it is pre-emptive self-protection. She's pretty sure it's more of the latter.

"Well I'm glad you had a good time," she tells Gail, squeezing her ankle. "I now no longer feel the slightest bit guilty about having to work today. In fact, I'm not sure I could have even begun to entertain you as much as these ladies clearly have."

"Oh, you're just jealous," Gail tells her, knocking her boot against Holly's side. "Anyway, and then after that we went shopping. I got something to wear tomorrow night because I packed nothing. Oh yeah and I know what you are getting for your birthday, too," she says, grabbing a handful of cashews and putting them all in her mouth at once, grinning at Holly.

"What? It's not Mom's pottery, is it?" Holly narrows her eyes, thinking of the cupboards full of beautiful but far too bountiful homemade crockery back at home. "I seriously cannot take any more clay objects. My kitchen is full. Full!"

"Okay," Gail raises her hands, giving her a calm down look. "Don't worry, no one is threatening to breach the perimeters of your kitchen with pottery, Holly. I swear." She picks up another cashew and tosses it in her mouth. "But I am not telling you what it is, either." She says, looking pleased with herself.

Actually, she looks downright smug.

"That's fine," Holly says peaceably, not giving Gail the satisfaction of any more questions. Her birthday is months away anyway. She's got plenty of time to chip away at Gail's resolve. "Then what did you do?" she asks instead. "You were out all day."

"Uh, we just hung out. She showed me around near the university and some other part of Montreal. She's really great, your mom," Gail tells her, chewing.

"Gail has a mom crush," Holly teases her, folding her arms and grinning at Gail.

Gail laughs. "Maybe I do," she says, turning just a little pink. She pouts at Holly. "If you had my mother you would want yours for a Mom too."

Holly laughs. "True. I probably would."

"Seriously, Holly. I spent like, eight hours with her, and she did not say a single thing about my hair, or my outfit, or my lack of ambition, or my choices in men— okay, well …" Gail tilts her head, pulling a face, "that would have been weird. Anyway, I couldn't spend eight minutes with my mother without at least one of those things coming up." She takes a sip of her wine. "In fact, she even said I had nice eyes, and then she asked me if I got them from my mother. And I told her no, that Momma Peck has black eyes, like a demon."

"You did not." Holly shakes her head. "No, of course you did."

Gail just smiles into her drink.

"Anyway. Your Mom might be a little painful," Holly tells her. "But your dad is pretty awesome. And your brother. If you really want to know, I actually have a little bit of sibling envy."

"You want a brother?" Gail raises an eyebrow, giving her a dubious look.

"When I was younger I did. Or a sister," Holly shrugs. "It got kind of lonely, sometimes. Especially when we went on holidays and I had no one but Mom and Dad to talk to."

"Yeah, well if you'd spent some time with twelve-year-old Steve, you'd have got over it." Gail takes another handful of nuts from the bowl. "He stank."

Holly smiles.

"Did you really used to be a runner?" Gail asks, plucking one cashew from the handful and putting it in her mouth.

"Mom told you that?" Holly asks, surprised, wondering how they got there. What else has her mother told Gail?

"Uh huh," Gail nods, grabbing another small handful of nuts. She narrows her eyes at Holly. "I thought you were all geeky and skinny and not into sport when you were a kid. That's what you told me."

"I didn't do it for that long. It was just long distance running. I guess I don't really consider it being sporty." Holly shrugs.

"Uh, okay," Gail tells her, raising a dubious eyebrow. "I don't know much about this stuff, but it sounds pretty sporty to me. Did you, like, run in races?"

"Yeah."

"Against other people?"

"Yes," Holly sighs, smiling. Here we go, she thinks.

"And just to clarify, did you train for these races?"

"Yes," Holly sits back against the booth, ready to wait out the interrogation, Gail's cocky little display of being right.

"In sneakers and, I don't know, like lycra or sweats?"

"Yes,"

Gail leans forward, folding her hands on the tabletop. "Was there a sports bra involved, Holly? There's a clue in there. You want it again. Sports bra."

"Shut up, Gail," Holly laughs. "Okay, I guess I was sporty for a while there. I'm sorry I lied to you.

"You will be." Gail sips her wine. "So, were you good?"

"I guess."

Holly can still remember that first time they were made to run a long distance in her first year of middle school. Holly, who had never been even among the fastest sprinters in her peer group suddenly discovered she could run endlessly without either tiring or growing bored. She still easily recalls how, after that first spurt of speed along the track leading out from her old school all the other girls in her glass slowed to laboured jogs, or even breathless, defeated walks behind her, while Holly realised she could run and run and run without stopping, loving the sting of the cold air in her lungs and the slow burn of her legs as they ate up the distance. She found it easy to settle into the pace, her brain switching away from the effort and into that weird mental in-between space, where it was like some breathless form of meditation. And then, when she came back into the schoolyard so far ahead there wasn't another girl in sight, her teacher discovered she could run too.

"So why'd you stop?"

"I don't know, I liked training, but I just wasn't that into competing."

Through middle school she maintained the romance and even enjoyed the races, always taking home a trophy or a medal or ribbon in the longer distances at school meets. It didn't take her long after starting high school, though, when she joined the team and started racing against girls who were just as fast as her, if not faster, to realise that as much as she loved running, she didn't care that much about trying to be the quickest or her best. Her coach would urge her to find fight; to push to pass her competitors, telling her she had the potential to win. And Holly liked training, she liked being given goals to achieve, distances and times to make, but when it came to racing, when faced with other people wanting the same result as her, she just couldn't muster the fight she needed. She just wanted to run without caring what anyone else was doing.

"Why not?"

"I don't know. I loved running. I just didn't care if I won races. Not very useful in an athlete, it turns out." she sighs, smiling and picking up a cashew and flipping it over between her fingers, wiping away the salt with her fingers before popping it in her mouth. "I don't know. It was weird, in science or maths class I'd go quietly crazy if I found out anyone beat me at an assignment or test. But running," she shrugs. "I don't know. I just didn't want to think about it that hard, you know? I just didn't see why it had to be about being really good at it."

"Fair enough." Gail tells her, spinning her wine glass around in her hand, frowning. "I remember when I told Mom I wanted to take choir or theatre and she was all like, 'Where will that take you— what will you do with it?' I didn't know how to make her see I just wanted to do it because it was fun and, you know, I liked singing." Gail shrugs. "There always had to be some kind of endgame, some achievement."

Holly nods. "Exactly. I just wanted to enjoy it. And racing made it less enjoyable. So I quit. Lucky for me, my parents didn't care."

"Lucky," Gail agrees. "My parent would have."

"What do you think your mother would do if you'd ever decided to quit being a cop?" Holly asks. She doesn't even know why she asks. She is already pretty sure she knows what Elaine Peck would do, and it would probably look a little like spontaneous combustion.

Gail looks down at her glass, running a finger down the stem. "I don't know," she shrugs. "Explode?"

Holly throws her head back and laughs. Correct.

Gail

"I'm just resting my eyes," Holly had muttered, rubbing her brow and closing her eyes.

"Yeah, yeah," Gail whispered, smiling. And, as expected, barely a minute later Holly is fast asleep next to her, her glasses still on her nose.

Gail pulls them off, and puts them on the bed stand. The moment she removes them, Holly mutters something quietly and rolls onto her side, away from Gail.

Gail contemplates continuing watching the film on Holly's laptop by herself, but her heart is not in it. She didn't really want to watch a movie, anyway. All she had really wanted to do when they got back from the bar was to get seriously undressed and have some fun. But she cannot— and, moreover, Holly cannot— bring herself to do anything when the parents are just out there in the living room. When they have gone safely to bed, yes. When they are in the living room, definitely not. And they are still in the living room, metres away, watching the television.

Gail sighs. It makes her feel like she's a teenager again. She loves it here but the part of her that has spent three weeks away from Holly and would like to do some serious making up of lost time can't wait for the weekend when they will go stay somewhere on the way back to Toronto and can do whatever they want, whenever they want and as loudly as they want. That's going to be fun after being in this tiny flat with Holly's parents.

Gail sighs, stops the movie, closes the laptop and places it carefully on the stand by the bed.

She turns onto her back, shuffles further down the bed, one foot against Holly's leg because she doesn't like to not be touching her, and lies there in the lamplight, staring up at the shadows on the walls. She can hear voices coming quietly from the television in the next room, all serious tones and authoritative statements. Holly's father must be watching the late news now. She shakes her head. That man watches more news in a day than Gail would consume in a year.

Then, in the semi-quiet, she hears the muffled beep of her phone. She reaches over the side of her bed with one hand, feeling around for her jeans and pulls it out of the pocket.

It's a message from Dov.

Hurry up and come home. It's your turn to buy toilet paper.

Gail grins. She misses the little shit. She turns on her camera, holds her middle finger aloft in the air and takes a snap. She hits send and drops her phone back onto her jeans on the floor. It is only half a minute before she hears the answering buzz. She smiles, but she doesn't pick it up. She'll save his comeback for tomorrow. It's bound to be good. If there is one thing Dov is expert in, it's how to escalate.

Holly sighs deeply and rolls back toward Gail, not entirely all the way into sleep yet. She shuffles closer, reaching out automatically for Gail's arm and resting her head against her shoulder. Gail smiles, turns and kisses the top of her head before returning to stare at the ceiling.

She thinks of their conversation tonight, about Holly's running, and of Tasya's revelation that Holly could have been an athlete. Gail feels like, in being here, she is being granted some new part of Holly's autobiography, a part that may have taken so much longer to get if they hadn't come to Montreal. She feels like she already knows her personality, is intimate with the most obvious— and many of the less obvious— traits and stances and tics. But now she is learning Holly in other ways. Now she is filling in the details of the way these things have come into play in the living of her life. And she kind of loves being privy to these new knowledges. But there is still so much to talk about, to know and be known, too. She loves knowing that.

They haven't talked about the note, though.

Or what Gail wrote in it. In fact, Gail isn't even sure if Holly got it. She never heard anything either way after handing it to Ollie. Maybe she never got it?

It's not that Gail doesn't trust Oliver, but who knows what could have gotten in the way of him delivering it? Maybe he backed out of doing something so against the rules? Maybe he just never got a chance?

What if he did get it to her?

Either way, Holly hasn't said a single word. And that sheer fact is making Gail too terrified to say something herself now. What if she did and she is not saying anything?

Maybe she's forgotten, Gail thinks hopefully.

And then she realises every single thing that is wrong with taking comfort in that thought.

She throws her arm across her forehead, frowning. Admittedly, though, in the rush and the relief of finishing the case, and the daze of tiredness it had left Gail's mind briefly— not the feeling— not at all— but the fact of writing it down. Then today, as she sat at that wheel, finally beginning to get the hang of shaping the clay, and idly thinking over the last few weeks, she remembered that desperate dashed out declaration, folded not once, but twice over, and passed to Ollie as he left her there in that apartment.

And now Holly hasn't said a word and Gail has no idea if the note is a silence between them, or if the note is just a non-thing between them, because Holly has no idea of its very existence.

Could Holly have chosen to ignore the message, those words that Gail so carelessly but fervidly threw out there into that space between them? And, if so, does Gail just let her ignore it, taking it as sign that Holly is not ready to hear it from her yet?

Gail sighs, rubbing her arms across her eyes. She has no idea what to do. Part of her, the part that is loving being here so much, being with Holly in this uncomplicated wonderful limbo that is Montreal, doesn't want to do anything to ruin this feeling. But the other part of her, the part that needs to know if something is stopping Holly from saying anything is just starting to feel a little restive.

But the only way to know that is to ask. And Gail knows she is not quite ready for that. For just a little longer, Gail is happy to rest on her favourite old default setting: avoidance.

Then, telling herself that there is nothing she can do tonight anyway, with Holly settling into tiny sighs of sleep beside her, she flicks off the lamp and rolls over, shaping herself along the curve of Holly's body, feeling Holly's arm instinctively slide over her waist.

They have days left, she tells herself. There is still time. For now Gail just wants to indulge in this brief, beautiful respite from the world a little longer without facing anything that could possibly shake it up again.