A blank buzzing filled JJ's ears, and she sat down hard in her seat again. What was happening?

Fear also clutched at JJ's heart for that brief, wild second. Was there something wrong with her mother? They had just seen each other so recently. She had seemed perfectly fine.

But…

Reason started to catch up with JJ.

Her parents were not friends. At all. Her mother wouldn't tell Clifford that she was having health issues. JJ was sure that during her parents' most recent interactions, they had been civil for her sake, but still... neither were so close that they would have shared such personal matters with each other.

Something was afoot.

"Wait a minute. Clifford, what the hell?"

"Don't curse at me!"

JJ hissed, "I'm an adult!"

Clifford relented. "The waitress is coming around. Choose an item from the menu."

"What—"

JJ was put off because she had been expecting her father to say something about her mother. Instead, she just fell silent at the look on Clifford's face. He already seemed like he would be unmoved.

"Fine. Pass me a menu. Please."

Clifford passed her a menu.

They sat together in stony silence as they decided on what they wanted to eat. Luckily, the waitress arrived at their table shortly thereafter. Clifford and JJ were perfectly polite with her. They went right back to being to being persnickety with each other.

"Then what about my mother?" JJ finally said. "She's fine."

Clifford challenged her. "And how do you know?"

"There was a long, long, long period after you abandoned us that mom and I just weren't close. Not even emotionally. I played soccer so I could get a scholarship to UPenn. Otherwise, I would have never left East Allegheny. There was even a recent reconciliation." JJ kept her hands in her lap to hide that they were curled up into fists. "Because of all that history, I know that mom wouldn't use you to deliver a message about herself. She would just call me."

If Clifford was at all sorry to hear about the rift his absence had caused between his ex-wife and his daughter, he made no outward signs of display. All he wanted was to get through this meeting intact.

"Very impressive." he offered. "I always thought you'd do something math-related."

"Times change. Plot twists happen. Besides, you only knew me for eleven years. I grew up."

Clifford nodded. "You did, indeed. What exact 'plot twist' made you go the FBI route?"

"Stop avoiding the question." JJ said with a stab of irritation. "What about my mother?"

"Has she told you about her version of events yet, surrounding the divorce?"

"Yes." JJ said crisply. "She told me when I was in the hospital."

"I see. What else did your mother tell you, then?"

JJ pulled no punches. "Well, she also talked about how you broke her heart."

"I broke her heart?" Clifford scoffed. "If you want to carry on being mean to me, knock yourself out. Just don't say that I didn't warn you. How much of life at East Iron Hill Farm do you remember?"

"My first memory," JJ said after a pause. "Is from learning to ride Poppy horse."

"And how could you remember your mother's horse like that? You were two!"

"And? I remember Poppy. She was all black, except for a white diamond shape in between her eyes. Those were brown. Like chocolate."

JJ's tone was so serious that Clifford believed that she was telling the truth about her long memory.

"Okay." Clifford sat back in his chair. "We always knew that we wanted to live out in the country after we got married. The animals were even your mother's idea because she grew up on a farm in Caldecott. Remember that?"

JJ bobbed her head as memories of going to her grandparents' Mississippi farm came back. "We both know the answer. Tell me what happened next."

Clifford decided not to hold anything back because he doubted JJ would ever tolerate him enough to have this kind of conversation again. "We could not—for the longest time—decide on when to become parents, even though it was high on our agenda. I guess that's when the real problems began."

"Oh." JJ said softly.

"Alexandra wanted to wait. If it had been up to me, we would have started having kids right away." Clifford absently traced the base of his wine glass. "She desired to experience life without kids first."

JJ tried not to sound too abashed when she spoke next—her own marriage had never been childless. "Did you two enjoy that time together?"

"Yes because we really got things off the ground, where the animals were concerned. That was good because it was needed."

"But…?"

Clifford sighed. "It went on a little too long for my liking."

Before JJ could press him to elaborate, their food arrived. She had had never been more pleased for a distraction. And she found herself glad that she had ordered a light meal—it was increasingly obvious that this would all end in difficulty.

"How long is 'too long'?" JJ asked after they had been eating for a few minutes.

"Try a decade. You know as well as I do that your mother has an almighty stubborn streak." was the reply. "Alexandra would not bend in any way, whatsoever, for that first decade. It didn't take long for Rosaline to happen when she finally came around."

"That's good. I guess."

Clifford continued to play with his wine glass as a distant look overcame him. "Did you know that your mother and your sister both almost died in delivery?"

This information jarred JJ as she processed it. "No."

"It's true. There was a sudden last-minute complication that almost took them both. I had never been so scared in my life."

"So then what happened after? Obviously, mom and Roz recovered."

"They did." Clifford told her. "Unfortunately, the doctors went on to inform us that having any more kids would not be a good idea because the likelihood of another traumatic delivery was even higher."

JJ blanched as a new thought hit her. "Then what was I? An unwanted surprise?"

"You were most certainly a surprise. Never unwanted."

"But I guess I had an expiration date of eleven years in your book, huh?"

Clifford ignored this. "Things were perfectly fine with your birth. Zero complications of any sort. When you were a tad older, Alexandra decided that we should try to give you a playmate, anyway. She wanted you to have someone closer to your age than Rosaline was."

JJ spoke with some trepidation. "How did that go?"

"Also very long because we never agreed on anything definitive. I was hesitant because I didn't want to press our luck. Your mother wanted what she wanted, but she was also desperate to give you a brother."

JJ's heart did a loop of unpleasant surprise. "Really?"

"Mhm. Really."

"I will file all that away. I'm still waiting to hear how mom broke your heart."

Exasperated, Clifford lowered the forkful of food he had been about to eat. "Seriously? That's your takeaway?"

"I don't know what to say." JJ shrugged. "A brother would have been amazing back then. I have August now and I love him so much, but I was robbed of seeing him grow up. Whose fault was that?"

JJ was clearly pushing Clifford's buttons on purpose, but he would not rise to his daughter's taunts.

"Adamant was the word about your mother's mission." Clifford said as if nothing had happened. "I told her no, but not only because I didn't want to run the gambit of what happened when she had Rosaline. That was a bit much for her. Ask me what happened next."

JJ's impending sense of dread mounted even higher. "What happened next?"

"Alexandra threatened to leave me."

"What?! Why?!"

Clifford sighed for the umpteenth time since JJ's arrival. "I will admit that we were fighting about all kinds of things by that point, so Alexandra's anger was justified, but it was the lowest blow she'd ever lobbed. She threatened to take you and your sister away from the farm altogether."

JJ repeated her previous inquiry. "Why?"

"Because your mother had become that fed up with me. I'll cop to that." Clifford said. "Alexandra was willing to leave East Iron Hill Farm, to start over."

"Even though she wanted a baby? She must have really not liked you. And because you didn't fight any harder for me or my sister, you were seriously willing to let us go? Away from the foundation that had already been built?" JJ began thinking about literally leaving the conversation. "That's really stand-up, Clifford. Were we not worth it?"

"Of course you and your sister were worth it, but the main reason I always put my foot down about one more kid because I was worried that I would lose your mother. The refusal on her part to even try to see my reasons is what broke me. She also found reasons to fight me about any and every little thing. The environment was unbearable."

Clifford held his hand in the 'time-out' position. Something wasn't tracking.

"How are you so calm, Jennifer? This is beginning to freak me out. Your reaction, I mean."

JJ took on a tone of deadly calm. "It's my job to chase killers, and I can break them. I've actually done it in more ways than one on multiple occasions. The flip side is that you are not the first divorced parent I've spoken to before. I have seen it all because of what I do for a living."

Clifford studied his daughter. She was putting on a façade because she had already arrived in a bad mood. But now... there was a chink in her armor. Cracks, too.

"Something happened to you before this last case." he observed. "It's all over your face now."

Without thinking, JJ touched the spot on her midriff where her electrocution burns were. The patch was extra ornery tonight because it was cold outside.

"My trauma is neither here nor there, although I can definitely say that it started on the say that you almost left without telling me good-bye." JJ sniped. "I know about the miscarriage because mom also told me about that, but what was the last straw for you? By mom's words, it was the beginning of the end. What about from your perspective?"

"That's actually how I would also describe it." Clifford pushed back his plate. "We were both so stubborn that we all but canceled each other out."

JJ made a harrumphing noise. "You're forgetting a very important piece of the timeline."

"Rosaline." deduced Clifford.

"Yes. I loved my sister so much. Did you know that she took it upon herself to take care of me when you and mom fought? All the times she did that are unfortunately some of the clearest memories I have left of her." JJ exhaled shakily. "To this day, I still have no earthly idea how I would have survived without Roz's love. It's like she kept me alive."

Clifford arched an eyebrow. "That's overselling it, don't you think?"

"No. She was the only friend I had in those days because I was utterly sad all the time."

"You keep talking about how I abandoned you, but so did your sister, didn't she?" Clifford steepled his fingers now. "Her depression became so much that she didn't make out of that time alive."

JJ sneered at him to cover up the ill feeling that had swept over her. "Unlike you, I hate to besmirch Roz's memory, but I'll have you know that we solved the mystery of why she did what did."

Clifford arched an eyebrow. "Just who all is 'we,' snooping in our family business? Your team?"

"That's right."

"Well?" demanded Clifford after a beat. "Why did your sister do it?"

JJ turned vindictive; it wasn't as if this conversation was at all salvageable. "No. I'm going to make you work for it. And after the way you've spoken about your firstborn, it suddenly feels difficult to cooperate on that front."

Clifford finally dropped the last of his kind pretenses. "You're being impossible."

"Am I? Am I, really?" JJ began to gather he belongings. "Thank God I wasn't the one who skipped out on a big family meeting to go gambling in Atlantic City! Oh, wait—that was you!"

"Nobody would have wanted me there."

JJ hissed at him once more. "It was an open invitation! Did you even try to consider? Or could you no longer be in the same room as your ex-wife since I wasn't in the hospital anymore?"

Clifford's full frustration was finally seeping through. "There are some things that you just wouldn't get because your marriage is picturesque."

JJ let out a hollow laugh as she was visited with memories of her fights with Will about work hours after leaving the Pentagon for the BAU again, telling him about her miscarriage and the child's gender... and of course all of the aggressive PTSD she had fought.

"That shows what you know: I have more scars to my name from life than you could understand." JJ stood with her things in her arms. "Are you back on any sort of speaking terms with Hannah? I haven't forgotten what happened there."

"Not exactl—"

JJ held up a hand. "Ah-ah! I don't want to hear it if the answer isn't straightforward!"

Clifford gave her a last-minute pitch of desperation. "I am your father!"

"Then why won't you act like it and just start apologizing, huh? Your list is already long: me, Hannah, Will, and Emily! Why is this even hard?" JJ extracted enough money from her wallet to cover her meal and laid it on the table. "I really have to go home now. Please don't follow me."

JJ didn't wait for Clifford to say anything before turning on her heel and leaving the crowded, noisy dining room. Nobody paid her any attention.

So of course nobody noticed her go.

Except for the host.

He approached JJ in the cold. She was already bundled up, and tucking her phone into her jacket pocket.

"M'am," the host addressed her. "Are you okay?"

JJ turned and offered him a smile, in spite of being in tears. "I am not okay. Thank you for asking, though. Dinner did not go well."

"I am so sorry. Can we call anyone for you? The police?"

JJ recognized that the young man was running through some sort of script that the restaurant employees were no doubt supposed to act on in questionable circumstances. But she let him off the hook.

"That's unnecessary. I appreciate it, and," JJ showed him her credentials from where they had been stowed in the front of her purse. "I'm actually FBI."

"Woah." the young man said in surprise.

"I've already asked my husband to come pick me up." JJ nodded as she put her credentials back. "Thank you for coming to check on me. I appreciate that."

JJ pointed to the host's name tag, half-obscured in the dark.

"What's your name?"

"Henry, m'am."

Calm came over JJ when she heard this. "Henry is my eldest son's name. I'm going to put in a word with your manager about your kindness."

"Thank you, m'am." Henry said in delighted surprise. "You are very kind."

"So are you, Henry."

The young man elected to wait with JJ for a few more minutes.

"Is that your husband's car?"

Henry had spotted a car approaching the front of the restaurant. When the overhead light hit the front of the vehicle, JJ recognized it.

"Yes!" she told him. "Thank you!"

Henry waved good-bye to JJ as she got into Will's car, before heading back into the restaurant.

"Who was that, darling?" he asked as JJ closed the door and situated herself.

"The restaurant host. His name is Henry and he kept me company because he was concerned." JJ sighed shakily. "I'm going to send his manager a kind word on his behalf."

Will did his best to put a positive spin on things. "Well, that's nice. He made that much of an impression?"

"I might also be partial to the name Henry. But I'm not sure about that."

She's making jokes; I'll take that as a good sign, Will thought.

"What do you need?" he asked his wife.

JJ's bottom lip wobbled as her deflection faded.

"Drive, Will. Anywhere. Please."