Do you loathe Garrett? Have you been patiently waiting for one of our ladies to finally come to their senses? This is the chapter for you. Enjoy!
Jane's eyes darted over to her phone, losing her place in the inventory list for the countless time, hoping it would be unlike all the previous glances, only to find a dark, blank screen. She stared a little longer, willing it to light up with a text from Maura. Or a call. Anything that could ease the knot that had been tightening around her since the broken moment between them a couple of days before. She had tried to send a text herself. Many times, actually. Fingers flying across the keyboard before stalling above the send button, only to delete it all. Because none of her words could capture the magic of that dance. Of their touch. Of the possibility.
The jingle of the bell above the door pulled away her thoughts in a welcome distraction. But as her eyes fell across the person walking through the door, all the relief dissipated. Evaporated away by the too perfectly parted hair and eyes shadowed with judgement. He was someone she never thought she would see walk through that door. His pressed shirt, free from any wrinkles, and crisp suit jacket, resolved any small hope she had that he might be there for hardware supplies.
Her glare hardened as she watched him look around. His noes scrunched in disgust. And, without subtlety, he grimaced as he looked down to the hand that had touched the door handle, wiping it gently across the side of his pants. Her anger boiled into something larger with each belittling glance he threw around the space she was so proud of. It threatened to spill over into something she wouldn't be able to take back. A word or phrase or physical shove right back out the door. But with a deep breath she settled, clearing her throat to grab his attention.
As their gazes met, that anger from moments before turned to wariness. A smugness sat deep within the blacks of his eyes. Entitled. Boastful. Like a cat with a canary. It was unsettling, leaving the hairs on the back of her neck raised in caution.
"Ah, Ms. Rizzoli, just the person I was hoping to see."
"What can I do for you, Garrett?"
"Mr. Fairfield, please."
She forced a nod and curt smile. "How can I help you, Mr. Fairfield?" She managed through a clenched jaw.
He sauntered up to where she stood, his arrogance blooming with each step. But there was more than just that. There was something darker. A shadow of malice that suddenly hung beneath his eyes and curled within his lips.
"I'm someone who has always been direct, with people and in business," he started. She forced herself to not roll her eyes at how pompous he sounded. "And I find now to be no different. So, without any more preamble, we have a problem."
"Really?" Disdain oozed from her reply.
"We do, yes. But it's one that you can resolve quite easily."
For someone who claimed to be direct, he was circling rather slowly and she was getting tired of it. Annoyance and anger coiled deep within her chest and her words came out as a grumble. "How's that?"
"By signing these divorce papers."
Her mind scrambled to try and make sense of the words he warned would be blunt. But no matter how loud they rang in her mind, she could not figure out how they applied to her. How there was any truth to them. How there was a need for her to sign divorce papers when she wasn't even married. Or how Garrett was entangled within any of it.
"Di…divorce papers?"
"Yes for you and Maura?"
"Me and… and Maura?" She gripped the counter to steady herself. The ringing that had been pulsing through her head turned to spinning, leaving her unbalanced and uncertain about everything. "I don't understand."
"It doesn't matter if you understand or not, you simply need to sign," he said, sliding the folder across the glass until it hit her fingers. Her mouth dropped open then closed a couple of times as he fished for a pen in the breast pocket of his jacket. And when she hadn't moved upon finding it, he briefly explained. "Apparently the pretend wedding the two of you had as children was legally binding and to dissolve it, you need to sign these, because clearly it was a mistake."
Deep furrows ran across her forehead. Her eyebrows knit closely together. She blinked back at him a few times as the information sank in. Memories that had slowly been trickling in ever since Maura had shown up at her store months before, now crashed into her like waves in a storm. The vows and washer wedding rings and their song and the marriage license. It was real and true and now apparently over. She flipped open the folder with trembling fingers. Her eyes bounced across the document, stopping as they fell to the names at the bottom of the page. Jane Rizzoli. Maura Isles.
She shook her head a few times as she looked back up. "I think I need to speak with Maura-"
"No, Ms. Rizzoli, you don't," he cut her off, an edge to his voice resultant of his growing frustration. He slid the folder a little further under her fingers. "Why do you think I'm the one delivering this news? Maura understands that what the two of us have is real. She knows that what the two of us have built together is what matters. She and I are the future. You are simply a confusing piece of her past. One she doesn't want lingering around any longer. She wrote this letter in anticipation you might have a difficult time letting go."
He pulled out a plain white envelope from his pocket and tossed it onto the counter. With slow, steady movements, she took it in her hands, knowing the words within were going to hurt like nothing else before them. Garrett watched as her eyes scanned over every word. As she broke a little more with each line. The corner of his mouth quivered, only an intense amount of will power keeping his lips from curling into a triumphant smirk.
The note had cost him a pretty penny, even by his standards. A forgery that held Maura's handwriting and wording and flow. All of it coming from source material he had collected from notes and scraps around their house. But now, as he watched it pushing them all into the only acceptable direction, he knew the price was worth it.
Tears glassed over Jane's eyes, making it hard to read, but still, certain sentences popped off the page with heartbreaking clarity.
I'm sorry.
I wish I could do this in person, but can't bring myself to face you.
I belong with Garrett.
I need to think about my future and no longer be trapped by my past.
Please.
She set the letter back down. Her focus jumped back and forth between it and the divorce papers, uncertain which stung more, but both of them starting to make her go numb. The sheen of tears had turned into pools, brimming with confusion and dashed hopes. She did her best to blink them back, giving a quick swipe of her sleeve to catch the few she couldn't, determined to make sure Garrett didn't get the satisfaction of seeing her hurt.
With a sigh and heavy hand, she reached for the pen near the register. Her fingers trembled, pen shaking against the paper, before she finally began to sign. The stroke of her signature fell shaky across the line on which is sat, mirroring all she felt inside. Frustration. Uncertainty. Heartbreak.
Garrett swiped away the folder as soon as her pen left the final page, like gremlin fingers snatching away stolen treasure. He secured the folder away in a previously unnoticed case before setting a business card down on the counter.
"If you have any legal questions, you can contact our lawyer." She set her fingers on the edge of the card, quickly overcome by a burning desire to rip it to shreds and toss the pieces at his feet. Garrett began to speak again before she had the chance. "And if it wasn't clear, of course you are still invited to the wedding."
She didn't humor him with a reply, not wanting to risk prolonging their interaction any further. She wanted, needed him to leave. With a smug grin and single, silence-acknowledging nod, he turned to leave, pausing as he reached the door.
"Oh, and Jane," he said, turning to face her one last time. "If you get the urge to contact Maura, don't. This is a lovely piece of property you've got here and it would be a shame for it to be pulled out from underneath you. I'll send someone from our staff to pick up the wedding arbor Maura commissioned you for."
She soured even further at the emphasis he put on Maura's name. No doubt to try and twist the knife even more. Without anything further, he slipped out the door and left her alone once more.
Jane looked back down at the letter, skipping over the words she wasn't ready to read again, rather focusing on Maura's signature at the very bottom. The graceful and smooth curves so unlike the ones she had just forced from her own hand. The choppy scribble reminding her of the one she had scrawled as a kid, when her cursive letters came out crooked despite all her effort and concentration. Back then those signatures had been filled with giddy joy. As they signed to finish their marriage license application just before a bout of giggles hit. And later, as somehow the license appeared at Maura's house, though neither of them recalled the application being sent in, immediately signed with a level of excitement only two 10 year old's can possess.
But as similar as her signatures looked, spaced decades apart, this most recent on felt nothing like it did back then.
Maura entered the house and headed towards the kitchen on auto-pilot, moving slower than normal, her attention split between walking and the dark screen of the phone in her hand. She hadn't been able to stop or escape the constant barrage of questions that had started after the night of their dance. Why hadn't she heard from Jane since then? Was it because she had messed things up too badly with the silence she gave Jane after that question, 'Do you'? Why hadn't she answered despite Garrett's arrival? Should she call and confess everything she was feeling?
The kitchen came upon her sooner than she realized, already occupied by someone else.
"Hey," Garrett said, startling her attention away from her phone to fall on him.
She gave a half smile back in return as she found his eyes, lasting only until her gaze moved away and fell to the counter. To what sat loudly on one corner. All the questions fled from her mind. The startled energy from moments before turned into something like ice, running so cold and swift she froze on the spot.
"Wh… where… why are those out?" she stammered, his initial greeting already forgotten.
"They're waiting for you."
Her face scrunched. "I'm not sure I understand."
He leaned back against the counter, glass of whisky in one hand, as she moved closer, his silence serving as a final moment of personal victory. Finally, he cleared his throat.
"I went and spoke to Jane today. Showed her those. She was quite surprised to hear there were divorce papers that required her attention. I had to tell her everything."
Her heart dropped. "What?" she whispered. Disbelief and shock clouded her every thought.
"Here I thought we were on the same page, that after the lawyer told us about this obstacle, you wanted to get it done and sorted as quickly as possible, but you've been dragging your feet, Maura. You hadn't even mentioned it to her." He shook his head a few times in disapproval.
The world began to feel unsteady under her feet. She knew she was only a few moments away from her mind completely spinning into something out of control. Fueled by worry and uncertainty and panic. She could only manage to focus on one thing. One person. Jane.
"I need to see her, to talk to her. I need to expla-" she stopped as Garrett leaned forward and opened the folder to show a page that now held something new. Maura's eyes moved slowly down to the bottom, a weight in her stomach, anticipating what she was going to find, but hoping that somehow prolonging it would cause it to vanish. But there is sat. Jane's signature.
Her mind tried to weave through the muddled mess it had become. Unable to understand why, after the wonder they shared over the past couple of months, she would have agreed to end everything without at least speaking with her. It didn't make sense. Didn't sound like Jane.
"She signed them?"
"Of course she did," he replied instantly, moving to stand closer to her, not recognizing the spark of anger that had ignited and begun to blaze within her. The sudden shift coming from the realization that the most likely explanation came down to him. To words he had undoubtedly said to her. Unaware, he continued with his explanation. "She was rather understanding of the whole thing. She just wants us to be happy."
She shook her head, refusing to believe his words.
"What did you say to her?"
"The truth," he spat back. "That I am your future and she is the past. That she needs to let go. That you want her to let go so you can move forward with me."
Her eyes fell to Jane's signature again, this time noticing how jagged and rough it looked, nothing like the smooth, polished one she had seen here and there since they reunited. Each letter held reluctance and hesitancy. It stoked the anger burning within her even more. Added to the fact that he took it upon himself to make this decision for her, she exploded.
"How could you think this was okay, Garrett? To go behind my back and speak with Jane about this? To take my divorce papers and, I imagine, practically force her to sign them. How could you think this would solve anything?"
He stumbled back a few steps as if knocked over by a strong wind. "Where is this coming from, Maura? Who are you right now?"
"Who am I?" she practically shouted back.
"Yeah. Who are you? Because this," he waved his hands in her general direction, "is certainly not the woman I've been planning on marrying."
The words hung there for a moment, not going unnoticed that he chose to reference her as the woman he was going to marry, not the woman he loved. It stalled everything. Because who was that woman? Someone prim and proper. Elegant and smart, although not so smart that she was smarter than him. That woman put on airs for people she barely knew, smiling evenings away through boredom and disinterest. Someone who, despite her own desires, wasn't helping those that needed it most, just to appease her mother and father and him. She hated the person he planned on marrying.
"That's just it," she said with an exasperated sigh, giving a quick shake of her head. "That isn't me. I have never been happy as that person. As the person my parents and their social circle and you expect me to be. I've let myself slip away until I became someone else. Someone I'm not and I'm tired of it. I'm tired of almost everything you believe my life should be and I don't want this anymore. I don't want us."
His head, having fallen to look at the ground, shot up as her last sentence registered. "What do you mean you 'don't want us'?"
"I mean it's over, Garrett. The wedding, the engagement, anything between us is done."
He stepped close once again. "You're ending this because I went and got some dumb signature? Do you understand how mad that is?"
"No, Garret, it's ending because," she took a deep breath in, a moment of calm before a hurricane spilled out. "Because I want someone who will love me when I'm messy and unpolished. Who will be there for me when I'm at my lowest. Who will encourage me to go for my dreams no matter how crazy they sound. Who can make me laugh when I've had a long day and let me rest on them when I'm tired.
"You're none of that, Garrett, and you never will be. I'm done ignoring how selfish you are and how horrible we are together just for the sake of appearances. I'm done."
His face turned a shade of red. "You're making a mistake."
"No," she said firmly. "Staying with you as long as I have despite what my heart wants, that has been my mistake.
With swift confidence, Maura slid her engagement ring off her finger and set it in front of him. It's absence immediately making her feel lighter. Garrett stared at the ring for a few seconds, only then being hit with the realization that she meant all that she was saying. He looked back up in disbelief.
"Really?"
"Really," she said with a nod. "Now if you wouldn't mind leaving my house, I have something I need to see to. I'll have you things shipped to you."
Garrett remained frozen for a few seconds, refusing for a few more futile moments that someone of his status and his wealth could be dumped this unceremoniously. And it was happening. With a large scoff, he turned, muttering about how unbelievable the whole situation was, before swiping the ring off the counter and storming off.
As she watched him leave, she couldn't help but agree. It was unbelievable.
Unbelievable she had found her person over 20 years ago.
Unbelievable they had found each other again and still fit together.
Unbelievable she had almost let Jane slip away again.
And with those realizations, a clarity she had been fighting against since that meeting with their lawyer swept over her. It has always been her and Jane. And she needed Jane to know it.