Sitting in the back room of the coffee shop, Kate's gaze trails from one book to the next, trying to take in as much as she can as she skims through the pages. There are three laid out in front of her, open and displaying everything she needs to study for the LSAT. She thought about going to graduate school for something else, maybe criminal justice, but it felt a little wrong, like it wasn't quite the best fit. Law school had always been the plan and for a while she thought it might be too painful to follow in her mother's footsteps, but after a few weeks of serious consideration she's decided it's still what she wants to do.

It's what feels right.

Even so, it's harder than she anticipated, trying to memorize all of these legal terms and every bit of important information she'll need to pass. And not just pass, but to score above average if she wants to get into one of the better schools. It's making her head throb, a headache blooming near her temples, and her eyes are beginning to go a little cross-eyed.

Forehead balanced in her palm, elbow resting on the edge of the table, Kate blinks a few times. After reading the same line about substantive due process five times without retaining anything, she absentmindedly flips the page and makes a mental note to go back later. Substantive doesn't even look like a word anymore.

This is how Anna finds her fifteen minutes later, five minutes after she was supposed to get back to her shift.

"You graduated already," the woman says as she approaches, catching Kate off guard and sending her jumping out of her skin. Anna chuckles, rests a gentle hand on her shoulder. "Didn't mean to scare you, dear."

Kate smiles, heart rate returning to normal. "Yeah, I know. I'm uh—I'm just getting a head start on studying." Gesturing towards the mountain of papers and books in front of her, she looks back to Anna. "I'm taking the LSAT in October."

Anna's eyes light up. "Oh! That's so wonderful," she beams, the hands on Kate's shoulders squeezing in excitement.

"Thank you! Not that I don't love the shop, Anna, but I think being a lawyer is my next step."

"I was never under the impression you'd stay here forever. You're better than this old place," the woman says, and Kate's about to protest, tell her that's absolutely not true and she really does love it here, but Anna shakes her head. "This is good for you."

There's something about Anna and how she looks at her, how she has both this grandmotherly way of offering comfort and kind words and a sternness behind the eyes that has Kate relenting. She knows better than to try to convince Anna that she regards her far too highly, and so she just lets out a small chuckle and nods in spite of herself.

It's sweet.

"Thanks, Anna," she says, patting one of the woman's hands with her own. As she does so, she catches sight of the watch on her wrist. "Shit. I'm so sorry, I didn't realize the time—"

"Don't apologize; your education comes first."

"But this is still my job, and I can't just flake out like this," Kate retorts, already standing from her chair and rushing to close the books, condense all of the loose papers into a manageable pile so it's not just strewn across the table.

Anna laughs, low and relaxed. "Kate, you are the least flaky employee I've ever had."

That's arguably false, Kate's certain, because she can count on two hands the number of times before graduation that she'd fallen asleep at this very back table and started work late because of studying. Probably the same amount of times she'd fallen asleep in class because of work, now that she thinks about it.

"Now, get out there and charm the pants off of those customers," Anna says, her weathered hands grasping at a few rogue pieces of paper to add to Kate's pile. "Figuratively, of course, because I'm quite fond of your dear Rick."

"Anna," Kate laughs, but the woman simply raises a knowing eyebrow. She purses her lips, nods in agreement. "I am too."

Pleased, Anna clasps her hands together. "Perfect."

Tossing one last appreciative smile her way, Kate turns to exit the back room and head out to the main counter. Anna's voice stops her though, the woman calling out her name, and she turns back around. She blinks, and Anna points down.

"Your apron's backwards, honey," she says, and... oh. Yeah, it is. Well, that's embarrassing. "And I don't think you'll be needing... this," she adds, plucking a folded up piece of paper from the pocket. There are intricate drawings all over it, definitions scrawled messily and arrows darting from every which way and a doodle of the scales of justice.

Kate laughs. "Yeah, probably not. Thank you." Huffing, she smirks to herself. "Again."

"It's what I do best. Now go, serve some coffee to New York's finest."

Curled into Rick's side on his couch later that night, Kate lets her head loll against his chest. The end credits of the movie roll on the screen before them and she pulls her legs out from beneath her, stretching them, toes pointed into the edge of the coffee table.

"You tired?" he murmurs, running his fingers through her hair.

"A little, but not enough to sleep yet," she says. It's a comfortable level of tired, one that settles into her bones and allows her to slowly unwind without completely knocking her out. "We could put in another movie?"

"Will you make it through another one?"

"Probably not," she laughs. "But we can just have it on in the background, have a glass of wine and relax or something." Rick pauses, and when she twists her face to look at him, there's hesitation. She sighs. "I'm not my dad, Rick."

He immediately shakes his head. "No, I know. I just..."

"Get nervous after..." After he found her midway to being blackout drunk, yeah, she remembers. "I get it, okay. I do, and I'm sorry you had to see me like that—that's why I didn't tell you about the anniversary. I'm not fun on January 9th, and rather than bring other people down with me into my pity party, I like to handle it alone. It's how I've always handled it."

"Kate, I don't need you to be fun. I need you to be okay, and drinking away your sorrows is not okay."

"I know," she mutters, chewing on her bottom lip.

Rick wraps an arm around her back, pulls her closer. "I know you're used to stewing in your grief alone because your dad wasn't... available, and I can't begrudge you that. If being alone is what you need on that day then I'm more than willing to give it to you, to give you space, but you don't have to do it by yourself anymore. I'm here, and Alexis is here, and so is my mother, though I can see how her presence would make the day worse."

Kate chuckles a little, unsure of whether he's talking about the fact that she's a mother, a mother around her own mother's age, or if he's simply alluding to Martha's obvious eccentricity.

Maybe that excitement would do her some good.

"Grieving is natural, and it's something you need to do, but Kate... you can't—I need to be sure you won't be drowning yourself in the bottle all day."

"It's not exactly the plan," she admits, because it's not. It wasn't, it never is. It's just the end result of trying and failing to deal with the thoughts and emotions she bottles up for 365 days, the ones that seem to slip through the guarded wall in her brain once a year. "It just kind of—I don't know, happens. When nothing else works to block it out, to make the memories from the deepest part of my mind stay there."

He waits her out, just runs his hand up and down her arm until she's ready to continue.

"It's shit, I know," she manages a laugh. "I'm not proud of it, you know. I need to start... remembering, not trying to forget, and I'm working on it. I'll keep working on it. I don't want that to happen again."

"Then we won't let it," he says easily, so confident that it's this simple. She doesn't miss the use of we. "Let us in next year, Kate. We'll take your mind off of it, if that's what you want, but in a more healthy way. Or we'll help you celebrate your mom in any way you want to."

Her heart swells. "Next year?" she asks, the corners of her lips curling into a smile.

"Well, yeah," he laughs, low and from deep in his chest. "You're not getting rid of me that easily. I'm kind of persistent."

Kate snorts. "Never would've known," she teases. Leaning up, though, she presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth. "Thank you. That'd be... nice, actually. To remember her as she was and not as what happened."

"Good. Then that's what we'll do," he grins. He hesitates for a moment and she quirks a brow, her forehead wrinkling in question. "Do you think you could tell me about her now? If you're ready, of course."

She opens her mouth, and for a second she wonders if she is. If she's ready to talk about her mother's life, about all of the things she's accomplished, the ways she made an impact on her life even if she didn't always show it. She thinks that's what's kept her from sharing all these years, to anyone who's asked before. She's been ashamed of how little she showed her appreciation for everything her mom did while she was alive, too stuck in her teenage ways. And then all of a sudden she was gone, just like that, and there was no way for her to go back and redo all of those little moments that meant nothing at the time but now mean everything.

But then she breathes out a little yeah, and she realizes she is ready. Here, with him, she's ready.

Rick's smile is soft yet blinding, and he pats her knee. "Great," he says quietly. "I'll get us that wine first."

"You can share whatever you want to, Kate. Whatever you're comfortable with."

Nodding, she takes a sip of the drink before cradling the glass in her palms. "She'd have loved you," she muses with a smile, eyes trained on the delicate swishing of the red wine. "She did love you, actually."

Rick grins. "Ooh, do tell."

"Your books." She gives a good-natured roll of her eyes. "You were her favorite author; she just loved you, loved everything you put out there. She actually tried to get me to read them."

She can hear her mother's voice in her head now. You'll love them, Katie.

She was right, of course, but she'll never get to revel in the victory.

"I'm honored," Rick says, his voice soft. "Really."

"You signed her book once," she tells him. His eyes widen, face full of shock, and she continues before he has a chance to ask the question she knows is coming. "In a Hail of Bullets. She waited in line for probably two hours to get it signed. I made fun of her when she came home, but she was so happy."

Noticing the way her eyes turn glassy, he puts a hand on her knee. "You don't have to..."

"No," she says, shaking her head. Turning a smile towards him, she covers his hand with her own. "Good memories." He nods at her to continue then. "She kept going on and on about how kind you were, and I was being a brat teenager, telling her how that wasn't anything special because of course you'd be nice to people waiting to meet you. Except that it was, because she was a generally happy person, but that day... I don't know, there was something special about it."

"Do you still have the book?"

"Yeah, it's at my apartment. I couldn't get rid of it, you know?"

Rick nods. "I wish I could remember it. I can't believe I met your mother and didn't know it."

"You wouldn't have known it anyway because you didn't know me then," she points out, and he gives a wave of his hand. Details. "But you've met hundreds of fans over the years, Rick, there's no way you'd remember one person you saw for maybe 30 seconds."

Kate taps her index finger against the glass. She spends so much time trying to forget, trying to avoid thinking about her mother so she doesn't fall down a rabbit hole of sadness and despair, that now, actively trying to think of things to share, she's overwhelmed.

What does she tell him? There's so much.

Her mother's way with words, a soothing, aged kind of wisdom that comforts in a way that's different from Rick's but equally as lovely; her kindness, and the way she treated every person she met as a distant relative or a long lost friend, returning after years of separation; her drive and determination, something Kate likes to think she's passed down to her.

Or maybe she should tell him about one of the most memorable moments she has from when she was a kid. Kate was probably eight or nine and Johanna was trying to cheer her up. The reason for her disappointment is lost on her now—something to do with school or her friends, maybe—but she knows she was in a sour mood, which, despite her late teen years, was unusual for young Kate. She and her mother got ice cream and went to the park, but neither the sweets nor the outdoors, the sun and the liveliness of their surroundings, was helping.

Johanna was feeding bread to the ducks (or maybe they were geese?) and kept calling for her, trying to coax her to get off the bench and come join her. She repeatedly declined, and the next thing Kate knew her mother was being chased by the ducks (geese?), running from them with exaggerating thrashing and the occasional scream. People were staring and Kate was cracking up, her little body doubled over in laughter, and when Johanna managed to escape the little monsters she returned to the table.

"You think that's funny?" she had asked, amused even as she gasped for breath. Kate had nodded, grinning, and suddenly her mood was lifted.

Sometimes she wonders if it was all planned. If her mother knew she'd be chased, because you really aren't supposed to feed the ducks (she really thinks they might've been geese), and just assumed that'd get her to laugh.

That's a bit far fetched, but it makes her smile.

So she does tell him; she tells him about that day at the park, about her mother's kindness and the passion she had for helping people. It's who she was, right down to her core: a good person.

"She had an incredible sense of humor, too," Kate says with a wistful smile. "You wouldn't know it just from looking at her, this professional lawyer who was so very serious when she had to be, but she was funny. She knew how to joke around and that made for a really fun childhood. I thought it was kind of embarrassing as a teenager, you know; she'd be making jokes and I'd groan and roll my eyes."

If she could go back and change one thing, it'd be that. Those little reactions.

Rick laughs. "She sounds like such an amazing woman."

Kate nods, a rogue tear falling onto her cheek but a smile on her face. "Yeah, she really was."

They sit together for a bit afterwards, Kate tucked comfortably into Rick's side while he runs his hand along her arm. The television is still on in the background, the perfect balance of sound so it's not too painfully quiet, and it's nice. Her head lolls after a bit, exhaustion taking hold little by little, but one hand remains pressed firmly against his chest.

"She's proud of you."

It's a whisper, and she doesn't say anything back, but she hopes he can feel the curl of her lips against his shoulder.

A/N: We're getting there, folks. Slowly but surely, this baby will be finished. I estimate only a few more chapters left. Thank you all for your continued patience, it absolutely means the world.

Edit: I've spent my entire life believing that this exam consisted of actual knowledge of the law, but I'm being told apparently that's not true of the LSAT. I had no idea it was just a test similar to the GRE. (Why not just take the GRE, then? Why have a separate test for law schools if it's not actually based in law? Talk about misleading.) Anyway, I digress. You know what they say: you learn something new, etc. Sorry if the inaccuracy bothers you, but I hope we can all just let it slide.