Disclaimer: Whatever I said last time.
Author's Note: Tricky chapter to write. I think it's the right one.
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It was three-eighths of a mile hike from the beat up shoulder of a little used country road.
She hiked it without resting: she never would give up. Once there, however, she settled down on a neighboring tombstone. Ol' Bernard Frasier, Loving Father and Husband. Alex always said that the two of them, Ol' Bernie and she, they'd better be real good friends in the hereafter - what with the intimate knowledge he was gaining of her in the herein.
The joke was old, but it had never been about the humor.
She knew Bernie wouldn't take offense. He hadn't been anywhere near spring when he kicked off so he knew how it felt. Anyway, she and death ought to start getting to be on good terms, if they weren't already squared away.
It was Bernie she sat on, but it was Goren she'd come to see. Many times had she thought whether it would be better or worse if she were to sit on her old partner during their visits. His small plaque, a footnote to the grass, had nothing to offer in the lumbar region, so the question had been merely academic for some time.
These trips had occurred less and less often over time. Little things were always coming up: an appointment with the hair-dressers, one of the kids was sick, she wasn't comfortable driving until Randy put the snow tires on. Small excuses, and she had grabbed at each.
As the number of occasions diminished, the amount of ritual increased. She had let the engine idle for a full minute before shutting it off. She had never broken stride during the hike partway up the small hill. She sat herself on the memorial to a deceased man she'd never met, and gave a few moments to their odd relationship. And now she would conjure up the dead.
Freeze frames and short clips were jumbled and likely represented one solitary iota of actual history. But that didn't matter because she was searching for his smile, for the wrinkles around his eyes, for the set of his head when he was in contemplation. He looked up at her across their desks: such a mundane even, onset. Their eyes caught, he gave her a grin, and she was laughing with him.
More complete memories. The first time they met. The first time she realized how far he would go. The day she had returned from her first maternity leave.
The way he had looked at her after they caught the Lepner murderer. That night at a politician's farm, sitting on the hood of her car. The letters he'd left her- every time she touched one she could feel him writing it.
The first time he was shot in front of her. His first break down. The way, when he fell for the last time, he looked at her and he knew…
She had thought she was mature when she transferred to the Major Case Squad. She'd done well in school and at the academy, her time on the beat and in vice had gained her more friends than foes. After putting in a decent number of years, she was reaching her professional goals, she was enjoying it, and she was enjoying it without any part of her anatomy sagging.
She was always an 'old soul', which gave her more leverage in the maturity game. She had buried a husband. There was no more room to grow up.
Then she met Bobby Goren.
In all the years they would be friends, she would never figure out whether he was one of the world's oldest souls, or one of it's youngest.
Since retirement had emptied her days, Alex had turned slowly back to the church. Once again she spent hours in the pews or on her knees, guiltily not thinking about god. Now she received less reassurance, her imagination leapt to the grim rather than the fairies. However many times she tried, beginning with the most beautiful ancient infant, back came the sad and the horrible: the soul dying in birth, or new fruit choked of it's sweetness by the old dried shell…
He wouldn't be pinned down. A Goren thought flitted through her mind, casting shadows and suggestion. All that was definite was his bulk, large and warm and protective.
Their relationship had spanned so many years. So many emotions, so many landmark events.
When you spend many of your waking hours, including many you'd normally be asleep, with another person, when many of your adult memories include, in some way, the other person, and when this is you for the better part of twenty years, how can you classify him? What role did he play in her life? How could she be who she is without him?
He was just 57 when he died. They hadn't managed to push him out of the force. He had never been retired.
Which was only relevant because for years she had promised herself that when they were both out of the force, no longer 'partners', then they might start a new kind of relationship. She didn't expect miracles. But if she could live out her life in his arms, that wasn't a bad way to go.
She was a few hours from 75. She had retired soon after Bobby's death, and had spent most of the intervening years with the family's eldest and youngest.
This had left her emotionally fulfilled but expectant.
It would be a cosmic joke, albeit a small one, if their ages at death were palindromically linked. Without having any specific knowledge or plans, she had never thought to see 76.
In front of her Bobby rose. He would always come when she called to him. She was starting to cry and he was trying to show her memories of the good times. Her mind wrenched away. She didn't want to forget the bad times. They all together, good and bad, left her with a life that she could only describe as 'emotionally fulfilled'… but expectant.
'Emotionally fulfilled' garnered either knowing glance or look askance. At a certain point, their colleagues had decided that either the two were fooling around after hours, or she was doing some serious quiet pining which he either didn't, or wouldn't, notice. They were only given those options. And this was frustration because she could yell "we're just partners" and mean it without reserve. They were what they seemed to be, without the dime-store elaboration.
Which was almost hypocritical of her, since she had always believed he'd proposed to her, in his way, not long before the coronary took him out.
She was off babysitting duties for the New Year's and she and Bobby had gone to dinner. They were perfecting the after-dinner stroll when he pulled the ring box out of his pocket. This wasn't an event- he liked giving her small presents he had 'found' on his travels.
And they looked like he had picked them up somewhere. This looked more like…
"It's beautiful."
Yellow and white gold intertwined in a fashion that was either incredibly old, viz. Goren, or incredibly strangely wonderful, also viz. Goren. She let him put it on her right ring finger, and they were looking at each other… …expectantly. He had dared to brush his lips past hers, she had dared more.
The next day they were swept up in a new case, and days quickly became weeks. Weeks became months then he was gone. And always on her right hand she had worn his ring. Life often tempted her to switch the ring over, minor revisionist history for comfort's sake. Every time she held back, clinging to a belief she barely dared say to herself: that if she went to the grave with his ring, he might move it to her left hand.
She had always believed you see loved ones after you die. Why couldn't you do more than say "hi, how are you?"
They were unfinished business. She missed him. No one could tell her what was missing in her life.
It wasn't simply love. It sounded silly to say she was in need. It sounded even worse to try and explain it as the feeling you get when you read a novel like Wuthering Heights. Like you have finally found perfection in suffering, and can now practice using your whole heart.
Not an emotion she could describe. But it felt good and she was old and so she kept it.
He was somewhere before her, listening. And she realized how much she had been talking. How much she had had to say. She felt freer, lighter. She felt pleasantly empty.
This what she had come to say, to them both. And she hoped one of them understood, because that would be her last trip to the cemetery until she was carried in.
She got to her feet, smiling at the lush grass over Bobby's grave, patting Bernie's tombstone one last time and with real affection. Going down the hill she paused many times during the three-eighths of a mile hike.
There was a sharp drop off down to her car and she caught herself against the door, badly-treaded shoes slipping on the ice. She unlocked the door and the car was given ample time to warm itself. Her nerves were shaken, her emotions frayed, and her knee hurt where she had banged it. She sat until the heat was comforting and right before she was ready to pull out her muscles spasmed, and she knew Goren was sitting next to her in the car.
As she pulled out slowly, because of the ice, into the dark twists of the roadway, she didn't look to her right, for fear he would fade away. And when she turned to her left she caught a glimpse of reflected headlights and she was… expectant.