CONFESSION

It looked just as peaceful as ever, belying the violence that had occurred there as he'd ended his quest. Belying the pain and anguish buried in these rows of stone.

After parking, Lisbon ducked into the chapel quickly to light a candle for Jane, and for his 2 loves interred there. She took a long moment to pray for guidance:

Please keep him safe. Please heal his pain. Please let him know how I love him and that I'm looking for him. Please show me the way to find him.

She tried to remember where exactly Angela & Charlotte were buried. She accessed a few long-lost memories of the place and just started walking through rows and rows of grey stone markers.

So very many…

As she did, a rabbit stopped and sat - right in her path. She could swear she was being stared at, or offered a challenge.

She chuckled at the bunny - remembering Jane, drugged up from belladonna leaves, hallucinating clues as well as his lost daughter.

The rabbit hopped away, but Lisbon was so pleasantly lost in that memory, she decided to playfully follow the animal. After awhile, the bunny stopped and stared again.

Right in front of Angela Ruskin Jane's headstone.

Lisbon touched her necklace and silently thanked God for what surely was a sign meant to help her find this exact spot. (She chuckled a bit at how Jane would argue that point if he were here).

Then, kneeling in the grass, she prayed for Angela and for little Charlotte. On her knees, she sat and pondered. Jane isn't here. He wasn't at the house.

"Where could he be? Where would he go?"

She didn't initially realize that she'd asked those questions out loud. A quick look around confirmed that she was alone in this moment, though, so she continued speaking, in what became a tearful confession of love & regret:

"Angela… I'm so sorry for what happened to you and Charlotte. He's never forgiven himself. For 10 plus years I've tried to help him realize he's not to blame. Tried to help him heal. Tried to save him through our friendship. Well, it's actually more than a friendship, Angela. I have loved him for such a long time. He is my most trusted and closest friend. I know you understand. I feel like you and I are somehow connected through our love for him. I waited for so long - YEARS… always holding space for him to show me… or tell me if he loved me back. But then I got tired of waiting, and… I… gave up on him," she admitted, through guilty tears,

"I bet you never would have done that..."

Sobs interrupted her words for a time, but then she continued:

"Angela, please help me. Help me find him. I need to tell him I was wrong. I need to tell him what he's meant to me…What he means to me." - She stopped, in surprise at the familiarity of those words.

The words that had preceded one of the strongest embraces they'd ever shared.

The words that had broken her heart as he had left her, shattered and angry, on the beach at sunset; Second only to his island disappearance on her scale of hurt, because they'd just before shared such a tender, honest moment together. It had seemed so real.

With a quick prayer of thanks, she hurried back to her car and sped toward the coast.