"Do you think Maggie and Ma are getting divorced?" wanted to know Ashlyn, who was once again sitting in front of the TV playing one of her video games.

Nikki, sitting at the kitchen island in front of her laptop doing some research for an upcoming school assignment, raised her head in surprise, spun around in her chair, and frowned deeply. "What?"

"Do you think Ma and Maggie are getting a divorce?" the younger girl repeated almost casually as she continued her video game, shrugging her shoulders.

Nikki stared at the back of her sister's head before closing the laptop to focus entirely on Ashlyn and the topic that had come up. "What makes you think that, Ash."

Ashlyn took a deep breath and finally paused the game before looking at Nikki. "You know Nicole Kramer from my class?"

Nikki furrowed her brows and nodded slowly. She knew Nicole Kramer not only because she was in the same class as her sister but also because Nicole's dad was an investigator for the DA's office and, therefore, part of Maura's team, which was almost equivalent to him being part of her own family. Like other members of the DA's office and the BPD, the Kramers were invited to barbecues and other not-so-private festivities hosted by Jane and Maura every month. It hadn't escaped her notice that Brayden Kramer had increasingly come to these parties alone or had been indispensable for professional reasons and that on these days, his wife, Dawn Kramer, had then appeared at these very parties with their daughter Nicole since she was also friends with Jane and Maura through her husband's long association with them.

Nikki nodded slowly in response to her sister's question.

Ashlyn set the controller aside and pressed her lips together briefly. "Nicole's parents are getting divorced, and Mrs. Kramer is planning to move her to Philadelphia to live with her parents."

The older girl blinked a few times and took a deep breath.

"Nicole told me that it started with her parents just like it did with Ma and Maggie," Ashlyn continued suddenly without Nikki having a chance to respond to what she had been saying. "Her dad worked 24/7 and always came home late, so her parents barely saw each other or spoke, and eventually her mom had enough and asked for a divorce because she and Nicole's dad couldn't stand each other anymore."

Nikki breathed a sigh of relief, got up from her chair, walked over to the couch, and sat down next to her sister. At the very beginning of her mother's relationship with Maggie, she had asked herself the same question about whether the relationship between them would have any chance at all; for that reason, she had kept a healthy emotional distance from Maggie back then or had always rebuilt it when times had gotten rougher between the detective and the ME, along the lines of "It already won't be so bad if you don't become a part of my life in the first place."

And yet the redhead had managed to worm her way into her heart, earning Nikki's trust by being patient enough with the girl until Nikki had turned to her with her first concerns and thoughts instead of directly to her mother.

Maggie had always been the one to smooth the waters between Nikki and Elizabeth, instead of further inflaming the tense situation, never choosing sides, but rather trying to mediate between the two hardened fronts like a neutral state, listening carefully to both sides and finding a solution that fitted both parts. Nikki knew that even if it looked to outsiders as if her parents weren't close, it was the exact opposite; both women were much more intimate than a couple made up of a financial advisor and a housewife.

Moreover, she had witnessed more than once how Maggie and Elizabeth showed their love for each other. Not when she caught the two women having sex, but when they snuggled up on the couch and assured each other their love, an equally intimate moment in which they noticed nothing and no one but themselves.

Nikki furrowed her brows with a smile. "Our parents are different from other parents, Ash." She smiled as she remembered the moments when the two women, Maggie, whom she called her mother without a hesitation or a doubt, had nearly gone for each other's throats and the moments when Elizabeth had admitted her mistakes with her head held high but still meek, even if it had taken days. "The two are like yin and yang, fire and ice, heaven and hell --"

"They complement each other, even if they are in opposition," Ashlyn replied with a deep frown. "And neither can exist without the other."

Nikki looked at her sister long and hard and smiled. "I've always known you were the smarter of the two of us." Just as she said it, she meant it.

Ashlyn smiled wryly and lifted a shoulder. "Always said so."

Nikki blinked a few times before laughing genuinely and giving her sister a nudge.