"Grace, it's time to go!" Kate called, tapping her foot absently.
"Coming!" the girl replied, her voice slightly muffled by the walls. She dashed out of her room, grasping a spiral notebook in one hand.
"What's that?" Kate asked as they made their way to the car.
"Ducky said I should keep a journal," Grace explained. "I'm supposed to write down my feelings and what I think caused them." Kate didn't miss the slight sarcasm in Grace's voice; she obviously didn't hold much truck with touchy-feely stuff but was at least willing to give Ducky a shot.
Their semiweekly-barring-an-important-case meetings with Ducky had become somewhat central to both their lives, giving them a common frame of reference of sorts. Kate had noticed a significant decrease in the number of arguments they had at home; Grace simply stored the information away and they hashed it out in front of their third party. Ducky took it all in stride, helping them to see where they could improve. Kate didn't always feel better after a session, but over the weeks she felt her general mood improving.
"So," Ducky started, as per usual, "anything particularly pressing on our minds today?"
Kate, who usually opened by expressing a newly discovered (or, rather, uncovered) emotion concerning Dominic and the Incident, was silent. She had nothing new to say; she was still processing from last week. Ducky had managed to get her past her self-blame and she had begun channeling her anger toward Dominic.
Grace, on the other hand, fidgeted slightly as she waited for someone else to speak. Ducky noticed and called on her.
"Grace?" he prompted gently. She glanced nervously at Kate before beginning, as if to make sure she really was the only one with something to say.
"I miss my parents," she whispered, almost inaudibly. She was clearly struggling not to cry.
"Oh, my dear," Ducky breathed, eyes full of sympathy.
Kate pulled Grace into a hug where the girl, after initially tensing slightly, broke down and sobbed into Kate's shoulder. Kate stroked her, rocking slightly, maternal instinct overriding any possible awkwardness. This was her child and she was in pain.
They remained in that position for several minutes, Grace releasing all the tears she hadn't been able to shed for months. Kate felt a pang of guilt as she realized Grace must have been trying to be strong for her, Kate, as she dealt with her own repressed emotions. Now it was Grace's turn.
"Grace," Ducky encouraged when she had finally cried herself dry, "what do you miss most about your parents?"
Grace drew a shuddering breath as she closed her eyes and remembered. Smiling shakily, eyes squeezing tears down the well-established tracks on her cheeks, she breathed, "The way my dad smiled when he teased me. My mom's laugh. How safe I felt when they hugged me…" At this, Grace nearly broke down again, wiping her face furiously and swallowing hard around the lump in her throat.
Kate blinked back tears of her own. She longed to gather Grace into her arms and rock her like a baby. While that had been appropriate two minutes ago, though, in light of Grace's latest articulation she felt it would be cheating the girl to attempt to replace what she had lost.
Ducky cleared his throat lightly when it appeared that Grace had collected herself. It wasn't a polite, get-their-attention-so-I-can-talk-uninterrupted ahem, either; it was a genuine, emotional throat clear. Grace, wiping her eyes, looked up. Ducky saw a brief flash of raw grief in her eyes before she clammed up again.
"Grace," he said softly, "it's all right to feel." He couldn't help but feel slightly pleased as emotion crept back into her eyes and she gave him a watery smile.
Kate sighed as she pushed open her apartment door. It had been a tough day, beginning with the emotional session with Ducky and continuing through a strenuous case to end with the drive home in the worst traffic jam ever. Grace looked about how Kate felt: tired, worn, emotionally strained. Impulsively, Kate reached down and tousled Grace's hair affectionately. Grace looked up and gave her what Kate had come to recognize as her trademark "Grace look". It was sarcastic and poignant, inquisitive and enlightened. Kate smiled; that look meant Grace was all right even if she was grieving.
"Aunt Kate," Grace asked, sighing heavily, "can I please call Uncle Jack?"
"Of course," Kate replied, slightly over-cheery in her desire to maintain normalcy. "Use the calling card."
Grace grabbed the phone from the kitchen and shut herself in her room. Kate busied herself with nothing, resisting the urge to pick up the other phone and listen in. She walked past Grace's door several times, leaning in slightly to overhear the goings-on inside. She heard sniffles a few times, strangled sobs at one point, and quiet weeping throughout. She stopped on her seventh pass, startled to hear laughter. She leaned closer, pressing her ear to the door against her better judgment, wondering what could be funny right now.
"Remember the time Mom was sick, so Dad had to make Thanksgiving dinner?" Grace giggled.
Kate was startled to hear a voice answer back before she realized Grace must have the phone on speaker. She recognized the distorted voice vaguely from her brief meeting with Uncle Jack two months ago.
"Yeah, well," Uncle Jack laughed with his niece, "don't be too hard on him. All men have to learn that lesson the hard way."
"Uncle Jack," Grace admonished teasingly, "six hours at 300 degrees is not the same as three hours at 600 degrees."
"It's a reasonable assumption!" he defended himself, jokingly indignant. "Besides, you're not exactly off the hook yourself. What about the dog food incident?"
"No fair! That was entirely different," Grace protested.
"Huh," he snorted, and Kate could hear the raised eyebrow. "…How, exactly?"
"Well…" Grace faltered, before suddenly changing tack. "The look on Dad's face was priceless. I thought he was going to spew!"
"Naw, it tasted like chicken!" Uncle Jack kidded. "Your mom took it awfully well, I thought."
"Yeah, banning me from the kitchen for the rest of my natural life is 'taking it awfully well'," Grace commented wryly. "You know, I actually cooked something the other day? Wasn't half bad either, or so Aunt Kate tells me."
"Got yourself a new guinea pig, eh?"
"You could say that."
"I just did. Hey, kiddo," he got slightly more serious, surprising Kate who had figured him for a perpetual joker, "how's it goin'?"
"Good," she answered after a moment's pause. "Mostly."
"Mostly," he repeated, dragging the word out in what was clearly a question.
"There are rough spots," Grace explained. "It's getting better, though. Really, Uncle Jack, you don't have to worry about me."
"Gracie, if I didn't worry about you I'd have nothin' to do."
"I know that's not true."
"You callin' me a liar?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I guess I am."
The serious note left their conversation just as quickly as it had entered and they resumed their banter without a hitch. Kate smiled at the comfortable relationship between uncle and niece and went back into the kitchen to fix dinner, more certain than ever that maybe she – maybe they – would actually make it through this.