((So this is my VERY FIRST fic for a different TV show and I'd really appreciate reviews. I know it's confusing, there's not much of an ending, and seems like the beginning of a bigger story. However, I don't like building elaborate stories outside of the show's universe, so this will only remain a way to reveal the original use of Lilly's picture frame. Set after last season's finale.))
I watch the phone very carefully. I can feel a ring building somewhere inside it. The last time I had someone important on the phone it was a serial killer.
We all know how that ended.
My fingers tap in apprehension. Bad news is coming my way.
I'm so absorbed in my staring match with the phone, I don't see the boss disentangle himself from the little knot of people in his office and join me in preoccupied contemplation. When I do notice him, I almost with I hadn't.
"What's up?"
"Lil." It's that tone of voice. Looks like the phone's going to get off today. My bad news has come in person. Express mail. Rush delivery.
"I've got some bad news."
I wish I wasn't right about these things.
"A job's just come in, and…"
"Who?" My heart's thudding in my chest. The phone really did have it in for me. Maybe it's a parting gift from George that he's left tied up somewhere for me to find.
"I want you to promise me right now, you won't try to find the do-er."
Not George then. Someone else, someone alive, has killed a person I care about.
My mind immediately jumps to Chris. Chris, with her bright hair and easy smile, catching the wrong sort of attention in the dark underworld she's fleeing NY police in.
"It'll be a job for homicide, not us."
Not for us cold-diggers he means. We are still homicide. Now who is it that has him wound so tightly? Is it my sister?
"Ah Lil, I'm so sorry," he says, giving in to the sigh I saw building in his eyes from the moment I looked up at him. "I know you and he had your differences."
Not Chris then.
"Who?"
I know I'm not going to like the answer.
And I don't.
I wish I wasn't right about these things.
Now I stand beside my bed, next to my nightstand. I pick up the picture frame, and reflect that George probably stood right here, probably picked up the picture frame and sneered.
It's fair, I suppose. I stood in his bedroom, beside his bed, and next to his nightstand, and cursed his black and bloodless boots.
It's all so strange. The circles we make. Or do we just complete them? There's something fitting to all of this, a cycle ending where it started.
George leers at me from the picture frame, so I turn it over, and release the set of catches to remove the back of the frame.
I wonder if he bothered to look here, to find out the frame's original use. I slide his picture free and drop it in the trash, knowing for once that I don't have to worry about cutting it's replacement to fit. It was already in there when Chris handed me the frame, wrapped in stiff and shiny paper, and I never bothered to remove it. I only placed each subsequent picture on top of it.
I wonder if I jinxed him by doing that. Trapping him behind the faces of other victims, as if to ensure he would become one.
I know lying to one's boss is usually frowned upon, doubly so when you're a cop, but the only way I was getting out of the office today, was by swearing up and down that I was as sane as possible given the circumstances and I would stay far, far away from this case.
Never mind that it's impossible. If their picture's by my bed, then I will find out what happened to them. This picture's been sitting by my bed for years.
Bossman's face said he knew that. His eyes said he knew I was lying.
In my eyes the tears gather heavier and heavier on my lashes, blurring our happy faces. In this picture his arm is around me, and we are laughing. A happy picture, Chris called, her simple carefree explanation reason for why she picked it.
It's also a picture from our engagement party.
Perhaps I've jinxed myself as well, keeping both of us tucked away back here, behind all the other faces. Perhaps a file box waits in my immediate future.
I don't have time to let that thought disturb me. An old picture from another lifetime sits in my picture frame. Somewhere my bright-eyed sister walks in dark places. Somewhere the man she duped into protecting her waits for the phone call he knows is coming from me. And in the city morgue sleeps the man who asked me to marry him and then betrayed me with my golden sister.
What circles we make.
No wonder I'm dizzy.
I take two fingers to my lips and press them to the glass.