The day that Spencer found out the truth of Riley Jenkins—of how he was so tied into everything that followed—it was a pivotal point in his life. He wished he'd never found out the truth. He wished his father could have remained in the shadows, and he wished the memories had never been brought to light.
It also made clear to Spencer something that didn't need saying—William Reid loved his wife, and Spencer wasn't sure if his father had ever stopped:
"But eventually I came to understand what had happened," William said. Without hesitation, without compunction, he continued: "And I knew that nobody could ever know."
Spencer looked up at his father from the couch and then looked in his mother's direction—tried to read into her sorrowful expression. A glance again at his father, then aversion.
"So, you never told anyone?" He was sure of the answer, and that was reflected in the tone in which he asked the question. His gaze flicked between them again.
William looked down. "No, she could've been implicated." He looked at Spencer and then finished unwaveringly: "And I had to protect her."
Again, Spencer averted his eyes, his mind flashing back to when he was a four-year old boy looking beyond the closed sliding door, watching his father burning those clothes. "You were burning her bloody clothes."
His mother nodded, but his father couldn't even look at him at that point. He wondered what he was thinking. There was a weight that had to be borne upon having covered up what happened that night. At four, he'd laid in bed and eventually covered his ears. At 27, he could understand the reason behind the argument the two had.
When William could finally look at his son, he spoke. "But the knowing . . . you can't burn that away." Again, William looked down. "It changes everything."
Spencer swallowed, and his voice was small. "Is that why you left?"
"I tried to keep us together, Spencer. I swear to you, but . . ." William licked his lips. "The weight of that knowledge—it was too much."
Spencer learned it well by now, that body language. His father was not only tired, but did that thing that parents apparently did to protect their children: he was withholding something.
He tried forming the next words but found it difficult for a few seconds, afraid of what saying them implied. He couldn't deny it. His feelings always vacillated between anger and a longing, and it was with the latter that he expressed himself.
"You could have come back." He watched as his father looked down in shame, which he clouded with a smile. "Could have started over."
"I didn't know how to take care of you anymore," William said.
Spencer's gaze flicked to his mother, who was still looking at her husband with that same expression.
"When I lost that confidence, there was no going back."
Spencer looked down again and he found himself bubbling over with a medley of emotions.
"What's done is done," Diana said.
Spencer couldn't bring himself to look up, and his knee began to bob. Longing, yes, but also shame. He had wanted so much for his father to be as terrible as he had imagined over the course of the last few days. He had wanted there to be nothing good or redeemable about him so ardently that he was ready to label his father a rapist, a pedophile, and a murderer.
His chin quivered.
The whole time, his father, a man of the law, had been bearing the weight of knowing that his own sick wife might be implicated in a murder, and there was verifiable motivation for her to be.
It was . . . when Spencer wrapped his mind around it, it was just a screwed-up situation. Minutes earlier, when he asked his mother if Gary Michaels ever did anything to him and his mother asserted that the man hadn't, his father had sucked in a breath and looked up with fluttering eyes as if reliving something difficult or imagining something difficult happening to his own child.
William Reid was no Lou Jenkins. He didn't react violently or without forethought. But he was a man that acted at that time.
It led to more questions, though. Did his father know what had happened to Gary's body? How far did the collusion with Lou Jenkins, Detective Hyde, and his father go to protect this secret, to protect Diana, to keep people from knowing about this, to keep Spencer from knowing about any of this? It was . . . it was a stressful situation, and far too layered. That murder couldn't have ended their collusion. Lou Jenkins defended his father's honor, and Detective Hyde tried to steer Spencer away from his wrongful conclusions. This was a fierce loyalty. There was so much more to this.
"At least now you know the truth," his mother finished.
Resolutely, shamefully, unable to be declared with a steady gaze, Spencer spoke in a single breath. "I was wrong about everything; I'm sorry."
They were silent, but then his father sat on the couch, and he looked over at him.
"I am, too, Spencer." He swallowed. "I'm sorry for it all—for everything."
It was seventeen years since the last time they three were in the same room together.
William, unmoving from the couch, looked over at his wife. "How have you been, Diana?"
"Well," she sighed out, and her bearing shifted. She looked at her husband with such gravitas, but her words came out with a light tone. "I was institutionalized eight years after you left us."
A look of shame and pain washed over William's face, and he reddened, stiffening. Spencer, too, felt that shame.
"William, I was kidding." She shook her head with a misplaced smile, sitting back in her chair and folding her hands onto her lap. With a nonchalance that was unfitting the gravity of the situation, she continued, "Well, not kidding, since it actually happened, but—you know—I was bound for this life."
"Mom!"
William shook his head. "Don't. Don't say that, Diana," he begged. "There was—we tried everything again and again and—"
"Well, there's no cure yet." There was not an ounce of maudlin sentiment attached to the words.
"I wish there were," William lamented. "I wish there were. I wish I could fix you, Diana. Leaving did nothing to help. I know that. But we tried—"
"Eh." Diana waved her hand dismissively. "Only broken things need fixin', Will. Do I look broken to you?" She winked. "Besides, I'm the one who kept going off my medication. I know you tried. I'm the one who kept—"
"Diana, don't do this." William objected, his voice taking on a desperate edge that Spencer never heard, hand outstretched—not to her, but in front of Spencer, as if barring him.
Spencer sucked in a breath in alarm. It was an instinctual action.
"Don't, please. Let's not go down this road, Diana."
Something unspoken was being passed above his head that Spencer still didn't like. He wasn't a child. He could take things like an adult and didn't take well to being treated like he was still a ten-year-old boy whose father wanted him to go into another room so he could hold a conversation with his mother.
And yet.
Spencer watched the exchange between his parents, and his mother looked—
She's happy. Content. She still loved her husband, too, clearly.
He didn't know where he fit into this anymore. He might. At times in the past, when he wasn't angry, he'd wished for it.
As if the sentiment had been spoken aloud and his father had heard him, William turned to Spencer. "Spencer, I—I know that I made a mistake when I was younger, when you were just a child. I lost that confidence, yes, but I wronged you. I know I did. You didn't deserve that, and I don't deserve your forgiveness. I'm too ashamed to even ask for it. But." He swallowed. "I am sorry. I am. And I hate that it's taken this incident for me to—to gather any confidence and say these things. I hate that I didn't come to you first—that you had to come to me."
Spencer averted his eyes, processing the words. It was true. If it weren't for the rehashing of his memories and the reemergence of Riley's case, he would never be sitting next to his father, receiving this apology.
It almost negated its sincerity.
And yet.
"I want to try to fix this. I would like to—I was wondering if—if maybe I can call you some time? If we can . . . try to catch up?" It wasn't said with the same brash arrogance he had shown hours before.
Something like a flickering light flashed in Spencer's mind.
Spencer swallowed, cleared his throat. "I . . ."
"Please, just a couple of minutes. I ended things badly. I know I did, son."
He flinched. Son.
No.
No!
He couldn't do this.
"But the beginning is always today," William quoted. "Maybe, today, we can begin aga—"
Spencer unfolded himself from the couch and stood upright. "I actually—no. If you've watched me as much as it seems, then you know that I'm busy with my job. Mom, we should—"
"Spencer—"
"William," Diana interjected, "would you be able to take me back to Bennington with my attendants?"
William and Spencer both balked at her, both with the same exact expression despite the lack of prolonged mutual exposure.
Without taking her eyes off her husband, Diana then addressed her son. "Spencer."
"Mom?"
"Have a safe trip back home. Although you know that I hate flying and even the thought of you doing it, May the wind always be at your back and the sun upon your face."
His mother had as good as dismissed him. Jealousy and resentment trilled through him, but he stamped it down. She was now his responsibility, not his father's. He sought after her care, not his father. But on that . . .
In this moment, she may have wanted to spend time with him in light of their peculiar reunion. The pettiness he'd displayed for the last few days, though, had dissipated in the light of the truth. He shouldn't let it crop up again.
He capitulated. "Bye, mom."
Diana reached over to pat his hand lovingly. "Bye, honey."
As he exited, he glanced at his father, whose hands were wringing.
"Bye, Spencer," he heard his father say just moments before he closed the door behind him.
His father didn't give up. His mother must have given his father his address. Two months after that day, he received his first letter from his father. He didn't open it for exactly two weeks. He didn't read it for another. There was a lot about his father he obliterated from his memory.
But seeing that hand-written letter had caused memories to dribble in—those of when he was young and his father and mother would write him little notes. As a child, on top of his non-verbal issues, he'd been dysgraphic and had trouble learning to write. His father had helped this issue by often writing with and to him and encouraging him to write short notes back to him. It, of course, didn't affect his ability to spell or to read, but it was the motor skills that just needed some honing. It never truly went away; his handwriting was atrocious, and he was constantly berated by his teachers for it and for how he held his pencils. Either way, passing notes was a normal form of communication. That must be why he wrote him one the day he left.
This time, much like with the goodbye letter from seventeen years ago, he didn't write back to his father.
Six months after receiving that first letter, he received another. It took him twelve days before opening it, and five days to actually read it.
And every few months since then, his father didn't fail to write him a letter. He never once wrote back. But he saved them, he counted down, and he waited for when they would stop. If the pattern was the same, he knew they would. He knew his father would give up.
They never did, though.
—
About three years later, on a chilly March morning, among the plethora of letters, Spencer's father broke pattern and changed his tactic.
There was a new letter in his post office box, among other official mail. The sender was a Dr Susan Calvin, who claimed to be a scientist in an undisclosed practice, and the letter's content was mostly a compliment for an article he published recently in the Journal of Behavioral Psychology . That article had gone into the correlation between the escalation of violence and obsessional natures.
"This is convenient," he groused. This surely was a pseudonym, taken from the famous novel, I, Robot, written by Isaac Asimov, his father's favorite author. It had been his father that got him into science fiction. Maybe his father was reaching out this way because he never answered the letters. But a few things didn't add up: the letter that he received had a DC Post Office Box return address, and the stamp cancelling indicated this was mailed from DC, too.
The letter was left with a question that prompted a response as well as a quote:
Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.
"Hm. Voltaire."
For three days, Spencer resolved that he wouldn't answer the letter. It was too damned suspicious.
The question wormed into his brain, though, and leaving it unanswered almost seemed irresponsible from an academic standpoint. Even if it was his father disguising himself as an interested reader somehow—his father was smart—he would simply answer the letter and leave it at that. So he went to the library, typed up his response, and brought the printed letter home with him to mail. Typing it distanced himself that much more from the situation and mimicked the original letter. His father's other letters were all hand-written; this one had been typed.
He would take the bite and see how far this would drag on. He started a mental countdown and popped the letter into the mail.
Within four days, he received a response from Dr Susan Calvin. He read it, and he somehow felt this wasn't his father. The man was smart, but he wasn't that smart, and to formulate such a thorough response so quickly after his reply required a different type of intelligence that he couldn't attribute to his father.
"Okay. It's just coincidence. This supposed pseudonym is related to something that my father loves."
He thought about it, speaking aloud to reason with himself. He paced slowly with the letter in hand.
"The book is popular—anyone could want to use Dr Susan Calvin as a pseudonym. On that note, Susan is the 23rd most popular first name in the US. and Calvin isn't an uncommon surname."
He sat on his couch, stared at it for any clues.
"You're reading too much into this."
The letter was left with another question, though, which prompted another response. It ended in another quote, this time by Camus:
We are all special cases.
Instead of going to the library, he hand-wrote his response in his neatest penmanship—scrawl—after creating a mental outline of how he would formulate its contents.
The response to his letter was doubly as swift—within two days—and posed another series of questions.
I hope this isn't a fan. He had half a mind not to respond if that were the case.
But the newest response strangely veered into a more personal subject, for the sender asked him about the psychopathy of obsessive stalkers. Further sentences down, it seemed that this person was, in fact, concerned about the very subject on a personal level. He had initially thought it peculiar that a scientist—someone who likely worked with empirical, quantifiable data—was reading an article in psychology—something mired in ever shifting ambiguities—and wondered if it was purely for academic advancement, but now it made more sense.
In fact, Dr Susan Calvin requested in the last paragraph that he address his letters in a pseudonym moving forward. This person was a bit smart. She—if the sender was a woman—had written the paragraph in a Caesar Shift. The overall theme of the coded message was as such:
She wanted him to address himself as Dr Joseph Bell in any further correspondences, and she noted that she would appreciate his discretion in also using coded messages with the claim that she would be able to figure out whatever he meant.
It ended with an uncoded quote, this time by Plato:
There is in every one of us, even those who seem to be most moderate, a type of desire that is terrible, wild, and lawless.
She attributed it to her stalker.
When he responded in kind, addressing his letter to her as Dr Joseph Bell, he used a little cipher himself—nothing too difficult for a person of notable intellect to crack—in the form of a Skip Code. And crack it she must have. He gave additional detail about obsessive stalkers, about what fail-safe actions to take, and wished Dr Susan Calvin all the best in a way that he was sure would terminate their correspondence.
Still, he wondered if she would respond.
She did, and it came quickly. You understood! she had written. I'm so pleased! And per the code you left me . . . The rest was written in code.
For about three more weeks, multiple letters were exchanged between the two of them—coded, covert, about her stalker. He became invested in helping her to narrow down who it might be and staying safe from the stalker, who seemed to be classically possessive, one who craved validation and recognition and who also had a suicidal ideation:
'Why won't you see me?'
'Do you think you're better than me?'
'When I find you, I'm going to kill you, then myself.'
Those were a few of the many things her stalker would say to her after leaving her messages on her phone in a warbly, deep voice, or sending her emails. Spencer told Dr Susan Calvin to take the threats seriously, take severe steps to avoid her stalker, and maintain high vigilance. He praised her, too, for having taken steps even to change her hair color, to cut off her ties with her current friends and colleagues, to have originally gone to the authorities to report the stalking. They were drastic but would preserve her life.
Sometimes the exchanges made him laugh, or the coded message was so ridiculous to crack that he was sure she was showing off.
Somewhere along the lines, a little more than two months in, the exchanges became a bit more personal following the bank heist that took place right in DC—the very same one that had nearly killed Will.
He asked Dr Calvin if she was alright. Who knew if she might have been one of the victims in the first or second bank, or one of the hostages—it all happened in the DC area, and he knew she lived somewhere in DC or thereabouts.
She also sent him a letter. Both crossed, and both shared the same sentiments. They were—each of them—doing well, and were unaffected by the event, and hoped the other was doing well.
It was a relief.
Soon after this, Spencer was curious to know if she might know of any good geneticists. After nearly seven months of general reprieve, his migraines were returning, as was the nausea. She was apparently an expert in her field of molecular biology, biochemistry, and biophysics, and it seemed she had worked on a project involving nucleotides—she might be well connected, and he had been searching for one for a consultation. He told her how doctors hadn't been able to assist him with figuring out his debilitating headaches, increased food sensitivities, and subsequent vomiting spells, all of which had been at their worst for nearly two years now.
He wasn't surprised when Dr Calvin revealed to him that she herself was a geneticist. He had his suspicions. She asked if he wouldn't mind sending his MRI scans to her as well as his complete medical and nutritional history, and so he did.
What interesting grey matter you have! Please allow me some time to review everything with a more careful eye and I'll get back to you as soon as possible. Also, your nutrition leaves a lot to be desired, Dr Bell. There are studies that show that nutrition and genetics influence each other just as much as genetics and predispositions to mental and/or physical disorders. I'm sure you know this. But we'll see about everything holistically as a look at what you've provided me with.
In the meantime, they continued exchanging letters about her stalker. Apparently, there was a new string of calls and threats. After another two weeks, in the middle of June, Dr Susan Calvin asked Spencer if he would like to have more in depth conversations that couldn't truly be had via the written word.
Sensitive to her issues, Spencer suggested to her that it might not be a good idea, but if she insisted, then he could call her from a payphone to continue to maintain a sort of distance. In her next letter, she was agreeable to the suggestion and sent her phone number to him in a series of codes that would require him to buy a specific Arthur Conan Doyle novel, printed from a specific publishing company, printed in a specific year. She also arranged a day for him to call her in that same coded message.
When he figured out the phone number, as well as the date—a Sunday—he set to bringing a few quarters with him, and he went to a payphone seven blocks away from his apartment. Something within him thrummed on the way there, and the quarters he had in his hands became warm and wet with sweat. He had stayed up nearly the whole night before, thinking about the call he would have with Dr Susan Calvin.
From what he knew about her, they were about the same age. He tended to have difficulty having conversation with like peers, but she was his intellectual equal. It would be a shame if the phone calls might become the beginning of the end. Most of all, he just enjoyed the companionship they'd developed.
Despite his reservations, he was curious to shape her beyond the letters of a page.
He put the quarter in, dialed the number, and after a few beeps, he then dialed the number for the specific payphone so that Dr Calvin could call it back. Once he heard the two-second beep, he hung up the phone and he stepped away.
And then it rang.
He lept back toward the phone and had to clear his throat and shake his head before he picked it up.
"H-He—hi-llo, um, Dr Calvin?"
"Dr Joseph Bell, I'm so pleased to speak with you over the phone." The soft voice on the other line said the words smoothly, all in one breath, without a single stutter, practiced.
"It's—yes—I'm ha—glad—pleased. That we can speak. It, um, it's been a few months now."
"It has."
They lapsed into silence.
Oh no. He feared that this would happen.
"Um, I'm glad that you were able to decipher my last letter," Dr Calvin said. "Have you read that book by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle before?"
"Yes," he answered. "Yes, I have. When I was much younger." He paused. Continue the conversation. Draw on something. "Of course, I had to buy a specific one so that I could decipher the Ottendorf Cipher you left me. Do you like, ah, do you like? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?"
"O-oh, yes!" she proclaimed. She cleared her throat once, twice, and then let out an audible breath. "I do," she then declared more calmly. "He's . . . he's my favorite author."
"Is he?" Spencer asked in keen interest. "Which of his works do you favor?"
"Oh." It came out as a breathless, shaking sound, followed by a single pitch. It could be a laugh.
And it was admittedly pleasant.
"Oh, by far anything from the Sherlock Holmes collections. I could read those—oof—hundreds of times and still be enamored with the adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson. The cases, their duality that touched on enriching life partnership and symbiosis, everything. Have you seen the newer BBC version? Tch, I'm so taken by it for both of those same reasons. It's a bit flawed, yes, but it's so rich. There's a new show coming out soon, too, and I'm interested to see how they'll approach it with a female John Watson and keep true to the partnership and not turn it into a terrible, convenient romantic overture. Romance has its proper place and the two undoubtedly love each other in any rendition, but I prefer the idea of exploring non-traditional relationships," she prattled.
That was a lot—a lot, a lot—to just throw out in their first verbal conversation. He had a feeling that she withheld much from her letters which—again—said a lot, because their last six exchanges had been pages long.
"I take it that's why you'd asked me to take on the pseudonym of Dr Joseph Bell."
"Yes!" It was another unbridled explosion, which was followed by a throat clearing and a softened response. "Oh, I'm sorry. Um, yes. So you know, then—that he's the real-life inspiration for Sherlock Holmes."
Spencer nodded, lips fighting not to break into a smile as he tucked his hair behind his ear.
"Dr Bell?"
"Oh, s-sorry I, um, I was—"
"You nodded into the phone, didn't you?"
"I"—he barked a laugh—"I—yes, I did."
This time, she giggled. Again—it was pleasant.
Spencer had to ignore it, so he continued. "But, yes, I know. That he's the inspiration, that is." And he thought. "You know, Dr Calvin, I'm fine with addressing you by your pseudonym, but so long as we're speaking on the phone, I don't mind dispensing with formality. It's fine to call me by my name. You already know it."
"Oh! Yes. Okay. It's fine? Dr . . . S-Spencer Reid?" she asked.
"Y-yes. Or, um, S-Sp-Spencer is fi—just Spencer is okay to use, too."
"So you figured out, then, um, Dr—Spencer —that I'm using a pseudonym as well."
"Yes. From I, Robot."
"Mm. You've read a lot, haven't you, Spencer?" It flowed effortlessly that time, his name. "I admire Dr Susan Calvin's character."
"I have. And I do too."
They lapsed into silence again.
"My name is Maeve."
Maeve. Maeve as a girl's name is of Irish and Gaelic origin meaning intoxicating. The original form is Meadhbh, the name of the powerful and legendary warrior queen of pre-Christian Ireland. It's not a popular US name, but—
"Um, hello?"
"I'm sorry. It's . . . it's nice to—um, hello, Maeve."
"Hi, Spencer."
SATURDAY, JULY 13, 2013 | WASHINGTON, DC
Penelope pressed the key into the lock at Spencer's apartment, unlocked it, and took a bracing breath before she would step forward.
Ever since she had begun mailing the letters for him, she only took a few at a time, hoping that she wouldn't need them for much longer. But it was time that she took the trunk with her. While it was difficult to accept, this was a hope that was just as painful to hold on to.
But when she stepped into the threshold, the light in his kitchen was on, and—to her horror—Jennifer was coming through the small hall with her hand splayed on her chest.
"JJ!"
"Jeez, Penelope, you scared me."
"What are you doing here?" She didn't know if she should let Jennifer see her getting the trunk. It would lead to questions, and she was awful at keeping secrets.
Jennifer gave a tight smile and shrugged her shoulder. "I just came to clean out Spence's freezer—make sure that nothing was spoiling past their expiration dates in the cabinets," she answered.
"Oh."
"And to check his plants."
"Oh, I . . . I see."
Jennifer thinned her eyes at Penelope. "What are you doing here?"
"Oh, I—" Penelope cleared her throat "—just here to, um, yes, do—the—same? Yes. Clean the fridge. A-And dusting." She tacked on that last bit. "Some dusting, too."
"Oh," Jennifer smiled. "I haven't watered the plants yet—do you want to handle that?"
"Yeah, yes, sure."
"Have you been coming by to water them? Whenever I come by, they look healthy."
"Yeah—yes. Mm-hmm." She nodded.
Jennifer looked after Penelope incisively.
Penelope tilted her head, then—without breaking eye contact—pointed her finger at his living room. "Gonna—just gonna get right to it then, Jayge."
"M'yeah," Jennifer agreed, giving Penelope a wink beyond her dubious expression.
They worked separately. Penelope whispered words of adulation to the plants, dusted the leaves off, sprayed them with water, petted them lovingly. After some time, she went into the kitchen.
"You know, I can finish that up for you if you want," she suggested. "You can get back to little Henry."
Jennifer shook her head. "It's no big deal at all, Pen. The boys are at the park, so I came here."
"You sure? 'Cause—I dunno—you can get goin' and meet them at the park and—"
"Penelope, why are you really here?" Jennifer set down the glass jar in her hand atop the counter. "It's like you're pushing me out."
"Well, JJ, I really wish you hadn't officially become a profiler," Penelope huffed. "I . . . I can't talk about it." She wanted Spencer to know that he could trust her. But, again, she was awful at keeping secrets.
"You can't talk about it, or you won't?" Jennifer asked.
Penelope shook her head plaintively, eyes glinting. She began to say something but stopped herself. Instead, she begged. "Please, JJ."
"Something's wrong, Penelope." Jennifer neared her.
Penelope gave her a guilty shake of the head. She was bad at these things. They were a family. When someone was in trouble, or someone was hurting, they needed to help each other. It distressed her the first few days to send the letters, but after a couple of weeks' time, she began to think: what if she got sick and she couldn't mail a letter or two? Or what if, god forbid, something happened to her and she wasn't able to mail the letters to Diana at all? If she couldn't fulfill Spencer's wishes if they never found him, then what was to eventually become of Diana Reid?
Oh, no.
The tears rushed out unbidden.
"Penelope!" Jennifer whispered in shock, bracing her hand on Penelope's arm. "What's—Penelope . . . please tell me what's wrong. I didn't intend to upset you; tell me what I did wrong."
"It's not you, JJ. It's not. I can't do this . . ." Penelope admitted. "It's Reid . I don't want him to hurt anymore. I don't know how you guys can be so strong."
Jennifer was nodding and rubbing Penelope's arm. She and Penelope were close. They told each other many things; there wasn't much they didn't share with each other, but they hadn't had a private moment between the two of them since all of this had started, especially since Erin Strauss and the Director had changed how they would approach Spencer's case moving forward.
"Penelope . . . I'm—" Jennifer's eyes also began to brim. "I'm not doing well with this either, trust me. I'm ready to fall apart, and I feel even more guilty because I want to do everything that I can to find Reid. But going back there, seeing more of those victims . . . half of me wanted to stay there for Spence and to bring him home safely. But half of me was so tired of the constant anxiety the whole situation brought about, and I needed to be as far away from this as possible. So no, I'm not strong. I'm trying to recalibrate my life with the possibility of Spence's inexistence, because doing otherwise is killing me. The dreams—the nightmares are the worst."
"Oh, baby Jay." Penelope placed her hand on Jennifer's face gently.
Jennifer's eyes were sightless as she interlocked her fingers and pressed them against her lips. "It's—I can't tell you how many times I keep dreaming that we find him just like Noah was found, just wrapped in white and he's just . . . his hands are gone and he's so pale and just . . . he's covered— covered in bruises. I hate this. I hate it."
"We need to find him and put this mess to rest. We all just need this behind us."
Jennifer straightened her lips, shaking her head. "This is never going to truly be behind us—ever, Penelope. Henry keeps going to his window at bedtime and lighting up the sky in hopes that Spence finds his way back home because he's convinced that he's lost. Do I let my son know that he might never see someone he loves again? How do I break my son's heart? Do I hope that he's at that threshold where he can just forget that Spencer even existed? How do I do this when there are pictures of them? Stash those away?"
Penelope tutted, hand pressed against her chest.
"I can't. Henry grows up and then he starts to ask questions. Either way, it's wrong, and I can't just do that to Spence. I can't just pretend he never existed in front of my son because I love Spence too damn much."
"Oh, Jayge . . ."
"Then I have to think about if we do find him alive. Let alone that Spencer is going to have emotional and psychological damage and god knows what else to deal with. We're going to support him. But how do I then explain this to Henry? How do I explain to him that his uncle wasn't lost—that some of the monsters that exist took Spencer and destroyed him? Spence will never be the same. I already know this. Our lives together with him will never be the same. He might never be able to have this closeness and intimacy and innocence that he had with Henry. No. This will never be behind us; this is permanent change, Penelope. For every single damn one of us because we allowed ourselves to get close to each other. It's never going to be behind Spence, if he . . . if he's still . . ." The tears finally fell.
Penelope moaned. "JJ," she started insistently. "JJ."
Jennifer flicked her hands over her cheeks, blinking the tears out of her eyes and humming.
"JJ, what happens . . . what do you think will happen to Reid's mother if—"
"Oh my god," Jennifer lamented, dropping her face into her palms. "She . . . she can't know." Her voice came out muffled. She then lifted her face away. "This is going to destroy her. Oh god, he writes a letter to her every day, she must be—she must be so worried." She leaned forward and her forehead fell into her hands. "It's been over two months. We have to . . ."
She puffed out a nasal breath as she placed her hand on her forehead and her other hand on her hip, turning. "I don't know how to handle this. I don't know how we handle this. I don't know what we should do. I—we have to think about this."
Penelope breathed in tremulously. "Reid did," she admitted.
"What?" Jennifer stopped.
"Reid—he knew." Penelope breathed again and her voice shook as she averted her eyes. "He knew what to do if anything happened to him."
"Penelope," Jennifer drawled, tilting her head and furrowing her eyebrows. "What . . ."
"I have to tell you something, and I'm telling you because if anything ever happens to me , I can't—I won't be able to help, and someone has to help. And I want Reid to trust me. I want him to be able to trust that I don't tell everyone his business, but he—we—we love him, and he loves his mother, and he wants to protect her, and I can't—"
"Penelope."
"We owe it to him to do what we can for him, for his mother—all of us, right? We owe it to him, for all that bad that's happened to him—we owe it to him."
"Garcia. What is it?"
Penelope decided. He technically never told her that she couldn't divulge this, but she was quite sure that this wasn't just something he wanted to tell everyone. But—he never—
And again, what if something happened to her? Someone would need to continue what he had started for his mother, whom he loved so very much.
"I have to tell you something that he and I talked about a few years ago." Penelope began, feeling like she was going to unburden herself from this weight. "A little while after he was shot. The reason I'm actually here."
Jennifer sucked in a breath and her head tilted downward. She kicked it in another second to the middle of the living room. "Couch."
ELSEWHERE IN WASHINGTON, DC
The seal on the flat brown envelope was delicately cut through with a letter opener. It had been over a month since Mary had received this personally from Agent Hotchner. For the first week, she had been hesitant to unseal its contents and it caused her great distress to the point of doubling over and experiencing couch-languishing headaches, and so she didn't.
The following week, she was laid up in bed for three days, physically and mentally exhausted with a lethargy that felt drug-induced. It was nothing new—it was a problem she had decades before the cancer. Her joints ached, and she had a constant, terrible headache that didn't ebb for those days, and the dizziness was enough to make her stomach turn. Thankfully she was fine shortly after, which was just as well. She and her husband had to pack for their two-week trip in France.
They'd long-since returned, and she decided to finally unseal the evidence envelope with a renewed vigor.
In it, she found a letter and an envelope addressed to a PO Box. She unfolded the letter and began to read its contents.
To my Ever Cherished Dr Joseph Bell,
I bought the blindfold today.
Mary blinked. "What?" she gasped out. She continued reading it.
I can't wait to use it.
"Mm. No," Mary said aloud, putting it down. She felt that she should rip it. That wasn't her daughter.
That wasn't her Maeve.
Something bubbled within her.
She folded the letter, slipped it back in the sleeve of its envelope, and put it away as the heat within pressed at her eyes.
—
It wasn't her daughter.
Mary had thought over it. Maeve was very open with her—about her likes and dislikes, about what went on with her when it came to boys. There was little her daughter didn't tell her, because she and her husband had fostered an environment where no conversation was considered taboo and where inquisitiveness was encouraged. Maeve's romanticism made her very selective with how she treated her dating life and her sexual exploits—limited though they were. Bobby had only been her third partner. She was open with how that relationship developed, and—once they were engaged—where it had started to go sour.
So Mary knew there was more to the letter that she should read into. There must be.
Or maybe she shouldn't read into it at all. It was none of her business what Maeve and that agent said in their letters. She felt like she was prying into her daughter's life where she ought not go. Everyone had secrets. Maybe Maeve's should die along with her.
It was two days later, though, and after having mulled over it—of having gone over the bitter tang at the idea of encroaching—she decided that she was going to read the letter's contents in full, despite her misgivings. She just needed a little bit of clarity. There was no room for judgement. They were adults, Maeve and that agent. It might let her know the character of that man better.
It wasn't coded. Reading the letter in whole had unburdened Mary's previous misgivings. The blindfold subject ended where she had last seen it, and the rest of the letter was innocuous. However, near the end, it returned to the blindfold subject, and the words her daughter wrote were a censure against someone who had apparently hurt Dr Spencer Reid when he was younger.
And at the end was a quote: The most sophisticated people I know—inside they are all children.
Mary herself liked to quote this wise man often, and she was glad to know that her daughter never spurned the things he so ardently believed; Maeve had loved his works as a child.
Maybe she could read the letters. It wasn't to pry. She just wanted to know what they had nurtured, how much he truly cared for her if at all—for someone he'd never seen. That kind of relationship wasn't impossible—it was just so rare in the age of social media, little privacy, and video calls. Why hadn't they ever seen each other? Who was the man that her daughter had been so enamored with despite never having seen him—that is, until the day she died?
A spike drove into her bowels. "Oh, Maeve," she moaned.
Dr Spencer Reid was apparently still missing—if the national broadcast that that team had released last week was anything to go by.
So, Mary wanted to know why she should care at all about Dr Spencer Reid.
—
Mary set herself to drive to her daughter's loft, find that trunk again, and bring it to her home. In her study, she read their exchanges over the course of the next few days and weeks.
The codes weren't difficult to break. Some of them were a little tricky, and some of them set her about tasks that she found adventuresome, like ordering specific books printed within specific years by specific publishing companies to decipher a couple of Ottendorf ciphers; or using a Skip Code or Playfair Cipher or Caesar Shift; or translating a familiar poem in its original language and determining what they were trying to say to each other based off the Fibonacci sequence. That one had been a bit excessive, and she got the sense that Maeve was preening and taking the mickey out of Dr Spencer Reid that time. But he broke it.
The letters were in chronological order, from Maeve to Dr Spencer Reid, and from him to Maeve. Mary opened Maeve's journal, too, to coordinate the entries with dates of the letters. She liked that her daughter ended each of the letters with quotes, mostly by Voltaire, Camus, and Plato—Maeve's favorite philosophers. Sometimes she ventured outside of these, though, especially with their later correspondences, to words of more whimsical or adventurous text.
Dr Spencer Reid had been clinical and distant in his first few responses to Maeve's letters, but he was an incisive man. He caught onto the code she had given him quickly, and he returned his letters in code as well.
After one letter where he praised her for all the evasive measures she'd taken, he signed off with a Wishing you all the very best—a polite way to end their correspondences.
But Maeve was insistent.
And he responded to that insistence.
So he instructed her in greater detail what she should do, how she should act, and what she should say—what lies she might say to lull and unbalance but not unhinge her stalker—if she were abducted. If Mary knew her daughter, she knew there were times where her sense of self-preservation might fail her even in the face of such peril.
Mary found it difficult to read some of the things that Maeve's stalker had said and done to terrorize her. She knew them already since she and Joe had been with her when she went to the authorities, but this was a reminder that that crazed woman had won, despite the good doctor's advice—despite their efforts, and despite her going to the police.
Either way, it seemed that he was invested in Maeve's well-being, and he told her that she should continue to take the threats seriously.
About two months into their constant exchanges, the contents of the letters became more personal. It was after those two bank heists that the FBI had been involved in—a little over a year ago, now. The two had exchanged letters expressing their worry for each other.
Mary stopped reading the letters when they got to this point for a while, laden with guilt. It seemed a little transgressive on her part to read the letters that Maeve had received, because those were the sentiments of another person who was still very much alive. Well, missing. Possibly dead.
But within days, Mary reasoned within herself again that at the end of it all, the letters belonged to Maeve, and she was Maeve's mother. It was within her right to look at the letters. So she resumed reading them even though guilt still gnawed at her gut.
It wasn't much longer after this that Dr Spencer Reid asked Maeve about his sickness, claiming that he was looking for a geneticist and knew that she was in the microbiology field. Maeve invited him to send her his medical history. That must be where those MRIs and medical documents had come into play.
"Look at you," Mary murmured fondly. "Sticking your fingers into these kinds of pies. Sweet-toothed child in a bakery, I tell you."
Yes, Maeve was unable to resist the allure of the brainwork. It probably kept her free of the boredom and monotony of her hermitage. Except, it was clearly so much more than just passing the time and distracting herself. It may have been that in the beginning of their correspondences, but they'd traversed that stage.
There was care.
The letters went on about her stalker, but soon, Maeve invited Spencer to exchange calls with her.
In concordance with the letters, Mary looked at Maeve's journal entries. They were sparse in the first couple of months that they first spoke, and it wasn't until the two-month mark—again, after the bank heist—that Maeve's entries started being written with a little more regularity.
As Maeve was a solitary child, she was an avid and keen journalist when she was growing up. The habit fell to the wayside in her college and post-graduate years, and when her career took off. But since she'd gone into hiding, she was picking it up again. The continued exchanges with Dr Spencer Reid got her back into it full throttle.
Maeve recounted their conversations in detail, and Mary was glad of it. They talked about, dissected, and analyzed everything: Euclidean geometry, mathematics, physics, biology, philosophy, human nature, space, anthropology, psychology, history, bibliographies—the many things that would keep bottomless minds like theirs occupied. But they talked about more mundane things: travelling, classic and contemporary art, classic and contemporary fiction, foreign and domestic shows and films, theatre, music, museums, favorite ethnic foods, languages, clouds, fabric textures, perception of colors. Individual goals. Joint future plans.
Even though they began to call each other regularly every Sunday, they still exchanged letters throughout the week—pages and pages of letters that surely took hours to write, read, and analyze in depth. Within just weeks of their telephone calls, they spoke about children, and it made Mary's chest hurt seeing what Maeve wrote of the conversation in her journal. It was a touchy subject for Maeve, and Mary found herself weeping over it.
Maeve recounted it all in her journal. She was growing to love him. She adored him.
Mary grew fond of Spencer's wit in the letters and in the recounted conversations, found herself laughing at some of the things that Spencer Reid wrote or said. Their debates always ended on a positive note as they played devil's advocate with each other. Well, almost.
Some conversations were personal and weighty, and Mary felt that guilt-weight pile over her like heavy stones upon her chest. But these were Maeve's interpretations of the events (though Mary knew for a fact that Maeve could recount conversations with an acute accuracy).
Once, he suggested that a simple search of him on the internet would be all Maeve needed to know his likeness. She wrote about it.
The desire of the eyes will stoke an insatiable need for me to meet him and know him more. I want to see him. I do. But doing that puts him in needless danger. If something happens to him, that's blood on my hands. And for what? Just to satisfy a curiosity that can wait? No, the obvious thing is to cut out all ties from the visual. If I look him up, then I'll want more and more and more. I can't be selfish. But I can use my imagination.
Their conversations were often candid after a while, and quite reciprocal. But Mary noted that Maeve avoided two specific subjects. Eventually, she would have to tell Spencer about these things.
What she was coming to know of Spencer Reid at this point—nearer the August mark of their relationship—was that he was a good person with a good and tender heart, but that he had some emotional baggage. He was a man who cherished his mother, was deeply wounded by his father and later his mentor's departures, and who treasured the relationships he had with his colleagues—a people, he later admitted, that he viewed as his very own family.
One thing that put her off was his past drug addiction. This he revealed to Maeve at the turning of summer to autumn—due to a psych article they were discussing. Considering how things had gone with Bobby and his alcoholism, Mary grew distrustful. The agent was over five years sober at the time of his admission, yes, but it was in her nature to be cautious. And yet the circumstances that led to his addiction were harrowing. Abducted and drugged against his will! Abducted once and now he was missing again? Too much for one person!
And so he opened up to her about what those appalling days in captivity had unearthed—the memories—and how those and the justified murder of his captor had led to the addiction. There were other factors besides, apparently, that contributed to his addiction—the inability to forget the relentless bullying throughout his schooling, namely two separate, detailed occasions that no child should suffer in the first place, and that were never properly addressed to any adult or professional.
That led Mary, of course, to finding out the true intent of Maeve's unsent letter.
It was these two events that seemed to have started him into a spiral since his youth. Maeve was a passionate person, but she seemed to hold back on her overtures and on waxing too poetic in light of these new understandings, in light of unaddressed trauma and abandonment issues that could trickle down to complications with trust and possibly intimacy.
So Maeve steered later conversations in ways to draw out his thoughts and to better understand him so that she could see how to tread with him, to see how also how he might need to explore some things with those whom he cherished most, to lay himself bare at them and come to terms with these things and hope for acceptance.
Maeve began a slew of intense research and logged it in her journal—but it seemed the actual articles were back in her loft. In her findings, she noted how best to help a partner or friend with trauma—things to say or do, and things to avoid saying or doing. On the latter, Maeve had failed once, speaking out with one of her devil's-advocate opinions regarding Dr Reid's father and later wrote of her regret in her journal without detailing the conversation.
She made personal notes about small, passing reminders to tell Spencer—small, repetitive things to say to and later do for him as acts of affirmation and love and as ways to help subside the severity of some pangs, making recordings to share with him in her recitations, encouragement, and an insistence that he seek professional assistance with the promise of supporting him—when they finally met and when their relationship would begin to flourish beyond pen, paper, and payphone. No overly grand gestures; just constant confirmations of friendship, love, and care that she not only had for him, but that those he worked with had for him, too.
That set Mary to go about and find these things in Maeve's apartment. And find them all she did.
Mary was glad—very glad and relieved—to know that in September, Maeve was able to pinpoint some things that would help Spencer deal with his health. Of course she had. She was almost unrivaled in her field. In conversing with Spencer over the months, Maeve learned that Spencer had dealt with his headaches for brief bursts beginning with the departure of a mentor, and then in systematic, brief bursts throughout the years before they—along with his stomach pangs—remained starting in 2010. Their exchange regarding some things that were attributed to his migraines seemed to have frustrated him.
Apparently, the issue was—in part—psychosomatic, but his poor nutrition wasn't contributing well to it either. She suggested some nutritional changes, and he was amenable to them. But it was the first time she forthrightly suggested Cognitive Behavior Therapy to him, and he refused. She wrote about it, expressing her frustration.
He's stubborn. As much as I love him, he's a damn stubborn dolt. It's a subject that I won't be able to broach for a while now. I know why he's resistant to the idea. A psychosomatic element is difficult for a person who's genetically predisposed to schizophrenia to accept. But suggesting CBT is also difficult for a person who's had multiple traumas throughout his life that haven't been dealt with. Pretty sure he's afraid of what these things might all yield if his brain is picked apart.
And? I think there's something that he's not telling me. Of course, that's understandable in any relationship. Some truths come with time. I still have yet to tell him about Bobby or about my genetic disorder. But considering what he's already suffered, I'm reluctant to know what it might involve. I don't want to pry too much, but I wish to know everything about him as much as I wish he can know everything about me. I'll tell him eventually, but now isn't quite the time.
In the days, spanning almost a month, that Mary spent reading all these exchanges, she became quite fond of Dr Spencer Reid. Spencer. One part genius, one part stubborn but lovable dolt.
In her journals, Maeve was open about her aspirations, her plans, her desires—and those that would go unfulfilled—her fears, all to do now with him. It was now a life and future built with him wherein she would love him, collide with him, become tied and enmeshed with him however much he could tolerate.
These were deep, private sentiments.
Mary had no doubt—none at all—that had things gone for the better, Spencer's relationship with Maeve would have continued to flourish, and he would have eventually been her son-in-law, and one much after her heart, unlike that Bobby Putnam. She censured herself for that thought. She mustn't think ill of the dead.
And she understood, now, the final sentiments of Maeve's last journal entry. Maeve saw Spencer, all of Spencer, with her heart and not with her eyes.
And so, Mary cried fiercely, not just because of what she and her husband lost, but for what Maeve could never have now, and for what Spencer lost, too. It was all just too bad.
Maeve hadn't ever gotten the chance to divulge to Spencer her genetic disorder. It wasn't life-threatening by any stretch, but it was severe and affected her almost daily. It seemed that when he asked her why she went into her field instead of pursuing the more whimsical art of calligraphy, Maeve was vague in her reasoning. She chalked it up to leaving her hobbies as such so that she wouldn't tire of them, so that she remained enamored by it, so that she wouldn't grow disillusioned by it.
And it seemed he never quite found out about Bobby Putnam until the day Maeve went missing, about how after they got engaged, he'd begun to terrorize her, enforce his ways onto her one day and turn around and dote on her the next, put her down before raising her up, treat her as a possession rather than a free agent. It had been jarring. And once, that man had put his hands on her daughter, she later found out after the engagement had been broken off. Maeve had gone from the frying pan into the fire, and it had left her drained.
Had they known each other longer, Spencer would have come to know it all, Mary was sure.
It was sad that there were more things he hadn't known, but he knew much.
Mary Donovan had wanted to know why she should care about Dr Spencer Reid, why she should care for a man who had failed to save her daughter, and after it all, she came to care deeply about Spencer—a man she never knew—because her daughter had loved him so ardently.
.
.
.
Some scenes from this chapter are taken from Criminal Minds Episode 04x07 Memoriam.
If interested, a little about fictional and non-fictional love letters throughout modern history is available on my Tumblr post for this chapter update.
