Spoilers: All I know, I learned from "Rio"…

Word count: 895

(9/29) Author's Notes:

1) And now I really mess with tenses by mixing past and present into the same chapter. Grammar nazis everywhere HATE me (my own Muse included).

2) I am reasonably competent in French. Not Spanish. So tell me if I properly translated the Spanish idiom for rose-colored glasses in here; it lacks a verb, but I only wanted to go for "everything in pink." (Or rose, or however it works in Spanish; seriously I'm clueless) Also, with the title, I was going for alone/lonely…is that right?

3) Is there more coming? Hmm…don't know. I like it as a 3-part, but I'm tempted to take this writing style and move into the next day. I'm thinking sequel.

Moonlight in Brazil
Part III: Sola

Another night alone.

It's a pattern that's grown increasingly frequent over the last few months, just like in the old days, and she puts up with it; puts up with his silence some days and gruff answers on others, puts up with his dealing, his suspected cheating and God knows what else, and she hates herself for making excuses but somehow her situation warrants it.

It started with a few late nights here and there, her questions silenced with soft kisses, easy and evasive. And in the first flush of having him back, she saw what she wanted to see, todo en color de rosa. She washed away the last traces of Rick, escaped the complications with Horatio, and fell gratefully back into a love that, for a time, it seemed impossible she'd ever fallen out of.

Gradually, the nights got later, the hours more erratic, the color a little faded. She pushed aside her uneasiness, desperate not to squander their second chance, for he always seemed to make it home safely.

But he's never been gone three nights in a row, and she's sick to death of worrying.

In the open front room, Yelina crossed the tiles of the floor, cool against her bare feet, settled a small pillow on the floor-level windowsill and leaned back against the wall. Crossing her arms in the sleeveless, off-white nightgown, she gazed up and out through the paned glass and let herself be hypnotized by the soft crevices and shadows on the face of the full moon. It reminded her of when Ray Jr. was just a baby; when he fussed in the pre-dawn hours she rocked him in the chair from her own childhood under the glow of the moonlight. Once upon a fairy tale, that time.

Almost fourteen years later, nothing is simple. Ray Jr. isn't a baby anymore; the last thing he wants is his mother's protection, or as of late, even her opinion. He's becoming as secretive as his father, and she's watching her family fall apart around her. She's strong-willed, she's independent, but she can't save her husband from the lure of the drugs, nor her son from the fable of a hero.

It's been fourteen months since she left Miami. This is her life now, and she accepts that the same way she accepts that a miracle, of sorts, can raise the dead and return a husband four years buried.

To the tune of a tree frog's chirp, she turned her head back to the mantle and let her gaze fall upon a wooden statue of Christ, its rough-hewn features made all more appealing by its individualized mistakes in craftsmanship. That's one thing about her new life; the city might have forgotten but the neighborhood breathes religion and it's allowed her to rekindle her spirituality. Sometimes the local church is the only place she can seek solace.

This isn't what she prayed for. For the last five years, she's clung to one certainty, that she and Ray Jr. had always come first in Raymond's eyes. Despite everything he did, he'd never meant to hurt them any more than Horatio had. Both brothers had only tried to protect her from the same truth. Through it all she'd cherished the memory of a devoted father, a loving husband. It was the one thing that the media circus, the ambiguous reports, even Suzie Barnum couldn't take from her.

For the last five months, her only certainty has been that the Raymond Caine she mourned is not the man to whom she's been returned. She sleeps with a stranger when she shares the bed at all, and his gaze never rests long on hers before sliding away. Guilt? Disinterest? Reality matters little in the powdered dust of broken promise.

Broken promise – not, she mused, unlike the one to her brother in law. The most recent letter from Horatio lay on the table, weeks old and still unanswered because her stubborn streak wouldn't let her give up yet. One way or another she was still determined to bring them back from the edge, and no one, least of all him, ever needed to know how close they had come to jumping from it.

There is a thump from down the hall, and then silence. She doesn't even have to turn her head to know her son is sneaking out again, that the window slipped and he's now waiting for silence to pass until he tries again, as if she doesn't know. Why do they always think she doesn't know? She could try to stop him, but short of placing bars on the windows, he'd be gone again in an hour. Perhaps it's not even worth trying to dissuade him anymore.

A minute later she jolts into action; she is still the parent and she is not giving her child free rein to seek his own destruction. "Ray!"

But by the time she gets there, the room is empty, the window still hanging open. After a moment, she shuts it against insects and the night air; the front door will be left unlocked for either's return. Until then, all that remains is her helpless whisper of a name hanging in empty space. "Ray." Husband, son; it doesn't matter. Her family is intact but she's never felt more isolated.

This precarious imbalance cannot hold indefinitely. Something will break, and someone will fall.