Chapter 12
"Emily Prentiss!"
Emily glanced up from her paperwork as the blur of hot pink that was the BAU tech analyst stormed into her office like a neon hurricane.
"Penelope?" Emily said slowly, raising her eyebrows at the other woman's dramatic entrance.
"You can't just leave brunch the way you did on Saturday and then not say anything for two days," Penelope told her in a big huff. "How's your mini-me?"
"Hannah? Oh, she's fine," Emily assured her friend.
Penelope stared at her in disbelief. "That's it? That's all you're going to give me? You left mid-brunch without even finishing your mimosa so I know it was an emergency. Now spill," Penelope ordered her.
"You say that like I'm an alcoholic," Emily said with a dry expression, not sure if she should be insulted. "It wasn't an emergency. Spencer saw Hannah at the library, and I wanted to catch her before she left. That's all."
"Does that mean she wasn't lying about the oodles of homework she had?" Penelope asked hopefully, wanting to believe the best of her new honorary niece.
"Oh, she was lying. She wasn't doing homework at the library. She was reading journals on genetics." Emily looked down, staring at the surface of her desk. Her team already knew who Hannah's biological father was, but it still wasn't something Emily was all that comfortable talking about. Ian Doyle was a triggering subject for all of them, Emily more than anyone. "She was, um, afraid she could be like Doyle. And instead of just asking me if she was like him, she was reading up on nature versus nurture," Emily told her friend, venting a little about her frustration with her kid's reluctance to talk to her. Hannah wouldn't have had to spend a week worrying about it if she had just talked to Emily about her fears.
"Wait, she knows about Doyle?" Penelope questioned with wide eyes.
"She asked me who her father was. I didn't want to lie to her," Emily explained as she wondered for the hundredth time if she made a mistake telling her kid about Ian Doyle.
It didn't take a profiler to read the guilt and self-doubt in Emily's eyes. "Well, yeah, lying is wrong and – and bad," Penelope said quickly. She didn't want her friend to think she was judging her. She was judgment free.
"I don't know if telling her was the right thing," Emily said with heavy doubt in her voice. "I mean, she was a pretty well-adjusted kid until she found out she was adopted and her father was an arms dealer. She's gonna need therapy now thanks to me," Emily said wryly. "I just can't help thinking it was selfish of me to insert myself into her life."
"You? Selfish?" Penelope gasped. "Emily, no. You don't have a selfish bone in your body."
"I'm not sure that's true. I'm the one that wanted a connection with her, not the other way around," Emily said honestly. "She didn't even know about me or that she was adopted. She was blissfully ignorant."
"Okay, first of all, anyone that doesn't want you in their life is just plain dumb, and if that girl has even half the brain that you have in your pretty raven-haired head, she's no dummy," Penelope told Emily. "And then we have the sad but true fact that she lost her adoptive mom. You know how I felt when I lost my parents? Totally and completely alone."
"I know that feeling, and my parents aren't dead," Emily muttered under her breath.
Penelope wasn't going to touch Emily Prentiss' mommy issues with a ten-foot pole. She pretended she hadn't heard Emily and continued. "I was older than Hannah when my parents died, and there have still been so many times when I really wanted my mom. No one can bring the mom she lost back, but she isn't going to feel like she's all alone when she needs advice about boys or clothes or any number of things a girl just needs a mom for because she's not going to be alone. She's going to have you. That's huge."
"Yeah." Emily smiled, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. Hannah's adoptive mom physically couldn't be there for her because she was dead, and the girl was old enough to understand that. Emily was just afraid that every time she was there for her and Sarah Johnson wasn't, all Hannah would be thinking was that she wanted the other woman, not Emily.
Penelope continued on her mission to lift Emily's spirits. "You're going to be there when she needs to know what to wear on her first date and when she's shopping for a prom dress and -"
"Okay, please stop before I'm shopping for a wedding dress for my fourteen year old kid," Emily interrupted, sensing a theme.
"Sorry," Penelope apologized sheepishly. She was quiet for a moment as she worked up the courage to ask something she'd been wanting to ask ever since Emily announced she had a fourteen year old daughter. "Do you remember when you told me you were having a nightmare about a little girl with dark hair? The girl was waiting for you, but you couldn't get to her?" Penelope tried to jog Emily's memory. Penelope would never forget it because it was one of the last things Emily said to her before her fake death. It wasn't the absolute last thing, but it was the last time they really talked one-on-one before Emily was just gone. "For the longest time I thought you made it up. But now I think maybe the nightmare was real, and the little girl was your little girl. It was Hannah." Penelope looked to Emily for confirmation.
Emily nodded slowly. "She was waiting for me and I couldn't find her. I always had that nightmare after cases where kids were involved. And then when Doyle escaped from prison, it changed. I couldn't find her, but he did. I covered my tracks well, but I still had this irrational fear that he would find her. I had that nightmare every night when I was in Paris. I wasn't really sleeping."
Penelope glanced at Emily questioningly. "But you don't have the nightmare anymore now that you found her, right?"
"I haven't had the nightmare since I found her, no," Emily replied. "I guess I just needed to know that she was okay."
"She was better than okay," Penelope told her firmly, trying to get rid of the last of Emily's guilt and self-doubt. She spoke quickly without really thinking. "She had the life you wanted for her. She was such a happy kid. I'm talking bouncing in her Mary Janes happy."
Emily's expression changed from the guilty one she'd had for most of the conversation to one of confusion and then finally settled on a knowing expression. She narrowed her eyes at the tech analyst. "Garcia…"
"Okay, I know I'm strictly forbidden from stalking Hannah's Instagram and Snapchat," Penelope said quickly, referring to a warning Emily gave her after the daughter reveal about not cyber-stalking the teenager. "But you never said anything about her adoptive mom's Facebook so you can't be mad and - please stop giving me that look now. I promise I won't do it again unless, of course, you ask me to."
"Please don't," Emily told her seriously.
"I won't," Penelope assured her.
Emily had heard that from the other woman before and wasn't sure she believed it. She sighed wearily. "This isn't like you spying on me when I was in London."
Penelope gasped, mock-innocent. "I did no such thing!"
Emily tilted her head to the side and gave the tech analyst a look. "Oh, come on. How else would everyone have known about Mark before I told anyone I was seeing someone?"
"Oh, that," Penelope said with a dismissive wave of her hand, not seeing what the big deal was. "That wasn't spying."
"What was it then?" Emily asked with a slightly amused expression as she wondered how the other woman would try to spin it.
"I was just keeping tabs on you because you're my friend and I love you and you have a lot of seriously scary enemies," Penelope said. "How else was I supposed to know you were alive and well when you insisted on moving halfway across the world?"
How could Emily argue with that logic? She knew Penelope always meant well. That was the problem - Emily could never stay mad at her for long. "Well, this isn't like that," Emily said with a pointed look at the tech analyst. "This is a kid you don't even know yet. A kid I don't know that well yet. You do realize if she ever finds out, it will make her really uncomfortable? I don't want her to think you're a creepy stalker. And I really don't want to be guilty by association."
"Oh, Em, you should have said that's what you were worried about," Penelope said with a newfound understanding. Emily Prentiss, international woman of mystery, wasn't just trying to keep her secret daughter…well, secret like Penelope had thought at first. Emily was worried about what Hannah would think. "I was so stealthy. She'll never know. And I'll stop now. Really," Penelope conceded. "But before my ban officially starts, do you want to see pictures of her as a cute little baby?"
"I don't know," Emily said uncertainly. Of course she wanted to see Hannah's baby pictures, but Emily had just read Penelope the riot act for snooping and didn't want to be guilty of the same thing.
Penelope could tell Emily was tempted by the offer of a sneak peek into her daughter's childhood, but she was still hesitating. "Come on," Penelope encouraged. "You know you want to."
"I really do," Emily admitted, giving in to temptation.
That was all Penelope needed to hear to come around behind Emily's desk and take over her laptop. With a few clicks of the mouse, the tech analyst had Sarah Johnson's old Facebook account up on the screen and was gushing to Emily about how precious her mini-me was. Emily knew she was biased, but she had to agree.
The adoptive mom's Facebook had monthly baby pictures taken every month for the first twelve months of Hannah's life, but it also had pictures of the girl growing up – birthday parties, family vacations, the customary picture taken of the girl standing on the front porch on the first day of school every year from pre-school through sixth grade. Sarah died before Hannah started seventh grade so that was where the pictures stopped.
Some of the pictures showed Emily a different side to Hannah's personality. There was a picture of ten year old Hannah and an older boy Emily would later learn was Steve's nephew wearing swimsuits and standing at the top of a cliff. It looked like they were about to jump off the cliff into the lake below. There was no sign of fear on the girl's face. In spite of knowing Hannah had made it to fourteen with all of her limbs intact, the picture made Emily's heart skip a beat. Her kid was a daredevil. There was also the photo of a younger Hannah on a snowboard at the top of a snow-covered mountain grinning widely. Hannah clearly wasn't afraid of heights.
True to the tech analyst's word, Hannah had a big, beaming smile on her face in every picture. It was bittersweet for Emily to see so many happy moments that she'd missed out on, but she was glad for the photographic evidence that her kid had the kind of childhood Emily had always wanted her to have. And, as Penelope pointed out, there would be a lot of moments Emily would be able to be there for in the future.
A/N: Thanks for reading and to everyone who reviewed! I lost part of what I had written for this chapter due to technical difficulties, but still had Emily's conversation with Penelope which was the first half. I wanted to go ahead and post it even though it's on the shorter side. Penelope was really hard for me to write so hopefully she doesn't seem too out of character. I tried my best to keep her in character.
