A/N: Thank you to everyone who read and reviewed. Fair warning - this is a really, really long chapter.
Chapter 24
Dinner with Andrew was bittersweet. The food and the company were good. It just sucked that she finally found a good guy, and he was moving to the other side of the country.
Dinner ended with a minor argument about the check. Emily wanted to split it since they were ending dinner as friends, nothing more. Andrew said he asked her out, and nothing about how things were ending changed that.
"Emily." Andrew turned to face her as he idled in front of her building. He was going to give this one last shot. He really thought they had something, and he wasn't going to walk away from it without knowing he'd done everything he could to try to make it work. "Look, I know my ex and my daughter moving to Denver makes all of this a lot more complicated, but I don't know how long it'll be before my transfer goes through. I'm still here, and I could be for a while. All I know is that I want to spend as much time as I can with you while I still can."
Emily looked at him with regret, and he knew her answer. "We haven't known each other that long. If it's this hard to end things now…" Emily's voice trailed off as she struggled to remain logical and levelheaded when her heart and her head were saying different things. She took a deep breath, and, ignoring her second thoughts completely, continued, "The longer we wait, the harder it will be. However long you're here, it will only be a matter of time before you leave. Please don't make this any harder than it already is."
Andrew didn't like her answer, but he accepted it as graciously as he could. "I can't say I'm not disappointed, but I get it," he told her honestly. "So I guess this is it then…?"
Emily nodded. Her eyes were sad, but she managed a thin half-smile. "Thank you for dinner."
Emily's night didn't get any better as it went on. After changing into a black hooded sweatshirt and jeans, she spent the rest of the night on the couch, watching the concerts in Times Square on the New Year's Eve special as she waited anxiously for her teenager to call, text, or – better yet – walk through the door.
Outside of a single text message informing her that Hannah was at the party, the girl was incommunicado. One text message didn't exactly constitute the regular check ins Emily wanted, but she only told Hannah that she needed to know she made it to the party okay and if her plans changed at all. Assuming Hannah stayed at the party, she hadn't actually done anything wrong. At least not yet.
The text message Emily sent at 11:00 pm to ask if Hannah needed a ride went unanswered. Emily knew Hannah could be on her way already. If she was in a car full of kids with the radio blaring, Hannah might not have heard her phone. But her 11:30 curfew came and went with no Hannah.
Emily decided she wasn't even going to say anything as long as Hannah got there soon. Ten – fifteen minutes even - wasn't really late. That could just be from traffic. Emily didn't know where the party was or what part of town Hannah was coming from.
Steve was the one to ask the girl all the basic Parenting 101 questions about the party. At the time, it seemed like it made sense for him to be the one to ask those questions. He wouldn't say yes without having that information. And, he actually knew the kids Hannah hung out with. Emily wouldn't have known anything about the kid who was having the party, even if she got a name from Hannah - which, in hindsight, she should have. Emily knew it was a rookie parenting move to let her teenager leave without having all the information.
To be fair, Emily did ask Hannah some questions of her own, but she backed off when Hannah pointed out with a bit of an attitude that she already told her dad everything. Hannah wasn't used to answering to two parents anymore. It had been a few years since she'd had to do that, and it showed in her response to Emily.
It got closer and closer to midnight, and a phone call and another two text messages (one asking where Hannah was and another telling Hannah to call her) went unanswered. Emily was starting to panic. It had been almost an hour since her first text message asking if Hannah needed a ride. The girl's iPhone was normally attached to her hand like an extra appendage. Why wasn't she answering?
Hannah wasn't just a little late anymore. Logically the mother knew her fourteen year old probably just lost track of time as teenagers tended to do, but the FBI profiler in her couldn't help thinking about all of the teenagers from past BAU cases whose parents probably thought the same thing when, in reality, their kids were missing. Thoughts of what happened to those kids only exacerbated Emily's worry and fear.
The not knowing was the worst. If she knew Hannah was on her way or even that Hannah lost track of time and had just realized what time it was, Emily would be able to relax somewhat. But the only thing she knew for sure was that it had been hours since she had heard anything from her daughter. This right here was why she needed regular check ins.
Emily tried calling her daughter again, but it just rang endlessly before going to voicemail. At least Hannah wasn't sending her straight to voicemail. That was something. There was still a possibility Hannah couldn't hear her phone and wasn't just ignoring Emily's attempts to locate her. Emily left a voicemail, telling Hannah to call her.
How worried should Emily be? She didn't know if this was normal behavior for her teenager. Was Hannah always home by curfew or was she habitually late?
Emily wondered if she should call Steve, but what if he thought Emily couldn't handle the teenager because of this?
There was no way Hannah didn't know what time it was when the clock struck midnight. The kids must have done something to celebrate the New Year, even if it was just a countdown.
"Come on, Hannah. Answer the damn phone," Emily muttered as she dialed her daughter again. But, like every time before that, Hannah didn't answer.
The sound alerting her to a new text message pulled Emily from her internal debate about what she should do. Her first thought was that Hannah had finally texted her back. She scrambled to unlock her iPhone, only to realize the text message wasn't from Hannah.
It was the first year since Haley died that Aaron Hotchner was home on New Year's Eve and didn't have his son home with him. Sometime in the last few years, he and Jack started a tradition of making root beer floats for a midnight toast and watching the ball drop. At the time, drinking anything with beer in the name with his dad made his then eleven year old son feel like a man. This was the first year his son broke with tradition and elected to spend the night playing video games with the other two freshmen on his soccer team instead of at home with Hotch. Jack was growing up.
Without his son to keep him company, Hotch was relegated to spending the night alone. He didn't begrudge his teenager this time with his friends, but it made him reevaluate his own social life, or lack thereof.
After so many years where he was away for work more than he was home, Hotch fully embraced his retirement and threw himself into being a stay-at-home dad. Aaron Hotchner never did anything halfway. His relationship with his son was the best it had ever been. Jack no longer questioned whether Hotch would be there for his soccer games – he expected Hotch to be there and looked for him in the stands. Any resentment his son may have felt over leaving their lives in D.C. behind to join the Witness Protection Program had faded as they rebuilt their lives in D.C. Hotch felt like he was finally able to provide Jack with the stability that he deserved.
When they returned from Witness Protection, Hotch was successful at pushing his friends from the BAU – his team – away. It was a conscientious decision to leave that part of his life in the past. He only maintained his friendship with Rossi, and now he and Emily had picked their friendship right back up where they left off.
Hotch had few people in his life he would consider close friends. Suffice it to say, he didn't receive any invitations to New Year's Eve parties. He did, however, receive Happy New Year's text messages from Rossi, a few old friends from law school, Jessica, and Sean.
Sean's text came in a little after midnight and had enough typos in it for Hotch to conclude that his younger brother was drunk. It bothered him more than it should have. Sean was hardly the only single thirty-something in New York who was overserved on New Year's Eve. He wanted to believe that his reaction was partially due to their dad's history of alcoholism and partially due to Sean's long history of making bad decisions, but, rather than concern for his brother, what he was actually feeling was envy.
If he knew Sean as well as he thought he did, his brother would find someone to take home with him. It didn't sit well with Hotch that his perpetually irresponsible brother would find someone to share the evening while he would be spending another night alone.
It didn't matter how irrational his jealousy was – and it was irrational. Even Hotch knew that. But that was still exactly how he felt as he compared his own lonely New Year's Eve with his brother's. It wasn't that he wanted to have a meaningless one-night stand. He didn't want that. What he wanted was to have someone to spend 2019 and every year after that with. He wanted a relationship. He wanted love and trust and commitment. The only problem was that he didn't want all of that with just anyone. Ever since he got it into his head that he wanted Emily Prentiss, none of the women he came across who were actually available seemed to measure up to her.
Emily was probably ringing in the New Year with another man. Would Emily and the agent she was seeing have stayed in for a quiet night at home or would they have gone out? Thinking about what she could be doing at that very moment did nothing to curb the bitter jealousy he was already feeling.
The truth was he'd been spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about Emily. Ever since he realized he had feelings for her that went beyond friendship, he just couldn't stop thinking about her. The more he thought about it, the more he thought they could be really good together. They understood each other on a level Hotch wasn't sure anyone else could ever understand him. It wasn't just that, as profilers, Emily knew how he thought, and he knew how she thought. It was more than that. They thought very similarly. They even had similar values. In so many ways they were a lot alike. It stood to reason that they would be compatible. He didn't know why he never saw it before.
Before he lost his nerve, Hotch opened a new text message and found Emily in his contacts. He hesitated for a very brief moment before typing a Happy New Year's text message to her. It was innocent enough. They were friends, weren't they? Without overthinking it, he pressed send.
Emily's response was almost instantaneous, leading him to believe that maybe she wasn't with the agent she was seeing. She could be working. Hotch knew that, of course, but maybe there was more to it than that.
Hotch could see that Emily was typing something else, something more than the standard Happy New Year text she already sent in response. He waited, practically on the edge of his seat until the text came through.
"Can you talk?" Another text came through immediately following her question. "Only if you're not busy."
His lips curved at that. It was typical of Emily. She wouldn't want to intrude on the plans he didn't have, but it wasn't an intrusion. And, even if it was, coming from her, it would be welcome. Instead of replying to her via text, he called her.
Emily answered on the first ring. "Hey. I'm sorry to bother you."
"You're not bothering me. If you remember correctly, I texted you," Hotch reminded her, his voice gently teasing.
"Yeah, to tell me Happy New Year. But happy isn't exactly the word I would use to describe my evening," Emily told him in a wry tone. "It's gone from bad to worse."
"Is something wrong?" Hotch asked with genuine concern.
"Yes. Maybe. I don't know," Emily said, getting flustered as she wondered if she was blowing this whole thing out of proportion. Just because her kid was forty-five minutes late didn't mean something terrible had happened to her. "It's a long story, but I have Hannah staying with me this week," Emily started to explain. "She, uh, went to a party tonight – well, last night now. Her curfew was 11:30, and she's still not here. I've tried calling her, but she's not answering her phone."
Hotch was listening, but he was also wondering why Emily was alone on New Year's Eve. If Hannah was staying with her, Emily had to be in D.C. Maybe things with the agent she was seeing weren't serious enough for him to meet her daughter.
"I'm freaking out," Emily continued to ramble on in a nervous manner. "You're the only one I know who has a kid the same age. Please tell me this is normal. Teenagers do this. Right? But how late is too late? I mean, when should I really be worried?" She posed her questions to Hotch in quick succession. He had a teenager. He would know all of this.
"It sounds to me like you already are," Hotch told her.
"I am," Emily admitted. "But should I be?"
"I know I would be if Jack was almost an hour late," Hotch said. "But Jack isn't Hannah. When we were in the Program, there was this one time when he didn't come home right after school. It was right after we moved. The soccer coach saw him play during gym class and asked him to join the team even though it was halfway through the season. Jack didn't call me because he thought I'd say no, but he went to practice after school anyway. By the time he finally came home an hour and a half later, the Marshals were there. I was convinced Scratch had him. After that, well…let's just say he knows to call me if he's going to be late."
"I bet he does," Emily said with wide eyes.
"Yeah, well, I have a feeling that Hannah won't make the same mistake twice," Hotch told her. As soon as she knew for sure that her daughter was okay, Emily's worry would turn into anger. He wouldn't want to be Hannah when that happened.
"I don't know. I won't have the U.S. Marshals here to greet her at the door," Emily replied wryly. She hesitated as she felt her uncertainty more acutely than before. Hotch knew to be worried if Jack was almost an hour late because he knew his son. Emily didn't know how worried she should be because she didn't know if this was out of character for Hannah. Steve would be able to tell her, but she really didn't want to call the adoptive father unless she absolutely had to. "What do I do?" Emily asked Hotch a little desperately.
"What's your gut telling you?" Hotch questioned. He trusted Emily's gut. If she thought something was wrong, it usually was. He couldn't tell if she really thought that now or if this was more a combination of her being brand new to parenting a teenager and needing to learn how to separate the BAU cases involving kids from her dealings with her own daughter – one of the hardest things for any agent to do, even one with Emily Prentiss' compartmentalization skills. When they saw what they saw, agents had a tendency to think the worst any time they didn't know where their own children were. It was a curse of the job. As a rule, anyone who routinely saw dead kids was overprotective of their own kid.
"She wanted to stay out later," Emily told him as she remembered her daughter negotiating her curfew with Steve. "She said everyone would be out until midnight. Her dad compromised and extended her curfew to 11:30, but that wasn't late enough for her. I have a feeling she chose to ignore her curfew because her dad's not here to enforce it." Emily had to consider that this may have been Hannah's plan all along.
"You think she's testing you," Hotch concluded.
"But what if I'm wrong and something happened to her?" Emily questioned anxiously, unable to get that thought out of her head.
"What do you want to do?" Hotch asked her patiently. He knew she wouldn't stop worrying until her daughter was home safe.
"I want to ask Penelope to track her phone," Emily answered immediately. "Is that bad?" She faltered a little, showing her insecurity. She was still pretty new to parenting a teenager and honestly didn't know what to do. She had found missing kids, including her own, before. That was nothing new for her. But Hannah wasn't really missing this time. Hannah was just late. Was it overkill to use her FBI tricks to find a kid who was, in all likeliness, off having a great time at a party? Or was the nagging fear that Hannah wasn't still at the party reason enough to hunt her down?
"You know, they have apps for that. For all those parents who don't have an FBI tech analyst on their speed dial," Hotch told her, his lips twitching into a slight smirk.
"It's good to know I'm not the only parent stalking my kid," Emily replied dryly.
"I'll let you go call Garcia," Hotch said reluctantly. He wasn't ready for the conversation to end, but he knew he had to let her go. She needed to find her daughter. "Let me know if there are any issues?" He added without really thinking about it. He didn't think there would be, but he wanted to know if there was a problem. He liked that she kept coming to him with her problems. It made him feel needed. It had been a long time since he felt needed by anyone besides Jack.
"You haven't had enough of me and my issues for one night?" Emily said in a self-deprecating tone. She was more kidding than anything, but it was a legitimate concern for her. She didn't actually plan to call him about her missing-in-action kid, but she was in total panic mode when his text came through. As soon as she saw who was texting her, it made sense to call him. Aaron Hotchner was the only person she knew who had a kid the same age as Hannah. Now, however, she was embarrassed that she interrupted his New Year's Eve over something like this – something she should have been able to handle on her own.
Emily hated asking anyone for help. She didn't want anyone to think she needed help, especially not Hotch. His opinion was important to her, and she didn't want him to think she was incapable. She had always wanted him to see her as strong and capable. She had to swallow her pride when she went to him for legal advice before approaching Steve and then again when Steve proposed the idea of a set visitation schedule, but this wasn't even legal advice. Now she was going to him for parenting advice, too. He always gave good advice, but she needed to stop asking for his advice all the time.
"You can call me any time, Emily," Hotch told her, and Emily could hear the sincerity in his voice. "You know that."
"I do. And I have been," Emily said ruefully. "I hope I didn't take you away from anything – or anyone – tonight. I know it's New Year's Eve," Emily finished on an apologetic note, knowing he probably didn't expect this when he texted her. New Year's Eve was a big date night. Realizing she didn't even ask if he had plans, Emily winced slightly.
"You didn't," Hotch assured her. He hesitated slightly before deciding to go ahead and ask what he really wanted to know. She opened the door for it. "I didn't have any exciting plans. I'm surprised you didn't have plans though," he said, trying to sound casual. "I thought you were seeing someone?"
"I was, but he's moving to Denver, and he picked tonight to tell me. It's been a really great New Year's," Emily said sarcastically.
"I'm sorry," Hotch offered halfheartedly as he processed that information and what it meant for him and his chances with Emily.
"No, you're not," Emily said knowingly. She may not know the real reason why he was so opposed to her relationship with Andrew, but she knew he was. "You didn't think it was a good idea for me to be dating another agent."
"That may be true, but I never wanted you to get hurt," Hotch told her with far more sincerity.
"We were only seeing each other for about a month now. It's not like it was some big love affair," Emily said, trying to downplay it.
Hotch knew it wasn't the time to tell Emily he had feelings for her, but, with her schedule, it could be another month before he saw her unless he did something. "Do you want to grab dinner sometime this week?" He asked suddenly. "I'm guessing you could use a drink after the night you've had." He tried to keep his tone light and friendly.
"Or two or three," Emily said in a dry tone.
After comparing schedules and identifying a night that should work assuming the BAU didn't have a case, they hung up.
By the time she hung up with Hotch, her kid was an hour late and still had yet to respond to any of her texts or call her back.
"If you don't call me in the next 5 minutes, Penelope's going to track your phone."
Emily sent that text message to her daughter and waited. She wasn't bluffing. She really would ask Penelope to track Hannah's phone if she had to, but just the threat of her doing that might be enough.
It only took a minute for Hannah to realize she had yet another new text message from her birth mother. Emily had been blowing up her phone all night, and Hannah was ignoring her texts and calls. The teenager knew she was late and had already decided it was worth being grounded when her dad got back - and that was only if Emily told her dad. She knew Emily probably would tell her dad, but Hannah thought she might be able to talk her out of it. In any case, Hannah thought it was worth the risk.
With no real intention of responding to it, Hannah gave the latest text message from her birth mother a cursory glance, expecting another message along the same lines as the ones before it – "Call me" or "Where are you?" When she saw what it really said, her eyes bugged out. It was one text message she couldn't ignore.
The teenager wasted no time telling the friend she was talking to that she'd be back and weaving her way through the crowded house toward the front door. Once outside Hannah walked past two juniors who were outside vaping and stopped on the sidewalk in front of the house. From where she was standing, she could still hear the music coming from the house but just barely. It was only then that she called her birth mother.
Emily smirked slightly when she saw the incoming call almost exactly five minutes after sending her last text. She just wished she would have thought to make that threat earlier. Then she wouldn't have spent the last hour and a half worrying. "Oh, so your phone is working," was the first thing Emily said when she answered. "I wasn't sure since you didn't answer any of my texts or calls."
"I'm sorry. I couldn't hear my phone," Hannah gave the first excuse she could think of. While it was true that she couldn't hear her phone over the music and all of the loud, drunk teenagers at the party, she'd had it out for most of the night and saw it light up with notifications each and every time Emily texted or called.
With how quickly Hannah responded to the threat, Emily wasn't buying that excuse for one second. "Funny, you sure called me awfully fast for someone who couldn't hear her phone," Emily said. "Where the hell are you?" Emily barely raised her voice, but she had never once raised her voice to Hannah before so it was enough to get her kid's attention.
Hannah was shocked. Since when did Emily yell at her? Sure, Emily had been displeased with her before, but she never really got mad. "I'm still at the party," Hannah admitted reluctantly. Something told her she didn't want to make Emily any more upset than she already was.
"Where is the party?" Emily asked her kid. "Give me the address. I'm coming to get you."
"You don't have to come get me," Hannah said quickly. She knew she wasn't talking to Emily, her friend. She was talking to Emily, her mother – and not the cool mom she had envisioned her being. It was like Emily had suddenly turned into the stereotypical angry parent overnight, and the teenager didn't relish the idea of being picked up from the party by an angry parent. "I'm leaving now," she told her birth mother.
"Address. Now." Emily spoke in the same firm, no-nonsense tone she would use when issuing a direct order in her role as Unit Chief. It was a tone she very rarely had to use with her team, but when she did, it reminded them that she was in charge, and, whether they liked her orders or not, they did have to follow them. It was more common for her to use that tone on uncooperative unsubs when telling them to back away from a victim or drop their weapon. Whenever she used it, Emily was done negotiating. She was not negotiating with Hannah on this. Her fourteen year old kid was not the one who was in control here. Emily wasn't letting Hannah hang up until she knew exactly where the girl was. And even then, she was done sitting around waiting for her to show up. She was going to get her daughter.
Wearing an unpleasantly surprised expression, the teenager unconsciously responded to the authority the woman was exuding, even just over the phone, and gave her the address in a meek voice.
"Wait there. Do not leave," Emily told her errant child very clearly. "Do you understand?"
"Yes," Hannah answered grudgingly. She definitely didn't appreciate Emily talking to her like a naughty little kid. Little did she know, that was exactly what she was in her birth mother's eyes, at least at that particular moment. It was not how the teenager ever wanted to be seen by anyone, especially not the sophisticated older woman she was so impressed by.
Emily pulled up to the house seventeen minutes later. It was a nice house in a wealthy area. The houses were far enough apart that none of the neighbors had called to complain about the noise from the party.
Hannah was waiting for her outside. If anyone were to ask Emily, it was the first smart thing Hannah did all night.
The teenager slid into the passenger seat almost the second the car came to a complete stop. She didn't want to risk her birth mother getting out of the car and making a scene that would embarrass her. As she sat there with Emily staring her down from the driver's seat, Hannah lost all of her teenage arrogance. Emily just continued to stare, never blinking once, as her kid shifted uncomfortably under her gaze, clearly unnerved. After the night she had, Emily didn't even feel bad about making her fourteen year old sweat.
In the front seat of the sedan with only the center console separating them, Emily noticed the smell of cheap beer coming from her teenager almost immediately. It was faint, but it was definitely there. Even so Hannah didn't seem drunk to her. The girl didn't stumble getting into the car and didn't fumble with the seatbelt when she buckled it. Earlier when they were on the phone, the girl's speech was normal. She didn't talk loudly or giggle for no apparent reason, and there were no slurred words. Once she got Hannah talking, Emily would see if she could smell alcohol on her breath or if the smell was just on her clothes from being at a party. Emily was sure she would see obvious signs of it if Hannah had, in fact, been drinking. In the meantime, they had other things to deal with.
When her nervous kid didn't seem to be in any rush to explain herself, Emily decided to start. "I told you I needed you back at 11:30."
Hannah knew what Emily said, but Emily was just the messenger. She knew the woman wasn't the one to blame for the early curfew. That was all her dad. She thought for sure Emily would have been more reasonable than he was.
It was easy for the teenager to see the birth mother who didn't make the rules as the cool parent, and the dad who made all the rules and decided her punishments when she broke them as the bad guy. Emily didn't think she was too young to date. Emily didn't reprimand her for her language when she swore in front of her. Emily took her shopping and watched movies with her all day.
"Only because my dad said I had to be back then! He's the one who wouldn't let me stay out later," Hannah said, trying to make her dad out to be the bad guy instead of taking responsibility for her actions. "I mean, who goes home at 11:30 on New Year's Eve?" She asked as if the very idea was ridiculous. And then, in a strategy employed by manipulative teenagers everywhere, she tried to get the less strict of her two parents on her side in this. She gave Emily an imploring look, the big doe eyes she inherited from the woman pleading for understanding. "I thought you'd be cool. You usually are."
The teenager thought that was a compliment, but Emily didn't take it as one. She understood the underlying implication that Hannah didn't think she was so cool anymore now that she was upholding the curfew Steve imposed. If that was really her daughter's best attempt at sweet-talking her, it was pretty pathetic.
Hannah was living in a fantasy world if she thought Emily was going to let her stay out all night. Emily wondered when she ever gave her delusional kid the idea that she would be even remotely okay with that.
"Really?" Emily questioned with heavy skepticism. She looked at her fourteen year old in complete disbelief. "You really thought I'd be cool with you partying all night?"
It sounded pretty dumb when Emily put it like that. "Kind of. At the time," Hannah replied weakly, averting her eyes when she realized she wasn't helping her case any. If she were being honest, Hannah knew Emily wouldn't be completely cool with it. And, if she didn't know before, all of the text messages and phone calls were a pretty good clue. She just didn't think Emily would actually do anything about it.
Taking in the girl's sheepish expression, Emily shook her head and gave her daughter a look that was rather pointed. "I don't think that's true. I think you knew I wouldn't be okay with it and did it anyway."
As she put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb, Emily waited for Hannah to say something else. She thought her daughter owed her an explanation - and thinking she would be cool with it was not an explanation.
"I didn't think you'd freak out and have Penelope track my phone," Hannah muttered in response.
"Well, maybe I wouldn't have freaked out if you had checked in with me. The last time I heard from you was at 9:30," Emily said reproachfully. "How many times did I call you?" When Hannah didn't answer her, Emily repeated the question a little more sternly. "How many times, Hannah?"
If Emily was going to ask her questions, Hannah couldn't tune out the lecture like she would if it were her dad. He usually talked while the teenager only half-listened, mainly just waiting for her punishment. Emily was forcing her to be an active participant in the conversation.
"I don't know," Hannah said with a wary look at her birth mother, whose gaze was on the road. "I lost count." That last part was mumbled under her breath. Emily wasn't supposed to hear it, but, unfortunately for Hannah, she did.
Emily couldn't believe Hannah actually had the unbelievable gall to be annoyed by the number of phone calls that went unanswered. "I called you so many times you lost count," she repeated back to her wayward daughter with angry incredulity, using the girl's own words against her. "You were more than an hour late by the time you finally called me back," she told the irresponsible teenager. "Do you have any idea how worried I've been?"
"No," Hannah said in a small voice. She didn't mean to worry her birth mother. She didn't think Emily would worry like she knew her dad would have if he'd been there. Over the last several days, Hannah had started to see Emily as more and more of a mom, but she still never would have put her birth mother in the same category of parent as her dad. She didn't think the cool older woman who had admitted to being a rebellious teenager herself would make such a big deal out of this.
"Pretty worried," Emily told her. "Your curfew was 11:30, and it's almost one now," the mother reiterated to her child. "There was over an hour tonight where you were completely unaccounted for."
"You knew where I was," Hannah protested, resisting the urge to roll her eyes at what she thought was a huge overreaction. Emily knew she was at the party. Why was the woman acting like she could have died or something? It was just a party.
"No, I didn't," Emily told her teenager in an exasperated tone. "For all I knew, you were on your way and you were in a car accident." She elected not to bring up any of the other possible scenarios that went through her mind because of the things she'd seen as an agent. She knew they would seem crazy to her fourteen year old - and maybe they were crazy, but they were very real possibilities to her. How did she make a kid who thought nothing bad could ever happen to her understand why she was so upset about what Hannah clearly thought was a minor infraction? Emily opened her mouth and then closed it again, reconsidering her next words before speaking in a very heartfelt manner. "Not knowing where you are or if you're okay has got to be the worst feeling in the world."
Hannah realized in that moment that her birth mother's feelings were no less real than her dad's, her worry no less than that of any other concerned parent. With that realization, Hannah felt a sharp tug of conscience followed by the beginning twinge of guilt.
As annoying at it could be at times, the fourteen year old knew her dad only worried because he loved her. Hannah knew Emily had said she loved her before, but how could someone who had only known her a little over a month possibly love her as much as her dad did?
Guilt gnawing at her stomach, Hannah offered her birth mother a sincere apology for the first time since that night. "Emily…I'm sorry," she said in a soft, contrite voice.
Emily stopped at a red light and took the opportunity to turn her head to the right and study her daughter quietly for a moment. When she decided the girl's remorse was genuine, her expression softened a little. "Would you have done this if your dad were here?" Emily asked the girl.
"I don't know. Maybe. I really didn't want to be the only one who left early," Hannah answered honestly. "But last time I was out this late, my dad called the FBI," Hannah added with a tentative smile, rolling her eyes in a playful manner. She held her breath as she waited to see how Emily would respond, hoping the woman would laugh or smile or something that would tell her she was forgiven.
Emily knew that by the FBI, Hannah meant her. She shot her cheeky kid a somewhat amused look. "Too bad missing curfew isn't a federal offense. I wonder what would be more embarrassing…being picked up by the FBI or your mother party crashing?" Emily mused, suppressing a smirk at the completely horrified look that came over her teenager's face. "Because if you do it again, I will track you down, and I promise you it won't be as an agent," Emily warned her daughter in a foreboding tone.
"I won't," the wide-eyed teenager assured her. Hannah would never live it down if her mother showed up at a party to drag her home. How did she ever think Emily was cool?
"You won't what? Miss curfew or ignore my calls?" Emily questioned with raised eyebrows and an unreadable expression. She needed Hannah to really understand what she'd done wrong, not just feel bad for worrying her. Realizing belatedly that the light was green when the Lyft driver behind her honked, Emily reluctantly turned her attention back to the road.
"I won't ignore your calls, but I probably will miss curfew again," was the teenager's response. At least she was being realistic. "Just not if I'm at your house," she added wryly. She would take being grounded by her dad any day over her mother making a big scene and embarrassing her in front of everyone at a party. She didn't know if Emily would really do that, but she wasn't about to find out.
Emily stifled a small smile at her daughter talking like she would stay with her again. She was also feeling a little smug about the healthy fear the girl seemed to have developed of breaking the rules when Emily was in charge. "You do have to follow the rules when you're with me," Emily told her daughter. "And on that note, I have to ask – were you drinking tonight? Because you kind of smell like it." Hannah's breath didn't actually smell like stale beer, but it did smell minty fresh, which made Emily wonder if her teenager tried to cover the smell of alcohol with gum or breath mints. That was the only thing that made her think Hannah might have been drinking. The fourteen year old wasn't acting like she was drunk.
Hannah's internal alarm flared at the question. "That's because someone spilled on me!" She cried defensively. She wasn't lying – another girl had spilled beer on her when a group of girls, including Hannah, were dancing on the makeshift dance floor in the living room. She wasn't telling Emily everything though. She did have one beer at the beginning of the night to keep up appearances and then caved to peer pressure and did one shot of Smirnoff at midnight, but with how angry Emily was already, Hannah wasn't about to tell her that. She wasn't that stupid.
Luckily for Hannah, Emily believed the half-truth. Maybe it was because the teenager didn't actually lie or maybe it was because she was acting normally. Whatever the reason, Hannah really lucked out when her mother, the seasoned profiler, moved on without any further questions. Emily would have to be sure Hannah had been drinking before she would take it any further, and she wasn't sure.
"Okay." Emily took a deep breath and tried to prepare herself mentally for a very unhappy teenager. She glanced at Hannah, her eyes a little wary. "You know I can't let this slide."
Understanding that her birth mother wasn't letting her off with just a warning, the young teenager's shoulders slumped. She originally thought all Emily would ever do was tell her dad, but now she wasn't so sure. "Are you going to tell my dad?" She asked apprehensively. She didn't know what would be worse at this point – having another parent be angry and disappointed or whatever Emily would do to her.
It wasn't lost on Emily that Hannah seemed to automatically assume her dad would be the one to determine her punishment. Emily had briefly considered taking the girl's phone from her. It seemed like a logical consequence for not answering any of her texts or calls - if she wasn't going to answer her phone, maybe she didn't need it. In the end, Emily decided against it. She wasn't sure it was really her place and didn't know how much of a lesson losing her phone for the rest of the day would really teach anyway (Hannah went back home in less than twenty-four hours so Emily wouldn't have been able to keep her phone any longer than that).
Emily still didn't want to tell Steve about this for her own selfish reasons, but she knew it was better that the adoptive father hear it from her rather than find out another way. When it came to rule-breaking, her kid was a dumb teenager, not a criminal mastermind. The girl could easily slip up and say something to him about her late-night activities. The father could be monitoring his fourteen year old daughter's social media accounts and stumble across a picture or a comment. There were too many variables that Emily couldn't control. Emily knew it would be bad if she didn't tell him and he found out some other way.
Hell, if the situation were reversed and her daughter was really hers, Emily would be pissed if anything like this happened and she wasn't told. By not giving the full-time parent the opportunity to deal with this behavior, Emily would be letting Hannah get away with it. If that happened, Hannah would be more likely to repeat it.
"I have to," Emily said with an apologetic glance at the girl. She didn't want her daughter to hate her for telling on her.
The girl's face fell, but she merely nodded in a resigned manner.
The easy acceptance surprised Emily more than pleading or arguing would have. She didn't know why, but she felt the need to justify herself to the fourteen year old. "Just because your dad's not here doesn't mean the usual rules don't apply. The only way to make that clear is for you to face the same punishment you would have if he were here. And, besides, your dad gets back today so I don't have enough time to really make you suffer." Emily tried to end on a lighter note, teasing the girl a little.
Hannah didn't crack even a small smile.
The teenager's expression had closed off completely, and Emily couldn't tell what she was thinking or feeling. Was the fourteen year old just unhappy and pouting as a normal, albeit childish, reaction to being in trouble? Or was she actually mad at Emily now?
It was neither of those things.
The rest of the drive was silent. When they got back to Emily's, Hannah disappeared into the guest room almost immediately without even saying goodnight – a first since she'd been at Emily's. Emily's heart sank at the cold, distant behavior.
After changing into her pajamas, Emily went to try to talk to Hannah again. The door to the guest bathroom was closed, and Emily could see the light creeping out from under the closed door and hear water running. Hannah must be brushing her teeth and washing her face. Emily went into the guest room to wait for her and sat down on the edge of the unmade bed.
While she waited, Emily looked around, taking in the pile of dirty clothes on the floor, the cosmetics littering the top of the dresser, and the paperback on the nightstand (The Nightingale) – all signs that her teenager had made herself at home while she was there. It took a day or two for Hannah to go from trying to be a perfectly polite houseguest to being the normal unruly teenager that she truly was. If anything good were to be said about that night, it was that Hannah was definitely comfortable enough to be that normal unruly teenager now.
Hannah hesitated in the doorway when she saw Emily sitting on the bed. "What are you doing in here?" Hannah asked, her voice coming out harsher than she intended it to.
Taken aback by the harshness in her daughter's voice, Emily frowned slightly. "I…just came in to say goodnight."
"Goodnight," Hannah mumbled half-heartedly as she moved past Emily without ever looking at her.
"Oh, is that how it's gonna be now?" Emily said with raised eyebrows. Unimpressed with the sulky behavior, she tilted her head to the side and gave the sullen teenager a reproachful look. "Don't tell me you're mad at me."
"I'm not," Hannah said honestly.
"You know you deserve whatever punishment your dad is going to give you," Emily told her.
"I know!" Hannah cried unhappily. Hadn't they already had this conversation? Did they really have to do it again?
"Then why are you acting like this?" Emily asked her.
"Like what?" Hannah demanded in an exasperated tone, unwilling to admit she was acting badly even though she knew she wasn't being very fair to Emily.
"Giving me the cold shoulder," Emily said. "I mean, is it just me or is it below zero in here right now?"
"It's just you," Hannah told her birth mother with a roll of her eyes.
"Oh, yeah? You want to try that goodnight again and actually look at me this time?" Emily challenged lightly. "A hug would be nice, too."
Hannah stiffened and crossed her arms in front of her protectively. Her entire demeanor was standoffish. She didn't want to hug Emily because she knew that if she did Emily would kiss her on the head and tell her that she loved her. She knew Emily would do that because Emily had been doing that for the last few days, and Hannah had been letting her. Hannah let her get too close. And now she was trying to put some distance between herself and her birth mother, but that was kind of hard with the woman sitting on her bed showing no signs of leaving until she got what she wanted. A hug wasn't too much to ask for, but to Hannah, the simple act suddenly felt like a betrayal to her adoptive mom's memory.
Hannah didn't know exactly when or how, but sometime in the last week she started thinking of Emily as a mother, and not just biologically. Without even realizing she was doing it, Hannah had referred to Emily as her mother when talking about her and had allowed Emily to refer to herself as such. Their relationship was building naturally, and the change had been so gradual Hannah barely noticed it, but there was a definitive shift in their dynamic that night. Hannah knew Emily wasn't her friend anymore, if she ever had been – was the concept of a mom who was her friend just a childish fantasy? In reality, Emily was just her mother.
But, now, every time she thought of Emily as a mother and not a friend, Hannah felt like she was being disloyal to the mom who raised her. Any mother-daughter interaction with the woman who was not her adoptive mom felt traitorous.
She was a bad daughter.
"Can you please just leave me alone? Please?" Hannah asked, hating the catch in her voice.
Emily might have given up then and let Hannah take the night to calm down before trying again in the morning if her daughter didn't sound so desperate to be left alone. Her instincts told her this was more than just a childish reaction to being in trouble. Something was wrong. "No," Emily said. "You've been acting like this since we got home, and-"
"It's not my home," Hannah interjected.
"No," Emily said with a weary sigh. She looked at her daughter with sad, tired eyes. "It's mine. And I love having you here," she told her daughter sincerely, "but you don't get to treat me like this in my own home."
"I'll leave then," Hannah said haughtily.
Emily stared at her fourteen year old incredulously and let out a short, harsh-sounding laugh. "Oh, no, you won't," she told her child. "You wanted to stay here while your dad was away," she reminded the insolent girl. "You don't get to leave now because you don't like what's happening. The only thing you're going to do is sit down and talk to me."
With a long-suffering sigh, Hannah sat down next to Emily on the bed, making sure to leave some space between them. She kept her gaze on the floor until she felt Emily lay a gentle hand on top of her knee. At the unexpected touch, her head snapped up and her eyes met Emily's. When she saw the pain in Emily's eyes, Hannah felt awful. "I'm sorry," Hannah said before she could stop herself.
"Why are you acting like this?" Emily asked for a second time. "Hannah, please…tell me what's wrong."
"You – you've been acting like you're my mom, and technically you are my mom, but I already had a mom…one I really, really loved," Hannah said, unable to maintain her composure anymore as the tears she'd been trying so hard to hold back started streaming down her cheeks.
It was rare for Hannah to cry, and when she did cry, she almost never cried in front of anyone else. Maybe it was the little bit of alcohol that was still in her system lowering her inhibitions or maybe it was the crushing weight of her own guilt, but whatever it was, once Hannah started crying, she couldn't seem to stop.
Emily felt tears forming in her own eyes as she watched her child cry. She wanted nothing more than to wrap her arms around the girl and provide all the love and comfort her daughter needed, but she knew Hannah wouldn't be very accepting of her touch. Hannah's whole motive was to push her away because she felt like Emily was encroaching on her adoptive mom's territory. That was why Hannah was acting like this. Hannah wasn't going to let Emily touch her.
The girl's feelings were probably building for a while now and only came to a head that night. She must have ignored her feelings until now, but Emily scolding her like only a mother would had been the trigger for this meltdown.
"You think that if your mom can't be here for you, she wouldn't want anyone else to be? Or at least not another mom?" Emily accurately guessed what the fourteen year old was thinking. It was very flawed logic, and she hoped Hannah would realize how ridiculous it sounded. "That's not how moms think."
"You don't know what she would think. You didn't know my mom," Hannah said.
"Not like you did, no," Emily agreed in a placating tone. "But I did meet her."
Hannah was shocked. Her mind was reeling as she narrowed her eyes in speculation. "You - you did?"
Emily nodded with a faraway look in her eyes. "Once. I chose your parents," Emily began to explain. "It's…not a decision I took lightly. If I couldn't raise you myself, I needed to know you were going to be with good people who would take really great care of you. And they did. Your dad still is. Without them, you wouldn't be who you are today," Emily said, giving credit where credit was due. The respectful tone she used when she spoke of Hannah's adoptive parents lowered the teenager's defenses a little. "I don't know if I have any right to be, but I'm proud of who you've become. You're a good kid. You're smart and you're funny and you're sweet. Of course, none of this is based on your behavior tonight." Emily gave her daughter a look that was a little pointed but not hard or unkind, even offering her a wry smile when she referenced the evening's events and her recent behavior.
Hannah's cheeks flushed. She was more ashamed than ever of how she'd been acting toward Emily and very uncomfortable with the praise she didn't feel like she deserved.
"I know because I've been there…if you can't be there for your child, you want someone else to do everything you wish you could for her," Emily continued with total conviction in her voice. "It's what I wanted for you. And I have to believe it's what your mom would want now. A mother's love is the most selfless love there is."
When Emily reached for her after that, Hannah didn't have the strength or will to fight her embrace. She let Emily pull her close and found herself taking as much comfort, if not more, from being in Emily's arms as she had taken from Emily's words.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," Hannah murmured over and over.
"Shh," Emily soothed her daughter. "It's okay. You're okay."
Hannah pulled back a little. "It's not okay. I was so awful to you tonight. You should hate me."
"But I don't. I love you," Emily told her.
"I love you, too."
