"Ok, explain it again," Jane perched herself on one of the stools at the kitchen island, legs bent high at the knee with her long feet on the footrest, and her hands pushing down between her legs on the seat. Her face was pulled forward in concentration while Maura pointed to the diagram on her computer screen with a pen. "Like I'm five."

Maura nodded. "How much of that did you get? Explain it back to me and then I'll fill in the gaps for you."

Jane scratched the back of her head and sighed. "Ok. So, genetic parent," she said as she tapped on one of the icons on the flow chart Maura had prepared for her, "that'd be me."

"Correct," Maura said.

"And birth parent, that'd be you," Jane continued. "So they pump us full of hormones and then when our cycles magically align," she teased as she made a wide, sweeping motion with her arms toward the ceiling, "they take my egg out, fertilize it, then stick it in you."

"More or less, yes. You got it!" Maura replied, smiling brightly. "You don't give yourself enough credit."

"I am more than willing to cede the 'smartest person in the room' title to you, Maura," Jane said. "Because we all know that's true."

"Well, I won't correct you. But if I weren't around, you would definitely still hold the title in most rooms. And any room we're in together, you're usually 'second smartest person' by far," Maura told her.

"You don't have to pet my ego. I'm already here for the long haul." Jane smirked when Maura sighed at her bravado and skipped a few slides ahead. "You know, of course you would make a slideshow about this."

"Well, last night you asked me how it would potentially work. And since it was one in the morning and I was too sleepy to answer you in depth, I figured that I owed you this."

"Sorry for wakin' you. Insomnia rears its ugly head every now and again," Jane said quietly.

"It's ok," Maura was quiet, too. "I wasn't sleeping very well, either." Her eyes were more downcast than they should've been, and she tapped her fingers against her lips as she returned to her computer screen.

Then the doorbell rang.

"It's ragin' outside," Jane said, getting up from her seat. "Who's here?"

Maura shrugged in the best fake nonchalance she could. When Jane opened the door, Tommy walked inside with TJ in a baby bjorn under a poncho, and a UPS package in his hand. "Signed for your package, Maura," he said, setting it on the hall table.

Jane knew something was off before it hit the wood. "Somethin's goin' on," she said. Maura avoided her gaze. "Uh-huh. UPS boxes. That's your tell, Maura. What happened?"

"Let's just get back to this," Maura motioned her over.

"It's Hope, isn't it?" Jane asked, and then Maura groaned.

"How did you know? Yes, ok? She e-mailed me," she said, standing and huffing, before worrying the ring on her right hand.

"She want your kidney still?" asked Tommy, pulling his poncho off.

"Yeah, for Cailin," Jane said her name in a fake voluptuous voice, smirking with malice as she talked.

"I haven't responded," Maura sighed. "I don't know what to say."

Tommy handed her the baby to calm her. Jane patted him on the back for somehow always knowing what to do. "Ya don't owe her anything, a'right? It's not your fault that she's your biological mother just as much as it's not her fault that you're her biological daughter. And, that didn't sound right, sorry," she said. "You know what I mean."

Maura laughed sadly and kissed the side of TJ's head. She bounced him on her hip and took comfort in the smell of him bundled in a sweater and a knit cap. "TJ, promise me you'll talk exactly like your father and your Aunt Jane when you grow up. I love that sound."

Both Jane and Tommy blushed and shared a timid glance. "You should say, 'I like both my kidneys,'" said Jane, bringing their conversation back around.

"Yeah. And 'have a nice life,'" Tommy piped up, unclipping the bjorn from his torso. "Fuck them, Maura. We got enough family to share with you. You don't need that negativity."

"Sounds about right," Jane said. "So why are you here? With TJ? In the rain."

"Babysittin'," Tommy replied.

"I think when you're the father, they call it parenting," Jane quipped, "did he need to be walked out there?"

"He's fine, he likes the fresh air. I take him for walks when he can't sleep. Fair warning, I texted Ma I'd be in the main house like five minutes ago." Jane startled at the news and slammed the screen of Maura's laptop down. Tommy watched her, intrigued. "What was that for? What were you lookin' at, huh?"

"Something medical," Maura offered for Jane before she got herself in trouble. Sure enough, as soon as she said it, Angela walked in the back door. Maura handed her the baby.

"Oh, come here, sweetheart," Angela cooed at TJ, "Oh, you're gettin' so big. You know, your daddy loved to play out in the rain when he was a little boy."

"Sure did," said Tommy.

Jane squeezed her mother's shoulder, leaned against the lip of the counter right next to Maura and looked at her brother. "So how's Lydia?" she felt obligated to ask.

"She's good. I think she's gonna get a promotion at the Penny Saver," Tommy responded, a shy smile on his face when he talked about her.

"Good, good. I'm glad," Jane said. Maura regarded her, the way she folded her arms, talked to her brother in their own dialect, inquired about Lydia despite her distaste for the woman. Jane looked like a parent already, a good one, and Maura swallowed to keep herself from staggering. How had Jane managed to be superior than all four of her parents combined, and yet have no children of her own?

The ringing of both of their phones broke the moment. "Ah shit. I wanted to go to bed early," Jane whined, and suddenly she was child-like again as she stamped her foot in front of Maura. "Rizzoli," she answered glumly.

"Dr. Isles," Maura answered, too, and then they were off.


Jane and Maura both entered the community theater at Storrow Center in wet trenchcoats, Jane's all black and Maura's a vibrant green. Korsak waved them over to where he stood in one of the aisles. "Looks like an accident with a prop gun," he said as they approached, nodding towards the body on the stage - a young man lying supine with his left hand far above his head and his chest all bloody.

Jane scrutinized him from afar. "Who pulled the trigger?"

"His costar," Korsak answered.

Maura, however, had her eyes on a man in a tailored Armani suit in one of the rows of seats, comforting the director of the play. "Is that Roger Duluth? Jane, that's our councilman," she said, tugging at Jane's sleeve.

"Yeah, his wife was directing a community-theater play here. He got her the space because he's apparently pals with the developer of the Storrow center," said Korsak, with a little smile at the way so many politicians, big and small, called in favors.

Maura seemed to understand the process well, however. "The potholes on our street are out of control. Maybe I'll just mention it to him." She started to make her way to him even as he held his distraught wife in his arms.

Jane curled her back around with an arm to the small of her back. "Or maybe we'll just go look at the body first… and it's not officially our street until my condo is off the market and in someone else's hands."

Maura trotted quickly to keep up with Jane's long strides until they met Frost on the stage. "Hey. I couldn't talk to the woman who pulled the trigger," he said when he saw them. "Jennifer Johnson, 29. EMTs are taking her to Boston General. She's being treated for shock."

Jane nodded. "Yeah, I'd be in shock, too, if I fired a pretend gun and killed my costar. Who was in charge of the prop gun."

"Victim. He was the star, lighting designer, and prop master," said Frost.

"Well, it's community theater… they're all volunteers," Maura commented as she kneeled toward the decedent. She pulled back his shirt to examine his chest. "That's odd. Look at these entrance wounds."

Jane peeked over Maura's head toward the mottled flesh. Korsak had caught up with them and now stood at the victim's head. "Wounds, plural? That's bizarre. It kind of looks like a cheese grater," he said.

"Mm," Maura agreed easily, but distractedly. She pressed the wound lightly with her gloved fingers.

"Maybe he forgot to clean the prop gun. Or left cotton wadding in it? It hardly seems enough to kill him, though," said Jane.

Maura stood, and put a wrist against Jane's chest for balance, having stood up too quickly on her heels. She kept it there for a few moments, Jane letting her linger. "I need to dissect his heart to know what caused this injury."

Jane accepted this and patted Maura's shoulder. Maura motioned for the techs on scene to bag the body and take it to the morgue, and Jane stepped away to let them. "Did you check the other blanks?"

"Just about to," said Korsak, "that's his prop cart over there."

"His real job was maintaining this building and the rest of Storrow center. I'm having his truck towed to the evidence garage," Frost chimed in.

"Anybody else have access to the tool box?" Jane asked him.

"I'll check," said Frost, pulling out his tablet and walking over to the owner of the building.

"Well, looks like a tragic accident, but I'd rather be sure," Jane said to Korsak. "Sucks to have such an awful thing happen in a brand new place like this."

"Sure does," Korsak agreed. "Storrow Center's been all over the news the past few months. Can't imagine ownership will be too happy when all this negative press comes out."

"No kidding," said Jane, motioning a CSRU tech to her so that he could begin showing her pictures of the scene. "I'll text you if I find out anything interesting at the autopsy tomorrow morning."


Jane had descended into the bowels of BPD headquarters hoping for more information on their victim, but stopped short of bursting through the autopsy suite doors in order to take Maura in. She had her hair pulled back into a utilitarian ponytail, and Jane liked this. Jane liked Maura's three-hundred dollar haircut, too, when it was down and styled and smelled like heaven, but Maura at work titillated her. Jane also liked the way the spinous processes of Maura's vertebrae popped against her black scrubs, and she wasn't sure how, but it looked like authority. So did the way that Maura wielded a scalpel against the skin of a body, and the way the hairs on her arms glistened under the lights, undulating with the rise and dip of her muscles in motion.

It hit her then, as she spied on Maura through the round peephole, that she was sleeping with the Chief Medical Examiner of the entire commonwealth. Maura was her best friend, too, the person she was closest to, but when Jane watched her command a wicked combination of anatomical proficiency and fine motor movement, she gulped. Maura was powerful. Maura was rich. Maura was a medical doctor, for Christ's sake. And she still wanted to fall into bed with Jane every night.

Jane was then overcome with need to see her up close.

Maura knew she had entered her domain without having to look up. "Hi, baby. You know, I wish it was still raining. The sound is so peaceful," she said, eyes trained solely on the heart tissue in her hands. She walked it over to a sterile table where she could cut it open.

"Rain makes me sleepy. I never want to get out of bed on a rainy day," Jane offered, still on the other side of the room, but inching closer.

Maura's jaw tensed as she palpated the heart. "You don't really want to get out of bed on regular days," she said distractedly.

"Only when you're in the bed," Jane said, hoping to catch Maura's eyes. When Maura didn't turn, she tried something more direct. "Maura. Look at me."

"Yes?" Maura asked, heart still in her hands.

"You're too good for me," Jane said seriously.

"What?"

"You. You're too good for me. You're hot and rich and smart. God you're so fucking smart. Why on Earth do you want to be with me?" Jane asked, practically running to close the distance between them. She could smell Maura and she could smell blood.

Maura was confused, rightly so. She shrugged. "Because you're hot and smart. You're not rich, but that doesn't matter because I'm rich enough for the both of us," she said jokingly, hoping her smile would ratchet down Jane's intensity.

That intensity only burgeoned. "Maura," was all that Jane said. It was an admonishment and a plea all at once.

Maura sighed, and put the heart back on the table. Then she removed her gloves. "You are interesting, you are talented, you are competent. You are also very good looking. Those things all play a role, I suppose. But the reason, above all others, that I want to be with you, is because no one else loves me like you do. No one else has ever loved me like you do. You always put me first, whether by shooting a bullet through your own body to save my life, or agreeing to order the quinoa because you know that I like it and seeing you eat it would make me happy. In fact, I can fully admit that you spoil me. You give me whatever I want, in the moment that I want it. I think that's partly why I was so upset with you when you shot Paddy - I was so used to you making me priority number one that when you didn't… it was jarring."

"I like to make you happy," said Jane. "And I promise I'm gonna do whatever it takes to keep you."

Maura smiled, and tugged on the front of Jane's white t-shirt, a little loose at the abdomen when she pinched it. "I know," she said. "No one fucks me like you do, either, for the record. That's another reason I want to be with you."

Jane blushed at Maura's rare profanity. "No one else better be fuckin' you, period, Maura," she said, pure Bostonian even through gritted teeth.

Maura shrugged. "They're not. But even before you, there was no one as good. And I am still trying to figure out why," she mused, eyes suddenly toward the ceiling in thought, in inquiry. "I've dated doctors before, so it's not like you have a superior knowledge base when it comes to anatomy and physiology. I think it may go back to the spoiling. You do it in bed, too."

"Maybe it's good because I love you. Because I care about you so damn much," Jane said, now flush up against Maura and whispering against the side of her head.

Maura rocked that head back and forth, considering this hypothesis. "Ah. The Boston Kama Sutra principle," she teased, pulling back and winking.

Jane chuckled and Maura felt it boom against her ribcage as it radiated from Jane's. "Frankie should have never told you about that."

Maura wrapped herself around Jane, then, finally. "I'm glad he did - the anthropological implications are quite interesting. I also think it's good because you're very in shape. You have impressive stamina. An athlete's stamina."

Jane stiffened. "We gotta stop talkin' about this," she said, putting an arm's length between the two of them. "Or I'm gonna get too… worked up at work."

"Ok, but you brought it up," Maura replied, turning back to the muscle on her slab and donning a new pair of gloves..

"You brought it up!"

"In response to your question! Wait," Maura stopped mid-slice and motioned Jane to her. "This is odd."

Jane settled behind her and looked over her shoulder. "What?" Maura applied pressure to the incision, and three metal balls fell onto the table. "What are those? BBs?"

Maura shook her head. "Larger, denser. Possibly ball bearings."

Jane hummed, put her thumbs in her belt. "Either way, Mr. Fix-it wouldn't load steel balls into his prop gun, unless he was committing suicide."

"It could be," Maura said. "You should have Sergeant Korsak help you check all the blanks to see if any of them had ball bearings as well."

"Yeah, I should. Thanks," said Jane. "Be there for me when we do? I need that big brain of yours to catch anything we might miss."

"Yes. I should be finished within the hour," answered Maura, inspecting valves and tissues for any other irregularities. "Come back then?"

"Yup," Jane confirmed, and then made her way back toward the double doors. "And Maura?"

"Yes?"

"No one else," she said, her long finger pointed threateningly in Maura's direction.

Maura laughed openly, and Jane winked at her on the way out.


"Maura said she found some irregularities on some of the ball bearings, but not all. I guess she's intrigued by it because ball bearings that are out-of-round can cause excessive wear and tear, but I'm not sure what that means yet for our case," Jane said to Korsak as they walked toward BRIC, where Frost punched excitedly at a keyboard inside.

"Well, hopefully it leads us somewhere since none of the other blanks had 'em," he replied. "Now let's see what the kid's got." Frost waved them in and tossed his head in the direction of the screens at the front of the room. Korsak whistled. "Jennifer and Ryan weren't just costars in a play."

"Costars in real life, too," said Jane, scanning the facebook photos of a happy couple and trying to ascertain how they ended up where they did. "Maybe that's why she was hospitalized for shock."

"Yeah, or she needed to disappear in a hurry before we could start asking her questions," Frost reasoned. "Check out this text Ryan sent to her yesterday morning: 'I'm on a mission to get over you.'"

"What happened?" asked Jane.

"From what I read, it looks like she broke up with him, and he… didn't take it very well," he responded. "'No point in being alive without you.'"

"Well, either it was suicide by girlfriend, or she killed him. Let's talk to some of those other actors," Jane said to Korsak, leaving Frost on his own again.


"It's nice that Lydia is breast-feeding him," Angela, wiping down a table for Tommy and TJ to sit at, found it easier to compliment Lydia these days. "So much healthier."

"Plus, it's obvious why he likes it so much," Tommy said, smirking as he fed his baby.

"What does that mean?" Angela looked at him, expecting to be shocked or wowed.

"If I'm gonna feed it to him, I gotta try it, right?" He said, and Angela's expectations were fulfilled. She rolled her eyes at her youngest.

"You hungry? You want somethin' to eat? Cafe's kind of in a lull right now, I can make you breakfast," she offered him anyway.

He smiled. "Sure, Ma. That'd be great."

Angela, as she patted his arm, surveyed her surroundings. A few patrons straggled behind, but midmorning between the breakfast and lunch rushes was quiet. Even more so in the springtime, when it was beginning to warm out and the sun stayed up just a bit longer. She loved April in Boston, even if it meant a reduction in paying customers. She looked out to the lobby, intending to indulge in the bright rays of the sun as they played upon the buffed linoleum, but was taken aback by what she saw instead.

Dr. Hope Martin looked back at her, walking slowly towards the cafe entrance.

"Excuse me one minute, baby," Angela said to Tommy, and then motioned for Hope to take a seat. She looked stunning as she always did, today in a floral patterned wrap-around dress and a black trench coat. "Hope, how are you?"

"I hope I'm not catching you at a bad time," said Hope timidly, sitting across from Angela, but still worrying the straps of the purse on her shoulder.

"No, no. I was just taking a quick break to visit with my son and grandson," Angela answered. She patted Hope's forearm gently.

"Well, it's nice to see you," Hope said.

Angela cut through the niceties. "I'm glad you two are seeing each other again."

"So, Maura told you?" Hope asked, half despondent and half hopeful.

"Told me what?"

"Oh, uh… Well, I have been… emailing her, but she hasn't responded."

Angela sighed. "Well, she didn't tell me much, but I know that you didn't leave on good terms."

"I was, uh, so shocked," Hope said, tears already coming. "And I… I didn't react well. I've never in my life been as surprised as when a grown woman told me that she… is the baby I thought died at birth."

Angela nodded, the pieces of the picture before her coming together. "How's Cailin doing?"

Hope smiled brightly, but falsely. "She's doing very well."

"I know this isn't my business," said Angela, "although, Maura? Maura is my business." She tapped against her heart as she said Maura's name, herself near tears, too. "Did you come here to ask her to…"

"Yes," Hope answered. "I came to see if she is still willing to donate one of her kidneys to Cailin."

"Hey, Tommy," Angela called to her son. "Come here. Bring me TJ." He walked over and dutifully handed her the baby. "Honey, this is Hope Martin. Maura's birth mother."

Tommy stiffened. He had never met her, but he had heard the stories. He pulled his lips back in a gesture that barely passed for a smile, and nodded to her. He didn't hold his hand out. "Tommy Rizzoli," he said as his only greeting.

"It's nice to meet you, Tommy. You look very much like Jane," Hope said in the best small talk that she could muster. He shrugged as if to agree. "And you have a beautiful baby."

"You know," Angela said to bring Hope's attention back to her, "I would do anything for any one of my children and for this baby. So, no one - no one - can blame you for wanting to save Cailin."

Tommy had to admit that, with TJ now here, he felt his mother's statement stir within him. He looked at Hope, who cried anew, but smiled genuinely this time. "Thank you," she said quietly, and he smiled sadly at her for the first time, too.


"Can you scan for depression?" Jane, just having been deep in thought, asked Maura.

Maura stopped working through the top drawer of the decedent's tool box. "Are you depressed?"

"Only when you ask me that…" Jane teased, "No. I meant him." She pointed toward the body on Maura's table under a crisp, white sheet. "I mean, something's hinky here."

"That's not a scientific term," Maura said warmly. "And no, there isn't a scan, per se. Though chronic depression can alter how the brain looks on neuroimaging."

"I just don't feel right about the suicide theory," Jane said distractedly as she bent down to rummage through the bottom drawer of the box. When she pulled a large plastic bag full of concrete out of it, she raised one eyebrow. "What is this? Why does he have concrete in his toolbox?"

Maura looked down and smiled. "I am so glad you said concrete and not cement," she said happily, "too many people think it's the same thing when cement is actually a component of concrete."

"Thanks," said Jane sarcastically. "But why is he saving it?" she emptied the bag, finding other objects as well. "And why is he saving a broken fluorescent light bulb, a copper pipe, and a bent anchor bolt?"

"Well, maybe he needs to purchase more."

"Yeah, but it looked like he was hiding it," she reached back to the drawer and pulled out a manila envelope with a post-it affixed to the front. "'Creep? Epoxy. Recycled?' That's a strange list." When she pulled out the contents of the envelope, she hummed. "Oh. He xeroxed some plans."

"Well, he was in charge of maintenance for all three buildings. It makes sense that he had building plans," Maura said, leaning over to watch as Jane laid out the plans on some available desk space.

"What do you think that means?" Jane asked. She pointed to a crudely drawn bar with the label "P3" on it, next to plans of the parking garage for the Storrow Center.

Maura went toward her buzzing phone before she could answer the question. "Oh my god," she gasped as she read the text message again. "Oh my god. It's your mother."

Jane awaited more information expectantly, but it never came. "Oh my god," she finally teased. "That is frightening. She find your little powerpoint from yesterday afternoon?"

"No. It's my mother, Hope. She's in the cafe. What is she doing here?" Maura put her hand to her neck in an attempt to self-soothe.

"She came to get ya kidney?" Jane asked brightly.

"Stop," Maura warned, her eyes harsh but also desperate. "Can you please go talk to her?"

"What?" Jane's incredulity started out strong, but the way Maura looked so small, so needy, so set adrift, diminished it. "I… why do I have… she's your… relative," she stammered, already one step toward the elevator back up to the lobby.

"Oh no," said Maura, "she rejected me. She said that I wasn't her daughter."

Jane went from resigned obedience to rage very quickly. She remembered; she was there. "But then she remembered she needed your kidney for her real daughter, Cailin!" she said it in an exaggerated, female Californian, the worst insult she could muster.

"I don't want to talk to her," Maura said, feeling emboldened by Jane's defense of her, but then gradually deflated. "But… I can't keep ignoring her. It's rude."

"Babe, you know what's rude?" Jane asked, leaning one arm against the tapletop nearest Maura and slinging the other over the tools on her belt. "Callin' you a liar in your own home. Sayin' you're not her daughter. Accusin' us of runnin' a grift. All that shit is rude. If you don't wanna talk to her, you have every right. But if you really feel bad, then tell that bitch to make an appointment."

Maura smiled despite her calamity. She patted Jane's cheek softly. "Good idea. I told you that you're very smart," she said, taking her phone into the autopsy suite where it was more private.

Jane stood alone amongst all the evidence they had just found. "But what about all this? No? All right."


Not even an hour later, Maura exited the crime lab to find Hope Martin waiting for her in one of their few lobby chairs. "Dr. Martin! Didn't you get my message? I'm very busy today," she managed to say, and to her credit, she was verybusy.

"Yes, I did," said Hope, standing and following Maura, "but I would really like to talk to you."

Maura sighed as they entered her office. She dropped the file she had been holding onto the top of her desk and planted her knuckles on it authoritatively. "What do you want to talk about?"

Hope stepped forward. "When we met, I said that I felt a strange kinship with you."

Maura winced. "You also, uh, said that conceiving me was the biggest mistake of your life," she said as she banished tears and gathered up some resolve.

"I'm sorry that I said that. Maura, I had no idea," Hope sighed as well, closed her eyes. "Paddy told me that our baby died. And I visited the grave," she said, and to her credit, perhaps that would have been a convincing reason to believe your child was dead, to visit their grave.

But Maura needed more. She punched in a few keywords on her desktop and then turned the monitor toward her mother. "You're really trying to tell me that you've never seen any of this? Paddy Doyle's capture was international news," she said, and sure enough, there was a Boston Globe article with color pictures of herself next to pictures of Patrick Doyle.

Hope shuddered. "I closed the door on that part of my life," she said, eyes glancing away from Maura and the computer screen.

"Well, at least your 18 year old had the guts to confront me," Maura spat. "You just denied your life. The Harvard girl who got seduced by the… the evil thug. And then you ran."

Hope seemed like she had so much to say in response, but all that came out was "I'm… very sorry."

Maura scoffed. "I had this… this stupid little-girl fantasy that when we met, you'd be… everything that you are. But you'd want me. You'd be very happy to know that I was alive."

"I reacted badly," Hope said quietly.

"Badly? You accused me of lying. You told me that I wasn't your daughter. I actually think that you asked me what I wanted from you."

"Yes, I did," Hope admitted easily.

Maura stiffened, and the anger rose in her until it bubbled up and she couldn't hide the wetness of her voice anymore. "And now you're back. Do you see Paddy Doyle when you look at me? Do you see evil?"

Hope put her hand to her heart, stunned. "No," she said emphatically, "and I saw so much good in your father-"

"Paddy Doyle's not my father," Maura interrupted her. "My father was a professor at Harvard, too. Same as my mother, to whom Paddy gave me after he lied to you."

"I… I loved him," Hope lamented. "And he was the… still is… the most complicated, intelligent, damaged human being that I've ever met."

Maura's insides roiled at her defense of him, at everything about Hope. "Why are you here?" she asked.

"Cailin," Hope answered definitively.

"Well, I know what I should do. I should give you my kidney to save your daughter," Maura said, and the solemnity of her statement shook her voice. "But I am your daughter, too."

Hope, who had also been able to hold back tears until this moment, began to cry. "I know that I have no right to ask you," she said, the pleading at the end going unsaid.

Maura raged again at the idea that only when Hope thought about Cailin could she cry. "You don't," she said coldly, "I think you should go."

Hope gaped at her, frozen in shock, but Maura did not budge. She turned her back, and her mother was left with no other option but to obey.

Once she left, Maura cried, too.