AN: "decade:(noun) 1. a period of ten years; 2. a group, set or series of ten." Chapter 4 sees the return of Summer, a character no one actually mentioned in reviews, which I thought was interesting! Summer is a gem of a character, so I thought I'd give her a chance to show her face here too. The feedback so far had been great, so thank you! As before, if you have any suggestions or guesses as to who should/is coming up in the next chapters, let me know! Please do review, it's great to know these fics are being enjoyed!
The baby is fretting. He's still getting over an ear infection and he's been sleeping very little these days. Summer hasn't slept a full night in weeks. Marshall is great, tells her again and again that he'll stay up with him this time, that she should go on to bed, but she insists no.
So here she is, twenty past three in the morning pacing the floor, her little child in her arms, his head resting on her shoulder, tucked in towards her neck. She thinks he must approve of the soft of her dressing gown, because now and again he gives a contented little sigh against her neck.
Summer has embraced motherhood more fully than she'd ever thought herself capable of. She loves being a mother, how it fulfils her better than anything else she could imagine. She feels complete in her little family of three and she is happy in herself. Of course, this doesn't mean she doesn't miss her lie-ins, doesn't mean she wouldn't kill for an hour-long bubble bath, but she knows that all pales in comparison when she looks into her baby boy's eyes and knows finally the meaning of unconditional love.
There's a lot of time at home now, though, in-between time; a lot of time spent waiting for Marshall to come home, a lot of time waiting for her son to wake up from his naps. These serve as Summer's only respite, however, and sometimes then her mind drifts to an earlier time in her life, her time in Sacramento when she had turned her life around and felt like Kimball Cho's Girl Friday, so different now from the humdrum of baby formula and nappies. She wonders sometimes what he'd think of her now. She likes to think he's happy for her, despite all that had gone between them. He's a better person than she, she thinks, but he got her that bit closer to where he was, she knows.
The baby is dozing on her shoulder as Summer paws her way downstairs softly. She doesn't want to wake her husband, not when he works so hard all day to please her. She was lucky to find him when she did. He makes her very happy, and she knows she does the same for him. She shuffles into the sitting room and switches on the television with the remote, the sound turned down low so as not to wake either of her two boys. Teleshopping is mainly all that's on at this time, and Summer watches for a few moments the saleswoman earnestly recalling how her new ironing board cover completely changed her life. Summer switches over.
Ads.
News.
Shopping.
Ads.
News.
Cho.
Cho.
Summer is sure her mind must be playing tricks on her, and yet there he is, on the news, a small, secondary figure in the corner of her screen, as the main picture is filled with police cars and a cordoned off area of what seems to be a park, but it's hard to tell due to the day's lighting. Cho is talking to Lisbon, the red and blue of flashing police cars splayed over their faces. It's only then Summer sees the Breaking News banner along the bottom of the screen: RED JOHN SERIAL KILLER DEAD, it says.
Summer stoops down, feeling her way to sit on the sofa, the child still dozing in her arms. Her eyes are glued to the screen. Something is off here, she thinks, but she doesn't know quite why. The camerawork is jumpy and jars somehow, but the lighting suggests this played out hours ago, late in the evening perhaps. But it's Kimball and Agent Lisbon that make this feel uneasy. When she knew Agent Lisbon, she was always at the fore, in control, at the head of her team. Here, in the flashes of them that she sees, the pair seem pushed to the side. There's no way to describe Lisbon but distraught, and Summer watches as Cho puts his hand to her elbow. She wonders what Jane might have done now, but then she realises the significance of Red John, and Summer's heart sinks as she wonders what might have happened in the fallout. As she watches Kimball lean in close to Teresa to confide something into her ear, the camera jumps and the scene changes. And then Summer's watching a newsreader back in the studio and the caption now reads something about a sharp rise in interest rates, and Summer switches over to the other news channels, but to no avail.
She switches the television off and stares into space, rubbing her baby's back to comfort herself. Her immediate reaction is to phone Kimball, to find out what the hell has happened, but because time has passed, and she now feels a little out of the loop of that wonderful group she had half belonged to for a short while, she knows she will not. She has no right anymore to any of them, why should she. She is more than glad both Cho and Teresa are alright, and she whispers a prayer that the rest of them will be alright too, but she has moved on from that life. In time she will find out the details of what has happened, she will send them her best as an old friend, but for now, she needs to put her little boy to bed. She hugs him a little tighter as he sleeps on, wholly unaware of the evil, or the concept of it, that exists in this world he is growing up in, and she is happy that tonight there is one less evil man living on the same world as her son.
Summer climbs back up the stairs and rests her child gently into his cot at the bottom of their bed and looks down on him resting, her hands on the rail of the cot. Then she hears Marshall stir, and she joins her husband in bed, and after a while, she drifts off to sleep.