CHAPTER NINETEEN
She gets up in the dark. Sneaks out in the middle of the night. Drives empty backstreets until she finds the alleyway and pushes herself into the doorway of light until it pulls her to another life.
Over and over.
She solves case after case. Sometimes with Frost, sometimes with Nina, but always with Maura and Korsak. Hears talk of smashed case closure records and rumors of hero award nominations, but that's not why she does it. Not only why she does it.
Again and again.
Some days she goes home to Maura. To a level of domesticity that feels natural and comfortable. Not awkward or forced, like it had when Casey had moved into her apartment. All up in her space and her business, making her feel crazy and secretly wanting to change the locks.
Other days she hears endless stories about perfect dates and perfect gifts from the perfect man. Spends those evenings where she goes to bed alone questioning all of her life choices and cursing the generosity she continues to show the clueless, handsome professor.
Day after day, night after night.
This is what her life has become. Her lives. For so long now she can't quite remember when it started.
But it's gotten easier - Easier to land on her feet instead of her face, as she steps assuredly through the doorway like a well-balanced pro. Easier to get up and leave one life for another when the need arises, knowing it will be there waiting for her when she gets back.
And harder, too - Harder to face that that last part is nothing more than a lie she tells herself each time she crosses over. Harder to contemplate what would happen should the doorway close.
Because, even as she wishes it weren't the case, what was once an uncontrollable pull of the light is now a push that takes considerable effort and nothing is bright enough to hurt her eyes anymore.
She still doesn't know where it came from or why; let alone how to fix it. And, of course, what's happening to it could be something else entirely, another something that she doesn't understand.
But at the end of the day, it does seem to be disappearing.
By her very nature, she should be unhappy at the lack of sleep involved in maintaining this dual existence, but she's too content. Sleeping with Maura on the one hand, and knowing nothing bad happened to Frost on the other.
She shoulders any additional weariness, not with ease but with considerable effort. Tries to cover the bags under her eyes with extra concealer. Doubles down in her duplicity.
Surviving such short nights and everything else in between would probably be impossible for most people. But she's Jane Rizzoli. And Jane Rizzoli is not most people.
She almost starts to get used to the reruns, too, yet this isn't Groundhog Day. She's not stuck in a loop.
Any overlaps or similarities from one life to another appear at random, so unpredictably that she can't really discern any useful pattern. Feelings of déjà vu sneak up without warning. Like a static electricity that buzzes around her, so strong it taints the air and she can taste it on her tongue.
The minor details are mostly different, though sometimes with huge consequences she finds out. Like how one phone call on that fateful day delayed Frost's road trip by a mere five minutes, enabling an out-of-control drunkard to miss him rather than hit him. As if life is just one big fucked up coin toss.
Regardless, the overriding themes are mostly the same.
"Wow, Rizzoli. That's gotta be a record."
"What are you going on about now, Crowe?" she sighs, so tired of him it's not even funny. He's like a broken record and she wants to throw her scalding hot coffee cup directly at his face.
"That bed head you're sporting; it's going on six weeks now. At first I thought maybe you'd started sleeping in your car again, y'know instead of going home… alone. But now I'm wondering if you didn't actually find someone man enough to deal with your butch ass -"
"You son of a -"
"KNOCK IT OFF, CROWE!"
And then there are the poor, unfortunate victims. The people who never seem to catch a break in any life.
If you ask her, fate is a cold, heartless bitch.
She recognizes the crime scene address immediately. Already has her gloves snapped on and is ready to open Maura's car door when the doctor's vehicle pulls up at the curb.
"Good morning, Jane."
"Hi, Maura," she breathes with a shy smile, mesmerized by the blonde's effortless beauty. In this dress and jacket combination, she's particularly stunning. It's almost as if Jane hasn't seen it and loved it once before.
"Korsak's already inside," she tells her friend. Probably shouldn't have said it, but he was here the last time and she can't help but assume. It's the little details that always trip her up.
"Have you been in?" Maura asks and Jane stiffens, squints a little as she weighs her response.
"No," she hedges, "Yes… kinda." It's all becoming a little confusing if she's honest and not slipping up on a daily basis, or coming across as some soothsaying lunatic has become a full time occupation. "Never mind," she mumbles at Maura's confused head tilt. Plays her trusted I speak nonsense because I'm half asleep card and fakes a yawn. "It's too early."
There's no honey in this life. No baby, or darling, or pumpkin. Though her other Maura hates that last pet name with a passion and refuses to explain why.
In this life, Maura isn't hers, and so, early on, she had strictly forbidden herself from being too familiar. God forbid anyone got suspicious about her odd behavior.
But, it was so hard to define exactly what constituted too familiar, considering how tactile and flirty they always were with each other before all this happened. Every interaction felt stilted and unnatural and quite quickly that was odd behavior, so the stupid rule got nixed almost as soon as it was borne.
Finding a happy medium here has been a bit of a struggle. It makes loving Maura from afar exquisitely painful some days. No more so than when Jack is present, but even when he's not, she already knows too much. Feels too much.
She knows how it feels to hold Maura, to kiss Maura… to be inside Maura and to taste Maura. Knows how perfectly they fit together. Hand in hand. Side by side.
She knows now. And on days like these, as they stride shoulder to shoulder into the crime scene, the memories alone have to be enough.
The word most befitting the scene of total destruction before her is rage. Pure rage.
It taints the room, suffocating and dark. As if it's been painted onto every surface, leaving only gashes and scratches and blood spatter and glass.
A murder scene is never good. Sometimes creepy and grotesque, sometimes just… sad. But this is so much worse than she remembers from the last time they stood in Rebecca Mills' living room that it literally takes her breath away.
Not again.
It makes it hard to look at the smashed picture frames that litter the floor. At the smiling faces of Rebecca and Kelsey Mills that stare back, tattered and torn and splattered with red.
Because, some are pictures she recognizes. And if they're here, obliterated, instead of intact in a box in the back of Charlie Mills' pickup truck, it means this time he didn't try to steal Rebecca's memories of her life with her beautiful daughter.
Instead, he destroyed them.
That difference alone, and the implications, make her stomach flip. And so she closes her eyes, turns her face away as bile burns her throat and the room fades out.
When she breathes finally, it's a sort of half gasp that sharply fills her lungs as the blurred edges of her consciousness clear. And when voices fade back in from the white noise of horror that has filled her ears, she just tries to nod in all the right places and gets to work on the shortcuts she knows she can use.
She runs up the stairs, skipping as many steps as she can with each stride of her long legs, to sweep through the child's bedroom. Finds traces of poor Kelsey Mills having been abducted from her little bed. Again.
Returning back downstairs like a whirlwind, she finds Maura busy with the body and Korsak with reading from his notepad as Frost chats with a uniformed officer by the back door.
She bags the shredded remains of Rebecca's mail. Torn pieces of court orders and divorce papers and what looks like a very recent restraining order.
That's new.
Admitting Charlie's abuse – not admitting Charlie's abuse – neither seem to have done Rebecca Mills any good and it makes her blood boil.
Then, crouching as low as she can, she spies a wooden box open and empty beneath the couch. A quick sniff for the telltale odor of gunpowder and it's off to the lab in a plastic evidence bag by way of Korsak's uncertain second opinion and a disapproving look from Maura.
She doesn't care.
Just grabs and bags everything she knows they'll need while the others continue talking around her. She can't remember every line word for word - so much of it has changed due to Frost's presence - but their conversation is still so thick with déjà vu it makes her skin crawl.
She wants to escape, wants to rush them all out of here and go find Kelsey Mills. So much so that, by the time they're officially done, she's painfully tense and jumpy and Frost catches her elbow at the door.
"Hey. What's gotten into you?"
"Nothing!" she snips. Wipes a hand across her brow and adds with a sigh, "Missing kids always drive me nuts." It's a reasonable enough explanation for him to swallow without question, even if he does raise an eyebrow as they start to wander away from the house.
They watch from a distance as the gurney is hauled out, eyes following it down to the sidewalk as Maura oversees stowage into the van marked 'Office of the Medical Examiner'.
"Want me to ride with you back to the precinct?" he asks as the blonde finds her car and follows Rebecca Mills back to the morgue.
"No," she says without hesitation, shakes her head and softens a little because he cares if she's okay and she's been insufferable since she got here. "No, I – I'll be fine."
With Korsak done giving final instructions to the uniformed officers that will remain on scene, Frost shucks a thumb toward the Sergeant's car. Backs toward it still looking concerned and unconvinced. "I'll see you there?"
"Yeah," she nods, flashes him a genuine smile. "I'll be right behind you."
She knows it's a lie before they even pull away. Has no intention of heading straight back to the precinct. Not when she already knows all the addresses in Charlie Mills' portfolio. And even though she promised herself she wouldn't skip ahead and risk rumbling herself over a case, it's a promise she's willing to break for little Kelsey Mills.
She drives around for a couple hours, tries house after house and ignores the ringing of her phone every time it shows a BPD number.
There's a cosmic joke, she's learned, which goes 'Knock, knock. Who's there? Not Charlie Mills!' and the universe laughs and laughs and laughs.
…
"Sorry. Never heard of him."
…
"It's not rented. My mom owned this house for fifty years before she died!"
…
"I knew a Charlie Miller once. Nice guy. Used to work with him down at the docks, but he died in a fishing accident in 2003."
…
Nobody's met or even heard of the murderous scumbag. So she can't cheat the system like she's done so many times before. Even if she'd have had no way to explain stumbling upon their prime suspect, it was worth a shot for the sake of the kid.
"Shit! Shit! Shit!" she rails, palms pounding against the steering wheel as her car idles out front of the last house on her mental list. These inconsistencies really sting. And now she has to head back and face the music.
Pulling away from the curb with a huge sigh, she has only the duration of her drive to think up a valid reason for disappearing…