If you twist and turn away

If you tear yourself in two again

If I could, yes I would

If I could, I would

Let it go

"Bad"

U2

August 28, 2019

Le Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris, France

On legs that trembled, Hannah approached the park bench. She looked up and down the walkway, counting all of them, behind her and in front, making certain she had counted correctly, that she was to sit at the third bench in front of the row of flowers. Every time she recalled her sloppily written instructions, on a torn piece of water-logged paper she had since ripped up and burned, she felt herself start to disassociate from the moment. This was so strange, so out of place, it felt dream-like, like she was remembering a television show she had watched rather than a memory from her own life.

Secret meetings with spies? Coded messages? She was just herself, a computer technician, a mother, and now, sadly, a widow. That word sent shockwaves down the inside of her, as she dealt with that reality as well, so new and traumatic.

She sat, folded her hands in her lap, and waited. The late summer air was heavy with humidity, the potent scent of flowers and pollen rich in the thick air. The purple flowers, probably petunias and hyacinths, stretched all the way down beside the walkway and curled out of sight. The beautifully plush green lawn in front of her, peppered with cement statuaries, provided the contrast for the azure blue sky, now clear after yesterday's rain. A cement rail was behind her to the left and the enormous and ornately architectured palace was visible at the head of the garden. It was truly beautiful, one of her favorite spots in the city.

Beauty now only seemed to hurt her eyes, no color as beautiful as it had once been, no sky the same color blue or warm summer breeze as sweet. She felt like a shell of herself, nothing left on the inside. Her husband was part of her, and his death seemed to have emptied out all that she was. Her heart was six feet under the ground, and yet, somehow, still beating. The wounds were fresh, still horribly raw, and this bizarre circumstance had pushed her to the limit of her capabilities.

She had given her in-laws the excuse that she needed to go to the cemetery alone to sneak out for this. Wringing her sweaty hands in her lap, she suddenly wished she was there, at the gravesite. She knew being there physically was not important--nothing was there, no real part of him, just a cold gray stone with his name carved on it. But somehow, it was the only place where she felt she belonged anymore. Although, she knew, no one living really belonged in a graveyard.

Her attention hadn't wavered from the walkway, as she focused, waiting for the face she remembered from yesterday. She jumped, startled, as he sat beside her, asking in accent-free French, " Excusez-moi, madame, mais ce siège est-il occupé?"

"Parlons-nous en français tout ce temps?" she answered.

" Pas quand on peut parler anglais," he responded.

She was afraid to turn her head to look at him, uncertain as to which direction he had approached from, no sound of footfalls ever heard. Her vision was blurry, as she realized she had started hyperventilating with her mouth closed, and opened her mouth to breath, very winded in the moment. "Thank you for coming. I wasn't sure you were going to show," he said quietly, his stiff British accent apparent now.

"I'm not really sure why I'm here myself," she admitted, a halting nervousness making her seem to almost stutter the words out.

"Because you knew I was telling you the truth," he said sharply, so much so that she turned her head to look at him. He had soft chocolate brown eyes that seemed to bore right into her, and she quickly looked away.

"Who murdered my husband?" she asked, the words forceful but quiet, so they would not be overheard by any passers by. It sounded like someone else had spoken, the meaning sounding too foreign and strange for her to have ever uttered such a sentence.

"You understand that there's a lot I can't tell you. I'm off mission, but there is still some classified information that I can't divulge. It compromises your safety if I tell you," he said.

"You said my safety is already compromised," she hissed, glancing at him, but turning her head to face forward again before he returned the gaze.

"Now that he's dead, they can get to you much more easily," he told her. "Right now, I'm the only protection you have."

"Who is 'they?'" she asked, raising her voice slightly in frustration.

"A Hungarian national who was released from prison about a month ago. The jails in Hungary are at least 40 percent over capacity. They've been slowly releasing inmates after sentencing adjustments for years," he explained.

"I don't understand…" she said, looking at him out of the corner of her eye. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"His release was maneuvered. Apparently they were looking to hire him, and they did. You and your children are his next assignment. Of that, I'm certain," he said, urgency tightening his voice.

"That's a different 'they,' it sounds like. And it still doesn't make any sense!" she growled, pounding a fist on her knee in frustration.

"You're right. The individual's identity is known. The entity that hired him is not, at least not now. My superiors are trying to sort that all out. I was ordered back to England, but I'm here now instead. The DGSE and MI6 are both more concerned with the big picture. It sounds harsh, but it's just reality. Our resources are stretched pretty thin," he told her, sitting forward slightly.

She had already been anxious and nervous, his words now ratcheting up the fear inside her. "Meaning?" she asked, anticipating how he was going to respond before he said anything.

Her worst fears were confirmed when he answered, "Meaning they don't care if he comes after you and your children. They see it as an opportunity to follow him, learn more about who he's communicating with. That's not acceptable to me. One innocent person is already dead. I won't let there be any more." She met his eyes, surprised and calmed at the same time. The intensity in his eyes translated to honesty in her mind. He sincerely was trying to help her, despite the jumbled haze of confusion, lies, and omitted facts.

"What am I supposed to do?" she asked, tears threatening to fall.

He sighed, shaking his head at some information he knew but wasn't explaining. Setting his face back to neutral, he continued, "In 2016, your husband Jacques had a stem cell transplant to cure a rare form of lymphoma, did he not?"

She was shocked, but had to remind herself, she was talking to a spy. Of course he would know things, intimate things that no one else but her family knew. From the chaos that was her mind, she again felt the cruelty there--that he had survived such a dreadful diagnosis only to die three years later from something else. She nodded.

Continuing, he said, "Neither one of your children were donor matches. Based on their blood types, there is no way your husband was their biological father."

She bowed forward, her chestnut brown hair falling in a curtain to hide her face from him. The thin line of her cheek left visible to him flushed scarlet. "No. I met him when I was in my first trimester, right after I moved back to Paris in 2010." Her voice broken as she continued, she sobbed, "He was their father--in every way but biologically. He knew, he just didn't care. He wanted to be with me, and he promised he would raise my children as if they were his own, and he did."

"The man you list as their father on their birth certificates is not a real person." Cole asserted, ignoring her emotional outburst.

Still sobbing, she replied, "Their biological father is someone who's last name I didn't even know," she whispered, shame evident. "I was on my way from L.A. to Paris and I had a layover for bad weather in Dallas. I was sitting alone in the bar. He was nice, we talked, I got drunk...and…" She stopped, almost choking, amazed that she was telling this total stranger such intimate things that only her husband knew. "I was in a really bad place in the winter of 2010. I was going through some very difficult things--feeling very desperate and lonely. I'm not proud of it. But I'm only human. I'm entitled to make mistakes." Sucking in a sobering breath, she turned to him, her face awash with uncertainty. "Why does any of that matter? Why do you know all that?"

"I don't honestly know. But the Hungarian knew it. We traced all that back to him. He paid a lot of money for that intel," he explained again.

"What does this have to do with anything?" she insisted, angry and impatient, her unease growing as each minute passed and he asked her more questions.

He looked upward at the sumptuous blue sky, closing his eyes in resignation. "What I'm about to tell you is classified. You need to know, but you can't tell anyone else what I'm telling you. Do you understand?" he insisted.

She nodded, feeling the cold sweat trickling down the back of her neck even though the air around them was hot and humid. Her thin silk blouse clung to her, uncomfortably sticking where moisture adhered the cloth to her skin.

"In late January 2010, you were flying first class to Paris for the last time before you left your job with DMI. You met someone on that flight. Charles Barowski, correct?" he asked her.

She hadn't heard that name, or even thought of him, in almost ten years. Her disassociation in the moment was worsening, to the point where her voice almost sounded time-delayed in her ear. "Yes," she said. "What does a jerk who works at an electronics store have to do with what you're talking about?" she snapped, frustrated at the circuitous nature of the conversation.

"This is the classified part, Hannah. Chuck was more than that, when you met him, and also before, when I did," he added gently. "Chuck was an undercover CIA agent. Which seems to have contributed to your poor attitude about him. Because I assure you, he was the farthest thing from what most women would consider a jerk than any man I've ever met."

She felt as if the seat she was perched on was spinning, like the scenery was actually swirling like a tornado over her head. Cole caught her as she pitched sideways, realizing too late that her head and not the scenery had been spinning. Dizzy and nauseous, she gripped the edge of the seat, feeling tiny splinters from the wood pricking the skin on her hand. "Are you all right?" he asked her, his voice seeming to fill her head like an echo shouted down a long pipe.

Panting, she leaned forward, burying her face in her hands with her elbows on her knees. She tried to scroll her mind back, looking for evidence in her memory that would correlate with this unbelievable information assaulting her brain from every direction. It had ended up being such a bad experience overall, she had done her best to not think about those days. A string of strange things seemed to almost coalesce, creating an entirely new picture now, armed with this information. "He saved my life," she said so quietly he almost couldn't hear her. "I thought it was just an accident. A fluke accident. But...it was so...weird...and…" She huffed, no more words forthcoming.

"He saved my life too," Cole told her softly, after a slight pause. "Which is another reason why I'm here. I don't know why, but he's been mentioned recently in some chatter in the European intelligence systems more than once, in some of the same circles that the Hungarian was. His wife as well. Once I realized that you knew him, I didn't think it was just a coincidence."

"He's married?" she asked, blurting it out, and cringing afterward, wondering why that was the first thing out of her mouth. As her thoughts started to coalesce, she realized how dichotomous the picture in her mind was--he was a spy, but he was married?

"He's not a spy anymore, Hannah. Hasn't been for almost seven years. Probably because they have children, would be a guess. They were the best of the best in their heyday, mind you." She heard the admiration in his voice, strange from someone so outwardly confident that it bordered on arrogance.

In a blast of insight, she asked cautiously, "His wife is Sarah, right? She was a spy too, back then?" He looked startled, turning his head quickly to her. How had she surprised a spy? she thought wildly. He only nodded in reply. "The yogurt shop…" was all she managed to say.

He smiled then, as if remembering something fondly. "Yes," he said, knowing if she knew it, there was nothing else to explain.

Snapping out of that strange reverie, she spun on him. "What do Chuck and Sarah have to do with my husband being killed by some Hungarian criminal?"

"It's part of my job to figure that out, Hannah. But right now, I'm making sure your family is safe. Do you at least acknowledge that I'm telling you the truth? Telling you what I told you is in part a gesture of faith. If you believe me, then you know you have to get out of Europe. Now."

She felt like a bomb had exploded inside her chest. The bottomless hole, the emptiness filled with fire--intense, angry, and indignant. "It's Chuck's fault that my husband is dead?" she hissed, making connections in his argument he had not yet implied, her heightened stress and anxiety making it seem worse.

"His fault? No, never," Cole insisted adamantly. "I'm not even sure if it's related. Something doesn't add up. But know this--if he knew this had happened, if he was in a position where he could do something, he would. That's just who he is. But he's not a spy anymore. So I'm here instead."

The anger slowly fizzled, calming. All of her feelings about Chuck were negative, had always been. Now she had no idea what to think. She wondered if her past involvement with him had consequently cost her husband his life. The man Cole was describing to her was like a different person. Like a line of telepathy directed from somewhere outside herself, she heard the sentence. Or maybe just the person he couldn't be with you, because he was forced to not tell you the truth.

"Tell me what you need me to do," she said with resignation.

September 27, 2021

Santa Barbara, California

Hannah pulled the car into the parking space and immediately killed the headlights, then shut off the car. The words Cole had left for Gretchen were in code. Part just to identify him as Cole to her, through another person. The other part was a location, and the word "intersect" was meant to signify it had to do with Chuck as a spy, the reason she had left Paris to come back to the U.S., using the excuse of needing her parents' help with her kids, as Cole had instructed her two years ago.

She scanned the area, not certain what she was looking for, but knowing he had to have left something here for her, that would tell her what to do next. She hadn't heard from him at all since she had been at the airport in Paris on the day she left. He had instructed her to change her last name, and had slipped her and her children the falsified passports that reflected the name change. Once in the U.S. again, he had assured her going by her maiden name was a simple procedure that would attract almost no attention.

The trees that lined the edge of the parking lot swayed gently in the evening breeze. Something on the trunk of the tree directly in front of the parking space caught her attention. A small plastic sheath, dark on the top, fluttered up in the breeze, quickly flashing a lighter underside. Some kind of envelope, Hannah understood, knowing it was exactly what she had been hoping to find. She opened the car door slowly, her heart racing and her palms damp with fear. Using just her eyes, she scanned the entire area, making sure she was alone. He had chosen a good spot, the parking lot of the school playground, deserted now after dusk.

She rushed up to the tree, yanking down the plastic pouch, dislodging the tack from the tree and stuffing it into her pocket. She turned and walked back to her car, resisting the urge to run, knowing it would call undue attention to her should anyone pass by. Once inside the car, she started it, backed it up, and pulled away in a blur. It wasn't until she was on the road again, on the way back to her babysitter's house to collect her children, that she opened it.

Same scratchy handwriting she remembered. A time and a place. Close to her work. He had obviously done some reconnaissance. The strange sensation from the past had returned, like this wasn't really happening. She was like an actor in a play, a character in a movie. How could anything like this remotely be real? However strange it seemed, she admitted to herself, Cole had been upfront with her, at least as much as he could with parsing information to her. He was still acting to keep her and her children safe, it seemed, with no other agenda. She wasn't completely convinced, and was still extremely wary, wondering what had changed. She had uprooted her and her children's lives based on a ten minute conversation with a stranger in the park two years ago. Was she now even crazier, that she thought she would have to do something else, and then do it, simply because he told her to?

She had been under extreme stress two years ago, freshly widowed and grieving. His contacting her then had shaken her world down to the foundation. Had she been in a normal frame of mind back then, she often questioned whether she would have just complied so readily. It had ended up working out--seeing her parents again had been just what she had needed back then. And then her father had fallen ill, and her proximity to him had become a blessing.

But now? Just leave her failing parents on a whim again?

She had told Gretchen she needed some answers. All she had now were more questions. But tomorrow, she hoped, there would be more forthcoming.

September 28, 2021

Burbank, California

Chuck was tying his tie in the closet mirror door when Sarah came rushing into the room. "Chuck, Vivian just called. She's looking for some help translating Russian today. Is this still about that ransomware attack in West Sacramento?"

He turned to address her over his shoulder. "Yeah. Skip was there late. He found evidence of a botnet I guess from how Morgan described it."

Her blank stare made him smile. "In English, Sweetie?" she smiled back. She played her part in their business, but the hardcore computer technicalities were still his wheelhouse.

"Someone working at the plant was their in. But there's apparently a network of computers that have been ciphoning info. All of the intercepted intel was in Russian. All in a day's work. That both you and I missed," he sighed.

"I can help her today. I have an 8 o'clock meeting with Abby's teacher, but I'll be in right after. I have to leave at 3 to get the girls to violin," she said, walking towards him.

"Was this about the gum in Lucy Parker's hair incident?" he asked, lifting an eyebrow in her direction.

"Yes," Sarah sighed. "But not so much the gum as the attitude she gave to the teacher. She's six, Chuck. What are we going to do when she's a teenager?"

"Call your Mom every day," Chuck laughed. "She has raised a positively delightful 14 year old. Who we need to ask to baby-sit Saturday night, now that I'm reminded."

"I think Molly was just born sweet," Sarah laughed.

"Well, your Mom's all we got. Unless you count Morgan's mother-in-law," Chuck replied.

"What about Morgan's mother?" Sarah asked innocently.

Both eyebrows far up on his forehead, Chuck answered, "Think about that for a minute."

She cracked up laughing, and Chuck spoke over her, "And I rest my case. Your Mom it is."

Sarah stood behind him, reaching her hands underneath his arms and straightening his tie in the mirror. She watched his eyes shift to the side in the mirror, but felt the warmth as he leaned back against her just the same. As she smoothed down his tie with her hand, he felt the numb tingling he always felt when she touched the scar on the left side of his chest, an inch long gash caused by the bullet that had pierced his lung under his vest.

"Chuck, what were you talking to your sister about yesterday, once I left the room?" she asked casually, resting her cheek against his shoulder blade as she dropped her arms to rest around his waist.

His face slipped only for a milli-second, his eyes wider, then narrowed, the skin under his chin pulling taught as he clenched his jaw. "About Stephen."

Looking at the floor, away from his eyes in the mirror, she said more softly, "When he was getting in his pj's last night, he told me he heard you talking to her while he was in the bathroom getting changed."

She heard the breath rush out of his lungs against her ear, felt the muscles in his back tense beneath her arms. "Wha--what did he say?" he asked tentatively.

"Nothing specific. He said he couldn't make out any words, not enough to repeat it word for word or anything, which you know he can do if he actually heard it all. He was pretty focused on the fact that he heard you crying," she added gently.

She felt him pull, like he was attempting to walk away and out of her grasp, but she held him still, determination on her face as he saw it in the reflection. "And then last night, you had a nightmare and you were crying in your sleep," she almost whispered, as he started, realizing she had remembered him waking her. "This is more than just what you keep telling me. I know you're worried about Stephen. But you saw first-hand last night. He's fine. He's happy. And you can talk to Casey and Beckman and we will be ok. So what else is going on? And why won't you talk to me?"

The seconds ticked by as she waited, and he shifted his eyes away, not able to even look at his own reflection. "I didn't mean to be so loud. Or so emotional. I didn't realize he could hear me--"

"That's not the point, Chuck, and you're purposely deflecting. This is me you're talking to," she reminded him. "It has to do specifically with what he remembered. What you told me last night, before the kids came in."

Hoarsely and quietly, after another uncomfortably long stretch of silence, he asked, "You don't remember anything about that day, do you?"

"I remember the morning, and taking a shower. Other than that, no, I don't. Seven days later waking up in the hospital with you holding my hand. That's all," she told him quietly. "I know what everyone told me. Sparse facts, medical technology."

He knew she didn't, both comforted and anguished at the same time. When she had finally woken up, she had been asked multiple times and he was confident that she really had no memory of what had happened, or what she had done. He knew from Emma she had talked to her mother only ten minutes before he had last received a text from her over the secure line, but Sarah had no memory of that conversation. He alone had dealt with the aftermath, his home looking like a scene from a horror movie, knowing inside that Sarah had to have believed she was dying, and that fear had caused her to not recall it--how her last few moments of consciousness she had used to protect her son.

"I didn't know he remembered anything, Sarah. He was so little," his voice cracked, and he struggled again to pull away from her, but she held fast. "My sister thinks that could be why he's a little fearful of being closed in small places." He swallowed hard, his eyes filling with tears. "It was just hard, hearing all that. That was the worst day of my life, Sarah."

"Mine too," she whispered, searching in the moment to connect with him, knowing she teetered precariously on the edge when trying to commiserate with him in grief.

She only strengthened her grasp around him, but this time he pulled her hands up, and turned backward away from her, stepping into the closet to do so. He bent down, reaching for his shoes on the left side rack, a desperate move to hide his face from her, unsure of what she would see there and sure no matter what it was he would be unable to disguise it from her in his tenuous state. He heard her sniff, then the delicate patter of her feet as she walked away. Nausea bloomed inside him, his dismissal of her cutting into him.

Out of breath though he hadn't moved, he sat back on his haunches, another memory he wished he couldn't remember assaulting his thoughts. The memory flooding his brain, he thought, perhaps he had been too dismissive of Bolognia when talking to Sarah.

March 16, 2014

Burbank, California

The house was dark when Chuck finally entered, the only light in the living room coming from the dim table lamp beside the sofa. The rug that normally covered the floor under the coffee table in front of the sofa was gone, the room now looking strange and unfamiliar to his eyes. Stephen's toys were stacked off to the side of the armchair, also in a way foreign to what he was used to. Bolognia had only tried to help, he knew, cleaning up after she had most likely put him to bed. His gaze stuck as he saw the spot on the floor in front of the sofa--it was faded, after most likely multiple times of scrubbing at it, but the floor was discolored, dark brown. His eyes blurred as he understood he was looking at what remained of the stain left by Sarah's blood. The sofa was covered with a blanket, one that was usually stored in the linen closet. He lifted the edge, seeing the right cushion on the gray fabric stained as well. Obviously, Bolognia had tried to clean the sofa too. The surface looked pilled, scrubbed in all directions, but still dark and impossibly large blotches of blood were everywhere.

He felt the tears drip from his chin as his gaze shifted, more evidence of blood Bolognia had probably spent every moment she hadn't been with his infant son cleaning. Morgan's mother had folded up Stephen's playard, but the white netting, obviously harder to clean, looked like it had been run over with a pink magic marker. The leg and the padded edge still had the ghost of tiny handprints, scrubbed but not completely removed. The leg of the end table, tucked next to the sofa, had been missed, he noticed. A dark red handprint with dried, dripped trails, reminiscent of fingerpaint but sickenly menacing with the knowledge that it was blood, held his attention, making him unable to look away.

"Oh, Chuck," Bolognia said as she made her way down the stairs, walking on her tiptoes to make as little noise as possible. She had her index finger over her mouth, a way of shushing him. "I just put the baby down," she whispered, her accent flattening the words. "I know it's past midnight. The little one was very wound up."

"Is he...is he ok?" he stammered, exhaustion gripping him so tightly he felt nauseous, the muscles in his face almost unable to form the words without slurring them.

"That bambino is too smart for his own good. He does not like bedtime, does he?" she asked, smiling softly, though when she was close enough to him, he could see how worried she was.

"Yeah, no, he...uh…" The frivolity of small talk, though Bolognia's attempt to be gentle with him, was more than he could tolerate in his heavy, hammering fatigue. He felt the entirety of the house closing in around him, hearing noises and laughter in his memory and suddenly afraid that it would forever be as quiet as it was now. The comfortably familiar scent of lemon furniture polish, baby powder, plus the sweet scent of flowery vanilla that was Sarah's perfume filled his lungs. He wanted to hold it in, savor it, wondering if he would ever be able to come home to this place and feel the way it used to make him feel.

She had to have seen the despair, the misery as it seeped from every pore. The smile on her face faded, and she moved to Chuck and embraced him, her arms around his waist, as he was so much taller than her. "It's going to be ok, Pitufo," she whispered softly. She hadn't called him that since he was very little, the Spanish word for Smurf. The tears fell harder as he recalled the affection he had always had for Morgan's mother, the only female adult left in his life after his mother had left him at age nine.

"I did my best, you know, to clean up. I washed all the laundry and folded it. The baby's little zipper thing--I had to throw it out, I'm sorry. It...wouldn't…" She looked away, not able to say the words directly, though he knew what they were. The blood stains wouldn't come out. "I also brought some enchiladas-- in the fridge. The baby didn't want it, but you must have not eaten for almost all day," she said, releasing his waist.

"Thank you, Mrs. Tucker. Really. For everything." He stressed the last word, knowing how much cleaning of blood she had actually done, an unbelievably horrible task, done solely for him, to make this moment easier on him. "I don't really think I can eat now. But I appreciate it. I do," he said, holding his voice as steady as he could.

"Anything you need, please, we are here. Always. I will come back tomorrow, you know, so you can go back to the hospital," she told him. "He is the sweetest little baby," she offered, patting his cheek affectionately, trying to leave on a positive note.

The mention of his son ground at his insides, turning his heart to pulp. He shifted his eyes up the stairs, overwhelmed with the urge to hold his young son in his arms.

"Michael is waiting with the car," she said softly. "Do you need anything else before I go?"

"No, really, I'm fine," he said weakly.

"Go and get some rest, do you hear?" she said as she walked to pick up her purse and coat at the door.

Numb, broken, aching inside, he climbed the stairs and headed to his son's room at the end of the hall. The hall was lit by a flickering, slowly dying nightlight. The light from his baby lamp shown out in a rectangle that stretched out across the floor. He needed to shut it off, not wanting him ever to get used to sleeping with the light on and causing problems as he got older. Something minor that Bolognia wouldn't have known. Deep inside, he knew, he just wanted to go look at his son, sleeping peacefully in his crib.

Chuck grabbed the doorknob, leaning into the room gently. Peering at the crib, he saw his son, standing, his chubby little hands holding the rail, his mouth pressed down on the teeth guard. Not sleeping, as usual. He never went straight to bed for anyone, not until Sarah sang to him. Sarah. Her name started in his head and blasted its way through his insides until he felt his legs shaking. Stephen noticed him, lifting his head, pulling his mouth off the crib rail, the drool glistening on his cheeks and chin in the soft lighting. His little face transformed, his eyes enormous, seeming to call out to Chuck with no words, the need for comfort though he didn't understand why. He reached out both tiny hands, yelping like a little seal, beckoning to be picked up. "Da da," he called, the tell tale look that he was about to cry.

Chuck crossed the room in two strides, whispering gently, "Hey, kiddo, it's ok. I'm here." He reached down, picking him up with a solid grip under both of his arms, feeling his tiny hands reaching around his neck, Stephen's soft mop of messy curls tickling against his cheek as he cradled his son against him. He knew it was from the baby laundry soap, but the scent was so comforting, evoking memories that ripped into him now. "It's ok," he said again, trying and failing to keep his voice from breaking.

He walked to the rocking chair, holding him as he sat. He knew the song Sarah always sang to him by heart, the one she had told him her mother used to sing to her when she was small. He could hear it now in her voice, so sweet and calming in a loving tone. Not able to sing above a whisper, hiding his tears from his son, he sang the same song, making sure the tears on his face weren't visible to Stephen. It took almost no time at all for Stephen to fall asleep, and Chuck gingerly placed him down in his crib, adjusting the bottom of his sleep sack to keep it from bunching.

The thought of going into his bedroom, seeing the bed unmade, the dent her head would have left on the pillow still visible, the sheets and blankets tousled from their early morning lovemaking--overwhelmed him. He felt his stomach acid burning in the back of his throat as he even contemplated sleeping alone in their bed. Instead, he crouched down beside the crib, curling himself onto his side. From his vantage point on the floor, he could watch Stephen sleeping peacefully, his little chest rising and falling. He didn't think, in this instance, that he was indulging anything other than their mutual need for one another. They had both had a traumatic day. Maybe his son could sleep better, knowing his father was in the room with him. Chuck knew watching his son sleep was the only thing left in the world that could calm him at all. Leaving Sarah in the hospital had been the hardest thing he had ever done, knowing if they called him here, he couldn't drive back to the hospital in time before she died.

Only for his son, needing to be with him, he had left her. Praying he would see her again.

September 28, 2021

Burbank California

He stood quickly, throwing his shoes flat onto the floor and stuffing his feet into them without tying the laces. He checked his face in the mirror, seeing the slight pinkness in the whites of his eyes and knowing it could pass for allergies. Rushing to his bedroom door, he leaned out into the hallway, seeing the light on in the bathroom. He could hear all three kids in the kitchen from upstairs, knowing it had to be Sarah. Over the threshold, he stopped, watching her dabbing at her made-up eyes with a folded tissue. "I'm sorry," he said to her.

Her makeup was perfect again when she turned to look at him, though the expression on her face was so complex and multi-faceted he couldn't interpret it. "Maybe not a good idea to try and force a serious conversation while the kids are eating breakfast downstairs and need to catch the bus in 15 minutes, and you need to go to work. That was my fault, and I'm sorry." She was sincere, meaning every word she said, though she knew his apology was for an entirely different reason. She was willing to let it go, not wanting to hurt or upset him, when he had a long day at work ahead of him. Pausing to kiss him gently, she continued out the bathroom door and out into the hallway.

Since before she had been her young son's age, she had been honing her intuition. And she knew, with certainty, her son's reactions and words yesterday had dredged something up inside him, something she had no shared experience to mine from to discern on her own. What bothered her now was thinking that for eight years, she had had literally no idea that there was even more to discuss, nothing left unresolved after a mutual grieving for their lost child.

Chuck's father had died in his arms, a death Chuck sometimes still blamed himself for, she knew, even though the fault lay solely in the hands of his murderer, Daniel Shaw. That had been eleven years ago, and still, Chuck couldn't talk about it. His father, yes. But even to acknowledge it out loud, to say the words that his father was dead, he couldn't do it. Hadn't it just fallen into place logically, that he wouldn't have been able to talk about the loss of his own child? She had always thought so, but now she wasn't sure.

She had pushed herself to be better, to learn to talk to him, something that had never come naturally to her. She acted, always, as was her instinct. Showing him and her children that she loved them had always been easiest. But children still needed to hear it, needed to be able to talk to their mother about anything, so she made the effort. Chuck was the opposite--words came effortlessly for him--he always seemed to know exactly what to say at the right time, something she even envied sometimes, thinking of what she should have said days after a conversation. He sometimes overshared, talked too much, and they had together worked consciously towards better communication. The fact that whatever this was, whatever had brought it back to the surface, he couldn't talk to her about it, was the most troubling.