With apologies for the long wait and the fact that it's not been proofread. Life happened. Thanks for the reviews.
After a quick shower, Gillian ventured downstairs and surveyed the mess she and Cal had left in the wake of their passion. She turned off the TV, folded and put away the blanket, and cleaned up the coffee table. He'd barely been gone for half an hour and she already missed him. She stared absentmindedly at the couch, balancing their cups and glasses in her hands, thinking back to their romantic evening.
She still was not entirely sure why he'd come by last night. Sure, the reason he gave her seemed logical but why now? What had happened? Why'd he change? Even more important was the question burning on her mind whether he'd be capable of that change. She really wanted their relationship to work. Last night opened the floodgates and she wasn't sure she could ever go back to just being friends. It was too early to say it out loud, lest she spook him, but she loved him. She had a feeling he returned it, but couldn't be sure how deep his feelings for her ran. She'd loved him for a long time; she just couldn't see how they'd ever arrive at the threshold they crossed last night. But it happened anyway and Gillian did not regret it. He was trying, so hard, and did it really matter why?
She sighed and walked into the kitchen. Rather than loading the dishwasher, she did the dishes herself. Occupational therapy. Her mind would go crazy, if she kept over thinking her and Cal. Cleaning up after them would keep her and her mind busy. A short while later, her kitchen and living room were spotless and Gillian glanced at the clock. Almost three. She did the quick math of time zone differences and retrieved her laptop to set up a Skype session with her family on the West Coast. Her niece and nephew's faces appeared on the screen right after the first ring, scolding Gillian for taking so long. They'd been anxiously awaiting her call apparently. She took turns talking with everyone, her parents, her sister, her brother in law until she heard her mother calling everyone together for lunch from the kitchen. Gillian smiled but felt a slight pang in the chest at the domesticity she was not really a part of. Wishing everyone a merry Christmas again, she hung up and turned off the computer. Now what. 4pm. Cal was probably just about to get ready to drive over to his ex-wife. But what should she do?
Lunch! As she moseyed into the kitchen, she spotted a medium sized package on the sideboard in her hallway. Cal had stored his gifts there last night. This one he'd been carrying around for the better half of the day like a prized possession…and now he seemed to have forgotten all about it. When she saw him with it running around during the office party she was convinced it was a gift he'd gotten for Wallowski… and that he'd make a pit stop at her place for a little festive celebration.
Instead he came to her. She reached into the fridge to grab the ingredients for making herself a roast beef sandwich. Maybe the present wasn't for the detective after all. He could've still dropped it off before coming to her place. She tried to remember what Cal had been trying to tell her when he'd been whisked away by Heidi. Maybe it was a last minute gift for Emily. Grabbing a soda can from the fridge, she made her way back to her couch, planning on finishing the movie she and Cal had started last night.
If only there hadn't been this hapless package sitting on her cupboard, silently beckoning her. Gillian cursed her curiosity and veered off course, taking a closer look at the gift. With a sigh Gillian put down her plate and searched for a nametag on the present. None. Figures. Couldn't have been that easy, now could it? She tried to lift it with her free hand but found that the gift was actually quite heavy. She frowned and her interest was definitely piqued now. She quickly balanced her can and plate on top of the package and then carried it over to the couch in the living room with both hands.
While she ate her roast beef sandwich, the gift sat mockingly on her coffee table. There was a blue ribbon tied around the present very asymmetrically. Gillian debated whether or not to open it. Whether or not it was intended for her in the first place. Even if it was for her, shouldn't she keep it until tomorrow now? Put it underneath Cal's tree and watch him while she opened it? That's when she realised the hapless package must have been wrapped by Cal himself. He'd never done that before. Would he really go to such great lengths for Wallowski? Gillian felt sick to her stomach. No, no, he wouldn't do that. Not after what he told her repeatedly last night and this morning. He wouldn't go all the trouble to wrap a package for Wallowski and never for her. Wouldn't he have just left it in the car if it had been for someone else? Or taken it with him this morning? But if the gift had always been intended for her in the first place, why hadn't he given it to her? Had he tried to give it to her before they got interrupted by Heidi?
But why didn't he say anything last night? Didn't he want to see her reaction when she opened it? What on earth did he get her? In a strange way, it touched her even more that he'd actually taken the time to wrap her gift himself than the fact that he had actually gotten one. She hadn't. She'd been so angry with him, she'd put it off until it was too late. She didn't feel too bad about it because she didn't really expect him to even bother ordering a romance novel from Amazon this year. Until now.
And yet here it was, this misshapen package with a hapless blue ribbon tied around it, which she couldn't bring herself to open. She wanted to watch Cal's face while she opened it. It was already the best gift she'd ever gotten, from Cal or anyone – just because he'd done it all by himself. Usually he contracted the wrapping out to Emily. She could just see him sitting behind his desk in his office armed with scissors and a tape dispenser, trying to hold the paper in place, while measuring out how much exactly he needed.
Ah, screw it. Curiosity finally got the better of her and she pulled at one end of the blue ribbon, which immediately resolved into a tight knot. Of course. Cal, she sighed. He really was a hopeless case in the arts and crafts department. She got up and fetched a pair of scissors to cut the ribbon off. She carefully peeled the tape off of the left side of the gift. She'd always been the kind of person who opened her gifts slowly. Alec hated it. It drove him crazy. But Gillian loved those final moments of anticipation and curiosity about what she would find underneath the wrapping paper. Sure, many times disappointment awaited her, but the few times where she was truly blown away by what she uncovered were etched into her memory forever. She peeked inside but couldn't see anything but a mass of brown carton. Gillian frowned and opened the other side and pushed the box out.
Her eyes widened with surprise when she realised she was staring at a shoebox. Cal had gotten her…shoes? That can't be right. The box was far too heavy for shoes…unless it contained ski boots. More than surprised and a little impatient she quickly lifted the cover and stared at a pile of sheets, neatly bound, resting in the middle of the box. Gillian fell back against the couch, exhaling slowly.
His manuscript. He had given her his manuscript for Christmas. He'd really done it. He'd finished writing his book before the holidays to make sure he wouldn't jeopardise the company's future in the new year. And that really explained why he had been so secretive about it. The first three chapters they'd swapped back and forth between them; Gillian offering her input as he tried to map out where to go in this book. He wasn't happy with any of the results, and she'd wondered whether that was because they'd lost their magic touch working together. Then a few weeks ago, when she'd asked if he'd gotten any further, he just nodded his head absent-mindedly but made no attempt to give the new material to her. She once asked him if he needed advice and he brushed her off abruptly, turning all secretive on her. She'd chalked it up to another one of his moods and considered it another nail in the coffin that was slowly becoming their relationship. He didn't even want her thoughts on his book anymore.
In reality, however, it seemed as if he'd wanted to surprise her. She felt touched that he knew how much it meant to her that he got his book done and got the publisher hounds off their backs. All the time he seemed so indifferent and aloof about it, when she'd pressured him, making her belief he didn't care about it but he had listened. And he had cared. Enough for him to sit down on his pretty little ass and type out what looked to be a whopping four hundred pages.
Gillian looked at the title: Truth or Happiness. She frowned.
He used to remind her frequently that truth and happiness were two irreconcilable concepts. You could have truth, or happiness – but never both. Gillian, in terms, rose to his challenge every time defending her stance – or as Cal called it her naivety – that not everyone in this world was out there trying to get you and screw you over. She'd always thought Cal was the living example for her faith in humanity. He was a little rough around the edges, sure, and his methods had always been a little unorthodox, most definitely; but he had also dedicated his life to making this world a better place. He'd never really gotten over his mother's suicide, had never forgiven himself for not seeing it coming; and like a dog with a bone, he had not given up until he saw what no one else could. He'd watched his mother's video footage over and over until he literally saw her pain. And as if that were not enough he developed a whole facial coding system to catalogue hundreds of micro-expressions to help end the suffering and catch criminals. If he didn't belief that his truth would eventually lead him back to happiness why had he started down that road in the first place, she always argued.
That usually shut him up for a while or he'd change the subject. They hadn't had this discussion in a long time. When had they grown so distant from each other? Gillian thought back over the last year but was unable to pinpoint the exact moment.
It wasn't just Wallowski. She hated to admit it to herself that she was jealous of the detective. It was ridiculous. She had no right to be jealous. It was not like her, and she had never been in any kind of relationship with Cal that would warrant such a reaction. They weren't married, they weren't dating, they weren't even sleeping with each other – well not until a few hours ago anyway. So why did it bother her so much that Cal spent so much time with this other woman? Even more so, now that they had slept together and decided to give whatever it was that was between them a try, she bristled at the thought that Cal was going to work with the detective again. He'd sworn to her that there had never been anything between him and Wallowski and she believed him. She knew he would never lie to her about something like that, and more importantly, she could feel it, see it on his face, last night when they were making love. She was the only one he wanted to be with. So where was all this insecurity coming from?
He had changed so much in the last years, she didn't even know where to begin. When they'd met, he'd swept her off her feet with his intelligence and compassion. She'd never really known him when he worked at the DoD until they sent him in for a psych evaluation, so she didn't know how much the rumours about "the rogue scientist" were true. She'd read about his questionable behaviour on a few missions but every time she dug deeper than the departmental complaint, she wound up with a reasonable explanation why he had acted the way he did. She didn't get too far though because after the third set of inquiries she was whistled back and threatened by Cal's former boss.
Sure, Cal liked to antagonise people and could be a confrontational man, but the Cal she'd met almost ten years ago hated violence and tried to use his science to prevent it. Her Cal would have never gone off gallivanting in the streets of Maryland looking for trouble with a crooked cop. The man she met was a scientist at heart who'd been perfectly content to give up his DoD issued tag and gun when he'd left the Pentagon. He didn't even like guns. Gillian knew. Cal had shared with her how traumatising he'd actually found it in the Kosovo being surrounded by firearms day and night, even though he was even nowhere near close to the hot war zones. She'd also seen him instinctively duck every time a gun was pulled. When had that all changed? When had he started to seek out danger for the thrill of it?
It wasn't the serial rapist case. Cal had used the long con as a means to an end to uncover the truth. And he would've never done it in the first place had he known a single hair on her body would be touched. He certainly didn't ask to be held at gunpoint by Matheson, nor did he invite the farmer to park a tractor full of explosives outside their office building.
Terry. When she thought about it, it all started when his old friend Terry from London entered the picture. His visit must have triggered something in Cal, for he became a lot more reckless after that. He didn't initially seek out the thrill actively but she started to notice that he secretly thrived on it. She wondered whether that was the need Cal had for Wallowski. Hanging out with a crooked cop fed his need for danger. Could Wallowski be Cal's enabler? Was that the void the detective filled that she herself couldn't, Gillian wondered? But where was that need coming from in the first place? It must have something to do with Cal's shady past in London. He never talked about his time in England; she'd practically had to drag the story about his mother out of his nose. Gillian had no idea how Terry's family figured into Cal's past, though he certainly seemed indebted to them. She pieced together that Cal and Terry had been running a scam business on the real estate market. She had a hard time reconciling that with the Cal she knew. Quite honestly it had been a shock because even if Cal had been someone who didn't always go by the book, he never danced around the law for his own gain. Terry apparently went to jail for Cal, who got his act together and severed his ties to the underworld. She wondered how he got into Oxford. Did he get caught along with Terry but struck a deal based on his talents? If he told her she couldn't remember. Maybe the scams were to get money together to pay for tuition? At least that would give his criminal past a slightly more positive edge than mere acquisitiveness.
The truth was she was scared. He had changed so much she barely recognised in him the Cal she'd met ten years ago. He reminded her too much of Alec. It wasn't that she didn't notice the changes in her ex-husband. She did. But they weren't nearly half as dramatic as Cal's erratic jumps in behaviour. Alec had changed little by little and Gillian never really thought about it. He was evolving, maturing. And so was their relationship, or so she told herself. No couple stayed in their honeymoon phase forever, she knew that. And people changed.
The covert displays of affection went first. She understood that Alec didn't feel lovey-dovey with her when they attended dinner functions. That was his work place. Unfortunately, the state department had a lot of evening events and they rarely had chances to date on the outside. In the beginning, though, Alec couldn't keep his hands off her. He always touched her, always had his arm around her, always making sure she was with him. Or so she thought. In hindsight, he was probably showing the other males in the room what a beauty he'd landed. Not so much a display of affection, after all, just a juvenile display of masculine pride. She never thought she could be considered a trophy wife – well, minus the age difference.
Then their first big fight occurred over who was going to move in with whom. Gillian had just bought an apartment she'd fallen completely in love with. Alec had been living in his for five years and was unwilling to move, either. He, too, had finally paid off his loans and grown attached to the place. Not emotionally as she was, but he'd been so set in his habits he didn't want to leave. He liked to know where things were. He didn't like the location of Gillian's apartment. Gillian thought Alec's place was inconveniently located for her daily commute to the Pentagon, tacking on another hour in traffic for her. They ended up staying at their respective places for another half year. She should have known then.
He proposed. Six months later he cooked dinner for her, went down on his knee and proposed in a very old-fashioned style. She hadn't expected it. She'd never been asked before and she found herself saying yes without even thinking. The doubts came later. Her mother told her it was normal. That everyone had doubts, when they were making big decisions. Alec had been so happy, so enthusiastic about their impending wedding, it rubbed off on her. She wanted to be that happy, too. If she made Alec so incredibly happy, marrying him couldn't possibly go wrong. She was just scared of the changes is all.
Alec had been so forthcoming and compromising as they began to merge two lives into one. He'd been secretly looking at houses and one day just packed Gillian into his car and drove out into one of the suburbs – blindfolding her and all. He'd picked the perfect house. She knew it the minute he took off the neck scarf and she looked at the large Victorian house. She realised that even though Alec had been unwilling to budge an inch on the topic of moving in with her he had listened to her when she'd listed all the things she liked about her apartment. He found a house that had the same charm, the same old architectonic quirks she loved so much about her place. And most important of all, it had a big bay window.
Gillian loved those old houses with big bay windows. When she grew up, the house on the opposite side of their street had one of those huge bay windows. When her father had been drinking again and was clumsily rumbling around their house, Gillian looked at the bay window on the other side of the street and imagined what it would be like to live there. She'd bet people with huge bay windows never drank but sat in their living room, reading books in the bright light all day, occasionally gazing out of the window, watching people as they passed by.
Alec drew her out of her reverie when he explained with a twinkle in his eye that it came with three bedrooms and a large garden for their children. He dangled the keys in front of her and an hour and a tour through the house later, they called the realtor to put down an offer. Between the move and the wedding her doubts had been drowned out. Everything was coming together. Professionally and personally. Life was good.
At some point Alec had stopped asking her what to wear for work. At some point she stopped asking him if she looked good in her new dress. She didn't know when. They just knew what the other one thought and liked and stopped bothering. Long breakfasts in the morning grew shorter as they started to leave for work earlier and earlier. Briefs needed finishing touches; psych evaluations had to be completed before the morning meeting. Something was always left undone at their office when they left the night before.
One of the things she'd looked forward to when buying the house were cosy evenings spent cuddling on their couch in the living room. They hadn't even used the fireplace once since they moved in. Their jobs kept them busy. When they finally came home exhausted all they wanted was a hot shower and a comfy bed. At some point they fell into a routine.
They waited for children who never came along. Everything would be different once they had kids, Gillian thought. They'd cut down on work hours; maybe she'd stay home until the kids went to kindergarten. She could work from home; perhaps do some private counselling, so their income wouldn't suffer. A big house had meant a big mortgage to pay off. Three years into their marriage it was clear that their perfect 1.6 children wouldn't happen. Fertility treatments took their toll on their marriage until Alec couldn't take it anymore and proposed to look into adoption. Gillian felt like a failure that she couldn't give her husband any children, Alec couldn't bear to see the disappointment and feeling of inadequacy on Gillian's face with every failed pregnancy test. Adoption really seemed the best angle to tackle their problem he argued.
He was always so rational. That was what she loved so much about him and drew her to him in the first place. She could always rely on Alec to keep calm and rational when her emotions got the better of her. She didn't think Alec Foster had ever rushed to a decision. She'd never thought she'd come to resent Alec's rationality. But when they took Sophie away and her world was falling apart, she began to hate her husband who tried to rationalise their loss. There was nothing logical about losing a child. There was nothing rational about the law taking their daughter away. It just wasn't fair. It sucked. Plain and simple.
She couldn't understand how he could stay so calm. Cal had said that Alec was just trying to be strong for her but at a time when she should have been turning to her husband for comfort, it was Cal's shoulder she found herself crying on. She couldn't stand looking at Alec. Gillian's grief turned into anger and she started to lash out at Alec, fed up with his passivity. She found the pathetic excuse of a man he'd turned into repulsive. Alec was just sitting there trying to rationalise what couldn't be made any sense of.
That was when Cal had interfered. The one and only time he had truly crossed the line and meddled with her personal life. He'd picked up on Gillian's hostility towards Alec when her husband had tried to come and pick her up for late dinner at work. She'd dismissed him harshly and Cal had grabbed her and shoved her into his study, locking the doors behind him. She'd just stared at him as if he'd gone crazy and then Cal confronted her. He was not going to watch her as she poured ten years of marriage down the drain. Even now, years later, she still couldn't believe she had so much pent up anger and frustration inside her that she'd hit him. Not once. Not twice. She slapped him and then… She'd attacked him, yelling at him that he had no idea what she was going through. He just stood there, taking her hits, occasionally fending her off when she came too close to breaking his nose. He didn't say a single word once she started to punch him, and just let her emotions run their course, until she showed signs of physical and emotional exhaustion. Without a word he overpowered her and enveloped her in his arms. She didn't put up a fight anymore but slumped tired and drained against his strong body instead, drawing comfort from his presence.
She didn't go home that night. She slept in the guest room at Cal's house. She should have felt wretched that another man provided her with the comfort and patient ear she'd so desperately needed from Alec, but she didn't. She'd tried. She made more than one attempt to reach out to Alec to grieve together but he didn't really want to talk about Sophie. He'd even gone so far as to clearing out Sophie's room while she was at work. When Gillian had come home to find the empty nursery, she'd felt like someone had stabbed her in the middle of her heart. She could actually feel the throbbing pain in her chest. She had trouble breathing. This must be what a heart attack felt like.
She'd made the cumbersome journey into the den where Alec sat quietly reading a crime thriller. Who was that man in her living room? She didn't recognise the stranger who occupied her favourite spot on the couch. Alec looked up at his wife, smiled with effort, and then poked his nose back into his novel as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. He was probably proud of himself. He thought he did her a favour by removing the last ghosts of Sophie from their life, thinking they could move on. Gillian couldn't. Not for a long while, for the ghost of Sophie had lodged into her soul and refused to leave. But in the quiet of Cal's study, she was finally ready to start the grieving process. He'd never know but that night Cal had saved her marriage…well salvaged what little there was left to keep her going for another two years.
Alec waited for her, when she came home the next day. They talked. They sat down, took stock of their marriage and talked for hours. Like they did when they'd just started seeing each other. When had they stopped doing that? She'd loved those endless conversations in the solitude of the night, about life, the future, their wishes and dreams, their insecurities and hopes. It was they against the world. When had they stopped being interested in each other's plans? Life happened just didn't seem a good enough excuse.
It worked for a while but in the end it proved not to be enough. Big bay windows couldn't buy you happiness after all. If Alec hadn't relapsed she might have ended it sooner. She took her marriage vows more seriously than she thought and so she stayed with Alec, in sickness and in health. She found it amusing when Cal tried to hint to her that Alec was cheating or keeping something from her, when they had both been keeping something from Cal together. Alec actually never tried to hide his past from her. Most women would have packed their things and run the other way. Gillian had stayed. Almost as if to make a point to herself. She didn't run away from problems. She always faced them heads on. So what if Alec had a little drug problem in the past. He'd gotten himself help, he was active in his programme, and she had experience with her father, a recovering alcoholic. She could do this. And she did. For eleven years, she was strong enough for both. But then Sophie happened and suddenly the façade of her happy marriage began to crumble. The loss of Sophie served as a catalyst to open her eyes to how much Alec had changed from the man she'd married into this shallow shell of a human being. He had completely retreated into himself, she realised, they'd stopped talking, really talking with each other, a long time before Sophie came and went. He hadn't even tried to hide from her that he was taking drugs again. He didn't tell her directly, but the way he acted around her told her he didn't care that she found out. Alec had always been an open book for her.
Cal, however, could be an enigma when he wanted. She knew little about his past, it was as if Cal Lightman didn't really exist before he walked into her office almost ten years ago. It scared her what he might have been up to before he became an upstanding citizen. If his current behaviour was any indicator of what he might have been like as a young man, she didn't want to know. Terry's visit probably dredged up old memories Cal had done everything to bury, which were now coming back to haunt him. She knew Cal. He was the type who didn't think he deserved what he got, so he subconsciously manipulated his environment until he fucked a situation completely up in a self-fulfilling prophecy. Oh, Cal. Truth or happiness. Never both.
She sighed, "Oh Cal, why can't you for once take a freaking leaf out of my book?" She'd show him how it's done. That it can be done. And that's when she realised that this was maybe what his visit last night was all about. He was trying. So hard. He just didn't know how. And why had she never thought about this before? She'd been so quick to judge Cal, not giving him the benefit of doubt. She'd been hurt by his actions so much she never bothered to stop getting to the bottom of his change in behaviour. He'd pissed her off too many times in too short a while, she felt like he did it all to spite her. Make her pay for something she had even no idea she'd done. She should've known better. He was a troubled soul after all.
Lost in her thoughts, Gillian flipped the title page absent-mindedly over, only to reveal the dedication on the next one:
To Emily and Gillian,
The only two women in my life in my life I truly want to understand but never will because they continue to amaze me with their love, passion and strength every day.