See Ch 1 for disclaimers…
Again – thank snowinmysoul if you are enjoying the frequent updates. Betas… wonderful things.
Jane barely snatched her hand out of the way of her mother's wooden spoon.
"Jane Rizzoli those meatballs are still raw in there. Do you want to catch salmonella?" Angela turned to Maura. "Tell her that she is going to get sick from eating raw meat."
Maura looked up from the dough she was placing under ceramic bowls to rest. "Actually she won't get sick from eating raw beef. If the beef was exposed to bacteria such as Escherichia coli, Campylobacter jejuni, Listeria monocytogenes, or Staphylococcus aureus then she would become sick by the bacteria tainting the raw meat."
"See Ma? I'm not going to get sick from tasting the sauce." Jane went to dip back into the sauce with a teaspoon.
Maura shook her head slightly. "I didn't say that. Raw meat provides an excellent transference medium if it was exposed to any bacteria during the processing. Ground beef is of extra concern because during grinding any exposed surface is now combined throughout the end product. Right now that meat is partially cooked and the temperature would be favorable for encouraging bacterial growth. If the beef was contaminated it you would be ingesting it at an optimal time to promote infection."
Jane dropped her teaspoon to the counter with a clatter. "Great, now I have no appetite, thanks."
Maura shrugged and put the last ball of dough away.
Looking out the window Jane watched the waning light of late afternoon. "I hate that it gets dark so early this time of year. If the guys don't hurry up we'll be trying to rig this entire mess up by streetlight. She turned to Maura. "Are you absolutely positive you don't want to put candles in the window and a nice wreath with a spotlight on it? Minimalist is all the hipster rage."
Maura leveled her best stare at Jane. "That is hardly keeping with the festive atmosphere of the rest of the neighborhood."
"Not true. Candles are very festive and as an added bonus I don't have to climb several stories up that rickety old ladder of Pop's and..." Jane paused when bell rang at the back door. Pulling it open she was surprised to see Tommy standing there, a grocery bag in hand. "Tommy, I didn't know you were coming over here to help."
Tommy handed over the bag. "Here, Ma wanted ground Romano from Capone's. She said you needed help with putting up some lights? I got to go help Ricky unload the van, there's a shit ton of stuff packed in there. He's lending us his ladders from the painting company and he has a date to get to so we need to hustle."
"What else are you unloading?" When Tommy didn't answer, Jane peered around the door watching him pulling cardboard boxes out of the back of the van. Her eyebrows shot up when she noticed a familiar box from an old stereo she had received as a Christmas gift one year hit the asphalt. She spun around and handed the cheese to her mother and grabbed Maura's elbow almost in one motion. "You come with me."
Pulling Maura into the laundry room Jane shut the door behind them. "Maura, why is my brother unloading all the Christmas decorations from my childhood on your driveway? We already bought pretty little white lights that match the rest of the neighborhood."
Maura bit her lip. "Your mother was so excited when she heard I was going to decorate the outside this year. She insisted."
Rubbing her hand over her face Jane sighed. "You have no idea what you agreed to. Those boxes are filled with a collection of all sorts of brightly colored bulbs in all different sizes. Hell, there are probably some old ceramics from my grandparents in there. Nothing is going to match. Different types, different sizes and different colors." Jane watched Maura try to cover up a wince. "Nothing in those boxes is going to be pretty, white or delicate."
"She was so excited." Maura took a step forward and buried her forehead against Jane's shoulder. "I didn't have the heart to say no."
Jane rubbed Maura's upper arms and kissed her temple. "I'll go out and tell her I bought new lights today."
Maura took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "No, it's okay."
They heard Frankie and Frost's muffled greetings through the door. Jane wrapped her arms around Maura and gave a gentle squeeze. "The guys are here, last chance to speak up." She felt Maura shake her head. "Okay then. Don't say later on that I didn't warn you."
Maura dipped the cup rim in flour before cutting another round of dough off and passing it to Angela. "Now I'm getting worried, it's dark out there. How are they going to put up lights safely?"
"They'll be fine, your floodlights are on and if they're out there too long we'll go get them for dinner and convince them to finish another night." Angela filled the dough round and pressed a fork along the edges. "Are you finished with your Christmas shopping?"
"Almost. I still need to pick out something for Jane. I have some little things, but not a real gift. I think it will be one of those, see it and know it's the right thing. I just don't know where to start looking." Maura selected another ball of dough and ran her hands over the smooth surface, testing it, before rubbing flour along her rolling pin. "I think everyone else is covered. I had to resort to using the internet to find ideas and I'm still not confident they'll like what I bought."
"My daughter is impossible to buy for so don't let that worry you. As for the rest of them, I swear, half the time I never see any of them use a single gift I buy. They think I don't notice but I do. Everyone but the baby is hard to find the right thing for. He was easy. Tommy and I finished shopping for him today." Angela counted the ravioli and checked her bowl of filling. "I think rolling that one will do it and the rest of the dough we can run through the pasta maker and let it dry out." She watched Maura finish rolling out the dough and moved over to help cut out circles. "I would never have imagined I'd have a grandchild this time last year to shop for. He is a bright spot for certain."
Maura pushed down the slight wistful feeling and gave Angela a small smile. "There were a lot of changes this year." She was grateful for the excuse to move away when they were finished and she gathered up the last of the dough to load the hopper of her pasta extruder. Maura turned on the machine and they were silent, the whirring of the machine filling the space as it churned out linguini.
As Maura draped the finished strands over her drying rack, she felt Angela's hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry honey, sometimes I forget how hard all that was. It's easy to be caught up in being the grandmother."
"No, don't apologize, I'm fine. It usually doesn't bother me. Not like it used to. After all, it brought Jane and me together. I think it is the holidays." Suddenly she turned around and faced Angela, twisting her hands together. Maura felt herself doing it and immediately placed hands palm down on the counter. "Angela? May I ask you a question?" Something in her tone must have registered because Angela gave her a concerned nod. Maura rushed the words out, her voice becoming strained. "Please be honest, why do you think Jane won't move in with me?"
The incredulous look on Angela's face was answer enough. "You already talked about it and she said no?" At Maura's nod Angela shook her head. "Did she give you a reason?"
"She didn't say no precisely. She evaded the discussion and eventually said we should wait until our relationship was more established considering you were already living here." Maura sighed. "However, I don't follow her logic pattern." Maura glanced at Angela staring out the window over the sink as they both watched Jane combing over the boxes on the patio. "Wouldn't it make more sense for you to live here if she was too?"
Seeing Jane waving at the boxes of lights, Angela let out a long sigh. "I might have an idea of what is going on and you can blame me. I'll talk to her."
Tommy came off the ladder and blew on his hands before pulling his gloves back out of his pocket and pulling them back on. "I think that will do it for the hooks along the roof." He hit the aluminum ladder. "I owe Ricky. Can you imagine pulling this shit off with a regular ladder like Pop used to do? We'd be holding the bottom and balancing half of it on a wood block on this street."
Jane clambered down off the second ladder nodding. "Pop would have cracked his skull open." She shoved on her gloves. "The view up there isn't half bad. I wonder if Maura would ever consider a roof deck."
Frost snorted. "A roof deck in this neighborhood? Weren't you the one who was just swearing at the box of colored lights and muttering about Maura getting a call from the neighborhood association?"
"Fair point and you know she will. She won't tell us about it, but she will. I don't think there is one strand of matching lights in that box." She called up the driveway to Frankie. "Yo Frankie, do all those strands work?"
"Some odd bulbs out but yeah, we're good, Pop has a box of replacements. I don't think we'll need all the lights though. There is no way we used to put all these up." Frankie jogged down the driveway towards them with a box. "Of all the things Ma kept from the house, old Christmas lights take the cake. I mean seriously why?"
"Why anything with Ma?" Dropping the box at his feet, Frankie raised both his eyebrows at his sister. "You know what? We don't have is enough outdoor extension cords to get these lit tonight. This old house of Maura's doesn't have many outlets outside and what ones do exist are out back on the patio."
All four of them stood there staring up at the house.
Finally Tommy gave them a shrug and walked over to a ladder. "Well the lights aren't getting up there by themselves. Plug them in some other night, but we're here now. Somebody go grab me a string. Let's use the two tall ladders to leapfrog the roofline. It will go faster and I'm freezing my balls off."
Jane grabbed the other ladder with Frankie and fussed with the legs until it was secure on the slope of the sidewalk. When Frost made back with a box they worked in teams, feeding lines of bulbs up. After they'd rigged about half the house up with lights, Tommy turned to her, tugging at his end of the line in her hands until she turned to face him.
"Memories right Jane? Though I think Pop used to wait until there was snow on the ground and it was the coldest day of December to put up the lights."
"Naw, coldest day was reserved for finding a Christmas tree. That way when we started fighting he could put his earmuffs on and pretend he didn't know us." Jane looked at her brother and he was chuckling. When he looked back at her he was serious again.
"Lydia's dating." Tommy finished hooking his line of lights through and called down to Frankie. "Ready for another strand up here."
"Oh?"
"Yeah, I mean she's been on a date here or there but nothing that lasted beyond a night." He paused when Frankie was climbing up to take the next strand from him. Tommy connected the ends of the light strings and started winding the lights around the hooks. "But then she met this mechanic over at Jerry's Garage and they've been out a few times now." He handed the line to his sister before she could say anything and scrambled down the ladder to move it.
Jane looped the lights over a hook and reached over to the next to repeat it, pulling tightly so everything could withstand a Boston winter. Light, hook, pull, repeat until she was almost finished and Tommy had reappeared on her other side. She looked at her little brother, not certain what to say. "Well you knew eventually she'd date again right? You two aren't together."
"I didn't think it would be so soon. Don't you think it's a little quick?"
"TJ is over a year old Tom. She has her new place and it sounds like she likes her job at City Hall. She's settled and it sounds like she is ready to start living her life a little. Why does this bug you anyhow? I thought you weren't interested in Lydia like that. How many fights have you and Ma had over it?"
"I know, I know. "
"Is it the guy? Are you worried about TJ? Do you want us to try to look into him?"
"No, Mike is okay and all. You might have your ways to check into people but I have mine. He's not going hurt TJ or anything. He actually is pretty cool with him." Tommy sighed. "I didn't think it would bother me that she might have someone new in her life."
"Well if it bugs you this much you should at least talk to her about it. Don't be an ass about it, but nothing is going to change one way or the other if you don't talk about it. Just figure out what it is that is bothering you first. That way you'll know what kind of conversation you need to have with her." Jane called down for the next strand. After a few minutes she called down again and noticed Frost was on his phone and Frankie wasn't in sight. "Great, stuck up a ladder while he has a nice little chat."
"You're right. I'll talk to her."
"After you figure out what you want."
"After I figure out what I want." Tommy sighed. "How did you figure out Maura was what you wanted?"
"Because I couldn't help but be with her." Jane sighed. "Because when everything happened with TJ all I wanted to do was pull her away from everything, hold her tight and never let go. I needed to be with her, protect her." Embarrassed, Jane looked down the ladder again. "I still need to be with her. No matter how much time we spend together, even when I'm mad at her, I need to be with her. End of the day she's last thing I want to see going to sleep."
Tommy had a slightly confused expression. "So can I ask how come you guys aren't married or at least living together? It sounds to me like you have that whole 'what you want' thing figured out."
They were interrupted by Frost handing her a line of lights. "Jane last one for you. That was dispatch. I'm going inside to get Maura."
Working quickly, thinking about what she wanted to say as she went along, Jane finished the last hook and connected the lines, leaning over carefully to hand it to Tommy. "You're right little brother. I know what I want but after that I'm in the same spot as you. I have to have that same conversation and it isn't easy. I know Maura loves me but it's complicated, she's complicated." Ready to leave the situation Jane started down the ladder.
Tommy stopped his sister's descent by calling her name. "Hey, I'll make you a deal. If you have your chat, I'll have mine."
Jane snorted. "We'll see."
"Chicken shit." He smiled at her. "Tell you what. I'll finish what I can tonight on the lights okay?"
"You don't have to. We'll get to it later."
Tommy shrugged a bit and strung up another few inches of bulbs. "Let me do something for you okay? Not often that I can. Lights or otherwise."
She looked at him strangely. She wanted to ask him to clarify, but Frost called up again and Jane headed down without another word.
