A/N: Before you read this chapter, make sure you saw the last one, coz fanfiction net kind of messed up my update there, as in adding the new chapter, but not showing that the story was updated.
Anyway, enjoy!
Chapter 6: Not winced nor cried
On Saturdays they go on trips, mostly to a museum, the aquarium, or to the park. The holidays came about and brought the first snow. For Christmas, Jane gave everyone tickets to Six Flags. A little reluctantly, the boys agreed to postpone their visit to the amusement park until spring, because Maura has been suffering from a mild, but annoying bladder infection during the second half of December. She had even called in sick for a couple of days in order to avoid uncomfortable situations with her subordinates and co-workers.
So today they decide on the park, where a new sled Frankie has given his nephews is supposed to make up for the things they would do at the amusement park. Jane pulls them all the way from their house to the playground. She loves how oblivious their sons are to the cold and bad weather in general, even though she is the one who continuously needs convincing when it comes to the muddy and wet experiences her family calls 'a walk in nature'.
Admittedly, there is a freedom to being outside, the way Maura encourages their sons.
Jane enjoys trying to get Maura into wearing a puddle suit similar to the ones of the kids, but naturally, it falls on deaf ears. Just as Maura heaves Charra onto the swings and his muddy boots brush his mother's way too expensive pants, Jane is about to make her point again. She never does, though, because out the corner of her eye she notices a man standing at the rim of the sand box, and with everything that has been going on lately, she is instantly alarmed. When she turns fully to look at the stranger, her emotions at his sight stream out into pretty much every direction she knows.
"Casey."
Maura gets so startled by that one-word statement, that she takes an involuntary step forward, right into Charra's swinging space. The little boy and his swing bump into her chest only a second later, making her stumble backwards and knocking Charra out of the seat.
The three-year-old starts wailing, and Maura herself feels wretched and like crying as she moves to gather him up in her arms. The boy struggles out of her grip, however, sobbing "my stone, my stone".
A scenario like that is already a classic for Charra. Barely out of the house, no matter where they are about to go, something will be in his hand; mostly a stick, a stone, a chestnut or an acorn. That kind of item will be holy for the period of being outside and needs to be carried everywhere. The smaller objects are invisible to the uninformed outsider, as Charra will keep them enclosed in his small fist while carrying on with whatever needs to be done.
Just like today. It only takes Jane a few seconds to spot the little pebble, and with Casey's eyes on her, she feels like performing a trick her son trained her to do. She is glad when Charra finally stops whining and squirming. After she gives Maura a pat on the shoulder that is meant as a comfort, she straightens up and finds their other son already engaged in a conversation with Casey. Alban knows the General from several Skype sessions. He also knows him to be his father.
They all greet each other politely. Casey apologizes for the unannounced visit, saying he was not sure he would gather the courage, and Jane suggests getting Maura and the children home and then going out to talk over coffee.
Jane tells her sons goodbye when they reach the driveway to their house, and gives Maura a long, reassuring kiss. "I'll be back in a couple of hours."
The ME nods briefly and waves to the General.
.
"He seems good", Casey remarks after they leave Jane's home. "And looks a lot taller than on a screen."
Jane is glad he does not use 'very well adjusted' or any of the other clichés that always swirl around when someone talks about her son. Then again, Casey really knows what it means to be perceived in a specific way because of certain physical aspects.
"We've got a very good school", Jane explains. "The boys' class consists of children with and without special needs. Alban has an awesome personal trainer of whom Charra is very jealous."
They have not even taken their seats and Jane is already telling Casey about the troubling things that have been going on.
"Six weeks ago, an envelope got sent to the bullpen. It held a family portrait from an article on Maura, as the Chief Medical Examiner of the Commonwealth. All our faces were scratched off. There was no note, no prints, no return address. About four weeks later, someone opened the door to our backyard, actually disarmed the security system, and lured out our cat. Snapped his neck and left him on the lawn. No trace evidence again."
"Someone is going through a lot of trouble to get under your skin." Casey's face is so earnest and sympathetic that Jane feels something melt inside of her. It is so good to talk to someone about that. Especially when there is no need to be strong, a feeling she gets a lot around Maura lately.
"Yes, exactly. We have a patrol car coming by our house every twenty minutes, but the city can't afford something like that forever and as long as we don't have any lead..."
"That sounds awfully scary."
"To be honest, what scares me most is the affect it has on Maura. She seems changed, and I feel like I have to put in extra effort so our family doesn't fall apart. She wrote me this letter about two months ago, and it's just like she's mingling all those-" Jane abruptly stops herself, her brows furrowed in thought. "I'm sorry, Casey, I can't do this."
"I know. I like that about you."
"Thank you, though."
"For what?"
"Making me realize I need to talk to someone about this."
"You're welcome."
They smile at each other and Jane is grateful that they have grown this comfortable around one another again. They try to talk once a month, a rhythm they established about a year ago, and a lot of the initial uneasiness around each other has dissipated.
"So, how long will you be in town?"
"A couple of weeks. I would love to do something with Alban and Charra."
Jane's heart warms even more.
Neither of them initially took Casey for the kind of father he has become: a mostly absent one. He once said that his sense of loyalty to his job, his duty and his comrades had actually grown after he decided to not come back for Alban. So many men over there are separated from their families and not many of them really have a choice. Many of them, however, are crucial parts of their families, they miss them, they are missed, they ache for what they are missing out on.
Casey could have left his life behind in order to be with them, that had not been an impossibility in itself. He knows he will have to live with his decision of not being there for his son, and that he will have missed all the important times in his life. Without question, that knowledge does hurt. Yet, he has always known Alban is in a wonderful family, well taken care of. And he knows it is up to him to figure out how to fit in there.
Jane is touched by how much Casey understands what they are living. He acknowledges and respects Maura's presence as a second parent in Alban's life. And he is not asking for Alban alone, because he has an idea of how difficult it is for the two brothers to understand that they are different in some ways. That Alban is going to get to know his biological father and Charra is not.
.
Maura puts the boys down for a nap. In the study she finds the old tool box and opens one of its drawers. She already knows what she is looking for, and finds it after seconds, the box being much more organized since she started roaming around in it.
It is a printout she once gave to Jane that holds research about the medical condition Casey had in the past. She turns it around in her hand a couple of times, as if she expects a hidden message to magically appear, giving her a clue on how to proceed with all the questions that have taken over her mind. It is a hopeless attempt.
Instead she decides to go through some of the other papers and snippets that are stuffed into that drawer. She pulls out one of Jane's old English papers from high school, a short story about a dog and a hedgehog that got her a D. Jane has kept quite a few things from her school days.
One is a paper on how students would imagine the world in 2022. Jane's eight-year-old-self had proposed a national park with 'brought-back-dinosaurs'.
"Whatever that means", Maura had chuckled when she first read it a couple of weeks ago. "Time machines or genetic reconstruction..." In response Jane had whined, "Give me some credit: I wrote that pre-Jurassic Park."
Suddenly, a voice startles Maura out of that memory. "You know what my Ma said the first time I brought home a D?"
"What did she say?" Maura whispers, genuinely worried about how bad the reaction must have been, yet also nervously trying to see past Jane in the doorway.
"Said it's about time." Jane smiles, fond of that memory, and then realizes that Maura is checking if Casey is still around. She drops down next to the medical examiner and tugs her towards herself until the smaller woman's back is resting against Jane's front.
"Do you really think I would share this with anyone but you?" Jane motions first at the box and then at her and Maura.
"Yes." There is no point in not being honest, not for her anyway.
"Well, I wouldn't. This is yours, Maur'." She kisses Maura's temple until the doctor turns around far enough to kiss her back. "It's just you and me."
After a while Maura leans forward to open the lid on top of the box. She likes the objects the most.
"When I was a child, I read a story about a boy who would help out this blind old man in his apartment building. One day, the blind man showed him a collection of matchboxes and cans; when the boy opened them, he could hear someone playing the piano, the sound of the sea rushing, war noises, or the cheerful chatter of a summer feast." Her fingertips are traveling from object to object again.
"Then, some day after school, the boy came home and met the paramedics in the stairwell, carrying out the old man's lifeless form."
"Geez, Maura", Jane smirks, "you could at least retell your childhood stories a little less creepy."
Maura grins and holds out a tiny wooden box that reads the detective's name and something in Italian. Her Latin skills give her a hint to what it could mean, but it makes no sense to her. "What's this?"
"My baby teeth."
Maura loses her intent for a moment and makes an indistinguishable sound at Jane's reply. "I don't think this is sanitary."
"It's not supposed to be properly preserved or something, Maur", Jane chuckles. "It's an Italian custom to keep 'em. I actually never wondered why."
"So, I take it the tooth fairy has never visited you?"
"As if she ever came to the 'I' in the Isles-has-no-room-for-imagination mansion."
"Touchée." The doctor rolls the tooth container around in her hand. "After the blind man died", Maura continues her story, "the boy went to get the boxes. However, from that day on, they kept silent." She looks expectantly at Jane, who, however, is staring back at her with a blank expression.
"Aren't you afraid that's going to happen to your treasures?"
"I think this is pretty self-explanatory." Jane shrugs as she motions at the object in Maura's hand that contains some of her lapsed body parts.
"But most of them are not. Wouldn't you want these memories to live on?"
Jane shrugs once more. "No. They mean something to me, and now also to you, but to anyone else, they would probably appear to be useless and simply wouldn't make any sense. Would you want people to read your diaries?"
"Somehow, yes." Maura blushes. "I envy you, though."
At Jane's raised eyebrows she adds: "To you, we are enough."
A/N: The story of the blind man is from the song "The old Mr. Stone" by singer songwriter Gerhard Schöne.
Admittedly, I have no idea whether the thing with the baby teeth is an Italian custom. It's a German one, though ;)