Chapter 3: One Second

Nicole slipped through Bobby's fingers again with more murders behind her that he knew she'd committed, but couldn't prove. She faked her own death and murdered Ella, and then she was gone. Bobby imagined she obtained great pleasure knowing that she'd outsmarted him. The same pleasure she got from asking him questions about his mother, and from referring to herself and Abby in the same sentence. He was almost ashamed that he knew Nicole well enough to know that she was trying to make him think of her when he thought of Abby. Trying to force a connection where there wasn't one. But he wouldn't let Nicole win that easily.

A month or so after Nicole's supposed death when everything had fallen back into its normal swing of things, Goren asked Abby to lunch and she accepted. Her eye got that little glint in it when she was surprised, which made Bobby more confident. It was a matter of facts. Abby liked him, he liked Abby, a date would either confirm their friendship or establish something more. And Bobby was eager to see which way it would go.

It was with Eames blessing that he'd taken the long walk down to the IT department to ask Abby out. His partner only affirmed what he himself believed about Nicole, that any connection to Abby was merely a plot of Nicole's designed to eat away at Bobby so he would never be certain what was what. It was a game, and one Bobby refused to play. His life had nothing to do with Nicole, and the choices he made reflected that.

And the truth was he had wanted to ask Abby out for a very long while but it had just never been the right time. Even though they worked in the same building, days would go by when he wouldn't see her. And every time she came up to visit or to drop off results, a bell would go off in Bobby's head warning him to ask her out now, ask her while things were calm and when she was at ease. Ask her before something came along and got in the way again.

It was a Thursday when Bobby and Abby took their lunch-break together as planned. They wandered to a deli near the precinct that was relatively empty for a lunch time, a fact that Abby noted didn't sing high praises for the food. "In retrospect," Bobby commented as they sat down at a booth and were served coffee by a pleasant but tired looking waitress. "Not the grandest place for a lunch date."

"Lunch date?" Abby repeated. "Are we on a lunch date?"

"Yeah," Goren confirmed boldly. "Might even call it our first date."

"Well, no," Abby smirked, but didn't react negatively to his statement. "Our first date has to have been the benefit. It was so much fancier."

"But we had lunch before that," Bobby reminded her of the day they met all over again, when he'd thought she'd long since left the country but was, in fact, still in his city. "When I saw you babysitting by your apartment building."

"Come on," Abby smothered a wry grin with her coffee cup before she replied. "If you're gonna go back that far why not call our first date the drink you brought me the first time I was in the interview room?"

"Okay," Bobby smiled. "Then maybe we should have a proper first date Saturday night." he suggested, encouraged by the way she was leaning her elbows on the table towards him, engaging him and not withdrawing from him. "That way we'll always know when it was."

An innocently nervous smile slowly spread across Abby's lips, and that little glint flashed in her eye. "Yeah, course, sounds great," but then her face fell. "Oh, crap, no, I can't this weekend. I'm watching my niece and nephew for my brother," she bit her lip, disappointment in her eyes. "Damn."

Still unswayed, Bobby persisted. "Next weekend?"

Her smile returned, and so did that glint. "Absolutely."

xxx

One of the reasons Abby chose to stay in New York was so she could spend more time with her growing extended family. So when Ben asked her if she'd be willing to take care of Tommy and Megan while Ben and a heavily pregnant Kayla visited her parents for the weekend, Abby jumped at the chance.

Abby packed a light bag with a few things for the weekend, reminded Sadie to feed the stray cat that had started coming in her window, and went to her brothers house. It was the way Abby always babysat for Ben and Kayla, it was a hell of a lot easier for her to pack a small bag of clothes than to pack up two small children as well as their beds, toys, food, clothes, etc. Plus, Ben's house was gorgeous, so Abby treated it like a little holiday. A holiday where she was awakened at least once a night by one or both children, but a welcome retreat from her stingy apartment nonetheless.

After Abby dumped her bag in the guest room at her brother's, and waved off Kayla and Ben with the kids, she took the children straight to Central Park. In her experience, it was always better to distract Megan and Tommy when their parents went away so they didn't start freaking out and wondering why they'd left. At four years old, curly haired Megan was so used to Abby babysitting she barely noticed her parents gone, but Tommy was only eighteen-months-old; the distraction worked best with him.

It was late in the afternoon so the park wasn't too crowded. Abby steered the kids towards a playground where Megan immediately dashed for the swing set. Almost instantly she was chatting with another little girl, and then they clasped hands and hid under the slide speaking in whispers. Abby envied that innocence of childhood where just being in the eye line of another person made them a friend.

While Megan played, Abby and Tommy settled in the sandpit with a couple of other toddlers and began building a sandcastle. It was always a bad idea to set a drooling toddler into sand, they just wound up sticky and messy. But Tommy liked it. And if Abby didn't keep her eye on him, he also liked eating it.

Out of the corner of her eye Abby noticed a young couple walking hand in hand across the grass, and it reminded her that this time the next weekend she would be preparing for her date with Bobby. It had been a long, long while since she'd had a date. And it would be her first in New York that wasn't set up by someone else. The first three blind dates Abby had ever been on in her life also turned out to be the last three blind dates she would ever go on. It had always seemed horrible to her in theory, meeting up with someone you don't know because another party suggests it's a good idea. In practice it wasn't any better.

This date would be different, Abby knew it would be. She wasn't nervous about being out with Bobby, which was generally her main issue with dating; she could never be comfortable. But Bobby had already seen her at her very worst. Worse than her worst, when he had suspected she was involved in a murder. So caring about how she acted in front of him really wasn't at the forefront of Abby's mind; he'd been subject to her personality already.

A crowd of nattering young children wandered by half-listening to the exasperated orders of their frazzled teacher. Their giggles and laughs made Abby smile, thinking of how exciting a field trip was back when she was younger. All the children carried balloons which immediately caught Tommy's eye. Distracted from their sandcastle, he made a humming noise and pointed at them.

"Yeah, I know," Abby said trying to get him back to building. "But if I get you one you'll chomp into it like last time and freak yourself out."

Not because he was understanding his Aunt, more because the balloons were walking away, Tommy started to cry.

As the afternoon wore on, parents and nannies began rounding up children, packing bags, fare-welling each other. And thankfully for Abby, now Tommy wasn't the only toddler throwing a fit. He wasn't even the loudest. But the fussing children all seemed to feed off each other's misery, so Abby decided she, too, should take her kids home.

"Megan, come on," Abby called to the playground as she lifted a whinging Tommy onto her hip. "Time to go." Tommy blatantly refused to be put in his stroller, so Abby just held him as she wandered towards the playground equipment to get her niece. "Megan?" There were only a half dozen or so children left playing - and after a moment Abby realized that Megan wasn't one of them.

Four of the children swinging from the monkey bars were boys, and the only girl had flaming red hair and was running up the slide. Tommy grumbled and shifted in Abby's arms to be put down, but she just clung to her nephew tighter. "Megan?" Turning on the spot, Abby searched the crowd for her niece. It was late in the afternoon, everyone were beginning to pack up their children to get them home, so everyone was moving, and to Abby every flash of curly brown hair was Megan, except none of them were Megan.

Abby's heart began to thump against her chest, and her voice was making a strange, shrieking noise. "Megan!" Tommy started to wail louder the more frantic Abby became, which only made her more frantic.

Her screams drew curious glances from everyone in her vicinity, until finally one grandmother came to her side. "Is everything alright, dear?"

After doing one more scan of the dwindling crowd, Abby stared agape at the kind stranger standing in front of her. "My niece is gone."

xxx