Author's note: thank you very much for all your reviews and messages, it's a pleasure to read and answer them.

November

Chapter eleven: What Constance Has To Say

"Mornin'..."

Jane's voice made her smile, instinctive reaction from her body Maura enjoyed more than anything. She turned around – coffee pot in hand – but raised an eyebrow with surprise as she came to face a still half-asleep Jane who wasn't wearing many clothes.

"Good morning." She marked a pause, just the required time for a smirk to play on her lips. "Since when do you walk in the kitchen half-naked?"

Jane frowned - let Maura plant a soft kiss on her lips - and blinked as if she hadn't understood the question. Very slowly, she looked down at her own body and yawned.

"I'm wearing a tank top and a pair of boxers. I'm dressed." She shrugged. "Since when this kind of outfit sounds like an issue to you? You seemed pretty ok with it last night." Or at least ok enough to go and take it off from Jane. "What gotta be covered is covered, no?" Half-convinced nod from Maura. "See. No big deal."

"Well, we currently have two guests in the house: Margot and my mother who – in case you forgot – arrived last night. Unannounced. One of them could walk in on you any time. Not just Bass or Jo Friday."

And they both knew that it wasn't something Jane was very fond of. She only felt comfortable with her body and the idea of being nude with Maura. For anyone else, she had to be fully clothed.

"Margot partied until the wee hours so she won't get up before 4pm - like the student she is - and your mother is jet lagged so I don't think she's gonna be up anytime soon." Without any warning, Jane took off her tank top, repeated the gesture with her boxers. "There we are. Now I am naked... In my house. And I can go naked all around if I want to."

The moment she started making some sort of dance moves in front of Maura, the medical examiner burst out laughing. Jane had certainly changed since they had got married. This would have surely not happened way back then.

"You are in a good mood, aren't you?" Maura bit her lower lip to hold back a chuckle. The scene was hilarious. "I wasn't challenging you, Jane."

"I'm naked! I'm naked! Naaaaked... N.A.K.E.D... Naked!"

"Good mor-... Oh my God, I am sorry." Constance immediately turned around and began to leave again; a hand in the air to apologize.

Silence.

"Fuck!" Succumbing to a very strong panic, Jane looked from right to left and ran to the first door her eyes landed on. She opened it and locked herself in the small room. "Shit."

Soft knock on the door; stifled giggles.

"Why did go into the pantry, Jane?"

"To admire the flour."

Not so honest answer but Maura didn't insist. She cleared her voice, trying desperately to remain serious.

"Wouldn't you like to have your clothes to do so? Here they are..."

The door opened ajar after a moment of hesitation. Jane's hand appeared. She grabbed the clothes and closed back right away.

"You are in the dark, Jane. Why don't you turn the light on?"

Growl.

"Leave me alone, Maura!"

Good mood: over.

...

Constance put down her cup of tea and looked by the window at the busy street. This cafe seemed to have turned into a ritual of some sort. She came back to it year after year with Maura whenever she was in Boston.

It hadn't really crossed her mind until now but she actually loved the idea of seeing it as a point of reference in her relation to her daughter because they didn't have any and it weighed a lot, bitterly. She hadn't been a good mother.

And she highly regretted it.

"What's wrong?"

The question took Maura completely aback. She had just finished explaining her mother Margot's incongruous lie and how she and Jane had accepted to play along. Constance had looked amused – just as she had been the first time around – so her question didn't make a lot of sense right now.

"What do you mean?"

Constance didn't look at her in disapproval but the way she wrinkled her nose resulted enough to let Maura nonetheless understand that she hadn't appreciated her answering to her question by another one. She didn't have much patience.

"You have put on weight and have literally thrown yourself on the cookies as soon as we sat here. If I didn't know that you have a tendency to hide behind food when you are stressed out or... If I ignored the fact that you are married to a woman, I would assume that you are a few weeks pregnant. So I ask: what are you stressing about?"

Maura pursed her lips and suddenly avoided her mother's gaze. She grabbed her cup of tea and took a sip, more to win some time than because she would have been thirsty. Nothing was wrong, right?

Absolutely nothing.

Her mother was seeing things that didn't exist. She had always had a very creative mind. She was an artist for a reason, after all.

This is exactly what it is, Isles. Don't be worried. It is extrapolation, nothing else.

"Pregnancy..." Constance squinted her eyes and focused on what she had just said. She froze then looked back at her daughter. "This is your problem, isn't it? Children. Maternity. This is why you are stressed and keep on eating these thin mint things."

"No!" Even her very own tone of voice betrayed her. Feeling defeated, Maura shrugged and bit her lower lip out of nervousness. "Not really..."

"Oh, sweetheart... Maura." Constance would never say it but she had actually hesitated before bringing her hand to her daughter's cheek to sweetly caress it. It was an unusual gesture between them and maybe it didn't fit right now. "Why do you have this tendency to keep all this inside? You know that it isn't good. You know that it only does harm to you. What is going on?"

"I don't know." Her high-pitched voice only manage to highlight her stress. She shook her head immediately to apologize for it. "This is the problem: I don't know."

Her lack of precision made Constance frown. She did look concerned, a lot. Her cell phone vibrated but she didn't even have a look at it. She remained focused on Maura instead.

"You don't know what?"

"All this!" Maura rolled her eyes and made a vague gesture of the hand. She swallowed hard. "If I want to have children or if I don't want to have any... I don't know. I don't know what I want. I don't know what Jane wants... I am unable to come to any conclusion regarding it."

"Would you like some more cookies?"

The waitress' intrusion sounded awfully brutal but Constance's reaction to it probably even more. The artist looked up at the employee as if she had lost her mind.

"Don't you think she had enough already?"

The snappy – extremely harsh – question made Maura blush. She looked down at the table and tried to focus on a precise point. Her spoon. A drop of tea had dried on it.

The waitress mumbled a semblance of apologies and left.

"Oh, that's fine..." Constance rolled her eyes, well aware of her daughter's reaction. She cast a look at the waitress and shrugged. "I will give her a big tip." She angrily grabbed her tea cup and took a deep breath to calm down a bit. Smooth voice. "What does Jane think about it?"

Maura almost winced in pain. She knew that the moment she let her mother know that they hadn't really talked about it, she would get sharp feedbacks. And maybe it was deserved. Probably.

Surely.

"I don't know." She paused and cleared her voice. "It isn't a topic we discuss a lot, as a matter of fact."

"Then it has to change. And as soon as possible. I understand better now why you work with dead people. Really. Communication isn't your thing and it would be alright if you weren't married but you are and you can't adopt this attitude. The silence over it is eating you up, Maura. This isn't good at all and I refuse to see you unhappy."

"Did you talk about it yourself? Did you conclude one day that you wouldn't have children? I know that you didn't plan to have any, that I wasn't planned to make it into your life. Is it something you – you and dad – had made clear?"

Maura's urging tone of voice took both of them aback. It was the first time that she actually asked such a thing, with such an authoritative tone. Her questions were fair. She knew that her mother – she knew it for a fact – wasn't sterile. Yet she had never had children nor felt the desire to give her another sibling.

Conscious of the fact that her reply would imply many things, Constance took her time and tried to choose the words that would fit the best; the ones that wouldn't hurt.

"Yes." She swallowed hard. "We had taken the decision to not have children."

Maura coldly nodded.

"I see." Neutral voice, deprived of any feeling.

"And this is why I am so glad that you made it unexpectedly into our lives. I would have missed so many things if you hadn't been my daughter, Maura. Your adoption is the best decision we have made so far. The one I know that I will never be able to regret because you mean so much to us..." A latent pain began to distort Constance's face as she desperately tried to fight against tears. She sighed. Loudly. "And it hurts to know that you probably don't realize that."