Author's note: thank you very much for all the reviews and messages (I need to take the time to properly reply to the PMs, sorry for the delay)

Chapter seventeen: Her Name Is Elsa

The living-room was cozy – rather modern – with impressive French windows that overlooked an immense backyard. The vision of it under the snow was breathtaking; peaceful too.

Maura would have loved observing it for long hours. If only she had been alone...

The layer of white that seemed to spread almost endless before her eyes was hypnotizing. She felt fine while looking at it. Serene – perfectly calm – in spite of the context she was in.

Guardians. Cailin had been right.

This was how she saw her relation to Margot in the end. As much as the French girl was now eighteen, the fact she was living in a foreign country far from her family pushed Maura to act – and think – as a guardian with her. Thanks to such theory, she had found the courage to attend Leo's parents' dinner yet hoping that they wouldn't ask anything regarding Margot's childhood.

It was one thing to tease Margot about her lie but it surely was another to keep it up with other people too.

Everything had gone smoothly when she and Jane had met them at the Division One Cafe a week or so earlier. They had been adorable and even if she thought that Margot needed to tell Leo the truth – because it was only fair, after all – she had accepted to share a dinner with them as a substitute.

Margot's parents were in Bordeaux. They should have been the ones meeting Leo's parents but they couldn't be here for obvious logistical reasons. As Margot's implicit guardian, it was thus Maura and Jane's role to do so.

Besides, chances were that they wouldn't be asked anything regarding Margot.

It was just a classic – very informal – dinner and she had to admit that she was curious to spend time with Margot's boyfriend's parents. He seemed balanced but she wanted to make sure that his whole family was just like him too.

"This is an excellent champagne, Sue."

The compliment seemed to go straight to Leo's mother's heart. A grin of delight lit up her features. She grabbed the bottle and motioned Maura's glass.

"Would you like some more?"

Jane and Tom were having a look at a series of photographies of the Red Sox – old ones – that Leo's grandfather had taken way back then. They were all in the hallway by the door – hung on the wall – and Jane had noticed them right away when they had arrived.

Sitting on the couch, Maura could hear her wife's voice there in the distance. It peacefully – oddly – rocked her. She loved it more than anything.

"I'm glad you managed to take a day off to come here to Brookline. You both have demanding jobs. Your schedules are probably complicated, not really of the 9-to-5 kind."

"Indeed. Thankfully, our colleagues show themselves to be rather flexible. Jane is working on a rather big case but I am not... Yet it doesn't require her presence on site 24h/day, it is an old case; a cold case actually." Maura was about to add some pointless comment when she noticed the brochure on the coffee table. She frowned, confused. "Are you..."

Sue nodded.

"Yes. We have finalized the adoption papers for a little Haitian girl. Her name is Elsa. She'll be here in a couple of months, now. We had been thinking about it for a while... You know, all our children had left the house and we were deeply missing the family atmosphere we had had for so many years... The house needed a new breath. Elsa will bring it. We are very happy. This house's too big for only two people."

"Congratulations." As much as she meant it, Maura had to admit that her tone had been rather blank and almost deprived of any sympathy. It made her blush. "What... What an excellent initiative!" She had been taken aback.

It was almost too personal for her to handle.

"Thank you. What about you? Have you and Jane ever thought about adoption too? Or even... Just a baby? You're still very young, after all."

Maura heard a bird outside. She focused on it for a while before abdicating. She hadn't recognized the birdsong at all. As her eyes landed back on Sue, she politely smiled but remained quiet. She had not expected the conversation to take this direction. Not at all.

"Talking about our little Elsa?"

She turned around only to see Tom and Jane make it back into the living-room. Leo's father looked as ecstatic as Sue had been when alluding to the adoption.

"Who's Elsa?" Jane sat back on the couch next to Maura and genuinely smiled at their hosts. They were nice but she wasn't sure that she could make any Frozen reference already. They weren't that close either. "She's...?" A dog?

"Elsa is our... Daughter." Sue nodded at her husband. "Yes, I guess it's fair to say it now. We have just finalized the adoption process. She's still in Haiti for the moment but will be here with us very soon, now."

"Oh." Jane bit her lips and blushed. Good thing she hadn't assumed out loud that Elsa might have been a dog or a cat. She would have died at the scene. "This is... This is fantastic!"

"It is, indeed. And that's why I was talking about it with Maura. I was asking her if you had ever... You know... Thought about adoption too. Or give it another try at maternity as you two are still young enough for it."

Whatever was left of genuine on Jane's face vanished right away. She knew that they had to openly talk about it – at least to make things clear – but it was a lot harder than what she had imagined. They were stuck on Level 0.

"Oh ahem... No. No... We ahem... We haven't." She shook her head, looked down at her lap. "We haven't."

"Wouldn't you like having a child around? A house is so much warmer when it's filled of innocent laugh and this pure - genuine - happiness only children have. Their joy is very contagious."

Sue and Tom were teachers. Children were their specialty. What they were saying was very true but the thing was that they had the experience it took to be good parents. Jane didn't. Playing with TJ – from time to time – had nothing to do with parenting. Besides, she didn't think that Maura wanted it.

It was just so blurry.

But because she was well educated and knew when to be polite, Jane nodded at Sue and squeezed Maura's knee.

"It is, indeed."

...

She was tired and wanted nothing but to find back the warmth of her bed. Then she would just fall asleep in Jane's arms and everything would be perfect again.

If only.

Reality had decided to not match her fantasies and – instead – Maura was stuck in Boston traffic on their way back from Brookline.

The dinner had gone smoothly. Sue and Tom were very nice and once Margot and Leo had joined, a large part of the evening had been dedicated to the students' education and what they would do once they graduated.

Margot still wanted to go back to France. She cared about Leo – loved him – but didn't want to go and settle with anyone so young. She wanted to live, to experience a thousand things. He knew it. She had told him about it when coming back from Bordeaux after the holidays. He accepted it.

She just hadn't mentioned yet that Jane and Maura weren't her parents. One thing at a time, she had said. Of course, her so-called mothers had accepted. They couldn't turn her down anyway. It didn't work. They were unable to do so.

What kind of parents would we be if we are incapable of saying no to Margot?

"It was strange, no?"

Jane's voice took Maura out of her daydreams. Hands on the steering-wheel, she turned her head and stared at her wife a bit blankly.

"What was strange?"

Jane shrugged. She had been playing with the buttons of her coat for the last fifteen minutes or so. Out of nervousness.

"Dunno. All of this... The dinner. It's the first time I had the feeling that... That parents considered me as one of them." Her remark made her raise an eyebrow in surprise. Yet it was exactly how she had experienced the evening. "Not in a bad way, you know. It made me feel older but... I dunno. It was like everything was fitting together. It made sense. It was like I was where I supposed to be at the right time."

Maura focused back on the road. No idea why, though. Not a single car had moved an inch but the concert of horns still filled the street in the most annoying way ever.

"Elsa's a cute name. I like it."

Nod. A silent one. Maura could hear Jane's uncertainty pierce through her tone of voice but she did not know how to react to it; what to say. So she remained quiet instead, almost paralyzed; her hands on the steering-wheel as if her life depended on it. Maybe it did, actually. Maybe her life did depend on it. Or at least a part of it.

And then it happened. At 11.22pm. On a snowy day. Their Prius stuck between a Honda and a large Toyota on Arlington Street. Jane took a deep breath and let the words come out.

"Have you ever thought about baby names? Have you ever thought about having children with me? Like... Have you ever wanted to build a family? ... With me...?"

Maura swallowed hard. There they were. At last. And none of them would be able to run awauy from it, this time.