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

Chapter Fourteen - Secretly Fine

"It's a good idea to go away for the weekend. Make sure to leave before rush hour or you'll get stuck in traffic. Oh, and call me when you make it there."

Jane looked up from the dozen of bags that littered the living-room floor and made a face at her mother's comment. Seriously? She had to call her? Angela noticed her daughter's annoyance and shrugged.

"What? I just wanna know that you made it there safe, Janie. It's not a crime. I'm not asking you to call me night and day. I know you and Maura need some time for yourselves. I'm not stupid."

Jane swallowed hard. Something told her that her mother was not alluding to the loss of Petunia and their child. She could see it in her eyes, in the way Angela tried to bring up a warm and friendly smile. She took a few seconds to ponder the idea and finally nodded at her mother.

"I'll call you when we have checked in and all, okay? Or I'll send you a text message, and a picture." Jane checked her watch. Her mother was right about the traffic though. "Maura? Are you ready? Where the hell are you?"

Provincetown was not very far but half of Boston drove there for the weekend and Jane was not in the mood to spend three hours stuck in traffic. Three hours of Yo-Yo Ma, besides. She would be the one choosing the music when they came back which means today Maura was in charge of the playlist.

A stifled noise rose from the first floor. Jane and her mother immediately looked up at the ceiling and frowned. What was going on?

"I am coming!" Maura's cheerful voice came from the stairs soon followed by a huge sound very similar to the one Jane and Angela had just heard. "I think I am ready. We can leave."

Her curiosity piqued, Jane walked towards the lobby but stopped right away as soon as she saw Maura standing there. Angela followed her and burst out laughing. Maura pouted, taken aback by Jane's mother's reaction.

"You don't like my hat?"

Jane cleared her voice to win some time. Such an old subterfuge but it sill worked out. She approached Maura and motioned the object she was holding.

"We're not going to Hawaii, you know that?"

Maura forced a smile only to hide better her sudden lack of self-confidence. Alright, perhaps she had been a tad excessive with the online shopping when she had booked their weekend in Provincetown but Hawaii was not the only spot in the USA where they could go surfing.

"It is one of the best surfboards that you will find on the market. I don't see what is wrong about it. I chose the turquoise model because... Because the color is a nice reminiscence of the summer. This is a 9"..."

Angela's laugh vanished as soon as her daughter stared at her, asking her implicitly to remain as serious as she could. Jane took a deep breath and cut off Maura right away.

"And I like it very much, Maura. It's just that ahem... It is kinda big for your Prius. Besides, I didn't know you actually liked surfing...?"

"I have never tried. I simply assumed that our getaway by the sea was a nice occasion to actually take a few lessons."

Of course Jane knew that they would leave with the surfboard at this exact moment because the disappointment in Maura's voice – a very genuine one – was impossible to handle. It had been three weeks since the funeral now and they were barely beginning to enjoy the sweetness of life again. Going away for a couple of days was the best thing they had come up to lately.

And a subtle approach to a well needed freedom for their couple too.

They hadn't said anything to anyone about the shift in their relationship. Remarks here and there let Jane assume that people had understood but nobody had put words on anything yet. After the tragedy they had gone through, they deserved a moment of peace. It was too soon to make it official already.

"You should buy a Lexus, you know. I mean look at the amount of bags you wanna take with you... And the surfboard. We're not leaving for three weeks, Maura! It's a forty-eight-hour kind of thing."

Twenty minutes later, they said goodbye to Angela with a packed Prius and a surfboard on top of it. They hadn't left Beacon Hill that Jane was already complaining about the music and a sudden need of caffeine but Maura couldn't care less. She was happy. For the very first time in a long while, she properly enjoyed the sun – the perspective of spending two days by the sea with Jane – and the lightness that embraced her heart. She was at the right place with the right person.

This was her definition of happiness.

"Ma' knows for us." Jane closed the novel she couldn't focus on and looked at the streets speeding past in front of her. "I'm sure she does. Her little insinuations... She knows, Maura. She knows for us."

The remark didn't seem to trouble Maura the slightest bit. She had got used to it, as a matter of fact. Jane had started talking about it for a few days now. She was convinced that every single person they knew had guessed for them.

"Your paranoia starts worrying me. First you assumed that Barry knew because he mentioned the Boston Pride – which is a tad cliché, I am sorry to say it, and he was actually talking about his own mother – then you thought Tommy knew because he called our getaway a 'girls only weekend' – when it is exactly what it is – and now your mother? What did she say, exactly?"

"That we needed to be alone. I swear it's not paranoia, Maura. It's... What I know? I can sense it. Maybe you don't trust your instinct but I do and what I can feel now is not pretty." Jane snorted and grabbed a fashion magazine that Maura had taken with her. She began to leaf through it. "They all know and I'm sure they secretly make fun of us because they think we don't know they know."

The skyline of Boston began to fade away in their back. Maura cast a last glance at it in the rearview mirror and bit her lips. It was the first time that they left Boston since they had got married. It was the first time that they actually went on a getaway as a couple.

The first time they took some distance with the last few weeks.

"Let's just relax, Jane, okay? Let's just enjoy this weekend. Don't overthink too much..."

...

It was very cliché. Choosing Provincetown for our first getaway as a couple was very cliché but it wasn't intentional. We were simply looking for a small town that wasn't too far from Boston. We needed some fresh air, some distance with our daily lives. It turned out to be perfect. Exactly what we needed in the end.

I will spare you the details because I know that this isn't something children are eager to know but we never left the hotel soon in the morning while we certainly didn't oversleep either. There was something very liberating in the idea of being in a town where nobody knew us. We could be ourselves, this strange little entity we had become after the funeral. A couple. We were a couple. A brand new one.

As sweet as one can be.

We walked hand in hand, we shared furtive kisses on the beach. We allowed ourselves to enjoy all these little details that we restrained in Boston. As much as Jane was convinced that most of our friends – relatives – and colleagues had guessed for us, there hadn't been any official announcement made about it so we kept a low profile at work and whenever we happened to spend some time with a third party.

I also think that I saw this getaway to Provincetown as a test for us. I never had doubts about our couple. I knew right from the beginning that it was what we wanted. But... Sometimes things look different from another perspective, from another place that doesn't belong to your daily routine.

It didn't happen during this weekend. We remained whatever we had become, whatever the past events had made of us. We remained true to ourselves and true to each other.

There were no promises of a better tomorrow. I am sure that Jane would distort the story one way or another if she were the one to tell you about it because she loves exaggerating but it still was romantic. In its own way. Our way.

We came back home relaxed and full of energy. The wounds on our hearts didn't hurt as much as they had in the past. I guess the healing process had been sped up by our new intimacy. Maybe we become a couple for a matter of survival... It may sound odd but who knows...? Of course there are feelings involved – true love feelings – but perhaps we instinctively went for each other at this exact moment of our lives because we had understood that it would save us. Somehow.

Life took us back in its whirl, almost insolently. The sun was shining anew, the summer was coming. Everything looked bright. The clouds had vanished away. Was the storm gone forever? None of us was able to say. We just hoped.

I am not a religious person so I won't tell you that I prayed because I didn't and I don't believe in such action but I found myself hoping a lot. We had gone through something terrible but we were happy nonetheless because we had found each other on the road. We weren't in denial, just in love and thus full of this urge to think about a bright future; a hopeful one.

It definitely saved us.

Maybe that's why we like going to Provincetown so much. It became a turning point in our lives. We learned a lot from this weekend.

And everything was positive. So positive.

Apart from the surf lessons. That turned into a sweet chaos. We were absolutely not made for it.