Surprise surprise, I still don't own anything that has anything to do with criminal minds – I know, shock horror right?
Beckoning Questions
Emma, still on the floor, felt her head pound from crying too much. She reached for a tissue in her pocket and found something else in there too; a key. She recognised it as the key her mother gave her moments before she died. She had no idea what it was, but it looked familiar, like she'd seen it long before. She soon realised that it was to her mother's safe. The safe that her mother said contained all the important information should anything happen to her.
It didn't take long to sort everything out. Emma and her mother had moved so often that they'd only really kept the essentials. It was tough, throwing out her mother's clothes, and personal belongings. Emma of course decided to keep some of them, like a soft brown leather jacket that her mother loved to wear and her favorite pieces of jewelry. Emma from that day onwards never took off the emerald ring or almost matching necklace. The safe went back with her to her new home too. But Emma couldn't bring herself to open it, not just yet anyhow. She wore the key on a simple chain for safe-keeping.
'Emma, I hate to be blunt and insensitive, but sweetie, I just wondered when you were thinking about having the funeral? Your mom has been released from the morgue, and I think that she should be put to rest now? What do you think?"
Emma nodded, Ellie was right, but she had no idea how to do this, or what to do.
Ellie seemed to be thinking along the same lines.
"I can do it; I can help you if you want. You just tell me what you want and I'll do all the talking, all the organizing and ringing up and that for you."
The truth was Emma had no idea what to do. When her godmother had died suddenly, the only thing that Emma had done was pick one song. She'd never discussed this sort of thing with her mother either, what she wanted when she was dead. What songs she would like, or where she wanted to be buried.
Some how Ellie and Emma got it all sorted out. The day of the funeral was a strange day. In the dead of summer it poured with rain. Cliché Emma thought, but her mother loved cliché. Emma didn't know what made her cry the most; the song she had picked or the fact that five people turned out for her funeral. Of that five, only Emma had truly known her, had truly loved her. Emma regretted that she had not known more about her mother's past and about old friends who could have come to say goodbye.
Long after it had turned dark, in the cold quiet of the night, Emma somehow found the courage to open the safe. It contained photos, letters, official looking documents, even test results. But what caught Emma's eye was her name. Well not her whole name, just her middle name; Morgan. There was a slim file on a Derek Morgan; a work number, home address and a letter. Emma was itching to open it. But it wasn't for her. Maybe she could just mail the letter.
She was a bit confused. Of all the people to write to, to leave such personal information about in a safe, it was someone that Emma had never heard of. Emma looked through the photos. They were mostly of Grace with this guy. A thought suddenly struck Emma; he couldn't be? Could he? Emma traced the outline of her nose and her chin, seeing a resemblance between her and this guy. In the photo her mother looked a little older than Emma did herself, but not much, still a teenager. Her mom had only been 20 when Emma was born. Emma at least knew that she had been with her father for a long time before Emma was born, high school sweethearts. They had also split up before Emma as born. She didn't even know if her father knew she existed. In some ways, she really hoped he didn't - that his negligence as a father could be totally and completely over-looked.
Emma scrambled through the safe looking for 'ah ha here it is' she said out loud; her birth certificate. As a child she had never realised how strange it was not to have seen her birth certificate, her mother would never let her. But here it was, after all this time. The answer to the question that had constantly been on her lips – who was her father?
Written there, plain as day was a name. It was Derek Morgan.
It all became clear, the safe, why her mother pushed the key to it into her hands before she died. Her mother had left Emma a way to find her father.