„State Attorney Reagan-Boyle?"
Erin, too, was used to calls after midnight. She probably hated them even more, though, than her father did.
Especially when she had left her cell in the living room where it would wake up Nicky.
"Mom? What's up?"
"Dad? Is it you? What's up?" Erin motioned her daughter to be quiet, already halfway alarmed. Automatically, Nicky straightened up and held her breath, mimicking her mother.
Erin listened for about a minute, then suddenly gasped. "Wha…"
"Mom?"
But this time, Erin didn't react. Her legs gave way as the wish to be in a nightmare washed over her with a force she hadn't felt since… yeah, since Joe had died. She put her hands over her mouth to keep from wheezing, and before she could hinder it, Nicky took the phone and held it to her ear. "Grandpa?"
"No!" Quickly, Erin slapped the cell out of her daughter's hands. "Dad, it's okay, it's okay." The words were so wrong that she almost choked on them. She took a deep breath. "Do you want us to come over now?"
Nicky's eyes were wide with fear by now.
"Okay, dad. Take care, I… I'll see you tomorrow." She hit the button with the last energy she could afford.
No. It wasn't right. It couldn't be.

But deep inside Erin knew exactly that it was true.
"Mom?" Nicky's voice was small and frightened. "What's wrong? What happened?"
Erin closed her eyes for a second. She already felt the pain rolling through her body like waves, tearing her apart with every beat of her heart.
"Mom? Please?" Nicky was close to tears now. For a moment Erin found distraction in the thought that she never wanted to raise her only child in such an environment. Nicky shouldn't be afraid when the phone rang in the middle of the night.
So practically it was Joe's fault. And from now on…
Erin reached out and put her arm around Nicky's shoulders, causing her to sit down and lean against her. She kissed the teenager's forehead, preparing herself to say it out loud. It hurt. It hurt so much to think about it, about how life would be from now on.

"Nicky, your uncle Jamie…" As she said the name, the tears started to fall. Erin closed her eyes.
Not Jamie! Not her baby brother, not the family's sunshine, not her best friend, not, not her sweet little brother! She couldn't lose another member of her family, she couldn't do this job without their support…
"…he was shot an hour ago, Danny was with him. He's dead."
"He's…" Nicky broke off. She shivered and retched, and for another short moment Erin could forget the corpse in her heart as she carried her daughter into the bathroom.
"It's okay", she whispered as Nicky bowed over the toilet, "it's okay, baby, it's okay."
No it's not, her heart cried.
"No it's not", Nicky cried, still coughing but not throwing up. "It's not okay, mom!" She broke down on the cold floor and buried her face in her hands. "Why uncle Jamie?", she whispered, "why him? I love him so much!"
"I do too, honey!" Erin went down beside her daughter and hugged her tightly, holding onto her so neither of them would fall apart. She stroke over Nicky's hair, rocking her like she had done when Nicky had been a baby.
Like she had done with Jamie when he had been a baby.

Breathing got harder. Erin knew she should be strong now, she knew she had to be there for her daughter.
Nicky and Jamie always had a strong bonding. Though Erin had made Joe godfather, Nicky's favorite uncle had always been Jamie. They were closest in age, with Jamie being only eleven years older than her. He had still been in school when she started with kindergarten, so whenever Erin was busy it would be Jamie and Mary to take Nicky home. After Mary died the bonding had grown even stronger.
And Jamie was the only one who had never reprimanded the teenager. He knew best from all of them how it was to be young and insecure about how to act and what to do when you're an adult. He himself had doubted his decision so often.

Erin shivered as a memory stabbed her right through the heart: She had been the first person to know that Jamie would be going to be a cop. He had told her about it only two days after Joe's funeral, and at the beginning, she had thought it was a bad joke.

"Do you think that's funny? Joe's just right down and you start following in his footsteps? I tell you something, Jamie, forget the academy, just get yourself shot and do it now so we won't have to pretend we can recover from the loss!" Erin was fuming. She felt betrayed, deeply and utterly betrayed – when Jamie had asked her for this talk, mentioning that there was something important he needed to tell her, she had assumed – no, hoped – that finally he and Sydney would go the whole hog. The perspective of having three lawyers against three cops, more or less (she had to count her grandfather in) was tempting. And with Sydney there the dinner table would probably not look so empty.
And now he was telling her that he wanted to be a cop as well. And he told her first, her, from all people!
"Mom would turn over in her grave, you realize that?" She asked icily.
Jamie nodded in shame. "I know", he said softly, his voice still thick with grieve. "But I can't change who I am, Erin. And being a lawyer is just… see, you're born to do this. You're amazing. And…" "You don't get born to be a lawyer, Jamie, stop counting it away from our blood", she interrupted, flattered by the compliment she knew to be meant honestly, but still angry, "working for the law means knowing it, and that means a whole lot of learning, you know that. You don't get born as a lawyer, you have to study to become one. And you did, Jamie. You studied to become a lawyer."
"No, I didn't." The young man's face was clouded. "I studied for mom, because I know she wouldn't have me being a police officer as well. And I… I get to understand why. I know the job's dangerous." He swallowed, and Erin bit her lips to fight off the tears. She had cried for the last ten days, it was so odd that she still had tears left.
"It's just…" Jamie closed his eyes, as if too ashamed to look into his sister's eyes. Automatically, Erin moved closer.
"It's just that I think… Joe died working on a job he loved, protecting people… I want that, too. I mean I… I'd give anything to have him back, Erin, I would, but – I can't. I just can try to honor him with my life, and I think I can do it better by being a cop."
Erin hugged her baby brother tightly. Ten years younger yet taller than her, she wasn't sure who was holding whom upright right now. Both each other, most likely.
"I know", she whispered gently, "but Joe wouldn't want you to spend your life trying to do his job. He wouldn't want you to feel like you have to fulfill what he can't do anymore." She closed her eyes at that and held Jamie closer. He gently patted her back.
"That's not what I meant", he murmured, "I just thought that… Erin, being a lawyer won't make me happy. I studied it, and I would never call it a waste of time – if nothing else, I found Sydney. For that I'll always love Harvard. But it's not where I belong. I belong to New York, to the city, to the streets."

To the streets… he would never leave them again now. He was gone, and it felt like he had taken all of Erin's strength with him. She could no longer hold Nicky in her arms, they fell open as she fell down, into a black hole where there was no time and no love or justice. It was an eternal night she woke up to, a cold wind that sang her mother's name, and Joe's, and it also sang a song of her dead marriage. Fail.
So often Erin had failed. But whenever she had fallen into that black hole, someone had come up and helper her out.
It was her father, most of the times, and Danny and Linda, who helped her when the world decided to stop or go twice as fast.
And when neither of them was there, Erin knew she could always count on Jamie. Even if he hadn't the answer, if there was one existing, he was always there and listened to her.

She needed him now. She needed him now to make her smile, to give her a hug or a smile, anything that would tell her that her family and she'd be okay.

Erin buried her face in her hands as she realized the impossibility of her needs. She wanted Jamie to comfort her because she had just lost Jamie, and it hurt so much that she didn't dare to live through it alone.

Jamie. Erin shook her head. She didn't want that. Bad things happened to good people, she saw that almost every day, but – not Jamie. Not her little brother, not the best friend she ever had. Not the most polite and clever and handsome young man on earth. She remembered him asking about Melissa Samuels, not giving up his small chance to help her.

Jamie. He was too important a part in Erin's life, he was a part of her, how could he be dead without asking her? How could he ever die?

"I love him so much", Nicky whispered in tears, "I want him to be alive! Tell me it's a joke, mom, please! Please tell me it's not real!"
Erin sighed and moved closer to her daughter again. "I wish I could, baby. God knows how much I wish I could."
"I'm gonna miss him so much, and every single day of my life", Nicky said – and then, finally, she clung to the toilet and threw up like crazy, giving Erin another twenty minutes to think about what Nicky just had said.
Every single day of my life.
She had to live with Jamie being gone for the rest of her life now. He would never marry or have children, and there was nothing – there was exactly nothing she could do. Nothing to fill the black hole in her heart.

There was so much Jamie would miss. So much where she would miss him.
Erin supported her daughter till there was nothing left to be retched out, then brought her to bed.
"Try to sleep now, okay?"
Nicky nodded weakly. "Can it all be a dream, mom? Could it be that we're all in a nightmare?"

Erin swallowed. "You can't wake up from this, honey. This is the reality God has put us in." She coughed at the mentioning of God, but it seemed just right.
"Try to sleep anyway, okay?"
"Can you stay with me?" She hadn't asked that since she was seven.
Erin nodded. "Of course." She sat down on the bed and kissed her daughter, trying not to think about what would happen to her if Nicky died. She hated these thoughts, but they kept coming up every once and then.

Now one of them had become real. Erin had to leave her daughter's room as she realized that it was definitively and true now. She had no little brother left.
it choked her to think like that, and it hurt, it ripped her whole body apart. Breathing got heavy because breathing meant opening up your brain, even if it was just for a moment.

Her whole life. She had to miss Jamie for the rest of her life.
She missed him already more than she think she could endure.

Empty. That was how she felt. She was an empty instrument, and the most beautiful piece of music had just vanished forever, and she had nothing more than the memory.

Jamie, Erin's heart said with every beating. Jamie, Jamie, Jamie… it choked her up with tears and love and longing, and yet she hadn't really realized it.
She'd really realize it in the morning, when he wouldn't come to their father.
Dad. Lost another son on duty.
Now it was Erin's turn to go over to the bathroom, waiting to threw up frustration and pain. It didn't work.

There was a dagger in her heart, saying that she never had said how proud she was of her little brother. Saying that she hadn't been there for Jamie when he needed her. Saying that she should've been a better sister.

Now it was too late.