Closing the circle… there'll be another two chapters after this one (or so I plan), one dealing with the rest of the family and the other one about Jamie's funeral. Thank you so much to all of you who're reading, even though right now in the series, Jamie is the one to grieve and not really his family (or so I guess, kind of – I want to see season 3! Or at least season 2…) – anyway. There are such heartbreaking stories out there about Jamie dealing with guilt and grief that it's a hard to keep on writing this one somehow. I still hope you like it.

"You need to get here, Linda. 27th street. Danny needs you. Jamie just got shot."
"Oh my…will he be okay? Jackie?"
"He's dead, Linda. I'm sorry. Linda, you need to get here, I don't know what to do with Danny, please!"

Linda put down the phone, trying very hard not to think about what she'd just heard. She knew her family well enough – she couldn't allow herself to break down now. She had to stay calm and composed for them so they could hold onto her. She had to be the rock in the stormy ocean that saved them from drowning in pain about…about what had happened.

Within a heartbeat, Linda switched to auto-pilot, something she had learnt to do soon after marrying a cop. Dressing, getting tissues, sleeping pills and alcohol, checking but not waking up the boys, walking over to her neighbor Mary Foreman to give her the keys and ask her to watch over the children. Mary, too, knew that mode. She had worked together with Linda, actually she had taught her everything way back when. The two women remained friends after Mary retired, and though their relationship had been strained after Linda decided to stay at home after having Sean, she knew that she could always count on the elder woman. Work was one thing, a strong and important part of life that could make you immortal if you were good.
But it was family that made you live.

As she got into the car Linda breathed again. Right before her she noticed a daisy in the grass. What a lovely sight! What a lovely night, actually. She wouldn't have to drive too long, so maybe she could keep her mind on flowers and stars till she reached Danny, maybe she could avoid thinking about…no. Stop it. Look at the car over there… but it was too late, and Linda had been a nurse for too long. She knew exactly how dead people looked like. And she knew her little brother – brother-in-law, she reminded herself, as if that would help getting any distance between her and him. Don't say his name, not even in thoughts. Linda shivered. She couldn't cry now, she couldn't, Danny needed her.
Danny whom she loved so much that she had given up her rich family, big house and cool job, knowing that what he would give her was more than anything she could ever ask from life. She had never regretted it. And now he needed her.

She remembered it so well – the night that Joe had died. Linda's heart had broken twice then, once for Joe who had so much still to live, so much that he would never do, and once for Danny. In that night Linda had feared for her husband's life, probably more than ever because what was killing Danny came from the inside and couldn't be treated. Danny had been drowning in his grief, and Linda knew the feeling, knew it from her mother and from Mary – how suffocating it was to know that someone you loved was dead. How thinking it sucks out all the oxygen and light from the room so you're left alone with the knowledge and it sits down heavily on your chest, making you choke on your sobs, how your heart beats the dead's name, and you breathe it in, breathe it out and how it makes you gag and you can't get rid of it, can't change it…

With trembling hands Linda pulled to the side. Her heart beat painfully, though she knew best how stupid that was – it was the brain that contained emotions, not the heart. The heart didn't feel a thing. Still it hurt, and as the first tears stumbled down her numb cheeks, Linda heard a familiar voice filling her with every beat of her heart, pumping through her in her blood.
Danny, it said and her heart broke anew as she remembered him then, holding Joe in his arms, desperate, helpless.
Joe, the voice added and new tears came as Linda saw Joe's laughing face before her. Then the picture changed, like a reflection on the water shattered by a stone – Jamie. It was a new name to be said by that voice, but his face was so familiar. A sweet little boy, with a smile that made everyone's day bright. Keep him like that, young and careless and forever.

Were they all sure he was dead? Cause it didn't make any sense. Linda wiped the tears away and started the engine again, not sure what to feel. The part of her that still was on auto-pilot did realize that she had just lost another brother, but she didn't feel any pain yet. Not for herself at least. She just feared for Danny, and it was that fear that made her drive faster than usual, faster than the law allowed, faster, don't think and drive. As she reached 27th street and halted the car, pictures of Jack and Sean rose in her memory. Her precious boys – these pictures were what she'd take with her when she died. Her sons and – Danny.

He was there, still kneeling on the ground, bathed in blood. Even though Linda knew that it wasn't his own, she was shocked.

So it was real. Little Jamie – he'd just started with high school when she married Danny – was lost.

Deep down inside Linda felt the pain starting, the final knowledge, and a part of her was almost relieved about it.
Then Danny looked up and saw her, his eyes red and drowned by absolute, hopeless, endless pain.
Linda was choked by her tears before she noticed that she was crying. For one second she couldn't move, paralyzed by the pain she saw in her husband's eyes. This was worse than anything she had ever seen, so much worse. Danny cried. He cried in public, hovering on the cold ground with the whole world around him. But the world didn't exist anymore. Time didn't exist anymore. Danny had never cried in public before, not at his mother's funeral, not even when he had found Joe's corpse in a street like that. Just like that.

Still struggling to breathe Linda held onto Danny's glance though the voice in her head shouted to run from the hurt in them. She knew that look so well, she had seen it with mothers, wives, fathers, children,… brothers. Wherever they came and to wherever they went, it was all the same. All the same look when she had to tell them that their beloved ones would die.
That can't be… look at her, she's alive, she's healthy, she'll be okay… money's no problem, there's got to be way… no, he won't! Don't tell me he'll die, I can't live with him dead, it won't happen… don't say that. Say that it's a joke, I'll laugh if you want me to. Just don't say that. Let it be a joke. Save them. Do anything. Tell me it's not true.
Tell me it's not true.
But it was. It was, and both of them knew it. Linda didn't know how she finally got over to Danny. All she noticed were that his eyes got steadily bigger and sadder till she reached him and hugged him, holding on tight so he wouldn't be washed away by tears, so she wouldn't lose him, too…

Danny held onto her as to life itself. He couldn't think straight anymore. It was hard enough to breathe through all the tears he couldn't stop, and he told himself that if he just didn't let go of Linda now, he wouldn't have to let go of Jamie. It was too hard a thing to bear, too much to realize it. He should have been the one to be shot, he should have looked after Jamie, he should have… but his thoughts were blurred. It was so hard to concentrate, and he was so tired. So tired, but there still was a message he had to get over to Linda, he had to tell her just as he had told his father, vision fuzzy with tears. Thinking of his dad made him choke.

"Jamie's dead" he whispered hoarsely, wondering at how two words could break down his world.

Linda pulled back so she could see Danny's face, determined to stand through his pain. She would be his rock, she would be whatever he needed.
"I know" she answered quietly, feeling new tears falling but never looking away. "I know." The lump in her throat got bigger as Danny buried his face in her hair anew, still crying.

Endless tears, and despite what she just had sworn, for a moment Linda couldn't help but falling in with her own tears, crying out her heart as if that could wash out the news. Endless tears. Hurt that echoes down the generations, and it would never stop. Jamie would never come back, no matter how long they could keep up their composure and swallow down the grief, it would never be long enough. The pain that made it hard to breathe would never stop.