Miami. Present day:
He'd rose early, kissed Calleigh goodbye and assured her that he would return later in the day, praying to God that she would not spend the whole time worrying about him. Her shocking confession in the early hours of the morning had taken him by surprise. He had been so used to the being the one that felt insecure that it came as a bolt from the blue that she was so consumed with fear that he would not return to her side, so much so that it was affecting her ability to sleep.
He'd tried to reassure her before he left, yet he could see that look in her eyes, the one that told him that she was hurting but trying not to show it. He was hurting her by meeting up with Lori, he knew that, yet he also knew that he had no choice. He had to meet with her to set things straight.
It was with a sense of some trepidation that he'd driven to the local store and purchased coffee, milk and a few other random bits and pieces that might be required during what he suspected would be a long and emotional day, anticipating his ex-wife's needs as always. When they'd been married he always feared getting on the wrong side of her, she could be particularly nasty after a hard day or one too many drinks.
He wasn't scared of her, more wary of the cruel words that might possibly spill from her mouth in one of her frequent bouts of anger. As much as he'd liked to portray an image of being a strong man, when they were married he loved her to the point where it was only natural that her words would sting when she saw fit to berate him for one thing or another.
He could certainly stand up to her, knowing that he was no shrinking wallflower himself, yet the common decency in him prevented the same harsh words spilling unbidden from his own lips. He would not hurt her simply because she had cut him to the bone with one of her scathing remarks; he would take them on the chin and attempt to reason with her instead. It was a rule that he had lived by in both of his lives, two wrongs had never made a right, he would not be dragged down to someone else's level simply to get back at them. Sometimes it was just best to turn the other cheek and walk away.
He sat at the kitchen table, nursing a mug of freshly brewed coffee, wincing slightly as the bitter-tasting liquid hit the back of his throat and provided him with the jolt of energy he'd need to sustain him for the next hour or so at least. Why had she come to Miami to find him and why now?
What was it that she was looking for, did she expect him to apologise, or had she come looking for her own sense of forgiveness?
Whatever it was, he just wanted to get it over and done with, to push it to one side and get on with what was left of his life.
The doorbell chimed and after a quick glance at his watch he made his way to the front door, opening it and motioning for her to enter.
"Lori, thank you for coming," he said as he walked her through to the kitchen and poured her a mug of coffee before setting it on the opposite side of the table to where he sat back down.
"I thought you were going to ignore me after what happened last time," she huffed as she placed her purse down and made herself comfortable at the table. "Who was that woman anyway?"
He took a deep breath before responding, resigned to the fact that she would likely not react well to what he was about to tell her. "That was Calleigh, she's my….."
"Girlfriend?" she cut in before he could finish speaking.
He nodded his head and looked down at the table, waiting for some scathing remark to fall from her ruby red lips.
"I thought you liked brunettes," she muttered after a while. "How'd you meet her?"
"At work…..she's part of my team."
She pursed her lips and gave him a dirty look, making it clear by body language alone what she thought about his dalliance with a colleague. Did the man never learn?
"Andy told me about what you do down here."
"I take it that Andy told you a lot of things the last time you saw him?"
"Yes, he did."
Flashback. New York 14 weeks ago:
There was an insistent knocking at her door as she attempted to fold the last of the laundry that she'd spent the afternoon working on. This was the part of being a divorced mother of two that really dragged. Her son and daughter were both away at college but had returned for a week's break and left piles of dirty clothes in their wake.
Being a mother was not something that came naturally to her, she had struggled at several points during her offspring's childhood years, always seemingly clashing with her feisty young daughter who appeared to take after her when it came to being strong-willed and stubborn.
It wasn't that she didn't love them, of course she did, they were her children and she would give her life to protect them. It didn't help that her mother was not a particularly good role model for her, the woman was driven by her career and it was only when her own children had reached school age that she realised that she was turning out in exactly the same way as her.
She'd married Danny and started a family with him, desperate to rid herself of the memories of John and the trail of destruction that he'd left in his wake. She fooled herself into believing that Danny was better for her, his choice of career as a paediatric physician was certainly much safer than that of a detective who worked on the mean streets of New York.
She fell pregnant with Megan first and struggled to bond with her new born baby, the crying, the constant changing of nappies and the sleepless nights became almost more than she could bear at times. Danny had taken to parenthood much more easily than she had and she felt a growing resentment towards him that he had such an effortless bond with his daughter.
Of course it was easier for him, he wasn't the one getting up in the middle of the night to feed and change the baby, he always cited the reason that he had to be fresh for his shift in the morning and told her that at least she would have the opportunity to catch up on her rest during the day.
Did he naïvely believe that babies stopped crying and needing attention during the day?
Newborn babies required round the clock care and attention and after only a few months she told her husband that she couldn't cope on her own anymore. Conceiving Megan had been a complete accident, Danny had convinced her to keep the child and she had reluctantly agreed, hoping it would bring them closer together as a couple and heal the wounds that John's death had left her with.
She had been working at a private law firm at the time and worked up until her eighth month of pregnancy before taking her maternity leave. Every day that she spent at home nursing a baby was another day that she fell behind the other associates that worked at the firm, she knew that if she didn't return to her position soon that she would be left in the wake of her colleagues, all of whom didn't have any family ties to hold them back for putting the required hours in to make junior partner.
Danny earned good money as a doctor; they had more than enough disposable income to employ a nanny to take care of Megan so that she could return to work and the career that she had worked so hard to build for herself.
It had worked for a while, kissing Megan goodbye in the mornings before she left and putting her to bed at night worked well. Each time that she felt a pang of guilt for missing her first child's achievements she would tell herself that she was doing it to build a better life for her family, creating a legacy that they could inherit.
Promotions and pay rises would never bring back those missed moments when Megan took her first steps or said her first words; all of those milestones were witnessed by the nanny who looked after her instead. She'd been given a second chance when she fell pregnant again almost eighteen months later, this time having a boy.
Aaron was a bounding bundle of joy from the moment he had been born, but still the urge to be a stay at home mother never gripped her like it did other women, after three months of maternity leave she was keen to return to her job as a lawyer, a decision that Danny did not agree with.
The fights had begun shortly after she had returned to work, her husband could not understand why she did not want to be a kept woman, staying at home to raise the children while he as the man of the house went out and earned the money. She had never been brought up that way, her mother had been more concerned about her career than her children and made it clear to both her and her brother, Max, where her priorities lay. She'd inherited her mother's desire to go out into the world of work and earn her own way, cutting her own path in her chosen career field.
She found the idea of staying at home and living off of her husband's earnings offensive, was he no better than John, the man who wanted to wrap her up in cotton wool and protect her from the big, bad world outside?
It came as somewhat of a shock then, that the man standing outside her door now reminded her again of the man that she had loved and lost so many years ago.
She stood and stared at him for a number of moments as he stood awkwardly in the doorway.
"You gonna let me in?" he finally asked as he looked left and right, checking the street. For what, he didn't know, it just happened to be a habit from his time as a cop that made him do it. Just because he'd retired it didn't mean that he could break the daily routines he'd formed years ago.
"What are you doing here?" she asked him suspiciously, blocking entrance to her two-storey house that she had been awarded in her divorce settlement from Danny.
"There's something you need to know, Laura. I'd rather not do it on your door step if you don't mind."
The first thoughts to cross her mind were that Andy had come to tell her that something had happened to Megan or Aaron. She quickly dismissed that thought, remembering that Andy had been retired for years. If something had happened to one of them it would have been a uniformed officer at her door instead.
She was fed up and tired after a long afternoon of doing house chores, perhaps a visit from Andy would help break the monotony of the day.
"Sure, come in."
He nodded his thanks and made his way into her kitchen, fiddling with the sides of his summer jacket that he was wearing, feeling awkward and uncomfortable. How the hell was he going to explain the fact that John was still alive?
"You…..uh…..you got any coffee?" he asked, trying to delay the inevitable.
His mind shot back to another time when he had visited Laura to deliver the bad news that her ex-husband's burnt and mutilated corpse had been found down by the East River. The conversation that they'd had was hard on both of them, he knew she had put on a brave face as he told her and was under no illusion that she had broken down in tears the minute he left her apartment. Laura was a strong woman who pretended that things didn't bother her; there were very few people that would be allowed to see the vulnerable and emotional woman that lurked underneath.
She placed a steaming cup of coffee in front of him and sat opposite, looking at him searchingly. "It's not that I'm unhappy that you've decided to come visit me, Andy, but why now? I haven't seen you in years."
"I know, I'm sorry. It's just with Theo growing up and heading to college…..time kind of got away from me."
"So is this a social visit?"
He blew on his coffee and took a sip before answering. "I wish it was, believe me. There's something you need to know…..about John."
The mere mention of his name caused her to freeze momentarily in shock. It had been such a long time since she had heard his name, let alone not thought of him in vain. John Kelly, a man who stole her heart, a man who betrayed his oath as a police officer and died no better than a petty criminal.
It still hurt to think of him and the things he'd done, as the years went by it became easier not to think about him every day. There were still times when he did cross her mind, but those days were few and far between now. The thought of his broken and burnt body had been too much for her to bear, it was easier to place those thoughts somewhere deep in the back of her mind where they would not haunt her on such a regular basis.
"If you've come to tell me of something else he did back then I don't want to know. I'd rather not think about him at all."
He rubbed a pudgy hand over his face and straightened his moustache, still feeling the effects of the flight from Miami to JFK airport that he'd just taken. "Laura, you need to know…John's still alive."
That was not what she had expected him to say, in fact it was the last thing she would have expected him to tell her. John Kelly was dead and buried, she was sure of it, she had gone to his funeral for God's sake. Andy had been the one to tell her that he'd been murdered way back in 1996. It didn't make any sense that Andy would turn up on her doorstep and tell her that John was still alive, had the man returned to his old ways and started drinking again?
She appeared to have zoned out, judging by the blank look on her face as she sat staring at him, dumbfounded. "Laura, did you hear what I just said? John's alive."
"No…..you're lying. That or you're drunk."
He could have retorted with a spiteful comment of his own to her last words, but decided to cut her a little slack. It wasn't as if he'd reacted well when he first heard the news either, at least he'd had a few weeks to process it though.
There would be no way that Laura would believe him without some sort of proof. He pulled out his cell phone and brought up a page from the Miami Herald online newspaper, in the centre of the page was a photograph of the man they both used to know.
She grabbed the phone roughly from his hand and stared at it, the man certainly looked like John, older but with the same hair and build that she remembered. "This isn't John," she said dismissively as she handed him the phone back.
"It is, Laura."
She shook her head and took a sip of coffee, her heart beating wildly at seeing a picture that looked like the man she used to know, the man she had loved and lost. "It says his name is Horatio. What kind of name is that?" she asked more to herself than anything.
"It's a long story, but I swear on Theo's life that the man in that picture is John."
"I don't understand…..it's impossible. John is dead."
"It's a long story," he began as he fidgeted awkwardly on the wooden chair.
"Start explaining then."
It had taken him hours to divulge the secret life of the man she used to be married to, there were times when he felt awful as he saw the tears in her eyes as he told her of the things John had done back in those dark days in New York. There were a few moments when he found it hard to speak himself, his voice cracking with emotion as he recounted the horrific few days that John had been at the hands of the Malucci's as they beat him senseless and tortured him to within an inch of his life.
He'd looked more dead than alive when he'd been brought to the hospital, there had been several days where his prognosis looked less than promising and he had only left Miami and returned here to New York when he was confident that John would survive. Even then, his doctor would not be entirely honest with them about his condition, not wishing to tempt fate should he take a turn for the worse. He had to come back; if John died he at least wanted him to die knowing that he was a hero and not the traitor that he had led them all to believe.
"Where is he now?" she asked finally once she'd managed to string a sentence together, the shock of realising that John was still alive had floored her.
"He's in a hospital in Miami. They really did a number on him, Laura; he's not in good shape at the moment."
"Will he be ok?" She might have been furiously angry with him and the double life that he'd apparently led but she still cared about him.
He sighed deeply, none of them were sure if John would ever be the same man again. The man who had regained consciousness did not seem to be the person they all remembered, something had changed inside him.
"They're not sure; they say that there might be some permanent damage."
Her eyes widened in surprise at his words, this was all far too much for her to take in. She needed a drink, something more substantial than coffee. She pulled herself up from the table on shaky legs and made her way over to the wine rack in the corner of the room. She grabbed a glass and uncorked the bottle, momentarily forgetting that she had a recovering alcoholic sitting in her kitchen.
"Andy, I'm sorry. I didn't think," she said as she looked down at the bottle opener in her hands.
He waved away her concern. "Don't worry about it; there were times recently when I could've done with a drink too."
The temptation was certainly there, it had been a harrowing few hours as he told Laura of the reasons why John had committed those crimes and worked for the Malucci organisation. Retelling the complicated story didn't seem to make it any easier to accept though.
But he'd done it; he'd sat and told John's ex-wife of what he had done to protect them all. He'd accomplished what he'd set out to do on his trip back to the city, meetings with the suits at One Police Plaza would seem like a cakewalk in comparison to this.
His chair scraped along the kitchen floor as he raised his bulky frame from it, shrugging his jacket back on, he walked up to her and placed his hands on her elbows. "I'm going to meet with the brass in a few days; there will probably be a bit of a media frenzy about all of this. I wanted you to be the first person to know."
He gave her a brief smile and let himself out, letting out a deep breath as he opened the front door and made his way back down to the street and towards his rented car.
She watched him leave from the window; her world had been turned upside down in only a few short hours. Everything she thought she knew about John had turned out to be nothing more than a lie. She had so many questions, Andy had not been able to answer that many of them and it left her feeling frustrated that she didn't have the full picture.
The only way that she would be able to get the answers she was looking for was by meeting with John face to face, the only problem being that she wasn't even sure that she wanted to see him again, what would happen if she was suddenly confronted with the man that she had presumed dead for nearly two decades?
Age had taught her to not be as impulsive as she was in her youth, with experience came a certain amount of wisdom, the tiny voice in her mind told her that running off to Miami half-cocked would not be a good idea. She needed to be sure that she was ready to reopen the can of worms that her relationship with John was, was she really ready to do that?
She wanted answers though, and she would get them from him, sooner or later.