are we out of the woods yet?
"You've checked on them ten times tonight, 'Manda," Sonny called to her sleepily from the doorway of their bedroom.
Amanda turned around and sunk her teeth into her bottom lip, a little embarrassed that he had noticed what she had been doing. Every few minutes, in between picking up toys and changing out laundry, she was poking her head into one of the children's rooms. The sight of them sleeping soundly in their beds relieved her anxiety temporarily, until some time passed and dread began to gnaw at her stomach once more as she wondered, could it happen again? Dana was well-contained at Riker's Island and when Luca was returned to them last night, Amanda had been too exhausted to worry. Now, her mind was concocting wild scenarios - all of them involving one of her kids being snatched from the very place they were supposed to be safest. "I know..."
"They're alright. Everybody's where they're supposed to be," Sonny promised her. He yawned and ruffled his hair. "Come to bed."
Amanda nodded and begrudgingly followed Sonny back into their bedroom, where only one light remained illuminating their space. It was late now; she had been flitting around the house trying to expend her nervous energy for hours. Already dressed in comfortable shorts and a tank top, she crawled beneath the sheets on her side of the bed. When she rolled inward, she was met by Sonny's outstretched arm. She curled in close to him, her head tucked beneath his chin, an arm snaked around his bare torso. She felt his palm rubbing slow circles against her back.
"I love them so much, Sonny," she whispered into the hollow of his throat.
"They love you," he assured her quietly.
She swallowed down another wave of anxiety. "If even we can't keep them safe..."
"I know," Sonny murmured solemnly. "But I'll be damned if I don't keep tryin'."
Amanda relinquished her gun at the Riker's Island Visit Control building. She slid it through the check-in window to the familiar-looking female correctional officer signing people in and rocked on the heels of her boots, apprehensive. She was definitely not supposed to be there - she had told Sonny she had to go into the precinct to finish incident reports. It was a beautiful spring day, so Sonny opted to take all three children to the playground with the understanding that Amanda would meet up with them when she was finished. He wouldn't last long trying to wrangle all three kids, so while she wanted to be there with him, there was something she had to take care of first.
"Working on a Sunday, Detective?" the officer asked lightly as she slid a sheet of paper toward Amanda.
She focused on signing her name on the visitor's sheet before her - sometimes she wrote her last name as Carisi, but given the nature of her visit that day, she opted for Rollins. "Yeah. Inmate 32982-453. Could you get me an interview room?"
"Sure. I'll have the officers in the south block bring her to... hm, let's see what's free... interview room four." The officer passed Amanda a visitor's badge. "You remember where that is, right? On the south side."
"I remember." Amanda clipped the badge to her shirt. "Thanks."
She walked the familiar hallways of the massive Riker's Island women's facility, greeted by several familiar correctional staff along the way. Outside of interview room four, an officer let her inside the stark space. He would hover outside of the privacy glass to make sure the inmate Amanda was meeting with didn't become physically agitated.
When the heavy door shut behind her, Dana Sinclair jumped in her seat at the metal table in the center of the room. She whirled around in her chair and blinked at Amanda, looking a combination of shocked and frightened. Amanda could feel her heart beginning to race; at the sight of Dana, she was angry all over again. Silently, she dropped into the seat across from her and took in the woman's appearance: unsurprisingly, she even looked fairly decent in an orange jumpsuit.
"Barba told me your lawyer asked for a plea deal," Amanda finally said curtly, arms crossed over her chest. "Three years of jail time and ten probation."
Dana nodded.
Amanda wanted her to talk. No, she needed her to. "Explain. I need you to explain to me why you did this," she urged Dana, her tone something between desperate and aggressive. "Because I can't figure out why you'd hold a gun to a sweet girl's head and take an innocent little boy from his own house."
"I wasn't going to hurt them," Dana whispered eventually. "I was trying to get Sonny's attention. That's all I was after. That's all I've ever been after." Bowing her head, a tear rolled down her face and dropped onto the metal surface between them. "He's the... he's the only guy I ever loved. There's been nobody after him."
Amanda had to resist the urge to slam her fists against the table. "He doesn't want you," she managed through gritted teeth.
Without looking up, Dana only nodded wordlessly, dislodging more tears.
Her brow knitted together at the sight of the woman crying before her. She remembered the day Dana had shown up at the Carisi's doorstep, how beautiful and confident she had been. Amanda had envied Dana more and more with each day she lingered in her personal and professional life - and she was sure her female LAPD colleagues resented her a little, too. So how did she end up here? "Look at yourself, Dana. You're beautiful. You're smart, got a good career... you threw it all away for a man?" Amanda narrowed her eyes in confusion. "For somebody who didn't even pick you?"
Dana didn't say anything.
"I don't even know why I'm here talkin' to you," Amanda admitted with a sigh as she leaned back in her chair. "You tried to take two of the most precious things to me. I guess..." She studied Dana, who wouldn't look her in the eye, her long blonde hair creating a curtain around her pretty face as she sat in tearful silence. "I guess I just... feel bad for you."
Amanda allowed the dreary room to fill with silence for a moment before she rose to her feet. "I'm never gonna forget what you did," she told Dana quietly. "But I'm gonna forgive you. I'm gonna forgive you for a pretty selfish reason: because I'm not gonna let you and what you've done hold me hostage. I've got three great kids and a husband who deserve all of me."
She didn't wait for her reply. Turning around, Amanda banged on the glass once to signal to the correctional officer to unlock the door, slipped into the hallway and left Dana behind.
On a rainy Saturday night, Amanda sat cross-legged on the living room floor with Ruby in her lap. While the baby waved around a colorful butterfly rattle, Luca was concentrating very hard on building a Lego structure on the carpet.
"What are you makin'?" Amanda asked the toddler curiously. With her free hand, she scratched lovingly at Fluffy's head; he was nuzzling her in a not-so-subtle plea for attention now that she was down at his level.
Luca clicked a yellow block on top of a stack of others. "My house."
"Ohhh," she nodded enthusiastically. "Can daddy and me live in it, too?"
"Uh huh," he agreed.
"How about your sisters?" Amanda smirked.
Luca scowled at his building before agreeing, "okay..."
"Hey, Rollins," Sonny called from the adjoining kitchen. "Did you eat all of my leftover Pad Thai from a couple days ago?"
She chewed her lower lip as she looked over at him innocently. "Um... maybe..."
"Why do you call her that?" Jesse asked Sonny from her seat at the island, where she was coloring.
"Call her what?" Sonny responded as he continued to rummage through the refrigerator.
"Rollins," Jesse clarified.
Empty-handed, he stood up straight again and leaned against the counter. "That's her name."
"No it's not. Her name is 'Manda."
"It's her last name."
"Nuh-uh, her last name is Carisi," Jesse insisted, and Amanda smiled from her spot on the floor.
Sonny sighed. "Her old last name. Sometimes, when girls and guys get married, the girl changes her last name to the guy's."
"Ugh," Jesse shook her head emphatically. "I'm not doing that."
"You don't have to," Amanda promised her daughter.
"I wouldn't worry about it right now, Jess," Sonny chuckled. He reached over and ruffled the hair at the top of her head. "My little girl's not gettin' married anytime soon."
"I am not little!" Jesse chirped indignantly. "Ruby and Luca are little."
"Oh, excuse me." He waggled his eyebrows and teased, "then how come you're not gettin' a job and payin' some bills around here?"
The little girl let out a giggle and a snort of amusement. "No! The mom and dad do that!"
"Lucky us," Amanda muttered sarcastically.
Cautiously beginning to help Luca with his house - he could get very territorial over his Legos - Amanda was surprised to hear the sound of the doorbell. She and Sonny exchanged confused glances as Amanda pulled herself up off of the floor to answer it. Toting Ruby against her hip, she pulled open the front door to see Mia, Sonny's niece, standing on their front step. While the teenager had a jacket on, the flimsy hood had done nothing to protect her hair and face - her skin was streaked with rain and her long brown tresses were soaked. Amanda's eyes widened in surprise as she grabbed Mia's arm to tug her inside: "Mia! Come in, come in. It's pourin' out."
Mia scurried into the house. "Hi! Thanks."
"Hey, you," Sonny called to his niece from the kitchen, obviously surprised. "What are you doin' here?"
"Mia!" Jesse jumped down from her seat and ran over to the older girl to hug her legs.
"Hey, Jesse," Mia greeted the little girl as Amanda helped her shoulder off her dripping wet coat. "I, um, was just in the neighborhood. My shift ended early."
"You've got great timin'," Sonny replied. "I was just gonna order some pizza since Amanda ate everything out of the fridge."
Amanda shot him a warning look as she hung up Mia's jacket. "That sounds a whole lot like you callin' me fat."
"Okay, well, Amanda, I was wondering if I could talk to you?" Mia asked shyly.
She studied Mia's face, curiosity piqued at her request. The teenager looked uneasy despite the smile on her lips. "Yeah. Of course you can. We can... let's go upstairs," Amanda suggested, giving a wave of her free hand.
"What about me?" Sonny asked eagerly.
"Uh... no..." Mia responded sheepishly before she began to climb the steps toward the second floor. "Sorry, Uncle Sonny."
Amanda raised her eyebrows and shrugged at her husband, clueless, then followed Mia to the second floor. Alone in the master bedroom, Mia sunk down onto the edge of the bed while Amanda stood before her with Ruby, apprehensive.
"I think I'm in trouble," Mia finally said, eyes downcast.
She pulled in a deep breath, bracing herself. "What kinda trouble?"
"You can't tell Uncle Sonny," Mia pleaded, looking up at Amanda anxiously. "Or my mother, or nana or grandpa or... or anybody."
Amanda cringed, dreading the direction the conversation was going in. "Mia..."
"I think I might be pregnant," she whispered.
She was caught so off guard that she nearly dropped Ruby; if she hadn't been gurgling and cooing so loudly, Amanda would have forgotten she was holding her at all. Her mouth hung open in shock for a few seconds before she gasped stupidly, "what?"
"I haven't gotten my period, not since..." Mia trailed off, but Amanda knew what she was implying: her body had been out of sync since her terrible ordeal with her former classmate at Hudson University, Ethan.
"Okay, well, that could be stress," Amanda said quickly. "Did you take a test?"
"No." She shook her head, dislodging tears from her big, blue-green eyes. "My mother is gonna kill me," she sobbed, dragging shaky fingers through her damp hair. "She's already so mad that I quit school, she's barely talking to me. This is gonna put her right over the edge."
"Let's not panic, alright?" Amanda soothed, reaching out her free hand to set it on Mia's shoulder. "I, uh, I've got a pregnancy test somewhere in here. You can take it and we can just... go from there."
"But what if it's positive?" Mia croaked.
"Then... well, we'll deal with it," she replied simply before moving into the adjoining bathroom. She was action-focused now; the emotional piece of this situation was too much for Amanda to process at the moment. She dug around the medicine cabinet until her fingers settled on the test she was searching for, left over from before Ruby had been conceived. The box was long gone, but Amanda had taken enough of them to remember the directions. Back in the bedroom, she stuck the stick out in front of Mia.
Tentatively, Mia took it from her, almost as if she was afraid of the piece of plastic. "How do I... use it?"
It was then that Amanda was reminded of Mia's age: she was eighteen years old, a legal adult, but very much a child in many ways. She still had stuffed animals and a dollhouse in her bedroom at home; before Ethan had assaulted her, getting a bad grade on a test was what kept Mia up at night. "You just... pee on it," Amanda explained gently. "Then you put the cap back on the end and we wait a few minutes. You can't mess it up."
Mia nodded silently before shuffling into the bathroom and closing the door. Pacing, Amanda jostled Ruby around as the baby cooed and used drool-covered fingers to grab at her mother's hair. When Mia emerged again, the two of them hovered over the bathroom counter in silence, their eyes focused on the little widow on the test that would reveal Mia's results. Slowly, blue began to appear, the fuzzy color forming two lines.
Two lines, Amanda remembered, meant Mia was pregnant. She felt her heart drop into her stomach, and she swallowed hard before telling her, "it's positive."
"What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to... take care of a kid?" Mia cried, her face flushed and her eyes wide with her panic. "I didn't think this could get worse. It was already so bad. And now, now I'm pregnant? It's like... I'll never get rid of Ethan!"
"Alright, okay," Amanda soothed, using a gentle hand to guide Mia back into the bedroom. "You have options, we-"
Unannounced, Sonny opened the bedroom door. "What are you girls doin' up here? Mia, you stayin' for dinner? We'd love to-" He stopped suddenly as he surveyed the emotional scene he had just walked in on. His brow knitted together in confusion and concern. "Are you cryin'?" he asked his niece.
Amanda and Mia were silent. Ruby babbled, making nonsensical sounds obliviously she fidgeted in her mother's arms. The happy noises were a stark contrast to the mounting tension in the room.
"What's goin' on?" Sonny demanded anxiously. "What's wrong?"
"Mia..." Amanda prompted the teenager quietly.
Mia looked at her uncle desperately. "Don't be mad."
Sonny crossed his arms over his chest. "I don't like sentences that start that way."
"Sonny," Amanda warned, inching closer to him, silently willing him to soften.
"I think I'm pregnant," Mia blurted, then flinched in preparation for her uncle's reaction.
Amanda watched Sonny's face: his expression went from worried to utter bewilderment. "W-what?"
Mia bowed her head and Amanda set a comforting palm at the small of her back. She gnawed at her lower lip as Sonny began move erratically around the room, one hand on his hip and the other carding through his hair.
"Oh, no. No, no," he sputtered as he paced. "This, there has to be some kinda mistake."
"She just took a test," Amanda told him. "A doctor can confirm it..."
"You're eighteen!" Sonny exploded, stopping in front of the both of them. "You just dropped outta school, you have a very part-time job in a coffee shop, you definitely aren't married-"
"I didn't do it on purpose!" Mia shouted, her features contorted in anger and pain.
Amanda's stomach twisted in her abdomen, her own emotions beginning to run high although she was trying to remain the calm one in the situation. She felt Mia's distress and Sonny's horror simultaneously.
"No, of course you didn't," Sonny responded quietly after a few steadying breaths, his facial expression losing some of its hardness. "You didn't. That's not what I'm sayin'-"
"You're thinkin' it!" Mia spat. She rounded on Amanda as she cried, "this is why I didn't want him involved!"
Amanda shifted Ruby in her arms. "Okay, both of y'all calm down..."
Sonny ignored her and asked Mia, "did you tell your mother?"
"No," Mia replied softly, shaking her head.
"You've gotta tell her," Sonny insisted.
"I can't do it. She's going to go crazy. You know her, Uncle Sonny," she pleaded. "I... I just can't do it."
"I'll help you." Amanda looked pointedly at her husband. "We'll help you. After you go to the doctor and you're sure, we'll help you tell her. You don't have to do it today."
Lower lip trembling, Mia looked up at her uncle. She was so clearly desperate for his comfort specifically; Amanda knew she didn't want to disappoint him. "This is such a mess. I'm really sorry," she whispered.
Sonny visibly deflated and Amanda knew that beneath the shock and anger, his heart was breaking for her. He reached out for Mia and she timidly approached him until his arms were around her petite frame in a hug. "C'mere," he said quietly. "S'alright, it's okay. It's not your fault. None of this is your fault."
Amanda watched them embrace in silence. "I'm gonna go get Ruby ready for bed," she eventually murmured, suddenly overwhelmed. She quietly slipped past them to escape into the hallway.
After Mia was calm enough to head home, Amanda settled an impossibly energetic Ruby into her crib, she found Sonny slamming things around in the kitchen. Dinner hadn't arrived yet, although Amanda was no longer all that hungry.
"You okay?" she asked Sonny tentatively, already knowing the answer.
He set a stack of plates down on the island roughly, wordlessly.
Amanda rolled her eyes. "Please, spare me the patented Dominick Carisi Passive Aggressive Treatment," she quipped sarcastically, yanking open the refrigerator door to pull out two beers. She cracked open the tops of the bottles and slid one across the island toward him. "It's not me you're pissed at."
"No, I'm not pissed at you," he insisted, exasperated. "It's just..." He squeezed the bridge of his nose and exhaled. "Her life is ruined, Amanda."
Amanda swallowed a sip of beer. "Sonny..."
"First she falsely accuses him, then he actually assaults her, then she leaves school because she's totally ostracized, and now she's gonna be a teenage mother by her rapist? Really, could it get any worse?" he went on irritably before taking a swig from his bottle.
She crossed her arms over her chest and raised both of her eyebrows. "Uh, yeah. He coulda killed her."
"Yeah, well, she's gotta live with this," he sighed. "And it's gonna be a really shitty life."
"I know you're upset, but this isn't your-"
"Listen, Amanda," Sonny interrupted her curtly. "Her father is useless. He left them when Mia was three and only communicates by writin' checks. She needs guidance-"
"-not smothering," she interjected pointedly.
"She isn't smothered," he asserted. "Smothering is what my parents did to me and my sisters."
"Teresa is really hard on her." It was bold of her to critique one of Sonny's sisters, but Amanda had gotten braver with the subject matter over the years.
Sonny's eyes narrowed. "Are you implyin' that this is... my sister's fault?"
"What? No," she exclaimed. "What happened to her isn't anybody's fault but Ethan's."
He sighed and appeared surly. "You didn't believe her, when she first said something. I know you didn't."
"You're right. I didn't," Amanda admitted. "But you and I both know these college cases get muddy - and this was muddy. I've just, I know what it's like to be a girl her age. You don't get the friendship dynamics, the pressure... I just had a feeling there was more to the story, is all." She fiddled with one of Jesse's crayons that she had abandoned on the island. "You were all worked up about it and I was tryin' to... tread lightly."
"That's unlike you," he mumbled before taking another drink of his beer.
She frowned, insulted. "Hey..."
He cringed at his own words. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I just... I can't believe this is happenin'."
"You and I both know those tests are wrong sometimes. If she really is pregnant," Amanda said carefully, "she has options."
Sonny's eyes widened in horror. "What are you suggesting?"
She was already anticipating his negative reaction as she answered, "well, she can terminate the-"
"Don't even go there, Amanda," he interrupted brashly. "Don't."
Luca wandered into the kitchen and began to hang onto Sonny's leg. "Daddy, up," he whined, reaching a hand upward. The toddler was in a stage where he wanted to be held all of the time, and after the ordeal he had endured with Dana, neither of them could refuse him.
Distracted by their conversation, Sonny hoisted Luca up as he told Amanda, "it's wrong. It's morally wrong."
"So is raping someone!" she hissed.
He pressed his lips together.
"I could barely figure out how to take care of Jesse when she was born, and I was thirty-one years old," Amanda told him quietly, not wanting the little girl watching television in the adjoining living room to hear her. "How the hell is Mia gonna raise a kid at eighteen? Think about it, Sonny. What were you like when you were eighteen?"
"I was responsible..."
"But you didn't have to be a parent."
Jesse got up from her place on the living room couch and hovered curiously at Amanda's feet. "Why are you yelling?" she asked them. "When's the pizza gonna be here?"
"We aren't yellin'," Sonny told her. "We're talkin'."
"In angry voices," Jesse observed cleverly.
"Let's... let this go for now, alright?" Amanda suggested to Sonny, her gaze flickering between the two young children. "We can talk about it later."
In track shorts and a faded navy NYPD t-shirt, Amanda perched on the edge of the empty bathtub. With one knee bent up toward her chest, she carefully began to paint one set of toes a shade of bright pink polish called No Doubt About It. Even though her feet were almost always in shoes, she liked making the nails there pretty colors as a little hidden touch of femininity. She exhaled deeply, the sweep of her bangs fluttering away from her eyes as she concentrated on her work, every now and then glancing over at the baby monitor on the near-by marble counter top. As she worked, Amanda could hear Sonny's heavy footsteps moving around the second floor as he settled Luca, then Jesse into their respective beds for the night.
After a little while, there was a quiet knock on the bathroom door before it creaked open to reveal Sonny. "Hey. Can I come in?"
She nodded. "Sure."
By the foot of the tub, Sonny dropped his lanky frame onto the floor, stretching his legs out parallel to the bath and leaning his back against the wall. His blue eyes looked tired and his brow was knitted together like he was thinking hard about something.
"Careful with that face, you're gonna get wrinkles," Amanda joked, echoing words her mother had spoken to her many times.
A smile flitted across Sonny's features. "Nah. I'm just gettin' more gray."
"That's inevitable." She swiped at a bit of stray paint from the edge of her big toe before dipping her brush back into the bottle. "Everybody asleep?"
"Yeah, everybody's all good." He looked sheepish as he picked at the knee of his jeans. "Sorry 'bout earlier, how I freaked out. I didn't mean to take it out on you."
Amanda sighed, gingerly switching feet and beginning to apply polish to the bare nails on her right foot. "I know it's not a good situation. It's gone from bad to worse. But..."
"But?"
"You love her. So just... keep loving her. She doesn't need the judgement." She glanced up from her work on her pinky toe and gave Sonny a knowing look. "The world's givin' her enough of that already."
"I do love her. I'll always love her," he insisted. "She just had so much potential-"
"She still has it, Sonny. As long as she's alive, she's got it." Pulling back slightly, she surveyed her foot. "And, she's got options. It's her body, her future."
"Abortion is wrong, Amanda." Sonny's voice was low and serious.
Amanda glanced over at him, but his eyes were focused elsewhere. They would always disagree on this topic - she had accepted that fact years ago. "Nobody's askin' you to get one," she reminded Sonny. "What's wrong is a kid havin' a kid she can't take care of. Even worse - one that reminds her of her scumbag rapist."
His eyes went wide as he met her gaze. "I get that, I really do-"
"You don't, though," she interrupted irritably, suddenly a little hurt by Sonny's cluelessness. Her brow furrowed in frustration and she jammed the brush back into the bottle of pink polish. "I know you think you do, but you don't. Nobody's ever used your body against your will, then told you what to do with it after." She shook her head as she scoffed, "God, it's like you haven't worked in sex crimes for five years."
Sonny appeared abashed, as if it had only just occurred to him that he was talking to a woman who had experienced both assault and unplanned pregnancy, albeit at separate times. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it again. He slumped his shoulders against the tiled wall, defeated. "I know. I know you're right," he admitted quietly. He rubbed at his forehead. "I'm not thinkin' about this the right way."
She screwed the bottle of nail polish shut tightly and set it aside. Leaning her back against the wall opposite of Sonny's, she stretched her bare legs along the edge of the tub. She wriggled her toes, coaxing the bright pink to dry, then studied her husband: he looked sad. "You still think this is your fault, don't you?"
He looked over at her with a sheepish pout.
"Mia wasn't assaulted because you pursued this - because we did. She was raped because Ethan is a rapist," Amanda told him for what felt like the hundredth time.
"But if we hadn't-"
"That's not the kinda cop you are. Or the kinda uncle," she interrupted firmly. "You investigated her disclosure because it was the right thing to do legally and for your family."
Sonny pulled in a deep breath, held it for a second, then exhaled. He settled a hand on her bare shin and met Amanda's eyes. "Thanks."
She tilted her head. "For what?"
"For bein' the voice of reason," he explained, his thumb grazing back and forth slowly over her calf muscle.
Despite the heaviness of the subject, Amanda couldn't help but waggle her eyebrows as she smirked, "who ever woulda thought, huh?"
