baby, you're my holy ghost / I need you close / come back to me
When Amanda snuck out of the house Saturday morning, her intention had been to go on a walk. The opportunity to steal a few, private moments to herself was rare, and while she felt a little guilty creeping away from her sleeping husband and children, she needed the space desperately. In the wake of Esther's death, Amanda hadn't had a chance to process it all on her own; her head was filled with static from Liv, Sonny, the Force Investigative Group and IAB. She valued some of their input more than others, but at the end of the day, it was ultimately her situation to make peace with.
Amanda never planned to pull open the heavy door of Immaculate Conception Church in Astoria that day.
Something had compelled her to stop in front of the wrought iron gates and go inside. This was not an urge that had ever struck her before: normally, Amanda stayed far away from all forms of organized religion unless dragged to services by Sonny and his family. That morning, though, her heart felt so sick, she figured it was the one option she had never really tried before.
The old church was cavernous and very empty. She tentatively stepped inside, almost in the same way she entered uncleared areas where armed perpetrators may have lurked - only at that moment she didn't have her gun or SVU backup. While she may have attended mass as a child and with Sonny as an adult, this was not a comfortable place for Amanda. Soundlessly, she slipped into a pew three rows from the front; she couldn't quite commit to taking off her jacket just yet, so she stayed huddled inside of it. Her eyes took in the ornate altar and idols before her as she wondered irritably, just as she always did every time she entered an allegedly sacred space, am I supposed to feel differently here?
"I don't think I've seen you here before," a male voice observed.
Amanda jumped, startled. She turned her head to see an older man dressed in dark, clerical clothing standing by her pew. He appeared to be in his seventies, with gray hair, glasses and soft wrinkles on his face. "I, uh, yeah." She began to get to her feet, suddenly extremely uneasy, as if he had caught her doing something wrong. "I'm sorry, I should-"
"No, no. Stay," he urged her. He put his hand out for her to take and offered her a kind smile. "I'm Reverend Marino, the pastor here."
Slowly, hesitantly, she sunk back down into the pew. "I'm Amanda. I'm not Catholic," she immediately felt compelled to disclose after shaking the reverend's hand.
He raised his eyebrows. "Okay."
"I mean, I grew up Baptist, sort of. I'm from the South. My husband's Catholic," Amanda babbled, "I go to church with him sometimes, not here, but in Staten-"
"You don't have to prove anything to be in here," the reverend interrupted gently, "everybody's welcome."
She nodded, somewhat embarrassed by her obvious anxiety.
"What brings you in today?" he wondered as he took a seat in the pew beside her. "I'm sorry to tell you that you're too early for the Saturday service at eleven..."
"That's good," she blurted, then cringed at her own response. "I mean... I'm not, well, organized religion's not really my thing. I just... I need some, I need somebody to..."
"To...?"
Amanda turned to look at the reverend, who appeared genuinely interested in why she was there. Disarmed slightly, she shrugged. "Forgive me?" It was more of a question than an answer, because truthfully, she wasn't quite sure why she was in that church herself.
Reverend Marino nodded. "For what?"
She turned to look straight ahead; even though he was a total stranger, she couldn't look him in the eye and talk about this. "I did something awful when I was tryin' to do something good and I..." Amanda pulled in a deep, steadying breath in order to compose herself enough to continue: "my husband, he always finds a lot of peace at church. And I don't even know if I believe in God or any of this or whatever but, I just want... to feel better. Maybe that's selfish. Maybe that's not what this is for..."
"Go on," he coaxed her, tone gentle.
"I... I'm a police officer. I got personally involved in a case, I..., the details aren't really - I shot and killed an innocent girl," she said, her tone oddly matter-of-fact to keep from becoming emotional. She sunk her teeth into her lower lip and debated voicing the question on the tip of her tongue. Eyes still focused on the grand altar in front of them, she finally asked: "God... did He know all along that I was meant to fire the bullet that killed her?"
"He knew." Reverend Marino's tone was quiet but confident.
Amanda swiveled in her seat, eyes now narrowed on the older man. "Then why didn't He stop it?" she demanded, suddenly hot with indignation. "Why doesn't He stop all the bad sh- stuff that happens in the world, if He knows it all before it happens?"
A wan smile formed on the reverend's lips. "The idea that God 'already' knows what we'll do in the future isn't the right way of looking at it," he explained, "we as human beings are trying to approach God's perspective in an all too human way. God does not look into the future and 'see' what's going to happen. God sees everything from an eternal state of being outside of time and space. He simply sees and therefore knows everything that to us is past, present and future." He paused, appearing thoughtful, and held Amanda's gaze. He concluded quietly, "Amanda, God knows what's in your heart. He knows your true intentions."
She felt a lump rising in her throat and she swallowed it down. "My intention was to help her," Amanda insisted, oddly anxious to convince him, "I took an oath to protect and serve. That's what I was trying to do. I wanted her to be safe. I wanted to show her that a different sorta life was possible..." She shook her head before adding in a whisper, "I have three kids. My husband and I, we're adopting another one soon. I can't help feeling like I'm not worthy of bein' their mother now that I've done this. I've felt like that before, but... why'd this have to happen at all, let alone now?"
"Faith in God includes faith in his timing," Reverend Marino replied simply.
Amanda's brow furrowed in obvious skepticism.
He offered her small grin. "You look... unconvinced."
"I, uh, don't know what to do with that information," she admitted.
Still smiling, the reverend appeared somewhat baffled by her response. "Be comforted by it, Amanda."
xxx
"Hi, mama," Jesse greeted Amanda from the couch. The little girl was in her pajamas with Frannie's head in her lap as she watched the Disney Channel. Neither of them budged when Amanda walked through the door; this was their Saturday morning ritual.
Amanda shook her coat off and hung it up while simultaneously toeing off her boots. "Hey, Jess."
"Daddy's gonna make pancakes," Jesse informed her, toying with the ever-patient dog's ears with her eyes still glued to the television.
She nodded, distracted. "Yum."
Sonny came loping down the steps with Ruby on his hip and Luca at his heels, everyone still looking rumpled and comfortable from a night's sleep. "Hey, where'd you go?" Sonny wondered when he reached the base of the stairs. Amanda could see that the baby was gnawing on the string of his hoodie, effectively drooling freely on herself and her father.
"Mornin', mama!" Luca shouted energetically, although he didn't come running to greet her. Instead, he immediately barreled past both of his parents and joined his older sister on the living room couch.
"Mornin', Lu," she said before turning to Sonny as he wandered into the adjoining kitchen. "I was up early, so I went for a walk..."
"Mamamama," Ruby cooed, her arms straining as they reached out for her from Sonny's hold.
"Hi, sweet girl," Amanda murmured. She took her youngest daughter from Sonny and adjusted the wriggling baby against her hip. She kissed the top of Ruby's head before smoothing down her soft hair with her free hand.
"Oh, alright," Sonny replied easily to his wife's explanation for her early morning disappearance. He leaned in and gave Amanda a quick kiss. "I'm glad you're back, I'm gonna make some breakfast." He looked beyond her to the children in the living room and called, "who wants what in their pancakes?"
"Chocolate chips!" Jesse and Luca answered in unison.
"Alright, good choice." He looked back at Amanda and his brows knitted together. He set a palm on her shoulder and squeezed as he studied her face with obvious concern. "You okay?" he wondered.
"Yeah." It wasn't necessarily the truth, but she didn't want to talk about Esther in front of the kids. She offered Sonny a weak smile. "I just need some coffee."
"Mamaaaa," Ruby babbled more insistently in her arms, pressing her wet face into the side of Amanda's before grabbing a fistful of her mother's hair and yanking it.
"Ow, yes, Ruby, I'm right here, holdin' you. We can't get any closer," Amanda chuckled as she flinched.
"She's enterin' that phase where you're the only person she's interested in," Sonny sighed, casting an amused grin over his shoulder as he tugged open the refrigerator door. "What d'you want in your pancakes?"
Amanda shook her head. "I'm alright. Coffee's fine."
"I'll make ya one anyway, for when you get jealous of all of ours," he concluded with a smirk as he pulled a bowl from a cabinet by the stove. After a minute of assembling all of the ingredients for pancakes, he cast another glance over at Amanda. Voice lower than before, he told her, "got the mail this mornin'... Luca's preschool is goin' up two hundred bucks a month next semester."
Her stomach lurched with anxiety but outwardly, she scowled. "Seriously?"
"Yep. I dunno what we're payin' them so much for, besides makin' sure he's alive at the end of every day," he grumbled as he cracked eggs into a bowl, "and sometimes I'm not so sure they're competent at doin' that..."
"It's a good school, Sonny," Amanda sighed. Just as she went to open her mouth again, her phone buzzed in the back pocket of her jeans. Adjusting Ruby on her hip, she freed the device to see two messages from Mia. The first was a text: thought you might want to see the latest sonogram. Below it was an ultrasound image: the perfect black and white silhouette of Leo in her womb at thirty-three weeks gestation. "Oh, Sonny, look," Amanda breathed excitedly, now sufficiently distracted from both Luca's tuition and her struggles around Esther. "Look what Mia just texted me."
"Hm?" Sonny wandered over to her and curiously peered over her shoulder.
"It's a sonogram," she explained, "it's Leo."
"Oh, hey, there he is." Chest against Amanda's back, Sonny leaned over her shoulder further to study the photo more closely, the grin evident in his voice. "He's lookin' good."
"I wanna see! I wanna see!" Luca cried from the couch.
"Me too!" Jesse chirped.
"C'mere, come see," Sonny beckoned them both.
The two children scampered from the living room into the kitchen to clamber up onto stools at the island. The crowded close to Amanda, who stood in between both of them.
"This is a picture from inside Mia's belly," Amanda explained, trying to keep the phone away from Ruby's eager fingers while simultaneously showing her two older children. "That's his head, there's his little hand... and there's his foot. See that?"
"He's waving!" Luca exclaimed with a laugh, as if it was the funniest thing he had ever seen.
"You're right," Sonny chuckled, "he is."
"When's he gonna be here?" the little boy whined.
"Very soon. Christmas time, remember?" Amanda reminded him. She smiled down at Luca, "you're so excited to meet him, huh?"
Luca nodded. "Uh huh."
"Is Santa gonna know to bring him presents?" Jesse wondered, appearing very serious.
"Maybe you guys should mention him in your letters this year, just to be sure," Sonny suggested.
"Okay," she replied, "I'll do that."
"That's very nice of you," Amanda told her, relieved every time her oldest daughter made any sort of remark indicating that she was accepting of the idea of a new baby.
The little girl nodded eagerly. "Santa likes when kids do nice things. Maybe I'll get an extra present," Jesse explained with the sort of Georgia-peach-sweetness that Amanda could only laugh at.
Amanda nibbled on a chocolate chip cookie in the basement of the Battery Park Community Center. Her Gambler's Anonymous meeting was over that evening, but several of the members lingered to socialize around leftover refreshments. Her blue eyes flickered to the watch on her thin wrist; Sonny was supposed to meet her there so they could walk to the train together.
"Amanda, long-time no-see."
She turned around to see an older woman, Nora, who had been a part of Gambler's Anonymous since Amanda had joined years ago. She always had such a warm, supportive energy; Amanda found solace simply being around her. Apparently Nora had lived quite the chaotic life, but one would never know it from her peaceful demeanor now. She hadn't gambled, drank or done drugs in thirty years. "Hey," she replied with a sheepish smile. "Yeah, I know... it's been awhile."
"How are those beautiful babies of yours?" Nora wondered with a grin.
A smile tugged at her lips. "They're doin' really well, thank you for asking."
"And that handsome husband?"
"He's great, too. He's meetin' me here, actually."
"And how are you, more importantly?" Nora coaxed her gently, "you didn't say much tonight."
She picked a chocolate chip out of her cookie before meeting Nora's eyes. "I needed to do more listening than talking," she admitted.
The older woman nodded in quiet understanding.
"I'm good, though. I don't even want to gamble necessarily..." Scrunching her nose up at the cookie in her hands, Amanda tossed the remainder of it in the trash, officially disinterested. "Just some other stuff goin' on..."
"Well, we're here for all of it, you know that," Nora reminded her, reaching out to give Amanda's arm a gentle squeeze.
She nodded appreciatively. "I know."
"See you next week?" the older woman asked hopefully.
"Yeah," Amanda replied, appreciative of Nora's genuine interest in her well-being.
Left alone, she dusted any remaining cookie crumbs off of her palms before wandering upstairs. Bundled up in her coat, Amanda waited in the community center's darkened lobby; it was too cold outside to wait for Sonny on the sidewalk. She recognized his lanky form the moment he quickly rounded the corner, his familiar frame hunched over slightly as he braced himself against the frigid air, hands shoved into the pockets of a camel-colored pea coat. When Amanda emerged from the building, he skidded to a halt inches in front of her.
"Hey," she greeted Sonny. She rose up on her toes to give him a quick peck on the lips and found that his mouth was pleasantly warm in comparison to the chilly wind around them.
"Hi." Sonny's gloved hands briefly cupped her face before he slipped one set of fingers into hers. They began walking down the street, their pace immediately steady and evenly matched despite their differences in height. "How was the meeting?"
"S'alright." She cast him a sideways glance, her free hand tugging her beanie further over her ears. "You finish up those reports?"
"Yes, Sarge," he smirked. "Let's get a drink."
Amanda quirked a suspicious eyebrow at his suggestion. It was a Tuesday night, Sonny had worked late, she had just left Gambler's Anonymous, and they had three children at home with Audrey. It wasn't necessarily abnormal for them to steal an hour or two alone before returning to Queens, but Amanda's ordeal with Esther hadn't exactly left her feeling like the life of the party lately.
"C'mon, we got time," he insisted earnestly, looking at his watch. "Let's stop into Max's."
"Okay," she sighed.
There were a few people taking refuge from the cold inside of Max's, but the bar was generally quiet. They ordered their drinks - an IPA for Sonny and a whiskey neat for Amanda - before finding a booth by a window to sit at together.
Sonny shook off his coat, then his suit jacket, before he leaned over the table like he was going to tell Amanda a secret. "I got some good news." He grinned widely and waggled his eyebrows. "I've been waitin' all day to tell you in person."
She took a sip of her whiskey before replying distractedly, "hm?" Her eyes darted around the bar, interested in who else was lurking there on week day night.
"Y'know my uncle's place, in Tom's River?" Sonny continued.
Amanda focused her gaze back on her husband, jarred back into the present as she vividly recalled the location where her son was abducted to by his crazy ex-girlfriend not so long ago. "How could I forget?" she muttered cynically.
"Well, my mother finally went up there to clean some stuff out," he said after a swig of beer, "y'know how she's been avoidin' it for awhile. She was goin' through all the rooms and pulled the fridge away from the wall-"
"What the hell was she doing, doing that?" she interrupted in disbelief. She wasn't sure she had ever felt compelled to move a refrigerator in her entire life, no matter how deeply she was cleaning.
"You know her, she gets kinda outta control when it comes to cleanin'," Sonny explained with a roll of his eyes. "Anyway, she goes to get behind the fridge and she finds this... thing, this file folder down there." He turned in his seat and fumbled with his suit jacket, brandishing a manila envelope which he had folded in half. He slid it across the table toward her once it was flattened. "It was filled with a buncha paperwork from an old job he had with the state of Connecticut. Apparently he had a deferred compensation retirement fund there and named me the beneficiary. Nobody knew about it when he died; he hadn't worked there in eight years and it was different from the pension he had been gettin'." He opened up the envelope and pulled out the contents, turning a document to face her. "She dropped this off to me today..." He pointed to first section of the paperwork. "There's nineteen thousand, sixty-seven dollars and fifty-two cents in there."
Brow knitting together, Amanda's gaze dropped to Sonny's finger as her eyes scanned the words on the page. "This... this account? This is for you?"
"Yeah," he responded eagerly, "it's just been sittin' there, accruin' interest, waitin' for me to claim it as the beneficiary. It's not like anybody from the company was gonna go out of their way to track me down when he died."
Her mouth dropped open in amazement, blue eyes flickering over the document repeatedly to make sure he had read it correctly - and that she was reading it correctly now, too. She picked the statement up off of the table and leaned back into the booth, gaze narrow and almost accusatory as she studied the quantity of money. Her heartbeat began to quicken as she realized that, yes, the comma and decimal points were all precisely in the places Sonny said they were.
"We can knock out almost all of that debt, Amanda," he breathed excitedly. "We can finally get ahead of it."
Amanda set the paper down again and lifted her eyes to meet her husband's. She sucked her lower lip into her mouth as it began to tremble, trying to keep herself from succumbing to the overwhelming urge to cry.
"Don't cry," Sonny chuckled, reaching for her hand and squeezing her fingers.
Amanda quickly flicked away any hint of tears and shook her head. "No, it's just... I did something the other day," she admitted.
He immediately appeared concerned. "What did you do?"
"I... went to church," she confessed.
Sonny made the mistake of taking a massive swig of his beer precisely when she answered his question - which he promptly began to choke on. "You what?" Sonny coughed, his eyes wide both with shock and his effort to breathe.
She chewed her thumbnail as she watched him attempt to collect himself; his reaction was understandable. "I was walkin' by and just... went in," Amanda mumbled. She lowered her eyes from Sonny to gaze into her whiskey, swirling the amber liquid around in the glass gently. "I dunno, you always go when something is bothering you. I figured I could use all the help I could get and... the reverend there, I was talking to him about how this Esther thing... how I can't understand how this happened, how it happened this way and, and why'd it have to happen now, y'know? With Leo comin', I wanted to feel like a good person, a good mom, and now I'm second guessing everything... and..." She lifted her gaze to meet Sonny's, "he told me something."
He cleared his throat and took another, cautious sip of his beer. "What'd he say?"
"He said," Amanda went on slowly, "to... trust in God's timing."
There was a distinct glint in Sonny's blue eyes, as if he had been vindicated - as if he had spent their entire relationship waiting for this very moment. "I see," he replied simply, very obviously fighting a smile as he lifted his glass to his mouth again.
She looked down at the retirement statement, at the quantity of money she had only ever seen before in the negatives. She felt a sense of relief take the edge off of the sadness and worry that had been weighing so heavily on her lately. "So maybe..."
"Maybe...?" Sonny coaxed her.
"Maybe... there's somethin' to the stuff you're always saying," Amanda mumbled, as if it pained her to admit such a thing.
"The 'stuff,' huh?" he repeated skeptically, an eyebrow raised. "Alright, I'll take that."
"With the baby and everything," she whispered reverently, "the timing really is..."
Sonny smiled as he completed her sentence, "perfect?"
Amanda nodded, the corners of her own mouth flickering and turning upward. "Yeah."
Straddling his lower back, knees settled into the mattress, Amanda's hands traveled along Sonny's spine. "There?"
"No, lower," he instructed, voice muffled as his head rested on his folded arms.
With steady pressure, her fingers obediently crept downward. "There?"
"Ow, shit!" he yelped, his body reacting so dramatically that he practically knocked Amanda off of his form.
"Guess I found it," she smirked triumphantly. Once Sonny laid flat once more, her thumb slid deliberately along the stretch of knotted muscle beneath his warm, freshly-showered skin. "Are you ever gonna go to a doctor about this?"
"No. You know how - ah! - I feel about medical institutions," he replied, flinching beneath her touch before relaxing again. "Plus, you always fix it."
She rolled her eyes. "Mm."
"Did you see Jesse's math worksheet on the counter?" he murmured sleepily.
"Yeah, you guys were working on that for hours," she sighed. "She's not so good at subtraction, huh? Must get that from her mama."
"She gets so pissed off when she doesn't get the answer right. Gets that from you, too." She could hear the smirk in Sonny's voice.
"Declan was never so great at bein' wrong either," she reminded him with a little grin. Enough time had passed that his name didn't make their stomachs churn with dread anymore. In fact, sometimes Amanda felt a tiny pinprick of guilt when Declan crossed her mind; she definitely did not miss him, but she did hope that he was doing okay. "With this Esther thing, I thought about him," she went on to admit, "how he'd handle it and what he'd tell me, y'know?"
"Mm," he grunted. "What would he say?"
Amanda paused thoughtfully before she offered one of the lieutenant's old, familiar platitudes: "'what doesn't kill you makes you a better detective.'"
"Does that make you feel better?" Sonny sounded genuinely curious.
She released a sigh as her fingers relented against his muscles, tracing gentler patterns against his back instead. "Maybe it would have years ago, when bein' a detective was all I ever cared about."
"That was Murphy's problem," he murmured, "his job was his whole life. That's all he ever cared about."
"Yeah," Amanda exhaled, then shrugged. "And I dunno what's really gonna make me feel better about it besides time, I guess."
Sonny nodded. "I think you're right."
Sonny's phone buzzed on the mattress. He extended one arm and reached for it, expending the minimum amount of effort to jab at the 'speaker phone' option to answer his sister Teresa's call. "Hey, T," he said, immediately flopping back down to rest his head on his arms again.
"Hi, Teresa," Amanda greeted her.
"Oh, I'm glad I've got you both," Teresa's voice rang out from the device.
"What's up?" he wondered.
"Mia's in labor!" his sister exclaimed.
Amanda froze, shocked, then scrambled off of Sonny's back to kneel on the mattress closer to phone, as if she hadn't heard correctly. "Huh?" she sputtered, "she's like... five weeks early!"
"I know, I know! But she's definitely in labor. She's young, first baby... you know how it goes, Amanda," Teresa rambled frantically. "I think it's gonna be awhile but, I know with the kids, d'you want to bring them to mom and dad's? I'm assumin' you want to be here-"
"Of course we do," Sonny interrupted as he struggled to sit up. He ran a hand through his damp hair and looked at Amanda with wide eyes. "We'll, ah, we'll call mom and we'll put everybody in the car and go over there."
"Do you even have stuff ready for the baby yet?" Teresa asked.
Amanda's mouth fell open, insulted at the insinuation that she and Sonny weren't prepared for something this important - as if they hadn't already spent years being parents.
"Nah. Amanda and me just figured we'd keep him in the yard till we sorted it out," Sonny responded sarcastically. "That sound good?"
"Dominick!" Teresa gasped.
"That was a really stupid question," he muttered. Shaking his head, he continued, "okay. We're gonna get the kids together and get goin'. Keep us posted, would ya?"
"I will," his sister replied.
"Is Mia doing okay?" Amanda asked, her mounting excitement overriding her irritation with Teresa. She clambered off of the bed, now unable to stay sitting - or still.
"She's nervous," Teresa explained, "aside from bein' early, everything is goin' fine so far. I'm just tryin' to keep her calm."
Amanda and Sonny exchanged skeptical looks; Teresa was not exactly the most relaxing presence. "Tell her we'll be there as soon as possible," Amanda assured her.
