I'm a schmuck. You get this before the last chapter of Adrift and I make a solemn vow to all of my readers that I will never, ever again post a new story before the last one is finished. The last chapter of Adrift *is* almost done, but there's something missing there and I'm not going to post until I feel it's just right.
She's thinner. That's the first thing I notice as I approach the cafe where Emily stands waiting for me, a cup of coffee in each hand. Much too thin, so thin that she looks like she must be cold even though it's July in DC and already hot and humid outside at nine o'clock in the morning. I've seen her weight fluctuate before; a few pounds is significant on her frame. Weight loss usually signals stress for her - the thinnest she'd ever been was during those weeks leading up to the showdown with Doyle.
She's thinner than that now. Maybe Interpol was just too much, too stressful, and that's why she's back.
She has large, dark sunglasses covering her eyes and looks slightly more pale than I remember. She doesn't take off her sunglasses as I approach, but she does smile. Still, it doesn't cover her face like I expected it to, like mine is of its own accord, just seeing her standing there. Her smile barely stretches her lips and it's in that moment that I realize that there is something very, very wrong. That this probably isn't about a job at all.
"Hi," I manage to say in a cheerful voice I don't quite feel when I'm standing in front of her, trying to disguise my concern.
"Hi," she says quietly as she hands me one of the cups of coffee. I take it with one hand and wrap my other arm around her. She returns to the hug and I feel a little better, until I feel the sharpness of her shoulder blades through the thin cotton of her t-shirt.
The two of us don't typically beat around the bush with each other, at least we didn't used to, back in the first several years of our partnership. So I don't try now. I glance around and find an empty outdoor table that's away from other people. I walk. I sit. She follows.
"What's wrong?" I ask.
I am stunned and my heart breaks for the woman before me who used to have such a prominent role in my life, as I watch two tears slowly creep from beneath her sunglasses and trail down her cheeks.
"What's wrong?" I quietly implore again.
She gulps and wipes her cheeks. Her mouth opens and closes as she debates and chooses her words. More tears follow. "Shit," she finally says. "I didn't want to cry."
The sunglasses are off, pushed up on her head and I gasp at the circles under her eyes as she swipes angrily at the tears on her face.
"You're sick," I utter thickly, knowing suddenly, dread settling like a heavy blanket over me.
She nods. "Cancer. I start treatments at Johns Hopkins next week. But that's not why I wanted to see you. Derek, I...we…"
She trails off and wipes more tears off her face. The word "cancer" drives a virtual knife in my heart. I reach over and put my hand on top of hers, rubbing my thumb gently over the paper thin skin I find there. I'm not sure where she's going with this conversation, but this woman was - is? - a very good friend, more than a friend if I'm honest with myself, and important to me, even in her absence the past few years. I want to comfort her. I'm scared to death for her.
She smiles at my hand on hers and places her free hand on top of mine, then stares at the connection and sadly shakes her head. "Derek, we have a son," she finally manages to whisper.
I am stunned for a second, not really absorbing the words fully, and then I am nothing. I feel like there's a giant vacuum pulling at my back, first sucking in my stomach, my lungs and heart quickly following. I am there and I am not. She seems very far away, like I am floating weightlessly down a miles-long hallway and she's at the other end, barely visible, barely audible, entirely unrecognizable.
I realize I'm not breathing when I hear myself take in a powerful, shuddering breath, and then I'm able to focus on her again. I pull my hand away from between hers, unable to touch her in that moment, and do the math in my head. If we have a son, he'd be a little over two years old now.
I realize she's crying again, and now I really don't care, because already the anger is surging in me. I have a son I know nothing about. I have a son who doesn't know me at all, because she never told me about him.
She's talking again. She's talking quickly now and I try to hear the truth while brushing aside her excuses, because there is absolutely nothing she could say to me in this moment that would justify her actions. Nothing. And she knows it.
But her eyes are still her eyes, even with the gray circles under them; her face is still her face, even with her cheekbones more prominent because of her weight loss. I can't make sense of my world, for the first time in what feels like forever. And now she is saying something about Stage IV Lymphoma and I'm fully listening again.
She wants me to get to know our son because her own mortality has been thrown down in front of her, and she doesn't know how this is going to end, how or if she is going to end. She wipes her face with a napkin.
"I'm sorry, Derek," she whispers. "So very sorry."
"Where is he?" I ask, thinking he might still be in London.
"At the park a block away, with his nanny, Claudia."
"What's his name?" I ask.
And she looks up and meets my eyes. "Charles...Charlie," she whispers.
At that word, at my father's name falling from her lips, I do the only thing I can do: I cry and try to remind myself to breathe. My emotions are at odds and I'm not sure which one is going to come out on top.
I'm so angry that I could shake her and scream at her; I want to call her every foul name I can think of.
I'm so heartbroken that I could crumble in a ball on the ground and sob, not caring that I'm in public.
I'm so disgusted and disappointed that I can barely look at her.
I'm so scared she might die.
I want to see my son.
That finally wins out. I stand angrily and wipe my eyes with the back of my arm. "Let's go," I say firmly.
She stands and points in the direction of the park, and I walk quickly, not caring that she's sick and my fast pace might be difficult for her. She doesn't complain. I toss my coffee roughly into the first garbage can I see and pull out my phone, call Hotch, tell him I'm sick.
"You sound terrible," Hotch says.
And I do. Even to my own ears, my voice sounds hollow and distant, like I'm not quite living in that moment, and I'm not, because I just can't believe it. Of all the things Emily never told me about herself that I had painstakingly forgiven, that she would keep this from me after all of that has rocked me to my core.
With each step I feel my anger rising, keeping pace with my anticipation. I can see the park ahead and feel Emily put a tentative hand on my arm. She's out of breath and winded from the very short walk, and I slow down.
"I know you're angry and hurt," she puffs out. "I understand. You deserve to feel that way. But none of this is Charlie's fault. Let's not scare him, okay? Let me make the introductions. I told him about you this morning. He's very verbal. I think he understands a little. He knows he's going to meet you today. He's comfortable with new people."
The angry beast inside me roars and I can't control it. It's my turn to reach out and grab her arm. I spin her so she's facing me. "I shouldn't fucking be new people, Emily." All the foul words I'm thinking of are right on the tip of my tongue, but I see her wince and I release my hold on her arm. I soothe the skin there because that is who I am. I want to call her selfish and awful and a bitch - me, Derek Morgan, who has never uttered that word aloud to a woman. I don't like what this is doing to me and I can't hold onto that angry beast for long before I let it go for the time being.
The Emily Prentiss I know is neither selfish nor a bitch, but I'm not sure I know her anymore; the woman I thought she was would not have kept this from me. Maybe I never really knew her at all. Still, she is upset and sick and I can't be mean, just can't.
I take a few deep breaths to calm myself. I know she's right, she needs to do the initial introductions, and I need to calm the fuck down so I don't scare my son. My son. I can't give her the courtesy of an "okay," but I manage to mutter a "fine" through my clenched teeth.
She nods and walks at a much slower pace towards the playground, and I walk beside her, trying to loosen the tension in my body.
A toddler sees her. He smiles and cries out, "Mummy!" And then he is running on little legs towards her.
His British accent shouldn't surprise me, but it does. His skin is a couple shades lighter than mine. His hair is wavy rather than curly. He is a stunningly beautiful mixture of the best of both of us - he is her eyebrows and my eyes; he is her forehead and my nose; he is her eyelashes and my ears.
I fall instantly in love with him.
I watch her bend down on one knee and scoop Charlie into her arms, kissing his cheek softly. I am insanely jealous of all the kisses she's been able to give him that I haven't. The good guy in me that keeps rising to the surface despite my residual anger is devastated that her kisses for our son might be numbered.
I see a young woman with blond hair and freckles hanging slightly back, her face unsure and worried. Claudia, I presume.
Emily picks up Charlie and walks towards a bench, and I follow closely behind. He's looking at me over Emily's shoulder, curious. I sit down next to them.
She gathers Charlie's hands in her own and rests her forehead against his. "Charlie," she says quietly and simply, "This is your daddy."
I don't know if he understands the enormity of that word; I'm not even sure I understand the enormity of that word. I don't know if he's asked about his daddy before, or if he's old enough to even express questions about that yet. I know nothing about him, except that his eyes are locked on mine and it's like looking at my reflection in the mirror.
He reaches a hand out and waves at me.
I smile.
He grins and says with his lilting accent, "You are big!"
And I laugh. I find myself again, let the anger and hurt go for the moment, and become singularly focused on this little boy who I don't want to be frightened of me.
I reach forward and take his small hand gently in mine and shake it. "Not too big," I whisper and wink at him. "It's nice to meet you, Charlie."
He stares at me and smiles again and I reach both arms towards him. "Can I hold you?"
He looks at Emily and she gives him a nod and a reassuring smile. He looks back at me and nods and leans towards me and I am holding my son on my lap, in my arms. I know in that moment that the world as I know it is completely over, even if I don't know what my future looks like. In that moment, there is me and there is him. Everything else is secondary.
I see Emily out of the corner of my eye, her head turned away from us, her frightfully bony shoulders shaking as she tries to cry quietly.
I can't give her much in that moment; my emotions are all over the map when it comes to her. It's going to take me a long time to sort out how I feel about Emily Prentiss. She has taken everything I knew about my path in life from me, spun it on its axis, and handed me back something new, something scary and uncertain, but unbelievable and beautiful and better, in the span of thirty minutes.
There's a toddler in my lap, my son, smiling at me, and whatever the future holds, I don't want him to sense tension between me and his mother. Her cancer brought her here. Her cancer allowed me to finally know about him. Because of that, there's a part of me that's glad she's sick, and a part of me that hates myself for that thought.
I desperately don't want her to die, no matter how angry I am.
I keep one arm around Charlie and smile at him and start asking about what he likes to do at the park. With my other hand I reach out and place it on top of Emily's for a moment. She doesn't turn to look at me. Her shoulders shake harder.
When I first picked out my flat in London, I chose a three bedroom with the hope that the team would visit me. I wanted space for them, like two spare rooms would tie me to the idea of them in my life even if I'd chosen to leave.
Only Garcia and Derek ever visited, and only once, after I'd been in London for two months. Three weeks after they left, I discovered that I was going to have a need for those two extra bedrooms, a different kind of need than I'd ever considered for my life.
Armed with good news from every prenatal test known to man telling me that at the age of forty-two I was carrying a very healthy boy, towards the end of my second trimester, I started the hunt for a live-in nanny.
My proposed salary, along with the room and board, had people crawling out of the woodwork to interview. At first, I barely glanced at Claudia Wright's application and resume. She was barely twenty-one years old, and listed her mother and a teacher as her references. I was looking for someone older, someone more mature, someone with a history of positive references and experience. I wanted someone kind and warm and loving.
Using my profiling skills, I carefully selected and interviewed eight middle-aged women. Because I was not naive enough to believe that prejudice didn't exist, I was honest. I lost five of them somewhere between "single mother," "biracial baby" and "unexpected, last-minute trips that will take me out of town sometimes." They didn't say anything, but I could tell by their faces that one or all of those ideas was not something they were entirely comfortable with or approving of. The three women I was left with wouldn't do; they were too strict, too cold, too stodgy. They might have ended up being fine nannies, but I couldn't imagine living with them, and I wanted something better than just "fine" for my son.
I went back to the drawing board and actually took the time to read through Claudia's application, thinking maybe my parameters were all wrong. I called and asked if she'd like to interview for the position, and she excitedly said yes.
And I found myself with a petite young woman who was maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet on a good day; a combination of sprite, fairy godmother and a modern-day Mary Poppins.
Her resume might have said she was twenty-one, but she looked no more than sixteen when I first met her; she doesn't look much older than that now. But she looked at me like she was wondering why the hell she needed to know that the baby I was carrying was biracial, like it couldn't possibly matter. And when I mentioned the last-minute trips for work, and that I could guarantee her two days off a week, but I couldn't guarantee that they'd fall on a weekend or even if they'd be two days in a row, she'd smiled and said, "I can read and visit with my family as easily on a Tuesday as I can on a Saturday."
At twenty-one, she'd helped raise six younger siblings. She was ready to move out of her family's home and was planning to give half her salary to her parents, so that they could have an easier time of it. She was bright and smart and kind and well-spoken. She was surprisingly strong, both mentally and physically, and mature and worldly-wise despite her seemingly sheltered life. She was a wealth of knowledge from breastfeeding to colic, and everything in between. She moved in four weeks before I was due and helped me set up the nursery.
When I went into labor two weeks before my due date, and two days after that I came home with Charlie, I arrived to a flat that was spotlessly clean with dinner on the stove, to a stack of freshly-laundered baby clothes and blankets, and to a young woman who seemed to instantly adore the baby in my arms as much as I did.
Her slim, freckled shoulders carried Charlie and me through those first difficult months. In Claudia, I found someone that started as a nanny, and soon felt like family. I found a friend, despite the fact that I was old enough to be her mother. We had the same tastes in books and television. I taught her Spanish and she taught me how to cook. I taught her to drive and she taught me, literally, how to take the time to stop and smell the roses.
When I told her I had cancer, she hugged me, and I felt perfectly comfortable crying on her shoulder.
When I told her I wanted to receive my treatment in the United States, she asked, "When do we leave?"
When I fessed up that Charlie was not merely the product of a one-night stand, but the son of a man that I had deep feelings for and a deep connection with at one time, a man I'd never told about his son, she put her hand on my knee and said, "I have faith that whomever helped make Charlie must be a wonderful, understanding person."
And now, as she sits next to me on the bench at the park and we both watch Derek Morgan sitting in the sand playing with Charlie, she keeps an arm around my shoulder and squeezes gently. She whispers, "This is going to work out. I can feel it."
I don't know what "work out" means. Does it mean she can tell Derek will take Charlie if I die? Or does it mean that I'm going to live and Derek and I are going to find a way in the middle of my own personal hell to co-exist and co-parent? Or does she mean something else entirely?
I turn my head to look at Claudia and she is smiling at the picture father and son make. I don't know what Derek is talking to Charlie about, but over the voices of other children on the playground, I can hear them both laugh frequently.
I've missed Derek's laugh.
We've been at this park for nearly two hours, and whenever Derek looks my way, I'm never quite sure what I'm going to get. Sometimes he looks clearly angry, and sometimes he looks sad and concerned. Sometimes he smiles, and sometimes he looks at me like he doesn't know me at all.
I watch as he stands in the sandbox and brushes himself off a bit. Between running and rolling around on the grass with Charlie and playing with wet sand, he's a bit of a mess, but he doesn't seem to mind at all. Charlie stands and takes his hand. Clearly, Derek has met with Charlie's seal of approval, almost instantly.
They walk towards us. "Mummy, I'm hungry," Charlie says.
I smile at the little boy who means the world to me. "We should get home and get some lunch, then."
I look at Derek and he's looking right back at me, with something that borders between confusion and worry, like I'm going to take Charlie away from him and that's going to be that. I push my sunglasses on the top of my head even though my eyes look awful. Derek and I communicate well with our expressions, and I don't want to block him out.
"I'm renting a house in Bethesda so I don't have to fight through DC traffic to get to Baltimore for my treatments," I say softly. That's partially true. It's the reason I didn't choose DC or Virginia. But I actually have no aversion to Baltimore and wouldn't have minded living there. I just didn't want to be so far away from Derek to make visiting whenever he wanted prohibitive. And when the day comes when he might take Charlie overnight, being thirty minutes away from my little boy sounds a hell of a lot better than an hour and a half.
Derek glances between me and Charlie, like he's not quite sure what to do.
"Would you like to see the house and have lunch with us?" I ask.
His relieved smile is brief, but there. And then it's gone. He nods. My car that my mother leased for me is actually parked right here at the park. I give Derek the address of the house so he can walk back to his car and then get on the road.
He still looks uncertain. He bends down and hugs Charlie like he might not ever see him again, and my heart breaks for what I've done to this man.
I take a risk. I put my hand on his shoulder and I feel him tense up before he relaxes under my touch. "Why don't we drive you back to your car and then you can follow us?" I ask, my lips quivering and my eyes once again filling with tears.
His voice cracks when he replies, "Sounds good."