The first property I ever purchased as a renovation project was nothing more than a shack in Manassas, Virginia. I wanted a project where I could fully immerse myself in the work, escape from the realities of my job, and feel like I was somewhat getting away from it all while still being within calling distance should there be an emergency case. The property was perfect for my purposes - the project would take me forever, there was plenty of land and trees and privacy around me, and even a little creek on the backside of the property.

The one-bedroom needed a lot of work and it took me over two years of my limited time to complete everything, to make it look like a small home instead of shack. My lack of experience with this type of work lead to many mistakes at first, and I had to scrap many of my first projects and re-start again.

It was my sanctuary from the far-more emotional work of the BAU, it was the place where I worked through missing my mom and sisters since leaving Chicago, and it was a place where I learned to let some of my demons go.

When the house was completed, I didn't sell it. I put a down payment on another property to start working on, but I kept that small place in Manassas. When my past was foisted upon me in front of the team on that case in Chicago in 2006, and my nightmares about Carl Buford resurfaced, I bought a bed for the house, and a small kitchen table and it was my primary residence for nearly five months. I slowly furnished the place while I screamed out my nightmares at night where no neighbors could hear, and when I finally went a few weeks without a nightmare, I packed up and went back to my apartment.

I rented it as a furnished one-bedroom and have had a steady stream of renters, single people or couples, who stayed, but never for long. They ultimately didn't like their commute, or they decided they needed a bigger space, or maybe it was just the fact that sometimes the type of people who wanted isolated, furnished, one-bedrooms in the middle of nowhere don't like to stay in one place for long.

I was never quick to re-rent when one tenant left. I took my time there each time, reacquainting myself with the place for a bit, creating work for myself even when it wasn't needed, before putting it back on the rental market.

My most recent tenants moved out this past May, and I haven't advertised it for a rental yet. Summer is the best time at this place - as dusk falls, you can hear the frogs croaking from the creek, and then, as night envelopes the property, the treeline comes to life with fireflies. When my last tenants first moved out, I imagined summer nights when Savannah was working that I could be here, repainting or possibly updating the bathroom a bit.

I wasn't planning on needing it as my emotional sanctuary again, but that's where I am the Sunday evening before Emily starts chemotherapy. I've been sitting on the back deck for four hours now, listening to the frogs, and now watching the fireflies make their first appearance.

The past five days have exhausted, confused and humbled me. I've been angry at times, with both Savannah and Emily, but mostly Savannah. And I've become so attached to Charlie that I can't imagine a single day not seeing him.

Emily pisses me off because I talk in "whens" and she answers back in "ifs."

"When this is over and you go into remission, are you going to go back to London?"

"If I get to that point, I'll talk with you and we'll figure out what's best for Charlie."

"When does your chemotherapy end and your radiation begin?"

"If I make it that far, my radiation will start right after my chemo ends, sometime around the end of October. Provided there are no complications."

"When it's all over, how do you see this going?"

"If I'm there to have a part in the say of it, I imagine you and I can come up with a solution that works for us."

These statements make me want to shake her more than I did when she first told me about Charlie. Her emotions around telling me about him, I can understand. Her tears about me helping her out through all of this, I can understand. Her absolute emotional indifference to her own mortality when she talks to me about it, I just can't understand at all.

Fucking want to live! Believe it! I want to scream at her.

I've been relatively mute with the team during the handful of hours I've been at headquarters with them. I have too much to process in my head to actually speak out loud, and sometimes I think I'm being selfish when it comes to Savannah, and I don't want anyone to voice their agreement to that assessment out loud. I simply don't want the confirmation.

The first day I knew Charlie, after I'd tucked him into bed at night, spoken briefly with Emily, and then made my way home by nine o'clock, like I told Savannah I would do, she wasn't there. I got a text at around eleven o'clock stating she was going to stay at her friend Marina's house that night.

The next day, a Thursday, I went into work and couldn't really stand the sad, worried looks on the faces of my BAU family. I spent four hours in my office with the door shut, researching lymphoma and chemotherapy instead of doing the paperwork I should have been doing. Then I walked out - actually, it was more like I snuck out - and made my way back to Bethesda to be there before Charlie when down for his nap.

Savannah came home that night, but she didn't say much. I got angry when she almost tried to pretend like nothing was different. There was a BIG difference there now. And when she asked me if I wanted to watch a movie, I bit back my anger at the fact that I felt like I had to sit there on the couch with her instead of tucking my son into bed that night.

On Friday, I watched Charlie alone for the first time. Emily had to go to Baltimore for blood work, and Claudia went with her. Emily's house was literally ten minutes away from Savannah's hospital and I'd talked to her in the morning about meeting me and Charlie at the park for lunch. She seemed opened to it, but then had called to say she was too busy to get away. I told her I could bring Charlie to her and we could have lunch at the hospital, and she said it wasn't going to work.

And then that night, she came home and was affectionate and suggested we just skip dinner and go upstairs. I decided I wasn't going to play her passive-aggressive games. "You blew us off at lunch. I know you could have gotten away. And the last thing I want to do is go upstairs with you right now. I have a son, and I can't be affectionate with you, or even try to pretend, unless you can accept him in our lives as the situation stands," I said softly but firmly.

I slept on the couch that night.

Saturday was a day where I tried to be around Charlie and also be around for Savannah, in case she wanted to talk. I made three round-trips between home and Bethesda that day. After my final trip home, she finally started talking. She said, "Maybe you could bring Charlie here on Monday during Emily's chemotherapy session. I don't work, and I think I would feel more comfortable with that. I think I need you to have only minimal contact with Emily through all of this."

Wrong or right, my plans for Monday had been to show up like a knight in shining armor at Emily's house, give her a boost of confidence that my day with Charlie would be better than perfect and she was going to be the badass woman I always knew her to be through all of this, and have dinner waiting for her when she got home from her treatment.

But I conceded. I conceded that this request from Savannah was not at all unreasonable. And when I called Emily to ask her, she was only just a little hesitant, like she knew denying the request was unreasonable, too.

"He should get to know your house and Savannah, absolutely," she'd said with barely a hitch in her voice.

So I agreed. I told Savannah that I would pick Charlie up on Monday morning - tomorrow morning - at seven-thirty, and be back home around eight o'clock. And I'm sitting here on this back porch of a tiny house in Manassas trying to come to terms with a decision that doesn't feel quite right to me.

It's not that there's any absolute right or wrong here, not at all. But I wonder when we're all going to stretch ourselves just thin enough doing the right things for what feels like the wrong reasons until we snap, until the threads that hold us together are frayed and we can't put ourselves together anymore.

I wonder who is going to snap first.

If I had to put money on it, there's really no way in hell I'd bet against Emily. She's going to drive me crazy trying to keep me at arm's length, and she's going to make selfless decisions that only hurt her without saying anything at all, but she's going to come through this intact, even if she doesn't believe it right now.

That leaves me or Savannah, and I honestly don't know who is going to come out on top, or if there can even be a winner here. I love her, but right now, I can only love her in the context of her accepting Charlie and this life that sprung up at us from out of nowhere. I can't fix it for her or sugarcoat it for her too much, even if I feel selfish about that.

I rest the heels of my shoes on the back porch railing on the house in Manassas and a firefly comes close enough to me that I can grab it.

I imagine Charlie at this house. I imagine catching fireflies in a jar, marveling at them, and then releasing them into the night.

And the thing that makes me think that I'm going to be the one who snaps first, who completely loses my shit, is the fact that when I imagine Charlie at this house that has only ever been my private, secret sanctuary, the person I see there with us is Emily, not Savannah.

And that's what really lets me know that if there was a race of the most selfish between me, Emily and Savannah, we'd go a long distance neck and neck, but I'd probably win.

My mother is good at ceremonies; it's her second favorite way to be present in my life besides buying me things. She wasn't around much when I was young, or at least not always there when I wanted or needed her to be. But she was there for my Communion and Confirmation, she was there for my graduations from middle and high school, she was there at my college graduation and my graduation from the FBI Academy.

Apparently, chemotherapy qualifies as a ceremony. She didn't knock when she got to our house. I actually only knew she was already there because I caught a glimpse of her through the front window on my way to get Charlie a cup of milk.

I turned away from the kitchen at that point and went to the front door instead. She was sitting there on our front steps in an impeccable designer suit.

"Why didn't you knock?" I ask her.

"I didn't want to wake you if you were still sleeping. The house was quiet."

She looks almost embarrassed. I narrow my eyes at her so she can't lie and can't look away. "How long have you been here?"

"Just a little while," she says.

I raise an eyebrow. She's not going to tell me, but my heart swells for my mother. I'd always assumed she'd somehow bribed her way into front row seats at my ceremonies or graduations, but maybe she was there extra early for a front row seat all the time.

The morning moves quickly. I dress comfortably, as my oncologist and the paperwork told me to do. I force enough breakfast in my mouth to keep the Prednisone down, the drug that's supposed to help this all along. I'll be taking it every day for the next twelve weeks, at least. And I'll be coming home with many more pills this afternoon.

I'm not numb to it. I know how I've talked about it has lead Derek, Claudia, my mother and the BAU team to believe that maybe I am. I'm good at hiding my emotions. It's all awful to me, every last bit of it. I'm angry and I feel like all the years I spent taking care of my body have been worthless and pointless.

I imagine if I didn't have Charlie, I'd be screaming at every person who was willing to talk to me about the unfairness of it all. But I don't have time for that.

Chemotherapy is what I have. I want to get on with it because I want to know if it's working. The sooner, the better. I don't want to give up, but I want to know how hard I'm going to have to fight, or if there's any fight in me at all, and I want to know sooner rather than later.

Give me a sociopath with a gun any time - at least I'd have skills to fight him, mentally and physically. All I have now is my body, and a shit ton of chemicals that people have spent millions of dollars researching. I'm banking on them.

Derek shows up right on time, and Charlie is ecstatic to see him. When my mother leads the way out of the house, and Claudia follows, I hang back to give Charlie an extra hug. When I stand, Derek is right in front of me.

I reach forward to give him a quick hug of thanks, for taking care of Charlie and letting me have Claudia. But he doesn't let it be quick. He doesn't let me go. His head moves from the friendly position of over my shoulder to a more intimate position, turned on my shoulder and lips next to my ears. He inhales before he speaks, and I am feeling overwhelmed. I can't have him this close, it's not right to let him be this close. But I don't push him away.

I imagine he must have been working on that ultimate sentence to say in his head at this moment for awhile, but I can sense when it's not coming out. He's gasping and I can feel his lips moving, but no sound squeezes past his lips.

Finally, he says, "You go kick cancer's ass."

And though I was on the verge of tears from the moment his arms wrapped around me, at those words, I laugh.

It's the first genuine, hopeful laugh that's crossed my lips since my diagnosis.

I take Charlie home, and Savannah's not there. She was there when I left to pick him up, but she's gone now. All that's there is a note. "Got called in. Home by noon. I'm so sorry."

I show the house to my son, my phone clenched in one hand. I take him on a walk around the yard and up and down the block. We play with the toys Emily and Claudia packed for him in a little backpack.

My home feels large and empty, and I feel large and empty. And I'm mad as fuck all, but I'm trying to tame that feeling for Charlie's sake. Savannah and I have both had our issues around our careers and being called away at a moment's notice, and we've both long left the idea of taking it personally behind. But this feels like a punch in gut. She's no longer just starting at Bethesda Memorial, she's pretty well in there. She could have said she couldn't come in, especially today, but she didn't.

Noon comes. I get a text from Savannah that she's going to be a little longer.

I look at my phone. "Shit," I mutter.

Charlie looks at me and opens his palms, shrugs his shoulders in question. "What's shit?" he asks.

I laugh. "Nothing, Charlie. Let's get your things packed up. We'll have lunch at your house."

I text Savannah back, "Don't bother."

It's when I'm packing Charlie's bag that I acknowledge that I need to call my mother soon. I'd been waiting to present her with some certainties, but there are none here. The only certainty is me and Charlie and the absolute faith I have in Emily kicking cancer's ass and taking names. What comes after that, I have no clue.

My faith in Savannah is gone for the moment, and I don't know if I can get it back.

I take Charlie home. I settle him in his little bed for his nap. I settle on Emily's couch and pull paperwork out of my bag and start working.

When Emily returns late that afternoon with bottles and bottles of drugs, and looking more than a little worse for the wear, Charlie and I are there to greet her.