Lee and Amanda lay happily entwined with one another post-lovemaking both blissfully ignoring the case that needed to be worked on. "So, this is your solution to fixing our marriage?"Amanda said breathlessly as she lightly stroked her husband's bare chest.
"Well, it's not the whole solution, but it's definitely a great start," Lee said with a rakish grin, equally breathless.
"Good, because I was just thinking, this was one area we've never had any trouble with," Amanda replied in a sultry voice.
"Not unless you count actually having time for it," Lee countered.
"Come on, Lee. Can you be serious for a minute? We both know that the real problem is not our sex life or lack of one lately. It's our lack of communication that caused us to fight. To be fair, it was mostly my fault. You wanted to talk about it and I didn't."
"I never did quite understand that either," he said. "Why didn't you want to talk about it?" When Amanda just lay silently running her fingers up and down his chest, he tried again. "Amanda, come on. Talk to me." When her only reply was to roll over to lie atop him and kiss his lips, he began to get irritated. As much as he loved kissing her and being close to her, he knew this was her way of avoiding the question. He pushed gently on her shoulders to break the kiss, clasped her face in his hands to make her look him in the eyes and said, "Amanda, please don't shut me out. You're the one who's the expert talker about your feelings. I'm the one who's supposed to be the strong, silent type, remember?"
Amanda slipped out of bed, and pulled on her robe, quickly tying it around her and turned from him to keep him from seeing the tears in her eyes. "We should really get to work on this case," Amanda said as she began to walk toward the bedroom door.
Lee was after her in a second, jumping out of bed and placing his hands on the door just before she reached to open it. "Amanda, stop! What the hell is all this about?" He turned her to face him and saw the tears she'd been trying to hide. "What the hell are you so afraid of?"
"Nothing, I'm not afraid of anything," she denied.
"Bullshit!" he spat out at her. "I've seen you face down terrorists who were trying to kill us with less fear in your eyes than you've got right now."
"I...I can't...we...you...me," she stammered, and then took a deep breath in an attempt to compose herself. "We're finally getting back to a good place. I...I don't want to ruin it."
"Well, right now you're pissing me off by not talking to me when you, yourself were just the one saying that our problem has been lack of communication. You're being damned hypocritical, if you ask me. How do you think that's not going to ruin it?"
"You couldn't possibly understand," Amanda said.
"Try me," Lee replied firmly unwilling to let her off the hook. When she was silent and only looked down at the floor refusing to make eye contact with him, he forcefully raised her head up, giving her no other choice but to look at him. "Amanda, look at me! Talk to me," he pleaded. "How are we ever going to get past this if I don't know what's going on? I don't get what has you so scared. Have I done something to scare you?" When she was still silent, he continued. "You said you wanted us to be a normal couple, so how's that going to work if we're not honest with each other? I may have acted like a horse's ass at the office the other day, but I was at least honest. Can you say that?"
"Sometimes, too much honesty just makes things worse," Amanda said sadly.
Lee's jaw tightened in anger as it hit him what was really going on. He reflected back her words earlier about her prior marriage. "I get it. This isn't about me at all, is it? This is about your ex and what he did to you."
"Leave Joe out of this," Amanda said. "This has nothing to do with him."
"I think it does. He abandoned you and your children and you don't trust that I won't do the same thing," Lee said pointedly, believing he'd hit the nail right on the head. "Here's a news flash for you! I'm not Joe!"
At seeing him so angry, so hurt, Amanda finally broke and cried," You don't know what it was like for me. How hard it was raising two babies by myself, begging my husband to come home, or to stay home just a little longer, begging him to think of me and our children. I tried so hard to be understanding, told myself over and over again that what he was doing meant something to the world, but all I could really think about was that we needed him more. You don't know how many times I pleaded with him to spend just a little more time with me, with the boys, being a family..." Amanda's voice trailed off as the tears overwhelmed her. At seeing Amanda break down, it struck Lee that for all of Amanda's prodding to get him to deal with and properly grieve all the death in his life, she'd never properly grieved the death of her first marriage or dealt with the hurt it caused. He wrapped his arms around her, enveloping her in a warm hug as she sobbed. When her crying subsided enough for her to speak again, she said softly, "I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry," Lee said as he stroked her hair. He once more raised her head to look her in the eye. "Just be honest."
"I don't expect you to understand," she said with a sniffle, "but all I've ever wanted was to have a happy, stable home life like the one I had growing up with my parents."
"I think you're the one who doesn't understand, Amanda," Lee replied. "All I've ever wanted was to have the happy, stable home life like the one that I didn't get to have with my parents. You know what that means. We want the same thing."
"But it's impossible for us," Amanda said.
"No, it's not," Lee said. "Weren't you listening in Billy's office? He's had a family for years and has made it work and there's no reason that we can't do the same."
"But we're not Billy and Jeannie. They're a normal husband and wife, neither of them had the baggage that we have, the kind of pasts that we have."
Lee shook in head in frustration. "Oh, I get what this is about now. You're not just talking about your past. You're talking about mine. I thought you said you didn't care about that."
"I don't," she said.
"Yeah, right," Lee muttered as he turned from her and pulled on his own robe suddenly feeling uncomfortable with his state of undress.
"Lee, I really don't care about your past, honestly. It's just finding out about the baby has got me scared...I don't...I can't..."
"Can't what?" When she didn't reply, he turned back toward her and his tone became more demanding, "Can't what, Amanda?" When she looked away from him and refused to make eye contact, he clenched his teeth and said, "I knew it! I knew the second that you told me about it that you weren't happy about this baby. It was stupid of me to think you would be. I mean, you've already got two kids and they're half-grown. What the hell made me think that you'd be willing to start all over again?"
"Lee, stop! That's not what's going on here! I am happy about this baby, I really am. I just don't want..." her voice trailed off again, not wanting to voice her real fears.
"Say it, Amanda! You don't really want this baby, my baby!"
"No, Lee, nothing could be further from the truth! I do want this baby, very much. I just don't want..."
"What, Amanda? What is it that you don't want," he demanded as he gripped her arms firmly trying to resist the urge to shake the truth out of her. He was angrier at her than he'd been in a long time
"I don't want to raise another baby alone!" she finally spit out.
Lee abruptly released her as her words sank in. "That's what you're afraid of? Do you honestly think that I would ever let that happen? Maybe it didn't sink in earlier when I said that I'm not Joe! I would never abandon you or our child. Is that what's really going on here? You think I'm going to leave you?"
"Yes," Amanda said softly.
The look on Lee's face shifted from one of anger to one of profound hurt, the emotional pain far worse than any physical pain that he'd ever suffered during his entire fourteen years on the job. His voice was shaky as he choked out through a blur of tears that had formed in his eyes, "I thought you trusted me more than that."
"I do, Lee. I trust you with my life. I think you're misunderstanding me. I don't believe that you're anything like Joe or that you would ever intentionally leave me to raise our child by myself the way he did. I'm afraid that..." she took a deep breath to compose herself before continuing, "...that it may not be your choice. Do you remember what led us to making the decision to keep our marriage a secret? The situation with Khai and his little boy?"
"Yeah, of course, I do, but I thought we agreed after our talk in Billy's office that we made a mistake letting that mess make our decision for us."
"I still believe that, but I've never forgotten what you said to me during that case. Do you remember what you said to me in the car after we interviewed Khai's wife?
"Yeah, I said that that you could be you, one day..." he said as it finally struck him what his wife's fear really was.
"...talking to strangers about my dead husband," Amanda finished her body shaking. "This is what I've been afraid of this whole time. It's why I agreed with you that we should keep our marriage to ourselves. It seemed safer that way. I always worry that the boys are going to lose yet another father and now that we're having our own baby, that fear is stronger than ever. If Phillip and Jamie lost you, it would be bad, but they'd at least still have me and Joe, but our baby..."
"Amanda, stop," Lee said taking her in his arms again. "Stop torturing yourself with what might happen. We can't live in fear in our personal life anymore than we can in our professional one."
"I'm sorry, Lee. I can't help being afraid. I don't want to be. I hate this fear. I hate it, but why do you think I always refuse to let you got out into the field alone? Why do you think I make sure that I kiss before we leave each other's sight? I never know when or if I might see you again. Why do you think I cling to you so tightly when we make love, and after we make love, why I never want to let go of you, why I like you to hold me when we're sleeping? We never know when any moment we have together may be our last."
"We can't know that, Amanda, but neither can anyone else in this world. You never know what could happen. Look at what happened to you on our honeymoon when the agency was the farthest thing from our minds; look at how many times your mother has gotten mixed up in agency-related stuff, not because of you, but just because she happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Look at how many people die every day in car wrecks, plane crashes, of heart attacks and strokes. Any one of those things could happen to anybody at any time, but we can't have a real life if we're always thinking about death." He lightly stroked her stomach and said in a softer tone, "This baby is about life and I need you to stop associating it with death." He brushed a tender kiss to her lips and enveloped her in his arms again.
Amanda clung to him, letting silent tears fall feeling a sense of relief that she'd finally gotten in out, but still not able to let go of her fear. "I love you," she whispered into his chest.
"And I love you," Lee said as he pulled her head back to gaze into her eyes. "Please, Amanda, try to stop worrying so much. How much danger can I be in with a relentless, stubborn partner like you?"
Amanda smiled a little and replied, "Billy does always say we're the best team he's got."
"Yeah, he does. Look, if you want, when we wrap this case up, I can talk to Billy about maybe modifying some of our field assignments; keep us in the office more, and less in the line of fire. It would kill two birds with one stone, keep you from worrying about me and keep you out of danger while you're pregnant."
"I don't know if that's the right solution," Amanda said. "We both love being out in the field and like I told you the other day, I'm not going to let you quit a job you love for me."
"I'm not saying quit," Lee said. "I'm saying back off a bit. What do you think?"
"Maybe," she said as she leaned back into her husband's arms feeling better than she had in weeks about their marriage now that she'd gotten her real fears out in the open.