"We need to get back inside. The sun is starting to rise; we need to be in our beds before that happens. Are you ready?" Red sounded like her normal self after a few hours of on and off sleep with Nicky in her lap.
"I'm ready." Nicky stood up for the first time since this happened.
"You don't need to tell anybody what happened if you don't want to, ok?" Red reassured Nicky as she put her arm around her shoulder and they started walking back to what they considered their home.
"Ok." Nicky said quietly.
"We can leave this in the past and never talk about it again, we can tell somebody, we can just talk about it between us, whatever you want to do is what I want to do, Nicky." Red explained.
"Ok." Another quiet answer.
"Hey." Red stopped walking and went to stand in front of Nicky.
"Yeah?" Nicky said softly, looking at the ground.
"Look at me." Red put two fingers underneath Nicky' chin and lifted up her face to force Nicky to look her in the eyes.
"I love you." Red said so sincerely that Nicky's eyes watered.
"I can tell." Nicky said in such a grateful tone that Red's eyes watered as well. "I love you too."
Red hugged her.
"You know, most of the time when you hug me, I wish you would never let go." Nicky whispered in her mother's ear.
"I'm sorry for leaving you the other night." Red apologized.
"You thought it was drugs. I would've left me too."
"Yes, but it wasn't, was it? I should have been watching. I should have known you were in trouble. And…" Red couldn't finish, the tears started to fall.
"Please, just don't cry, Red." Nicky put a hand on her cheek, rubbing her thumb under her mother's eye, erasing the tears, trying to rid her of guilt.
"Sometimes I just think why can't we be a normal family." Nicky said as Red's crying subsided.
"Because we didn't fall in love with each other in a normal environment. You were bent over a toilet puking your guts out and my maternal feelings came alive all while we were in prison." This made Nicky chuckle a bit, for which Red was grateful.
They continued walking. Reaching the back door of the kitchen, Red reached into her bag and pulled out the key and unlocked the door. They were walking down the halls, knowing that they were going to make it to their beds in time when as they turned the corner, Piscatella had entered the other end of the hall way, looking down at his watch.
Grabbing Nicky's arm, Red bolted back around the corner out of his sight. Leading the way and practically dragging Nicky because she was going so fast, Red took them back to the kitchen to her office there where she knew Piscatella wouldn't go. Once there, she was able to look at Nicky for the first time.
She was breathing very heavily. Red was afraid she was going to go into shock.
Red sat down quickly and pulled Nicky in front of her so that Nicky was in Red's lap, her chest against Nicky's back. Red took a deep breath in and a deep breath out.
"Do you feel that? Feel me breathing. Breathe with me." She whispered in Nicky's ear. Another deep breath in and out. In and out.
"Feel my chest rising, rise with it, Nicky. Feel it fall, fall with it, my girl." To Red's relief, this breathing was working, Nicky seemed to be calming down. "Breathe with me."
After several more breathes, Nicky turned around, still on Red's lap and looked desperately into her eyes, "Do you think he saw us?"
"No." Red said confidently which was a lie. She wasn't entirely sure whether Piscatella had seen them or not but she wasn't about to let Nicky know that.
"So what do we do now?"
"We wait until it's time to start cooking breakfast. They'll never know. I'll say I wanted an early start and you came in to help me." Red put simply.
"Came in from where?" Nicky sounded a little puzzled.
"Everyone knows you were missing outside. I'll just tell them you came back. You got lost but you found your way back." Red explained.
"Yeah, found my way back to you." Nicky smiled a genuine smile for the first time in the past 36 hours or so.
"It's funny you say that because that is the way people have been wording it: 'She'll come back to you, Red.'" Red said putting air quotes up. "But anyways, Healy knows that you aren't to be punished so it won't matter that you just popped up."
"Why wouldn't I be punished?" questioned Nicky.
"Because I am your mother and I took care of it." Red replied as she took Nicky's hands and put them in her own, squeezing them ever so slightly to stop them from shaking.
"Remember in the woods, when you said you are a terrible mother?" Nicky brought up.
"Yes." Red sighed.
'You're really not. You're a good mother." Nicky looked so deeply into Red's eyes she could see her heart and it swelled with such love and happiness for her.
"Oh, is she?" neither of them had to look in the door way to see that Piscatella was standing there.