Chapter Summary:

Continuing the fallout from Alec's death, and its impact upon Gillian, Cal and Zoe. And Emily

Tonight: a slow, thinky, handy-cam style PoV on the next few hours.

(Which means: frank discussion of what happens after a hospital death.)

It's nine o'clock.

One small benefit of passing away at night in hospital is that, barring religious requirements or an investigation, there's no reason for everything to happen all at once. Alec isn't going anywhere except the morgue in the basement. Everyone can go home and sleep, or try to, before dealing with the funeral home and the great heap of paperwork.

The only time-critical question is of tissue donation.

Alec has been officially, medico-legally dead for six minutes. His poor bony arm is still warm under the sheet, under Gillian's hand, as she stands beside his bed, with four hospital staffers arrayed near the wall, their hushed discussion growing more urgent.

Cal stands behind Gillian, between her and the line of staff. He's not touching her but he thinks she can feel his hand on her shoulder. She usually does.

"He was clean for three years," Gillian says, back in clinical mode. The need to be useful has infused her spine with new energy. "Even so, I know his organs won't be viable, not in his condition, but what other…?"

"You'd be surprised how far we've come," the donation family liaison tells her, mirroring Gillian's tone. He has a simple anatomy chart with him, that he uses to explain donations to families in all kinds of emotional states. He starts circling areas on the chart. "Corneas, yes. Skin grafts, maybe. Heart valves, yes. They're not as susceptible to damage as the muscle. We can try a bone marrow extraction, even if his white cell count is up. Bone marrow's a few months old at most. High turnover. Clean it up, purify it, someone with leukemia gets a bonus round."

Gillian's visibly relieved. She is no longer next of kin, and since Alec's been a registered donor for years, her approval isn't needed, but it's good to know. The rest of his mortal remains will be consigned to the flames, as he wished. Cal isn't sure what happens after that - whether Alec had a worldly place in mind to be deposited, or if he even cared.

Alec is wheeled discreetly away to the tissue harvesting suite, unfortunately past Emily, who's been sitting outside waiting. She watches, wide-eyed but calm. Perhaps it's a help for her to see this. Cal makes a note to talk to her later, but he suspects she's inherited his death pragmatism, even though she hasn't had to deal with a fraction of it that he has.

Gillian follows the procession out into the hall, and watches Alec go into the elevator, her hands somewhat helplessly at her sides. Around them, the nurses and the few late-night visitors look away respectfully, some of them quickly glancing at their little group curiously first.

Cal can't tell if Gill's misty-eyed or still in professional mode until she speaks: "I'd better call Addison. His lawyer. He's the executor, or supposed to be."

"Maybe he knows where the brother is?" As far as he knows, nobody's heard from Matt Foster in many years, since before Alec's own troubles manifested. But you never know who will come down from the trees once an obituary is published.

"I doubt it. But he may still know some of Alec's old colleagues. Or people from the tennis club. From before."

"I'll call him. If you like."

She throws him a grateful look. "No, but thank you."

She pulls out her phone from her jacket pocket as they walk back towards the seating area, and closes her eyes a moment. Speaking the words to someone else is going to be a wrench, regardless.

Keeping his eyes on her as he sits back down, he wonders who will turn up at Alec's memorial service, assuming there will be such an event. And where have they been, anyway? Nobody but Cal had visited Alec in hospital. Where were they over the past couple of years as he got sicker? Did they fall away one by one, or did Alec push them away?

Gillian exchanges very awkward pleasantries with the lawyer who was on the other end of her divorce. Then: "I'm sorry to be calling so late, Addison, but you should know Alec passed away this evening. Yeah. At GW. Yes, thank you, anytime tomorrow. I'll have a copy for you. Were you aware how ill he was?"

And if so, why the hell didn't anyone tell me? he hears under her perfectly reasonable question, loud and clear. Emily hears it, too, and glances over at him. He returns her look with a guilty grimace and lays his arm over her shoulders.

Still thinking about people who pop up after a death, and about lawyers and carrion birds, he texts Zoe, one-handedly.

Hi, not good news. Not me or Em. Call when you can.

Zoe calls back right away. "Talk to me."

"It's Gillian's Alec, darling. He's just passed away. I'm at the hospital with her now."

"Ah, shit," she says, quietly and all-encompassingly. She doesn't ask what happened. Perhaps she assumes Alec dies of an overdose. "Looking up flights," she goes on, and he hears her tapping away on her laptop.

"What, really?"

"Of course. This weekend's no problem."

That's a change in her, he thinks. Zoe taking time away from chasing full partnership in her Chicago law firm is a large gesture, even on a weekend. He can't imagine what Alec might have said to him, if anything ever happened to Zoe. A minimum of polite condolence, likely.

"She's gonna need a shitload of notarized copies of everything," Zoe expands, typing away. "Especially as an ex. That's something I can do at the dining table, and I won't charge her a hundred a stamp. He leave a will?"

"He did, yeah. That's a tomorrow thing. Lawyer's got it. He's also the executor. Supposedly."

"Right," Zoe replies, drawing out the vowel. "Look, I'm sure Gillian's got her own personal lawyer, but I'll be happy to read through it too. Make sure Alec's guy doesn't pull any fast ones. Ten years means she's entitled to some of the same benefits of a current wife. He never remarried, so that simplifies things. If that works for Gillian, I mean."

She might not want me nosing around her ex-marriage, he interprets correctly. He's not going to try to answer that on Gill's behalf, so he sticks with, "Good of you, Zo, thanks."

"Mm hmm." she responds absently. He can practically see her pen in her teeth. "I can come overnight if you need, but it's three times the cost of the ten a.m. flight tomorrow. Get me there for a late lunch."

"Yeah, do that, then." Mum's coming, he mouths to Emily.

Emily nods, but her eyes flick to Gillian and back to him.

Cal gives a silent ah of understanding.

"Zoe, about that. We've asked Gillian to stay a bit. Shouldn't be alone right now, yeah? So that means she'll be in the - yeah. We'll book you somewhere nice. Okay. Safe flight, darling. Oh, hang on. Sproglet incoming."

"Hi, Mom." Emily takes the phone and moves a short distance away. Oh, shite. He'd neglected to mention they'd brought Emily to this existential family evening out. Emily's attachment to Gillian was always a sore spot with Zoe. It can't be helped now, though.

He wonders how long this united family feeling will last. It's one thing to know that your old room in the house where you spent your married life is no longer yours to drop into. It's another thing to see someone else there.

When Zoe and Rudi visit DC together, they get a hotel room, but when Zoe visits alone, she still stays at the house with him and Emily, in her old study, now the spare room. It's the sensible thing to do. Rudi is apparently fine with it. Zoe can see as much of Emily as possible and save on a hotel bill. It's never been an issue, but sometimes it's dangerously far from sensible. Although since she remarried, Zoe hasn't let them slip into old…familiarities. She's been resolute about not letting them get too cozy together, whatever their eyes and silences can't help leaking out at odd moments. Habit and comfort, yes, but it's all still there. Christ, it's not as if that spark ever diminished between them.

He's never asked, and he can't imagine it's so, but if the boundaries of her marriage include a negotiated window for sexy interludes with her ex-husband, then who is he to quibble?

Sometimes he misses it with a physical pang, that fucking brilliant sexual connection between them. He's tried filling that space with other women. Not on the kink club circuit he and Zoe were part of, which is ironic: he's got twenty years of trust built up in that community. He could find a willing, experienced play partner and the kind of scene he likes, but he'd always be looking for Zoe. So instead, it's women he meets on cases, in bars and hospitals and airports. Ones who don't remind him of Zoe. (And ones who couldn't be more different from Gillian.)

Who will be sleeping down the hall from his bed tonight. That's going to be harder to ignore than Zoe being there.

He catches himself lingering on Gillian's wonderfully curved arse in her snug jeans, as she paces and talks to the lawyer. He's quite aware that sex is one of the most common reactions to grief and shock. The human need for contact and to shake up the brain chemicals and the confirmation that life goes on and all. But still.

He quickly resets the expression on his face to bordering-gaumless and sticks his hands in his pockets and hauls his thoughts back around like a rig in danger of jack-knifing. He focuses on his daughter, who is smiling as she finishes making plans with her mother.

Zoe's coming to spend extra time with Emily as much as to assist Gillian, he knows. Emily only has one more week in DC anyway. She'd always planned to spend the last half of her vacation with Zoe in Chicago, but this way, they can visit their old familiar haunts together.

Emily hands him his phone and drops back into the seat beside him. "I can do the airport pickup if I can have the car."

"Thanks, love. We'll have Gill's car if we need one. No telling what tomorrow will be like. "

Gillian hangs up with the lawyer, her face as expressionless as porcelain, and does a quick double-take at her phone screen. Stepping back over to the seats, she shows it to him. Zoe's texted her.

I'm really sorry. Here to help if I can. Coming out to see Emily, so I'll be nearby.

She's been calm and teary in waves, and gets a little damp again at this. There's a plain honesty and tact there that cuts through years of emotional bullshit and double talk.

He tugs her to sit down beside him, and she tucks her head into his shoulder with a trusting little sigh that goes straight to his guts. It's not late, but the exhaustion's going to hit her soon. And she's coming home where he can keep an eye on her.

"She offered to get on the first plane out, didn't she?" Gillian murmurs, the vibration sweet against his neck. He tries not to shiver with the intimacy of it.

He hums affirmatively. "Surprised me, too. Don't - don't go looking for motivations, love. Not just now. You know people react in all kinds of ways even they don't understand."

Gillian manages a small smile. He can feel it. "Nothing between Zoe and me ever had a simple motivation. But I'm glad she's coming."

He lets her decide when it's time to leave the hospital and head home. As long as they stay there, Alec's death is still a thing in progress, incomplete. Going home means the start of the new reality.

But soon it's time to go. There's nothing more to do here tonight.

As the girls get sorted and collect themselves, he stops by the nursing station to shake hands with Kimberly and thank her. She seems surprised, but nods agreeably enough when Gillian asks her to thank Dr. Hubanks, and the nurses who looked after Alec.

Whenever they walk together, the three of them, he's usually in the middle, with Em and Gillian on either side. Tonight they're holding Gillian up between them. Both realizing a little guiltily that they should have made sure more often that she knew she had them to lean on. Cal holds her hand in his, as if walking hand in hand like a couple is normal for them (it's not), and Emily has an arm around her back as they head for the elevators.

Cal looks over and thinks back to the years when Gill was stilted and reserved in responding to Emily's affectionate hugs and obvious liking, could barely look properly at the girl, from grief over losing her own, from jealousy so deeply hidden even she couldn't see the shape and tug of it, from her desperate need for a child of her own to hold.

He sees Gillian absently tucking a wild strand of curly hair into place behind Emily's ear as Em looks up at her, dropping a hand on her shoulder for a quick squeeze, and it hits him, deep in the gut, that this is real.

They haven't been dropped into a new existence at all. They've been there for a while now. Alec's death has just made them see it.

And he remembers that they still need to talk about why he waited to tell her about Alec till it was really too late.

It's ten thirty when they get home.

Looking up at the Lightman house, with its welcoming lights in the windows, Gillian has an unexpectedly maudlin moment. Her own house will be dark and chilly and silent, even if it is her haven. It doesn't need her. There aren't even any fish to feed.

She's trained and adept enough to observe the thought and watch it go by, but it's intense and worth revisiting sometime. Not tonight.

"Would it be weird to start the pizzas up again?" Emily wonders, as they clamber out of the car.

"Not at all. Good save, Em," Cal replies. They never got to have dinner, and didn't even pause for coffee at the hospital. No wonder they're all running on fumes. It's not just emotional.

Emily had shoved the pizza trays into the freezer, not wanting them to spoil. She heads into the kitchen to check on them. They're a little stuck together, but otherwise intact. Pizza's a perfect food to have around at times like this: grief and estate settling are unpredictable and take a lot of energy, and can strike acutely at any time. And a slice of pizza goes with any time of day or night.

That's what she needs, Gillian thinks. Solid fuel. Something grounding.

"I'll go find your bag," Cal says, nudging her gently towards the stairs. "Get you settled in."

She opens the door to the quiet spare room at the back of the house, next to Cal's room and across from Emily's. She wishes she had something concrete to do, too.

She's kept an emergency duffel bag at the house for years. (Cal has his own at her place, too, and a big plastic bin, stocked for him and Emily. Safety is a relative term, with Cal.) Her bag contains a couple of changes of casual and work clothes, the usual overnight supplies, power chargers, backup cellphone and an envelope of cash.

Copies of her legal and medical documents and family photos are in the safe downstairs. Cal's safe is fireproof and bolted to the concrete floor of the basement, so she keeps a document lockbox in it. Zoe's is still there, too. She doesn't want to look at them tonight. Or anytime soon.

She lies curled up on the guest room bed, waiting for Cal to come back, listening to Emily puttering in the kitchen.

Her thoughts wander through time in search of hooks and anchors, fragrances and voices. She's used to that: it's a familiar effect of living deeply in her head. For the moment, her mental rowboat feels steady and not about to capsize, so she closes her eyes and lets herself drift.

She feels unusually passive and remote from the goings-on. She thinks she'll wait and let Zoe and her own lawyer, Georgia, go through everything themselves and ask her whatever questions they need. There's nothing to hide in there. There never was, though Zoe might be surprised at the truth of how hard Gillian fought for her marriage and family, far from wanting to disrupt Zoe's. There may be nothing to do. Alec may have left crushing debts, or he may have left every penny to a donkey rescue, for all she knows.

Nothing to fight for now. Nothing to fear losing, either. What does she have to show for holding onto her marriage with her two bare hands for so long? Cal and Zoe were messy as hell, but in the end they've held onto a wry sort of affection, the security of being in each other's corner when the chips are down, and an amazing kid.

Oh. That's her rowboat tipping a little.

She opens her eyes and looks around her, reorienting. The guest room used to be Zoe's room. It was set up from the start to be her study, though it was used for an occasional overnight guest or stashing knickknacks. It was a good balance, for a time. Zoe needed quiet order and focus. Cal preferred to work among the buzz of humanity, at the dining table or the kitchen island, or perched precariously at one of the small tables scattered in various nooks.

(He particularly liked scowling at the swarm of neighbourhood children that descended on the place on their rounds, most weekends, and threatening to pry out their deepest secrets before letting them go home if they didn't let him think in peace. So he was often found with his pencil flying productively down the page and a half smile on his face, while a tribe of feral children yelled the biggest whopping fibs they could come up with, to try to trip him up. Best idea generating machine ever, he called it. Can't beat kids' imaginations and sense of justice.)

On bad nights, Zoe slept in here, and over the last couple of years of their marriage, when the decision to separate was still up in the air, it had truly become Zoe's Room, not just Mom's Study. It gave Zoe and Cal space in the intensity of their relationship; it gave Zoe a sense of control over some part of their shared existence. Some marriages are saved by separate rooms, but theirs was not.

Would it have helped Alec and me? she wonders.

She can't imagine it. Alec needed reassurance that all was good and normal, not that his wife needed her own space away from him sometimes. She loves, she loves her modest little townhouse now, with its patio garden at the back. It's the first place that's been truly all her own since she left her parents' house. Her haven.

There are strong shadows of Zoe here, still, in the decor and the furniture that's never been a priority to update. Gillian's always been amused to see the difference in their preferences. Gillian likes simple, airy spaces, with solid, grounding furniture and the evidence of living around her. Zoe likes simple, airy spaces too, but her furniture is austere and angular: glass and steel, plain panels of colour. Including the starkly plain white European-looking bed, that is quite comfortable, but feels impersonal compared to her solid oak bedstead with the inset shelves in the headboard, at home.

She thinks suddenly, Zoe never really fit here, in this old character house. Zoe likes modern and downtown and trendy. How she must have hated this place, even as Cal and Emily thrived in its comfort. But she tried. She tried hard.

Gillian has a sudden surge of increased empathy for her.

Little by little, the Lightman Group offices and study have evolved from clean, transparent rooms to the cozy spaces they are now - far more to her tastes. She wonders how much input Zoe had into Cal's design preferences in the beginning. They'd all agreed on a sparse style that was more laboratory than psych consultancy, wanting to distance the Group from the so-called psychologist's couch and position their product as a science of observation and tested proof.

She'd wondered, at the time, if Cal was trying to tempt Zoe into taking an office there too, and becoming their in-house lawyer instead of a silent partner.

There was never a question of whether Alec would get involved in the company, she thinks. Of the four of them, he was always the man apart. Zoe's cases occasionally overlapped or influenced theirs. Even in the depths of their separation, Cal still consulted with her on points of law. Alec had never had a reason to be asked his opinion. More often than not, Gillian couldn't tell him much about her work. No wonder he'd felt out of things.

They worked well together, though, in their way. He'd liked the idea of a wife with high political access. It wasn't why he married her. It was just how things worked out, and she was happy to play the part of a political wife to his goals as an up-and-coming State operative.

Actually, Gillian thinks, she was an excellent political wife. She was supportive and publicly adoring, she introduced him to the influential people she'd met at Ground Zero and later, the Pentagon, and she listened to the other spouses with interest and sympathy. It was a stageplay, and she was good at it. The problem was that the more she saw, the more she couldn't pretend not to see. Alec didn't like it when she pointed out that he must have seen things too, and that his actions didn't match the integrity she knew was in him. And when their professional paths crossed and clashed, she was more often than not in the controlling position, and he didn't like it.

It wasn't that he expected her to be subservient to him, but he expected her to show loyalty by doing him small favours in return for future favours - that was the currency of his world. And unlike Cal, who would blow his top and stomp around the office for all of ten minutes, Alec went silent. And remembered. Because that, too, was the currency of his world. The remembrance of favours denied.

He'd never suggested that she leave the Group once they started a family, but he liked the thought of her safe as a negotiation consultant on Capitol Hill, where the criminals were strictly white-collar, and danger would be quickly dealt with by many layers of security. He'd pointed out that one reason he was working so hard to advance his career was so that they'd only need his income while she was on maternity leave, or if she wanted to stop working full time entirely. It was a reasonable thing to prepare ahead for. There was no way to know what would be best for their family until they got there.

It wasn't a joyful sort of planning ahead, though, but a guilt-ridden grind. He'd wanted to pay her back for her share of funding his rehab stays and years of cripplingly expensive fertility and IVF treatments, too, she knows, by taking care of her and their future family.

He hadn't really envisioned her staying on with the Group, with Cal, with the kind of escapades they routinely got pulled into. Looking back, she wonders if he thought it was something she'd get out of her system. A few years of crazy stories to tell later. But she stayed. And thrived. He must have wondered if his life and marriage would ever be free of Cal Lightman.

Cal taps on the door at that moment. "All right, love?"

"Mm hmm."

He comes in with her old gray duffel bag and sets it on the end of the bed as she levers herself up and sits on the edge.

She gives him what she hopes is a grateful smile, but she's aware it doesn't even reach halfway to her eyes. His own eyes go soft. He'd do anything to take away the pain that's looming like a storm in the distance, waiting for the winds to change.

His hand comes up to gently cup her face, his thumb tracing her cheekbone. She's supposed to be furious with him for keeping her in the dark about Alec, but right now she's just tired.

She turns her face into his hand and closes her eyes for a moment. He strokes her cheek and withdraws. She misses his touch instantly. He seems to take a moment too, casting about for something to say.

"Come down for dinner if you like. Or we'll bring you a plate." His voice, low and tender, belies the commonplace words. She wants to tell him she's going to need belligerent Cal, crass and reckless Cal, in the days ahead, or she'll end up in floods of tears from kindness. She needs to keep her fight up.

"I'll be down in a bit."

"Take your time."

Well, she thinks, as he leaves, pulling an old set of pyjamas from her bag, here I am. I guess this is what you feared all along, Alec.

No, fear isn't even the right word. Fear can be irrational, baseless. Alec knew dread. He'd seen the connection between them from the start, and there was nothing he could do. Nothing any of them could do, really, once she and Cal met, except walk away, and that was never an option.

She changes her jeans and shirt for soft lilac drawstring pyjamas, and the light cardigan she was wearing earlier, and decides to try a slice of pizza before brushing her teeth. It smells too good to miss, fresh from the oven, and it was supposed to be a special family pizza night. And Cal and Emily will want to see she's really okay, at least for now.

She reminds herself it's fine to feel a sense of rightness at wandering around Cal's house in her PJs. He's an old friend who's offered her his home and company during a critical time. (Even if she can't quite bring herself to roam around braless, because Cal.) Of course it should be okay to feel comfortable here. Where else should she be? Home alone?

She thinks about the many evenings she and Cal have spent talking and laughing and drinking and launching rapid fire arguments at each other on the couch downstairs. The earliest discussions about the Lightman Group, when Zoe was as much a part of the back-and-forth as they were. Late night wine and whisky. A few epic fights. A lot of drawn out moments of particular warmth. Chats alone with Emily.

Her little rowboat bumps into and then conveniently skirts around the fact that if Emily was still at school right now, she would feel very different about staying over tonight. That's a whole lot of complex relationship dynamics that Emily doesn't need on her shoulders. Staying in the spare room as a family friend is one thing. Being Cal's best friend, business partner and God knows what else is another.

She gives herself a quick shake and pulls herself together to find pizza and people.

And possibly two fingers of scotch.