Chapter Three: Fragile Things


"Maura… Oh my God—"

"I'm fine…"

"No, I don't think you are."

"Jane, really—" Maura insisted after she attempted to shrug her way out of the detective's hands.

"Yeah, well, if you hadn't just gone as white as a sheet, I'd be more inclined to believe you…" Jane pulled her aside near the elevators into a small alcove. "Let me take you home."

Maura shook her head. "It's not what you think."

"What, someone tells you that your dad's just passed away and you almost fall down, but it's not what I think? Tell me then, what am I thinking?"

Jane released her and then sat her hands upon her hips, blurring the line between frustration and concern. Her tone of voice was gentle, so Maura took it as a sign of the latter.

"You're thinking about cancelling your date with Casey."

"I—" Jane's mouth dropped open and shut a few times until her brow furrowed with realization. "I am, actually." Then she shook her head, tossing her impressive mane about like a proud flag whipping in the wind. "Well, of course I am! How could I just—"

"Jane." Maura said again, firm and resolute. Jane stopped, drooping her shoulders a bit with what looked like defeat. "It's a lot to explain." Maura continued, "But I will. I just need some time."

"Alright." Jane said.

Maura gave an appreciative bow of her head. The feeling in her face was beginning to come back, thankfully. "I just have several calls to make and I'd rather be alone to do so. I'll be fine, I promise."

Jane looked her up and down, studying her steady and slightly stubborn persistence. Maura did want more than anything just to be alone at that very moment. She knew there would come a time when her very bones would call out for Jane again, but she would cross that bridge whenever she got to it. Everything was just a little too much for her to handle all at once.

"Alright. But I'm walking you to your car."

As if Jane didn't walk her to her car every day after work anyway. Maura managed to make it home through her tear-blurred vision and she sat in the middle of her couch for a good twenty or so minutes in silence, her head empty and completely tuned out to the quiet drone of her air conditioning.

It took twice as long for her to pick her phone up again and to dial her mother back.

The way Constance Isles had left Maura the message of her father's passing in the first place had been so aloof and apathetic, much like if she had been reciting a grocery list or merely mentioning the weather. Maura had no idea where she was. She hadn't in years.

The phone rang with long tones for what seemed like forever, and just when Maura had decided to put it down— a voice rang back, and she was thrust toward the present again. The phone came up to her ear far too quickly for her liking, making her feel like the silly little girl who longed for her mother's affections once again.

"Maura dear, are you there?"

"Yes, I'm sorry. You must be very far, the signal—" She lied. Her ears ran hot and the skin on the tops of her shoulders began to prick with pins and needles. "Just calling back to let you know that I got your message."

"I assumed as much." There was a short pause then. "I am dreadfully sorry, ma chérie. You must know that he loved you very much."

"Yes." Maura answered, her voice feeling very small and as if it had not come out of her own mouth.

"Will you be able to sort yourself down to his estate and handle things? I'm afraid I am presently engaged here in Paris—"

Aren't you always…

Maura worked hard to diminish the rising need to sigh with a sense of exacerbation. It was her first phone call with her mother in years and already she felt as if it had gone on too long. "Yes. I will keep you apprised."

"Alright, my darling. Please do call again soon and give your Jane my love, won't you?"

"I will."

"Goodbye then."

"Goodbye, mother."

Maura was stunned for a moment.

My Jane…

The hand that held her phone fell limply into her lap. It came as no surprise that her mother wouldn't be making the trip back home. Her parents had been estranged for more than half of her life, what with her father's hermit like nature and her mother's lust for life that was anywhere but in Texas. When she was a child, Maura had thought the world of Arthur. She loved to hear him talk and to wait by the door whenever he came home, and to see his eyes set upon her and to smile because of her. He was everything… and then Maura grew up. Now he was gone, along with any chance they had of reconnecting. Maura felt the sting of tears again and her chin began to quiver, but when they failed to come forth and drop from her eyes, she sat back into her couch and folded her hands into her lap, confounded.

She must have sat there for at least another hour. Then suddenly, and quite out of nowhere, she sat bolt upright again. Pondering aimlessly about the woe and want of her childhood days simply wouldn't do. She decided that she wouldn't have another minute of it.

Not sober, at least.

Maura lost track of time somewhere into the middle of her second bottle of wine… or was it her third? Her relentless constitution and tolerance for alcohol proved to be quite tiresome whenever she was in desperate need to run from the way she felt. It dulled everything, in a way. Life just had a tendency to vibrate on a scale that left her rather shaken whenever she abstained from alcohol, and to her credit, most of the time she never drank just to feel "drunk". It merely aided to streamline her thoughts whenever they were normally disordered and flighty. Maura would never admit it, but she had completed some of her best work slightly inebriated. Compartmentalizing was just easier whenever the godforsaken rush of blood in her inner ears wasn't threatening to split her head open. Conversations were easier. Navigating her job was easier. Keeping herself calm was easier… but sometimes the drinks did tend to get away from her.

It was eleven o'clock when a knock came from her front door. Maura weaved her way around from the kitchen in a daze to pull it open. There she found Jane leaning against the large door frame in a leather jacket and dark blue jeans. Her hair was loose around her shoulders and her eyes drew forward in pity.

Maura hadn't realized it yet, but she had drank enough wine to become defensive.

"Angela called you." Maura assumed with a slight roll of her eyes.

"No." Jane replied, shaking her head. Her unintentionally swaggered stance didn't change.

Maura took a deep breath and swung the door open wide in a gesture for her to come inside, but ended up leaning on it a bit too heavily. Its ornate wrought iron handle hit the wall behind with a knock, and Jane lunged over the threshold to catch her mid-stumble. A pair of strong hands ran firmly around Maura's waist. She squeaked unexpectedly at the feel of them.

"I do not wish to be held, Jane…" Maura said, regaining her footing quickly and peeling the hand cupping the small of her back away with a tired -tsk- from behind her teeth.

Jane's voice came from somewhere above her. "I only wanted to come by and check on you… You weren't answering your phone."

The sound of the heavy wooden door shutting with a firm -thunk- from behind them instilled a sense of calmness within Maura once again. Jane was in her home, and everything was alright, though was it too much to ask for the floor to stop spinning?

"My phone? I don't remember where I put it." Maura said with her eyes narrowed upon her then. Well, on one of her, at least. She couldn't quite tell where one Jane began and the other ended. "Are you sure you didn't call your mother in to spy on me?"

"Are you kidding?" A smile broke out somewhere upon Jane's face. "You've seen that woman try to smuggle an entire bread bowl out of the Olive Garden. Subtlety is not a strong Rizzoli trait."

"Then where do you get it?"

Jane laughed.

Apparently, defensiveness was not the only thing to come a bit more easily after nearly three full bottles of wine. Maura hiccupped quietly and somehow found her calves smoothing against the seat of her couch again. She sat, folding her bare feet up underneath herself. Her dress was tight around her thighs still, but she was in no mood to change. Jane sat beside her, tossing her arm over the tall back of the couch.

"I hate to break it to you, but I'm about as subtle as a flying brick."

"Who on earth told you that?" Maura asked, her limbs feeling heavier now with the continued sound of her best friend's gravelly voice.

Jane played with the zipper of her jacket for a moment, the expression on her face falling a bit. "My dad."

"Well—" Maura yawned, leaning across the couch finally to rest her head in Jane's lap. "It's a shame he doesn't know you as well as I do. I think you can be remarkably subtle, when you mean to be."

Jane chuckled softly. "Is that right?"

Maura pulled some of her hair from her face where it tickled her and gave a soft -pft- with her lips to blow the rest away. She remembered humming a short "mhm" before the pitch black from behind her eyelids swallowed her up completely. It wasn't until sometime later that she felt an arm behind the bend of her knees and the sound of footfalls against a carpeted set of stairs, waking her slightly. The next thing Maura knew she was stretching along the length of her bed and sighing contentedly as she felt Jane's weight sink in behind her. She reached out blindly in search of her, unable to force her eyes open.

"Okay…" Maura mumbled drunkenly, her mouth already dry and in possession of a foul taste that lingered of grapes.

"Okay what?" Jane asked.

"Okay, you can hold me now."

Jane didn't say a word. She merely scooted closer and wrapped one of her long arms around Maura's torso. The warmth of her was divine, and Maura cursed her own drunkenness for she knew it wouldn't be long until she fell asleep again. She wanted more than anything to be able to cherish the way Jane felt as her knees were tucked behind her own. Rare was it that she verbalized the desire to be held despite wanting it every minute of every day. Except for when she cried, of course. Those times were far fewer in number. Her mother's benign neglect and reserved nature hadn't done her any favors when she was a child, because now she was an adult who experienced physical pain whenever others sought to embrace her. Maura didn't know if that would ever change, but it certainly wasn't something she had to figure out right now.


Two days went by, and Jane had become macro attentive.

Never had the detective been this extraordinarily sensitive for longer than a mere conversation at a time. Her frequent visits to Maura's office and offers to spend time which included the consumption of food, as well as the random appearances at Maura's front door with claims of just "being in the neighborhood" had begun to wear thin on the medical examiner's last remaining coat of emotional armor.

It was all so heavy, the pretending.

And all that was left to do… was wait.

Arranging her father's funeral was a thing of relative ease, as Arthur Isles was the proud owner and facilitator of a small town funeral home business. It would be the act of navigating his left-over estate and the impending litigations of which that made her sick to her stomach. It would all begin in just a few days' time and Maura wanted so very badly for it to not be true. She wanted to wake up in the morning and for all of it to have been some terrible kind of nightmare. Waves of nausea caught her in spells. Rather than her teas and coffees being doused in whiskey just to get her through the day, she was ducking in bathrooms and stepping inside of security camera blind spots to tilt a flask to her mouth. That was of course after she ran out of the mini bottles that had been tucked away in her purse. Anything to not feel normal.

Anything to not feel at all.

At least work was more or less steady. People did have a habit of dying unexpectedly. Jane popped into her office that afternoon —quite literally, too, the woman was quick on her feet and seemed to materialize out of thin air sometimes— and the next thing Maura knew she was being called out to the Highland Park area of Dallas were a body had been discovered in a home. Upon arriving, Maura could smell the faint odor of decomposition emanating from the open doorway. Several people in uniform crowded the porch area, too hesitant to go inside. She gave Jane an attentive nudge with her shoulder and pointed toward the house with her chin.

"I don't blame them. The second stage of decomposition can produce some very foul-smelling chemical compounds."

"I still can't believe you can smell deco in a house all the way from the street." Jane stated with a playful vapor as they walked. She caught Maura by the elbow when she didn't quite make one of her heels over the curb. Thankfully Maura was able to shrug it off as clumsiness.

"It's a heavy particulate odor detectable by some animals for miles."

"What are you, a bloodhound?"

Maura squirreled her facial features together in confusion. "No…?"

Jane shook her head. "C'mon—" She said, tucking her arm inside one of Maura's and then coming to an abrupt halt a moment later. Her eyes were staring intently at Maura's breasts. "Maur, you feelin' alright?"

"What?" The medical examiner swallowed hard, noticing how the detective was unable to tear her eyes away from her cleavage. Then she looked down and realized that there was quite a bit of it. Her cleavage, that is. "Oh—"

Jane's hands flew to Maura's shirt and went to fix it for her. "You missed a button."

"I—" It was all Maura could do to laugh. Sometimes in the absence of words, her body tended to lunge toward the next available non-verbal response. Which, in most cases where Jane made her heart do backflips inside of her chest, she simply laughed. Maura scrambled to speak finally, "I hadn't noticed. Thank you."

Jane narrowed her eyes at Maura in inspection for perhaps the fifth time that day. "You know, Cavanaugh really did mean for you to take the rest of the week off, to prep—"

"I don't need to. I'm fine."

"Are you sure? Because—"

"Yes." Maura replied in a somewhat clipped tone. She just wanted to work. Leaving room for anything else at this point would have disastrous effects.

They continued walking in silence then and dipped beneath a stripe of yellow police tape, flashing their badges one at a time on their way toward the front door of the house. Jane leaned slightly downward to whisper as they traipsed along a rather pretty landscaped path. "So, is that why my deodorant gives you a headache? Your super nose?"

Maura so often appreciated the way Jane could dance around awkwardness, pulling them back toward their previous conversation like the one that took place after it hadn't occurred at all.

"Yes, but I like your men's deodorant—"

"Shh! Good grief, Maura, I don't need the entire squad knowing I wear men's deodo—" Jane straightened immediately as soon as they were inside the house. "Korsak, what do we got?"

"Dead husband, missing wife. Neighbors noticed the newspapers piling up and had a uniform come down to make a wellness check." He spoke with his eyes laser-focused on the small notepad in his large hands, still scribbling away.

"What, this such a hoity-toity neighborhood that they'd rather just call the cops instead of going over to knock and check for themselves?

Sergeant Detective Korsak shrugged, taking a moment to finally look up from his notes.

"Wow. Remind me how much I love my upstairs neighbors the next time they go stomping around at two in the morning." Jane remarked, "At least they're happy to take care of Jo Friday whenever I take a trip out of town."

"When was the last time you took a real trip, Jane?" Frost teased from the foyer where he leaned as far as he could into the living room.

"I—" Jane waved her hands around in search of words, "I dunno. I went to Juarez that one time."

"That was for a case… back when we were still partners." Korsak cut in with a chuckle.

"Detectives, I've found some strange marks near the base of the neck here…" Maura said.

Both Jane and Korsak wheeled around as if they had forgotten that Maura was there working alongside them. It used to hurt her feelings whenever she began accompanying Jane to crime scenes; the way that the detective and anyone else could just tune her out. But Jane had insisted once that it was only because she'd given some very clear and rather aggressive instructions to the whole of Homicide that whenever Maura was working with a body, she was not to be bothered or interrupted in any way. Maura found it to be one of the kindest things anyone had ever done for her… To be given a defined space in an investigation outside of the morgue.

"They look familiar." Maura continued, blinking rapidly to maintain focus. Maybe she should have forgone that last hot toddy right before Jane had swept her out of her office. She squinted closer toward the deceased man's neck, trying to get the small pinprick marks that looked an awful lot like burns to keep still.

"More stun gun marks?" Jane asked.

"I cannot say definitively whether—"

"I know, I know." Then Jane bent down with her hands upon her knees to look at something beneath a nearby coffee table. "What's with the empty tea cup?"

Korsak visibly stiffened and dropped his eyes back to his notebook. Jane then stood upright once more like the crack of a whip, catching his reaction. Her brow furrowed. Maura immediately recognized the expression upon her face. Something had definitely gotten Jane's attention.

"Why are you being so cagey?"

Korsak shook his head. "I'm not being cagey. I'm taking notes." He said, giving the notepad in his hands a slight bounce.

"Cut the crap, Korsak. What's going on? We've got, what, three similar cases now? What aren't you telling me?"

"I can't say anything yet—"

"Can't?" Jane balked, raising both of her eyebrows.

"Look Jane, I've got my orders. And so do you. Let's let the techs finish processing the scene here and then pack him up."

"Orders…" Jane muttered, slipping off her latex examination gloves one at a time. "Yeah alright, Sergeant. Because it's like you said, we used to be partners?"

"Jane—"

"No, you're right. I've got my orders." She said with a sneer and then turned toward Detective Frost. "C'mon, partner." Jane disappeared then in a flash around the corner and into the foyer, only to reappear a second later. "You too, Copper!"

Maura perked up at that and rose from the carpeting where she had been kneeling in front of the body. "I understood that reference- Fox and the Hound!" She said proudly, "The twenty-fourth Disney film in its animated canon, released in the summer of 1981—"

"Maura, for God's sake…!"

"…coming!"


"So where is it?"

"Where is what?"

"The funeral?" Jane asked patiently. "I mean, you've hardly talked about it—"

"Odessa." Something panged deep inside of Maura's chest. Was it guilt?

Jane bobbed her head back in recognition from where she sat in the driver's seat of her unmarked. Her hands were at their ten and two positions upon the wheel, and her thumbs were drumming anxiously.

"Wow," The detective continued as she turned them down another street toward DPD. "Not much to do in a place like that 'cept drink and pray."

"So I've been told." Maura replied solemnly. Jane's thumbs continued their repeated tapping against the wheel and Maura knew that there was something she was holding back just beneath the surface. "Go ahead."

"Go ahead what?"

"Go ahead and ask me whatever it is that you've been stopping yourself from asking me."

"I'm—" Jane billowed an exhausted breath and gripped the wheel tighter. Maura could read her like a book. "I'm just concerned, is all. You get a voicemail out of nowhere saying that your father's dead, the same father you haven't spoken about with me at all, like ever, not even once- and you're acting like everything's fine…?"

"I simply want to focus on work until the weekend, that's all."

"Yeah, but whenever I show up at your house and you're stumbling around drunk and asking me to hold you- I get concerned. See how that works?"

"Then don't." Maura said defensively. Her head was beginning to pound now that the alcohol in her system had long since metabolized and her body was crying out to be replenished with water and electrolytes.

"Don't show up at your house? Are you serious right now?"

"You don't have to." Maura shrugged.

"I know I don't have to, Maura, Jesus- I do it because I'm worried—"

"Jane, I am not made of glass. I'm not going to shatter or crack under pressure."

"I know that."

"Do you?" Maura's head snapped sideways to look at her then. "Because I'm not as fragile as you think I am. It's certainly apparent from the way that you've been acting."

"C'mon, that's not fair. Am I just supposed to not care? What do you want?" Jane protested.

"You can pull over here, I'll walk the rest of the way."

"Maura—"

"I don't want to wait for the light on Belleview. There's nowhere to park at this time of day. I want to get out, and I want to walk."

"Fine." Jane said with a huff, throwing the steering column's gear shift into park one city block away from headquarters.

Maura restrained herself from shutting the passenger's door of Jane's car without slamming it. All of the years of being treated as if she were incapable, like she was some sort of mousy, spineless doctor who had to have others constantly either come to her aid or to her defense came flooding back. It washed the back of her tongue with a foul, metallic taste of bile and Maura thought for sure that she would be sick. The walk towards the front of Dallas police headquarters was a three-to-four-minute stroll, and by the time she got there, she was fuming. Maura reached for a door handle and it swung outward, nearly knocking into her. A moment later, a man with a pair of beady eyes behind small round spectacles stared down at her.

"Dr. Isles, what are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the very same, Dr. Pike." Maura answered more harshly than she had intended.

"I was called to examine a body. Bound and exsanguinated in some sort of ritualistic manner from what I've ascertained so far. I'm just off to receive—"

"What are you talking about?"

The man named Dr. Pike squinted down the length of his bird like nose at her, giving her a suspicious though no less belittling kind of stare. "Perhaps you should drink some water, Doctor. This sun can really take it out of you."

Without so much as waiting for a reply, he stepped past her and trotted down the few stone steps toward the street. Maura gritted her teeth and thought to shout at him that the morgue dock was on the opposite side street, as he was headed in the entirely wrong direction, but she swallowed it back down and stomped inside the building instead. She continued stomping in her pointed Alexander McQueen pumps all the way to Lieutenant Cavanaugh's office on the second floor.

She swung into the doorway, red-faced and heaving for breath. "You called Dr. Pike?"

"Good afternoon, Dr. Isles. Please close the door." Lieutenant Sean Cavanaugh said calmly from where he sat behind a large oak desk.

"Dr. Pike?!" Maura exasperated again.

Cavanaugh merely motioned toward the door with a hand and clasped them back together over his desk. Maura growled under her breath and shut the door quietly. Slamming this one would definitely get her into some trouble.

"Please sit."

"I'd like to stand, thank you." She said.

The Lieutenant clenched his jaw and then he gave a tired sigh. "That suggestion I made to you this morning about taking the rest of the week off?"

"Yes?"

"It wasn't actually a suggestion. I am not in the habit of giving my subordinates direct orders after a loved one has passed, though it seems like something I have to do rather frequently around here."

"I'm not one of your subordinates though, am I? I don't want to—"

"You are if you wish to continue working in this building, Dr. Isles." He said, giving her a knowing look. It was no secret that Maura and Jane were tied at the hip.

Maura immediately straightened her back and then sat calmly in one of the chairs at the front of his desk. "Lieutenant Cavanaugh—"

"Sean, please."

"Sean... I can assure you that I am both mentally and emotionally capable of working until I am meant to leave town." Maura insisted.

"Here's the thing, I don't believe you."

Maura's jaw dropped. "I—"

"You've not only concerned me, but you've concerned your coworkers. Please, Maura, take the time off. Rest. Go home."

She stopped, unable to shake his particular choice of adjective from her mind.

Concerned…?

Maura sat up straight again. "Is that an order?"

He nodded. "It is."

Without another thought, she was back on her feet and tapping her heels toward the front of DPD again. She punched the down button at the elevators hard, earning herself some more looks of "concern" as she stood there waiting. Once on the ground floor, the elevator gave an aggravating -ding- and the doors opened again, where she ran directly into Jane Rizzoli.

"Oh!" The detective jumped back, catching Maura by the middles of her arms before she knocked them both down to the ground. "Hey, what's the matter?" She shook her head quickly, "You would not believe the parking nightmare out there, had to go all the way over to—"

"You told Cavanaugh?" Maura spat, ripping her arms out of Jane's hands.

Jane pinched her brow together. "W-what?"

"You told your boss that you were concerned about me? Are you too concerned that I can't do my job? What, do you think I'm going to screw up your case? Am I fragile and a liability now?"

"Woah—"

"Thanks a lot, Jane."

"Maura! I didn't—"

She didn't stop to listen. She didn't care. Someone had said something, and rather than worry about whether it had been because someone had seen her drinking inside headquarters, or maybe if someone had seen her a bit dizzy or if she was slurring her speech lately… Her initial reaction had been anger. It was very unlike herself, but she found it nearly impossible to get away from now. Maura heard the back and forth shouting between Frost and Jane as she was stepping through the building's front doors again. She had no doubt that he had come to hold Jane back from going after her. Barry Frost was a kind and understanding man, and he also knew when to pick his battles. Maura would eventually need to apologize to him as well.

But she didn't want to think about that right now.

She didn't want to think at all. Maura wanted to go home and to throw herself into the bottom of the very first bottle she could wrap her hands around.