When Jay walked back into Intelligence, Voight was standing near the whiteboard at the far end of the bullpen, ready to deliver a briefing. He showed no impatience at having to wait for Jay, but a curious look did appear on his face when Jay walked towards him rather than sitting down at his desk.
"Need to talk to you, sarge," Jay said.
"I'm about to start a briefing."
"I need to talk to you," Jay repeated before walking into Voight's office. He noticed Erin looking at him from her desk, wondering what was up. Her explanation would have to wait.
Voight knew Jay wouldn't behave the way he had without a good reason, so he followed him into the office and closed the door. "What's going on?" he asked on his way around the desk.
Jay had already sat down in front of it. He felt stressed and on edge, unable to even sit comfortably, so badly had the shocking news rocked him.
"I, uh... just found out I have a sister. Half sister. She turned up downstairs."
Hank shook his head in a sign of disbelief. "A half sister? Your dad had a kid with another woman?"
"So she said. I can't believe it. Well, I can believe it because I do believe what she said. At least, I'm convinced she believes it. Claimed her mom told her the truth about who her dad was on her death bed, and about Will and I. She went to Med to find Will, which obviously didn't work out, so she came here and got me."
"Damn," Hank breathed. "That is a big shock for you. What did you say to her? What's her name anyway?"
"Jess. Jessica Sutton," Jay said. And there was something else that had just started bothering him. "Sarge, I feel like I've seen her somewhere before."
"Oh? Where?"
"I don't know. Don't have a specific memory to associate with the feeling. There's just something telling me I've seen her before."
"I don't know the name," Hank said thoughtfully. "You don't think you've arrested her at some point, do you? What did she tell you about herself?"
"No, that's not it," Jay said, feeling confident of that at least. "I didn't find out anything about her really. To be honest? I kind of went off at her. Pretty much kicked her out of the station."
Hank took a couple of seconds to decide what to say next. "Did she deserve that?"
"No," Jay admitted. "I was reeling, and I shot the messenger."
Hank's expression showed that he approved of Jay recognising he had overstepped the mark. "Whatever wrongs her mom and your dad may have committed, it's not Jess's fault. If she's only just found out, she's likely as shocked by the whole thing as you are."
"Said she found out three weeks ago. I got her number, sarge. She left a piece of paper with it on."
"Take some time to think about what's happened. Then, if you think it's the right to do, give her a call and see if you can start over." It was clear that Hank thought it was the right thing to do.
Jay sighed. "There's a lot of starting over going on lately. I'll think about it all. Thanks, sarge."
"After the briefing, I'm sending you and Erin out to do some surveillance. You might use the opportunity talk to her about it."
Jay nodded. Thanking the man again wasn't necessary, so they both got up and went back out to the bullpen, where the briefing got underway.
Erin sat opposite Jay, their two desks pushed together so that they sat facing each other. She glanced at him with concern while trying not to be too obvious about being distracted from the briefing.
"You okay?" she mouthed to him.
"Tell you after," he mouthed back.
The briefing only took just over five minutes, then Hank handed out the first tasks of the day. As he had mentioned, he gave Jay and Erin the job of surveillance on a warehouse where an illegal drug lab was possibly in operation.
On the way out of the bullpen, Kevin made eye contact with Jay and said, "You good?"
"Yeah," Jay assured him with as much of a smile as he could muster, appreciating the concern. Kevin was a good colleague and a valuable friend. A top man all round really, Jay thought.
It wasn't until they were in Jay's car that Erin broke the silence between them. "So, what's going on? What happened when you went downstairs? You were fine before you went down, then you looked pale when you came back and you went straight into Hank's office."
Jay looked at her. The woman he loved. The woman he trusted, although they had only recently reconnected after not even speaking for several years. Life had somehow become such a mess, and they had spent years out of touch with each other. But they were starting over, as seemed to be the current theme. If starting over was going to work, he had to be honest with her, not that he had a reason not to be about Jess.
"I'll just come out with it," he said, shaking his head. "A woman called Jess Sutton showed up. Apparently she's my half sister."
"Half... Oh, shit," Erin said, her eyes widening. "I mean, wow. How old is she? Why has she made contact now?"
"To answer those in order, a few years younger than me I'd say. So dad was messing around behind mom's back while she was raising Will and I. That makes me sick, Erin. Angry and sick. And as for why now, Jess found out three weeks ago when her mom told her the truth about who her dad was just before she died. Until then, she had told her she didn't know who her he was. Messed up, huh?"
"Very. What an awful thing to do to a child, and then keep the lie going all those years. Start driving, Jay. We can talk on the way to the warehouse."
"Right," he said, firing up the car. This was work time after all.
"Tell me how the conversation went," Erin requested as he got the car moving, slowly pulling out of the lot.
Jay did so, giving it to her word for word as best he could remember it, despite the fact that he now realised that he hadn't handled the situation as well as he might have.
"Ah, Jay," Erin groaned when he told her about how he ordered Jess to leave and snapped at her that he had no interest in speaking to her.
"I know," he said with a sigh.
"You had a huge shock out of nowhere. No one is at their best in those circumstances," she said, trying to be supportive.
"I wasn't even angry with her, it was about my dad. She took both barrels, and I ought to apologise for that. So I guess that means I need to call her."
Erin looked at him as if he said something stupid. "Of course you should call her. No matter what your dad did or didn't do, you've just found out you have a sister. That's awesome. You've got to find out what she's like."
The one part he had left out was the feeling he had about having seen Jess somewhere before. He was no closer to figuring out where that feeling was coming from, and he didn't want to get into it with Erin until he could figure it out.
The conversation about Jess went on for some time, helping to pass the dead time undertaking surveillance of a warehouse where nothing seemed to be happening. They talked about who Jess's mother might have been and how Jay's dad might have known her, although Jay didn't get any closer to working those things out either.
What he appreciated most was how Erin helped him consider some positives that might be found if he and Jess were able to establish some kind of brother/sister relationship. Jay found himself thinking that he would like a little sister, assuming they got along with each other. While there was no drama between him and Will, they were not close either. They never had been in adulthood, and now Will had moved on from Chicago. Maybe he would have more luck with Jess, in time? It was a nice thought at least.
"Thank you for turning my mood around," he said to Erin, really meaning it. She had helped him a lot with sorting it all out in his head. It might have been a moment to take her hand or kiss her, but they weren't at that stage yet on this go around.
"Of course," Erin replied with genuine affection in her voice. "It's going to be a complicated situation. You can always talk to me about it. Although maybe not over dinner tonight," she added as an attempt at humour.
It was a weak joke, but Jay smiled. "Not over dinner tonight," he promised. "That'll be for talking about us."
Erin looked straight ahead out of the windshield, watching the warehouse as she chewed that over for a few moments. "Us. I like that," she said eventually.
A/N: After his initial reaction to Jess, Jay has been helped by Hank and Erin to see that didn't handle the situation well. What do you think he should say once he calls her?
And how do you think the dinner date will go between Jay and Erin?