It was a peaceful night at the Florrick's household.

"Hey." Connor Florrick née Flannigan knocked on Grace's home office.

"What's up?." The lawyer was working on her laptop.

"I sent you an PDF to the gracieflorrick gmail like 3 weeks ago. Can you print it for me?"

"Uhm." Grace looked at her screen. "Why don't you print it from your phone?"

"The printer hates my phone and my laptop." Connor shrugged. "Can't connect it."

"Alright." Grace was about to look for the email when their baby started crying. "Oh. I'll go get her. Go ahead and find the email."

"Sure." Connor sat down in front of the computer. "Jeez. She has a lot of emails. Okay, search for: Connor PDF."

"Baby girl, what's wrong?" Grace picked up Debbie from the crib. "Is it your tummy?"

"Ma." The baby rested her head on Grace's shoulder. Then Connor entered the nursery with Grace's laptop "Connor, I think Debbie has an upset stomach, can we...Is everything okay?"

"You did a background check on me?" Connor showed her the report on the screen.

"Oh... didn't know I still had it."

"My juvenile record?"

"It was before you got the expungement order."

"My credit score, my previous apartments, there's stuff here about Benjamin. Come on. What is this? Why do you have this?"

"It was during the campaign." Grace told her husband.

"The campaign? You wanted to know if I was a liability for your campaign."

"No... It wasn't about that."

"Then what?"

"I wanted to...it's hard to explain."

"Forget it." Connor realized Grace didn't have an answer. "I'm going out."

"Out?"

Connor walked out of the room. "I'm going out on a run to blow off some steam because l'M PISS OFF!"

In her next therapy session, Grace brought up her marriage quarrel.

"Dr. Anderson, I betrayed my husband's trust." Grace stated to her therapist, the doctor raised an eyebrow in a surprised way, Grace noticed. "I didn't cheat on him, to clarify."

"Of course not." Dr. Anderson said. "Then tell me what you mean by betraying his trust."

"About two years ago when Connor re-appeared in my life I asked my campaign manager to do a background check on him."

"I thought you already knew your husband from school." The doctor said.

"I knew him in high school. We were kids and a lot of things can change in 12 years." Grace responded. "Also, back then it was more about sneaking around."

"Sneaking around?"

"I didn't tell anyone Connor was my boyfriend. I think only Zach knew." Grace told her therapist. "I hid the relationship from my parents, I mostly spent time in his house with his family."

"Did your parents not approve of you dating?"

"My parents?" Grace smirked. "I think I have established that my dad wasn't exactly present and my mom…my mom…"

"Grace?"

"I don't know what it is about my mom. Maybe it's a generational gap, maybe grandma wasn't a good example, maybe my mom had a real bad time when she was a teen. I don't know but my mom never talked to me about relationships or sex." Grace told the therapist. "She was never comfortable talking to me about it so it was very easy to shut it down."

Alicia sat down on Grace's bed. She moved the girl's stuffed animals out of the way. The teen observed her from the desk.

"How are you?" Alicia asked her daughter.

"Good."

"And how's Connor?

"Connor?" Grace frowned. Her mom hadn't ask about him for a while. "He's good, I guess. Why?"

"Tell me about him."

"About Connor? I don't know. I already did." She didn't tell Alicia that Connor had asked her to be his girlfriend.

"No. I only know that you go to the same school, and that his girlfriend was the one who did that…"

"Not his girlfriend. They broke up." Grace rectified it. Alicia heard this and thought about Grace excusing Peter with the 'just one hooker'.

"Okay. Tell me about him."

"Well, he's nice. Um…" Grace wasn't sure why her mom had this interest in her friends.

"So you two have gotten close?"

"Just as friends." That was a lie.

"And he's a Christian too?"

"No." Grace briefly thought about telling her mom that Connor was an atheist like Alicia, maybe she could relate to him.

"But you are? You're still a Christian?"

"Yeah. Why?"

Alicia took a deep breath and went for it. "You used the hard line on my desktop computer? Someone did a search there. Trying to find out about something…Condoms."

"Oh, my God, Mom!" No, she didn't. She wasn't thinking about sex with her boyfriend.

"I didn't know if it was you."

"No! No!" Grace wasn't thinking about condoms, or Connor's penis, or what does it look like or how would it feel to…NO! That's lust and lust makes you do stupid things like cheating on your wife with a hooker. (Just one hooker tho).

"And if it was, that's not a problem. But I think maybe we should talk about it." Alicia said timidly. Then Grace saw a way out. It wasn't her, she didn't do it, then they don't have to talk about it.

"Do you really think I'd use a computer to find out about condoms?"

"I didn't know. We haven't had a talk."

"Because I don't want to."

"Well, maybe we need to have it now." The key was in the maybe.

"No, Mom. No thanks, really. I really don't want to."

"You okay?"

"Yeah."

"And you're being a good girl?"

"I'm being a good girl." Good girls don't have sex until they're married, right?

"Grace?" Doctor Anderson brought Grace back to the present.

"Yeah" The lawyer cleared her throat. "I didn't tell anyone about my boyfriend because someone recorded us the very first day we met. It was my first time having any kind of romantic interaction with a boy; we were sitting outside school, he was whispering in my ear and I felt all my teenage hormones going crazy. I was so excited and when I got home my mom showed me a video of that moment. My dad's opponent had me follow to get some dirt. Then my sweet school girl moment wasn't mine anymore. So I decided to not tell anyone."

"Hm." the Doctor nodded. "Retrieving is a natural response to the invasion of privacy."

"Yes, privacy. Because it's nobody business."

Grace's mind goes back to her grandma's wedding, confronting Alicia about not telling her and Zach about her upcoming divorce.

"How long ago did you decide?"

"A month ago." Alicia told her kids.

"And you're just now telling us?"

"We weren't telling anyone."

"We're not 'anyone', Mom."

"You're right. I'm sorry. We just wanted to get through Dad's trial."

"Is this about Jason?" Grace asked her mom.

"Wait, who's Jason?" Zach didn't know him.

"Her investigator. So this is about him?"

"It isn't."

"But…"

"But what? You're gonna say something else."

"You're sleeping with him." Grace adventured to say. She saw her mom's surprised reaction. Did she really think she wouldn't notice? She saw Jason leaving the apartment, she found Alicia in a robe, the bed undone.

"That is none of your business." Alicia replied.

"I don't want to talk about my mom." Grace blurted out.

"We weren't." Doctor Anderson replied. "But you can tell me anything that is in your mind."

"Alright. I'm a bitch." Grace shrugged. "I never took anyone seriously as a partner. Whenever someone at church would set me up for a date with a nice guy, I would go with them maybe twice and then blow them off."

"you weren't connecting with them?"

"I didn't want to connect with them." Grace said. "I didn't care."

It was a daytime affair, Grace said she was having a 'long lunch break' to her coworkers and instead she would meet Evan Van Ray Jr. in his apartment. After sex, Grace showered and hurried up to go back to work.

"Can I call you next week?" Evan was still laying on bed, observing Grace getting ready.

"No." The lawyer told him. She saw him in the reflection on the bedroom mirror.

"Next month?"

"Come on, Evan."

"What?"

Grace turned around to face him. "You and Susan got engaged. Did you think I wouldn't find out?"

"Don't be like that." Evan said. "We can still…"

"Do this? Evan if you want a mistress, get a mistress. Put her in an apartment in the West Loop and visit every 3 days."

"You can be so mean to me, Grace." The young man told her. "You never wanted to be my official girlfriend."

"You never really wanted me as your official girlfriend." Grace believed it to be true. She had known Evan for a long time, she saw him going from a sweet Christian Youth group member to a greedy fund manager. Hell, maybe she was the same, far away from Jesus.

"Be happy with Susan." She told him. "Don't ever call me again."

"You didn't care for them as individuals?" Doctor Anderson asked. "Were you afraid of commitment?"

"I don't know." Grace replied. "Maybe. Maybe I thought if I picked the wrong guy, I already knew it was gonna end up badly. Instead of getting my hopes up."

Outside the classroom in Northwestern, Julian Rainsford caught up with his girlfriend, Grace Florrick. They made quite a pair with their respective 'controversial' last names, although they never like getting too much attention. They usually avoided the big parties and preferred to hang out by themselves.

"Hey, babe." Julian took Grace's hand and pulled her away from the hallway to a dark corner to kiss her.

"Come on, Julian." Grace laughed off but there was a little voice inside her head telling her Julian wasn't good. He was sometimes rude to waiters, he would buy her presents and demand she would wear them, he liked to enable her drinking.

"What are you doing for Christmas break?"

"Uhm…We're going to Nashville to visit my step sister Lauren."

"Nashville? Fuck that. Come with me to Aspen to skiing." He wasn't really asking.

"Is there even snow at this time?"

"Then we'll stay in the hot tub drinking champagne." Julian raised his eyebrows.

"And your family? Are they staying in New York?"

"No, they're gonna be in Aspen too."

"Oh!" Grace stepped back. "You want me to meet your family?"

"Don't make it a big deal. It isn't a big deal."

"You haven't met my family and they live 2 miles from here." Grace told him.

"Yeah well…" Julian felt insecure. "Whatever."

"It's not about you, they're busy and we're busy." Grace knew she was ashamed. She wasn't sure about what. "And I don't know how to ski."

"I can teach you." Julian said. "And my parents…we're barely gonna see them, except for Christmas dinner."

"Okay, sure…Let's go to Aspen." Grace really tried to see a future with Julian, until he slapped her and Grace ghosted him.

"Grace, I don't think you're a 'bitch'. It's the same pattern of behavior. The same bad habits you learned at a young age." Doctor Anderson said "A person who doesn't acknowledge their own feelings, good or bad, won't have good personal relationships."

"Is that the key for a good relationship?"

"It's a step. Remember, it isn't a magic wand that fixes every bad relationship." Doctor Anderson added. "But it can help you see when you're in a bad relationship, or correct course."

Later than day; Grace stood outside her home in Highland Park. She saw the lights were on, Connor was already home. She decided to stall a little bit longer and called Zach.

"Allo?"

"Hi Zach. Did I wake you?"

"No. I'm not sleeping. I'm writing my next book." Zach informed her. "It's gonna be a spy novel."

"I can't wait to read it."

"Did you read my first one?"

"Of course. You send me copies."

"What was your favorite part?"

"So…what's going on with you and Natalie?" Grace ignored Zach's question

"We're talking. I'm still not back in the house, but we're talking." Zach informed her. "It's giving me anxiety but I think, maybe, I'll try to be a dad."

"If it gives you anxiety it means you care, right?"

"Does it?"

"I don't know, Zach."

"I just don't want to wake up in 3 years and realize I'm only in it because of my kid." Zach said.

"I understand you."

"Are you okay, Grace?"

"I'm not sure, yet." Grace saw movement inside her house, Connor was now in the kitchen, she better hurried up. "Good to hear from you big brother."

"Same, little sister."

Grace came into her house. "I'm home! I brought dinner."

"I heard your car like 10 minutes ago." Connor said.

"I was on the phone with Zach." Grace greeted her daughter with a kiss. "Hi Debbie."

"Ma ma."

"My mom gave Debbie a special tea." Connor told his wife. "It helped her upset stomach."

"Great news."

"What did you bring for dinner?"

"Italian beef sandwiches." Grace raised the brown bag. "With spicy giardiniera."

"Wow. I'll take them." Connor took the bag from her and the married couple started to set the table for dinner.

"Connor?"

"Yes?"

"I asked for a background check because I wanted to find an excuse to keep you away."

The man frowned. "Why?"

"My other relationships were either short or bad. So I made up my mind about not having any romance. I thought I should focus only on winning the election." Grace told him. "You came into my life and you made me feel hopeful."

"You didn't want me."

"I didn't know what to do because I felt how much I wanted you, right away. I was afraid of my feelings."

"I got you good, didn't I?"

"Head over feet." Grace smiled at her husband. "And I know it's hard for you to be the emotional mature one in our marriage. You sent me to therapy for a reason."

"I didn't send you."

"You saw me struggling and you were right. I'm learning to be in an adult relationship for the first time. So maybe we rushed our marriage. But I don't regret it, do you?"

Listen, I still have plenty more chapters to go. How many? Who knows! I still need to get to Jackie, recycle a Kalinda idea, Marissa Gold, Ruffles the orange cat gets an origin story and of course Alicia. I promise you there's gonna be plenty of Alicia. In fact this fanfic it's just a very long way to get to my view of this messed up mother and daughter relationship.