TW for minor swearing and for brief mention of minor self-injurious behavior


By the time Friday afternoon rolled around, Melinda was already beat. It wasn't for no reason, by any means. Things had been busy at work, and there was still plenty to do to get the girls ready for the start of school next week – last minute supply shopping, finalizing accommodations paperwork and scheduling therapy and tutoring sessions around school hours, trying to squeeze in as much as they could before their life shifted totally back towards homework and soccer games. There'd been workouts and driving practice with Bobbi, tai chi and reading practice with Skye, puzzle working and trips to the library with Jemma… all of it good, and all of it keeping Melinda busier than she'd been in a long time.

Jemma had needed new shoes, and Skye had outgrown the jeans they'd bought last fall, so there were shopping trips to fit in, all full of gentle coaxing as they helped Jemma ease into the idea of new shoes and the difference in the way the new ones felt. It had been obvious that Jemma was trying her best to seem amenable and easy-going about the change, but it was equally obvious that the effort was costing her as she forced herself to lace up the new sneakers and tried to not grimace at the sensation of newness.

Honestly, if it hadn't been for the fact that Jemma's old ones were literally coming apart at the seams, they might have just let her keep wearing the old ones until she was ready to pick out new ones on her own terms. That was something she and Phil had been trying to be attentive to with all the girls, especially after some of their conversations with Andrew. Letting the girls set terms when and where it was safe and appropriate for them to do so. Giving them more ownership of their lives. It was a natural thing to be encouraging for teenagers regardless, but after everything Bobbi, Skye, and Jemma had been through, Melinda knew it was particularly important for them to feel like they had control over parts of their lives. With the shoes, though, she wasn't sure Jemma would have ever made the switch voluntarily, and it wasn't good for her to be walking around in falling apart shoes that offered no support or protection, so they'd had to step in with some encouragement.

It had helped when Phil suggested Jemma could still keep her old shoes, and Melinda had done her best to find some options that were as close to the old ones as possible for Jemma to try on at home, away from the pressure and stress of the store. Once Jemma had settled on a pair, Melinda had taken the others back to the store and returned them. She knew to an outsider, it might have seemed like an unnecessarily complicated system, but it worked for them, and it worked for Jemma, so Melinda was willing to deal with complicated if it meant it was easier for her youngest daughter to transition through and accept small changes.

On top of all that, they'd spent the last several days getting things ready for their newest arrival. Phil and the girls had moved all of the old furniture out of the office, squeezing the desk into a corner of the living room and finding an empty-enough section of hallway to stick the file cabinet. It wasn't until after they'd gotten Deke's bed delivered and had spent the better part of Thursday night putting it together that she and Phil realized that maybe it wasn't the best idea to put the 6-year-old in a room by himself on the first floor while the rest of them slept on the second.

"I can't believe I didn't think of that sooner," she'd said, falling back onto the newly assembled bed in a dejected huff. "Of course we can't let him sleep down here all alone. What were we thinking? He's so young; there's no way we're prepared for this, Phil…"

"We'll figure it out," Phil assured her. He joined her on the bed and ran a soothing hand up and down on her shoulder, massaging out the stress and self-doubt. "The girls might be willing to all share a room, and we can put Deke in the other bedroom while he's here. Or maybe Bobbi would be interested in moving down here for the time being. I seem to recall you being more than eager to move your bedroom into your basement when you were her age."

"I was trying to put as much distance between me and my mother as possible back then," she smirked. "I was so mad at her for making me move to Wisconsin."

"It worked out in the end," smiled Phil.

"Yes, it did." She leaned over and gave him a quick kiss. "Okay, you're right, let's just ask the girls what they want to do. Thanks for not letting me spiral too much."

Ultimately, Bobbi had decided she'd rather move into the made-over office than cram in with Skye and Jemma. Even though Skye had been disappointed by the decision, Bobbi seemed more than happy to have a little more space and privacy, even if the room itself was smaller. Melinda knew they were probably all busy at home now, working away with Phil to get Bobbi's things moved and Bobbi's old room ready for Deke, while she sat behind her desk at the precinct, finishing up some backlogged paperwork and trying not to get too nervous about meeting their new foster son that night.

It was hard to say what was more distracting that afternoon – the drudgery of paperwork, the anticipation of that evening, or maybe just her general worry about the girls and how they were adjusting to everything – but whatever the reason, when Melinda's phone rang at her desk near the end of her workday, she didn't pay close attention to the number that flashed on the caller ID. If she had, she would have seen that it was a number she'd been ignoring for months now, and she wouldn't have picked up. Instead, she answered without thinking.

"Hello?"

"Is this Detective Melinda May?" came a flat voice on the other end.

"Speaking."

"This is the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility. We have an outgoing call for you from an inmate here. Would you like to accept?"

Melinda's heart turned to lead in her chest as she glanced down at the ID and registered what she'd done by picking up the phone. Suspecting the answer already, she asked: "Which inmate?"

"Calvin Johnson."

Cal had been calling her as often as his phone privileges allowed, ever since he'd been sentenced to MSDF several months ago and had somehow figured out her work phone number. She'd never accepted one of his calls, and often she didn't even pick up the phone if she could see it was the detention facility calling. At least he hadn't been able to get ahold of their home phone number. The last thing she wanted was him trying to call there and for one of the girls – Skye especially – to hear.

"Detective? Would you like to accept the call?"

Melinda gave herself a little shake and pulled herself out of her thoughts and back to the situation at hand. She was about to say no, to hang up and start packing up to go home, but for some reason, something stopped her. She was getting a feeling, one of her hunches, like maybe this time she ought to just answer him. Not one to dismiss her intuition, even if maybe it went against her better judgment, Melinda heard herself telling the phone operator "yes." At the very least she could tell Cal to stop calling her.

There was a brief pause while the phone line transferred, then a click, the automated reminder that their call was being recorded, and suddenly, although there was nothing but silence on the other end, Melinda could tell that Cal was there. Waiting like a spider on the other end of the line.

"Hello? Mr. Johnson?"

A man's voice made a surprised little sound, and there was a long beat before he spoke. His voice was a little hoarse, but it was unmistakably the voice of the man who she'd found terrorizing her children nearly nine months ago. She knew she would never forget the sound of it. "Hel-? Oh, I… My apologies, I… I wasn't expecting you to pick up, Detective May. This is a momentous first for us."

Melinda felt her expression harden, her face go stony as she listened to his puttering little mannerisms work their way over the phoneline. When she spoke, there was steel in her tone.

"What do you want, Mr. Johnson?"

"It's… it's Doctor, actually. Did you know that? I'm not allowed to practice anymore, of course, but I am a… was a doctor. You can call me Cal, though."

"Is there some reason for your call?"

"Well, I want what any father wants…"

Melinda's eyes narrowed. "You must be out of your mind if you think for a second I'm going to let you anywhere near Skye. If that's all this is about, you can stop calling me, because my answer will not change."

"Please, I just want to see Daisy. To talk to her. She's my little girl, and we left things on such bad terms last time…"

"You mean when you kidnapped her? Or when she testified against you in court?"

Cal made a pained noise, almost like a groan. "You see, that's no way for a girl to remember her father. I have so many things I want to tell her."

"This conversation is over. Don't call again, Mr. Johnson."

"Wait!"

Perhaps foolishly, Melinda hesitated. Cal spoke in a rush, like he knew she was about to hang up.

"Daisy's in danger. I need to tell her. To warn her. I have information, things she needs to know, for her own safety."

"In danger how?" Melinda asked. It sounded to her like a desperate last attempt on Cal's part to get what he wanted.

"It's really the sort of thing she ought to hear from me herself," Cal started to say. Melinda cut him off sharply.

"Anything you have to say about Skye's safety can be said to me, not to her. And frankly, Mr. Johnson, if you were truly worried about Skye's safety and not just using an empty threat as a bargaining chip, I think you would have shared that information a long time ago."

"It's about Daniel Whitehall."

Melinda's blood ran cold. "What?"

There was a slight pause, and she could almost imagine the sickening, satisfied smile spreading across Cal's face as he spoke. "I thought that name might mean something to you."

It certainly did. Memories of ominous, half-filled police reports, of vague but frightening comments from hospital staff and deliberately evasive paper trails about Dr. Daniel Whitehall's dismissal from Ames' Memorial Hospital and subsequent stripping of his medical license over 'ethics violations' flooded Melinda's mind. He was the doctor who had delivered Skye on the day she was born, the doctor who had signed Skye's mother's death certificate, the doctor that Cal had attacked just days after Skye's birth… and yet, for all the digging she had done into Skye's past, Whitehall was one bone-chilling piece of the puzzle that she hadn't quite been able to figure out.

"What about Daniel Whitehall?"

"I want to see Daisy."

"This isn't a game," Melinda said harshly, trying to keep the snarl out of her voice. The cold fear that had flooded her a moment ago changed to hot anger. "Either you know something, or you don't. You care about Skye's safety, or you don't. That's not conditional, and it's not a negotiation tactic."

"Have you even asked her?" Cal needled. "Did it ever cross your mind that Daisy might want to see me, too? I mean, she left you for me once before…"

"We're done here." And with that, Melinda hung up the phone with a resolute snap of plastic against plastic as she crashed the phone back into the receiver with more force than was probably necessary. Her heart was thrumming in her chest like she'd just run a mile, and she tried to force herself to take a deep breath. It wouldn't do anyone any good if she let her emotions get the best of her. Cal was a known manipulator, a man with no qualms about hurting people or forcing them to bend to his cockamamie will.

Even if what he'd said was true, that he did actually know something about Daniel Whitehall, there was no way in hell she'd ever let Skye anywhere near him ever again. She remembered all too well how much Skye had suffered at his hand last year, how much she had struggled when she'd had to face him again in court a few months ago. She would never let Skye hurt like that again, never put her through that pain; Whitehall or no Whitehall, and Cal Johnson be damned.


The house was a tidal wave of activity when Melinda stepped through the front door half an hour later, casting any hope she'd had of a quiet moment to unwind before Victoria arrived with Deke out the window and into the thick summer air. Skye darted past her with barely an over-the-shoulder hello, barreling towards the kitchen with an old towel in her hands, and Jemma and Bobbi were on their way up the stairs, their arms full of linens – much cleaner and newer than the towel Skye had been carrying.

"Hi May," Jemma chirped on her way upstairs. Melinda gave her a bemused little wave as she set down her work things and hung her keys on the hook by the door.

"Do I even want to know what's going on around here?" she asked with a faint chuckle. Bobbi, who had paused at the base of the stairs, made an apologetic face.

"Phil was making a lasagna for supper. Skye was helping, and now there's a whole bunch of tomato sauce on the floor."

"Hence the towel."

"Phil said he was going to finish putting the clean sheets on Deke's bed once the lasagna was in the oven, but he's a little distracted right now," Bobbi continued. "So I figured I could do that while he and Skye clean the kitchen. Jemma's helping me to get her mind off the…" Bobbi trailed off and waved a hand listlessly in the air, trying to capture the spirit of the word she couldn't place. "The everything. She's… a little nervous, I think."

Melinda hummed a thoughtful little sound and wrapped an arm around Bobbi's shoulders, stretching up to squeeze her tallest daughter in a side hug. "We're lucky to have someone as thoughtful and responsible as you around," she said warmly. "Thank you."

"It's nothing."

"It's not nothing," Melinda told her. "You've been stepping up a lot lately, and it's not nothing. I want you to know that Phil and I see that. That we appreciate everything you do."

"Thanks." Bobbi gave a bashful little shrug, her cheeks pinkening slightly.

"You said Jemma was feeling nervous?" asked Melinda. "Did she say anything to you?" She and Phil had been trying their best to check in with the girls about everything, but she knew there were plenty of things they missed, plenty of things the girls saved to share only with each other.

"Not really," Bobbi shook her head. "She's just… you know… Being nervous. Tappy. Quiet. She rearranged her bookshelf three times this afternoon."

"What about you? How are you feeling?"

Bobbi was quiet for a moment. "Feeling… feeling, feeling okay, I guess. I don't really know that much about little kids. I don't really know how to talk to them, so I'm kind of…" She paused and considered, and Melinda knew she was choosing her feeling word. "Apprehensive. But I think it's going to be okay."

"Me too," Melinda said. "I'm apprehensive too, but I agree. I think it's going to be okay. We'll all just do our best and take things one step at a time."

"Time, time," Bobbi agreed. For a fleeting second, she looked like she was on the verge of saying something more, but she was cut short by the reappearance of Jemma, who had come back downstairs and drawn up to Bobbi's side. She tugged lightly on the sleeve of Bobbi's t-shirt, tapping a couple times on Bobbi's elbow as she spoke.

"I need help," she admitted. "I couldn't put the fitted sheet on. The elastic is too difficult to do by myself."

"It's not really a one-person job," Bobbi said kindly. "I'm coming."

"Do you want help?" Melinda asked, the question directed at the two girls' retreating backs as they headed for the stairs.

Bobbi shook her head and glanced back at Melinda. "We've got it. Thanks, though."

"Phil and Skye could probably use some help," Jemma suggested, also turning back to face Melinda. Her eyes darted toward the kitchen, and she winced a little. "Things are a bit of a mess in there."

"Thanks for the heads up," said Melinda with a wry smile. Taking Jemma's suggestion, she made her way back into the kitchen and found that "a bit of a mess" was a more than apt description of the scene.

Phil was on his hands and knees, mopping the towel back and forth over a puddle of tomato sauce that has splattered across the linoleum. The front of his white shirt was speckled with a spray of red, and there was a blob of sauce splashed across his cheek, too. Melinda almost laughed out loud at the sorry sight of him, covered practically head to toe in the mess, but she caught herself when she spotted Skye standing nervously off to one side, thumping the knuckles on her right hand against her left wrist almost absent-mindedly.

"That's quite a spill," she said, trying to keep her voice even. She didn't want to alarm anyone. "Everything okay in here?"

"We're okay," Phil said delicately, panting a little as he wiped up the last of the sauce and got to his feet. He deposited the towel in the sink and turned on the faucet, speaking over his shoulder as he began to wash his hands. "I got a little clumsy with the jar of tomato sauce—"

"I dropped it," Skye interrupted him, frowning. "I couldn't get the lid off, and I was handing it to Phil so he could try, but it slipped."

"It was a team effort," soothed Phil. "The glass broke, but we got up all the pieces. I had Skye get the towel, and now here we are. No harm done."

"I guess it's a good thing there was a buy-one-get-one special on tomato sauce at the grocery store last week." Melinda smiled, taking her cue from Phil and trying to keep things light. She got the sense from his intentional nonchalance that, right now, it was better not to comment on the unanchored look in Skye's eyes or the fact that she had put as much distance between herself and the spill as possible.

"Didn't I say it's always a good idea to have extra on hand?" chuckled Phil.

"You did. I'll never doubt you again."

"Oh, that I have to get in writing," Phil grinned. Melinda swatted playfully at his shoulder and smirked, although she retreated quickly when he brandished his soapy hands at her, threatening to douse her with bubbles.

"Don't you dare, Phil."

"You're no fun," he teased, craning his neck back her way to kiss her jaw, right in the spot he knew she loved. He finished washing his hands and wrung out the now rinsed towel in the sink. "Skye, do you need to wash your hands? Got any sauce on you?"

Skye shook her head. "I'm okay." She was still thumping her knuckles against her wrist. Melinda had gotten Phil's silent message about not pressing Skye loud and clear, but she couldn't let the knuckles go. They were supposed to be working on transitioning away from that habit.

"Can you open your fist, please, Skye?"

Skye looked bashful and quickly removed her hand from her wrist, jamming her now-unclenched fist into her pocket. "Sorry. I forgot."

"It's okay," Melinda smiled. "That's what reminders are for. I don't want you hurting your arm. Do you want to run through first form, to help you focus on relaxing your palm?" The was one of the unexpected benefits of doing tai chi with Skye, they had discovered. Most of the forms required an open hand, and it was an easy way to redirect some of her energy while also encouraging her to safely release the tension that built up inside of her.

"No, I'm okay."

Skye shuffled a little, and Melinda fought the urge to chastise herself. She hadn't meant to make Skye feel self-conscious. She had just opened her mouth to say so when Skye spoke first.

"Can I go find Jemma and Bobbi? Maybe I could help them instead?"

"Sure, sweetheart," Phil nodded. "We'll be in here if you change your mind and want to come back and help cook. Victoria will probably be here with Deke in about half an hour."

Skye scampered off then with barely a backwards glance, and Phil sagged a little once it was just him and Melinda left alone in the kitchen.

"Damnit. That could have gone better."

"What happened?" Melinda asked. "Was it like the thing with the juice all over again?"

"Not as bad as the juice thing," Phil told her. He pulled the replacement jar of tomato sauce down from the cabinet and started to resume the cooking that he'd presumably been doing prior to the broken jar fiasco. "She weathered it better this time. But essentially… yes. As far as I could tell, it was like the juice thing."

A few months ago, not that long after Skye'd had to testify against Cal in court, there had been a morning where a carton of juice – cranberry – had tipped over and spilled all over the kitchen floor. It wouldn't have been a big deal, just a simple clean up, but something about the spill had struck a nerve with Skye. It was Melinda who had figured it out first, had put two and two together and realized just what the dark red juice stain might be conjuring in Skye's mind, but she hadn't been quick enough to keep Skye from slipping into an almost-fugue state, practically paralyzed until the spill had been wiped away completely. They'd tried to get her to talk about the incident with Andrew a couple of times, but so far, Skye had stubbornly refused to acknowledge that anything had even happened.

"She was doing that thing with her knuckles again…" Melinda pointed out. She began pulling things out of the fridge for Phil as he worked.

"I know. I should have made her stop sooner, but—"

"You had a lot to manage," she interrupted him kindly. "Cleaning up the mess was the right first priority."

"It's become a habit," he sighed with a shake of his head. "I kept thinking, once the cast was off, she wouldn't want to knock her arm on herself anymore, but then she just switched to the knuckles and I let it go on too long before we tried to address it. Now it's something she'll have to unlearn, and it's going to turn into a whole thing..."

"You're not the only one who let it go on too long," said Melinda. "I kept hoping it would resolve itself once we got things a little more settled, made her feel more safe. I should have seen the signs earlier, intervened sooner. But this is where we are now, and all we can do is move forward. We know she's trying, at least."

"It just breaks my heart that her impulse when she's upset is to hurt herself," Phil said sadly. "I don't even think she realizes it half the time."

"Which is why we just need to keep reminding her. Like Andrew said, gentle correction until the impulse changes to something less harmful."

"I know, you're right," Phil smiled. "Just hard to trust the process."

"I know." She drew up beside him and rested her head on his shoulder. "I hope we're doing the right thing, here."

"With Skye? I think so. I trust Andrew—"

"No, I meant… Tonight. Bringing someone new into our home. I know it's only temporary, and the boy needs our help, but… I don't know. Skye's still struggling, we just saw that. Bobbi said Jemma was nervous all day today, and Bobbi's been freezing us out this whole week. Maybe we're biting off more than we can chew."

"I've been worrying about that, too," Phil hummed. He passed her a knife to start mincing onions for the new and improved tomato sauce he was working on. "But we talked to the girls about it, more than once. We made sure to check in with them about it. They said they wanted to foster Deke, said they were okay with it. I feel like we owe it to them to believe them, take their words at face value."

"That's true. I want them to know we trust them when they tell us things."

"We'll just do our best, and lean on our resources to help us out," Phil continued. "And it's not like the girls haven't made a lot of really good progress. They're so different from how they were this time last year. There'll always be tricky things and they'll always need love and support, but we've all come so far. I want to believe that we're in a good place. Or at least, a better place."

"We are," nodded Melinda. She tipped the chopped onion into Phil's pot and watched as he stirred. "Of course we are. You're right. I've just been worried, is all. Between school and adoption and therapy, there's just a lot going on right now. And that stupid nonsense at work today has me all on edge…"

"What happened at work today?" Phil looked up, suddenly very curious and concerned. "Everything okay?"

"It's fine," she said quickly. "Or, it will be. Just a phone call I had near the end of the day from—" Her phone buzzed in her pocket then, stopping her short. She pulled it out to find a text from Victoria. She was leaving Deke's house and would be there in 20 minutes. "Vic's on her way."

"Not enough time in the day," Phil said with a faint, maybe a little on the weary-side, chuckle. "Can you watch the pot while I go put on a clean shirt? Don't touch anything, just stir," he teased.

"There's no way I can ruin your sauce in the five minutes it takes you to change," she protested, laughing.

Phil raised his eyebrows her way and bit back a smile. "Your track record says otherwise, dear."

That got another laugh of mock-outrage from her. "You know, a pettier person than I would take that insult as an opportunity to oversalt the sauce out of spite."

"Which is why I said it only out of love," Phil smiled. "And because I know you'd rather prove me wrong than sabotage the meal."

"Go change," she said, shooing him with the sauce-covered spoon. "They'll be here soon."


Sorry it took me longer than normal to get this one up! I'm hoping I can be back on a regular schedule moving forward. Thank you all for sticking with me!