It could be a Sunday morning out of the past. Zoe's off at one of her ridiculously early yoga classes. Emily's snoring unquietly from the depths of her bedclothes upstairs. He's in the kitchen in his pyjama pants and a ratty sweatshirt that Zoe threatened to toss years ago, looking down into the old Brown Betty teapot and watching the loose tea leaves swirling and steaming. Seeking order and pattern in turbulence, then letting go of the need for it. Zoe has her mantras. He has this. To each their thing.
But everything's different now. He only knows where Zoe is because she texted him from her B , and asked him to call if Gillian was up to talking more today. And it's Gillian in the second bedroom, just beginning to shuffle around softly to the bathroom and back, not knowing where the squeaky bits are in the floorboards yet that give her away. He loves that. She's where she's supposed to be, even if Zoe was just as perfect there in her way, too, back in the day.
He slips the lid back on the teapot, with a familiar scrape and clink. A sturdy black tea needs five minutes, at least, covered. He looks up, out of the kitchen window over the sink, and has a stomach-gripping moment of realization that he's in time for once, he's awake and present for this - that moment in the back garden when the first ruby-gold glint of sunrise streaks at an angle across the tops of the hedges and the undersides of the fir trees along the lane. It's glorious and fleeting. An omen?
He leans on the heels of his hands on the cool counter tiles, and watches. They'd be surprised if they knew, all his women - what a poetic sap he is. But he never saw that early alpenglow, as a snotty-nosed kid running in the crowded streets around the Shoreditch tenement flats. Not till he'd made his escape, against all the bloody odds, to Oxford, where the rich and privileged took no more notice of the natural beauty all around them than to pass a comment on the weather. He used to get up in the still-hungover darkness of a morning and sit huddled on the stone steps of the back entrance of his college res hall in hopes of catching it. Always a good portent if he did. Another exam passed (Pass…second class…first with honours…keep this up, Callum, and we'll want to discuss your options after your degree…) another night (or morning, or afternoon) with someone sweet in bed, another pound in the bank from some scheme just this side of getting him plucked from uni.
Been one long game of beating the odds, his entire life, really. And here he is.
Right now the one thing he can't bring himself to bet on is whether Gillian will be able to forgive him - truly, in her bones. She wants to, because she's Gillian and forgiveness is her thing, but he can't let her do that. Bad old patterns to fall back on that they both have to shift. He'll have to earn it and prove it the hard way, not through poking the Devil in the eye as usual.
The question isn't even whether he was wrong to keep Alec's illness from her. There's shades of wrongness and rightness all tied up with protecting her from weeks of sheer awfulness that Alec specifically didn't want her to see. What of the moral rights of the dying man? And knowing that Alec would stop giving the incendiary deathbed testimony that could trigger a once-in-a-generation investigation, if Gillian knew about it.
But, as Gillian said, in the end, he'd taken the choice from her, and lied to keep the truth from her.
Unforgiveable? Maybe. He's watched her handwalk clients away from relationships like that, and make sure they have strong, solid words to hang onto on their way. Words she had to chisel out and scrub clean from the wreckage of her own marriage to a man whose addiction made a liar of him. Why should she forgive him? What assurances can he give her she hasn't already heard?
But.
That look in her eye last night.
Being in just the right time and place to catch that moment in the garden, that takes him right back to that place where his life changed entirely.
He wonders why he feels oddly content this morning, and thinks of the power of confession, even before absolution, in the Catholic sense. He could ask Gillian about that, his local lapsed Catholic with an encyclopaedic knowledge of Irish and French saints. Maybe that's what she needs right now, though, agnostic-humanist as she is - to watch him go through the work of penance and absolution. Do the work, as the therapists say.
Lapsed decades ago. Marry who she likes.
Stow it, Lightman. Hasn't even been a memorial planned yet. And it'll all be on Gillian's shoulders. Which is another very sturdy reason to do his best for the man, to keep his testimony safe and make sure it gets to the right people to take action, in Alec's name. And depending on how much skin in the game that costs him, maybe that will turn out to be the penance that Gillian needs to see.
The danger of a day like this is, he feels like he could take the House at blackjack and walk out unscathed. After weeks of feeling like a right donkey. He's always landed on his feet so far.
He closes his eyes, stretches his spine back till it pings pleasurably, and then sets about fixing his tea. He'll put the coffee on for the girls when he sees them.
"Closer to five, I'd think."
"Five million?"
Cal doesn't see Gillian at a loss for words very often, but Zoe's done it in a blink. Zoe, still glowing from yoga and chanting, shrugs, a little surprised at the reaction around the table. Nearly two million in savings is about average for a professional couple in DC, but this is getting significantly lifestyle-changing.
"Or six, even. It's prime Rosslyn real estate. Those classic older houses that have been kept up are going for over ten, in that area."
"We didn't even have a swimming pool."
"No, but you did keep the original carriage house at the back, and that's a huge value-add. The land alone is worth a lot. Even if someone took the main house down they could live in it during construction," Zoe points out.
"We figured we'd rent it out, once we got around to fixing it up. Or have my Dad move in. Or just keep it for guest space. I don't even know if he's been inside it in…five, maybe ten years."
Zoe's amused. "My guess is it'll add couple mil to the parcel, over asking."
"You're gonna be able to do whatever pleases you, darling."
Gillian grips her coffee cup and blinks at him. "He must have known what the house was worth. He'll have gotten the same appraisals we've seen. Why did he keep it? Living there all alone couldn't have done him any good. Rattling around in a big house full of memories and old hopes."
"I'll wager he was keepin' it to give back to you."
"He bought me out of my half anyway."
"Yeah, an' you could have taken him for the whole thing."
He says it as gently as he can. Gillian shakes her head slowly.
"We could expand the business," she says, thinking out loud. "Bring in a couple of the contractors onto payroll. Open a branch office in New York like we - "
"Gill, that's your inheritance. If anyone's invested more'n they ought in the business, it's you. And you know better'n anyone how likely it is we'll go arse over tip one day and get sued into oblivion. You 'ang onto that cash. Once you've got it all in hand, that is. Still no tellin' what he owed where."
She's looking for the quickest way to avoid having to deal with the Alec part of it, he knows, but dumping it into the business isn't the way.
Still, he can't help but exult: she's not even thinking about cashing out and leaving him. And she could. She could pack up her toys and leave and start her own consultancy, go do her own research, and nobody would blame her. Certainly not him. He'd be thrilled for her and he'd go to work, alone, at half-capacity and with rocks in his belly every day that she wasn't there.
He squirms in his chair at that, and scritches and scrubs at the back of his neck, and Gillian and Zoe both flick concerned glances at him. He pretends he just had an itch.
"Small moves," Zoe agrees. "Get the whole picture, then sort out investments and real estate, and then start thinking of what you'd like to do." She pops the last bite of her raspberry muffin into her mouth.
Gillian remembers her own muffin, then, and takes a bite. Her eyes suddenly take on a deep gleam as she chews and swallows and takes a swig of coffee. "We could fund a couple of postdocs," she says, and her fingers start tapping on her mug. Which is brilliant, and definitely something to keep in mind for later, but -
"'ang onto that, love, but we best get as much done as we can while Zo's here."
"Right. Yes. We need to sort out the memorial. And at least brainstorm what the hell to do with these tapes. I just don't want them here. While we sort out what to do with them."
"Agreed," says Zoe.
It's something, he thinks, to see these two in total synchrony across the dinner table. He once hoped it would happen naturally over time, and now they're finding this intense connection in the midst of grief.
It takes a minute for it to sink in that Gillian sounds like she's not planning on leaving. That here means that here is where her place is, and she doesn't want the tapes in the house where she is.
The sunrise lights up in his belly.
And a thought strikes him.
"Shazzer. That's our girl."
"What?" from Gillian.
Zoe's ears prick up and Cal remembers she's only heard about old Shaz from Emily, filtered through the eyes of their daughter. Zoe won't have heard what exactly went down or how he ended things with her, but if Zoe and Gillian keep up with this current bestie fling, no doubt she'll hear it all.
He groans internally. Not his finest moment, that. He's never really atoned for that one, either. He adds it to the running list.
"Sharon Wallowski," he clarifies, "A detective here with DCPD. We go back a bit. You were sayin' we need to find someone who'll protect these tapes with their lives. Well…" he holds Gillian's gaze. "Owes us 'er life, that one. And she's got a whole fuckin' armoury in her house. An' a safe you'd need a plasma-cutter to get into, an' that would destroy the tapes anyway. An' all bein' said, I'd rather someone who's been tryin' to stay on the right side of the law than, I dunno, my boy Wheelsie, or Simone from the - "
"Cal," Gillian warns.
"From the evenin' get-togethers for boxing enthusiasts," he finishes. Zoe snorts audibly and throws him a look.
"Is she still in town? Sharon?" Gillian asks too casually, sipping her coffee.
"Far as I know. I 'aven't heard from 'er in 'alf a year or more, but I'd know if anything 'appened to her. Got 'erself demoted after that rumpus with 'er old partner. But she's back at full Detective, so I heard. Tryin' to keep her shoes shiny an' her fingers clean, she told me last. Yeah. She'll do it, all right, if I ask. The only hard part'll be keeping 'er out of the action. She's been wired tight for some sort of high drama righteous-vigilante shite 'er whole fuckin' career, that's 'er trouble." He looks over at Zoe. "Street crime, drugs an' vice, that's 'er beat. Possible she's even familiar with some of th' names on those tapes, come to think of it."
"I thought your trouble was aiding and abetting her going rogue and nearly getting you both killed," Gillian says, mildly. Zoe barely reacts except for the slight rolling upward of her eyes.
"Yeah, well, she's still alive, in't she?"
"Thanks to you?" Zoe asks point-blank. Cal lifts his mug of tea and waves it toward Gillian.
"Thanks to this one, really." Credit where credit's due.
Gillian's eyes drop away from his. Bugger it, bugger it. Too sore still, after all this time. But memories of Sharon are woven into Claire's untimely death, for Gillian, and Sharon seeing her at a gruesomely low point, achingly vulnerable.
"I, uh," he stumbles, rubbing at the back of his neck again, "I'll see if I can track down Sharon. Leave that with me. Save us a whole mess if I can bring 'er round. There's still a memorial of some sort to think of. Bein' realistic, Gill, is it really down to you? What happens if you let that go? I don't think anyone's expecting you to take on something like that."
He's trying to give her a reason to put some of the weight down, take it off her shoulders, but she's resolute. She stares at him again and he sighs.
"I need to do this," she says quietly.
"You don't have to do any of it alone," Zoe reminds her. Which is kind of her, stepping in like that. Gillian isn't looking very fondly at him at the moment.
"He's the last of his line," Gillian goes on. "There isn't anyone left. As far as anyone knows, Matt passed away years ago, or he's out of the country and using an assumed alias."
He shouldn't have been the last of his line, rings in the air, unspoken.
Ah. This is a public reminder of that, just a little, for those very few who know the whole story.
If you'd held up your end of the bargain and stayed clean enough to keep your fucking sperm from disintegrating from cocaine use, or at least agreed to use donor material for IVF, you might've had your children mourning you as well. Our children.
Gillian looks at him, with a carefully blank, cold expression he's only seen on her once before. When she calmly explained that she had made a formal recommendation, as the past therapist and personal friend of Claire Hardwick, that Claire's killer be considered not criminally responsible, but a continuing danger to re-offend, and subject to psychoactive sedation and mood stabilizers for the remainder of his days. The court, interpreting this as an act of compassion, and not wanting Claire's parents to have to suffer through the years of inevitable high-profile death penalty appeals, had accepted her recommendation.
Cal had never been so proud of her and so terrified for the corrosive effect on her soul. But apparently she was satisfied, and had never spoken of it again. His Gillian has a capacity for personal vengeance he never really saw underlying her compassion for survivors.
He knows now why she'll forgive him, eventually, and why they'll probably never talk about the reason. She gets that about him, too. You're absolutely right. He didn't fucking deserve me.
"Have you...thought of a venue?" Zoe ventures carefully.
"Our old tennis club lounge," Gillian replies. "I e-mailed them this morning to ask about a booking next Sunday. Technically I'm still a member."
Back to the field of battle, then. And this time, he'll be at her side. One way or another.
Zoe helps clear away the morning coffee things, and then spends a lovely hour with sleepy Emily when she comes downstairs.
"I've already gone to sadhana, and we've had a first breakfast," Zoe tells her. "But we can have second breakfast in a bit."
"Mm," Emily says, snuggling into her mother's side on the same old couch they've snuggled on since they moved into the house, just before Emily started kindergarten. "That sounds perfect. Did you get all the Alec business stuff dealt with?"
"We're working on it, honey. Nothing for you to worry about. But we think - your dad thinks he knows someone who can keep those tapes safe and out of the house until we need them. I don't want them here. They're serious evidence."
"Yeah, I know. And if anyone who's on them finds out they're here, they'd probably come after it."
Zoe pauses in stroking her daughter's sleep-mussed curls. "Why don't you sound all that concerned about that happening?"
"I mean, it's happened before. But Dad stopped them. Actually he maced a cop who - get this - actually broke in looking for evidence here. A cop! And then they sort of had a thing for a while."
"Shazzer," Zoe says flatly, realizing. "I should have known."
"Yeah, her. You know about her?"
"A very little. Let's keep it that way for now. Dad can tell me more if he wants to. How are you doing with all this? I know you've been worried about Gillian."
Cal and Gillian are upstairs in their separate bedrooms, at the moment, and won't hear them speaking quietly. Emily looks up. "How is she today?"
Zoe feels a pang of the old jealousy that Emily loves Gillian so much. How did Gillian just come along and bewitch her child? "Well, I'm not the psychologist, but she seems more with it today. More verbal. Showing more reaction. I think that's a good sign for now."
"And Dad?"
"Twitchy. He's done all the cooking and cleaning for days, and we've been…a bit rough on him. Not that he didn't have it coming. But it's back to the office tomorrow."
"Gillian's going back to work, too?"
"She didn't say otherwise." Zoe looks down. "Why?"
"I was thinking, if it's okay - what if I fly back with you tonight? Instead of at the end of the week? It seems like we might as well both go."
"Hm." Zoe thinks about this. "Easy enough to change your ticket. I'd love it, having the extra time with you."
"Yeah, and it just seems like I'm in the way. Not being the token kid here, I mean, I'm just not involved in any of this and nobody wants me to be."
"You definitely don't need to be. The farther away the better, as far as I'm concerned. We haven't decided if I'm going to dash back here for the memorial next weekend, but that's up to you, too. If I come back it'll be just to lend support. It might be good to give your dad and Gillian some space till then."
Emily nods against her shoulder, and Zoe melts a little. God, she's missed her kid. There's not much kid left now, and she gets why Cal's trying to hold onto his half-mini-me as long as possible. Whenever Emily moves out for real, it's going to be an earthquake for him.
"You think they might finally get together after this?" Emily wonders aloud, quietly.
"Oh, honey, I have no idea. I'm not the one to ask. You'd have a better idea than me."
"Then they're both as clueless as I am, 'cause I have no idea anymore. I thought they were about to, and then Alec happened. Or didn't happen. Ceased happening."
"Emily." It's barely been thirty six hours.
"Sorry." She's not, really.
Of course Zoe knows Cal's been at least partly in love with Gillian for nearly as long as he's known her. That wasn't ever the problem, not for a marriage like theirs. The problem was that Cal and Gillian share a brainwave that took over their lives. The two of them egged each other on in their wild obsession with truth-finding and people-reading in higher and higher stakes cases, and then there were the mundane the daily requirements of running a business. Cal couldn't keep his work out of the house, and inevitably found some message in his wife's face that sparked off some old paranoia of his. Gillian, for her part, went home and refused to see the truth in Alec's face unless he chose to come clean with her.
Zoe's been grappling all along with the awareness that she was jealous of Cal's professional respect for Gillian's capabilities, more than his perfectly natural sexual desire for her. And still is, of her child's adoration of the eternally calm, unruffled Gillian, who never has to lay down the law because Emily just behaves like an angel around her.
If Alec and Gillian had been one of the swinging couples they used to arrange pleasant recreational evenings with, Zoe thinks, it might have done them all good. But the Fosters of Rosslyn, Virginia, were as conventional a couple as you could find working in DC, up to and including Alec's drug problem. But it never came up in conversation. Zoe asked him, once, whether he'd thought about it, considered asking her or gauging her reaction. You could never tell from appearances. Cal had been unwontedly hesitant, for once, saying he didn't want to cross any lines and risk pushing Gillian away. It was one thing for Gillian to be aware that he thought she was a deeply attractive woman - he couldn't hide that anyway - but he wasn't going to do anything to make her feel awkward about it.
Since Gillian's divorce and her own move back home to Chicago, though, things have changed. It's clear that Gillian's been meeting him halfway more and more. Volleying banter and barbs and flirtations, and the bedrock layering of a life bond back and forth with him. Slowly, over time, on her own timeline.
Watching them this weekend, Zoe can see the timeline drawing tight and thin, under the kind of tension that's about to snap back on them one way or another. It's a horrible time for them to have to face it. But maybe it had to happen this way. She'd heard about the death of Gillian's young friend Claire, who was more like a niece to her, and how concerned Cal had been for her.
Gillian's been through too much loss, he'd told her. She hates making anyone feel like they should be comforting her. That's s'posed to be her job.
And what's your job? she'd asked.
Show 'er that's pure shite, he'd replied.
He'd done it, too. Showed her that caring, utterly attentive side that was there all along, as vulnerable and buried as Gillian's own hurt. She hasn't seen them much in the past year, but she's heard enough snippets from Emily to know things have shifted. When Emily came home from college excited to see her friends, but stayed home for weekly Friday movie dinners with Gillian, Zoe knew something was happening.
And here they are now. Cal is aware that he is crashingly, completely, terrifyingly in love with Gillian, and that he won't recover if she leaves him. And Gillian is currently furious with him but no less in love with him, quite sensibly scared of putting her poor bruised heart in his volatile hands. It's been through too much already.
Funny, being his ex-wife and quietly rooting for them, in between wanting to lock them in a freezer till they sort it out or fuck it out or both.
Maybe putting Alec to rest will let her finally let go and move on. Cal seems like he might actually be ready for her, for all the self-scrutiny and accommodation that a real relationship with her would require of him. Pity she and Cal couldn't have found that together in their marriage. But they had other things to learn from each other. And they had Emily. Maybe co-parenting was always meant to be the shape of their path.
They're good at it. The proof is curled up in her arms, on the brink of adult independence and far wiser, far more self-aware and compassionate a human as either of them had been at nineteen.
Maybe it's time she caught up with everything shifting, since she's been gone. Even if it means closing the door with finality on that undying spark between she and Cal, for good. Even if Rudi was all for them reconnecting during her visits, if it suited them.
"No, feel free. It's your space, anyway."
"Well - not really, anymore, but I appreciate that."
Gillian's sitting at Emily's old desk in the guest room, trying to type out a coherent stream of thoughts before mentally switching to the work-week ahead, and Monday morning coming too soon. Zoe has one foot in the door and is looking in with an expression that makes Gillian think of their old careful interactions. She'd hoped they were past that now.
Zoe gives her a smile then, and comes into the room. She unfolds the tall white closet doors, rummaging in a small set of shelves for things that will fit into her overnight suitcase. Gillian goes back to typing. She hasn't re-packed her own bag, though she hasn't spread out much. She's still on the fence about staying here tonight, and for how long after that. Cal is out right now, meeting up with Wallowski to discuss her storing the tapes. Gillian will wait until he's back before deciding.
She wants to. God, she wants to. The thought of driving into work with Cal tomorrow, versus sleeping at home tonight, alone, and driving in to work, alone…
"So we've decided Emily's going to come back with me tonight. No point in having her fly out four days from now."
"Oh, nice," she returns, agreeably. "She's been looking forward to Chicago time with you."
She definitely doesn't mention that Emily really needs to get her mother alone to have a serious chat about the college threesome relationship she seems to have ended up in. Away from Cal. Zoe doesn't need to know that Emily spilled it all to Gillian a few weeks ago, soon after she returned, and that Emily even introduced her to Derek and Franny over FaceTime. Alec's death put quite a little monkey wrench into Emily's plans to float the idea past her father. (And it's not like Cal and Zoe can say much about it, given their own history.) But missing her partners, and not being able to video much with Franny from home or tell fond stories about her, as well as Derek, is hard on a teenager. The summer's wearing on and she won't see her sweethearts for a month more. That's Emily's emotional focus, as it should be. Not Alec, or the information he left behind.
"How - how d'you like the new space?" Gillian thinks to ask then. "Didn't I hear you and Rudi moved in a while back?"
"We did, yeah. It's pretty great, actually. Wilmette's a very nice spot. It'd be way over our limits on our own, but combined - it's working out. It's closer to work for both of us. And Rudi's on the board of a few of the museums nearby."
"That's right! Emily showed me a photo of you two at a fundraising gala. Gorgeous."
Zoe steps out of the closet and comes to sit on her old bed. "Gillian - look, if you need to keep things light, I totally get it. And I am not trying to interfere. Nor am I being paid or compensated in any way for my testifying," she smiles, and goes on: "But you and Cal - I just want you to know, I'm all for it. Pain in the ass as he is. I wish you all the luck, truthfully."
Gillian turns herself to face her, serious now. She waits to see if Zoe will continue. Zoe does.
"And…I know the timing sucks, and I didn't know I'd feel like this until I saw you both again, but…time goes by fast, you know? You gotta hang onto what you've got."
"Except sometimes there's a strong likelihood that hanging on will get you hurt."
"Yeah. I get that. Fuck, do I get that. Cal and I left the worst scars when we should have let go. But I also have the advantage of distance now, and I can see how he's changed. He really has. I mean, of course he was completely wrong to keep you in the dark over Alec. But he felt that. He knew it was wrong and he wasn't being cavalier about it. He wasn't under any impression it was the right thing to do."
"I know. We started talking about it last night. We'll get there, eventually."
She's so grateful for this, for Zoe being clear and honest with her, and not pretending that they haven't always known far more about each other than they let on. She's too emotionally tired for that right now.
"The thing is, if we do decide to try to make it work, and it doesn't...If he goes back to his old habits. Or if I find myself being the enabler all over again, and neither of us can change those old patterns…"
"That's still going to happen from time to time, you know. It might take you both a while to find a new level. But we're not talking about Alec's drug relapses or Cal's gambling relapses anymore. Just how you treat each other and how you let it play out in the business."
Gillian looks at her. This conversation is turning out to be all kinds of surprising. Does Zoe know Cal's been actively confronting his gambling-slash-adrenaline habits since Claire died? Or has she just picked up on that, having lived with him for so long? Zoe telling her she can stand down from that level of hypervigilance is…nothing she was expecting. "Then the leap of faith becomes not are we really going to change but are we going to keep reminding each other, when we need to?"
"The every day commitment."
It ain't about the wedding, it's about every day after, Gillian hears Natalie's voice. She sighs. It's far too soon to think of it, and for what reasons would they want to marry, anyway? But that small glow in the bottom of her heart, the one that has never, will never give up on them, and wants to take over, whispers, of course you will.
"Funny to see Cal being the still center of all this," Zoe changes topic slightly. "He's usually the one charging all over trying to fix things. And here he's just being - an anchor. The rest of us are swirling all around and he's holding everyone in place. And this house, too. Em's coming to Chicago with me, then back to Berkeley in September, but he'll always keep her room here. It's hard for him to let anyone leave, where he can't keep an eye on them."
They both look around the guest room. Gillian tries to recall if they ever mentioned Gillian moving in here, out loud. She doesn't think so.
Maybe they didn't need to.