4

The laptop had gone into sleep mode and the screen was black for the time being, so there was no distraction from the handwritten note on the keyboard. Andy picked it up with clumsy fingers. His head was still pounding, the ibuprofen he had found in the bathroom cabinet not having kicked in yet. The pain in various other parts of his body was down to a dull ache that was very different from the pins and needles the hot water of the shower had caused due to countless abrasions. Whoever had done this to him, Andy vowed to himself, had it coming. For now, however, he was glad that he didn't have anything better to do than enjoy the empty house and the freshly-brewed coffee he had found in the kitchen.

But then there were that laptop and note sitting on the coffee table, waiting for him to do something about them. He picked the note up and read it, recognizing the neat handwriting from the countless times he had watched the Wicked Witch taking notes during interrogations.

Good morning, Andy. You were still asleep, so I decided not to wake you. I took Paddy to the beach for some playtime and then lunch. We won't be back for a few hours. In the meantime, if you would like to catch up on the past few years, the laptop contains our photos. - Sharon

Sharon! He snorted at the signature. Not that he had expected her to sign her notes with "The Wicked Witch", but it felt odd nonetheless. He moved the cursor and the screen came to life to reveal a folder containing several subfolders in chronological order. He was pretty sure that this was her work. He couldn't be bothered to label his files, let alone arrange them in chronological order. For a moment, he hesitated. This felt like trying to find out what you had done during an alcohol-induced blackout. He knew that he would find himself in these pictures, visiting places (Paris, he remembered from the picture upstairs), doing things he did not remember with people he did not remember or at least did not remember in this way.

For a moment he considered not checking the pictures out, snapping the computer's lid shut and finding out whether there was a ball game on television. The date in the right hand corner of the screen informed him that it was a Sunday morning. Maybe there would be a rerun. But then, as always, curiosity won out. He was not going to discover himself passed out in his own vomit, or having hit on women too young for him while looking at these pictures. Whatever he had been doing for the past few years, it was not going to be shameful - even though there was a strong possibility that it would be shocking nonetheless.

He opened one of the first folders entitled "Wedding". Apparently they had gotten married at the town hall with just a few people in attendance. He found a picture of Raydor with her arms around a pretty girl in her early twenties and a guy barely out of his teens. Her daughter and son, he guessed. He didn't remember their names, but the girl had the same green eyes as Raydor and Paddy while the son's features looked vaguely familiar from a long time ago. Andy remembered having seen her stressed-out with a little boy in tow decades ago.

The next picture was a group shot of everyone in attendance. A beaming man in a lavender suit stood next to Raydor in her simple but stunning white dress. Andy was surprised to recognize him as Gavin Baker, the lawyer from the city attorney's office who had left to open his own practice. There were Raydor's kids, two elderly people who he thought were probably her parents and part of his team. However, the Chief wasn't in the picture and neither was Gabriel. Instead there was a gorgeous black woman he did not recognize. He found himself standing next to Raydor, his arm around her as she leaned into him, smiling into the camera.

And then his breath caught. On his other side stood Nicole, smiling brightly and looking beautiful in a light blue dress. What amazed him even more than the fact that she had actually been there was the way she had looped her arm through his and was leaning into his shoulder, her head right next to his with more affection than she had shown him in years. Whatever had happened, if this picture was not misleading, he had somehow managed to patch up his relationship with his daughter. That realization lifted his spirits more than he would have ever expected and even the dull ache in his skull seemed to lessen for a moment.

He clicked through the pictures of the reception that had apparently taken place in some sort of park. One showed Raydor and Nicole hugging and in another, he found himself laughing about something with Raydor's son as if they had known each other forever. He felt a little queasy being presented with those images of past bliss. He was almost jealous of the man in them; he did look like him, but this was clearly not him.

The next folder in line was titled "Paris", which must have been their honeymoon. Paris, he thought. How generic! But then he had to admit that Paris was just too beautiful to be considered generic in any context. There were shots of buildings and the Seine glistening in the afternoon sun. He found pictures of Raydor laughing as she posed in a dress inside a shop, the label still attached. He wondered whether she had kept it. It was dark green and looked beautiful on her. The next picture made him smile. It was of their hotel room, the bed littered with shopping bags.

His smile didn't fade as he clicked on the next picture. It was them in front of the Eiffel Tower as well, but while the picture up in the bedroom had been taken by someone else, this was a selfie. He looked a little stiff since he was concentrating on getting the picture right, but Raydor was all relaxed, her head resting on his shoulder and blinking against the sun with her arms holding on to him. She wasn't wearing her glasses and for the first time he had an inkling on why this other him could have fallen in love with her.

He clicked on a folder titled "Thanksgiving 2012", hoping to see more of Nicole. And there she was, in his kitchen, posing with the turkey with a goofy grin. She was with a young man who had his arm around her waist and they looked happy. Raydor's kids were there, too, posing with Nicole, their arms around each other. He stopped at the next picture and leaned back, suddenly feeling dizzy. There he was on this very couch in the same spot he was occupying right now, Raydor next to him. He guessed from the way there were looking at each other that they had not been aware of a picture being taken. She was smiling up at him, her head resting against his shoulder while he had his hand on the almost imperceptible swell of her belly, leaning in to kiss her temple. It struck him how happy they looked and how intimate their touches and smiles were.

There was another folder with various shots from the beginning of 2013, appropriately labeled "Various". He saw himself painting the nursery with a hat made of old newspaper, found one of Raydor sleeping - or rather passed out - on the couch, snuggled into a blanket and another one of the two of them at the beach with their sunglasses on, holding hands. She was growing bigger in front of his very eyes as their baby inside of her grew steadily.

He was about to skip the folder named "Patrick Andrew Flynn - March 25th, 2013", but then opened it anyway. There was a dull ache in his chest when he thought of the little boy who understood as little of what had happened as he did himself. He couldn't imagine the world of pain the little one would find himself in once he realized that his father was no longer the person he knew. Maybe it was a form of self-punishment, or maybe he was just curious, but he clicked through all of the pictures.

The first one almost broke his heart. It showed a tiny baby with almost translucent skin, hooked up to so many machines that his body looked even smaller than it would have without them. The baby's eyes were closed and if he hadn't known better, he would have wondered whether it was still alive. He clicked on the next picture, showing Sharon in a wheelchair, her hair falling over her shoulders with none of its usual lusciousness, looking flat and limp. She was painfully pale and her shoulders looked frail in the hospital gown. She wasn't looking at the camera but at the fragile little boy in her arms who was sleeping, wrapped in a blue blanket and cradled close to her chest. Suddenly Andy understood why these pictures had been taken. Back then, they probably hadn't been sure whether these would remain the only photos they would have of their child.

He remembered her telling him that the baby had been early. He just hadn't thought that he had been this early. There was another picture of him with the baby, holding on carefully, as if the little human was made of porcelain. The little body seemed even tinier in his arms than in Sharon's and even now he felt himself tense, scared that touching the baby would harm it.

He relaxed a little when he saw the pictures that had been taken over the following weeks. The baby looked much better in them. He had gained weight and his skin was now of a healthier color. Andy looked at Raydor with the baby in her arms, smiling at the little boy with so much warmth that his heart seemed to skip a beat. In the next picture, they were on the couch in their living-room together, cuddling their son as the baby beamed at them, little hands reaching out for them.

Once he had started, he couldn't get enough and began to click through the entirety of the carefully documented first two years of his son's life. The pictures spoke of a happy family that had recovered from the horrors that those first days in the hospital must have brought. The baby was developing into a toddler in front of his very eyes. He saw the christening, Provenza standing next to the woman named Patrice who was proudly holding the kid in a group shot in front of the church. There was Nicole with her little brother, holding him in the air above her as he was laughing.

He saw pictures of them on the beach, Sharon holding up Paddy so he could take what Andy thought might have been his few steps. He saw himself, saw his own happiness that had evaporated along with his memories that someone had violently beaten out of his skull.

He hadn't paid attention to his coffee having gone cold, to the light that had changed or to anything else as he had taken in the images of his life. He only realized how long he had been sitting there, when he heard the front door open.

"Someone is going to have a bath now!" he heard Sharon say, answered by rapidly padding feet across the hardwood floors and a little boy's voice yelling "No! No! No!". Paddy didn't sound mad, but a little teasing instead. He came running into the living-room and his face lit up when he saw Andy. Andy tensed but then relaxed. The kid was smiling brightly, arms outstretched for him to pick him up.

"Daddy! Daddy! Mommy and me built a sandcastle!"

Andy picked him up and sat him on his arm. The weight was comforting in his arms. "Did Mommy take a picture?"

The boy nodded. "Daddy! I saw a seafall!"

He frowned. "Did you mean a seagull?"

Paddy thought about that for a moment and then began to imitate bird noises. Andy was still grinning when Sharon walked in wearing a sundress and holding a straw hat in her hands. It was another look on her he hadn't seen before. She looked pretty with her sunglasses pushed into her hair.

"Hello, Andy," she smiled back at him, clearly still cautious. "We took a little longer than I expected, but Paddy needs a bath before dinner."

"Nooo!" Paddy yelled, wrapping his arms around Andy's neck and hiding his face in his shoulder. "No bath!"

Sharon and Andy exchanged a smile that came a lot easier than it should have given the circumstances.

"There is no discussion, young man," Sharon said strictly, but with a healthy dose of amusement. She gently took Paddy from Andy and kissed his unruly dark hair. "You're all sandy, honey." The boy's laughter echoed through the house as he was carried upstairs.

/

Much later, Paddy was playing with his airplanes on the floor by the kitchen counter and Sharon and Andy were making dinner in silence. He snuck sideward glances at her from time to time, taking in her hair that was still wet from her own shower and the ensemble of black yoga pants and a tight dark red sweater. Her body looked great for three kids and what he guessed must be fifty-something years. He remembered always thinking that, even though before her, he had been dating women in their thirties. He watched her pour cranberry and sodas for both of them and the way she handed it to him without offering made him think that having that drink before dinner probably constituted some kind of ritual between them that he didn't remember.

She was making pasta with vegetables and he tried not to be in her way. He could have gone upstairs to be away from the kid and Sharon, but somehow he didn't feel the need to close off right now. And when had he started referring to her by her first name?

She didn't look at him when she finally asked. "Did you have a look at the pictures?" She sounded cautious, probably afraid to provoke an outburst from him. Andy's head hurt despite the ibuprofen and the bruises made themselves known more and more, but he wasn't as angry anymore. None of this was her fault, that much he knew.

"I did." The image of the helpless newborn flashed in front of his eyes and he tried to suppress it and the very real pain that accompanied it. Strange that he should feel that strongly about something long gone, something he had never experienced. "Paddy was pretty early, wasn't he?"

He wasn't surprised and yet affected by the flash of pain in her eyes as he mentioned it. "Yes, he was," she said softly. "by almost two months."

"What happened?" Andy asked, suddenly not only curious, but desperate to know. She lowered her voice, maybe to avoid Paddy overhearing what she was going to say, maybe to lower the impact on both Andy and herself.

"You were called away on a case one night," she turned and dried her hands on a towel. "I woke up from a contraction. My back had been bothering me all day but I hadn't thought anything of it. When I got out of bed, my water broke." Her voice shook. "I panicked because it was so early and I couldn't reach you, so I called Patrice."

He finally got it now. Patrice. Patrick.

"I couldn't have done it without her," she said. "I was so scared and he was still so small."

"I saw the picture of him in the incubator," Andy said and Sharon nodded. She looked so affected by the memory that he briefly wondered whether having forgotten about that time was actually a blessing in disguise. The pain he was feeling was just an imprint of what it had to feel like for her.

"We didn't know whether he would make it," she said. "It was a terrible time."

Andy looked over at Paddy who was pretending to land his airplane a chair near the counter. He didn't look like the small, sick baby in the incubator anymore and he felt a sudden rush of gratitude.

"We didn't lose him," he said.

When he looked over at her, she was smiling softly. "No, we didn't."

"So he is named after Patrice? Provenza's wife?"

Sharon nodded. "Yes. She was a godsend that night. She used to be a nurse, you know. And she is not Provenza's wife. They are not married. She says she likes the fact that they are living in sin. Provenza keeps proposing to her, but she always turns him down."

Andy snorted. "I kind of like her already."

Sharon smiled. "She is wonderful. She is Paddy's godmother."

Andy hesitated for a moment, then asked the question that had been on his mind since he had first set eyes on the kid.

"Why did we have a child so late in life? I mean, that pregnancy must have been high-risk from the start. What were we thinking?"

Sharon pursed her lips. "What we were thinking was that the vasectomy you had done years ago had taken when, in fact, it had not. We didn't think we had to worry about contraception and I find it kind of romantic that we had a lot of sex for three years without consequence before I got pregnant on our honeymoon in Paris."

Andy couldn't help but laugh. "Really? Then maybe we're lucky that he wasn't born with a striped shirt, a thin mustache and a baguette under his arm."

She clasped her hand over her mouth and tears appeared in her eyes. He was still trying to figure out what he had set to upset her this much, when she provided the answer herself.

"Oh, Andy. You don't remember, but that is exactly what you said when I told you I was pregnant after Paris." She chuckled, looking almost relaxed for a moment. "And then you wanted to call Gavin to ask about your chances on bringing a lawsuit against your doctor."

"Charming reaction to your wife telling you that she's having a baby," he said dryly.

Sharon shrugged. "You had a lot on your plate with the new job and all. And that was just before you called Paddy 'our little miracle'."

Andy frowned. "New job? Did I leave the LAPD?"

Now Sharon looked a little sad again, having been reminded that he did not remember anything of their life together.

"Oh, you would never! You got promoted to Captain and took over Major Crimes after Chief Johnson left."

Now she had to be making fun of him! Who in their right mind would promote him and give him a leadership role? The ex-alcoholic with an FID file that took up half a library? Apparently his disbelief showed, because Sharon was smiling.

"Chief Johnson recommended you as her replacement when she left and the new Deputy Chief of Police accepted that recommendation."

Andy snorted. "That guy must be out of his mind."

"She trusted in your abilities," Sharon pointed out. "And she was right. You had a little bit of adjusting to do, but you're running your division well."

Andy went through his mental list of the higher ranking female officers of the department but couldn't imagine anyone despite Chief Johnson who would be in line for that sort of promotion. It had probably been an outsider.

"Who is that new Deputy Chief? Do I know her? Is it one of the DDAs? Hobbs?"

Sharon looked a little proud now, her smile bright. "No, Andy. It's me."