Since You Went Away - Chapter Six: In This Our Life
Title: Since You Went Away - Chapter Six: In This Our Life
Authors: i-must-go-first & UbiquitousMixie
Fandom: Brenda/Sharon, The Closer
Rating: PG-13 (Overall M)
Word Count: 3476
Disclaimer: Not ours. Please don’t sue.
Summary: A late-night craving and a coincidental meeting lead a certain deputy chief to discover that there’s much more to the inimitable Captain Raydor than meets the eye, and to realize that her mama was right: sometimes all a single woman really needs is a good girlfriend.
Authors’ Note: Did we scare y’all off with that last angst-ridden chapter, or does this fandom only respond well to chapters that include references to sex toys? In this gripping next installment, Brenda attempts to make it up to Sharon. (Still no vibrators.) Will write for feedback.
-
Under normal circumstances, when Brenda Leigh made a break in her case, she would take that insight and work well into the night to search for the missing pieces. She’d typically be thrumming with the knowledge that she’d be closing her case within a day or two and gearing herself up for a fight with another division or FID or the FBI over the legal custody of the remaining suspects. After speaking with Monica Stern, it became clear to Brenda that the FBI’s cartel was not involved. Monica and Rosalie were not involved with the big fish, instead supplying low-key dealers. If Monica had been telling the truth, which Brenda suspected she was, one particular dealer had been stiffing them with his payments and had threatened them if they stopped supplying him or expected full payments. He had not anticipated that Rosalie would become spooked and tip off the police herself.
These, however, were not normal circumstances. During her interview with the young woman, Sanchez and Flynn had rounded up the dealer, Big JJ, and Brenda had instructed them to leave him in holding overnight. She would interview him and Officer Reyes in the morning. There were many unanswered questions, but Brenda was uncharacteristically satisfied to wait a few hours.
No one had been as surprised as Brenda herself when she dismissed them all at a decent hour. She couldn’t shake the haunted, sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach whenever her mind drifted to the photo she’d seen of Sharon’s daughter. She was beautiful, her face somewhat severe, her emerald eyes hard and unyielding. She was her mother in miniature, and she was lost.
Brenda drove to the nearest grocery store and bumped her car into a stray grocery cart as she pulled into an empty space. She swore under her breath and stalked inside the crowded market, grabbing herself a basket. She looked around, feeling overwhelmed and lost and completely at a disadvantage.
How could she possibly make it up to Sharon? She knew that “I’m sorry, I didn’t know” wouldn’t cut it but felt panicked and slightly unhinged at the knowledge that she had no idea what would communicate what simple words could not. What did Sharon turn to when she was down? Candy? Booze? Kleenex?
If one thing was clear to Brenda, it was that Sharon obviously didn’t turn to her friends. The realization shouldn’t have surprised her; Sharon had always been guarded and distant, her personal life remaining elusive until Brenda had made the effort to seek it out. It had been Sharon’s job for years to muddle through other people’s problems and fix the things that were wrong, but what had she done when her own problems arose? She had compartmentalized, had dealt with it all on her own. So often had Brenda been the one that needed help that she never considered the possibility that someone else might have been silently hoping for the same thing.
Brenda weaved past a horde of disgruntled shoppers and made her way to the brightly lit corner of the store that housed the flowers. She had no idea what Sharon liked. Was she fond of lilies or roses? No--those wouldn’t do. She pursed her lips and sifted through memories of her mother’s early days of avid gardening, remembering that carnations symbolized pride and roses symbolized love and daffodils symbolized joy and daisies symbolized innocence. She frowned, knowing that none of these would suit her purposes.
Scanning the shelves, Brenda nearly missed the pot of blue hyacinths that was all but hidden behind an ornate sunflower arrangement. She vaguely remembered being told by her mother that hyacinths meant sincerity, and Brenda placed the flowers in her basket. She wondered if Sharon would even know the meaning of the flowers and decided to risk it, hoping that she at least liked the color blue.
Brenda continued her pursuit of the perfect apology gift, adding a bottle of Cabernet and seven bars of Sharon’s favorite dark chocolate to her basket.
Said basket was half filled with a seemingly random but carefully-slash-desperately chosen assemblage of goods when she stopped short, staring at the Ben and Jerry’s section of the ice cream freezer. She imagined herself greeting Sharon and presenting the frozen treat: “I heard about your daughter. Here’s some Half-Baked.” The incongruity was such that it made her bark out a laugh and her eyes stung. The truth was that she could stay here in this supermarket until kingdom come and she’d never hit upon the right thing to give to Sharon, or to do for her or say to her, because there was no right thing. The whole situation was horrible and wrong, and whatever she did would be totally inadequate, but she had to go over to Sharon’s tonight and apologize or she wouldn’t be able to live with herself.
She paid for everything she’d gathered and drove straight to the captain’s house before she could lose her nerve -- not a problem she had in professional situations, but this was anything other than professional. This wasn’t Deputy Chief Johnson paying a visit to Captain Raydor.
Warm yellow light spilled from Sharon’s living room window, and Daniel’s Accura was parked next to Sharon’s familiar car. One of the curtains at the window rustled. Well, no use stalling, since her presence had already been observed.
She rang the doorbell, and a tread heavier than Sharon’s made the wood floor of the entryway squeak almost immediately. The door opened and Brenda found herself looking up into eyes darker than Sharon’s. “Yes?” Daniel asked formally, unsmiling.
“Daniel, who -- Oh.” Sharon appeared behind her son in the doorway to the living room, and when Brenda saw her she felt her eyes widen hugely.
“Chief,” Sharon continued calmly, “this is my son, Daniel Tate. Danny, Deputy Chief Brenda Johnson.”
Daniel wheeled sharply toward his mother. “Bre -- this is Brenda? With friends like these, who needs --”
“Daniel was just going. Here, honey -- I don’t think she’ll wake up. She’s exhausted.” The captain expertly transferred her astonishing burden, a sleeping toddler of whom all Brenda could see was olive skin and unruly dark curls, to her son’s waiting shoulder.
Daniel hesitated, his gaze ricocheting between the two women. “She’s fine here, Mom. I’m not in any hurry.”
Sharon smiled softly, and Brenda recognized her mom face again. The younger woman realized Daniel was intent on protecting his mother. The idea of Sharon Raydor needing protection -- and from her! -- was so unexpected and sweet that it made the blonde smile too, even as it made her more ashamed of herself.
“Take her home to her own bed, and then you go home and get a good night’s sleep too.” Sharon leaned up to kiss her son on the cheek, forcing him out the door past Brenda in the process. He cast one last watchful, suspicious look at the chief, readjusted the sleeping child, and finally walked to his car. Green eyes turned to Brenda. “Come in,” Sharon invited quietly. “I’m glad you dropped by.”
The smaller woman perked up slightly as she followed Sharon into the living room. “You are?” she asked, hopeful.
Dark hair shimmered as Sharon bent to collect the toddler toys scattered across the colorful rag rug. “Yes, chief. I owe you an apology,” she declared, not quite meeting Brenda’s eyes. “My behavior this morning was unprofessional. You were right: I was unfocused, and as a result the investigation suffered. For that I --”
“No, no. For heaven’s sake, stop,” Brenda Leigh interrupted rather frantically. Between Daniel’s hostility and Sharon’s stubborn insistence on apologizing for being human, this visit of conciliation was not off to a good start. She grabbed the taller woman’s arm, attracting her clear gaze. “Sharon, stop this. I came over here to apologize to you.”
She watched green eyes darken slightly as Sharon considered what this meant, digesting what she must’ve suspected since she saw Brenda standing there. Sharon’s tongue peeped out to moisten her lips. “Why?”
“Because I didn’t know,” Brenda replied simply.
“No, I know. You didn’t.” Sharon’s eyes dropped to one of the large, brightly colored blocks she’d scooped awkwardly to her chest. Neither of them said anything for a moment. Somewhere a clock ticked. “I’m sorry Daniel was rude to you.”
“He’s got a lot on his mind.” She hesitated. “I don’t guess he wants you to date me any more,” she added rather sadly, and to her surprise Sharon laughed shortly.
“What’s in the bag?” the captain asked, gesturing toward the shopping bag Brenda had almost forgotten she was carrying.
“Oh.” The blonde peeked into the bag as if its contents might have changed. “A bunch of useless junk,” she admitted shyly. “I wanted to bring you something, but I didn’t know -- I don’t know what to -- Sharon, I’m so sorry.”
Sharon nodded and didn’t say anything. She blinked rapidly, and it occurred to Brenda that maybe she couldn’t say anything right then. The words and everything behind them hung between the two women.
“I feel like a horrible friend.”
“No,” Sharon disagreed, recovering herself and reaching for the bag. “A horrible friend wouldn’t have brought me one, two, three -- six bars of chocolate. And what’s this?” Her forehead crinkled as she frowned and poked at something with her finger. “Macaroni and cheese?”
Brenda blushed. “Oh, that’s for me. And there are seven bars of chocolate.”
This time a tiny bit of suspicious moisture made its way beyond Sharon’s thick eyelashes, but even as she wiped it away with one knuckle, she chuckled. “Thank you, Brenda.”
“You can keep the mac and cheese if you want it.”
“I might take you up on that.” Sharon’s smile faded and she looked away, staring into space. “I don’t talk about it.”
“I understand.”
“It’s -- It isn’t an effort to be secretive. There’s never a good time to bring it up, you know?”
Brenda nodded, trying to imagine. “You could have told me.”
“I would have, eventually. Daniel says we don’t talk about it because discussing it would make it real.” She lifted her shoulders in a sad little shrug, aware that neither of them had actually spoken Vivien’s name. “Maybe that’s part of it. I don’t know.”
“And, uh, the little girl?” Brenda pointed to the toys as if Sharon might need a visual aid.
The older woman brightened immediately. “My granddaughter, Clarissa.”
“Your grand --?” Brenda shook her head in dismay. “Morales was right. I really don’t know anything about you, do I?”
Sharon gave a sympathetic smile and set the brown paper bag on the coffee table, taking a moment to scoop up the remaining toys and deposit them in the chest beneath the window. “You know more about me than most people do, Brenda Leigh. It’s not personal. I wasn’t...purposely hiding anything from you. It’s just not something we talk about.”
Brenda nodded. Who was she to judge Sharon’s evasive tactics when she herself was a master at avoiding topics she didn’t want to acknowledge? “Guess I need to start askin’ better questions,” Brenda added lamely, taking a seat on the sofa. She shifted, pulling out a stuffed penguin from between the cushions, and set it on the coffee table.
“What else is in the bag?” Sharon asked, pointing at the bag as she put away the stuffed animal.
“All sorts of things,” Brenda said, reaching in. She began extracting its contents, piling the candy bars and pasta beside the wine. She set out the ice cream (which she couldn’t not buy, because who could say no to brownie chunks and cookie dough?), a box of tissues, a bag of organic trail mix, and the flowers. “I didn’t know what you liked, so I got everything.”
Sharon laughed, her smile easing the anxiety in Brenda’s belly. “So I see.”
“I hope you like hyacinths,” Brenda added, glancing down at the fragrant bouquet.
The captain’s eyes settled on the blue flowers. She stepped closer, kneeling on the floor so that she could inhale their scent. “Mmm...they’re beautiful.” She traced the outline of a petal, her eyes closed as she breathed deeper.
The blonde preened. “My mama...she had this garden--oh it was gorgeous--and she’d have me out there with her every afternoon when I got home from school, turnin’ the soil and plantin’ bulbs and pullin’ weeds. She used to say that it was best to grow all sorts of flowers so she’d always have the right kind for every occasion. She used to tell me what all the flowers meant, y’know, what they symbolized. I don’t think most people knew just why she chose tulips over peonies, or daisies over sunflowers, but they always got the right ones.”
“And what do hyacinths mean?” the brunette asked, catching the wistful expression on Brenda’s face.
“They mean...” She cleared her throat. “They mean ‘I’m sorry for bein’ an insensitive bitch today’.”
Sharon let out a bark of laughter, covering her mouth as if surprised that such a sound had come from it. “You sure know how to make a statement.”
“I try. Now...d’you want me to put the ice cream away? I’d hate for my apologetic gesture to make a mess.”
Sharon rounded the coffee table and slumped down onto the sofa. “Why don’t you get us a couple of spoons?”
The blonde grinned and leapt to her feet, disappearing into the kitchen. Sharon didn’t watch her go; she propped her elbow on the arm of the sofa and rested her head in her hand, taking a moment to close her eyes. She exhaled slowly and found that she was glad that Brenda had stopped by. She hadn’t required the plethora of goodies, but Sharon knew that Brenda had indeed been trying to make a gesture. It had been too long since Sharon had a girlfriend with whom she could share her woes, and it was obvious that Brenda was in the same position.
On some level, which Sharon would never admit, she had been thankful for the distraction of work. It had been difficult with Danny, who had wanted to spend the day commemorating his sister with anecdotes and what-if possibilities. She couldn’t blame him for wanting to talk about it; he was, after all, going to be making a living talking about people’s problems. As much as Sharon wanted to support her son’s need to discuss the disappearance of his twin sister, she had felt more and more imprisoned by her own grief and guilt. Playing ‘good cop, bad cop’ with Brenda had been a refreshing, though difficult, reprieve.
Sharon opened her eyes when Brenda walked back into the room, holding out one of the spoons. She kicked off her heels and settled down beside Sharon, reaching forward to grab the pint of Half-Baked. She gnawed away the plastic barrier and opened the container, allowing Sharon to take the first bite.
There was a reason why ice cream was the age-old medicine for a broken heart: it worked.
They sat in silence for a few moments, Sharon snickering as she stole the first uncovered brownie chunk. She could tell that Brenda was searching for something to say and she hoped it wouldn’t be about Vivien.
“So a granddaughter, huh?” Brenda said, settling on the safer of the available topics.
“If you make a comment about my age, I will shoot you,” Sharon warned.
Brenda chuckled. “No grandma jokes, I promise. She’s cute. Really cute.”
Sharon warmed immediately to thoughts of the unnaturally happy child. “She is.”
"Does she live with her daddy?” Brenda asked conversationally.
So much for a safe subject, thought the captain with a wry little twist of her lips. “No.” She paused, carefully licking traces of the sweet ice cream from the corner of her mouth before calmly resuming, “He isn’t involved in her life. Cee lives with Paul -- my ex-husband,” she reminded, glancing over at the blonde, who nodded. “And his wife, Helen.”
“Oh.” For a moment Brenda concentrated on excavating a ball of cookie dough, finding herself at a loss. Her instinct was always to question, to push for more details, but the renewed wariness surrounding Sharon warned her off. So instead she asked, “Do you get to see her a lot?”
The other woman smiled, again at ease. “Oh, yes. Several times a week.”
Brenda chuckled, and Sharon raised her eyebrows, her spoon poised over the carton. “What?”
“No, just -- Sharon Raydor, International Woman of Mystery. It’s hard seein’ you as somebody’s granny.”
The captain practically spat her mouthful of ice cream onto the coffee table. “Don’t you dare!” she exclaimed. “Don’t you dare use that awful word when you refer to me!”
“You could trade in the Blahniks for support hose and Dr. Scholl’s, the Armani for Liz Claiborne --”
“I could easily shoot you and make it look like an accident.”
“And after you finish oiling your gun, you can oil your aching joints with Ben Gay, and --”
Again Brenda broke off, her words abruptly stopped by a stinging faceful of throw pillow, but she grinned, incredibly pleased that Sharon was again snarling and spitting with irritation, light years away from the pale shell of a woman the deputy chief had glimpsed for those few, disconcerting moments earlier that day.
**
Brenda would’ve recognized the razor-sharp crease of the pale gray trousers and the sleek fall of medium-brown hair as belonging to Sharon Raydor even had the green eyes reflected in the bathroom mirror not met hers as the chief stepped out of a stall the next morning. The blonde smiled automatically. “Capt’n Raydor,” she greeted the other woman, reaching out toward the soap dispenser.
The answering smile, small but warm, reassured her that last night’s effort at making amends had done its work. “Chief,” Sharon replied in a neutral, silky murmur.
“I’ll have my report about yesterday’s homicide to you right after lunch,” Brenda promised conscientiously.
Sharon tossed her crumpled paper towel into the bin. “It’s fine. I still have --” Her eyes darted to her slim wristwatch -- “fifty-one hours. At your earliest convenience will do.”
“After lunch,” Brenda repeated, and the older woman nodded and slipped out into the corridor.
Provenza, Flynn, and Sanchez were sharing a laugh near the open door of the break room, but none of them looked more surprised than the captain herself when the deputy chief fairly came bursting around the corner behind her, loudly calling, “Sharon!”
The two lieutenants exchanged twin skeptical stares, and Raydor pivoted, wide-eyed at the very public use of her given name. “Yes, chief?” she responded cautiously.
The blonde stopped within arm’s reach, smiling again. “Brenda,” she suggested, and Provenza ostentatiously choked on his coffee.
Behind the fluorescent glare on the lenses of her glasses, Sharon blinked. “You are my superior officer, Chief Johnson,” she pointed out in a voice pitched low enough that the men couldn’t overhear. “As such, it is my duty to address you in a manner befitting the rank you have earned.”
Brenda flinched. She knew Sharon was sincere, but she heard an echo of herself demanding that the FID captain always call her 'chief.' “I’m also your friend.”
Sharon’s lips curved into a tiny smile. “I know that. Chief.”
“For heaven’s sake, I call Will Will,” Brenda returned, mildly exasperated. “He’s my superior officer. He’s everybody’s superior officer! And I report to him; you don’t report to me.”
The captain smirked, appearing to be enjoying this. “Yes, but we’ve never slept together.” As soon as Sharon heard her own words, she flushed a rare deep rose but also snorted out a laugh, as if both surprised and amused by herself, and Brenda laughed too.
“Is that a proposition?”
Green eyes rolled toward the ceiling. “Very well. Bren-da it is. So I’ll expect your completed report after lunch, Brenda.”
With that Sharon pivoted and headed back down the corridor, and Brenda Leigh smiled to herself, ignoring the stares of the three members of her team who were taking an inordinately long time to replenish their coffee. Her request that Sharon call her by her first name at work hadn’t been a spur-of-the-moment thing. It was an outward expression of something yesterday’s disquieting turn of events had brought home to the deputy chief: if she and Sharon Raydor were going to be friends, real, true friends, they couldn’t just be Brenda and Sharon off the clock, and Deputy Chief Johnson and Captain Raydor while they were on. The twain needed to meet, or their friendship would suffer from a severe case of multiple personality disorder. Never again did she want to snap out an order to Captain Raydor and be answered by that exhausted, haunted look in Sharon’s eyes.
***
Authors: i-must-go-first & UbiquitousMixie
Fandom: Brenda/Sharon, The Closer
Rating: PG-13 (Overall M)
Word Count: 3476
Disclaimer: Not ours. Please don’t sue.
Summary: A late-night craving and a coincidental meeting lead a certain deputy chief to discover that there’s much more to the inimitable Captain Raydor than meets the eye, and to realize that her mama was right: sometimes all a single woman really needs is a good girlfriend.
Authors’ Note: Did we scare y’all off with that last angst-ridden chapter, or does this fandom only respond well to chapters that include references to sex toys? In this gripping next installment, Brenda attempts to make it up to Sharon. (Still no vibrators.) Will write for feedback.
-
Under normal circumstances, when Brenda Leigh made a break in her case, she would take that insight and work well into the night to search for the missing pieces. She’d typically be thrumming with the knowledge that she’d be closing her case within a day or two and gearing herself up for a fight with another division or FID or the FBI over the legal custody of the remaining suspects. After speaking with Monica Stern, it became clear to Brenda that the FBI’s cartel was not involved. Monica and Rosalie were not involved with the big fish, instead supplying low-key dealers. If Monica had been telling the truth, which Brenda suspected she was, one particular dealer had been stiffing them with his payments and had threatened them if they stopped supplying him or expected full payments. He had not anticipated that Rosalie would become spooked and tip off the police herself.
These, however, were not normal circumstances. During her interview with the young woman, Sanchez and Flynn had rounded up the dealer, Big JJ, and Brenda had instructed them to leave him in holding overnight. She would interview him and Officer Reyes in the morning. There were many unanswered questions, but Brenda was uncharacteristically satisfied to wait a few hours.
No one had been as surprised as Brenda herself when she dismissed them all at a decent hour. She couldn’t shake the haunted, sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach whenever her mind drifted to the photo she’d seen of Sharon’s daughter. She was beautiful, her face somewhat severe, her emerald eyes hard and unyielding. She was her mother in miniature, and she was lost.
Brenda drove to the nearest grocery store and bumped her car into a stray grocery cart as she pulled into an empty space. She swore under her breath and stalked inside the crowded market, grabbing herself a basket. She looked around, feeling overwhelmed and lost and completely at a disadvantage.
How could she possibly make it up to Sharon? She knew that “I’m sorry, I didn’t know” wouldn’t cut it but felt panicked and slightly unhinged at the knowledge that she had no idea what would communicate what simple words could not. What did Sharon turn to when she was down? Candy? Booze? Kleenex?
If one thing was clear to Brenda, it was that Sharon obviously didn’t turn to her friends. The realization shouldn’t have surprised her; Sharon had always been guarded and distant, her personal life remaining elusive until Brenda had made the effort to seek it out. It had been Sharon’s job for years to muddle through other people’s problems and fix the things that were wrong, but what had she done when her own problems arose? She had compartmentalized, had dealt with it all on her own. So often had Brenda been the one that needed help that she never considered the possibility that someone else might have been silently hoping for the same thing.
Brenda weaved past a horde of disgruntled shoppers and made her way to the brightly lit corner of the store that housed the flowers. She had no idea what Sharon liked. Was she fond of lilies or roses? No--those wouldn’t do. She pursed her lips and sifted through memories of her mother’s early days of avid gardening, remembering that carnations symbolized pride and roses symbolized love and daffodils symbolized joy and daisies symbolized innocence. She frowned, knowing that none of these would suit her purposes.
Scanning the shelves, Brenda nearly missed the pot of blue hyacinths that was all but hidden behind an ornate sunflower arrangement. She vaguely remembered being told by her mother that hyacinths meant sincerity, and Brenda placed the flowers in her basket. She wondered if Sharon would even know the meaning of the flowers and decided to risk it, hoping that she at least liked the color blue.
Brenda continued her pursuit of the perfect apology gift, adding a bottle of Cabernet and seven bars of Sharon’s favorite dark chocolate to her basket.
Said basket was half filled with a seemingly random but carefully-slash-desperately chosen assemblage of goods when she stopped short, staring at the Ben and Jerry’s section of the ice cream freezer. She imagined herself greeting Sharon and presenting the frozen treat: “I heard about your daughter. Here’s some Half-Baked.” The incongruity was such that it made her bark out a laugh and her eyes stung. The truth was that she could stay here in this supermarket until kingdom come and she’d never hit upon the right thing to give to Sharon, or to do for her or say to her, because there was no right thing. The whole situation was horrible and wrong, and whatever she did would be totally inadequate, but she had to go over to Sharon’s tonight and apologize or she wouldn’t be able to live with herself.
She paid for everything she’d gathered and drove straight to the captain’s house before she could lose her nerve -- not a problem she had in professional situations, but this was anything other than professional. This wasn’t Deputy Chief Johnson paying a visit to Captain Raydor.
Warm yellow light spilled from Sharon’s living room window, and Daniel’s Accura was parked next to Sharon’s familiar car. One of the curtains at the window rustled. Well, no use stalling, since her presence had already been observed.
She rang the doorbell, and a tread heavier than Sharon’s made the wood floor of the entryway squeak almost immediately. The door opened and Brenda found herself looking up into eyes darker than Sharon’s. “Yes?” Daniel asked formally, unsmiling.
“Daniel, who -- Oh.” Sharon appeared behind her son in the doorway to the living room, and when Brenda saw her she felt her eyes widen hugely.
“Chief,” Sharon continued calmly, “this is my son, Daniel Tate. Danny, Deputy Chief Brenda Johnson.”
Daniel wheeled sharply toward his mother. “Bre -- this is Brenda? With friends like these, who needs --”
“Daniel was just going. Here, honey -- I don’t think she’ll wake up. She’s exhausted.” The captain expertly transferred her astonishing burden, a sleeping toddler of whom all Brenda could see was olive skin and unruly dark curls, to her son’s waiting shoulder.
Daniel hesitated, his gaze ricocheting between the two women. “She’s fine here, Mom. I’m not in any hurry.”
Sharon smiled softly, and Brenda recognized her mom face again. The younger woman realized Daniel was intent on protecting his mother. The idea of Sharon Raydor needing protection -- and from her! -- was so unexpected and sweet that it made the blonde smile too, even as it made her more ashamed of herself.
“Take her home to her own bed, and then you go home and get a good night’s sleep too.” Sharon leaned up to kiss her son on the cheek, forcing him out the door past Brenda in the process. He cast one last watchful, suspicious look at the chief, readjusted the sleeping child, and finally walked to his car. Green eyes turned to Brenda. “Come in,” Sharon invited quietly. “I’m glad you dropped by.”
The smaller woman perked up slightly as she followed Sharon into the living room. “You are?” she asked, hopeful.
Dark hair shimmered as Sharon bent to collect the toddler toys scattered across the colorful rag rug. “Yes, chief. I owe you an apology,” she declared, not quite meeting Brenda’s eyes. “My behavior this morning was unprofessional. You were right: I was unfocused, and as a result the investigation suffered. For that I --”
“No, no. For heaven’s sake, stop,” Brenda Leigh interrupted rather frantically. Between Daniel’s hostility and Sharon’s stubborn insistence on apologizing for being human, this visit of conciliation was not off to a good start. She grabbed the taller woman’s arm, attracting her clear gaze. “Sharon, stop this. I came over here to apologize to you.”
She watched green eyes darken slightly as Sharon considered what this meant, digesting what she must’ve suspected since she saw Brenda standing there. Sharon’s tongue peeped out to moisten her lips. “Why?”
“Because I didn’t know,” Brenda replied simply.
“No, I know. You didn’t.” Sharon’s eyes dropped to one of the large, brightly colored blocks she’d scooped awkwardly to her chest. Neither of them said anything for a moment. Somewhere a clock ticked. “I’m sorry Daniel was rude to you.”
“He’s got a lot on his mind.” She hesitated. “I don’t guess he wants you to date me any more,” she added rather sadly, and to her surprise Sharon laughed shortly.
“What’s in the bag?” the captain asked, gesturing toward the shopping bag Brenda had almost forgotten she was carrying.
“Oh.” The blonde peeked into the bag as if its contents might have changed. “A bunch of useless junk,” she admitted shyly. “I wanted to bring you something, but I didn’t know -- I don’t know what to -- Sharon, I’m so sorry.”
Sharon nodded and didn’t say anything. She blinked rapidly, and it occurred to Brenda that maybe she couldn’t say anything right then. The words and everything behind them hung between the two women.
“I feel like a horrible friend.”
“No,” Sharon disagreed, recovering herself and reaching for the bag. “A horrible friend wouldn’t have brought me one, two, three -- six bars of chocolate. And what’s this?” Her forehead crinkled as she frowned and poked at something with her finger. “Macaroni and cheese?”
Brenda blushed. “Oh, that’s for me. And there are seven bars of chocolate.”
This time a tiny bit of suspicious moisture made its way beyond Sharon’s thick eyelashes, but even as she wiped it away with one knuckle, she chuckled. “Thank you, Brenda.”
“You can keep the mac and cheese if you want it.”
“I might take you up on that.” Sharon’s smile faded and she looked away, staring into space. “I don’t talk about it.”
“I understand.”
“It’s -- It isn’t an effort to be secretive. There’s never a good time to bring it up, you know?”
Brenda nodded, trying to imagine. “You could have told me.”
“I would have, eventually. Daniel says we don’t talk about it because discussing it would make it real.” She lifted her shoulders in a sad little shrug, aware that neither of them had actually spoken Vivien’s name. “Maybe that’s part of it. I don’t know.”
“And, uh, the little girl?” Brenda pointed to the toys as if Sharon might need a visual aid.
The older woman brightened immediately. “My granddaughter, Clarissa.”
“Your grand --?” Brenda shook her head in dismay. “Morales was right. I really don’t know anything about you, do I?”
Sharon gave a sympathetic smile and set the brown paper bag on the coffee table, taking a moment to scoop up the remaining toys and deposit them in the chest beneath the window. “You know more about me than most people do, Brenda Leigh. It’s not personal. I wasn’t...purposely hiding anything from you. It’s just not something we talk about.”
Brenda nodded. Who was she to judge Sharon’s evasive tactics when she herself was a master at avoiding topics she didn’t want to acknowledge? “Guess I need to start askin’ better questions,” Brenda added lamely, taking a seat on the sofa. She shifted, pulling out a stuffed penguin from between the cushions, and set it on the coffee table.
“What else is in the bag?” Sharon asked, pointing at the bag as she put away the stuffed animal.
“All sorts of things,” Brenda said, reaching in. She began extracting its contents, piling the candy bars and pasta beside the wine. She set out the ice cream (which she couldn’t not buy, because who could say no to brownie chunks and cookie dough?), a box of tissues, a bag of organic trail mix, and the flowers. “I didn’t know what you liked, so I got everything.”
Sharon laughed, her smile easing the anxiety in Brenda’s belly. “So I see.”
“I hope you like hyacinths,” Brenda added, glancing down at the fragrant bouquet.
The captain’s eyes settled on the blue flowers. She stepped closer, kneeling on the floor so that she could inhale their scent. “Mmm...they’re beautiful.” She traced the outline of a petal, her eyes closed as she breathed deeper.
The blonde preened. “My mama...she had this garden--oh it was gorgeous--and she’d have me out there with her every afternoon when I got home from school, turnin’ the soil and plantin’ bulbs and pullin’ weeds. She used to say that it was best to grow all sorts of flowers so she’d always have the right kind for every occasion. She used to tell me what all the flowers meant, y’know, what they symbolized. I don’t think most people knew just why she chose tulips over peonies, or daisies over sunflowers, but they always got the right ones.”
“And what do hyacinths mean?” the brunette asked, catching the wistful expression on Brenda’s face.
“They mean...” She cleared her throat. “They mean ‘I’m sorry for bein’ an insensitive bitch today’.”
Sharon let out a bark of laughter, covering her mouth as if surprised that such a sound had come from it. “You sure know how to make a statement.”
“I try. Now...d’you want me to put the ice cream away? I’d hate for my apologetic gesture to make a mess.”
Sharon rounded the coffee table and slumped down onto the sofa. “Why don’t you get us a couple of spoons?”
The blonde grinned and leapt to her feet, disappearing into the kitchen. Sharon didn’t watch her go; she propped her elbow on the arm of the sofa and rested her head in her hand, taking a moment to close her eyes. She exhaled slowly and found that she was glad that Brenda had stopped by. She hadn’t required the plethora of goodies, but Sharon knew that Brenda had indeed been trying to make a gesture. It had been too long since Sharon had a girlfriend with whom she could share her woes, and it was obvious that Brenda was in the same position.
On some level, which Sharon would never admit, she had been thankful for the distraction of work. It had been difficult with Danny, who had wanted to spend the day commemorating his sister with anecdotes and what-if possibilities. She couldn’t blame him for wanting to talk about it; he was, after all, going to be making a living talking about people’s problems. As much as Sharon wanted to support her son’s need to discuss the disappearance of his twin sister, she had felt more and more imprisoned by her own grief and guilt. Playing ‘good cop, bad cop’ with Brenda had been a refreshing, though difficult, reprieve.
Sharon opened her eyes when Brenda walked back into the room, holding out one of the spoons. She kicked off her heels and settled down beside Sharon, reaching forward to grab the pint of Half-Baked. She gnawed away the plastic barrier and opened the container, allowing Sharon to take the first bite.
There was a reason why ice cream was the age-old medicine for a broken heart: it worked.
They sat in silence for a few moments, Sharon snickering as she stole the first uncovered brownie chunk. She could tell that Brenda was searching for something to say and she hoped it wouldn’t be about Vivien.
“So a granddaughter, huh?” Brenda said, settling on the safer of the available topics.
“If you make a comment about my age, I will shoot you,” Sharon warned.
Brenda chuckled. “No grandma jokes, I promise. She’s cute. Really cute.”
Sharon warmed immediately to thoughts of the unnaturally happy child. “She is.”
"Does she live with her daddy?” Brenda asked conversationally.
So much for a safe subject, thought the captain with a wry little twist of her lips. “No.” She paused, carefully licking traces of the sweet ice cream from the corner of her mouth before calmly resuming, “He isn’t involved in her life. Cee lives with Paul -- my ex-husband,” she reminded, glancing over at the blonde, who nodded. “And his wife, Helen.”
“Oh.” For a moment Brenda concentrated on excavating a ball of cookie dough, finding herself at a loss. Her instinct was always to question, to push for more details, but the renewed wariness surrounding Sharon warned her off. So instead she asked, “Do you get to see her a lot?”
The other woman smiled, again at ease. “Oh, yes. Several times a week.”
Brenda chuckled, and Sharon raised her eyebrows, her spoon poised over the carton. “What?”
“No, just -- Sharon Raydor, International Woman of Mystery. It’s hard seein’ you as somebody’s granny.”
The captain practically spat her mouthful of ice cream onto the coffee table. “Don’t you dare!” she exclaimed. “Don’t you dare use that awful word when you refer to me!”
“You could trade in the Blahniks for support hose and Dr. Scholl’s, the Armani for Liz Claiborne --”
“I could easily shoot you and make it look like an accident.”
“And after you finish oiling your gun, you can oil your aching joints with Ben Gay, and --”
Again Brenda broke off, her words abruptly stopped by a stinging faceful of throw pillow, but she grinned, incredibly pleased that Sharon was again snarling and spitting with irritation, light years away from the pale shell of a woman the deputy chief had glimpsed for those few, disconcerting moments earlier that day.
**
Brenda would’ve recognized the razor-sharp crease of the pale gray trousers and the sleek fall of medium-brown hair as belonging to Sharon Raydor even had the green eyes reflected in the bathroom mirror not met hers as the chief stepped out of a stall the next morning. The blonde smiled automatically. “Capt’n Raydor,” she greeted the other woman, reaching out toward the soap dispenser.
The answering smile, small but warm, reassured her that last night’s effort at making amends had done its work. “Chief,” Sharon replied in a neutral, silky murmur.
“I’ll have my report about yesterday’s homicide to you right after lunch,” Brenda promised conscientiously.
Sharon tossed her crumpled paper towel into the bin. “It’s fine. I still have --” Her eyes darted to her slim wristwatch -- “fifty-one hours. At your earliest convenience will do.”
“After lunch,” Brenda repeated, and the older woman nodded and slipped out into the corridor.
Provenza, Flynn, and Sanchez were sharing a laugh near the open door of the break room, but none of them looked more surprised than the captain herself when the deputy chief fairly came bursting around the corner behind her, loudly calling, “Sharon!”
The two lieutenants exchanged twin skeptical stares, and Raydor pivoted, wide-eyed at the very public use of her given name. “Yes, chief?” she responded cautiously.
The blonde stopped within arm’s reach, smiling again. “Brenda,” she suggested, and Provenza ostentatiously choked on his coffee.
Behind the fluorescent glare on the lenses of her glasses, Sharon blinked. “You are my superior officer, Chief Johnson,” she pointed out in a voice pitched low enough that the men couldn’t overhear. “As such, it is my duty to address you in a manner befitting the rank you have earned.”
Brenda flinched. She knew Sharon was sincere, but she heard an echo of herself demanding that the FID captain always call her 'chief.' “I’m also your friend.”
Sharon’s lips curved into a tiny smile. “I know that. Chief.”
“For heaven’s sake, I call Will Will,” Brenda returned, mildly exasperated. “He’s my superior officer. He’s everybody’s superior officer! And I report to him; you don’t report to me.”
The captain smirked, appearing to be enjoying this. “Yes, but we’ve never slept together.” As soon as Sharon heard her own words, she flushed a rare deep rose but also snorted out a laugh, as if both surprised and amused by herself, and Brenda laughed too.
“Is that a proposition?”
Green eyes rolled toward the ceiling. “Very well. Bren-da it is. So I’ll expect your completed report after lunch, Brenda.”
With that Sharon pivoted and headed back down the corridor, and Brenda Leigh smiled to herself, ignoring the stares of the three members of her team who were taking an inordinately long time to replenish their coffee. Her request that Sharon call her by her first name at work hadn’t been a spur-of-the-moment thing. It was an outward expression of something yesterday’s disquieting turn of events had brought home to the deputy chief: if she and Sharon Raydor were going to be friends, real, true friends, they couldn’t just be Brenda and Sharon off the clock, and Deputy Chief Johnson and Captain Raydor while they were on. The twain needed to meet, or their friendship would suffer from a severe case of multiple personality disorder. Never again did she want to snap out an order to Captain Raydor and be answered by that exhausted, haunted look in Sharon’s eyes.
***