Bullets and Bourbon (24/25): I'll Be Seeing You
Category: The Closer
Character(s): Brenda L.J. & S. Raydor
Words: 7,462
Genre(s): Romance/Angst
Rating: Rated: M
Summary: They're not exactly friends. They're not exactly enemies. Defining
their relationship might, she worries, make it mean something. Maybe that's
what really keeps her awake at night.
Author's note: Christmas is either coming really early this year, or really late last year, depending on your point of view. This is the penultimate chapter of B&B, and I want to thank everyone who has hung in there during this longer-than-anticipated journey. We've almost come to the end of the road. I hope you'll think it's worth your while. If you have any special requests for the last chapter, drop me a line - I aim to please.
1.
Brenda Leigh Johnson had never lost the childlike joy and glee she’d always felt from the start of every holiday season. The first Christmas song on the radio, the first red-nosed reindeer lighting the dark Georgia night, the first glimpse of big department store bows and shiny tinsel made her eyes shine and her heart skip a beat. Fritz had never been able to wrap his head around the genuine enthusiasm with which she embraced her parents’ yuletide visits, replete with tacky sweaters and Frosty the Snowman and enough food to feed an entire battalion of the Confederate Army or a roomful of hungry LAPD officers, whichever happened to turn up. To him it had seemed so unlike Brenda; but it wasn’t at all, it was just a manifestation of the part of her he knew least - the part she’d tried to squeeze out of her deputy chief persona, with the result that it oozed out around the edges like the cream in a sandwich cookie. For Brenda, Clay and Willie Rae brought Christmas itself to Southern California.
Of course, this Christmas would be quite different.
“Chief?” Brenda jumped, startled, when Sanchez’s hand landed on her upper arm, jarring her out of her contemplation of a tiny nativity scene on the mantel of their latest murder victim. “There’s something in the kitchen I think you should see.”
She nodded and signaled to Tao, her gaze still fastened on the Holy Family. “Bag this,” she informed the bald lieutenant, sweeping her hand toward the collection of miniature figurines. “The third wise man’s got blood on ‘im.”
Yes, this Christmas was going to be different.
2.
“Sharon?”
Green eyes snapped up from their appraisal of the warm oak tabletop and abstractedly returned to the face of her companion.
“I asked if you like the wine.”
“It’s good.” Sharon managed a smile, but Kate wasn’t fooled for a second.
“I propose a toast,” the redhead said, and Sharon obligingly if spiritlessly lifted her glass. Kate bit back a sigh. The feeling she often got of being humored was one of her least favorite aspects of her former lover and present friend.
“To?” the captain prompted after a couple of beats.
Kate lifted her narrow shoulders in a small shrug. “I was going to say ‘To the pleasure of your company’ but you’re light years away, so instead I propose ‘The holidays.’ L’chaim.”
Sharon’s lips curved into a more genuine, if guilty, smile as their glasses of Chablis clinked together.
“I still can’t believe you didn’t even call me.”
It was the refrain of the evening, and before answering Sharon dragged a chunk of focaccia through the olive oil in a small dish between them. “I’m fine, Kate. The only casualty was my sofa, which, as I recall, you never liked.” Sharon rested her hand atop her friend’s, ready to appease Kate and have done with this particular line of conversation once and for all. She was surprised to feel herself fight back a flinch at the contact. Had Kate’s hands always been so cold? Brenda Leigh’s were warm. “I told you he was only trying to scare me.”
Kate shook her head. “Honestly, Sharon, I don’t see why you don’t go ahead and reti-“
“Do not use the R-word with me,” the captain interrupted, scowling. She chewed another morsel of bread, her shoulders drooping. She felt Kate’s eyes on her. “Besides,” she admitted more softly, curling her hands into fists where they rested against the edge of the table, “it may be unnecessary. It’s looking extremely likely that I’ve gotten myself fired.”
The other woman’s carefully shaped eyebrows shot toward her hairline. “Fired?” she exclaimed so loudly that the diners at the next table turned to look. “You?”
“Me.” Sharon sipped her wine, pleased that Kate had remembered Chablis was her favorite white. But then, they’d ordered enough bottles of it to share.
“Is this about that scumbag you shot?”
The captain cocked her head and felt her hair slide over the angle of her jaw. “Mm, it would provide as good an excuse as they’re ever likely to get,” she replied, because there was really no discreet way to say “I accused the acting chief of police of plotting to kill my ex-lover (and his).” She’d heard nothing from Pope or Taylor over the course of the past four days, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to convince herself that no news was good news.
A waiter delivered their antipasti and Sharon picked up her fork to take a delicate bite of white Tuscan beans and fennel sausage. Kate eyed her for another moment.
“Be it noted,” she said with grim humor as she picked up her own fork, “that I am choosing not to pry and instead to change the subject. I expect a gold star in the hereafter. What are your holiday plans? Park City as usual?”
“Oh.” Jonathan had asked the same thing the previous week - with good reason, since it was already the 20th - and yet the question somehow came as a surprise. An unpleasant surprise. She gestured vaguely with her fork. “Oh, I suppose. The kids will be with David in New York. To tell the truth I haven’t given it much thought. I’m not in much of a holiday mood this year.”
Kate frowned, concerned. The Sharon she knew tended to bake up a storm and decorate everything in sight at Christmas. “Oh, hell. I’d invite you to spend it with me, but I’m taking Pam to Paris.”
“Pam?” Sharon chewed thoughtfully. “You’ve been seeing her, what? A month?”
Kate grinned. “She doesn’t hold a candle to you, Sharon Raydor. But the holiday is a good excuse for a vacation. - Maybe that’s what you need.”
The other woman snorted. “A vacation. Kate, I haven’t worked in nearly three months.”
“Exactly. Get away from it all. The stress, the empty house, your mother - Brenda.”
“I don’t want -“
“I know you don’t want to talk about her. It’s a good suggestion, Sharon. Barcelona, maybe? Or somewhere warm. Go to South America. Ride horses or lounge on a beach. Have sex.”
But sex had caused Sharon enough problems recently; she was thinking about architecture. “Barcelona,” she mused, thinking of unfinished cathedrals and a musical, lilting language. “I was there thirty-five years ago, just for a weekend. It was beautiful.”
Kate’s lovely straight teeth beamed at her friend. “You should do it. Not being at work is not the same thing as taking a vacation. Promise me you’ll at least think about it. You have the time and the money. You could go anywhere you wanted.”
Anywhere she wanted, except back to work or into Brenda Leigh’s bed.
The captain polished off the rest of her glass of wine in one gulp. “I’ll think about it,” she reassured Kate, her eyes already far away. “I certainly will.”
3.
Sharon had decided to give herself a Christmas present.
It wasn’t neatly wrapped under the Christmas tree (she hadn’t put up a tree this year, much to Claire’s chagrin) with a big red bow and a gift tag from Santa. It wasn’t really anything tangible at all. It was walking through her silent house, doing a last-minute check to make sure the windows were locked and the appliances unplugged, even though she already knew they were. It was throwing her Louis Vuitton suitcase into the trunk of her car, smoothing the loose tunic she wore over her faded jeans, and driving away without a backward glance. It was the open road stretching before her.
She had decided she didn’t need exotic climes or horses or cabana boys (or girls). But Kate had been right: she needed a vacation.
She didn’t need Park City with her family gathered around her, too many of them in the small space of her father’s timeshare. She didn’t need the beach house in Santa Cruz with too many memories. What she needed was a change, somewhere different, somewhere she could just be herself, not anyone’s mother or daughter or friend or lover. Just herself. Just Sharon. Just a woman.
Sharon was fairly certain she had hurt Claire’s feelings when her daughter, curled up next to her on the brand new sofa two nights before as they demolished a large pepperoni pizza and watched the opening credits of Hello Dolly roll across the flat screen, had casually broached the subject of remaining in California with her mother instead of flying out to New York the next morning, and Sharon had immediately and certainly replied, “No, I want you to go.” Claire had studied her with her big serious eyes, and Sharon had known her youngest child was worried about her, but she hadn’t been able to provide an explanation, not really. All she’d been able to say was, “I need some time by myself, to think. I promise I’ll be fine, baby.”
Time by herself. To think.
That was what she needed, wasn’t it? To be away from the constraints of her daily life, a life that had paradoxically seemed both stagnant and chaotic during the last few months, and think about what she really wanted, really needed, and how to go about moving forward?
Sharon allowed herself a small smirk. Wandering off into the desert to meditate for three or four or five days - how very un-Captain Raydor.
Sharon loved the desert the way she loved the mountains and the sea. Brenda’s assessment had been fair after all, she acknowledged: she was a true California girl at heart.
Brenda. Her heart gave a hard, shuddering throb, and Sharon sighed, aware that she could no longer pretend she was too logical or too aloof or plain just too old to experience the deeps and shallows of romantic love. She was driving off into the desert to spend three or four or five days thinking about Brenda Leigh Johnson; that was what it boiled down to.
It didn’t help that she was worried about the younger woman’s safety, truly worried. Jason Donovan or no, something was rotten in Denmark, and the captain remained convinced it had much more to do with the deputy chief than it did with her. She was even becoming increasingly convinced that someone wanted to get a certain annoyingly persistent FID captain out of the way so that he (or she) could have easier access to Brenda. There had been too many coincidences, and at the risk of being branded as a conspiracy theory nut, Sharon couldn’t see any way to convince herself that all those coincidences didn’t require the involvement of someone inside the LAPD - someone fairly powerful.
She didn’t think it was Pope, not really.
She hoped to Christ it wasn’t Pope, because if it was, she was well and truly screwed, and so was Brenda Leigh, who would persist in trusting the man despite any and all evidence that he was a self-interested, back-stabbing little prick, not that Sharon would actually say as much about her boss.
She frowned at the highway in front of her. Taylor? Despite her total lack of confidence in the man, it seemed a bit extreme to cast him in the role of murderer. Although no one had actually tried to kill Brenda. Or Sharon, for that matter. Taylor as a shadowy shot-caller, moving behind the scenes and getting others to do his dirty work? That was more believable, but still…
She considered the possibility that she was just hacked off because the man kept trying to take her job.
In that moment Sharon decided she didn’t care that it was Christmas. When she reached her destination, she was going to call Will Pope and inform him that Santa Claus was bringing her reinstatement as the head of FID, because she had been a very good girl. Then at least she’d be around to keep an eye on Brenda during the day.
Of course that did nothing to solve her other problem, which was that keeping an eye on Brenda wasn’t what she really wanted to be doing. She just… wanted her, full stop.
Her heart did that unpleasant thumping thing again, and she winced as she changed lanes.
She wanted to be with Brenda Leigh.
And Brenda Leigh had said she wanted to be with Sharon too.
Sharon had convinced herself Brenda was reckless, delusional - naïve, even. Because things didn’t happen like that; people’s lives didn’t work like that.
Except when they did.
Sharon’s palms tingled, and she felt that same uncomfortable sensation she’d felt standing in a perfectly nice apartment talking about southern exposure and hearing Brenda say, “I want you to like it,” and this time Sharon Raydor looked that sensation head-on and acknowledged it for what it was: fear. Pure, complete, blind fear. Because she wanted Brenda Leigh Johnson more than she had let herself want anyone or anything in a very long time, perhaps ever, and there was every chance that their complicated, frustrating relationship wouldn’t work out and Sharon would end up broken in ways she couldn’t even begin to contemplate.
Brenda’s smile, Brenda’s laugh, Brenda’s pointy little chin and perfect breasts and petulant scowl all flashed across Sharon’s vision like a cinematic reel, and she pounded her palm so hard on the top of her steering wheel that the ache reverberated all the way up her arm.
“Have you told her?” Claire had asked softly over hot chocolate and the remains of the pizza, and Sharon had scowled at her child’s audacity. The follow-up question had been even worse: “Why not?”
There were a thousand reasons why not; Sharon could have listed them off the top of her head.
And there was probably only one reason why she should. Because it was real and it was true, and Brenda should know how Sharon felt.
Sharon looked up at the sky, a pure soft blue hiding behind the layer of smog, as if afraid the contact might hurt it. Only a coward would think it was better to hide and avoid the risk of loving and still failing, and while the captain was many things, she was pretty sure she’d never been a coward. Whether or not she managed to shame Will Pope into giving her back her job, there was only one real course of action she could follow if she wanted to move forward. She had to go to Brenda and tell her that she loved her and that she was terrified by it. Saying it aloud might even make it a little less scary, although Sharon remained dubious.
The traffic slowed, and Sharon shifted in the driver’s seat, impatient. Her gaze fell upon the random exit sign looming ahead of her.
Without allowing herself to hesitate, she swung the wheel and stomped the accelerator, lurching into the turn lane. After months of uncertainty, Sharon saw what she needed to do with absolute clarity, and she didn’t need to go meditate in the desert like some half-insane prophet before she just ripped the damn band-aid off and did it.
4.
She’d waited as long as she possibly could before driving to the airport. She had lingered in her brand-new, half-furnished apartment, poking at unpacked boxes, sniffing the freshly applied paint, throwing out anything in the fridge that might spoil while she was gone, even the half gallon of skim milk that had an expiration date of January 2nd. Before that she’d similarly haunted the murder room, carefully erasing the murder board, making sure all the caps on the magic erase markers were sealed tightly, stacking random papers into perfectly neat, meaningless stacks on her desk. She’d felt Provenza and Sanchez staring at her while trying to pretend they were oblivious to her actions.
Brenda Leigh couldn’t explain her dawdling. Her childhood home waited, complete with baked ham and squash casserole and sour cream coconut cake for dessert. Her youngest brother would be there with his wife and their toddler daughter, and there would be aunts and uncles and cousins galore. Mama and Daddy had promised her that everyone already knew not to ask any awkward questions about Fritz, and she was seasoned enough to ignore the odd pitying or disapproving glance.
Brenda had always heard about dysfunctional families, and she had no doubt they existed and plenty of people were stuck in them, but she had always liked her own family just fine. She liked going home to Atlanta, too, even if somehow she hardly ever found the time to make the trip. Spending the holiday surrounded by all her relatives would be good. It would be wonderful and warm and comforting, the seasonal equivalent of crawling back into the womb, but with better food.
Perhaps that was the problem, she mused as the cabin lights were dimmed for take-off. If the last few topsy-turvy months had taught her anything, it was that she wanted to go forward, not back.
That, and the way her thoughts kept straying from visions of her family gathered around her parents’ dining room table to imagine a solitary, elegant figure standing at a granite-topped kitchen counter making green tea.
It wasn’t that she felt sorry for the Sharon she remembered-slash-imagined. Rather, she envied her. Or, no, that wasn’t right either. Coveted. Coveted was better.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife or his ass. That one had always made Brenda Leigh giggle.
She wanted Sharon Raydor, as much as - more than - she had ever wanted her before. Somehow it was easier to admit that here on a 757 with the cabin doors already closed, insulated with this random assemblage of people headed for the East Coast, as if she could already look down from a great height at her own life with the luxury of analytical distance. Her pride stung from the way Sharon had rejected her, trivialized what she felt, but she knew the older woman wanted her too - she knew it.
She also knew Sharon was scared, which was really saying something, now that she thought about it. Sharon hadn’t been scared when she’d had to shoot a man. Sharon hadn’t been scared when Jason Donovan had opened fire on her house like it was a free-for-all at the shooting range. Sharon wasn’t scared of the scorn of her colleagues, or big fat spiders, or the way Brenda looked with no make-up on. Sharon wasn’t scared of anything.
Except this thing between them. That was pretty damn powerful.
Brenda’s small frame pressed back into her smaller seat as the aircraft lifted from the ground, and she felt a tight, tingling sensation akin to panic in her chest. Go back, she suddenly wanted to cry. Go back! She needed to be back on the ground, back in Los Angeles, back with Sharon.
Now that it was completely beyond her control, Brenda Leigh saw it all clearly, which was fairly typical, wasn’t it?
They reached cruising altitude, the pilot turned off the fasten-seatbelts sign, and a flight attendant served Brenda tasteless coffee, and with each moment Brenda’s conviction grew. This was wrong. This was not what she needed to be doing.
She’d been so angry with Sharon, furious at her, for not trusting her, not believing in the reality of her love and her commitment - but had she ever told Sharon she loved her? Had she ever told Sharon she wanted to be with her, stay with her?
Brenda Leigh stared at her little packet of Delta Airlines pretzels, feeling like a prize idiot.
She and Sharon were alike in so many ways, strong-willed, intelligent, relentless, unconventional - but in this they were complete opposites. Where she was impulsive, Sharon was cautious, wary. Was it any wonder that the woman needed a little reassurance?
Brenda spent most of the long flight gnawing on her lip, fighting an internal battle with herself. Part of her worried that she was being a little ridiculous, overly dramatic, acting like a character in some sappy romantic movie (something from the forties, with women who wore red matte lipstick and silk stockings), and that if she turned up on Sharon Raydor’s doorstep, the other woman would give her that cold, penetrating Captain Raydor stare and send her on her way.
By the time her flight landed, Brenda had decided that while a grand, impulsive gesture might not win Sharon over, sweep her off her feet and mean the two of them would live happily ever after, Brenda needed to make it, for her own sanity if for nothing else. She would go crazy if she had to wait a week to see the brunette captain again. She would die of impatience.
After she had disembarked and collected her suitcase, instead of picking up her rental car, Brenda made a phone call, and forty-five minutes later Willie Rae was there, a slim figure in a long camel-colored coat.
Brenda lifted one hand in a silly little wave, unable to help herself. Willie Rae simply surveyed her daughter from head to foot, nodded, and asked, “When’s your flight back, honey?”
“Hi, Mama.” Brenda smiled tremulously, suddenly surprisingly close to tears. “Everything’s full, so I’m flyin’ standby.”
“Well, I was going to offer to take you to lunch, at least, but I suppose you won’t want to leave the airport.”
“We could get some coffee instead.” Brenda gestured toward the Starbucks kiosk over her mother’s shoulder.
“I have my two cups with breakfast every mornin’, Brenda Leigh, but it’s fine if you want some.”
“No, I probably don’t need any more,” Brenda admitted shakily, absently smoothing her skirt the same way she always did when she was a little girl facing a scolding. “I’m sorry I ruined Christmas, Mama,” she blurted.
Willie Rae smiled slightly even as she raised her eyebrows. “Don’t be foolish, Brenda Leigh. Your father and I will have a perfectly lovely day with your brother and his family,” she pointed out, gently reminding the deputy chief that she wasn’t the center of the universe, not even the center of the Johnson family solar system. “What I want to know is what you are gonna be up to. It’s not work.” Brenda shook her head. “Is it about Fritz?”
“No, Mama.” Brenda looked over at a cluster of unoccupied chairs near one of the automatic trash cans that had ceased being automatic not long after their 1996 pre-Olympics installation. “Let’s sit down.”
As the two women settled next to one another in the rigid plastic chairs, harried travelers swirling around them, children crying, luggage wheels squeaking, the forty-seven-year-old deputy chief didn’t know what she was going to tell her mother. She always had a plan going into an interrogation, but this time the roles were likely to be reversed.
“Mama, you need to understand that Fritz and I aren’t ever gettin’ back together.”
“Oh, honey,” Willie Rae put in instantly, her face alight with sympathy, “it’s barely been a month. Sometimes these things just take ti-“
“No. It’s my fault - mostly my fault. I - I’m in love with somebody else.”
Even as she spoke the words and her heart leaped with panic, there was a faint undercurrent of relief at admitting it to someone. She’d finally said it aloud. She, Brenda Leigh Johnson, was in love with Sharon Raydor. It was as if now that the words had been said, the universe would be forced to acknowledge them.
She gave her mother a second to chew on that before bursting out, “I can’t even be sorry about fallin’ in love, because that’s what it took to make me see that I didn’t love Fritz the way a wife - the way you’re supposed to love the person you’re married to. Not like you and Daddy love each other.”
Brenda’s throat bobbed as she swallowed hard, too afraid of censure to look her mother in the face, so she studied Willie Rae’s hands instead. They were almost as expressive as her face: thin and blue-veined, work-roughened in a way that would never diminish their natural elegance. They twisted together briefly as the older woman’s right hand smoothed over her own wedding ring.
“Mama,” Brenda Leigh whispered desperately, because she had basically just admitted to her devout mother that she’d broken her vows and had an affair; she hadn’t said it in so many words, but her mother was far from stupid, and now her cheeks were scalding with shame and embarrassment. “Say somethin’.”
“What do you want me to say?” Willie Rae returned in the sharp, matter-of-fact tone that always made her husband and her children stand up a little straighter. “I can’t say I approve.”
“I know,” Brenda said, still whispering. “I know. I’m awful, and you and Daddy must be so disappointed. You must hate me.” She bit her lip, unable to stop the two tears that escaped from beneath her eyelids. She knew she sounded like a melodramatic child, but she was, at least, determined to keep herself from blubbering.
“You stop that,” her mother returned even more sharply. “Tears never fixed anything, and you know perfectly well that your father and I could never hate you, even when we’re mad. Even if we are disappointed.”
“You are disappointed.” Willie Rae nodded. “In me or for me?”
Her mother shrugged, a fatigued lift of shoulders bearing many decades of life experience. “Both, honey. You’re my only daughter. And while I certainly believe in the sanctity of marriage, I don’t think you’d be doin’ Fritz any favors by stayin’ married if you don’t love him enough to keep from - from takin’ up with somebody else. He deserves better.”
Brenda winced. She knew what her mother was saying was not only true but mild, much kinder than she deserved. She forced herself to take a few deep breaths and remember that she was a middle-aged woman, a reasonably autonomous adult, not a child. She craved her parents’ approval as she always had - although she knew that her odds of getting it this time were about as good as the odds that Clay would vote the straight Democratic ticket in the next election - but she knew what she needed to do regardless. She knew what she was going to do.
“You haven’t told me why you came all the way out here just to turn around and fly back across the country.”
“Because I made a mess of things. I’m not very good at cleanin’ up my messes, but I suppose it’s way past time for me to learn.”
Willie Rae tilted her head. “And this means you have to turn right back around and fly to Los Angeles now, today, on Christmas.” Honestly, Brenda thought, her mother chose the most unexpected moments to come over all stoic and unruffled - she was a tiny little bit like Sharon that way.
“Yeah, Mama. I think it does.”
“Here.” A slightly crumpled Kleenex appeared in Brenda’s direct line of sight as she reached up to wipe her nose, and she took it, risking a quick glance at her mother’s face. The lines, the planes, the fall of snow-white hair were all there, all the same and blessedly familiar.
Willie Rae stood up very gracefully for someone of her age. “You just come on home if you don’t get a flight, Brenda. Make sure you get somethin’ to eat before you get on the plane, and call us when you get there. You know we worry; it’s our job.”
As Brenda stood too and automatically leaned down to accept her mother’s embrace, her eyes were wide with surprise. “You’re leavin’ already?”
Willie Rae smiled slightly. “Well, it is Christmas Day, honey. I have a ham to see to, and the sweet potato casserole needs to go in the oven shortly.”
The sweet potato casserole: Sharon had made it last year. The marshmallows hadn’t really been burned, the deputy chief acknowledged generously, just chewier than she preferred.
“What are you gonna tell Daddy?” Brenda asked anxiously, wondering if anybody ever felt like a grown-up when confronted by a stern-faced parent.
“That somethin’ came up,” Willie Rae replied briefly, adjusting the collar of her coat. “Merry Christmas, Brenda Leigh.”
5.
“I think,” said the voice on Brenda’s voicemail, and then it paused. “I think I may have created a sticky stit - a sicky sit - a problem. A minor, ah, embarrassment. For you. Or perhaps not. I don’t know. At any rate, I’m spending Christmas at the Holiday Inn. Isn’t that just completely appropriate? At least the mini-bar is stocked. Was stocked. I didn’t drink the tequila, though. Who drinks tequila out of a mini-bar? And they keep playing your song, Brenda Leigh. I - oh, hell. This isn’t why I called. I just - I wish - shit. I am drunk.”
Even completely bewildered, standing inside the main terminal building at LAX with her cell phone clapped against her ear, Brenda couldn’t help the smile that flitted across her face at Sharon’s precise, meticulous enunciation.
“All I’m accomplishing is embarrassing myself. I -“ A hesitation; a ragged exhalation. “Bye, Brenda. Merry Christmas.”
Her voice sounded small. Sharon Raydor never sounded small. She filled any room she entered with her confidence, her assurance, her damned Sharon-ness.
Still standing right there among the swirls and eddies of travelers, Brenda Leigh dialed Sharon’s number from memory. (When, exactly, had she memorized Sharon’s number? Brenda didn’t actually know anybody’s phone number besides her parents’, and they’d had the same one for thirty years.)
She listened as it rang and rang.
“Hello, you’ve reached Sharon Raydor. I’m not able to take your call right now, but -“
Brenda hung up. She didn’t have the time or the patience to leave a message and wait for that woman to decide to crawl out from underneath her hangover and call her back. Sharon obviously wasn’t in Los Angeles, and she wasn’t in Park City with her father and brother or up at the beach house if she was staying at a Holiday Inn somewhere. (Oh, Sharon, where are you? Why aren’t you here when I came all the way back out here to find you, damn it?)
Brenda gnawed on her lip for a second before scrolling through her recent calls. Back, back, back - bingo.
At first Brenda didn’t think she was going to answer, the phone rang so many times; but at the last possible second before the call went to voicemail, a breathless voice exclaimed, “Hello!”
The voice was achingly familiar in the way the speaker enunciated so precisely, even on that one simple word, but it was the wrong voice, and Brenda suddenly felt the weight of exhaustion and her solitary state and all the things she had messed up so horribly over the last few months.
Impatient now, Claire repeated, “Hello?” She sounded so much like her mother when she was impatient.
“Claire, it’s Brenda.” She allowed herself a small space to breathe, and then poured every ounce of Southern sweetness and honey she could muster into her question. “Do you know where your mama is?”
“At home.” A beat. “Isn’t she? We all talked to her this morning, but I called her on her cell. If she’s not at home, Brenda, I’d think you’d know better than I would where she is, but -“ There was muffled conversation as Claire turned away from the phone, obviously asking her brother if he knew the whereabouts of their mother. Brenda clearly heard his negative response.
Brenda sighed. “Thanks, Claire. Merry Christmas,” she added half-heartedly.
Before the chief could hang up, that familiar-but-wrong voice softly replied, “Merry Christmas to you, Brenda Leigh. I hope you find my mom. We’ll see you soon, yeah?”
Brenda hoped so too.
The deputy chief flopped down in one of the rigid chairs that, despite their designer’s best efforts at modern contours and tasteful fabric choices, felt like nothing but gate-side airport chairs. They felt like waiting, and reminded the blonde that she had nowhere to go, no particular destination. She wanted to go to Sharon, but she couldn’t find Sharon.
“Dammit,” she swore, dropping her elbows to her knees in defeat. Sharon Raydor, where the hell are you? Brenda felt the humiliating sting of tears behind her eyelids, because she was exhausted and she missed Sharon, who was somewhere hurting and pounding down tiny bottles of overpriced hotel booze; because she wanted Sharon. She wanted to hold her and comfort her, give the apologies Sharon didn’t want but needed to hear nonetheless; assure her that she understood, even if she didn’t, not completely, but she was trying. She just wanted to look into her eyes, hear her voice live and in person, touch her hand. The tears kept rising, because she had put that grave, determined look on her mama’s face and because she had missed Christmas dinner. Because she had impulsively made a grand romantic gesture, possibly - probably - for the first time in her life, and the excitement and trepidation and sense of urgent importance she’d felt since making that decision was ebbing away into nothingness, with no one to appreciate it. She acknowledged that a measure of the feeling was self-centered - Brenda wanted to be romantic this one time, god damn it (and never mind what her mama would think of her language) - but only a measure. She wanted to do this for Sharon.
But that woman was thwarting her again.
Her phone vibrated, and for an instant Brenda was elated with giddy hope, until her parents’ photo appeared on the screen.
No. No, she just couldn’t.
She also couldn’t just sit here in the airport all day. She might as well go home; it wasn’t like she had anywhere else to go.
As she slid into the backseat of a cab (the airport’s prices for long-term parking were extortionate), her phone vibrated again. Her mother had left a message. With a dutiful sigh, Brenda lifted the small hunk of plastic to her ear and pressed the appropriate button.
Willie Rae’s voice filled her ear. “Brenda Leigh, it’s your mother, just checkin’ in to see that you made it home okay. I know you’ve had a long day and you must be worn out, so if you don’t feel like talkin’, you can just send one of those word messages -“
(In the background Clay interrupted, “Text messages, Willie Rae; they’re called text messages.”)
“Whatever, Clay. - Oh, by the way, your daddy and I had the nicest surprise a little while ago. Your friend Sharon dropped by to say hello. She’s such a lovely girl - well, woman, I should say. You didn’t even tell us she was in town, honey. She said she’d come to visit a friend because her children are with their daddy this Christmas. I invited her to stay for supper, but she had plans.”
Brenda stopped listening, frozen with shock. Sharon. Sharon had been at her parents’ house. Sharon was in Atlanta.
Sharon had gone to her, for her.
Rational, practical Sharon had paid the Lord only knew how much for a last-minute ticket and flown across the breadth of the continental United States to go to Brenda - while Brenda was doing exactly the same thing in reverse. Things like this didn’t happen in real life.
Real life. Brenda’s lips quirked slightly as she remembered Sharon’s angry insistence: “This is real life… There’s no fade to black.” Yes, this was real life; but maybe sometimes real life was allowed to be like the movies. Maybe no one got a happy ending. Brenda Leigh would settle for a happy right now.
Romantic gestures were great and all, but now the two of them were again at opposite ends of the country, which was terrible.
And Sharon wanted to see Brenda, which was wonderful. Her heart leaped, thudded, skittered in her chest, as off balance as the rest of her, and Brenda sucked in great lungsful of the stale, cool air recirculating in the cab’s interior.
Once she’d caught her breath, she burst into laughter, the sound loud and shrill in her own ears. Only when she felt the startling scald of hot moisture on her cheeks did she realize she’d also burst into tears.
**
When the bedside phone began to ring for the third time in as many minutes, Sharon reached out, tentatively curling her palm around the cool plastic receiver. It wasn’t a wrong number. It wasn’t a prank call. It was Brenda. Sharon knew it as surely as she knew she was going to have a bitchin’ headache the next morning.
So why wasn’t she answering? She wanted to talk to Brenda - had flown across the country to talk to Brenda. But it wasn’t supposed to go like this. It was supposed to be face to face, with Sharon looking her carefully groomed best. She was supposed to have all her faculties about her and be able to recall the little speech she’d prepared, going so far as to write it out on the long flight from LAX.
The phone stopped ringing, and instead of feeling relieved, Sharon felt her heart plummet.
No less than ten seconds later it rang again, and said heart leapt into the captain’s mouth, tattooing wildly. Oh, for heaven’s sake.
She lifted the receiver but couldn’t bring herself to speak.
“Finally!” Brenda exclaimed, exasperated; and then, when the silence continued, “Sharon?”
“Yes.” Was that her voice, that breathy little exhalation? Fuck.
“Are you okay?”
The drawl was so tender, so alive with concern, that Sharon’s rigid muscles melted and she slumped back against the mound of hotel pillows. “Yes,” she managed. “Yes, I think so.”
They were both quiet, listening to the barely audible susurrations of one another breathing.
“That’s good,” Brenda said quietly, sounding shy. “So - Atlanta?”
Green eyes roved around the characterless hotel room. “Atlanta,” she confirmed.
“My parents seem to be under the impression that you have family there.” Brenda cleared her throat. “You got another child you haven’t mentioned? Sibling? Cousin?”
“Of course not,” the older woman murmured faintly, her newly unpredictable heart doing that unpleasant thing in her mouth again.
The pause was a long one.
“I - I’m glad.”
More silence. Why couldn’t she talk? Sharon wondered frantically, and the more frantic she became, the harder it got to contemplate opening her mouth and making words come out.
“You - Did you come to see me?”
“You know I did.” Her husky voice had a trifling little catch in it. Sharon felt as if she might burst open, everything was so close to the surface of her skin and it was such a flimsy barrier.
“No, I… I know that was what I wanted you to say.”
“I came to see you.” Sharon felt hot all over, hot and trembly, and was terrified to think she might actually cry.
“Why?” Brenda Leigh’s voice was so small that Sharon could barely hear it despite the fact that every nerve in her body was straining toward the sound.
“To apologize.” All right, that was only the partial truth, but she couldn’t just blurt out “Because I love you” on the telephone after she’d had too much to drink. Again.
(For the last time, she promised herself. It never helped; it only made things worse. She didn’t need a bottle, she needed Brenda.)
Sharon looked down at her own hand, which was twisting in the comforter. “To be with you. To hold you, if you’ll let me. To make love to you.”
Brenda’s voice trembled. “Oh, Sharon, I’ll let you. Of course I will.” She chuckled weakly. “Do you know where I am?”
A little startled by the change of subject, Sharon sat up a little straighter against the pillows. “Your father said you had to go back to work.”
“That’s what Mama said she’d tell him.”
“Brenda?”
“I came back to find you. I was gonna go to Park City or your beach house or wherever -“
“Brenda.”
“We must’ve passed each other in the air. I never dreamed you’d do something like that. It doesn’t happen in real life, does it? Only in the movies.”
“This is ridiculous.” Sharon thought she needed a drink - water, or maybe a soda. Something rich and sweet and fizzy on her tongue, since she couldn’t have Brenda Leigh.
“I miss you so much.”
“I’m coming back tomorrow.” Sharon gazed at the ceiling. She’d be home tomorrow - and then what? “Brenda, can we start over?”
“No.”
The response came so swiftly that it took Sharon’s breath, leaving her as stunned as a punch to the gut.
“Sharon, this thing between us - it’s been happenin’ for two years. I don’t want to erase a minute of it.”
The captain’s chest contracted painfully and then, as if something had finally ruptured, she was able to breathe again. “Not even when you called me a bitch?”
“Which time?” the chief retorted, and Sharon felt her trembling lips curve into a smile.
“You know, when you want to, you do self-aware really well.”
“You kept tellin’ me I needed to think,” Brenda replied solemnly. “I want to make sure you know I have.”
“I have too.”
“You think too much.”
“I do. I always have, and I always will.” She drew a shaky breath. “The way you jump in with both feet - it terrifies me. I sit back on the edge and watch. I worry. I think about what’s going to happen to me when you change your mind and jump out again -“
“No,” Brenda insisted, her voice faint but firm. “No, Sharon, that’s what I -“
“I know. I know now. Sometimes I just need to feel.”
“Feel me,” Brenda encouraged.
“Yes.” It was a plea, a promise. “Be a little patient with me, Brenda Leigh. It’s been a long, long time since I let myself feel like this.”
“Are you cryin’?”
“No,” Sharon replied immediately, although she was, and she knew that Brenda knew she was. Brenda knew her better than the older woman had ever wanted to admit. “I - I think I should probably get some sleep.”
“Take some Tylenol or somethin’ first,” Brenda instructed, sparing a worry over how much Sharon had been drinking, and wondering if that was a conversation they needed to have. Not tonight, she decided. “I don’t want you feelin’ bad tomorrow. I’ve got plans for you. What time does your flight get in?”
Sharon told her, and Brenda promised, “I’ll meet you.”
Sharon sniffled - allergies, of course. “My car is there.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Brenda retorted firmly. “I’m not wastin’ another single minute.”
Character(s): Brenda L.J. & S. Raydor
Words: 7,462
Genre(s): Romance/Angst
Rating: Rated: M
Summary: They're not exactly friends. They're not exactly enemies. Defining
their relationship might, she worries, make it mean something. Maybe that's
what really keeps her awake at night.
Author's note: Christmas is either coming really early this year, or really late last year, depending on your point of view. This is the penultimate chapter of B&B, and I want to thank everyone who has hung in there during this longer-than-anticipated journey. We've almost come to the end of the road. I hope you'll think it's worth your while. If you have any special requests for the last chapter, drop me a line - I aim to please.
1.
Brenda Leigh Johnson had never lost the childlike joy and glee she’d always felt from the start of every holiday season. The first Christmas song on the radio, the first red-nosed reindeer lighting the dark Georgia night, the first glimpse of big department store bows and shiny tinsel made her eyes shine and her heart skip a beat. Fritz had never been able to wrap his head around the genuine enthusiasm with which she embraced her parents’ yuletide visits, replete with tacky sweaters and Frosty the Snowman and enough food to feed an entire battalion of the Confederate Army or a roomful of hungry LAPD officers, whichever happened to turn up. To him it had seemed so unlike Brenda; but it wasn’t at all, it was just a manifestation of the part of her he knew least - the part she’d tried to squeeze out of her deputy chief persona, with the result that it oozed out around the edges like the cream in a sandwich cookie. For Brenda, Clay and Willie Rae brought Christmas itself to Southern California.
Of course, this Christmas would be quite different.
“Chief?” Brenda jumped, startled, when Sanchez’s hand landed on her upper arm, jarring her out of her contemplation of a tiny nativity scene on the mantel of their latest murder victim. “There’s something in the kitchen I think you should see.”
She nodded and signaled to Tao, her gaze still fastened on the Holy Family. “Bag this,” she informed the bald lieutenant, sweeping her hand toward the collection of miniature figurines. “The third wise man’s got blood on ‘im.”
Yes, this Christmas was going to be different.
2.
“Sharon?”
Green eyes snapped up from their appraisal of the warm oak tabletop and abstractedly returned to the face of her companion.
“I asked if you like the wine.”
“It’s good.” Sharon managed a smile, but Kate wasn’t fooled for a second.
“I propose a toast,” the redhead said, and Sharon obligingly if spiritlessly lifted her glass. Kate bit back a sigh. The feeling she often got of being humored was one of her least favorite aspects of her former lover and present friend.
“To?” the captain prompted after a couple of beats.
Kate lifted her narrow shoulders in a small shrug. “I was going to say ‘To the pleasure of your company’ but you’re light years away, so instead I propose ‘The holidays.’ L’chaim.”
Sharon’s lips curved into a more genuine, if guilty, smile as their glasses of Chablis clinked together.
“I still can’t believe you didn’t even call me.”
It was the refrain of the evening, and before answering Sharon dragged a chunk of focaccia through the olive oil in a small dish between them. “I’m fine, Kate. The only casualty was my sofa, which, as I recall, you never liked.” Sharon rested her hand atop her friend’s, ready to appease Kate and have done with this particular line of conversation once and for all. She was surprised to feel herself fight back a flinch at the contact. Had Kate’s hands always been so cold? Brenda Leigh’s were warm. “I told you he was only trying to scare me.”
Kate shook her head. “Honestly, Sharon, I don’t see why you don’t go ahead and reti-“
“Do not use the R-word with me,” the captain interrupted, scowling. She chewed another morsel of bread, her shoulders drooping. She felt Kate’s eyes on her. “Besides,” she admitted more softly, curling her hands into fists where they rested against the edge of the table, “it may be unnecessary. It’s looking extremely likely that I’ve gotten myself fired.”
The other woman’s carefully shaped eyebrows shot toward her hairline. “Fired?” she exclaimed so loudly that the diners at the next table turned to look. “You?”
“Me.” Sharon sipped her wine, pleased that Kate had remembered Chablis was her favorite white. But then, they’d ordered enough bottles of it to share.
“Is this about that scumbag you shot?”
The captain cocked her head and felt her hair slide over the angle of her jaw. “Mm, it would provide as good an excuse as they’re ever likely to get,” she replied, because there was really no discreet way to say “I accused the acting chief of police of plotting to kill my ex-lover (and his).” She’d heard nothing from Pope or Taylor over the course of the past four days, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to convince herself that no news was good news.
A waiter delivered their antipasti and Sharon picked up her fork to take a delicate bite of white Tuscan beans and fennel sausage. Kate eyed her for another moment.
“Be it noted,” she said with grim humor as she picked up her own fork, “that I am choosing not to pry and instead to change the subject. I expect a gold star in the hereafter. What are your holiday plans? Park City as usual?”
“Oh.” Jonathan had asked the same thing the previous week - with good reason, since it was already the 20th - and yet the question somehow came as a surprise. An unpleasant surprise. She gestured vaguely with her fork. “Oh, I suppose. The kids will be with David in New York. To tell the truth I haven’t given it much thought. I’m not in much of a holiday mood this year.”
Kate frowned, concerned. The Sharon she knew tended to bake up a storm and decorate everything in sight at Christmas. “Oh, hell. I’d invite you to spend it with me, but I’m taking Pam to Paris.”
“Pam?” Sharon chewed thoughtfully. “You’ve been seeing her, what? A month?”
Kate grinned. “She doesn’t hold a candle to you, Sharon Raydor. But the holiday is a good excuse for a vacation. - Maybe that’s what you need.”
The other woman snorted. “A vacation. Kate, I haven’t worked in nearly three months.”
“Exactly. Get away from it all. The stress, the empty house, your mother - Brenda.”
“I don’t want -“
“I know you don’t want to talk about her. It’s a good suggestion, Sharon. Barcelona, maybe? Or somewhere warm. Go to South America. Ride horses or lounge on a beach. Have sex.”
But sex had caused Sharon enough problems recently; she was thinking about architecture. “Barcelona,” she mused, thinking of unfinished cathedrals and a musical, lilting language. “I was there thirty-five years ago, just for a weekend. It was beautiful.”
Kate’s lovely straight teeth beamed at her friend. “You should do it. Not being at work is not the same thing as taking a vacation. Promise me you’ll at least think about it. You have the time and the money. You could go anywhere you wanted.”
Anywhere she wanted, except back to work or into Brenda Leigh’s bed.
The captain polished off the rest of her glass of wine in one gulp. “I’ll think about it,” she reassured Kate, her eyes already far away. “I certainly will.”
3.
Sharon had decided to give herself a Christmas present.
It wasn’t neatly wrapped under the Christmas tree (she hadn’t put up a tree this year, much to Claire’s chagrin) with a big red bow and a gift tag from Santa. It wasn’t really anything tangible at all. It was walking through her silent house, doing a last-minute check to make sure the windows were locked and the appliances unplugged, even though she already knew they were. It was throwing her Louis Vuitton suitcase into the trunk of her car, smoothing the loose tunic she wore over her faded jeans, and driving away without a backward glance. It was the open road stretching before her.
She had decided she didn’t need exotic climes or horses or cabana boys (or girls). But Kate had been right: she needed a vacation.
She didn’t need Park City with her family gathered around her, too many of them in the small space of her father’s timeshare. She didn’t need the beach house in Santa Cruz with too many memories. What she needed was a change, somewhere different, somewhere she could just be herself, not anyone’s mother or daughter or friend or lover. Just herself. Just Sharon. Just a woman.
Sharon was fairly certain she had hurt Claire’s feelings when her daughter, curled up next to her on the brand new sofa two nights before as they demolished a large pepperoni pizza and watched the opening credits of Hello Dolly roll across the flat screen, had casually broached the subject of remaining in California with her mother instead of flying out to New York the next morning, and Sharon had immediately and certainly replied, “No, I want you to go.” Claire had studied her with her big serious eyes, and Sharon had known her youngest child was worried about her, but she hadn’t been able to provide an explanation, not really. All she’d been able to say was, “I need some time by myself, to think. I promise I’ll be fine, baby.”
Time by herself. To think.
That was what she needed, wasn’t it? To be away from the constraints of her daily life, a life that had paradoxically seemed both stagnant and chaotic during the last few months, and think about what she really wanted, really needed, and how to go about moving forward?
Sharon allowed herself a small smirk. Wandering off into the desert to meditate for three or four or five days - how very un-Captain Raydor.
Sharon loved the desert the way she loved the mountains and the sea. Brenda’s assessment had been fair after all, she acknowledged: she was a true California girl at heart.
Brenda. Her heart gave a hard, shuddering throb, and Sharon sighed, aware that she could no longer pretend she was too logical or too aloof or plain just too old to experience the deeps and shallows of romantic love. She was driving off into the desert to spend three or four or five days thinking about Brenda Leigh Johnson; that was what it boiled down to.
It didn’t help that she was worried about the younger woman’s safety, truly worried. Jason Donovan or no, something was rotten in Denmark, and the captain remained convinced it had much more to do with the deputy chief than it did with her. She was even becoming increasingly convinced that someone wanted to get a certain annoyingly persistent FID captain out of the way so that he (or she) could have easier access to Brenda. There had been too many coincidences, and at the risk of being branded as a conspiracy theory nut, Sharon couldn’t see any way to convince herself that all those coincidences didn’t require the involvement of someone inside the LAPD - someone fairly powerful.
She didn’t think it was Pope, not really.
She hoped to Christ it wasn’t Pope, because if it was, she was well and truly screwed, and so was Brenda Leigh, who would persist in trusting the man despite any and all evidence that he was a self-interested, back-stabbing little prick, not that Sharon would actually say as much about her boss.
She frowned at the highway in front of her. Taylor? Despite her total lack of confidence in the man, it seemed a bit extreme to cast him in the role of murderer. Although no one had actually tried to kill Brenda. Or Sharon, for that matter. Taylor as a shadowy shot-caller, moving behind the scenes and getting others to do his dirty work? That was more believable, but still…
She considered the possibility that she was just hacked off because the man kept trying to take her job.
In that moment Sharon decided she didn’t care that it was Christmas. When she reached her destination, she was going to call Will Pope and inform him that Santa Claus was bringing her reinstatement as the head of FID, because she had been a very good girl. Then at least she’d be around to keep an eye on Brenda during the day.
Of course that did nothing to solve her other problem, which was that keeping an eye on Brenda wasn’t what she really wanted to be doing. She just… wanted her, full stop.
Her heart did that unpleasant thumping thing again, and she winced as she changed lanes.
She wanted to be with Brenda Leigh.
And Brenda Leigh had said she wanted to be with Sharon too.
Sharon had convinced herself Brenda was reckless, delusional - naïve, even. Because things didn’t happen like that; people’s lives didn’t work like that.
Except when they did.
Sharon’s palms tingled, and she felt that same uncomfortable sensation she’d felt standing in a perfectly nice apartment talking about southern exposure and hearing Brenda say, “I want you to like it,” and this time Sharon Raydor looked that sensation head-on and acknowledged it for what it was: fear. Pure, complete, blind fear. Because she wanted Brenda Leigh Johnson more than she had let herself want anyone or anything in a very long time, perhaps ever, and there was every chance that their complicated, frustrating relationship wouldn’t work out and Sharon would end up broken in ways she couldn’t even begin to contemplate.
Brenda’s smile, Brenda’s laugh, Brenda’s pointy little chin and perfect breasts and petulant scowl all flashed across Sharon’s vision like a cinematic reel, and she pounded her palm so hard on the top of her steering wheel that the ache reverberated all the way up her arm.
“Have you told her?” Claire had asked softly over hot chocolate and the remains of the pizza, and Sharon had scowled at her child’s audacity. The follow-up question had been even worse: “Why not?”
There were a thousand reasons why not; Sharon could have listed them off the top of her head.
And there was probably only one reason why she should. Because it was real and it was true, and Brenda should know how Sharon felt.
Sharon looked up at the sky, a pure soft blue hiding behind the layer of smog, as if afraid the contact might hurt it. Only a coward would think it was better to hide and avoid the risk of loving and still failing, and while the captain was many things, she was pretty sure she’d never been a coward. Whether or not she managed to shame Will Pope into giving her back her job, there was only one real course of action she could follow if she wanted to move forward. She had to go to Brenda and tell her that she loved her and that she was terrified by it. Saying it aloud might even make it a little less scary, although Sharon remained dubious.
The traffic slowed, and Sharon shifted in the driver’s seat, impatient. Her gaze fell upon the random exit sign looming ahead of her.
Without allowing herself to hesitate, she swung the wheel and stomped the accelerator, lurching into the turn lane. After months of uncertainty, Sharon saw what she needed to do with absolute clarity, and she didn’t need to go meditate in the desert like some half-insane prophet before she just ripped the damn band-aid off and did it.
4.
She’d waited as long as she possibly could before driving to the airport. She had lingered in her brand-new, half-furnished apartment, poking at unpacked boxes, sniffing the freshly applied paint, throwing out anything in the fridge that might spoil while she was gone, even the half gallon of skim milk that had an expiration date of January 2nd. Before that she’d similarly haunted the murder room, carefully erasing the murder board, making sure all the caps on the magic erase markers were sealed tightly, stacking random papers into perfectly neat, meaningless stacks on her desk. She’d felt Provenza and Sanchez staring at her while trying to pretend they were oblivious to her actions.
Brenda Leigh couldn’t explain her dawdling. Her childhood home waited, complete with baked ham and squash casserole and sour cream coconut cake for dessert. Her youngest brother would be there with his wife and their toddler daughter, and there would be aunts and uncles and cousins galore. Mama and Daddy had promised her that everyone already knew not to ask any awkward questions about Fritz, and she was seasoned enough to ignore the odd pitying or disapproving glance.
Brenda had always heard about dysfunctional families, and she had no doubt they existed and plenty of people were stuck in them, but she had always liked her own family just fine. She liked going home to Atlanta, too, even if somehow she hardly ever found the time to make the trip. Spending the holiday surrounded by all her relatives would be good. It would be wonderful and warm and comforting, the seasonal equivalent of crawling back into the womb, but with better food.
Perhaps that was the problem, she mused as the cabin lights were dimmed for take-off. If the last few topsy-turvy months had taught her anything, it was that she wanted to go forward, not back.
That, and the way her thoughts kept straying from visions of her family gathered around her parents’ dining room table to imagine a solitary, elegant figure standing at a granite-topped kitchen counter making green tea.
It wasn’t that she felt sorry for the Sharon she remembered-slash-imagined. Rather, she envied her. Or, no, that wasn’t right either. Coveted. Coveted was better.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife or his ass. That one had always made Brenda Leigh giggle.
She wanted Sharon Raydor, as much as - more than - she had ever wanted her before. Somehow it was easier to admit that here on a 757 with the cabin doors already closed, insulated with this random assemblage of people headed for the East Coast, as if she could already look down from a great height at her own life with the luxury of analytical distance. Her pride stung from the way Sharon had rejected her, trivialized what she felt, but she knew the older woman wanted her too - she knew it.
She also knew Sharon was scared, which was really saying something, now that she thought about it. Sharon hadn’t been scared when she’d had to shoot a man. Sharon hadn’t been scared when Jason Donovan had opened fire on her house like it was a free-for-all at the shooting range. Sharon wasn’t scared of the scorn of her colleagues, or big fat spiders, or the way Brenda looked with no make-up on. Sharon wasn’t scared of anything.
Except this thing between them. That was pretty damn powerful.
Brenda’s small frame pressed back into her smaller seat as the aircraft lifted from the ground, and she felt a tight, tingling sensation akin to panic in her chest. Go back, she suddenly wanted to cry. Go back! She needed to be back on the ground, back in Los Angeles, back with Sharon.
Now that it was completely beyond her control, Brenda Leigh saw it all clearly, which was fairly typical, wasn’t it?
They reached cruising altitude, the pilot turned off the fasten-seatbelts sign, and a flight attendant served Brenda tasteless coffee, and with each moment Brenda’s conviction grew. This was wrong. This was not what she needed to be doing.
She’d been so angry with Sharon, furious at her, for not trusting her, not believing in the reality of her love and her commitment - but had she ever told Sharon she loved her? Had she ever told Sharon she wanted to be with her, stay with her?
Brenda Leigh stared at her little packet of Delta Airlines pretzels, feeling like a prize idiot.
She and Sharon were alike in so many ways, strong-willed, intelligent, relentless, unconventional - but in this they were complete opposites. Where she was impulsive, Sharon was cautious, wary. Was it any wonder that the woman needed a little reassurance?
Brenda spent most of the long flight gnawing on her lip, fighting an internal battle with herself. Part of her worried that she was being a little ridiculous, overly dramatic, acting like a character in some sappy romantic movie (something from the forties, with women who wore red matte lipstick and silk stockings), and that if she turned up on Sharon Raydor’s doorstep, the other woman would give her that cold, penetrating Captain Raydor stare and send her on her way.
By the time her flight landed, Brenda had decided that while a grand, impulsive gesture might not win Sharon over, sweep her off her feet and mean the two of them would live happily ever after, Brenda needed to make it, for her own sanity if for nothing else. She would go crazy if she had to wait a week to see the brunette captain again. She would die of impatience.
After she had disembarked and collected her suitcase, instead of picking up her rental car, Brenda made a phone call, and forty-five minutes later Willie Rae was there, a slim figure in a long camel-colored coat.
Brenda lifted one hand in a silly little wave, unable to help herself. Willie Rae simply surveyed her daughter from head to foot, nodded, and asked, “When’s your flight back, honey?”
“Hi, Mama.” Brenda smiled tremulously, suddenly surprisingly close to tears. “Everything’s full, so I’m flyin’ standby.”
“Well, I was going to offer to take you to lunch, at least, but I suppose you won’t want to leave the airport.”
“We could get some coffee instead.” Brenda gestured toward the Starbucks kiosk over her mother’s shoulder.
“I have my two cups with breakfast every mornin’, Brenda Leigh, but it’s fine if you want some.”
“No, I probably don’t need any more,” Brenda admitted shakily, absently smoothing her skirt the same way she always did when she was a little girl facing a scolding. “I’m sorry I ruined Christmas, Mama,” she blurted.
Willie Rae smiled slightly even as she raised her eyebrows. “Don’t be foolish, Brenda Leigh. Your father and I will have a perfectly lovely day with your brother and his family,” she pointed out, gently reminding the deputy chief that she wasn’t the center of the universe, not even the center of the Johnson family solar system. “What I want to know is what you are gonna be up to. It’s not work.” Brenda shook her head. “Is it about Fritz?”
“No, Mama.” Brenda looked over at a cluster of unoccupied chairs near one of the automatic trash cans that had ceased being automatic not long after their 1996 pre-Olympics installation. “Let’s sit down.”
As the two women settled next to one another in the rigid plastic chairs, harried travelers swirling around them, children crying, luggage wheels squeaking, the forty-seven-year-old deputy chief didn’t know what she was going to tell her mother. She always had a plan going into an interrogation, but this time the roles were likely to be reversed.
“Mama, you need to understand that Fritz and I aren’t ever gettin’ back together.”
“Oh, honey,” Willie Rae put in instantly, her face alight with sympathy, “it’s barely been a month. Sometimes these things just take ti-“
“No. It’s my fault - mostly my fault. I - I’m in love with somebody else.”
Even as she spoke the words and her heart leaped with panic, there was a faint undercurrent of relief at admitting it to someone. She’d finally said it aloud. She, Brenda Leigh Johnson, was in love with Sharon Raydor. It was as if now that the words had been said, the universe would be forced to acknowledge them.
She gave her mother a second to chew on that before bursting out, “I can’t even be sorry about fallin’ in love, because that’s what it took to make me see that I didn’t love Fritz the way a wife - the way you’re supposed to love the person you’re married to. Not like you and Daddy love each other.”
Brenda’s throat bobbed as she swallowed hard, too afraid of censure to look her mother in the face, so she studied Willie Rae’s hands instead. They were almost as expressive as her face: thin and blue-veined, work-roughened in a way that would never diminish their natural elegance. They twisted together briefly as the older woman’s right hand smoothed over her own wedding ring.
“Mama,” Brenda Leigh whispered desperately, because she had basically just admitted to her devout mother that she’d broken her vows and had an affair; she hadn’t said it in so many words, but her mother was far from stupid, and now her cheeks were scalding with shame and embarrassment. “Say somethin’.”
“What do you want me to say?” Willie Rae returned in the sharp, matter-of-fact tone that always made her husband and her children stand up a little straighter. “I can’t say I approve.”
“I know,” Brenda said, still whispering. “I know. I’m awful, and you and Daddy must be so disappointed. You must hate me.” She bit her lip, unable to stop the two tears that escaped from beneath her eyelids. She knew she sounded like a melodramatic child, but she was, at least, determined to keep herself from blubbering.
“You stop that,” her mother returned even more sharply. “Tears never fixed anything, and you know perfectly well that your father and I could never hate you, even when we’re mad. Even if we are disappointed.”
“You are disappointed.” Willie Rae nodded. “In me or for me?”
Her mother shrugged, a fatigued lift of shoulders bearing many decades of life experience. “Both, honey. You’re my only daughter. And while I certainly believe in the sanctity of marriage, I don’t think you’d be doin’ Fritz any favors by stayin’ married if you don’t love him enough to keep from - from takin’ up with somebody else. He deserves better.”
Brenda winced. She knew what her mother was saying was not only true but mild, much kinder than she deserved. She forced herself to take a few deep breaths and remember that she was a middle-aged woman, a reasonably autonomous adult, not a child. She craved her parents’ approval as she always had - although she knew that her odds of getting it this time were about as good as the odds that Clay would vote the straight Democratic ticket in the next election - but she knew what she needed to do regardless. She knew what she was going to do.
“You haven’t told me why you came all the way out here just to turn around and fly back across the country.”
“Because I made a mess of things. I’m not very good at cleanin’ up my messes, but I suppose it’s way past time for me to learn.”
Willie Rae tilted her head. “And this means you have to turn right back around and fly to Los Angeles now, today, on Christmas.” Honestly, Brenda thought, her mother chose the most unexpected moments to come over all stoic and unruffled - she was a tiny little bit like Sharon that way.
“Yeah, Mama. I think it does.”
“Here.” A slightly crumpled Kleenex appeared in Brenda’s direct line of sight as she reached up to wipe her nose, and she took it, risking a quick glance at her mother’s face. The lines, the planes, the fall of snow-white hair were all there, all the same and blessedly familiar.
Willie Rae stood up very gracefully for someone of her age. “You just come on home if you don’t get a flight, Brenda. Make sure you get somethin’ to eat before you get on the plane, and call us when you get there. You know we worry; it’s our job.”
As Brenda stood too and automatically leaned down to accept her mother’s embrace, her eyes were wide with surprise. “You’re leavin’ already?”
Willie Rae smiled slightly. “Well, it is Christmas Day, honey. I have a ham to see to, and the sweet potato casserole needs to go in the oven shortly.”
The sweet potato casserole: Sharon had made it last year. The marshmallows hadn’t really been burned, the deputy chief acknowledged generously, just chewier than she preferred.
“What are you gonna tell Daddy?” Brenda asked anxiously, wondering if anybody ever felt like a grown-up when confronted by a stern-faced parent.
“That somethin’ came up,” Willie Rae replied briefly, adjusting the collar of her coat. “Merry Christmas, Brenda Leigh.”
5.
“I think,” said the voice on Brenda’s voicemail, and then it paused. “I think I may have created a sticky stit - a sicky sit - a problem. A minor, ah, embarrassment. For you. Or perhaps not. I don’t know. At any rate, I’m spending Christmas at the Holiday Inn. Isn’t that just completely appropriate? At least the mini-bar is stocked. Was stocked. I didn’t drink the tequila, though. Who drinks tequila out of a mini-bar? And they keep playing your song, Brenda Leigh. I - oh, hell. This isn’t why I called. I just - I wish - shit. I am drunk.”
Even completely bewildered, standing inside the main terminal building at LAX with her cell phone clapped against her ear, Brenda couldn’t help the smile that flitted across her face at Sharon’s precise, meticulous enunciation.
“All I’m accomplishing is embarrassing myself. I -“ A hesitation; a ragged exhalation. “Bye, Brenda. Merry Christmas.”
Her voice sounded small. Sharon Raydor never sounded small. She filled any room she entered with her confidence, her assurance, her damned Sharon-ness.
Still standing right there among the swirls and eddies of travelers, Brenda Leigh dialed Sharon’s number from memory. (When, exactly, had she memorized Sharon’s number? Brenda didn’t actually know anybody’s phone number besides her parents’, and they’d had the same one for thirty years.)
She listened as it rang and rang.
“Hello, you’ve reached Sharon Raydor. I’m not able to take your call right now, but -“
Brenda hung up. She didn’t have the time or the patience to leave a message and wait for that woman to decide to crawl out from underneath her hangover and call her back. Sharon obviously wasn’t in Los Angeles, and she wasn’t in Park City with her father and brother or up at the beach house if she was staying at a Holiday Inn somewhere. (Oh, Sharon, where are you? Why aren’t you here when I came all the way back out here to find you, damn it?)
Brenda gnawed on her lip for a second before scrolling through her recent calls. Back, back, back - bingo.
At first Brenda didn’t think she was going to answer, the phone rang so many times; but at the last possible second before the call went to voicemail, a breathless voice exclaimed, “Hello!”
The voice was achingly familiar in the way the speaker enunciated so precisely, even on that one simple word, but it was the wrong voice, and Brenda suddenly felt the weight of exhaustion and her solitary state and all the things she had messed up so horribly over the last few months.
Impatient now, Claire repeated, “Hello?” She sounded so much like her mother when she was impatient.
“Claire, it’s Brenda.” She allowed herself a small space to breathe, and then poured every ounce of Southern sweetness and honey she could muster into her question. “Do you know where your mama is?”
“At home.” A beat. “Isn’t she? We all talked to her this morning, but I called her on her cell. If she’s not at home, Brenda, I’d think you’d know better than I would where she is, but -“ There was muffled conversation as Claire turned away from the phone, obviously asking her brother if he knew the whereabouts of their mother. Brenda clearly heard his negative response.
Brenda sighed. “Thanks, Claire. Merry Christmas,” she added half-heartedly.
Before the chief could hang up, that familiar-but-wrong voice softly replied, “Merry Christmas to you, Brenda Leigh. I hope you find my mom. We’ll see you soon, yeah?”
Brenda hoped so too.
The deputy chief flopped down in one of the rigid chairs that, despite their designer’s best efforts at modern contours and tasteful fabric choices, felt like nothing but gate-side airport chairs. They felt like waiting, and reminded the blonde that she had nowhere to go, no particular destination. She wanted to go to Sharon, but she couldn’t find Sharon.
“Dammit,” she swore, dropping her elbows to her knees in defeat. Sharon Raydor, where the hell are you? Brenda felt the humiliating sting of tears behind her eyelids, because she was exhausted and she missed Sharon, who was somewhere hurting and pounding down tiny bottles of overpriced hotel booze; because she wanted Sharon. She wanted to hold her and comfort her, give the apologies Sharon didn’t want but needed to hear nonetheless; assure her that she understood, even if she didn’t, not completely, but she was trying. She just wanted to look into her eyes, hear her voice live and in person, touch her hand. The tears kept rising, because she had put that grave, determined look on her mama’s face and because she had missed Christmas dinner. Because she had impulsively made a grand romantic gesture, possibly - probably - for the first time in her life, and the excitement and trepidation and sense of urgent importance she’d felt since making that decision was ebbing away into nothingness, with no one to appreciate it. She acknowledged that a measure of the feeling was self-centered - Brenda wanted to be romantic this one time, god damn it (and never mind what her mama would think of her language) - but only a measure. She wanted to do this for Sharon.
But that woman was thwarting her again.
Her phone vibrated, and for an instant Brenda was elated with giddy hope, until her parents’ photo appeared on the screen.
No. No, she just couldn’t.
She also couldn’t just sit here in the airport all day. She might as well go home; it wasn’t like she had anywhere else to go.
As she slid into the backseat of a cab (the airport’s prices for long-term parking were extortionate), her phone vibrated again. Her mother had left a message. With a dutiful sigh, Brenda lifted the small hunk of plastic to her ear and pressed the appropriate button.
Willie Rae’s voice filled her ear. “Brenda Leigh, it’s your mother, just checkin’ in to see that you made it home okay. I know you’ve had a long day and you must be worn out, so if you don’t feel like talkin’, you can just send one of those word messages -“
(In the background Clay interrupted, “Text messages, Willie Rae; they’re called text messages.”)
“Whatever, Clay. - Oh, by the way, your daddy and I had the nicest surprise a little while ago. Your friend Sharon dropped by to say hello. She’s such a lovely girl - well, woman, I should say. You didn’t even tell us she was in town, honey. She said she’d come to visit a friend because her children are with their daddy this Christmas. I invited her to stay for supper, but she had plans.”
Brenda stopped listening, frozen with shock. Sharon. Sharon had been at her parents’ house. Sharon was in Atlanta.
Sharon had gone to her, for her.
Rational, practical Sharon had paid the Lord only knew how much for a last-minute ticket and flown across the breadth of the continental United States to go to Brenda - while Brenda was doing exactly the same thing in reverse. Things like this didn’t happen in real life.
Real life. Brenda’s lips quirked slightly as she remembered Sharon’s angry insistence: “This is real life… There’s no fade to black.” Yes, this was real life; but maybe sometimes real life was allowed to be like the movies. Maybe no one got a happy ending. Brenda Leigh would settle for a happy right now.
Romantic gestures were great and all, but now the two of them were again at opposite ends of the country, which was terrible.
And Sharon wanted to see Brenda, which was wonderful. Her heart leaped, thudded, skittered in her chest, as off balance as the rest of her, and Brenda sucked in great lungsful of the stale, cool air recirculating in the cab’s interior.
Once she’d caught her breath, she burst into laughter, the sound loud and shrill in her own ears. Only when she felt the startling scald of hot moisture on her cheeks did she realize she’d also burst into tears.
**
When the bedside phone began to ring for the third time in as many minutes, Sharon reached out, tentatively curling her palm around the cool plastic receiver. It wasn’t a wrong number. It wasn’t a prank call. It was Brenda. Sharon knew it as surely as she knew she was going to have a bitchin’ headache the next morning.
So why wasn’t she answering? She wanted to talk to Brenda - had flown across the country to talk to Brenda. But it wasn’t supposed to go like this. It was supposed to be face to face, with Sharon looking her carefully groomed best. She was supposed to have all her faculties about her and be able to recall the little speech she’d prepared, going so far as to write it out on the long flight from LAX.
The phone stopped ringing, and instead of feeling relieved, Sharon felt her heart plummet.
No less than ten seconds later it rang again, and said heart leapt into the captain’s mouth, tattooing wildly. Oh, for heaven’s sake.
She lifted the receiver but couldn’t bring herself to speak.
“Finally!” Brenda exclaimed, exasperated; and then, when the silence continued, “Sharon?”
“Yes.” Was that her voice, that breathy little exhalation? Fuck.
“Are you okay?”
The drawl was so tender, so alive with concern, that Sharon’s rigid muscles melted and she slumped back against the mound of hotel pillows. “Yes,” she managed. “Yes, I think so.”
They were both quiet, listening to the barely audible susurrations of one another breathing.
“That’s good,” Brenda said quietly, sounding shy. “So - Atlanta?”
Green eyes roved around the characterless hotel room. “Atlanta,” she confirmed.
“My parents seem to be under the impression that you have family there.” Brenda cleared her throat. “You got another child you haven’t mentioned? Sibling? Cousin?”
“Of course not,” the older woman murmured faintly, her newly unpredictable heart doing that unpleasant thing in her mouth again.
The pause was a long one.
“I - I’m glad.”
More silence. Why couldn’t she talk? Sharon wondered frantically, and the more frantic she became, the harder it got to contemplate opening her mouth and making words come out.
“You - Did you come to see me?”
“You know I did.” Her husky voice had a trifling little catch in it. Sharon felt as if she might burst open, everything was so close to the surface of her skin and it was such a flimsy barrier.
“No, I… I know that was what I wanted you to say.”
“I came to see you.” Sharon felt hot all over, hot and trembly, and was terrified to think she might actually cry.
“Why?” Brenda Leigh’s voice was so small that Sharon could barely hear it despite the fact that every nerve in her body was straining toward the sound.
“To apologize.” All right, that was only the partial truth, but she couldn’t just blurt out “Because I love you” on the telephone after she’d had too much to drink. Again.
(For the last time, she promised herself. It never helped; it only made things worse. She didn’t need a bottle, she needed Brenda.)
Sharon looked down at her own hand, which was twisting in the comforter. “To be with you. To hold you, if you’ll let me. To make love to you.”
Brenda’s voice trembled. “Oh, Sharon, I’ll let you. Of course I will.” She chuckled weakly. “Do you know where I am?”
A little startled by the change of subject, Sharon sat up a little straighter against the pillows. “Your father said you had to go back to work.”
“That’s what Mama said she’d tell him.”
“Brenda?”
“I came back to find you. I was gonna go to Park City or your beach house or wherever -“
“Brenda.”
“We must’ve passed each other in the air. I never dreamed you’d do something like that. It doesn’t happen in real life, does it? Only in the movies.”
“This is ridiculous.” Sharon thought she needed a drink - water, or maybe a soda. Something rich and sweet and fizzy on her tongue, since she couldn’t have Brenda Leigh.
“I miss you so much.”
“I’m coming back tomorrow.” Sharon gazed at the ceiling. She’d be home tomorrow - and then what? “Brenda, can we start over?”
“No.”
The response came so swiftly that it took Sharon’s breath, leaving her as stunned as a punch to the gut.
“Sharon, this thing between us - it’s been happenin’ for two years. I don’t want to erase a minute of it.”
The captain’s chest contracted painfully and then, as if something had finally ruptured, she was able to breathe again. “Not even when you called me a bitch?”
“Which time?” the chief retorted, and Sharon felt her trembling lips curve into a smile.
“You know, when you want to, you do self-aware really well.”
“You kept tellin’ me I needed to think,” Brenda replied solemnly. “I want to make sure you know I have.”
“I have too.”
“You think too much.”
“I do. I always have, and I always will.” She drew a shaky breath. “The way you jump in with both feet - it terrifies me. I sit back on the edge and watch. I worry. I think about what’s going to happen to me when you change your mind and jump out again -“
“No,” Brenda insisted, her voice faint but firm. “No, Sharon, that’s what I -“
“I know. I know now. Sometimes I just need to feel.”
“Feel me,” Brenda encouraged.
“Yes.” It was a plea, a promise. “Be a little patient with me, Brenda Leigh. It’s been a long, long time since I let myself feel like this.”
“Are you cryin’?”
“No,” Sharon replied immediately, although she was, and she knew that Brenda knew she was. Brenda knew her better than the older woman had ever wanted to admit. “I - I think I should probably get some sleep.”
“Take some Tylenol or somethin’ first,” Brenda instructed, sparing a worry over how much Sharon had been drinking, and wondering if that was a conversation they needed to have. Not tonight, she decided. “I don’t want you feelin’ bad tomorrow. I’ve got plans for you. What time does your flight get in?”
Sharon told her, and Brenda promised, “I’ll meet you.”
Sharon sniffled - allergies, of course. “My car is there.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Brenda retorted firmly. “I’m not wastin’ another single minute.”