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Jubal could see the light shining from the edges of the window as he crossed the street to his house. Telling him that despite it being the early hours of Wednesday morning she was still awake.
He wondered if she was worried, or just simply waiting for him to get back, maybe she was reading, or had fallen asleep with the light on, all he knew was that he needed to get inside.
Once he got inside, locked all the doors and got up to the master bedroom, he knew that she was waiting for him.
“Hey,” Dana said, her voice quiet and soft as she sat up in bed.
Jubal had shrugged off his jacket downstairs and kicked off his shoes.
Leaning against the wall, he couldn’t help but smile at her. “Hey, sorry it’s so late.”
She shook her head. “It’s okay,”
He could hear the hesitation in her voice. The same hesitation that was in the voice of his ex-wife whenever he came home late.
“I’m not drunk.” He said, mainly out of habit, but also because he knew that it would be on her mind.
“Good. That’s good, are you coming to bed?”
Jubal nodded, “Yeah,” he paused. “I was going to - “
He didn’t know why, but he felt as though he needed to tell her, as though he needed to explain where he’d been, despite the fact that Dana wouldn’t push him or expect to know.
“Going to come to bed?” She asked.
Jubal shook his head with a small smile. “I went to a bar,”
He looked up and met Dana’s eye. The look of hidden disappointment and frustration he was expecting was instead a mixture of concern and understanding.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Dana asked.
Jubal shrugged, pushing himself off the wall and walking further into the bedroom.
“It was a tough case,” he sat down next to where Dana was laid on the bed. “I just, I don’t know - I ended up in a bar and,” he shrugged, all he could say was how bad the case was.
How hard everyone has worked, and how still nothing seemed to have gone right.
“It’s okay, take your time.”
He turned to look at Dana, and despite her words he knew it wasn’t all okay.
“A kid died today. He was 14, he wasn’t that much older than Isaac. We should have stopped it; we should have seen it coming.”
He stopped, taking a deep breath.
“I ended up in a bar and I was ready to go back to all of that, and I ordered a drink, I opened my wallet to pay, and saw that picture of the kids,” Jubal pulled out his wallet, handing it to Dana so she could see what he was talking about.
Inside his wallet was a picture of the three kids - which made Dana smile - they had only been officially dating for a year or so, but he still considered Eleanor his child. The picture was taken a few months ago, the three kids were sat on the couch, all of them laughing.
“Thought of them, and of you and realised that I couldn’t do that to you all.”
He felt Dana shift in bed, moving behind him. Her arms wrapped around his waist with her head in his shoulder.
“But you’re home now, you didn’t drink, you didn’t get into a fight, you came home.”
Jubal wanted to say something, but he couldn’t find the words to say how grateful he was that Dana loved him and accepted him and was so willing to help him.
“We all have bad days, and we all need someone to talk to - you can talk to me, always.”
Jubal relaxed a little. “I was so sure walking into that bar that - “
“I know,” Dana cut him off. “But you didn’t, and that’s the only thing that matters. You had a bad day, but at the end of it all you came home, to me and the kids.”
Jubal couldn’t argue with her, he knew that in the end that was all that mattered, that despite how he felt walking into that bar, he came home.
“Come to bed,” Dana said, moving away from him to get back into bed herself.
Jubal turned to look at her, he wanted to say thank you, but he wasn’t sure how. He didn’t know how to say how grateful he was that she was there, how blessed he felt to have met such a caring woman.
“I love you, Dana,”
She smiled, and he couldn’t help but smile back.
“And I love you too, no matter what.”
It felt good. Not just to be home, but to be in a home, where even though he wasn’t perfect, he was loved, loved by a woman, who along with so many other things, was ready and willing to support him.
He turned back to face her before entering he bathroom, the smile still on his face.
All it took was one bad day, one bad case for it all to come crashing down, but the more he settled into family life with Dana and three kids, the more he realised that no matter how bad the day was, how bad the case got - he could always go home.