Work Text:
The letter arrives three days after she finds out he’s extended his tour.
Three days, two bottles of wine, a confrontation with Sean, and a google search that’s left a sinking feeling in her stomach and an email address she doesn’t want to use buried in her notes.
She doesn’t open it.
Doesn’t even pick it up for the first few days.
When she finally does, it’s only to move it out of the way. It sits on the bookcase, tucked away and out of sight. She’s only just worked up the courage to come home, can only just stand behind alone in the apartment. She has a nagging feeling of just wanting to go home when she’s sat in the middle of the first place that ever immediately felt like that.
So she doesn’t want to read the stupid letter. She knows it will just make her feel worse, make everything harder than it is already.
So she ignores it.
Which works for about two weeks.
She grabs the letter off the shelf and puts it on the counter one morning after sleep had completely eluded her the previous night. She stares at it until the alarm on her phone reminds her she needs to leave for work and she grabs her coat and leaves.
It’s still on the counter when she gets home. The exact same position. Everything is always in the exact same position as she left it and she hates it. Jay had a habit of moving everything. Never enough that she couldn’t find it, but things would always be just adjusted from where she had put them. Things staying put make her want to scream.
She ignores it some more. Work has been hell, a drugs case they just can’t seem to find a way in on, and she doesn’t have the mental energy to deal with her husband wanting a divorce. Because that’s what the letter will say, and she knows it. He finally realised what she has known since the start, that he is too good for her. Hailey is too messed up, too comfortable with the grey in between the black and white. She loves him as much as she is capable of, but because of her upbringing it’s not a whole lot in comparison to what someone else could give him. The letter will say he’s extended his tour to give her enough time to get out, for them to sell the home that was theirs and sign the paperwork making it official. She doesn’t blame him. The last time she spoke to him, two weeks into his tour, she had sobbed for over an hour once she hung up because Jay had sounded so goddamn peaceful in a way she hadn’t heard since before they got married. He didn’t need her dragging him down any longer.
So the letter stays on the counter until the case is solved.
She has two options - read it or don’t.
Option two leaves her in the position to keep going as she has been. She doesn’t have to deal with reading that her husband, the man she thought she was going to spend the rest of her life with, doesn’t want her.
Option one lets her finally know for sure. As much as she may want it to be the case, nothing is going to change whether or not she buries her head in the sand and ignores it. Reading the letter at least lets her know what she’s dealing with.
Half a bottle of wine might not have been the best way to make the decision, but it gives her the courage to open the envelope. Which she leaves on the coffee table with the letter still in. She has the next day off, and a clear head is what she needs to deal with whatever it says.
Gone noon, still wearing her pyjamas and wrapped in her blankets, she finally takes it out.
She tries not to read it immediately, to give herself a few seconds, but the moment she spots her name at the top of the page in her husband’s familiar handwriting she can’t stop herself.
Dearest Hailey, it reads
I feel like that’s how I should open this letter. Sounds stupid, kind of old fashioned, but it feels right. And like I said when I asked you to marry me for the first time, I’m old fashioned.
I love you. I know it probably doesn’t feel like it right now, but in a weird way that’s because I love you so much. When we spoke on the phone I was a wreck for days after because I missed you so much, and Martinez decided I couldn’t be trusted with my phone after I cried myself to sleep listening to your voicemails one too many times. So my phone is currently turned off in the bottom of his locker and I’ll ‘get it back when I can be trusted with it’. You’ve got the number for my liaison, as does Will, so if there’s anything you need to tell me you do have a way.
Apart from missing you like crazy, I’m doing really good. The work I’m doing here is exactly what I needed and I feel more like myself every day. Things are much clearer here than they were in Chicago, and that’s helping me be clearer. Not even just about the here and now, but what I want and who I want to be going forward. I’m so excited to come home to you and get started with the rest of our lives.
Onto the reason I’m writing this letter. You’ve been asking, and you deserve to know, but I can’t tell you the date I ship back yet. And I can’t tell you because I’ve asked for an extension to my post. Before you start thinking the worst, because I know exactly where your head is going, let me explain. The work we’re doing here is so important, and we are making such a difference it’s amazing. But one of the sergeants for the next rotation is going to be late getting here because of the deployment he’s on currently. So one of us needs to stay. We all knew they were going to ask Lawson. But his little girl started walking last month and his son is about to start kindergarten. He would have sucked it up and done it, but it would have crushed him. So I went and asked if I could extend my tour, and if I did would it mean he didn’t have to stay. Turns out it does. So, eight months is turning into a year. But that might change again, depending on this other guy.
I’m so sorry Hailey. I know how hurt you probably are. I know I should have talked to you about this, but it all happened so fast and Martinez was out on patrol so I couldn’t get my phone to call you and ask you and by the time he was back the decision was made and I was staying. I won’t blame you if you pack all my stuff up and drop it at Will's because you never want to see me again. I really hope you don’t, but if you did I’d understand. I want us to be okay, and I’m willing to do whatever it takes to make that happen. If that means therapy, couples' counselling, whatever, I’m okay with that. I don’t want to lose you. I love you.
I’m so sorry Hailey,
All my love,
Jay x
He had written he loved her. More than once, with a kiss at the end.
It wasn’t a long letter, but it was long enough. Jay’s neat print filled the page and said everything she wanted to hear.
He was struggling just as much as she was. His unit had taken his phone so he wasn’t getting her calls.
He didn’t want a divorce like she had assumed.
He wanted to come home to her and start a life together, for real this time.
It was just a few extra months because he was such a decent man that he wanted to get his friend home to his kids. It had nothing to do with her.
It has nothing to do with her.
She doesn’t know if she feels better or worse.