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He had to read the words on the paper three times before he understood them, but when he finally comprehended the message, Lee's head came up sharply.
"Has Amanda seen this?" he asked.
"First thing," Billy said. "I knew it'd be coming over the wire and I wanted her to find out privately before that happened."
"Where is she?"
"She's upstairs, I think."
Lee nodded. He studied the paper in his hand again, reading the words a fourth and fifth time.
"Look, if you two want to take the day…." Billy began.
"Thanks." He handed the note back to Billy and turned for the door, but paused before opening it. "I appreciate that," he said, with a backward glance.
"You know I watch out for my people."
"Yeah." Lee found himself giving in to a half-hearted grin. "I know."
Lee strode through the bullpen toward the elevators, keeping his gaze focused. He wasn't in the mood to talk to anyone right then, and he felt sure someone would stop him with a question. He stabbed the elevator call button and stood staring at the doors, thinking about what he'd learned in Billy's office. The message had been about Norton Scott, the man who had shot Amanda as she sat in a car at the Las Palmas marina, almost ending their life together before it had begun. He had died in prison, Sheriff Waterhouse had written. Natural causes. (Lee felt a twinge of remorse over how disappointed he was at those words.)
The elevator doors opened and he started at the sight of Francine. He expected her to say something, but she simply stepped off the elevator and surreptitiously reached to squeeze his arm as she passed.
She knew. She'd probably handed Billy the message herself.
He found Amanda sitting at her old desk in the Q-Bureau. Her official desk was with Analysis, but it wasn't unusual for her to set up in the Q if she was working on a case with his team, and at that moment his right hand, Paul Peterson, had stepped aside so Amanda could use the computer. They both looked up from the screen when he came in, and Amanda gave him a bright smile.
"Hi," she said, her fingers flying over the keyboard.
His heart gave an extra thump, the way it so often did when he hadn't seen her for an hour or two. He'd read somewhere that you only got a finite number of heartbeats, and then one day you reached your limit and that was it — you were done. He wasn't sure he believed that. It sounded like some kind of New-Age hokum from one of those self-help books about seizing every moment, and he had no time for that. If he was using up his supply on those extra heartbeats that came with being near his favorite person in the world, well, so be it, he supposed. It seemed a small price to pay in the end.
"Hi." He couldn't help smiling at her, even briefly, even as his thoughts continued to swirl with good and bad. He made a concerted effort to smooth his expression and nodded at Paul. "Hey."
"Amanda's just digging up some background info for me," Paul said, "and then Evelyn and I are heading out for the day."
Lee nodded, moving to sit at his own desk. He rearranged the stack of files in front of him, bounced his leg, and fiddled with a pencil while the two worked. What felt like an eternity later — but was in reality ten minutes — Amanda pressed the print button and Paul caught his jacket from the back of the chair as the printer whirred away beside them. A moment later, Paul disappeared out the door with a cheery wave, a sheaf of papers in hand.
The door shut with a click and silence filled the room. Amanda busied herself for a minute, shuffling files and stacking them in order. And Lee sat, digging his thumb into a chip in the paint on the pencil. Finally, he heard her sigh and she turned in her chair to face him.
"You talked to Billy," she said.
He dropped the pencil and nodded. "Yeah."
"I didn't know you were keeping tabs on him."
Lee sat back in his chair. "Well, yeah. Billy and I both did. Brockett, too."
Amanda nodded.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"Me? I'm fine."
His brow wrinkled. "Are you sure? It's —"
"Lee. I made my peace with all of it, you know that."
He nodded — he could see it in her steady gaze and the set of her shoulders. She had made her peace with it. How many therapy sessions had she been to, just to be able to come back to work? Everyone counted her recovery in physical milestones but few of them thought what it took to make sense of something so nonsensical. Especially something you didn't remember.
"You can't, really," she'd said to him once. "I mean you just can't."
He watched as she straightened in her seat. She was dressed for a meeting with her interagency team, in a neatly tailored pantsuit and blue silk blouse. She looked strong and limber, and he knew she was proud of how she'd recovered. She'd worked hard enough for it. She worked hard for everything. It was one of many things he admired about her.
"Come on," she said, pushing back from the desk and standing.
"Where?"
"Anywhere. Out of here."
"I thought you had a meeting."
"I canceled it." She reached for her purse, which she'd slung over the back of the desk chair. "Sometimes you have to cancel a meeting and have a piece of pie with your husband."
He pushed his chair back, laughing a little. "You do, huh?"
'Yeah. You do." She tugged open the door. "Come on."
They made small talk as they drove back toward home, talking about what the boys were up to that day and how Peterson's case was going, skirting their reason for being in the car at all.
At the Pie Plate, they sat in what Lee thought of one of his favorite booths. The breakfast rush has dispersed and a busboy moved around the room, clinking plates together as he cleared tables. Brenda immediately stopped by their table, coffee pot ready, teasing them about having a morning date.
"We didn't plan to," Amanda said, "but we had some time and we both felt like a treat."
"Can't argue with that," Brenda said, and if she thought there was another reason for their presence she didn't let on. She came back a moment later with Amanda's tea and took their order, and they sat in silence waiting for her to bring their food. Amanda's attention drifted toward the window, and she sat, her chin resting in one hand as the other lazily dipped a teabag into a pot of hot water.
Lee stirred cream into his coffee and watched her, trying to gauge her mood. She didn't look upset. Then again, he probably didn't, either, but his insides roiled and he felt ridiculous for thinking a piece of pie would offer any comfort.
He felt silly for even needing comfort. Nothing new or bad had happened to either one of them — it was just an update on a case, the type of update some people assumed would be inevitable, given Scott's choices. But it was a case with personal history attached, and even though he liked to pretend he could manage those, he'd come to realize sometimes he couldn't.
"You asked me, so now I'm gonna ask you," she said after a minute. "Are you okay?" She asked it carefully, the way she always did, because how many times had he blown off that question over the years?
He shifted in the chair, deciding to be honest. "I can't seem to settle."
"Hmm." She nodded, sipping her tea. "Well, you know, things get stirred up, I guess. Even if you don't want them to."
So maybe she wasn't as 'fine' as she claimed. He was glad, suddenly, that they were going away together that weekend. They'd booked a little cabin in the mountains and they'd asked the boys to come along but both had said no — they were with Joe that weekend anyway. For the first time in a long time, he and Amanda were heading off for two nights and three days alone. He'd found an extremely detailed grocery list on the kitchen counter that morning that meant she was looking forward to it, too.
"Yeah," he said, wryly. "Stirred up is one way of putting it."
"I don't know what else to call it," she admitted. "It gets stirred up and then it settles again. But Lee, it always settles if you just let it."
"And what, just never think about it again?"
"No." She set down her cup and he could see she was carefully choosing her words. "I think about it all the time. When I shop for clothes, or I see a story on the news, or someone at work gets hurt. But I think about it and then I think about all the good things. You, and Mother and the boys, and how I'm healthy and I have a job I love and — you know."
He nodded, giving his coffee an unnecessary stir. "Aren't you angry at him?"
Amanda chewed her lip. "I used to be. He was a terrible person who did a terrible thing. But I can't be angry all the time. It crowds out all the other things. And my life is great, Lee. Ours is. We have a great life together. Maybe not exactly the way we envisioned, but some things turned out even better."
They sat in silence as Lee sipped his coffee and listened to an elderly couple squabble over the Bananagram solution. Brenda brought their orders and they busied themselves with first bites. Another distraction.
"I'm glad he's gone," Lee muttered finally, and Amanda looked up at him, surprised. He wanted to walk the statement back even as he felt compelled to double down on it. He knew she probably didn't feel comfortable with that line of thinking, no matter how much Scott had altered the trajectory of their lives. "I can't help it," he added, his expression hardening.
"Lee." She reached to cover his hand with hers. "Look at me." She gave his hand a little shake when he kept his gaze fixed on his coffee. "Look."
He let out a long breath and did as she asked.
"I'm fine. I really am. Up here, too," she said, pointing at her temple. "I mean, if anything's not fine up there, it has nothing to do with Norton Scott." She rolled her eyes and laughed a little.
One corner of his mouth lifted, just a little. "I know."
"I'm gonna live to be ninety at least, you know that."
"Yeah, I do." He turned his hand over under hers, meshing their fingers together.
"And he's gone. He's — he's dead. But I'm here and I'm tired of devoting even a single minute to him. You know?"
"I know."
"So let's not," she said softly. "I need you to just — to let go of it. Please."
She was leaning forward on her seat, her dark eyes wide. If anyone should be holding on to anything it should be her, he thought. That bullet had derailed everything — her career, their marriage, even the way he'd gotten to know her family. Every time he thought of it he felt a knot in his chest, a tangle of rage and terror that rose up and reminded him of the way his heart had stopped, metaphorically, and hers had stopped for real.
He felt the gentle pressure of her hand, warm and soft, and the knot began to dissipate. "Can we agree to focus on other things from here on out? Good things?"
He gave her hand a firm squeeze. "Yup," he said, nodding once for emphasis. "We can do that."
"Promise?"
"I'll… do my best."
"You'd better," she said. "Your best is usually pretty darn good, so I have high expectations."
He went silent again, but his posture relaxed as he thought about her words and studied the expression on her face. She really was going to be fine. Whatever Scott's death had "stirred up" was already settling, just like she said it would. He could see that, and he envied it.
He watched as she dug into a bowl of oatmeal topped with spiced apples and toasted walnuts, drizzled with cream. She was the only person he knew who'd consider a bowl of oatmeal a treat, but he did have to admit it looked pretty decadent. He supposed it was one of those good things she was talking about — not top of the list, but part of the bigger picture. A hug in a bowl (as Brenda had called it when she'd set it on the table) that made her life better. Like those extra heartbeats that made him take a pause.
She caught him frowning as he looked at her and lifted her napkin to her face.
"What?" she finally said. "Do I have food on me somewhere?"
He chuckled. "No."
"Then what? You're giving me a look."
He shook his head. "You really are pretty amazing, you know that?"
She shrugged and looked away. "No. I just — No."
"You are," he insisted. "Every time I think about —"
"Oh come on, you just said you weren't gonna talk about it."
"Not just that. Everything." He reached for her hand and ran his thumb over her knuckles, drawing lazy circles on the back of her hand. He knew she'd think he meant other terrible things, like Addi Birol or countless other near misses. He didn't. "The way you manage everything. Work and the house and the boys and — everything." He meant himself, too, his continually crazy schedule and all the bumps that came with it as he extricated himself from the field and found himself pulled back in, sometimes with disastrous results.
Her cheeks stained pink and she blew out a short breath. "I have a lot of help."
"Amanda," he chided. "That's not what I'm saying."
She bit her lip, ducked her head, and picked up her spoon. "You're pretty amazing yourself," she said, looking up at him through her eyelashes.
He let go of her hand and leaned back in his chair, his pie abandoned for the moment. "There is one thing you're not amazing at."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. Taking a compliment. You're brutal at it, as Phillip would say."
She laughed. "He would say that. And he'd be right, I guess." She shrugged. "I'll work on it."
"Promise?" He was teasing now. She caught it, the way she always did, and lifted her spoon as if in a toast.
"I'll do my best," she said, chuckling, and then ate her oatmeal.
Lee felt the last of his dark mood slip away, hearing her soft laugh. Her eyes twinkled at him across the table, and his heart gave another extra thump. Her best was usually pretty darn good.