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The closed-mouth groan gets Jack’s attention. He looks up from his book to where Bella squints at her laptop, the way she always squints when presented with something foolish. They’re sitting side-by-side on the bed, Bella in the cozy robe and bonnet that have become her nightly uniform. She keeps them as clean and coordinated as she would her work clothes, even through her tough days.
“Uh oh, I know that sound,” Jack says. “Who’s getting you worked up?”
She shakes her head; she never tells him the first time. “It’s nothing…”
“Bella…”
They’ve promised to be honest with each other, after everything that’s happened over the past few months. Her diagnosis, her suicide attempt, the roller coaster Jack has gone through at work with Will and Miriam and the loss of Beverly. Neither has the time nor energy to keep lying to one another.
“It’s Mr. Hopson from next door again. He keeps bugging me about my pollinator garden.”
Bella had planted a little patch along their front windows; herbs she would use in the kitchen intermingled with native shrubs. She did it because she wanted to attract the bees and butterflies. She’s always made a habit of attracting beautiful things (present company excluded).
(Case in point: He had to make an effort not to think too hard about the woman who made beehives out of those men every time she mentioned it. He liked to fool himself into thinking he could leave that stuff at the office.)
“What, has he got a bee in his bonnet about ‘em?”
That gets Jack an abbreviated version of the squint. She whacks him in the thigh with the back of her hand and he snickers.
“He says they look too unkempt,” she continues. “Keeps referring to them as ‘weeds.’ ‘Mrs. Crawford, the HOA is still concerned about the expanse of weeds in front of your domicile.’”
“He said domicile?” Her eye roll is the only answer he needs.
When they bought their house, they hadn’t really thought of what it might be like to live in a neighborhood with a Home Owners Association. The perks seemed ok—somebody coming by and mowing the lawn every week wasn’t so bad. With both of them having worked in government in one way or another for most of their lives, they didn’t have too tough a time following rules.
But they also had jobs. And little time for nonsense. But now that Bella didn’t have the first thing, this clown seemed to think she had the second.
“He never used to bother you about that kind of thing”
“I guess ‘out of sight, out of mind’ implies its opposite. Now that I’m at home all the time he thinks he can bother me about it.”
Jack feels a growl threatening to bubble up in the back of his throat. He swallows it back. “Do you want me to go talk to him?”
“No, no, the last thing we need is him complaining about you intimidating him,” she says.
“Please. I am nothing if not a gentleman,” he says. But there’s another part of him that knows he’s getting worse at restraining his annoyance over petty shit. Like some mousey old man making a stink over something as inconsequential as a little overgrown shrubbery when there are things like lung cancer and betrayal and people getting turned into beehives in the world.
“Besides, I used to do a better job of keeping them trimmed up,” she says. There’s a frustration in her voice, and some self reproach at her own limitations. She thinks that just because she’s sick that she’s weak, and that sits badly with him.
“So they’re a little overgrown. It’s wintertime for godssakes. Nothing looks good out there anyway.”
She bats her eyes, not in the flirty, fainting-damsel way other women might mean it. It’s more a message that says, you know what I want don’t make me say it.
He sighs. “Shall I go out and trim them for you?”
“Absolutely not. It’s already dark out,” she wrinkles her nose. “And cold.”
“I don’t mean now,” he says. “I’ll do it before dinner after I get home tomorrow.”
She fully turns from her laptop, eyes flicking from his head down to his toes, like she’s dubious about his gardening capabilities. “Only if I supervise.”
“Good. I’d be hopeless if you didn’t,” he says. “Don’t want to cut off something important.”
“You won’t.” She sets her hand on his leg, and he takes it in his. He balances the book on his knee and doesn’t retain a single word of it for the rest of the night.
*******
The next day, work is exhausting. He’s held up by the same old shit but in a different configuration. It’s gone from bees to trees to a killer who decided to go and put a woman in a damn horse. What kind of man puts a woman in a horse?
Thank god he’s got Will back. This is exactly the kind of thing they really needed him around for.
It’s a long drive back from the stables, and he has to take it slower than he’d like to due with all the ice on the road. Other than in circumstances like these, Jack really has been good about getting home earlier to spend time with Bella. Her schedule had gotten flipped upside down since she had to stop working—she sleeps all day now and wakes up around in the evening. He can only stay up with her for a little while before he falls asleep sitting up, but he always cherishes that time.
Their routines, such as they were, weren’t like other couples. They’d always been so focused on work. People usually complain about marriages falling apart when people work too hard, but Bella always valued her autonomy and alone time, and so neither of them had pressured each other to do things like eat dinner together and watch the same TV shows at night.
Bella had never been a good cook; she’d tried for a while when they first got married until probably her tenth failed foccaccia. He tried for a while and the results were even bigger disasters (some requiring a fire extinguisher). They could both make some simple pasta dishes, but man does not live by spaghetti alone.
The office meal trains hadn’t started yet, but he knows they will. It’d happened when Zeller broke his leg falling into a creek bed a couple years back and when the woman working the front desk lost her husband (also to cancer). He knows the first hint they get that he’s overwhelmed, the charity is going to start up, and he’s trying to brace himself for it.
Even worse, Doctor Lecter has already sent him home with leftovers here and there. Part of him wants to throw it in the garbage, but he knows Bella would be disappointed if she found out. He’s protected her from Will’s theories, from their new agreement. She still considers him a friend. Jack hates keeping this from her, but they’re all a little poisoned from their dealings with Lecter. Unfortunately, she’s a part of that mess now, too.
But at least now that Lecter suspects Jack is onto him, he can be confident that he’s not feeding his wife human meat.
*******
It’s dark when Jack gets home and trudges in through the garage door. Bella’s sitting in her armchair with the vaporizer in her hand, but even though he knows she’s been using it, she still looks on edge.
“What’s wrong?” he asks as he bends down to kiss her, tasting the bud on her lips.
“Did you see the front yard?”
A little flare of defensiveness, followed by guilt, pervades him. She wasn’t begrudging him for not being able to work in the garden tonight—she understands what he’s up against at work every day. It had to be something else.
“I didn’t,” he says. He starts to take off his woolen trench coat to hang in the closet “Why?”
“Hopson had a landscaping crew dig out the garden patch.”
Jack freezes, coat still hanging on him by a single sleeve. “He did what?”
He marches to the front door and flings it open. That few square feet of bare roots and branches is completely blank. There’s nothing there but frosty mud and patches of cracked ice.
“Jack, shut the door,” she calls from the doorway. He storms back inside immediately—can’t have her catching cold. She shutsthe door behind him, and they stand facing each other in the entryway crimson-colored entryway. It’s supposed to be a good luck color, but right now it just feels sinister.
“Who does this motherfucker think he is?”
“King of the neighborhood,” she says. “The almighty god of suburban homeowners.”
She puts the straw from the vape in her mouth and takes a long, deep breath. He’d think that she was taking all this oddly well if it wasn’t for that mistake. Even though it’s vapor and not smoke, a breath that deep always sends her into a nasty coughing fit. Sure enough she doubles over, and he instinctively steadies her. The rattling in her lungs vibrates against his palm.
“They were making noise under the window, and it woke me up,” she says after recovering herself. “I went outside but the damage was done. They were polite, very apologetic. He’d told them that they were ‘doing a favor for a sick woman’ and had no idea he hadn’t told me.”
“Jesus. Give me that.” He reaches for the vape, and this time she hands it over without question. He still doesn’t partake all that often—doesn’t like the way it makes him feel out of control and doesn’t like the idea that he might not be able to answer a call if he needs to. But he feels so useless that he needs something to calm him right now.
Within a few seconds, he can feel the edge melting away.
“Thought he could get away with it without you knowing he’d done it?”
“If only he’d remembered that I’ve got a little detective in me too,” she says.
“Hey, hey—not so little,” Jack says.
And then they both start giggling. She coughs again, and he pulls her against his chest and pats her on the back. Keeping an arm around her, he throws the deadbolt on the front door and guides her upstairs to bed.
Despite how mad he is, vaping took his blood pressure down a couple points. He feels his joints relax a little as he goes through his nighttime routine and sits on the bed next to his wife.
Even though there’s no smoke, the loud smell of cannabis still hangs in the air around them. After the past couple months, he’s grown used to it, even grown to like it a little bit. It’s not so sad if he just thinks of it as a new perfume; something to remind him of her.
Not something he should admit to his coworkers, that’s for sure.
Nights were what was special to them. That was the routine they did have. After they finally got home late, after they’d found something to eat on their own. They’d find each other in the bedroom and settle in for the night.
There was the physical side of things, obviously. That had never lost steam. Maybe they had the long hours of separation to thank for that—other than Bella being the most beautiful woman on the damn planet. He was always dazzled by her; this goddess that everyone wanted but he got, that chose him.
But after, they would lie there in the dark talking through their days. She helped him make sense of steering through bureaucratic bullshit; helped him figure out what to do when he butted heads with coworkers; helped him navigate all those tricky hoops and hurdles with a shred of the grace she shared with him.
When she’d stopped coming up to bed with him was when he’d first known something was wrong.
But then, he’s trying not to think about that so much. It was a waste of time for him to hold any of that against her. They were both proud people, but Jack also didn’t have any illusions about the permanence of death. He couldn’t let her (in his opinion, misguided) attempt to maintain her dignity ruin their remaining time together.
“I shouldn’t be so upset about it. It isn’t as if bees are very active in the wintertime anyway,” she says.
Jack rests his hand on her hip; her body warms the soft terry cloth of her aquamarine robe, and the sash lays limp on the bed between them. When they were first married, she had an even softer one, this creamy white satin thing. He’d loved that robe. He’d never been able to resist tugging on the sash whenever she got within reach, pull her toward himself or pull until the knot came undone—whichever came first.
Don’t know why you bother with this thing. You know I’m always gonna try to get it off you.
Why do you think I wear it in the first place?
Every time she said something like that it’d drive him nuts. It was always a revelation that she wanted him as much as he wanted her.
Where had that thing gone anyway? Probably hidden somewhere at the back of the closet, like most of the clothes she deemed “too young.” He’ll come across it at some point after she’s gone, and it’ll just be one more memory that will break him all over again. The thought made that warm buzz in his chest from the pot go tepid.
“I’ll plant some new ones in the spring,” he says. “You can tell me which ones to get and where to put them.”
“If I’m still here in the spring.” She looks up at him with eyes that are a little more hollow than they were yesterday, although some of that glaze might be from the vaporizer. But he doesn’t like to let her go down that road anymore; every time she tries, he digs in like a mule.
“Uh-uh,” he squeezes her waist. “You will be.”
“And if I’m not?”
“In the unlikely case you’re not,” he says—so emphatically he almost believes it, “I’ll make sure there are always flowers indoors for you from now until spring.”
There’s that little spark in her eye again, the one that makes him want to surround her with nothing but beautiful things to try and keep it there.
“Every day?”
“Every day. But, you need to let me pick them,” he says. She tips her head back and groans, and he tuts at her. “Come on, I know what you like by now.”
“No yellow carnations.”
“I make one little mistake twenty years ago, and you’ve never let me forget it.”
“And I never will,” she says. She looks like she’s going to say something else, but closes her mouth—like she knows whatever she was about to say would be too much for him.
She takes another puff from the vaporizer, passes it back to Jack as she settles against the upholstered headboard. Absently, he takes another drag, even knowing that it’s probably going to bite him in the ass later.
“Remember in Italy when we went out to the beach. . .” Bella says, voice languid with the drug. “I think we’d only been together about a month.”
“Uh huh…” Jack puts his hand on her knee. He knows the story she’s going to tell of course, but he still wants to hear it more than anything.
“And I lost my shoe between those rocks—”
“I would’ve carried you all the way back to the base.”
“You tried, but I liked those shoes. And they were the only ones that matched with probably half my outfits back then.” She takes the vaporizer from Jack and inhales, this time more gently. “And there was that little old spear fisherman.”
“And he speared your shoe like he wanted to roast it for dinner,” Jack shakes his head and sighs, sounding as put-upon as he always does. “I would’ve gladly bought you a new pair of shoes.”
“You were too broke—”
“—from all the flowers I bought you—”
“And so jealous.”
“That old man was breaking my balls. I was supposed to be the one come to your rescue.”
Bella breaks into another round of giggles. “You were trying so hard. And that time you tried to take me on a romantic date and we got on the wrong side of the Arno and wound up in that park with all those used needles lying all over the place?”
“And all the signorinas laughing at us. I’ll never forget it,” he says.
She leans over and gives him a kiss on the cheek, then tips her forehead against his temple. “Well, you were a big boy and took it on the chin.”
He turns to kiss her lips. They taste they always taste, plus that little hint of green. When she pulls back, she’s got a bigger smile on her face than he’s seen from her in a while. She leans in again and gives him a peck on the tip of his nose.
“You’re stoned as hell, aren’t you?” he says.
“Mmhm.”
“Good.”
She sets the vaporizer on the side table and scoots down the bed to rest her head on his thigh. As she shuts her eyes, his knuckles brush along the bare skin behind her ear and down her long neck. They sit like that until she falls back to sleep.
*******
The buzz wears off just enough for him to remember that petty little man next door.
Imagining this man harassing his wife from behind his computer, sneaking around their backs just so he could take something from her, makes him clench his jaw until his teeth hurt. This man who thinks he can just come onto his property and do as he pleases with it, while his sick wife is lying at home in bed.
Just another man trying to weasel his way into Jack’s life and fuck with what’s his. Reminds him a way more pathetic version of somebody else.
But unlike Hopson, the Chesapeake Ripper is someone that Jack can relate to in at least one way. He doesn’t get him the way Will does, obviously, especially if it really is Hannibal. But he does get the grudges that grow from seeds of indignity, from people who meddle in your life like they know better than you.
The resentment sown from rudeness.
With all the shit he’s had to eat to get where he is in life, letting his guard down means disrespect creates wounds that can fester. And his guard has been worn down so much over the past months that all the little scrapes and scabs are open to infection.
The Chesapeake Ripper would do something really nasty to this man. Probably sautee him with some native herbs, if Will’s right about him. That’s not a very creative crime scene, Jack realizes. But it’s not really Jack’s place to be creative—definitely not in that way. Jack has killed before, but he’s not that kind of killer.
Also he’s still pretty stoned.
Jack glances down at where Bella sleeps on her side, face pillowed sweetly on her hands.
Maybe Jack isn’t that kind of killer, but his hands aren’t clean either. Might as well get them a little dirtier. He puts on his slippers and pads downstairs, then pulls his trenchcoat on over his pajamas.
A partially full can of paint left over from when they’d done the entryway sits on the wire rack in the garage. Bella had insisted they do it themselves, and it had actually made for a lovely day. No murders. No emergencies. Just the deep thrum of the roller against the wall, some tunes, and a pizza for dinner that gave them both heartburn.
He picks up the single remaining paint roller and shoves it onto the extension pole that’s balanced against the wall. Along with the can, he carries it with him through the side door and into the yard. It’s cold, but he’s still warm from sitting with Bella and from the drugs in his system making his movements gooey and soft.
There are no cars in the driveway, which gives Jack perfect access to Hopson’s garage door. He pries the lid off the paint can with the utility knife in his coat pocket and just dips the roller straight into the can. The stuff has separated in the last year or so since they’d used it, but that doesn’t matter. It’ll still get his message across.
Drops of oil and pigment splash all over the driveway and all over his coat and pajama pants. He stretches to shape the letters. It’s hard to make a letter S with the long-handled roller, but he’s nothing if not persistent.
S - T - O -…
He keeps at it until he’s out of space on the garage door, then lets it bleed over into one of the columns beside the house. Bleed, like he’s literally painting in blood—as far as he’s willing to do so. Like some mockery of the killers he hunts. It’s not the worst thing he can do, but boy will Hopson—wormy little Hopson—be pissed off when he sees it.
And by the time he’s finished with the final exclamation point, he hears an all-too-familiar chirp and whips around. Reflexively, he drops the roller on the ground and raises his hands over his head. He hadn’t even seen a light come on upstairs.
Bold move to call the cops on the head of the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Unit, but Jack shouldn’t be surprised. Of course Hopson hadn’t even come out to face him like a man. Hadn’t even come to dig up the plants himself—had paid someone to do it. Coward.
It’s ridiculous. He’s freezing in his slippers, reeking of marijuana, and about to get arrested by a beat cop. As the officer steps out of the driver’s side door and saunters toward him, Jack keeps his hands up and chokes back a drug-induced laugh.
Oh god, it’s like getting the church giggles, the kind you get when everybody’s trying to silently pray around you and you can hardly breathe. The kind that get you smacked on the back of your head by your mother. Except this time it’s a man with his hand on his holster coming toward, and not his mother. This is very not funny, but somehow his mutinous body is still trying to force a laugh out of him.
“Is that…are you….Agent Jack Crawford?”
He doesn’t recognize the voice. But it doesn’t matter because whoever owns it recognizes him. Maybe that means he’s about to catch a break in his paint-spattered striped pajama pants and his expensive, ruined winter coat. Catch a break after painting a messy: STOP NOW DON’T EMAIL MY WIFE!!!! on his neighbor’s garage door.
The giggle in Jack’s chest finally breaks out, and he stands, hands above his head, laughing like a loon.
*******
The arrest was embarassing for everyone involved.
The officer who responded to the call looked too young to buy cigarettes, let alone carry a badge and gun. There were pimples peeking out of his patches of stubble and if he’d hoped a beard would give him an air of authority, he missed the mark by a mile. It just made him look like a kid wearing his dad's dress shoes. The glare of the police spotlight had the boy's ruddy face gleaming like a grocery store tomato, and his voice cracked when he ordered Jack to step away from the paint brush. Despite the false bravado, his eyes sought Jack's as he spoke, like he was checking whether he was “doing it right.”
Jack didn't doubt that he would've loved dearly to drop the whole thing, but the exchange was taking place under the watchful eye of Hopson who looked appropriately malevolent, backlit and looming in his bedroom window like a Disney villain.
Actually touching Jack was obviously beyond the kid. The handcuffs hung uselessly from his fingertips, held out vaguely in Jack's direction like a suggestion he could take or leave. And something about the the panic in the kid's eyes brought the humiliation of the situation home. Jack ended up cuffing himself with practiced efficiency. Thankfully, they skipped the perp walk, even though Jack was sure Hopson was filming the whole thing on his phone. He'd have to tell legal to scrub it off YouTube or wherever it ended up.
Jack bit his tongue when he almost reminded the kid to mirandize him. Let him work that screw up out with his supervisor later. Instead, Jack slid into the back seat of the police cruiser under his own power, grimacing at the little glances the kid kept darting at him in the rearview.
The twenty-minute drive to the station felt more like catching a ride with an overly chatty uber driver than an arrest. Jack half expected him to offer up a water bottle or let Jack pick the music. What was it about the younger generation that made them incapable of sitting in silence? He kept making random comments followed by a nervous twitch of a smile, pointing out suburban landmarks like Jack’s own home wasn't one house down from the garage he’d been defacing. Jack sighed and used the cell phone the kid failed to confiscate to text the team that he might be late to work tomorrow.
In the end, he shouldn't have bothered. They didn't put him in the Bullpen, but set him up with a weak cup of coffee in the captain’s office. If he had to guess, Jack would say they held him exactly as long as it took for them to come up with some credible reason not to charge him with trespassing and vandalism, which probably called for quite the legal acrobatics given that he was caught paint roller in hand and spent half the night picking red flecks from under his nails.
When morning came, the station captain shook Jack’s hand, with a reassuring flurry of, “I’m sure we'll straighten all this out,” and “there are two sides to every story," that was so divorced from the reality of the situation, Jack gave a silent prayer of gratitude that he only ever had minimal exposure to the incompetence of local PDs.
It was a little after dawn by the time he made the walk of shame from the cab to his front door, ducking his head to avoid the dog walkers’ curious glances. It was too early for Bella to be awake, but she was there anyway, sitting at the dining table, hands wrapped around a steaming mug. Shrewd eyes took in his paint crusted coat, his blood shot eyes. He knew his face must be tight with exhaustion, and he wasn’t doing much to hide that he was on the verge of collapse. When she finished her survey, she gave Jack a look she’d spent twenty years of marriage perfecting and whatever hairbrained story he'd concocted on the ride home to spare her dissolved on his tongue like an antacid. With a sense of resignation, he slumped into the chair beside her and started at the beginning.
Any hope that she’d laugh at the absurdity of it all vanished almost immediately. She’d looked concerned at first, but that quckly bled into alarm. By the time he got to the child-cop’s arrival, her breath was shallow and thready, as if she were struggling to keep it even, and suddenly it was hard to remember what part of any of this he'd ever found funny.
When he finished, Bella didn’t say a word. She was rolling her coffee mug absently between her palms, eyes unfocused on the table. Her face was drawn in a subtle moue of displeasure, like she was staring into some future Jack couldn't see and hated the look of it.
He inched his chair closer and pulled her hands away from her mug. Her extremeties were always ice blocks in the morning, but some of the heat from the coffee lingered in her fingers now. Jack lifted one hand to his mouth and kissed each fingertip, each knobby knuckle before meeting her eyes, hating that for months—through every agonizing side effect and fresh discomfort—he’d never once seen her falter. She was never worried, but it was there in her face now, plain as day.
“I know,” he rushed to reassure, pressing chapped lips to her hands as he squeezed her fingers, “I know. It was… I don’t know what the hell came over me. Guess I should probably stop using this stuff, huh?” he chuckled weakly as he tilted his head in the direction of the vape.
Bella stared at him in that way she always did when they both knew he was lying. She let Jack kiss every knuckle on her other hand, though her mouth remained a stubborn line of worry.
Eventually, she drew in a quivering breath and said, “Grief does strange things to people.”
Jack couldn't help flinching at the word. “I’m not grieving. Not yet. You’re not gone. You’re right here."
Bella’s skin was warm, her pulse fluttered steadily under the thin skin of her wrist where his thumb grazed it, but it still sounded like he was bargaining without a thing to offer. He knew that he was clutching her fingers too tightly now. Like a drowning man grasping for a line he just couldn't quite get a grip on.
When Bella shifted, he let his hold loosen, but she didn’t go far. She wrapped her arms around his back and reeled him in with surprising strength, until their foreheads knocked together. “Stay home today, Jack. Stay with me.”
Bella had never asked that of him before. They both understood that a day away for Jack was one more day with a killer at large. Long enough to kill again. Or at least cover his tracks. Case in point, he and Will were supposed to vist Peter Bernadone that afternoon.
But then Jack thought about those raven wings beating against a breastbone in a grotesque facsimile of life. The young woman’s corpse sewn into the belly of a horse, the smell of rot and blood when they pulled her out like an afterbirth. Jack would come home tonight, to Bella, after another day of this shit. Trying to peel the stench of all that death and horror off before crawling into bed next to his wife. Refusing to let any of it touch or taint her. Bella woke more easily now, but he could never stop himself from pulling her to him when he got home late. She'd pay him back for it. Half asleep, she’d slide her icicle toes up Jack's calf until he jerked away, smothering a chuckle in her hair, and passing out with the smell of her filling his nose.
And Jack realized he couldn’t think of a damn thing worth leaving her for when she asked him not to go.
With a hastily dashed off text, he canceled the visit with Will and took a day’s sick leave for the first time in at least a decade. The team would be suspicious, as they should be. It was their job to know when something was off. And Zeller and Price were like dogs with a bone when they sensed a secret. Z would probably have Jack’s arrest record and the footage from the CCTV camera on the corner within the hour. But Jack didn't worry about any of that as he pulled Bella into a kiss.
The fullness of Bella’s lips was one of many comforts he’d learned to take for granted. But even decades of intimate muscle memory would fade with time, he knew. They already kissed less. And much to Bella’s disapproval, Jack was more calculated in his touches now, more careful of her. It took a half second longer than it used to for their noses to find their places beside one another.
Jack found himself paying attention to all of it in a way he never did—the feel of her hands sliding along his shoulders and the pressure of her fingertips. The kiss tasted like a bitter mashup of Bella’s arabica dark roast and whatever sludge they'd given Jack down the station, and the pungency of morning breath hovered in the air every time they parted. Still, Jack put effort into remembering every detail, and hoped, of the thousand things he’d seen in his life that he’d gladly forget, this moment would stick.
When they fell into bed together, he breathed in the lavender cream Bella massaged into her face and neck every night, and with her pulse thumping a steady lullaby against his cheek, he slept.
*******
Jack lurched awake at noon, his heart racing like he was late for something, before he remembered that he had nowhere to be. Bella was still fast asleep in his arms. The midday sun streaming through the windows was making their room uncomfortably stuffy, but Bella seemed fine. She craved the heat these days. Pressing his nose to the silk wrap around her hair, he found the sweet herbal scent of her face cream had been replaced by clean sweat. She shivered and rolled into the warmth he left behind when he extracted his arm from under her, and Jack tucked the duvet up under her chin before heading downstairs.
Lunch was a peanut butter sandwich eaten over the sink, and by the time he popped the last piece of crust into his mouth, the novelty of an aimless day off was starting to fade. It had been a long time since he had to sit alone with himself without a case or Bella for company, and he wondered whether he was up to the task. Bella's vape was still on the coffee table, right where she left it last night, and without much debate, he took it up and headed for the patio.
Their backyard was south facing—a "feature" according to their broker. Ideal for a summer garden, she'd said, but it left Jack squinting and avoiding the oppressive heat four months out of the year. He settled on one of their stiff wicker chairs and took a drag from the vape. One deep pull was all it took for his limbs to feel looser, lighter. Another one and his thoughts felt the same. He lazed with a satisfied groan, and chuckled, wondering what Kade Purnell would say if she could see him now—playing hooky from work so he could get high alone at 12:30 on a Tuesday. He was just considering the merits of drifting to sleep again when the snick of the garden gate opening ruptured his peace.
Jack lolled his head in the intruder's direction, ready to send them packing, particularly if it was a neighbor nosing around for gossip. His tolerance for bullshit was low on a good day, and maybe it was the weed, maybe the clusterfuck of the past twenty-four hours, but he was fresh out of fucks to give when it came to neighborhood politicking.
The last thing he expected was to see Will Graham making his way down the path. As was always the case these days, Jack had no idea how he felt about Will’s presence. It was all bound up in a morass of guilt, and self-condemnation, and residual suspicion that he couldn’t shake no matter how many times he berated himself for it.
Will, meanwhile, was busy scouring the backyard like it was a crime scene, seeming to slot it into a picture that was half-formed somewhere in his mind. If he was here, it meant he’d heard what Jack did to that garage. And Jack didn’t doubt Will had clocked the conspicuous six foot trench in the front yard, how it contrasted with the rest of the orderly landscaping, and guessed at the rest. Jack felt a twinge of shame at the thought of Will Graham recreating the most asinine crime scene imagineable on his account. Jack had caught a glimpse of the photos the boy-cop snapped last night, and the final effect looked both grislier than he'd intended and excessively theatrical. Jack wasn't sure whether it made it funnier or more horrifying that it was all borne of the pettiest of HOA disputes.
Will wordlessly slid into the chair next to Jack’s, sighing up at the warmth of the sun like a cat who just found a good spot to curl up. He glanced over with a small smile, as if nothing about any of this was out of the ordinary. As if he’d been to Jack’s house before. As if he regularly found Jack flopped in a chair, stinking of marijuana in the middle of the workday. Will hesitated for a second when he spotted the vape on the table, but he didn’t say anything. About that or any of it. It reminded Jack of that day months ago. The day that Jack first found out about Bella. Before Jack failed Will by every possible measure.
I'm going to sit here until you're ready to talk. You don't have to say a word until you're ready, but I'm going to stay here until you do.
Jack refused to speak for forty-five minutes after that—some hardheaded refusal to accept Will's attempt at kindness. For the life of him, Jack couldn't understand now why he'd done it. But apparently Will's days of waiting for Jack to take the lead were behind them.
Reaching for the vape, Will pointed to his own mouth, “Do you mind?”
A bemused smile sprang to Jack’s lips and he flapped a hand vaguely in Will's direction. “Be my guest.”
From the pull Will took, it was obviously far from his first time. And even though it was the height of hypocrisy, Jack couldn't help needling him.
“Do this often?”
Will laughed, that short bark of amusement that Jack hadn’t heard in what felt like a year. He hadn't even realized he missed it.
“Not recently, but sure. On occasion.”
Jack meant to chuckle, but it came out more of an undignified snort. “Guess you've never worried too much about the FBI’s rules of employment.”
After another practiced drag from the vape, Will shot Jack a kind of grimace. “I think they'd be relieved if the worst thing I was hiding was the occasional joint.”
Will had more than earned the right to make light of what he went through at the hands of FBI, but Jack couldn’t help cringing. If Will noticed, he ignored it as he took one last pull and passed the vape back to Jack, letting them lapse into the only comfortable silence Jack could remember between them since Will’s release.
“Price is organizing some kind of edible arrangement for you by the way. He feels bad they didn't do something earlier,” Will stretched his legs out, slipping lower in the chair. “Bev used to take lead on that kind of thing.”
Jack's stomach twisted as he nodded. Will was right. Bev would've brought over a lasagna at least by now, would've recruited Z to bake his banana bread. The grief over Beverly—and for a time, Will—had shattered the team's dynamic. The gallows humor that made the daily grind bearable had been replaced by a heaviness and urgency Jack suspected they'd never quite cast off. Her death was a dull pain he'd learned to live with most of the time, only truly breathtaking when he prodded at it. But talking about Beverly with Will was a different thing. Jack always got the sense that he was being accused of something. And he wasn't at all convinced he didn't deserve it.
Jack shook the thought away and he was high enough his head shook along with it.
“Don’t think we're quite at the care package point yet. We're getting by.” Will glanced over at him like he could smell the unsatisfying peanut butter sandwich on Jack's breath, like he'd already guessed how many expired condiments were cluttering their fridge door. But that stuff didn't matter. They were fine.
Will turned his face up to the sun again. “Would a little help be a bad thing?”
Jack knew Will wasn't asking about dinners or grocery deliveries. And getting professional help wasn't a bad idea given that Jack had gotten himself arrested the night prior for a crime that was the exclusive purview of high schoolers.
Still, “Got a recommendation for a therapist? Pretty sure my wife’s wouldn’t be a good fit.”
He meant it as a poor-taste joke, but Jack hadn't quite expected Will’s eyes to shutter as he turned away, like the comment cut too close to the bone. Sometimes—and far more often than he’d like—Jack wasn't sure what to make of the way Will responded to Hannibal. Only a fool would miss how obviously conflicted he was. And every instinct Jack spent a career honing was telling him not to ignore it. But he also understood that he had no more goodwill to burn where Will was concerned. No more second chances for either of them. And he wasn’t gonna cut bait at the first sign of strain when Jack was the one who cast him adrift again in the first place.
Jack was about to move the topic to something less fraught, when Will saved him the trouble.
“Who’s the gardener?”
Of course Will knew, but small talk didn’t come naturally to him and Jack appreciated the effort enough not to point it out. “It’s all Bella.”
Will nodded, “It must have taken a lot of work to get it looking like this.”
It was such a Will Graham comment Jack couldn't keep the fondness from his face. The garden, if it could be termed that right now, was mostly a gnarled mess of bare branches. There was nothing to see but spindly stems, razed flower beds, and dead bushes cut down damn near the root. And, of course, the former pollinator garden out front, sitting there like an unfilled grave.
Jack gave him a look, and a half smile tugged at the side of Will’s mouth. That was another change. Will seemed more aware of how he came across since his release from the BSHCI. Or maybe he just realized he couldn’t afford to ignore it anymore.
“Death breeds life. This is a part of its lifecycle.” Will pointed over to a prickly bramble and what looked like a literal twig poking through the soil. “Those peonies and the camellia will do great in the full sun come spring. And I’m assuming there’s some perennial ground cover that’ll come up in April after the bulb blooms fade. There’s diversity and hardiness in the choices she made here. It’s designed to survive without much help.”
Jack hadn’t expected Will to have a green thumb. Maybe he could see him with a vegetable patch or an herb garden, something he could consume. Not anything as frivolous or fleeting as flowers. But if the past few months had taught him anything, it was that he didn’t know Will half as well as he’d assumed. Jack took in the frost-covered yard, trying to see it through Will’s eyes. He thought it might be the one beautiful inversion of Will’s overactive imagination. To look at this bleak expanse and see the life and vibrancy waiting just around the corner.
“I'll probably still manage to kill it all in a season.”
“You won’t with help,” Will said quietly, eyes still on the yard, and it sounded like a promise. Jack turned to study his profile. There was so much between them that was beyond repair. A half dozen betrayals he could never take back and wouldn't ask Will to forgive. But Will Graham had a talent for empathizing with the unforgivable. And Jack started to wonder if he even had to ask.
“Where did Bella learn?”
Jack frowned. “What?”
Will swept a hand across the yard, "To garden."
Sighing, Jack slid a hand down his face. “From her mother. Who's been dead for ten years and hated me for ten before that.”
“Why?”
Jack gave Will another look, but from the open expression Will was wearing, the question was genuine.
“Because her daughter left for a prestigious NATO posting with the whole world at her fingertips and came back saddled with a hotheaded army lieutenant. She didn't want Bella to end up a military wife.”
“And she didn't.”
“No.” Jack agreed with a lazy head shake, “What she got was a hell of a lot worse.”
“I hope you give her more credit for knowing her own mind than her mother did.” It wasn’t said harshly, just a comment.
“Did you know she didn't tell me because of work? About the cancer. Twelve weeks. Because she didn't want to add to my plate. What else do you think she sacrificed over the years at the almighty altar of my job? Because nothing was more important. Not even her health. What more did it cost her?” Jack wasn't sure where this was coming from or why he was sharing it with Will Graham right now, other than that he felt like he needed to say it to someone. And, with a painful twinge, he realized that the last time he opened up about Bella, about any of this, it was with a snifter of brandy and Hannibal’s heavy hand on his shoulder, grounding him as he fell apart.
“If there was a cost, it was her choice to pay it. It’s not your place to second guess her happiness now. She wouldn't want you to.” It was very much what Hannibal might have said, and Jack’s stomach gave an uneasy flip hearing it from Will's lips. He didn't like seeing Hannibal in Will, but these days, it often felt like there was very little daylight between them.
“Your wedding was in Italy?”
Jack shook himself as Will, yet again, steered them away from the unsettling feeling that seemed to dog every step in the conversation. With a nod and a smile, Jack let himself fall into the memory, “A traditional church ceremony, but Bella wore blue to the reception. Braided forget-me-nots into her hair. She put Lake Como to shame.”
Will listened as Jack told him about it, asking questions to extend the topic until one story about Bella became seven. He told Will about how they almost burned the soles of their feet off on Sicilian pebble beaches on their honeymoon. How the sun melted the leather off of Jack’s sandal, and the locals laughed as he and Bella hopped and yelped their way to the cool relief of the sea. He told Will about the proposal, and how his hands were sweating so badly he dropped the ring and they both had to dive to keep it from washing away down a Florence drain. There were fewer stories from the past ten years, but there was still that disastrous watercolor painting class they took a few years back that actually got Will to crack a smile.
“Thought I was dreaming when I heard laughter through the window,” came a low, breathy voice from the slider door.
Somehow Jack hadn’t heard Bella come downstairs. It felt like the first time in months he’d been home and not aware of her.
Will’s keen focus, that had glazed over for most of their conversation, returned as she moved to join them. It seemed impossible that these two people didn't know each other. Not when, between them, they were responsible for every sleepless night he'd suffered for the past year. But there was a wariness in how Will tracked Bella’s approach, something uncertain and a bit lost in his expression. Jack wondered how many times, in the weeks since his release, he'd had to endure the song and dance of being introduced to someone who already knew the worst thing about him.
Bella looked curious too, and Will certainy didn't miss it, but there was no scorn or trepidation in how she took him in. And the warmth in her expression outweighed the rest two-fold. She blew past the hand Will clumsily extended as he stood, and instead pulled him into a hug that had Jack biting back a smile. It took a beat for Will to catch up with the fact that he was being held and tentatively squeeze her back, and she kept one of his hands in both of hers as they pulled apart.
“I hoped I’d get to meet you at some point, Mr. Graham. It's rare for Jack to talk about any colleague with as much care and admiration as he does you.”
Will very clearly had no idea what to say to that, and Jack didn’t blame him. When Bella turned on the charm, it was hard to string two words together.
“Call me Will.”
Jack watched Will try and fail not to smile when Bella's face lit with genuine delight at that. It was her super power, or one of them at least. That uncanny ability to put the people around her at ease.
“I hope you're staying for dinner?”
“No. No, I should get back. Just wanted to,” Will visibly scrambled before landing on, “come by.”
She eyed the vape and met his gaze with a teasing smile. “I’m glad you did. And consider this an open invitation.”
“Will was just offering to save me from myself when the spring comes. He’s a gardener too, apparently.”
This whole interaction must have been taking a lot out of her, but she brightened impossibly more at that. By unspoken agreement, no one hinted at the reason Bella wouldn't be able to help Jack herself.
“I’ll bring some supplies by in March. Start with basics.”
Bella hadn’t released his hand yet and she squeezed it now. “I'm grateful. Jack could use the guidance, but I'll warn you, he’s terrible at taking direction.”
That earned another laugh from Will, a shocked jolt of mirth, like the only way he'd allow that kind of unbridled joy was if it snuck up on him.
When Will was gone, Bella turned to Jack with laughter brimming in her eyes.
Jack flapped a hand dismissively and let his head rest on the back of the chair. “I’ll go to the dispensary for you tomorrow.”
She chuckled then, a low tittering thing. “You can get high with your friends on a school night if you want.”
Jack rolled his eyes affectionately as she levered herself down into Will's vacated chair.
“I like him,” Bella said.
“Are you surprised by that?”
The wicker creaked as she shifted, and Jack knew without looking that she was turning her head his way. “Are you surprised?”
Jack hadn’t ever considered Will spending time with Bella. If he probed his reluctance, he knew he’d find a protective instinct at the root of it. The same one that would have him steering Bella away from a wild animal or slowing down to avoid an erratic driver. Even before any of this, Will felt like too great a risk for Bella. But when he pushed past his own reflexive discomfort and imagined it, it wasn’t hard to see. They were both practical people who valued honesty. Creatures that thrived in peace and quiet, but chose lives that allowed them far too little of it. And Bella exuded the sort of kindness Will might have benefited from. In another world, she might have understood him better than Jack ever had.
“Not really.”
“We should invite him for dinner.”
Jack peered over at her. “Should we?”
“I’d like it if we did.” And that settled that, really. They never hosted dinners, certainly not since Bella got sick and her appetite faded. But if Bella wanted to invite Will Graham over, Jack would research a fish recipe he could pull off.
Bella hummed, lips pressed in a small, satisfied smile as her eyes slipped closed. Soon they’d have to go back inside. It was too cold for her to rest out here and she was already starting to shiver. But for now, Jack warmed her cold hand with his own and let his eyes shut too. An image played behind his eyelids, and Jack couldn’t be sure if it was a memory or a wishful daydream: Bella bathed in spring sunshine, knees and fingers black with mulch and rich soil as she readied the hard, unyielding earth for the arrival of new life.