Chapter Text
One week after the funeral, Camille Frost learned that grief had terrible manners. It did not wait until she was ready; did not knock, did not dim the lights, or make the room feel sacred. It followed her into Barry’s apartment on a Thursday morning and stood there beside the coffee mug still sitting in the sink, as if nothing extraordinary had happened at all.
The mug was blue, chipped near the handle where Barry had dropped it years ago and refused to replace it because, according to him, “it gave it character.” Camille hated that she remembered buying it. Of all the things grief insisted on preserving, that seemed like a particularly cruel one.
Robin stepped in behind her and closed the door quietly. For a moment neither of them moved, because Barry’s apartment still looked like Barry might come back in ten minutes complaining about parking. His hoodie was hanging over the back of a chair, there was a grocery list stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet shaped like a lobster, and a half-finished crossword puzzle sat on the table beside a pen he had probably stolen from the department. Eggs. Cereal. Coffee. Batteries, underlined twice.
Camille looked at the crossword and almost laughed. “He always cheated at those.”
Robin’s hand brushed the small of her back, light enough to be refused if Camille needed to refuse it. “He called it research.”
“He called everything research when he didn’t want to admit he was wrong.”
“That sounds genetic.”
Camille turned her head just enough to give her wife a look, and Robin lifted both hands in surrender. “Too soon?”
“No,” Camille said, swallowing around something that felt too large for her throat. “Accurate.”
That was the terrible thing, the unbearable thing. The apartment was ordinary. Messy in familiar ways, warm in familiar ways, irritating in familiar ways. Nothing had changed except the one thing that made all of it make sense.
Robin did not ask if Camille was okay. They had been together long enough that Robin still sometimes asked before touching her, but not about this. Not today. Instead, she crossed to the stack of flattened cardboard boxes leaning against the wall and opened the first one. “Books?”
Camille nodded automatically and handed her the box labeled exactly that. Robin took it without comment, and they worked that way for nearly an hour, moving around each other with the quiet coordination of people who had learned where the other person would break. Camille sorted through kitchen cabinets while Robin handled the closet. Robin knew which drawers Camille would not be able to open and quietly opened them herself. Camille knew Robin would forget to tape the bottom of the boxes properly and silently reinforced them before handing them over. It was not a system they had discussed. It was simply what they had become.
At Barry’s desk, Camille stopped.
The desk was too neat, and somehow that bothered her more than the hoodie on the chair, the mug in the sink, or the unfinished crossword on the table. Barry had never been that neat unless he was avoiding something. His pens were lined up, his notebooks stacked in tidy piles, his laptop centered with suspicious precision, as though he had spent an afternoon trying to convince himself he was the kind of person who had his life together.
Camille pulled open the top drawer and found receipts, chargers, a roll of mints, two pens that had definitely been stolen from the department, and a photograph of him and Jane at what looked like a crime scene barbecue, which sounded impossible and yet somehow wasn’t. In the second drawer, beneath a file of old apartment documents, she found a slim blue folder.
Across the front, written in black marker, were the words "Things I Should Probably Say."
Robin looked over from the closet, and after a moment, she smiled. “That sounds like Barry.”
Camille stared at the folder. “Which means he probably spent months avoiding it.”
Robin came to stand beside her, close enough that their shoulders touched but not so close that Camille felt cornered. “Do you want to open it?”
Camille did not answer immediately. The folder was light, too light, as if whatever was inside had no right to matter as much as it already did. Finally, she opened it.
Inside were five envelopes.
Jane. Maura. Angela. Korsak. Camille.
Her name was written in Barry’s uneven handwriting, the C too large, the rest rushed, like he had gotten embarrassed halfway through writing it. Camille pressed her thumb over the ink, and Robin’s voice, when it came, was gentle.
“Maybe start with yours.”
Camille shook her head once, not quite refusing and not quite agreeing. “I don’t know if I can.”
“You don’t have to.”
That was the problem. Robin always meant things like that. She never pushed unless pushing was kindness, never softened the truth unless softness was necessary. Camille took the envelope with her name on it and noticed, with a small, painful twist of affection, that it was not sealed. Of course it wasn’t. Barry had always been terrible at finishing things that required emotional follow-through.
She unfolded the single sheet inside.
It was barely half a page.
Mom,
Robin laughs at your terrible jokes.
Either she’s deeply in love with you or she’s an excellent actress.
Honestly, I don’t want to know which, but I’ve never seen you this happy.
Keep choosing that.
I hope you marry her.
—Barry
Camille made a sound that was not quite a sob, and beside her, Robin covered her mouth with one hand.
“Oh,” Robin whispered.
Camille read the letter again. Then again, six lines—that was all. No grand goodbye, no perfect explanation, no wisdom polished by tragedy. Just Barry, annoying and observant and loving in the most inconvenient way possible.
“He wrote this before,” Camille said, though she did not know why she needed to say it.
Robin nodded. “I know.”
“He wasn’t saying goodbye.”
“No.”
“He just…” Camille looked down at the page again, at the uneven slant of his handwriting, at the dash before his name. “He just didn’t know how to give it to me.”
Robin’s eyes were wet when Camille looked at her. “He wanted you to know.”
Camille let out a broken little laugh. “I already asked you to marry me.”
“I’m aware.”
“He’ll miss it.”
Robin reached for her hand and held it carefully, like grief had weight and she was helping Camille carry one corner of it. “No,” she said. “He won’t.”
That undid her. Camille folded forward, and Robin caught her, and for a few minutes the apartment was not ordinary at all. It was full of the sound of everything that had been held together too tightly for too long. When Camille finally pulled back, she wiped her face with the heel of her hand and thought, with a sudden ache so sharp it almost felt like humor, that Barry would have made a comment about waterproof mascara. Something spectacularly inappropriate. Something that would have made Robin laugh despite herself. The fact that Camille could hear it so clearly only made the silence that followed hurt more.
Robin took the letter only when Camille handed it to her. She read it once more, smiling through tears at the second line. “He really did hate your jokes.”
“He inherited his sense of humor from me.”
“That explains so much.”
Camille laughed again, smaller this time, and then her gaze returned to the other envelopes.
Jane. Maura. Angela. Korsak.
For a long moment, neither woman spoke. Robin’s thumb moved gently over Camille’s knuckles, patient and present.
“What do you want to do with them?” she asked.
Camille closed the folder. “They’re not mine.”
Robin simply nodded. There was no suggestion that they should read them, no argument that grief somehow gave them permission, no curiosity dressed up as concern. That was another thing Camille loved about her. Robin understood that some boundaries deserved to survive the people who had created them.
Camille placed the folder inside the box and rested her hand over it for a moment, as if that could settle the matter. Then one of the envelopes shifted… Jane’s.
It slid sideways, catching against the edge of the folder, and opened just enough for the paper inside to move. Camille did not mean to look. She truly did not. But the sentence was there, visible in Barry’s handwriting, brief and unmistakable.
“Including Maura.”
Camille froze.
Robin noticed immediately. “Camille?”
Camille closed the envelope at once. Her pulse had changed, and she hated that. Hated that three words from her son could still rearrange the air in a room.
Robin looked from the folder to Camille’s face. “What?”
Camille pressed her hand flat over the envelope, as if she could protect whatever Barry had written from the world and from herself at the same time. “I think I know why he never gave them these.”
Robin’s expression shifted. Not curious. Careful. “Are you going to read them?”
Camille shook her head. “No.”
The apartment hummed quietly around them. Refrigerator. Traffic outside. A neighbor’s television through the wall. Life continuing, rude as ever.
Camille looked down at the folder.
“But I think they should.”
Robin said nothing for a moment. Then she reached into the box, took out the blue folder, and handed it back to Camille.
Camille held it against her chest. The marker on the front had smudged slightly beneath her fingers.
Things I Should Probably Say
For the first time all morning, the words did not feel like a joke.
They felt like a responsibility.