Work Text:
Carson wakes to find the other side of the bed empty, crumpled blankets pulled back to expose the pastel pinstripe sheets. He glances at the clock on the nightstand—six A.M., on the dot—and drags his palm across the indent in the mattress to find it cool to the touch.
Where Jean's first two trimesters had done there best to drain her, her third has kept her restless, rising early most mornings to pace through the kitchen or lay down a mat to do some stretches in the garden—anything to calm the baby who seems determined to get a head start on its fitness routine.
A light thunk, followed by a whispered "shit" alerts him to her present location. Reluctantly, he extracts himself from the warmth of the covers and heads downstairs, pulling on a bathrobe to shield himself from the cold.
He glances into the living room and finds last night's late arrivals still fast asleep, curled up together beneath several blankets on the new pullout couch.
"Did I wake you?" Jean whispers. He turns to find her standing in the kitchen, cabinets wide open, ingredients and cookware spread out over the island surface.
"I couldn't sleep," she continues before he can so much as shake his head, "so I thought I'd get things ready for you."
As he joins her, Carson notices Kate's recipe book lying open on the counter.
"I couldn't find your blueberries."
He wordlessly opens the freezer and removes two bags from the shelf in the door.
"Nancy always preferred the frozen ones."
At Jean's look, he holds up each bag in a gesture of mock surrender.
"Hey, ask Ryan where she got it, because it wasn't us."
"What'd I get from Ryan?"
Carson and Jean turn to the source of the question to find a very sleepy-looking Nancy standing by the stairs, clad in pajama pants and a hoodie Carson suspects isn't hers.
Jean takes a bag and waggles it. "Frozen blueberries?"
"Oh." Nancy shrugs and joins them at the island, sliding onto one of the stools. "They're superior."
Carson goes to her and wraps her into a hug, pressing a kiss to the top of her head.
"Happy birthday, sweetheart."
Nancy leans into the hug. "Thanks, Dad."
Jean takes a turn hugging her, then asks, "Did we wake you?"
Nancy shakes her head. "I had a weird dream." She hugs the hoodie more tightly to herself. "Plus, it's kind of cold in here."
Jean smiles apologetically. "Hot flashes. I can turn the thermostat up, if you need me to."
Nancy shakes her head. "That's okay. How's my future sibling?"
"Active."
Nancy laughs. Carson sets a fresh pot of coffee to brew for himself and his daughter while Jean grumbles into her herbal tea.
His daughter dozes lightly in her seat. Jean hands him the appropriate measuring cups. Carson sifts the dry ingredients together in the precise order Kate insisted was necessary despite having no scientific evidence to support her claims.
Ace emerges from the living room just as the coffee finishes brewing.
"Morning, Mr. D," he greets quietly, sliding onto the stool beside Nancy. "Morning, DA Rosario."
Jean, mid-sip, nearly chokes on her tea. "Jean is fine, Ace. Unless you're about to get arrested for something I don't know about?"
Nancy lifts up her head, eyes still closed, and slips her arms around Ace's waist. "Nothing you can prove," she mumbles. "Good morning."
"Happy birthday," he tells her, and she hums in reply, already dozing off again.
Carson slides two mugs of coffee to the pair. Ace takes both with a quiet thanks. Jean kindly passes him the sugar bowl.
Nancy barely stirs as Ace scoops out spoonfuls for each mug before setting the one with fewer—one, to be exact, just as she likes it—in front of her and gently nudging her awake. Nancy sits up and wordlessly takes the mug and one of the spoons laid out for them. The two of them stir their coffees in tandem.
"So, all ready for college?" Jean asks Ace.
Before he can answer anything more than an I think so, she starts a line of questioning that rivals any witness cross-examination Carson has ever seen. Ace takes it in stride, satisfying her curiosity about his class schedule, his dorm situation, and what extracurriculars he's hoping to pursue.
Carson knows she means well, but Jean has the uncanny ability to make small talk feel like an interrogation. Luckily, he finds it pretty hot.
The whir of the hand-mixer puts a pause on the conversation. As he whips the batter to precise levels of fluffiness, Ace takes the opportunity to lean toward Nancy and whisper something in her ear. Nancy smiles, then leans in to reply. The pair laugh softly to themselves before continuing to sip their coffees, entwining the fingers of their free hands together.
Before parenthood fell into their laps overnight and made the quiet a rarity, he and Kate had spent their mornings together like this—comfortable, casual touches and routines formed to bear each other's weight; saplings caught in each others' branches, lithe trunks twisting together until fixed in place to forever bear the spiral shape of a shared life.
Kate leans in, head propped up by her elbows on the opposite side of the island as she gazes at their daughter and her boyfriend, watching every movement with affection. She lifts her glistening eyes to Carson's with a gentle smile.
Yeah, he thinks, speaking to her, the curves are starting to form.
"Carson!"
Jean's voice startles him out of the vision. Kate's gone, replaced with empty space. He hurriedly shuts off the hand mixer, but the damage is done. Nancy, Ace and Jean each make a grab for napkins to wipe their pancake-batter-splashed faces and pajamas. Carson winces as he looks at the mess he's made.
"Sorry."
He looks down at the bowl to find perfectly blended batter.
Jean begins to clean up the rest of the mess, but Ace leaps from his stool and gets to work. A grateful Jean goes to change her bathrobe while Nancy opts to take a shower.
"I packed your shampoo and conditioner in my bag," Ace calls over his shoulder. "You almost left them at the motel."
"Ugh, thank you," she calls from the other room before returning, bottles in hand, to give him a quick kiss on the cheek and head upstairs. "You saved my hair from dad's three-in-one."
"I don't use three-in-one!" Carson calls after her. "…anymore," he adds to Ace. "Jean said the smell made her sick."
Ace laughs. "Whatever made you see the light, Mr. D."
He finishes wiping up the pancake batter as Carson turns back to the now-sizzling skillet, the ghost of Kate's smile lingering on his own lips.
Maybe twenty presents was too much. It's certainly too much for Ryan to carry from the car by himself, so he loads Ace up like a pack mule before gathering his own pile, boxes of assorted sizes wobbling in their arms as they ascend the stairs.
"I respect the vision," Ace says, voice muffled by a wall of cardboard and wrapping paper, "but gift cards are way smaller."
Nancy descends the stairs with damp hair to the sight of gifts piled high in the foyer. Ryan grins at the stunned expression on her face.
Just as planned.
As much as he wants to sit and watch her open each box one-by-one, there are pancakes on the stove, cooked to perfection, that neither Carson nor Nancy will allow them to delay any longer. When they sit down to eat, he understands why. The first bite of Kate's pancakes, glazed in a specific brand of maple syrup, is enough to overwhelm him with a sudden wave of emotions.
"Ryan? You okay?"
Nancy's watching him with deep concern. Ryan shakes his head, blinking away the tears stinging his eyes.
"I'm fine," he says. "These are… really good pancakes."
They sit down to watch Nancy open her gifts.
"Trying to get ahead in the favorite dad competition?" quips Ace as he looks between Ryan's mountain of boxes and Carson's reasonable two.
"Carson's nineteen birthdays ahead of me."
Nancy sighs and appears ready to argue, but the look on his face must be enough to convince her there's no point.
"These aren't all going to fit in my car," she says instead.
He hadn't actually thought of that, but he plays it off with a shrug.
"You'll figure something out. But open them, first."
So she does, starting with Carson's—a maroon cashmere sweater and matching socks, and a pocket guide to emergency car maintenance. Practical and thoughtful.
Slowly, they make it through Ryan's pile. For the most part, his gifts are also practical—an electric travel mug that keeps coffee hot through long car rides, a pair of warm, sturdy boots. Some, however, are more sentimental, like the teddy bear he found in storage, the one he loved as a kid and assumed Everett had tossed decades ago.
"Wow," Nancy says after opening the final gift, a pair of gold pendant earrings set with green gemstones the size of her thumbnail. She holds one up to the light to watch it sparkle.
"It's peridot," he says. "August birthstone."
She smiles, then immediately goes to put them on.
"What do you think?" she asks Ace, tucking her hair behind her ears to show off the sparkling jewels.
"Beautiful," he replies. "But you always are."
Smooth, Ryan thinks to himself as he watches Nancy blush. He's a keeper.
Carson grabs the Polaroid camera and snaps a picture of her grinning ear-to-ear in the armchair. He pulls out her baby book and a stick of glue and adheres the photo to the back of the last page, titled My First Birthday!
When Ace goes to help Carson with the dishes, Jean disappears to get dressed, and Nancy gets to work figuring out which gifts will end up where, Ryan ends up with the baby book in his lap, both heartbroken and grateful he and his family are nowhere to be found in the photos it contains. With each turn of the page, he can’t help mentally superimposing his and Lucy’s faces over Carson’s and Kate’s whenever they appear, a vision of what could have been if he’d gotten to Horseshoe Bay in time that night, twenty years ago.
And then he blinks, and it’s Kate and Carson again, holding his—their—daughter with nothing but love in their eyes.
A hand finds his, warm and soft to the touch.
"I think I made the right choice," Lucy says in that euphonic voice he thought he'd never hear again. "I think she's right where she's supposed to be."
She—the Lucy he remembers, the girl with strawberry blonde hair and a smile that lit up his world—sits beside him on the sofa. She gives his hand a gentle squeeze.
"Yeah," Ryan replies, looking back down at the photo of Kate helping Nancy take her first steps. "I think she is."
"What was that?" Nancy plops down on the couch next to him.
He shakes his head and smiles, even as Lucy vanishes quickly as she came. "Nothing."
She's quiet for a moment. Finally, she says, "Thank you for the presents."
He puts his arm around her shoulders and pulls her in for a hug. "Of course."
"Thank you for making today feel like my birthday," she adds as they break apart, biting her lip nervously. "I wasn't sure it would. It's kind of a weird day."
"Tell me about it."
She glances to the kitchen, where Ace and Carson are debating the best sponge grip, and takes a deep, uneasy breath.
"Do you want to go to the graveyard with me?"
"You didn't deserve any of this," he says to the headstone. "I'm sorry."
He hasn't been here since the funeral. Between the suspicion her death placed on him, his involvement with and treatment of George, and the revelation that it should have been him beneath this soil, a profound sense of guilt has kept Ryan away from his wife's grave for nearly a year.
"You should've seen Nancy solve your murder, though," he says with a watery laugh. "She was incredible."
He doesn't linger; he doesn't have much to say other than apologies.
Ryan looks off into the distance to where Nancy sits, cross-legged, in front of Kate Drew's grave.
"…Thank you," she says, voice thick with tears, "for the birthday you gave me. I won't forget it."
She turns toward the sound of his approach and wipes at her eyes with her sleeve.
"Okay, I'm done here," she says, standing up and brushing the dirt off her jeans. Ryan wraps her up into a hug, which she returns with a quiet sniffle.
"We can stop by Lucy's stone before we go to the ice cream shop," she suggests. "I'm hungry after all that gift unwrapping."
Ryan laughs. "Sure…" He trails off, then glances at the stone beside them. "You go ahead. I'll be right there."
She gives him a confused look, but doesn't say anything. Instead she nods and heads toward the monument beneath which no bones lie. He watches her a moment before turning back to the grave of Katherine Drew, the woman who twenty years ago had been no more to him than the guidance counselor who took his withdrawal form and wished him well at his new school with a gentle smile.
"Thank you," he whispers. For loving her. For raising her. For turning her into the best person I've ever known.
For making the pancakes I never could.