#masterwords

The truth is, sometimes it's easier to call Aaron. (She's met Aaron before, of course. She has photos printed out of the Christmas he and Jack and Derek came, sees his red nose and smiling face every time she walks up the stairs. She met him once the first year Derek moved to DC when they came through on a case, thought of him for years as quiet, polite, his eyes kind and his demeanor shy.

But when she thinks of Aaron, it's not the smile or the shy tuck of his chin. She thinks of that night, years ago, in her living room, her baby out of jail and sitting next to his colleague on her sofa.

She can still see it, sometimes, when she sits in the same chair: her little boy, all grown up, hunched over with his elbows resting on his knees, his fingers woven together and his exhaustion written into the slump of his shoulders, the way his gaze stayed focused on his hands.

He was trying to explain Buford’s arrest, she remembers. She kept interrupting, could barely stop pacing to sit in the chair across from them, ready to storm the police station and shout about her son’s unfair arrest, to shout that they couldn’t arrest the man who’d taken their whole family in after Hank had died.

“Ma’am,” Aaron had said quietly, always quiet, but somehow he was at her shoulder and not sitting beside Derek on the sofa—and why was he there anyway, in their home?--one gentle hand at her back and guiding her into her own kitchen. “Could I have a word?”

This is how she remembers Aaron: standing in her small kitchen, still in his suit, his gaze soft but his chin lifted, his arms crossed. “Your son is trying to tell you something.” He paused for a moment. She didn’t notice, brimming with her own maelstrom of emotions, but he swallowed. Took a breath. “You need to listen to him.” She can still see him standing there, a dark spot in the yellow light of her kitchen, the black of his suit against the pale wood of the table. “You need to let him talk. You need to believe him.”

She doesn’t think he said anything else, but she can hear the promise in his eyes. When she thinks of that night, she can hear him tell her that if she says one more word in defense of Buford, he will take her son and leave.

Aaron would never say that to her, of course. But he sits back down on the sofa next to Derek, clumsy enough that their knees knock together, and he stares unblinkingly at her while her son confesses secrets too horrible to be true, pressing his shoulder to Aaron’s, mumbling to his hands.)

Calling Aaron means that she knows about Emily’s death, though neither of her boys say much. It means she thinks she knows how to interpret Derek’s silences on the phone, all the things her reticent baby never says. (Then she thinks of all the things he said that night, and wonders for the first—for the millionth—time, if she’s ever known her baby boy at all.)

She knows when Aaron gets an assignment out of the country. She and the girls send care packages, cookies and cards and little puzzles, because Derek always liked word games as a kid. She starts sending them to Derek and Jack and Jessica, too, though Derek says the strain in his voice is just the job.

It’s Aaron who tells her that he’s back in DC. It’s Aaron who tells her that he helped fake Emily’s death. She tries to talk to Derek about it, the cordless phone in her hand as she paces around the living room, brimming with care and advice and -

She hangs up an hour later when Derek says Jack is calling for him and realizes that Derek never said anything at all.

Neither boy tells her that Derek’s moved out, but—for all that she missed over the years—Fran’s no fool. Aaron keeps asking her for details of Derek’s life that he should already know. Derek stays quiet on calls, like the twelve year old boy she’d picked up from the station decades ago after his first arrest, his thin shoulders hunched and his lips sealed. Eventually, she realizes that Jack is actually calling for Derek on the phone, not down the hall.

She tells Derek that Aaron meant well, when he lied about Emily’s death. She tells him that marriage is hard sometimes, but it’s worth fighting for. She tells him about how his father was a terrible flirt, and she had to navigate her own unfounded jealousy to make the marriage work. She tells Aaron that she must have raised one stubborn man, since he wouldn’t listen to reason or see sense.

“You raised him to stand up for himself,” Aaron tells her kindly, and doesn’t castigate his husband for standing as far away from him as possible.

“Stop telling Derek how to live his life,” Sara tells her when she’s cooking dinner and eavesdropping on Fran’s weekly call. “You’re his mom, not his marriage counselor.”

“I’ll tell him how to live his life!” Desiree offers, sitting at the table and trying to throw carrot slices into Sara’s pot. “Him and his white boy.”

There’s never really been any telling Derek what to do, though, not since Hank passed. Fran could coax him, she could shout or cry or beg, and Derek would nod or hunch or stare at his hands. He was always a good boy, even when he was running with those older kids. Kind to his neighbors. Sweet to his mama.

They come back to Chicago, of course, for Cindi. Poor Cindi. Fran can still see her as a little girl with her twists and her knockers, poking her tongue out through her missing teeth, as a teenager arguing with Yvonne in the living room, sounding just like Desiree would a few years after that. But Derek saves her. Derek, and Aaron, and their team.

He comes by the house afterward. He sits on the sofa. His shoulders are hunched. His fingers interlaced. He stares at his hands.

Fran talks. She can’t help it, most times. She talks, and then she turns to the kitchen and she can almost see Aaron standing there, years before, telling her to listen and be still.

She sits down. “Do you still love him?” she asks, her own hands folded between her knees, her eyes on the slope of her baby’s nose, the bend of his thumbs.

He huffs out half a laugh, sits back and looks at her through those lashes Sara always envied. “More than anything,” he tells her, smiles more to himself than to anyone else. “That’s never been the problem, Ma.”

“Then what is?” she wonders, and Derek’s expressive eyebrows raise, his eyes—his daddy’s eyes—shocked, perhaps, that she’s stopped talking long enough for him to reply.

He shakes his head. She stays quiet. Listen, she thinks. Believe him. He takes a deep breath, holds it for a moment; and he might be about to reply when the doorbell rings.

“It’s probably Mr. Carson,” she says, rolling her eyes, because the octogenarian down the street has been proposing to her ever since she invited him to Thanksgiving dinner last year.

It’s not.

It’s Aaron, standing at her door, two bunches of flowers in his hands, his chin tucked. “These are for you,” he says, handing her the larger of the two bouquets. She opens her arms and pulls him into a hug, drags him down a little so that she can rock him like she does her babies, squeeze him tight and make sure he’s still healthy and whole. He returns the embrace, careful, gentle with her and with the flowers still in his hands.

He doesn’t ask where Derek is. He never looks away from her face, but she listens to the quiet and sends him to the living room. She tells him she’ll be just a few minutes, she’ll need to go hunting in her boxes for her nice vase.

She cuts the flowers. Finds the vase. Puts some coffee on, then brews Aaron some tea. When she goes back into the living room, they’re sitting on the sofa: Aaron’s fingers are twisted around each other, Derek is worrying at the plastic around the edge of his bouquet. They’re speaking too quietly for her to hear, if they’re talking at all.

“I brought tea,” she says, and Aaron stands up to take the tray from her, his shoulder brushing Derek’s. He passes Derek a cup first, then sits back down beside her son, their legs pressed together, Aaron’s hand hovering over Derek’s knee.

“When do I get more grandchildren?” she asks them, and Aaron chokes on his tea, and Derek laughs, throws his head back and turns to smile at his husband, captures Aaron’s hand in his and winks at Fran.

(Maybe Fran doesn’t know everything about her boy. Maybe there are secrets he’ll never share, some things she’ll never be quiet enough to hear. But she knows when he’s happy. He sits on her sofa and he laughs for the first time she can recall hearing all year, and Cindi and her baby are safe with Yvonne and Fran’s baby is right here, holding his husband’s hand.