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Author: vegawriters
Fandom: Silk Stalkings
Genre: History, Character
Pairing: Multiple
Rating: Teen-16
Word Count: 8,934
A/N: This one is for the character who shaped me more than any other character has. She was there during my formative years and has stayed with me – even when I’ve put her to the side. I do have to give a heads up to Em tho. Unknowingly, she helped me to rediscover this part of my style and my heart.
Disclaimer: Rita Lee Lance and all the characters in Silk Stalkings belong to SJC and Co. I make no money. The tears I cried writing this were my own.
Summary: She flees to a place of security – the loneliness of the unknown. It is comfortable. It is familiar. She is the girl on the track, the girl on the bicycle, the girl running from the disapproving gaze of a foster family who does not wish to understand her. Flight is all that makes sense to her, that and the subtle movements she can detect from the small life inside of her.
these tears i've cried
i've cried 1000 oceans
and if it seems i'm
floating. in the darkness
~Tori Amos – 1,000 Oceans
As an adult, Rita does not remember the day her life changed forever. She remembers watching her father grow quieter and quieter while he made plans to sell the house. She remembers sitting amongst her piles and piles of dolls and stuffed animals and being told she could only take one of each. She does remember the emptiness in her father’s eyes. She tells people that she remembers how her father would read stories to her over breakfast every morning, but the secret she holds close to her heart is that the thing she remembers most is the look of sadness and failure he carried until the day he died.
It’s a perfect Florida afternoon the day her world changes. A perfect little lady, she races out of the school yard, her pleated skirt bouncing against her knees, her socks pulled tight, her perfectly polished Mary Janes hardly hindering her scamper across the playground.
“Rita needs to learn to play with the other little girls. She only plays with the boys.”
Her father ignores the nun who has come up to speak to him. There is nothing wrong with his little Rita holding her own with the boys around her. It is a strength she will need from this day forward. As she waves goodbye to her friends, he wants to tell her to linger, to play with them for as long as she can. This will be the last time she sees them. He will not send her back to this school. The children here will only torment her because she is no longer one of them. By dinner, they will all know that the Fontana Family has fallen from grace.
Soon he will start her at the public school. There they will torment her because they will know she is now one of them.
For the first time since Rita’s mother died, he is glad Olivia is not here. He cannot bear the thought of her ever knowing what has become of them.
“Daddy!” He lifts her, looking into the eyes that are so much the copy of her mother’s. “Daddy! Why are you here? Where is Marcella?”
Marcella is looking for a new job. He cannot tell her that.
“I gave her the afternoon off. I want to take you for ice cream, Rita.”
Rita drinks wine and beer because she hates the smell of hard liquor. To her, it is all the same - the stale smell of an empty bottle next to the couch. People assume she does not smoke for all the right reasons. They do not know that even during her days of teenage rebellion, of all the things she did do, she never once picked up a pack of cigarettes. The smell lingers and reminds her of the man she still hero-worships. Instead of it being the warm, comfortable, faint scent that clung to her father’s clothes as he came in the door at the end of a busy day, it is the oppressive smell of a man who never leaves their small apartment.
Her afternoons never change. Leaving the two friends she has behind, she runs home from school, her tattered tennis shoes scraping against the sidewalk; her backpack, full of library books, bouncing against her hips. Her little legs take the big steps two at a time and she does not bother trying her key in the lock – the door will be open.
Rita never gives up hope that her father will be awake, waiting for her to tell him about her day. Before she turns the doorknob, she offers up a quick prayer. Maybe today will be different. She is greeted not by her father’s warm embrace but the nauseating smells of whiskey from the open bottle on the coffee table and the ashtray full of cigarette butts. Quietly, to keep from waking him, she cleans up and opens the windows to air out the musty rooms. The heat of the outside and the smell from the alley below is better than the oppressive feeling in the tiny, one bedroom apartment. Her father sleeps on, never knowing the difference.
It is in the afternoons that she misses the house. She misses running through the door ahead of Marcella’s teasing scolding. She misses the swing set and the fountain and the huge aquarium full of brightly colored tropical fish. She misses being dragged from the yard and sent up to change out of her school uniform. She misses the smell of Marcella’s fresh baked cookies.
Some afternoons Rita finds a photo album beside her father’s sleeping body. She always stops her cleaning and looks through it, staring at the photographs of a woman she has never known. Her favorite pictures are the ones from the wedding; her mother was dressed in a gown only princesses would be allowed to wear. She traces the image in the photograph and imagines that her mother is not dead, but is a princess back in Greece and she will be coming for her daughter and husband someday soon. It is on these days that she spends time staring at the front door of the apartment, dreaming that her mother will step off the pages of the photographs and make their family whole again.
But the dream never comes true. Rita puts the album away, puts the whiskey bottle into the freezer (once she poured it into the sink and her father yelled at her) and then sits on the floor under the open window and does her homework and remembers Marcella and Alfred and being swept into her father’s arms as he came through the door at the end of the day.
Books become a comfort. She reads and reads and reads. Her friends are Cherry Ames, Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and Suzy Pratt.
Chris teases her because of her soft spot for a hard luck story; she lets him. She knows he does it because he loves her. She knows he worries about how she attaches herself to the kids with no hope, but he also understands why she does it. He steps in her path only when she needs to be challenged, when she needs to be reminded that there is only so much one person can do. Someday, she swears she will tell him about the times she ran away from her foster homes and how, despite the angry words she threw in her direction, Sue never once gave up on her. But she also knows that somehow, he already knows. That is how it is with Chris.
One afternoon, there is a loud, angry knock on the door. Two men stare at her and demand to know where her father is. They are from Child Protective Services and she is sent to her room and she crouches at the door, listening while they talk to her father about the black eye she came to school with yesterday. They all but force their way into the bedroom and she begs and pleads with them. Her daddy loves her and he doesn’t hurt her. The bruise on her cheek came from when she bumped her cheek against the broken railing on the stairs. She even shows them the railing and knows they don’t believe her but there is no proof otherwise. They give her father thirty days to get into a sobriety program or they will take her away and give her to a new family. Rita lives in terror.
But suddenly, things are almost like they were before they moved. Her father reads to her over breakfast and then walks her to school. She is grown up enough to stay home alone after. He tells her he is looking for a job. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, he goes to his meetings.
She pretends he doesn’t come home smelling like cigarettes and whiskey.
On her seventh birthday, her father takes her out for ice cream. They sit behind the Thirty-One flavors and he tells her he has a job and that he’s going to start doing better for her. Rita believes him and dreams that once he has been working for a while, they will get to go home and her mother will be there and her mother will love her. Marcella will bake cookies.
After he loses his job at the real estate company, her father never leaves the apartment again. Rita makes the walk to school alone and after, runs home to make sure he is okay.
Rita is a damn good homicide cop. She’s always been good at reading people’s emotions and her instinct almost never fails her. Her one weakness is the smell of the body. The decomp. The body fluids. It is a smell that haunts her dreams. She knows it’s technically a violation of crime scene policy, but she adds a touch of perfume to her nose before she gets out of the car. She keeps a small jar of numbing lotion in her day planner incase the smell is too bad. She loves her job but she wishes that dead bodies were like the ones on TV and in the movies. It never smells on cop shows.
One day, things are different. A different smell greets Rita as she comes through the door of the apartment. Her father is not on the couch, but the photo album is. It is open to a picture of her, taken at her sixth birthday – it feels like a lifetime ago. She giggles for the camera while a pony nibbles at her ear.
“Daddy?!” She calls out, wondering if maybe, he isn’t here. But there is a sound like water in the bathroom and she goes closer. “Daddy? Are you taking a bath?” He doesn’t answer and she knocks on the door, worried he might have fallen asleep in the tub.
He is there, but his clothes are on and that makes her feel creepy. She pushes her way into the room, confused by the utter silence. Why did he decide to take a nap in the tub? The smell of whiskey is over everything and she smells smoke, but not cigarette smoke.
“Daddy?” She asks again, going to touch him. He is cold.
And then she sees the gun and the hole in his head.
She tries to scream, but no sound will come out. She screams and screams and screams and screams, but no sound comes out. She does not know how long she stands there but at some point everything he has taught her comes back.
On legs of rubber, she stumbles to the phone and dials 911.
“My Daddy is dead,” she says into the receiver. “Come help him.”
Rita watches the men in jumpsuits as they lift her daddy from the water. The apartment is so busy and full that no one really notices the tiny little girl with the dirty face and the tangled hair as she stares at the orange bag that is zipped up around her father’s body.
“He left a little girl,” she hears a man say. “Fucking ass. If you really love your kids, you wouldn’t do that.”
But the man doesn’t understand. Of course her Daddy loves her.
“Did he leave a note?”
“Yeah. It’s been logged into evidence. Where’s the kid?”
“She’s the one who called it in.”
“Oh God. Where’s that social worker?”
A tall man kneels down in front of her and there are tears in his eyes but he tries to smile at her. “You must be Rita?” She nods. The man in the dark blue jacket just pulls her into a hug and she finds herself clinging to him. “I’m so sorry, Sweetheart,” the man says. “Don’t worry. You’ll be okay.”
The man in the jacket’s name is Neil and he sits with Rita until the woman from social services comes. She is nice enough, but she seems impatient. Rita gathers what she can – her favorite book, her teddy bear, the few clothes that will fit into her biggest backpack. On the way out the door, she stops, breaking away, grabbing for the photo album. She can’t leave this behind. It is all she has left.
More than once, Rita has thought about being a foster mother. Especially after Nicole’s few short days with her. But the pain is still too near and it is easier for her to hide in her work and to focus on succeeding and capturing the bad guys who kill people than to help scared teenagers find a sense of justice in the world. She also knows first hand that no matter what she says, nothing takes away the pain and the betrayal. So she gets up and she goes to work and she helps the kids who are lost in the shuffle of a stupid parental mistake get into good foster homes but she cannot open up her house or her heart. She talks a good game, but the truth is there are some wounds that will never truly scar over.
Rita quickly learns ranking in the foster homes. The newbie always gets the top bunk and the last shot at the bathroom. She will make her own breakfast and do everyone else’s dishes. She will be happy going last and be grateful for anything she gets. She receives no comfort when nightmares haunt her.
The child psychologist she is assigned to doesn’t seem to want her to heal but is instead absolutely certain that Rita is hiding some deep, dark secret about how her father used to touch her inappropriately. He can’t understand that her father loved her and that he’d never do anything like that. He doesn’t listen when she does break down, crying because her foster father comes into her room some mornings and watches her get dressed. They tell her she is exaggerating and that what she thought was inappropriate was her projecting what her father did onto the “nice man” her foster father is.
It makes no sense to Rita so she learns to keep quiet. She learns to observe what is going on around her. She says nothing that might get her into trouble.
She changes houses because she is too difficult and the mother believes that she is “bad to the bone.” The new house is next to a park with a bike path that leads down to the pier and a small beach. It is on that path she discovers the true freedom of running. Out on the path, alone, she feels safe. She runs and runs until she is too tired to move and then she runs again. Every day it is the same; she comes home from school and leaves her backpack on her bed. She puts on her tattered tennis shoes (the ones she stole from the thrift store) and she goes to the park and runs until the sun goes down.
One Saturday afternoon, she finds herself at the gates of the city cemetery. The large gate creaks as the rusty hinges turn. She slips through, feeling as if she is trespassing, and makes her way past the ornate headstones to the back of the solemn park. Rows of small, white cards line the lawn, each with three names and dates. It does not take long for her to realize these are the graves of the people with no money; the people no one cares about. Three bodies to a grave. She stays until the sun goes down, reading each name, saying good-bye to each of them. They deserve that much. The graveyard becomes the final destination of all of her runs. Some nights she does not have time to go in, but when she does, she moves, unnoticed, past the people visiting the loved ones with the headstones. It is always silent and deserted on her end of the cemetery.
On her ninth birthday she discovers her father’s marker. D. Fontana. November 6, 1971. The breath goes out of her and kneels down, her fingers moving over and over and over the small placard. S. Cummins. May 5, 1971. G. Luggins. August 17, 1971. D. Fontana. November 6, 1971.
Somehow, it makes her feel better to know that he is not alone under the ground.
The place becomes her new spot to run. She races through the cemetery to the marker next to the iron fence and tells him about her day and how she hates foster care and how she wants him to come back to her. One day she asks why he had to go away.
She never gets an answer.
A year later, Rita discovers her mother’s headstone. Her father had never taken her there, even though she had known he went to visit because sometimes he would go somewhere and come home with red eyes like he had been crying and then he would hold her and tell her stories about her mother. He never went to the cemetery after they moved.
But she is running through the cemetery, jumping over headstones like they are hurdles, when she comes face to face with the name that belongs to the woman in the wedding dress in the photo album. Olivia Eleni Fontana. Beloved Wife and Mother. Lost to this world too soon but with us forever in spirit. December 25, 1940 – May 16, 1964. In this moment it becomes real. Neither her father or her mother will ever come through the door for her.
She never steps foot in the cemetery again.
Rita does not celebrate her eleventh birthday. The foster family doesn’t care; in fact she knows they no longer want to deal with her. This time, her running brings her to the beach and, exhausted, she walks to the water and sits at the edge, watching the waves until it is dark. The next day she is sent to a new home; a small cottage near the beach.
She’s never forgiven Michael for abandoning her. It’s not his fault, she knows this, but the little girl who will never heal from being abandoned by her father never really heals from Michael leaving her behind. It’s unspoken between them but something they are both aware of in the silence that often fills their occasional meals together. She’s proud of him and what he has accomplished with his life and even though he teases her about being a cop she knows he is proud of her too. They are almost brother and sister. Almost. Bound not by blood, but by a pain that only those not raised by their parents can understand.
Sue is different. She ignores the social worker and kneels down in front of Rita and says hello at Rita’s eye level. “You’re too skinny, honey.” Sue touches her chin. When Rita pulls back, frightened, Sue glares not at Rita but the social worker. “Wait here,” she says to the woman. To Rita, she just nods. “Okay. Come on,” she reaches to take Rita’s backpack but Rita will not let go. Again, she just nods. “Okay. Follow me.”
Rita has her own room and a bathroom that is linked with another bedroom. A sullen, angry boy glares at her through the open doors and after Sue introduces him as Michael, she closes the bathroom door, giving Rita privacy. She shows Rita how to lock the doors and then lets her have her time alone. Three hours later, she comes in with hot cocoa.
“What is this, Leave it to Beaver?”
“Don’t drink it if you don’t want. I won’t be offended. But you didn’t come down for dinner and I thought your stomach would be empty.”
“You didn’t bring dinner up?”
“We eat at the table, Rita. And if you snooze, you lose. But you can have the hot cocoa.” She tilts her head. “You are going to need some clothes I’ll bet. We’ll go shopping this weekend.”
Rita sulks, but Sue is not phased. They go shopping and two hundred dollars of new jeans and tops later, Sue sits her down in a beauty salon. They cut her hair to her shoulders, removing the damaged ends. Rita cries, not because of her hair but because the woman looks like Marcella. Sue has already realized that Rita likes to go running and buys a good pair of running shoes. She never criticizes and when Rita misses dinner, there is always an apple and a jar of peanut butter left on the table.
Soon, Rita starts to make a point to be back in time for dinner.
They go to church every Sunday. After, they travel to Sue’s mother’s. Grandmother Anderson makes dinner. Sue’s younger sister is always there and it is Lisa who teaches Rita about makeup doing her hair. While the older adults talk, Lisa shows her the right way to do eye shadow and lip liner. Lisa is on the track team in college and Rita learns from her that it is okay to be beautiful and to be athletic. The next time she goes shopping, Lisa takes her and they buy skirts and peasant style blouses and Rita finds a pair of shiny Mary Janes that remind her of a time she has all but forgotten. When she gets home that night, Rita pulls out the battered photo album and clutches the image of her six-year-old self to her chest while she sobs.
Sue gets her into sports, hoping to channel her rage before it becomes self-destructive. There is dance (which fails miserably in a humiliating beauty pageant moment) and tennis (which keeps Rita in one place) and track (that she loves). Keeping busy seems to be the smart thing to do.
Her friends at school think Sue is her mother and she never makes an effort to change that perception but she always stops them short when Tom is mentioned as her father. “I have a father,” she always retorts, “and someday …” but she can never finish the sentence. They all think Tom is her stepfather and she learns to live with that.
She likes to dream but she knows her father is never coming for her.
Michael likes to tease her but they become friends. His mom is still alive – recovering from drugs and alcohol but she’s coming back for him. While Rita goes running, Michael sits at the window and waits.
On Rita’s thirteenth birthday, Michael’s mother takes him home. Rita doesn’t get to say good-bye but he comes back to see her sometimes and always brings a photograph of something. She gets to keep the one of the beach at sunrise. Rita believes that while was out running when her own mother came to get her and she wants to stop running but staying inside drives her crazy and on days she is cooped inside, the thin blade of a razor finds its way into the skin on the top of her thigh. Each slice relieves the pressure and each red line is color in her gray world.
In her dreams, this life is a mistake. Her father did not kill himself and her mother is really an heiress in Europe and someday soon her parents will come for her.
She refuses to think about the two graves under the grass in the City Cemetery of Palm Beach. They are different people than the ones who abandoned her. But her rage, which is always right under the surface, boils over after Michael leaves and she takes to riding her bike to the furthest end of the island and then running along the sand until she collapses from exhaustion.
There is a part of her that loves Chris’ desire to tell her everything about his sex life. She is comfortable in her sexuality and comfortable with her own choices, but his freedom with sex and his body (at least with her) allow her a sense of empowerment – even if she keeps her own experiences much closer to the vest. Her mother taught her that a Lady doesn’t kiss and tell.
She loses her virginity the night of her senior homecoming. The female half of the star couple in school – she the tennis star, he the star running back – she happily tumbles into the sack with Tommy Bartel. While most of her friends suffer through the teenage angst of boyfriends dumping them once they got what they wanted, she and Tommy only grew closer. He is the one to discover the thin scabs on her thighs and to keep her from cutting, he holds her and distracts her and goes jogging with her. She would have married him, but college ripped them apart. Tommy is picked up by the Notre Dame football program and on graduation day, they say good-bye. He is off to become a football star until a knee injury during his rookie year with the Patriots sends him into has-been oblivion.
Unlike most foster kids, she gets to go to college. A scholarship in track and tennis to Palm College opens the door and a scholarship from the Krane Foundation seals the deal. After her freshman year, she has saved up enough money to transfer to The University of Miami and so Tom and Sue load up the truck and drive her the hour South. It is in Miami she gets to study criminology and art history.
A scout from the national tennis association wants her to think about turning pro and another scout from the US Olympic team talks to her about her speed in long distance running.
She brushes them both off. Athletics is getting her through college but it is not her destiny.
“I wouldn’t recommend the police academy, Rita,” her advisor tells her one day. “Police work is meant for men. It would be best if you thought about focusing more on art history. It’s a better career for a wife. You can work part time in a museum or funnel it into elementary school teaching.”
Why is it that everyone thinks she should be an elementary school teacher?
She misses Tommy and wonders if he would have wanted her to be an art history major. But out loud, she laughs in the face of her advisor. “I’m not getting married any time soon. And I want to be a detective.”
Her advisor laughs and signs her application for graduation.
Three weeks before graduation, she receives a call from an attorney in Palm Beach. Lisa, Sue, and Tom have all been killed in a car accident. A drunk driver. She is the only one listed as next of kin. She returns to Palm Beach on a greyhound bus and hitches a cab ride to the morgue where a young looking man who introduces himself as Doctor Lincoln leads her through the hallways so that she can collect the belongings of her family. It will be nine-hundred dollars to have the county cremate the bodies, he tells her.
Somehow, she authorizes the procedure and manages to meet with the attorney. She has been left a car, what is left of the Lance’s money after debts are paid, and the small cottage next to the beach. Rita keeps the car and sells the house. The money goes into a savings account; her nest egg. Before she returns to Miami, she makes a stop at the courthouse.
When she told Chris the truth about her last name, he held her gently and let her cry. On her birthday that year, he showed up at her door with a thick manila folder containing as much as he could dig up about her biological family’s history. There were her mother’s immigration papers, newspaper articles about her father, and even her birth announcement. That was the day she realized that she didn’t just love him, but she was in love with him. But to tell him would mean that the fairy tale they shared might end. Love for her meant loss. So she held her breath and felt a strange kind of painful release every time he found himself a new girlfriend.
“We aren’t going to risk all we have just to tumble into the sack together,” she reassures woman after woman. Do they realize what she is really saying? Do they realize that she and Chris are in love but pretending they are not?
She hopes so.
But how was she to know his playboy antics came from his own realization that he loved her and he was scared she didn’t love him in return?
In retrospect, she realizes how stupid both of them had been.
She graduates from college on her twenty-first birthday and shortly after, the paperwork is finalized and her last name changes from Fontana to Lance. Though she’s glad to honor the two people who kept her alive, so much of her feels she is abandoning where she really comes from.
Then, while moving into her new apartment, which is three blocks away from the training grounds for the police academy, she meets DJ Martin, a short stop for the Florida Marlins. He is beautiful and charming and suave and he loves her almost as much as she loves him.
She falls in love at first sight. It’s not something she ever believed in, but he stood there, the sun glinting off the white of his uniform and for a moment he was not a person but a baseball God, sent from above to bestow a few moments of greatness on the mere mortals of Earth. She leans forward, resting her arms on the top of the dugout, and when he glances back, they share a smile. She waits after the game. He comes to find her.
DJ is perfect. Perfect in every way. He is well built and they have so much in common and he makes her fears of love fade away. He is gentle, he is passionate, and she realizes soon that yes, love at first sight does indeed exist. She knows this because she never stops feeling for him the way she did when their eyes first met. She finds she does not mind his hectic travel and it leads to even more passion in their relationship.
Their stability is the eight mile runs they share in the mornings. Without needing to talk, they fall into a comfortable rhythm of breathing and footsteps. Their conversation is physical and each run ends with a tumble into bed. He knows she is keeping parts of her history from him, but he does not push. After all, he has his own secrets.
Six months into their morning runs she moves in with him. His house reminds her of the long forgotten castle of her childhood dreams and when she cannot sleep, long after she should be worn out from how passionately he touches her, she wanders the rooms, listening to the ghostly giggles of a time that no longer seems like her life. Some nights, DJ finds her curled into the bay window in the dining room, her hand rubbing a tense spot on her neck and a finger pressed against her temple. He worries about her headaches, but says nothing. She does not like to be seen as weak and after all, he has his own secrets.
Seeing DJ again brings back every emotion she’d never dealt with. He’s right in one regard – she did run from him. He may have pushed her away, but she ran and did it as fast as she could. Running is what she knows best. Running is most comfortable. And the faster she runs, the easier it is to forget about the holes in her heart. The more she runs, the more she can forget about how those she has loved have abandoned her and the faster she sprints, the less she needs to think about the part of her soul that she left in Miami.
The secret she holds is darker than Chris can ever suspect and when he pushes for more information, she almost tells him, but it is her burden to bear. Let him believe the half-truth that it was drugs that pushed her and DJ apart. Her secret was her choice to make, but there are so few who would forgive her for it and she does not want Chris to think less of her.
Nine months into their morning runs, she starts to puke up her cornflakes. He is in Boston, helping to lead his team to a sweep of the series. He calls after the first game and knows something is wrong, but she isn’t sure of her suspicions yet and she doesn’t want to tell him. The next night is the first night he misses a phone call but she doesn’t worry. It was bound to happen and she is still scared to tell him that her breasts are tender and that she is a week late with her period.
He is in Atlanta, making fantastic plays, the day she confirms she is pregnant. The morning sickness hasn’t faded and the fitness tests at the academy are killing her. Her doctor sends her home with a set of pamphlets – none of which point her to the local Planned Parenthood. But she isn’t ready to make that choice without DJ at least knowing he could have been a father.
She couldn’t have underestimated his reaction more. Rita gives him credit for keeping his temper under control and after he gets back from his sudden need to get out of the house, he sits down with her and tells her that he’ll do whatever she wants – but it’s clear he doesn’t want the baby any more than she does. He loves her. He’ll support her. The promises sound rehearsed.
She was prepared for the cold feel of the room and the clinical bed side manner of the doctor and the nurses. He doesn’t go with her to the appointment and she lies there, counting the tiles above her. It lets her forget that there is something going on between her legs. She runs the Roe vs. Wade ruling through her mind. She replays every argument she’s had recently with DJ. She closes her eyes and prays.
The decision is the right one. She is a woman entering a man’s profession and it is only a matter of days until graduation. Babies aren’t part of her equation.
But when she feels the vacuum make one last suck, she bursts into tears.
When she gets home, he is passed out and doesn’t wake up when she climbs into bed with him.
As with all things, her sorrow pushes her forward. She graduates at the top of her class at the academy and is immediately picked up by Miami PD. The Marlins don’t make it past the first round of the playoffs and DJ’s contract is up. Boston wants him. He isn’t sure. She doesn’t want him to go, but she has a feeling he has never forgiven her for not having the baby – even though it was something neither of them wanted.
The day he signs his contract with Boston, she finds him at home with a bag of coke and an eighth of whiskey. She runs, finding solace in Robin’s arms. There is an opening in Palm Beach and she takes it, hoping that with her different last name, no one will remember her past.
The night Chris tells her that she is his best friend, she puts on a smile and shakes her head. “You’re my best friend too,” she tells him, laughing. But part of her heart breaks. It’s not like they haven’t acknowledged their attraction for each other or that they both don’t realize that they are too scared to cross the “sacred line” but she wants to know if it’s because they are running from each other or because sometimes two people really are meant to be best friends. But the questions don’t change the fact that Rita’s fantasies always revolve around Chris and his soft hands and the lips she can’t wait to get the chance to kiss.
She’s known who he is for some time now. Everyone knows Lorenzo. He’s the hot shot with the perfect shot and at twenty-five he got his gold shield and he’s part of an elite narco team that has a tendency to take down the roughest, nastiest, angriest dealers in South Florida. Somehow, they always come through Palm Beach. She meets him the night of her shield test; he is working undercover and is going down with the bust in order to save face. She arrests him and shoves him into the car, apologizing under her breath and promising to let him free once they get to headquarters.
When she looks into his eyes, her instinct tells her to run because he will hurt her more than anyone else ever has.
But how can her best friend be the one who will hurt her?
That year, they are partnered together in Narco. She is dating Brent, but it’s okay because Brent is Chris’ best friend. When Brent takes the job with the DEA, she’s happy to finally have Chris all to herself. Already close, they are soon finishing each other’s ideas, each other’s sentences, and together, they are an unbeaten shot. They almost cross the line the first few months they work together.
He likes to hold her when they talk. It is natural for them. More than one rumor circulates that they are sleeping together but no one can prove it and Rita only wishes it were true.
But he is dating Riki … or is it Lisa … or is it Vonnie?
Together, they are transferred to homicide. Rita is thrilled – it is where she’s wanted to be. Chris has been waiting for a chance at the elite unit since his first criminology class. They are young and beautiful and she is known for her diplomacy with the rich snobs and so, in a twist of irony, she finds herself often investigating crimes in the homes of the families who used to be friend’s of her fathers.
None but one remember her.
She meets Mark down on the beach. She likes the way he smiles. He likes the way she looks in a bathing suit.
Chris pays attention to the headaches that have become a part of her daily life. After a particularly bad migraine, he reminds her that she’s dating a neurologist and Mark agrees to do a CAT scan.
She stares, horrified, at the tiny little bubble in her head, the bubble that spells out her impending death. As a cop, she expects death to come in the form of bullets impacting, tearing at her flesh, and sending her, flying, into the afterlife. But now, it will come in small ways – a headache the grows and grows, shortness of breath, paralysis, and then death. There is no longer an if with death, there is a when. But there is no time given for when.
She is put on a migraine medicine that has been known to help with the pain. It is simple and won’t raise any red flags with IAD should they go digging into her personal life like they have every right to do. Mark also puts her on a once a day aspirin regimen, with orders to pop them whenever she feels a headache coming on. The aspirin will thin her blood, but it is the only treatment they know for her situation. She goes off her birth control pills. There is little else that can be done.
She tells Chris in a moment of weakness. He’s rubbing her shoulders and her head hurts and it comes out and he freezes. Just freezes. Later, she gives him credit for not pulling away, but she can tell he’s upset. It’s okay, so is she.
When she holds his son for the first time, her tears come from so many places. Frannie holds her hand, nodding her understanding, but no one knows. No one knows that she and Chris had their chance for long-term happiness but they froze up and freaked out. No one knows that the first time they crossed the friendship line was back when he’d thought she’d been killed. He hadn’t been able to sleep without holding her and while they hadn’t made love, the kisses they shared had proved their feelings right. They’d had their chance but walked away from it. As she names Chris’ son after him, Rita kisses her little boy and promises she will never let any harm come to him – even though she knows it is an empty vow. If she has learned anything in her thirty-two years on the planet it’s that no matter how deeply the promises are meant, none can ever truly be kept.
Her heart breaks when Gillian walks into the room. The other women, she knew he would love and then leave, but Gillian was the marrying kind. To this day, she wonders if Chris heard the words she’d whispered to him as he finished shaking off the effects of the sedatives.
“I love you” had never been so heart breaking.
But instead, he fell in love with Gillian and she let herself love Eric – Eric who was a good substitute and was good in bed and it wasn’t until he came over one night, smelling of whiskey, that she knew she was in trouble.
He never hit her. Grabbed her twice when he was drunk and she learned quickly how scary and strong his hands could be. Instinct kept her safe. She had a feeling Chris suspected, but he never said anything and she didn’t want him to.
Her headaches were getting worse and her body ached the same way it had the first time. Chris was in the Bahamas with Gillian and she tried to convince herself it was the flu.
It wasn’t, but it wasn’t a baby either.
Chris didn’t do anything but support her and love her, but she could see how relieved he was when she wasn’t pregnant. He wanted any baby she carried to be his.
So did she.
It takes years before she is able to return to his grave. CJ stands with her, a rose clutched in his tiny hands as he says hello to his daddy for the first time. At five, he understands that his daddy died before he was born. He asks why daddy had to leave.
Rita wishes she could give her son an answer.
It takes a car bomb to get him to kiss her again. She melts into his arms, her mind racing with the truths he has confessed and she returns the kiss with everything she has. But then she gets scared, remembering the gut feeling that he would hurt her more than anyone else in her life, and she tries to run. If she doesn’t confess her feelings, if she ignores them, they will go away. But it’s too late. They’ve crossed the line and this time, there is no going back to the playful time they shared. It is up to them to create a future together. The future scares her, so she tries to run.
For the first time in her life, someone stops her. She’s held back from her escape and try as she might, Chris doesn’t let her leave. Chris holds on to her and together, they discover happiness.
His favorite thing to do is hold her after they’ve made love. He loves to wrap his arms around her and spoon against her body. In these quiet moments, when she feels more alive than she ever knew possible, their conversations turn to sleepy discussions not about the future but about everything they have always talked about. They talk about God and Sports and he says he finally understands crimes of passion. He’s always been protective of her but now, he understands how passion can turn someone into a killer. He is glad he has her to hold on to.
“If anyone were to ever hurt you, Rita. Before, I wanted to kill them. I hated them. Now, I know that nothing would stop me.”
In those moments, the instinct that tells her to run is quieted and she always, without fail, turns in his arms and opens her legs and he sinks into her again and again. He claims her with his lips and his seed and she allows herself to be truly owned by another’s soul.
But two months into their relationship, she finds herself rising before he does so that she can dry heave into the toilet. He hears her and holds her hair back and worries that it is her aneurysm. She knows better and tries to avoid the conversation.
“I’m fine. Quit worrying about me. I’ll survive.”
If anything, she will do that. It is what she has always done.
When she tells him, she is prepared for the silence but not his excitement.
“Look, I’m terrified. But I’m also excited.”
This time, she knows that if she decides to get an abortion, that he would go with her and they could hold each other. It is how she makes the decision to keep the baby. When she tells him she wants to risk it, she understands the fear in his eyes (her aneurysm) but his excitement is contagious.
This time, it will work.
She blames herself for his death. If she’d held on more, prayed harder, found a way to keep him from running. She still doesn’t believe that it was a part of the plan of the fabric of the universe and the day she put him in the ground, she stopped talking to God. Given full leave, she ran, hard and fast, as far from his memory as she could but as close to him as she could bear. When she brought Chris’ son into the world, she finally understood what had kept her own father alive as long as he had. Had her father been sober, he’d have been alive, she believes that.
For a few brief moments, she knew true happiness. She had the man of her dreams and they had a baby on the way. She was secure in her job, her finances, her life. For a few moments, life had been perfect.
She blames his death on her complacency. She’d let herself believe that it was finally her turn and because of that, God had taken Chris from her - a reminder from the here-ever-after that she was not important enough to warrant joy.
In her mind, there is little question as to where she will go. Anna has already promised use of the property she owns in Los Angeles and while the last place she wants to be is California, it is as far from Florida as she can get. She flees, packing up only what she needs and sub-letting her apartment to a young cop and Chris’ loft to a young baseball player who wants to live in Palm Beach and not Miami. The storage unit fills quickly and she takes only the clothes she needs, a few books, and the hundreds of photographs she has of Chris. Her world fits into the back seat of her LeBaron and she takes off, one hand on the wheel and the other on the small bulge that is the last link she has to the man she knows she will meet again in the next life.
She flees to a place of security – the loneliness of the unknown. It is comfortable. It is familiar. She is the girl on the track, the girl on the bicycle, the girl running from the disapproving gaze of a foster family who does not wish to understand her. Flight is all that makes sense to her, that and the subtle movements she can detect from the small life inside of her. As the wind whips around the car while she flies past the cornfields of the Midwest, she apologizes to Chris’ son for all the mistakes she is about to make. She apologizes for his father – he didn’t mean to die. She apologizes for running, but it is all she knows. She apologizes for apologizing. And at night, when she is curled up under thin motel sheets, she apologizes for her endless tears. She apologizes to her husband for her flight. She apologizes to Sue and to Tom. In the darkness, she forgives her father. She now understands his hopelessness and if it were not for the baby inside of her, she knows she would follow his same path. But every morning, the sun seems a little bit brighter – even if she feels that much more empty. Healing is a longer road than the one to the small Beverly Hills cottage where she will start her life over.
There is a note from Anna and the key is left under the mat. A gardener will be by on Tuesdays, there is a house keeping company on retainer, the appliances and phone are turned on, there is a small pool out back. The house is furnished and Anna and Benny are both going to help with any money she might need while Rita finds her feet. The number to a grief counselor is scribbled at the bottom. Anna is in Europe filming, but she promises to return in time for the baby’s birth. Numbers of family are listed. You are our family, Rita. Don’t hide. Let us know our grandchild … is the final plea. She hears the unwritten We never knew our son.
The silence is peaceful. Rita moves from room to room – a nursery has already been set up. A neutral room of blues, greens, and yellows. A bassinet, a crib, a playpen. Rita’s bedroom is one of fantasy – a canopy bed with curtains tied back to the bedposts. She can almost see herself at home here.
Taking a breath, Rita moves the first of her suitcases inside. The only thing she unpacks is the photo she and Chris took shortly after her promotion. They stand together in the gardens behind the station, looking into each other’s eyes. The golden frame goes onto the mantle and she sits, closes her eyes, and tries to find the strength that is demanded of her.
Rita smiles obligingly at the women at CJ’s preschool. They all gossip, friendly, knowing now that she is Anna Alexis’ daughter in law, and they would be more than happy to set Rita up with one of their single brothers or cousins. She only shakes her head and gathers her little angel into her arms and goes home, clutching the wedding rings that still rest on a chain around her neck. He promised her he would be with her forever, they would be together forever. He promised he would never leave her. She cannot turn her back on that promise. It is in these moments that her anger bubbles up and over and she cries and CJ only looks at her, confused.
She hates herself then. She does not want her son’s memories of her to be tearful ones.
The phone call from the attorney is surprising. The chaos in the house is typical – CJ is climbing over his grandfather and the dog is barking and she has to move outside to hear the caller.
Suddenly, she is twenty years old again, the only kin listed in a Last Will and Testament. She will be the executor of the Krane estate.
It is time for her to return to Palm Beach.
This time, the arrangements are easier. She has done this before. Karen Krane has the best funeral any society woman in Palm Beach could have and Rita sets about restoring the good name of a once great family. The money is set into an interest based trust – scholarship available to foster kids and children who have lost a parent in the line of duty. The home has been left to her and CJ and there is a smirk on her face the day her closest “neighbor” comes to introduce herself. She remembers Sherry Anne from school, but it is clear the feelings are not mutual and while there is a part of her that wants to remind her of the once powerful Fontana family, instead she simply introduces herself as a distant member of the Krane Family. Eventually, the truth will come out but right now, it isn’t important.
CJ rides his bike, full speed, up and down the streets in front of the mansion.
They spend their weekends with Harry and Frannie and Rita helps Frannie deal with Harry’s slow slide into dementia.
She discovers pictures and journals and histories, all kept by Karen, about a life Rita can barely remember.
One day, while CJ is in school, she starts off on a jog. She runs and runs until she comes to the headstone she has only visited once, when CJ was only five. She kneels before the marble, a headstone not far from her mother’s and one that somehow faces the small placard of her father’s. She touches his name and tears stream from her eyes.
Christopher James Lorenzo. Beloved husband and father. August 17, 1963-December 13, 1995
“I’m home, Chris,” she whispers. “I love you.”
For the first time in her life, she doesn’t feel like running.