I'm silently thanking Constance for helping me pick our honeymoon location as I see the excitement on Maura's face. The whole plane trip I'd had her stuffed with ear plugs and her sleeping mask. It earned several glances and double looks from the people in both airports but I was not about to have the surprise ruined. Instead, I'd informed our 'tour guide' about the surprise and she was playing along surprisingly well.

"We've arrived at your...suite." The woman hesitated, almost using a word that would give it away. I thanked her set the luggage down on the aisle. Maura was wiggling beside me in anticipation, I knew surprises killed her.

Smiling, I gently tugged the ear plugs from her ear, finally allowing her to hear the sounds of the ocean and birds. The sheer silence of the suite I'd booked us. But it wasn't until I removed the sleeping mask from her eyes and she was assaulted by the full beauty of where we were did she gasp.

"Jane-" she tried. "Fiji? You know I've always wanted to come here." Her hands covered her mouth as she took it all in. The suites in Fiji were houses suspended above the water. We had one of the larger houses with a full kitchen, bath, living room, bedroom with king sized bed, and two patios with our own private pool. When I explained to them it was for our honeymoon, they opened the closed side of the resort for us.

Maura disappeared inside the house to look around at where we would be spending the next two weeks of our married lives. I had been smart enough to wear my bathing suit under my clothes and stripped in the living room once I'd brought our bags inside.

"Maur, watch out!" I yelled as I ran through the house to where she stood on the porch looking out at our amazing views. I jumped into the ocean water and splashed Maura playfully.

She pursed her lips in disdain before stripping down and jumping into the water behind me.

My wife was still out in the pool watching the sun set over Fiji. I walked into the expansive room that was the bathroom, full vanity, and half of it was a glass walled, teak floored shower with a tub at the other end. I walked past the tub into the shower and turned on the water, rinsing the salt water from my bathing suit before tugging it off.

"Maura!" I yelled as I lathered my hair with shampoo. "You have to get out of the pool if we're going to make our dinner reservations!"

I was standing under the rain shower head scrubbing the shampoo from my scalp when familiar hands wound their way around my abdomen. Maura. Her body pressed against mine. I smiled and leaned against her touch, this was something I could get used to.

She kissed the back of my shoulder. "Maur." I warned as she turned me toward her and backed us against the shower wall. "We're going to be late if you do this. We have to be responsible."

I don't think she really spoke, her mouth was on mine and we slid to the floor. Maura was sitting on my thighs, pinning my wrists to the floor. Her teeth nibbled at my earlobe.

"Let's be irresponsible." She growled.

Frankie and I are sitting on the patio with a beer. Maura is inside with Ma and Cavanagh; Tommy, Lydia and the kids left an hour or so ago. Korsak and Frost were talking security with Maxwell, Asher, and Robyn, who had arrived shortly after we did. Fenway was passed out across Maura's lap as she sat comfortably on her old couch, settling into the familiarity of her own home.

"You didn't really talk to Maura much." I said as I took a sip of beer.

Frankie ignored me. Or at least that's what it seemed like as he looked anywhere but at me. His hands were fidgeting with the beer bottle in his hands and he tried not looking in the windows behind him. "I guess I'm still mad." It was mumbled and quiet.

I set the beer down on the deck. "Yeah, I'm a bit mad too." He swiveled in his chair to look at me. "But that's my wife, Frankie. As mad as I am at her, I thought she was dead. It takes a lot out of you to see the person you love buried."

His face darkened. "I was there too. I buried someone too."

"I never meant that you didn't."

Long legs erupted from the chair as he began to pace. "She wasn't here to put you back together, Jane. I sat at your door for weeks. Weeks! The sounds you made? I didn't think they were human let alone coming from my sister. And then you just show up with a kid in your arms and her attached to your hip and you want me to be happy?"

"Do you remember when you woke up in the hospital after Marino? And Ma wouldn't tell you anything about me because she was afraid if you heard I'd been shot you wouldn't recover? And when I finally walked in your room two days after you woke up you were so pissed?"

He chuckled. "You were wheeled in."

I smiled back at him. "You told me a couple days later why you were so pissed. Do you remember?"

A pebble flew across the patio from where he kicked it. "I was afraid you'd died."

"That's what every day for the past three years has felt like. There's no relief, sometimes sleep doesn't even help. It's just this constant movie playing in my head of Korsak telling me she's dead." I stood up and walked over to him. "Yeah, I'm mad too. She should've talked to me, told me what was going on. But she made a mistake, just like you did when you didn't tell Ma that you crashed the car on your eighteenth birthday. I'm not saying that you should welcome her with open arms like Ma, but it's better than the alternative right?"

I made eye contact with Maura through the window begging me for help, for an escape. "She's alive, Frankie. And my genius wife found a way to have my kid and they're healthy and alive and they exist. And yeah, I'm pissed too because she made me so scared for three years. But that isn't something I'm willing to let ruin what's happening."

"And what's happening, Janie?" He sounded bitter and harsh, and nothing like I'd ever known him.

"I'm getting a second chance to be a better wife. That's something I'll never take for granted." My hand is on the door as I prepare to rescue my wife and daughter from my overbearing mother when Frankie decides to go for the kill shot.

"Band aids can't fix bullet holes, Jane."

I smile as I pull open the door. "And the three of us all know exactly how to recover from bullet wounds, Francis."

Ma is clasping Sean's hands so tight I think they're going to fall off. I know it's her way of coping, she has been begging to hold Fenway since we stepped in the door but my toddler is reluctant about strangers. Maura taught her well.

I cross the room to bend over my wife and place a kiss on her forehead. "Why don't you take her upstairs? The guest room is where you left it." Maura nods and disappears, Robyn following closely behind them.

"I can't believe I have another granddaughter." Ma gushes from behind me.

"Be gentle with them okay?" I warn. A frown spreads across her face, a whole bunch of Italian fire is preparing to come from her mouth. "Fenway and Maura have been through a lot and I don't want to frighten them into leaving again." Her frown softens as she realizes I'm scared to lose them again, I don't think I could survive a second loss. Especially not Fenway. She nods and I head over to where the boys are talking security.

I spend an hour with Maxwell and company talking security and game plan for the rest of Maura's stay here. We figured out ways to get her back into the BPD, the tiny office I'd saved was the perfect place for her to run her tests and investigation near the lab without drawing attention. I would arrive separately and Fenway would stay with Ma and Robyn while we were away.

The group left reluctantly, Frankie having slipped off sometime just after our conversation, but Ma and Cavanaugh said their goodnights and headed somewhere else. Korsak and Frost hugged me and said they'd see me tomorrow, and I left Maxwell and Asher to figure out the security detail for the night.

I drug my feet on the way upstairs, not sure if I was ready to see my wife figuring her way back into our house. Our bedroom was just as I'd left it when I approached. Frowning, I went to the guest room. Fenway was tucked into the bed, her exhausted little body sprawled out.

But Maura wasn't there.

Continuing down the hall, I checked the music room and my office before finding her standing in her old yoga studio. The screens, lighting and overall decor had made the room perfect for me when I needed peace. From my job, my family, and even myself.

Maura is standing in the room, surrounded by the haphazard chaos I'd created. There was an easel in the middle of the room, the freehand sketch of her face half completed. I just needed to finish the shading. My box of charcoals open on the small table beside it. The framed photo from our honeymoon took up the majority of one wall. The rest of the wall space had been covered in drawings and writing.

"Maur?" I asked cautiously as she turned toward me.

Tears were coming down her cheeks, her mouth open in surprise. "What is this?"

I fidgeted with my hands, not sure how to answer without sounding creepy. "I was afraid I would forget what you looked like. All the details. So at first I just started sketching in here. And then well…it turned into more than that."

"A shrine?" She balked, sitting down on the stool before the easel.

"What? No." I couldn't help the anger that dripped out of my voice. Taking a deep breath, I centered myself. "I hope you can understand how…difficult it was to lose you. That for a long time I thought I deserved to have lost you. So I flipped all the photos that you were in over, or I took them off the walls. And after a couple weeks I became so…terrified that I would forget what you looked like but I couldn't bring myself to actually face you. So I tried to draw you the way I'd always seen you. It helped. It made it easier, I drew you every single day, Maur. With different expressions, different memories. And then I was able to flip over a picture or two and then they all made their way back to their places and I thought I was getting better." I looked down at the floor, covered in crumpled pieces of paper. "I can see how it seems like a shrine to you."

She was silent for a while, walking around the room, trying to take it all in. "Studies have shown art therapy to be extremely helpful in traumatic situations." It took everything in me to look up at her. My wife was standing in front of me, holding her hand inches from my cheek. "You were coping, Jane. Of course I understand."

Maura lead me to the window where a small bench was built in. "What are the…poems?"

"They're not all poems. Some are songs. There's some quotes in here too. Just stuff that reminded me of you." I looked up at the framed photo, we were leaving the spa at the resort, my back was toward the camera, Maura hanging on my arm laughing. She was wearing a white bikini that said "bride" across the butt. I was in a teal bikini with white accents. Maura's smile is the best thing of the whole photo but she always loved my exposed back, the muscles shining as I pulled her in toward me. Only my profile is visible but my face was relaxed and I was happy.

Maura caught my line of sight and smiled. "I always liked the starkness of your back."

The smiled dropped from my lips slightly. "It's not exactly stark anymore." Maura frowned and I stood up, taking my shirt off to show her. Down my spine was a tattoo with the one poem I carried with me always:

Compass point you home

Calling out from the east

Compass points you anywhere

Closer to me

Where you are, I will be

Miles high, in the deep

Where you are, I will be

Anywhere, in between

Maura is looking away from me, just around the room at everything. "You know, there was a time I did not think I would return to you. I feared I would forget who you were, who we were together...who you made me. I forced Maxwell to get me photographs of you, I forced them in my home and I told Fenway about you as soon as she was old enough to comprehend." She paused to look down at her hands. The rings perched back upon her fingers capture her gaze, she seems almost ashamed. "I thought I would never see you again. I thought that of anyone, you would find me. That it would take you weeks, months maybe but I never envisioned years. And when you did not come, I assumed the Marshals had been right and you believed I had truly died. I struggled with the idea of that. Of you believing me dead. Of having to move on, of never seeing you again. Then you showed up on my doorstep."

She's biting her lip. A storm is brewing in her head and I furrow my brows in confusion and concern. I know I'm not about to like what comes out her mouth. "Maura? What are you talking about?"

"Jane." She sighs my name like it's a curse and a lifeline all at the same time. But she stands up, her heels clicking on the floor, her hands anxiously smoothing her dress. "I did not think we would ever be reunited and during which I made several...questionable choices." Only now does she make eye contact with me. "Choices that I regret to the fullest capacity of my heart. I was weak and desperate and...oh Jane, I am doing this all wrong."

"You slept with someone else?"

Her head bows, hands coming up to cover her face. I see her shoulders shaking more than I hear the cries. Maura doesn't even have to admit it, her whole body is screaming it loud and clearly- she cheated on me. It's irrational, but this feeling of anger and grief wash over me. I don't know how to process this, how to accept that the wife who left me also cheated on me. How many blows did she expect me to take?

"Was-was it once? Or more?" My voice falters, unsure if I really want to know these answers. She is sobbing now, and I can't help this feeling of overwhelming relief that washes over me. Relief. How fucked up is that? I know that I've had one night stands, met a woman at a bar who became a fuck buddy but it was never anything serious. And to me, Maura was dead. I was a widow. But Maura, she had abandoned me.

Left me for dead.

In her mind, she was coming back. She kept her wedding rings on a necklace draped across her throat. So what the hell was I? Just some fool she'd loved and left? And now the anger was coming back. Because this hadn't been my fault- nor can I say for certainty hers either. But she had been the one who knew I was alive, was waiting for her. She was the one who had cheated, in every sense of the word.

"Would that really make a difference?" She asks shakily. "Knowing?" I don't need an actual number now, she's confirmed it. This was not a one time, moment of weakness and loneliness thing. Grief comes flooding back over me. My wife left me, had my child without me, and on top of it all cheated on me- multiple times. There were pieces inside of me that had started dying and decaying as I assumed Maura had been that flatlined suddenly inside of me.

I stood up to cross the room, I wanted the proximity of her but also to be as far as I could. "I need to know Maura. Was it multiple times with multiple people? Or one? Did you cheat or did you have an affair?"

Her shoulders dropped in defeat and she turned to me. Face streaming with mascara and eyeliner, her hair astrew. My god the havoc we'd wreaked on each other. "In the complete sense of the word I infer I had an affair." It's a punch to the gut and I drop to the floor on my knees. Something dies a behind Maura's eyes. "She came into my life as an emotional support and somehow it became more than that, I was lonely and I needed someone- physically. It is over, Jane, and had been for awhile before you came for us."

Maura crosses over to me, kneeling in front of where I slumped, tears finally coming out. "I know I should have come clean with you the moment I asked to wear my wedding rings. There is nothing I can do now to erase all the pain I have caused, in leaving and in my transgressions. I have no right to ask for your forgiveness and would not expect you to do so lightly. If you wish at the end of all of this for me to leave, I understand and will respect your wishes and will of course be compliant in scheduling visits and overnights with Fenway for you. I would never again intentionally keep you from your daughter."

"Maura." I whispered painfully. Looking up at my wife, I reached out to cup her cheek. "I don't know how to forgive you. And I don't know how to live without you. But if you've taught me anything, it's that I can." I wiped away one of the tears that poured from her eyes before standing up and walking away.

There's this moment right when I wake up. Maura's side of the bed still empty, the absolute silence caressing my ear drums. My wedding band is a comfortable weight upon my finger, my diaphragm able to contract and relax with relative ease.

Some people call it clarity, relief, peace.

I call it delusion.

Because as soon as it comes it's gone, and I remember that my dead wife is really alive. That she had an affair while waiting for me to rescue her. I feel the weight of a small body pressed against my abdomen, just beneath the bra line where Fenway has glued herself. The daughter I'd never wanted but now could not live without. I wrap my arms protectively around her and hear a small sigh from behind me.

The alarm goes off, and I jump bit, a reflex I do even in my sleep. Slight movement from behind me as someone stands and walks towards the door. Maura appears in my line of sight, pausing in the door frame. I clamp my eyes shut and she whispers to our sleeping forms; "I am so sorry I was the one who ruined us." The door closes and the alarm blares once again, my daughter curling more toward me, small, sleepy moans emanate from her mouth. My hand clamps down on the alarm and I look down at my daughter, wishing I could fix this.

Could fix the damage her mother caused.

Wishing I could take back the things I said, how I handled certain aspects of my grief. The truth of the matter was that I loved Maura, and resented her at the same time. And it hurt to stay and try to figure what it all meant.

I'd lived years believing her dead, that I was beginning to think I could live even more having been the one who walked away.