Juvenile

The loft is quiet when Kate makes it through the door, her daughter's head just visible above the back of the armchair she's curled into. Shucking her jacket and heels, Beckett dumps them in a pile in the entryway for her husband to trip over later and pads in her stockings over to her little girl.

Coming around the chair, Kate goes to her knees on the hardwood and smoothes her hands down her pencil skirt, reaching out to curl her fingers around Beatrice's bare foot. She's curled up in the seat like a tiny thing, Baudelaire half on top of her and licking at her neck, and tears skim silently down her cheeks.

"Sweet girl," Kate breathes, and her daughter's eyes come open. They're bloodshot, her lashes clinging together, and her face seems scraped raw with salt and grit. "What's wrong? Come here."

Beatrice slides down from the seat and into Kate's arms, the dog squirming between their bodies until Kate settles a hand at the top of his skull and he goes still, nose nuzzling into Bea's palm. "We broke up."

"You broke up with Noah?"

Her daughter nods, teeth sinking hard into her bottom lip, but it doesn't stop the sob from escaping her and her mouth turns down at the corners in an ugly slash.

"Yeah. I was talking to Alexis about what college was like for her, and she said that she and her high school boyfriend couldn't make long distance work, so me and Noah talked about it and we decided to break it off. So we can enjoy college with no strings attached."

"Oh, sweetheart," Kate soothes, fingers carding through the spill of Beatrice's hair, and her lips land at her daughter's temple in a shadow of a kiss. "I know it hurts. I know."

"Mama," Bea moans, turning her face into Kate's neck, and a skinny arm wraps around her mother's waist and clings tight. The dog makes a strangled noise, crushed between them now, and Baudelaire rolls onto his back and lifts a paw to rest at Bea's cheek, his tail thumping against the floor.

Kate rocks her daughter in her arms, palm at the curve of Beatrice's skull while she cries herself out. Her neck itches where Bea's tears are pooling but she grits her teeth and ignores it, won't shift her baby girl even a millimetre.

"I know we're just kids still," Bea says wetly, tugging her head back to look at her mother. "But I love him, Mom. It hurts."

"I know it does. I know," Kate murmurs, her free hand settling at the dog's stomach and scratching, making his leg twitch. "But it won't hurt like this forever, I promise. You'll go to college and you'll make so many friends, and you'll be okay sweet girl."

Swiping at her cheeks, Beatrice wrinkles her nose when her palms come away wet and gruffs a little noise, her head dropping heavily against Kate's shoulder. "When is Dad coming home?"

"A couple of hours," Kate says, easing her little girl carefully out of her lap. "Now, let's move to the couch and watch the girliest movie we can find."

"Won't Dad be upset if we raid his DVD collection?" Beatrice smirks, and Kate's heart rolls over in gratitude to see some light come back into her daughter's face.

Tucking her daughter's hair back behind her ears, Kate shares a grin with her and opens her arms to the dog when he crawls into her lap, his two front paws over her shoulder like a child. "He never has to know. You choose a movie, and I'll get us some ice cream."

She stays on the floor a moment, watching her daughter disappear into the office, and then Kate gets to her feet with a groan and sets Baudelaire down on the couch, heading for the kitchen to rummage through the freezer. Her husband made it a rule that there must never be less than three different types of ice cream in the house at one time and she rolls her eyes when she tugs open the top drawer and finds five cartons.

"Bea, honey, what kind of ice cream do you want?" she calls through, and her daughter pokes her head around the door of the office.

Since she was a girl, their daughter has hated to have her hair spilling into her face, and she has it caught in a knot at the nape of her neck now. "Have we got honeycomb? I want that, and strawberry."

"Coming right up," Kate says, serving the ice cream into a bowl for her daughter, and scooping herself some potato chip fudge. The first time she tried it was just a few weeks before she found out she was pregnant with Jack, and for most of the first trimester it was one of the only things she could stomach.

It always makes her feel a little wistful whenever she eats it now, aching for that time again. How excited she and Rick were, how much her love for him grew in those months.

Shaking her head at herself, Kate heads to the couch and sets their bowls down on the end table, leaves them there while she goes in search of her daughter. "You wanna hang up the shower curtain and I'll set up the projector?"

"Yeah," Bea says, setting the DVD case down on the desk and coming to meet Kate in the entryway. Both arms wrap around her stomach and she tucks her head underneath her mother's chin, her eyelashes brushing Kate's neck. "Thanks, Mama."

"I love you, Little Bean," Kate murmurs against the crown of her daughter's head, that old childhood nickname coming easily again, and she lets the girl have another moment of melancholy before she eases out of Beatrice's arms. "Now, come on, Baudelaire is keeping the couch warm for us, but if we let him get too comfortable he might not be willing to make room."

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