Donnelly sighed and watched as McCoy moved towards her desk.

"I was planning to tell you myself," she began, after closing the door. "But with the reporters…and then the interrogation I got from Becky…I just needed a chance to –"

"We both know our girl's headstrong, to say the least. Liz, I didn't come down here to finish what Becky started," McCoy explained, after taking a seat in front of the desk. "You forget. I was around the first time. Becky wasn't."

Donnelly grimaced. She remembered only too well the strain the Criswell trial had put on the relationship between herself and her new husband. They'd been married just barely two months when Caroline Criswell had been charged with the murder of her husband of eight years. Donnelly hadn't even begun to get a handle on her new role as the wife of up and coming prosecutor, Jack McCoy. The idea of dealing with a new baby on top of that was almost more than the young wife could fathom.

"Maybe not, but she's right. I was so hell bent to send that woman to prison; I never even stopped to consider…She said she needed to talk to me, Jack. About something only I could help her with. It never occurred to me that Criswell had raped her. Raped her and got her pregnant…," Donnelly said almost to herself, as she leaned against the office door.

"All you knew about Caroline Creswell was that she had committed murder. You had no way of knowing the rest of it, Liz."

Donnelly shook her head as she closed her eyes. Silently she replayed the cross examine that had taken place only hours before. She could hear her own voice… her cool, level, confident tone… as she led Criswell through a series of questions carefully designed to take the woman back to the day she had executed her escape.

Donnelly took her back… back to the night her husband had supposedly raped her… an event the fragile looking woman had neglected to report to the homicide detectives that discovered Criswell had shot her husband with his own gun as he slept.

"If it was self-defense, then why did you run," Donnelly smoothly demanded before turning to face the jury, as if she were posing the question to the twelve transfixed individuals in the jury box, as she went in for the kill. "Why didn't you tell the detectives on the scene or your lawyer or –"

"I didn't think anyone would believe me," the tearful defendant declared. "I tried to get away…I'd saved almost enough money to leave…but he found the grocery money I'd been hiding. He, he told me I had to be selling myself to have that kind of money."

Donnelly turned back to eye the woman with the tear streaked face skeptically. She listened indifferently to a variation of a scenario she'd heard countless times during her time in the D.A.'s office …sometimes true... sometimes not so true…

"…he did every vile, degrading thing he could think of to me," Criswell soft voice told Donnelly; their eyes locking on each other's as if they were the only two people in the room. "When he was finished I was crying and he told me to be quiet, so he could sleep. He, he said he knew I liked it and …. if I was a good girl…he'd do it again. That's when I knew," Criswell continued; her voice rising for the first time since Donnelly had begun to grill her. "That's when I knew, he'd never stop. The only thing that gave him pleasure was hurting me!"

"So you sought revenge by-"

"No! It wasn't like that," Criswell pleaded as her eyes locked onto Donnelly's. "Killing him was wrong. I knew that as soon as I realized what I had done. I, I just wanted to make it stop…to make him stop…"

"If you knew it was wrong, then why did you run," Donnelly said; taking care to ask as opposed to demand, in an effort the prosecutor felt confident would back Criswell into a corner build on the defendants own lies.

"To get an abortion!"

As Criswell revealed her desire to 'take what was coming to her' by serving out whatever sentence she was given for the murder of her husband, but only after she had terminated the pregnancy she couldn't bear to continue, Donnelly listened transfixed by the details of a story not even she could doubt the validity of, as well as the horrifying realization of why the woman had been so desperate to talk to her all those years before.

"Liz, beating yourself up like this isn't going to change the fact you're not a mind reader. She climbed out a bathroom window and ran. You had no idea what was going through her mind."

The sound of her ex-husband's voice brought Donnelly back to reality. When she opened her eyes and found McCoy's eyes on her. The look of genuine concern they held only served to renew her sense of shame.

"I may not have been a mind reader, but you and I both know, Caroline and I were of like minds back then," Donnelly replied so softly, McCoy found himself moving forward, simply to be sure he was indeed hearing her correctly. "If anyone should have known… if anyone should have understood what she was feeling... it was me."

Donnelly watched as a flicker of, what she assumed was annoyance, clouded the eyes she knew so well. She turned her eyes downward, in anticipation of the silent judgment that she felt sure was to come.

Even after so much time had passed…after not only making a name for herself in the DA's office, but in the judiciary as well, Donnelly easily recalled how panic struck she was when she learned of her own pregnancy. She had just had convicted the Eastside Rapist. It was the case that had at long last established her as more than a pretty face…more than Jack McCoy's former assistant.

It was the case she felt sure she'd be able to ride to a position of Bureau Chief or even to a permanent position in the Homicide Bureau. But fate played what she saw as an unforgivable trick on her and she found herself pregnant just weeks after becoming a bride.

It was pregnancy, that like Criswell's was very much unplanned and at the time, very much unwanted.

"I'll tell you what I know …what we both know, Elizabeth," McCoy continued firm and certain, as he lifted her chin. "You're a survivor, not a victim. You're not Caroline Criswell."

"But I felt every bit as trapped as she did," Donnelly countered in a voice so uncharacteristically filled with emotion, McCoy found himself instinctively reaching for her. "Jack, when I found out…when I knew for sure… there was no going back. I never felt so alone, so-"

"And maybe if you'd had a husband that had shown a little more understanding instead of just expecting you to be a thrilled as he was, you might have felt you had someone to lean on."

Donnelly blinked back tears and she stared up into the eyes that startled her with their look of remorse.

"Jack, you were never the sadistic monster Criswell was. I was wrong to put the blame on you. I was young. I was selfish. I-"

"You love our daughter and you always have," he injected with as much firmness as the embrace he pressed her into. "That's what you have to think about, Liz. That and what you want to do when the verdict comes back in the morning."