Chapter Text
When Amy remembers it years later, she faintly remembers the close feel of the gun against her temple, her heartbeat accelerating like a lion running after its victim. Which, she mused later, made Romero the lion but he wasn’t chasing, no, he had already caught up to it.
She remembers slowly standing up from the bed, being careful not to startle him as he gripped her arm tightly and told her not to try anything. The slight thump in the floor of the baby book, now long forgotten. The names she had read floating out of her brain and lightly hitting the ceiling, like deflating balloons.
Her eyes darting around the room in pure staggering fear, looking for her gun or for anything that could offer her a form of protection. Don’t try anything, he says before half dragging her to the living room and Amy finally coming to her senses and wrestling away from him.
Everything is like in slow motion, as if her whole life is lagging, feet dragging through the clay.
Then, when he tosses her against the dresser and she hits her head against it, everything becomes painfully clear.
He looms over her, gun waving as he shrieks. She’s not really paying attention. She’s still in shock because he’s real. He’s real and he’s here and he has a loaded gun.
“Anybody there?” he asks after a moment, kicking her leg making Amy fall to the floor on her elbows. She gazes up at him. “Where’s Jake? Where’s that little weasel?”
“I don’t-I don’t know.” She shakes her head. He grunts and Amy blinks away from him.
What is she going to do? How is she going to get out of here safely? How does the gazelle try to escape from the lion’s jaws?
Then, the sun moves through the curtain, illuminating the precision knife she uses for her scrapbooks thrown under the bed. She gets an idea.
“Where’s he gone?”
“I don’t know.” She says again but she’s distracted, she’s trying to figure out a way to get the knife without him noticing. He doesn’t notice her eyes going to the bottom of the bed or the three feet between her hand and said knife.
Still, his face darkens like a storm approaching water.
“You know, I told myself that I’d stay away for a while, I never really meant to hurt you. My problem is with Jake, not you, but he’s a slippery little eel. How do you catch a little eel? By getting Mrs. Eel. But what do you do when Mrs. Eel tries to escape?” he pauses. Amy looks up at him, her left hand slowly reaching under the bed. “Do you a) let her run? Or do you b) push her down some stairs because she’s really pissed you off by running away?”
Amy swallows thickly, remembering his thick hands on her shoulders and the BANG as her head hit the railing.
“I felt sort of bad when I saw you at the bottom of the stairs, all pale and barely breathing. I felt so bad that I even called an ambulance. ” He laughs, waves the gun around. “But, look at us now.” He grins off into the distance, slightly distracted and Amy takes a chance. The knife edge digs into the floor as she slowly drags it up. It makes a noise, like a scratch, but it goes unheard by Romero.
And before he sees her, she stabs it as hard as she can into his leg. It feels like cutting into raw chicken and she cringes but doesn’t stop until it’s jammed into his leg.
He lets out a hiss of pain, cursing loud enough to shake the door off its hinges. She knows she’s hit a tendon from the gushing blood and the loud curses that continue streaming through his mouth.
“You fucking-“ he begins and points the gun straight at her but before he can shoot, she twists the precision knife, making him fall onto his knees in pain. A loud crack sounds as he falls onto his knees. As he falls, he presses the trigger, the bullet grazing her shoulder and hitting the dresser behind her. Amy doesn’t let go of the knife, despite how much he tries to wrestle away. The blood runs down her hand as she twists it again, as if she’s unlocking a door, or perhaps locking one.
Her own shoulder bleeds onto her shirt, making the purple dark but she can hardly feel it. She can hardly breathe as her heart beats in her ears.
He lets out an ear-piercing scream and scurries to grab her, no doubt to finish putting that bullet in her shoulder or maybe in her head but she crawls away. She makes it to the kitchen with him ambling behind her, his leg makes it hard for him to walk and Amy hears as he drags it behind him. She imagines the blood trailing after him like a trail and shivers.
As she makes it to the door, he shoots off the gun again. This one misses her terribly, hitting the refrigerator instead. He’s losing blood, a lot of it, and Amy knows he’s very close to passing out. Still, she runs. She makes it out to the hallway, Romero now running after her slower. His threats are quieter, duller, the intensity oozing out of him in red, thick blood.
Her shoulder starts to ache now, the pain like a pulsating heart. The blood drenches her top even more now, now going down to elbow. She’s dizzy, too and knows that she only has to outrun him. He’ll be down soon, she knows he will.
Black spots appear in her vision. She blinks tightly and they’re gone but the edges of her vision remain blurred.
She’s at the stairs, about to start climbing down when he catches up to her, his thick hand wrapping around her mouth as she begins to call for help. His eyes are dark storms, a hurricane destroying everything in its path.
Jake, Jake, Jake, she thinks.
“You think you’d get away from me a third time?” he says throatily. Amy tries to wrestle his hand away from her mouth, her blood soaked hands streaking his with red. He presses the gun to the middle of her chest and she drops her hands. “You think I wouldn’t push you down those stairs? Stab you with this knife just like you did to me? Think I wouldn’t put another bullet in you?” He pauses, teeth glowing as he breathes through his mouth harshly. She can tell he’s in tremendous pain. “Because of Jake I got six months in solitary and ten more years added to my sentence.”
But you got out, she wants to say but can’t. The only sound is the dripping of blood from his leg and his harsh breathing.
“You want to know what I did during solitary? I thought of everything that I would do to Jake once I got out and I crafted a plan.” He shakes his head. “Jake doesn’t deserve an easy exit, doesn’t deserve one big hit and that’s it. He deserves to be chipped down little by little until there’s nothing left but rubble.”
Someone in one of the apartments laughs at something on TV and Amy calls out to them help, please help. Call Jake or Rosa. Anybody.
“It wasn’t easy to get out.” Romero shakes his head. “But once I did and I found out about your little wedding, I made sure it didn’t happen. And then you two left in hiding.” He laughs a booming laugh, eyes un-focusing on her face. “It was hard to find you, you know? But, a buddy of mine remembered you from the hospital.” He pauses, fakes sincerity. “Sorry about the baby, by this way.”
This is the final thing Amy needs before she kicks him in the leg. As he stumbles, Amy reaches out and pushes him. He rolls down the stairs, dropping the gun with a clack. Amy races down and grabs it before he can. He groans from the stair landing and Amy can tell that the knife has edged deeper into his leg.
“Goddamn it!” he grumbles, teeth grinding in his pain. He looks very pale, all the color siphoned out of him. Is this how he saw her those months ago? Pale and in pain at the foot of the stairs?, she thinks.
With shaky hands and an even shakier voice, she says, “Romero, you’re under arrest.”
When Amy awakes at the hospital, she sees Jake asleep at her bedside. She isn’t sure how she woke up here. All she remembers is her neighbor, Mr. Tatum, finding her over Romero’s almost passed out body and his shaking hands as he called 911 after she ordered him to. Then, after that, everything is blurry. She has a slight headache and she figures she fainted. Her bloody clothes have been exchanged for a blue hospital gown and Romero’s blood on her hands is washed off. But, still, she feels the sticky sensation.
Jake’s chest rises as he sleeps, his arms are crossed on his chest tightly. The tightness in his brow tells her that he fell asleep worried, probably terrified. Her heart aches at the thought of him arriving and finding her passed out by the stairs with her bleeding shoulder.
She deliberates for a second and slowly stands up, careful not to move any of the cables attached to her. Her finger traces over his features as he sleeps. She knows she should feel relief at the thought of Romero being gone, of him and his horribleness leaving them alone finally, but she’s a little scared. Because, in the trees, there’s always another monster but, as she looks at his calm sleeping face, the fear in her chest dissipates. Because, no monster if ever that scary without him by her side.
He wakes shortly after that and as they share her green hospital provided Jell-O, he tells her that Romero was gone. This time for good. He told Amy of arriving and finding Mr. Tatum crying over her fainted body. He was holding her gun and making sure that nobody got close to her or Romero as the police arrived.
“He’s honestly traumatized.” Jake adds.
Amy makes a mental note to send him a basket of fruit as thanks.
He pauses as he speaks and says, “You stabbed him in the tendon, you know?”
Amy grimaces, remembering the sickly feel of his blood gushing down her wrist and the twisting of the knife.
“At least he’s away.”
Jake nods and his face turns worried. “It was so scary to find you like that. Blood all over your hands and just…” he trails off and shakes his head. “Just, I got dejavu to what it probably was when, you know…”
Amy nods, takes his free hand. “Yeah, I know.”
“I didn’t see you that time until the hospital and seeing you there with blood all over you, makes me glad I never did.”
Amy squeezes his hand. “Want the rest of my Jell-O?”
Jake’s face conveys his relief and he nods, polishing off the rest of her Jell-O while she takes a nap.
It takes her a while before she can move her arm without grimacing and another three months before they take bandage off. He grazed a bone and they warn her that she’ll feel the pain once in a while, especially during the cold times. Amy rolls her eyes; yet another cruel reminder that those ugly moments existed.
Holt puts her back on the street after weeks of her begging him and six strongly worded letters stating her case. But, Jake telling him “Don’t be Captain Lame, sir!” is probably what did it.
As she showers, she glances at the scar in her arm, tracing it with her finger. The scar on her upper arm is a few inches below it and Amy connects them like a constellation. The Wounds of Magnitude, she names it.
The blood of Romero remained in the crevices of the wood flooring in the kitchen. They told her he wouldn’t be able to walk anymore without limping. But there wasn’t a whole lot of walking in thirty years solitary.
Her mother stops by one afternoon, a few months after the sentencing, and helps her tidy the living room. They hang balloons around the apartment, banners, and her father even brings one of his prized wines from his wine collection along. Albeit, dragging his feet slightly. Jake arrives from work and his eyes gleam at all the decorations, their friends, and Amy’s joyful face.
“Happy birthday.” She tells him and kisses his cheek.
The party isn’t the real present. The real present is an envelope tucked into deep into her drawer. It’s been there for two weeks and sometimes when he isn’t home she opens and stares at it to make sure it’s real. She put it off until his birthday, knowing that’d she’d really nailed the gift this year.
Later, when it’s just the two of them and he’s drifting off to sleep she whispers to him, “Do you want your real present now?”
“Now?” he mutters back, almost asleep. “I’m kind of tired but I can probably wake up. Just give me a minute.”
“Not that.” She says and rolls her eyes. She rolls out of bed and walks to the drawer, her hands find the crisp envelope in the bottom. Meanwhile, Jake sits up, rubbing his tired eyes. There’s a million butterflies in her stomach, making a home out of it and she’s very close to throwing up or passing out. Maybe both. She hands it to him, her hand shaking with excitement. Jake starts to open it but stops.
“Did you get me Mets tickets?”
“Nope.” She bounces back on the bed tucking her chin into her knees. She watches with fascination as he reads the letter. His eyebrows furrow as he reads it once and then again. She’d done the same before and she understands the look on his face.
Then, when he looks up it’s the clouds have cleared. “We’re off the waitlist.”
It’s not a question but Amy still says, “Yes.”
He reads it again, eyes dragging along the three sentence paragraph.
Mr. Peralta and Mrs. Santiago-Peralta, we’re pleased to tell you that you have been taken off the waitlist for the Nicholas Huck Adoption Center. Your caseworker, Hannah, will assist you through the process of adoption. If you have any questions….
Jake’s quiet for a second and then when he looks up, Amy can see the emotions in his eyes. Joy, happiness, excitement. “I thought I’d be sadder about turning 41 but,” he shrugs. “this is the best birthday ever. Beats that time my Uncle Scott took me to Coney Island.”
Amy grins. “Best birthday ever?”
“The best.” he grins and reads the letter again.
“Adopting a younger child is a relatively long wait.” Hannah says a week later, the words come quickly from her mouth as if she’s said this again and again to hopeful parents. There’s a wrinkle in her eyebrows, too, as she thinks of the older kids who didn’t take their eyes off the two of them as they walked around the adoption agency.
Amy’s not paying attention. She’s staring out the window, out at a little girl with wild curls. She’s about eight with dusky skin slightly darker than hers and observant eyes. She’s swinging slowly on her own, big black book in her hands. Her eyes move quickly as she reads. The wind moves her hurricane of hair and she sweeps it back with one motion. Amy remembers seeing her when they toured the agency. She looked up, saw them: young, green and eager, and looked back to her book.
Amy stomach drops at the thought of how many couples she’s seen to know exactly what they wanted.
Jake and Amy had spoke about the adoption and had settled on a younger child. Ideally, a baby. But now, Amy was rethinking everything.
Amy turns to Hannah. “What about an older kid?”
Jake’s eyebrows raise at this but the determination in Amy’s eyes soften his eyes and he nods along. “Yeah, an older kid.”
"Older kids are not usually as sought after as babies and most of them end up spending their time here or in foster homes." she pauses. "A lot of kids have gone through a lot in their lives."
Amy looks at the curly haired girl again and imagines the pain and the heartbreak. Although Amy’s own heartbreak is different, she feels for her.
Amy looks away from the curly-haired girl and into Jake's eyes. "So have we."
“Are you sure about this?” Jake asks her quietly when Hannah leaves them alone for a second.
Amy nods almost automatically. “Are not up for it, Peralta?”
Jake smiles, his hand settling on hers. “With you? Anything.”
Amy squeezes his hand.
Her name is Liliana and she’s eleven, about to turn twelve in three months, she explains in her quiet voice. Every so often, she looks up to make sure they’re still here and listening. Jake almost melts on the floor when she says that she’s seen Die Hard.
Hannah tells them her backstory: abandoned at two at a church, bounced around several foster homes, almost adopted once but the process was stopped when the couple found a baby. After that, she’s been staying at the Center where Hannah says she’d probably stay till she turned eighteen.
“I love her.” he says when they’re walking back to their car. “I seriously love her.”
They tell the squad later that week that they’re going through with the process.
“Terry is proud of his children.” Terry says with tears in his eyes when they tell them her backstory. “And Terry already loves his little niece.” Boyle sobs even more and tells that Nikolaj will be her best friend.
“Even better, I can see it now: us as father-in-laws.” he squeals. “You’ll be a Boyle cousin, Jake!”
“Yeah, that’s never going to happen. ” Jake says and shakes his head. “We haven’t even been approved for her adoption yet.”
“That agency would be stupid to not let you two be parents.” Boyle says.
“I agree.” Holt adds. “I think you two will be spectacular parents.”
“Thank you, sir.” Amy replies.
“Of course, it helps that the little girl isn’t biologically related to Amy because then maybe she’ll have a chance of having actual friends.”
“Thank you, Gina.” Amy says with an eye roll.
“I can take her on my bike.” Rosa says with a smile from the back of the room, her feet resting on the table. “ Better yet, when does she turn sixteen? I have an old bike I’ve been restoring-”
“Maybe we should hold off on her meeting you guys.” Jake interrupts, scared for Liliana and setups by Boyle, motorcycles given by Rosa. But, his heart swells. Is this feeling in his heart what every parent feels when they think of their kids?
They take her out weekly to dinner and she eats everything, including all her veggies. She doesn’t complain at all. The process of the actual adoption is long and her twelfth birthday comes and goes. Jake and Amy take her out for pizza, along with two of her friends from the Center. For her present, they buy her pink, glitter flats that she sits in her lap and stares at during the ride back.
When the papers go through and they go down Steward Street instead of turning towards Howard, Amy’s heart nearly bursts. Amy had already cleared out her office as a room for her. Jake surprised her and painted it Liliana’s favorite color. They almost went crazy picking out furniture and curtains. Terry spent a whole weekend drawing constellations on the ceiling, using glow in the dark paint so she’d see them before she went to sleep.
Liliana looks around with awe at the room and sets the little belongings she has in the drawers. Including, her birthday flats still as new as when they bought them.
Jake worries about her a lot, checking in on her almost hourly. Most of the time, she’s reading in Amy’s old childhood rocking chair. Other times, she’s napping.
He whispers to her at night, “She’s really quiet.”
"Yeah, and you talk way too much." He glowers at her playfully and Amy lets out a smile. He did talk too much, just nervous ramblings as Liliana stared blankly at him. They were entertaining and honestly, a little pitying. "Let's hope it catches on."
She starts school that August at the middle school five blocks down. Amy’s mom picks her up most of the time, commenting to Amy how Liliana does her homework almost immediately arriving home.
Her mother adored her from the first glance. Now, every week her mother came to teach her how to knit and her father played chess with her.
“She’s very precious.” Victor tells her later when Liliana is asleep. “Don’t let any Jake get on her.”
“Well, jokes on you because we have weekly Die Hard marathons.” Victor grumbles under his breath. Amy knew her father loved Lily as soon as Lily said she knew how to play chess. He loved her even more when she bested him thirty minutes later. She was quiet around him but she listened diligently as he spoke to her about chess. He didn’t speak to her like she was a child and Amy could tell that she liked it.
Amy usually drops her off in the morning, helping her comb her hair into a braid and ironing her uniform. One day, however, Jake is the one who drops her off and at noon, they come home smelling of popcorn.
“Jake, isn’t she supposed to be in school?”
“Yeah, um.” Jake glances back at her. Liliana looks down at her still unscuffed shoes, the wild curls in her braid unraveling. Jake shrugs. “We wanted to watch the new Thor movie, okay?” Amy glares at him but he shoots her a pleading look. I’ll explain later, it says and Amy sighs.
“How was it?”
Liliana looks up Jake, who nods to her, and she says, “It was really funny.” The smile on her face grows. “We saw Hulk’s butt.”
Jake raises his eyebrows. “We saw Hulk’s butt, Ames. How cool is that? Isn’t that way funner than school?”
“It’s actually ‘more fun’; ‘funner’ isn’t a word.” She corrects. “Which you’d know if you went to school instead of looking at Avengers’ butts.”
Jake sticks his tongue out at her and Liliana hides her smile.
Later, when Liliana is watching TV in the living room, he tells her the truth. “Her nails were digging into the door, Ames. I didn’t have any other choice.”
“You think she’s being bullied?”
“No.” Jake hesitates. “I think she’s scared.”
“Of what?”
“That we….” he trails off. Amy’s eyes soften.
“That we won’t come back for her.” Jake nods. “She still has to go to school. We can’t homeschool her, Jake.”
“I know.” He sighs. “But, just let her take the rest of the week off.” She starts to talk but he cuts her off. “It’s just two more days. I’m off tomorrow and then both of us are off the day after. I’ll tell her school that she got the flu and I’ll pick her homework so she still does it. Then on Friday, we go out to eat, all three of us. We can talk about school and everything else then. We’ll assure we’re not leaving her and maybe, even talk about a children’s psychiatrist.”
Amy thinks it over. In the kitchen, she can hear Liliana quietly laughing at something on the TV and her heart swells. As if they would abandon her. She loves her with her whole being. She loves that Liliana loves going to the museum, bringing her sketch pad with her and sketching as Amy looks at the paintings. Jake deserved credit for the sketch pad, finding her doodles in old napkins. He went out and bought her four new pads, pens, pencils, charcoal, paints. Liliana was taken aback and didn’t touch them for days but now had gone through two sketch pads.
Amy loves that she loves to draw as much as she loves to read.
She loves that she adores Rosa and loves Captain Holt, who didn’t know how to act around her at first but who now bought her books weekly, knowing her to be a voracious reader.
Amy loves braiding her hair, making her lunch, just being her mom.
But now, Amy sees all the clues. How her bed is always made first thing in the morning, her still-new shoes, her quietness which Amy mistook for shyness. Everything. Everything that she was doing to ensure that she would stay here, that she wouldn’t be a burden. She didn’t want to be returned like some malfunctioning appliance; she wanted to stay. She liked it here.
Amy’s heart soars.
“Okay.” Jake begins to quietly cheer but Amy’s finger to his face quiets him. “But, no more decisions like this without my input.”
He nods. “Of course.”
“I mean, we’re her parents and this is a-“
“Parents.” He says and smiles widely. Amy’s smile mirrors his. “I just-I got goosebumps.”
“She is our daughter now.”
“She doesn’t call us mom or dad, though.”
“Jake, it’s been like two months, give her time.”
Jake nods slowly and then his face lights up. “My daughter beats your dad at chess weekly.”
Amy sighs and rolls her eyes but the smile remains on her face.
Damn right, she does.
Liliana listens carefully as they talk to her.
“I’m seeing one, too.” Amy assures. “I had a”-she looks over at Jake-“pretty bad accident late last year and I had to see one to deal with that.”
“What kind of accident did you have?” she asks.
“I fell down some stairs and forgot Jake, my whole life.” Amy says. “But, I remember him now. It was scary and I tried to hide. I didn’t want to face a lot of things but, I’m stronger now.” She finishes with a smile. “There’s still a lot of memories that are really blurry and I probably won’t remember them but that’s okay. Jake and I have made some pretty amazing memories.”
Her eyes grow slightly misty and Jake squeezes her thigh from under the table.
Liliana listens carefully and looks down at the table.
“And you’re one of them.” Jake adds. Liliana looks up in slight surprise.
“Point is, we’re your parents now and we’re not going anywhere.”
“Yeah, you don’t have to be a quiet little mouse.” Jake says. “Yell at us if we do something that makes you mad, scuff your shoes, don’t make-”
“Jake-” Amy interrupts.
“-your bed every morning. Just be a kid, Liliana.” He finishes and Amy nods along. She thought it was going to go somewhere else but like always, he’s surprised her.
“I like making my bed.” Liliana says after a brief pause. “And I hate when people call me Liliana. Can you just call me Lily?”
“Yes, Lily.” Jake emphasizes.
“And maybe in the future, if you feel like it, you can call us ‘mom’ and ‘dad’.” Amy says slowly, hoping to not startle her. Truth be told, she was bummed that Lily wouldn’t call them ‘mom’ or ‘dad’ but the saddest part was that Lily probably didn’t know what it was like to have a parent.
Lily nods, and takes a french fry, dipping it in ketchup. She pauses and Jake nods encouragingly . “Can we stop by the art store later? I need another sketch pad.”
“Of course.”
“We’ll get you twenty.” Jake adds and Amy shoots him a look but smiles softly at his eagerness. He loves her.
“Thirty.”
When school lets out, they go down to Boston to see Jake’s parents. So far, they’d only seen Lily once in person but Karen bonded over her over art stuff, blabbing off for hours. Roger, on the other hand, went on a long tangent about meeting Picasso when he was younger. Jake later told her that her father thought he saw Picasso but it was probably just some bald man.
Amy feels like hell most of the trip and spends most of it in the guest room while the four of them play games in the kitchen and watched films.
Lily comes in to the room when she’s trying to rest off the headache. She walks carefully up to her and sits next to her.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m sick.” Amy opens one eye, looking into her observant eyes.
“I don’t think you’re sick.” She says slowly.
“I don’t like Rodger but not enough to pretend to be sick.”
“I think you’re pregnant.” Lily says. Amy sits up automatically.
“What?”
“We learned in health class that when you’re pregnant you get really cranky and you throw up a lot.” Lily shrugs. “You threw up on the airplane and you haven’t left the room once.”
“That’s not possible.” Amy says. “I can’t…” she sighs. “the doctor says there’s like a ten percent chance I’ll ever have kids.”
“It’s still ten percent.” Lily says with a shrug and then her eyes darken. “If you have a baby, does that mean-“
“It doesn’t mean anything. It probably isn’t even true.” she says, reassuring her worried face. For the millionth time in her life, she curses her almost-adoptive parents. Still, she can’t remember her last period but she does remember not taking her birth control pill one night. “Put your shoes on; we’re going to the grocery store.”
Lily waits in the Walmart restroom as Amy sits in the stall and worries during the three minutes. She knows it’s probably just a bug—Hitchcock was sick last week—but part of her wished it was a baby. Still, ten percent was too slim of a chance. She knows she won’t be heartbroken if it’s not true. She has Lily, she has Jake.
Her phone dings as the three minutes come to an end.
When Amy comes out, Lily raises her eyebrows in a told-you-so way.
Amy wants to smile at the direct Jake-like movement but she rushes into the stall where she throws up again.
Amy glances over at Jake but he’s frozen, staring over the doctor’s shoulder as he speaks. The doctor’s voice is low, apologetic, and Amy looks down at her fingers.
She feels numb, but she’s felt this way for months, ever since she stopped being Amy Santiago and started being Beatriz Lopez. Beatriz Lopez wasn’t an officer, she was a homemaker with a knitting obsession. It was hard to be Beatriz but as the numbness settled in, she wondered if large parts of her no longer were Amy but Beatriz.
And now, she didn’t know who lost the baby. If she was supposed to mourn as Beatriz or as Amy.
But, as she looks at Jake once again. She knows who he’s mourning as. Jake, simply Jake.
It’s hard not to tell Jake about the pregnancy but she has to be sure and she’s 37, any pregnancy at her age would be high risk.
When Amy turned sixteen, her mother dropped a packet of birth control pills onto her bed. “You’re a Santiago; you can’t walk down the street without getting pregnant.” At her look, she added, “Better safe than sorry.”
Years later, Amy would look back at that moment with a cruel ironic outlook. She’s in a daze on the way back to precinct. She finds Jake in the evidence room going over some files.
His back is turned to her, the hunch of his shoulders looking like a sloping hill. He turns at the sound of her boots.
“Hey, babe. How was the dentist?”
“I’m pregnant.”
Jake looks up from his file at once.
"What?"
"Yeah...I'm pregnant."
"When did you find out?"
"In Boston." She says walking over to him. "I thought Hitchcock had gotten me sick but..." Amy trails off and shakes her head. “The doctor confirmed it today."
“You’re pregnant.” He says slowly, as if not understanding the word. “Like, there’s a baby in you?”
“Yes.” She says. “Your baby.” She doesn’t even notice him wrapping her against him until she’s in his arms. He holds her tight against her, breath rustling her hair.
"Jake," she pulls away and tries to sound as serious as she can. "It's extremely high risk. There's a big chance it won't really happen."
"I know. I know." he grins and then he says, "We're having a baby."
When baby Elias is born, Amy watches as he coos in her arms. His eyes are all hers but even in his miniature state, she can tell the rest of his face is all Jake. When Jake first carried him, she was sure he was like ten percent away from crying. She had already done all her crying during the labor; she was all cried out.
The door opens and Jake walks in, Lily holding his hand. She looks hesitant, holding a big, blue bear reading It’s a boy. She was still anxious about the baby, despite how many times she read to Amy’s belly. Maybe, like Amy, she thought it was like a distant dream but here it was real and whole.
“Hi, there.” Jake coos down at the baby. Lily stays back, watching with guarded eyes. Amy signals her over, feeling for her little almost-thirteen year old heart.
“Come meet your little brother.”
Lily looks down and her face melts. “He’s cute.” Elias yawns, his mouth forming a perfect ‘o’. Jake’s eyes soften as he looks at both of them.
“My two kiddos.” Jake says, settling his hand on Lily’s shoulder.
Lily rubs her finger against his cheek and Elias’ tiny baby cheek dimples.
“You want to carry him?” Lily nods almost shyly, dropping the bear to the bed and holding her arms out. Amy lowers him into her arms and watches in wonderment as Lily perfectly positions him in her arms. Elias yawns again.
“Am I going to share a room with him?” she asks.
“For a little while.”
“I don’t mind.” Lily says. “I can take care of him. I took care of the babies at the Center.”
“You don’t have to.” Amy shakes her head. She wants to cry at the fact that she's’ trying so hard to not be a burden. “Just be his big sister. We’ll worry about the rest.”
Her mother comes to take her home and Lily’s eyes don’t leave her baby brother until the door is closed.
When it’s just her and Jake, she looks down at Elias’ now-sleeping face.
“I think it would’ve been so much harder.” She says quietly. “If I had my accident after them both.” She looks up at him and Jake is paying close attention. “I would be devastated to forget them.”
“I know.” Jake pauses. “That was one of the hardest times of my life and I was stupid to think having them around would be easier.” He shakes his head. “I think of all those times that I stayed up late thinking that you’d probably never remember me. If I had the kids with me, I’d probably go crazy if you didn’t remember us. I think I’d be more devastated for them.” He pauses. “I went down that scenario so many times. What I’d do.”
“What would you do?”
“Nothing.” Jake says quietly. “I thought that if you didn’t remember me, I’d help you fall in love with me again. But, if you found someone better, I wouldn’t stand in your way.”
“I think I’d do the same.”
He snorts. “As if. I’d live a hundred lifetimes and still fall in love with you.”
Amy smiles. “You said that to me before.”
“And I meant it then and I mean it now.”
“I wouldn’t remember her first Christmas with us or the first time I met her.” Amy says quietly.
“Falling in love with her.” Jake scrunches his nose up and smiles at her. “Or her adorable lisp for the first weeks.”
“Or his first kick.”
“Or the first time she called me ‘dad’.”
Amy laughs, “You cried like a baby.” Amy find his hand and threads their fingers. “The first time she called me ‘mom’, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t stop smiling.”
Jake glances at baby Elias. “Want to count his toes again?”
“No.” she says. “Let’s count his eyelashes again.”
“And, how are things?” Dr. Ramirez asks her.
Amy shrugs. “Pretty good. Elias is walking now.”
“No new memories?”
Amy shakes her head. “I have tons of good ones now. Lily joined the soccer team and Jake took so many the pictures of her. “
Dr. Ramirez smiles. “And the fogginess? It doesn’t bother you?”
That’s what Dr. Ramirez called her missing memories, the ‘foggy’. Those memories hadn’t returned and while she grieved them before, she didn’t mind anymore. Going through that terror and that heartbreak made her stronger. Made her and Jake stronger.
“No, because everything ahead of me is clarity, I’m sure of it.” She thinks back to Romero, to her accident, to her father’s heart attack a few months prior. “There’s bad clarity and there’s good clarity and I’m glad I have Jake’s hand to guide me through it all.”
Amy passes her Lieutenant's exam when Elias is four. Lily, a sullen teen girl now, even pushed the bangs out of her face to attend the party. She was going through a straight phase and flat ironed her hair daily but the edges around her temples curled.
She’d been hanging a lot with Rosa and Lauren now that they were engaged and she thought that Lauren was the coolest person ever.
Rosa corners her. “Hey, is your kid trying to steal my fiancée?”
Amy rolls her eyes, adjusting her uniform. “Leave her alone.”
"It's okay. I get it." Rosa lets out a half-smile. “I remember when I was sixteen and I had a crush on Mrs. Montevideo. She was so hot for her age.” Amy raises her eyebrows, noticing the similarities between her daughter and Rosa. It never crossed her mind but now it’s painfully obvious.
“You think...“ Amy trails off and Rosa shoots her a look.
“Duh.” Rosa shrugs. “Just don’t pressure her. Let her figure it out on her own.”
“Okay.” Amy nods. “I can totally do that.” Amy glances at the corner of the room at Lily and the stars dancing in her eyes. She can see her in five years, working her way through college, her curly tresses probably colored some outrageous color that Jake would think would look super cool but secretly hated. Elias would be nine then and soon enough it’d be his turn to be a sullen teen. She almost groans but instead, she smiles.
Jake and Elias are in the other side of the room talking to Holt. The chevron on Jake’s uniform had happened two months prior and he wore it well. Elias notices her and lets go of Jake’s hand and runs over to her. He wraps his arms around her legs tightly.
“I’m tired.” he moans quietly and Amy picks him up, pushing his thick brown hair away from his forehead.
“We’re almost going home, bud.” She kisses his forehead and meets her husband’s eyes from across the room.
She remembers thinking that she wasn’t the same Amy that Jake fell in love with and how stupid she really was. Was the loss of a few memories going to erase the years the had together? The loss? The tragedy? There was always going to be something there.
It’s like he said, a hundred lifetimes and I’d still fall in love with you. Amy hugs her son tighter. He smiles from across the room and makes his way over to her. She extends her hand and their fingers mold together.
Screw a hundred. She’d live a million lifetimes and she’d still fall in love with him.
I think everything leads to something, one way or another. I think that there’s paths we’re walking down, little doors that taunt us and doors that we mistakenly open in order to find that perfect one.
And honestly, every single door probably leads me to you.
Excerpt of Amy Santiago: A Life in a Binder by Jake Peralta.