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Charles ‘Casey’ Jones has built a career on facing the unknown. On any possible thing that can be thrown at him literally or logistically - IEDs, terrified privates, guerilla ambushes, long General-decreed marches over desert terrain that make no logical sense with no notice.
Casey has even faced the cheap under-loaded pistols and broken bottles of the Southie playgrounds he grew up on; the even scarier worn-asphalt, no-net black-courts that Jane Rilzzoli ran back in the day, challenging any varsity player willing to challenge a girl.
Charles ‘Casey’ Jones often went into battle knowing that nothing could ever surprise him the way that scrawny freshman Jane Rizzoli and her buddies did when they beat his senior crew 3-on-3.
Until that same Jane Rizzoli, no longer 5 feet, and no longer scrawny, dropped a bomb unlike any he’s ever seen on General Jones.
“Casey?”
“No, I, I’m sorry, I’m here. I’m processing”
She laughs and Casey, somewhere in the Afghani desert, feels like he’s home again.
“No. I get that, I needed time to process myself, it’s been a few weeks, and your email even cut that short.” She chuckles again, and Casey feels homesick. “You heard what I said though, right? I’ve processed. I’ve made my decisions. I know you made yours. I’m more than happy to raise this baby on my own, as a Rizzoli.”
“Yeah”
“But I want you invol…I don’t want to push you out Casey! We made our decisions, but this baby is yours. He, they, I can take care of this. I will have this baby and I will be responsible for it. And you’ll be a General and we’ll…well…”
“I know. I’m sorry, Jane. If I’d known..”
She shakes her head in that dismissive way that felt as threatening to a teenage Casey as her corner jump shot and he knows she’s made peace with their situation.
“You didn’t know. I didn’t know. There’s no way we could have…Casey… You want to be there. Well not there but -
“I know”
She smiles and in any other situation Casey would have felt loss, but now he just hopes that his child has that right cheek dimple, as she continues “- and I want to be here. I love my job, as much as you love yours. And I’ll do it for as long as I'm able. But I - wait Casey, you know that right?. That we’ve made our decisions?”
“I’m starting to”
“Well you should have, before you..” she takes a deep breath, so intentionally Casey knows who taught her to do it…I’m sorry. You’re..we made our decisions. And this is a surprise for both of us, but I…well I want this, even though I know we’re never gonna..”
“That’s great Jane.”
His heart is breaking. He made a pretty calculated decision about how he could rise above the ranks, after his first wife cost him a few early promotions. And he would probably make the same decision now, even with the baby, but it's a baby. It’s him and Jane married with a baby in a quiet triple decker down by the water in the way they both would have imagined a future back in high school.
But he knows now it would mean the two of them with a triple decker and Angela in one of the rooms if not one of the floors. And Maura over every morning and night. Or him and the baby while Jane is at Maura’s, or more likely, him alone while Jane and the baby are at Maura’s.
He knows he’d be unemployed or maybe working for some local government contractor who kept him working at least as many hours as Jane, and seeing her and the baby only a few hours a day, while he resents the fourth star on his collar he’ll never attain. He knows, even as he longs for their life together, that it would never work. He knows that Jane, who has always been smarter than him, and has had weeks to process, has already come to this conclusion.
“ Casey”
She has never said his name with that level of affection before, and he decides to be pragmatic in his response to it.
“Jane, I…”
“No Casey, just hear me out, please?”
He gives her a go ahead gesture.
“This will be quick, but I planned it out, and you know that’s hard for me”
She laughs and shows him the notepad, and it’s her scribbles surrounded by Maura’s bullet points. It has him raising up to attention in defiance of no-one.
“I…you are this baby’s father. I’m never gonna keep you from being that. And we have a lot decisions to make, like names and last names, and hockey positions”
She laughs and Casey laughs exactly where he’s supposed to, knowing he’s already lost her, but excitedly imagining a future for their child.
“But I’m okay, and I can make all the doctors’ appointments and whatever…probably would anyway I guess.” She does that dismissive headshake again and Casey doesn’t feel dismissed. He kinda feels in awe of her.
“I”m going to have this baby, no matter what, and I don’t expect anything from you, I don’t need anything from you -”
He understands fully that she truly doesn’t need anything from him and his heart breaks again.
“-but Casey, I’m not gonna…I’ll never keep you from them, or lie to them. You can be as involved as you want to but you’ll always be their dad, okay? No matter what.”
“And who’s gonna look after you?”
She riles in the way he wasn’t trying to instigate but should have expected.
“I can look after myself.”
He tries to keep himself from laughing as he says “no, I just meant…are you watching your caffeine, taking vitamins, do you have a doctor?”
She says “well I went to a new doctor because my usual OBGYN is in the neighborhood and I didn’t want your mom to have this conversation with you before I could.”
They laugh together and it feels good. He wasn’t sure he’d ever have a child and now that it’s likely he will, he knows he wants them to grow up surrounded by laughter.
“And Maura’s been a Nazi about caffeine and cold cuts and a vitamin regimen, so…what?”
He’s been nodding at her knowingly and she just noticed.
“And when you give birth? She’ll be there too, right? She would have even if I stayed home.”
Her countenance changes, defensive in a way he hasn’t seen since that blacktop basketball court.
He puts his hands up in surrender “hey, I’m not trying to, I just want to know you're taken care of. I don’t think anyone could do it better, maybe even better than me, than Dr. Isles”
“ Casey”, she softens again.
“ Jane ”, he softens as much as the cold desert night will allow. “I just want to know if…since we decided…you’re being taken care of, right?”
She collapses into a gentleness he’s never seen, be that he wants his child to have constant access to, “I am. I’ve given up caffeine and trans fats, and twinkie goodness and basically anything that brings me joy, and she’s…Maura came with me to the appointment to confirm…I can send you the image if you want it’s just a blip but it’s…”
“Do you have it now?”
“Huh? Oh, do you mean do I?”, she leaves and comes back with a grainy picture of a kidney-bean looking thing.
He lets out a sound of wonder against his will and Jane says chuckling, “I know, right? It doesn't seem like much but it’s…Maura was super happy because there’s ectopic pregnancies or false chemical signatures or whatever..and this picture means”, she takes a moment to deeply sigh, “it was worth telling you”.
“It’s beautiful, Jane.”
“It’s a bar nut”
“It’s our baby”
“Ha, yeah..it’s..it’s our baby”
“How do you feel? I mean are you sick, physically. Are you?.. How do you feel emotionally?”
She lets out a wet chuckle and Casey feels homesick again.
“I’m fine. I mean, I’m eating a lot of plain toast and Maura won’t let me near the chemicals in the morgue unless my respiration rate is less than 16, but mostly I’m okay, and, what?”
He realizes he’s nodding, against his will, in confirmation of something he already knew.
“Nothing. I’m glad you’re okay, Or okay enough. And that Maura is looking out for you.”
“I mean she’s not,”
“ Jane , I wasn’t being petty. I’m happy you have someone to take care of you. Someone to look for the baby. Genuinely.”
“You know you’re…whenever you come home, you have full access right? You can hold them from the moment you get here until your furlough’s over”
He can’t hold back the wonder in his expression or voice when he says “I know”.
He knows that Jane is taken care of. He knows who is taking care of Jane. But he can’t help himself and his Irish Catholic sense of duty as he says,
“Jane, I said I love you and I swear I still do. If you need me to come home…”
“I don’t. We don’t.” She does that deep sigh of hers. “You have a destiny to follow there, General”
The sound of his new title, in her voice, made it seem real in the way his new star didn’t.
“Well you know, if you do need me, for anything, if Maura can’t…”
“ Casey,” she says in warning.
He holds his hands up in surrender again, “I’m not trying to undermine… anything …you have going in Boston...”
She softens, “I know”
“But I do want to make sure…”
“Casey, I’m fine. Truly. I just wanted you to know so that you can make all of your decisions now that I..we..won’t get in the way of any of that”
“I believe you”
“Thank you”
“I don’t…I know we’ll have a lot more conversations…but I’m really happy”
He’s always teased her about not being girly enough, as kids, and when they were together, but she looks plenty girly now as she says, down right maternal, “I’m really happy too”
“And she knows if she doesn’t take care of you up to standards, she’ll have the entirety of the US Army to deal with, right?”
Jane is giggling in a way he’s never heard from her, as girl or woman, as she replies “I don’t think it’ll be a problem, but I’m sure she’d agree with you”.
He knows he made the right decision about his life even as he aches for the little beer nut in the jpeg file Jane has already sent him.
“Honey, I’m getting the signal I have 60 seconds; you’ll keep me updated? And you promise she’ll take care of you? Both?
“She will, and we will! Casey. You’ll have any role in this baby’s life you wa—--”
The signal cuts out long before the 60 seconds he was promised but that’s the Army. They haven’t delivered on most of the promises they’ve made him since he was 18, but he’s managed to exceed most of the expectations some enlisted kid from Southie could ever have anyway.
He’s exceeded most of the expectations he could have imagined in boot camp, or even as an officer, ever on the edge of combat five years ago.
He chose to be a General, in part because he’s always worked to be a General, and in part because he would have settled in Boston well short of his expectations, watching his wife and kids live our their destiny under another woman’s influence.And he would have resented the hell out of all of them.
There would have been a nanny or there would have been Angela or likely both, working to keep their family steady day to day while he went to some federal office and Jane solved murders.
While Jane had early morning coffee with Maura and after work drinks with Maura and he went crazy.
Maura would have ‘filled the gap’ whether he would have been available or not.
And he and Jane would have simmered in resentment until they exploded and he would get to see his kids every other weekend, and he never would have made General.
And Maura would be making them all some organic breakfast no matter what.
This is better, he tells himself now, and will have 30-some weeks to come to terms with. He can’t take better care of Jane now than Maura can. He doesn’t know about folic acid.
He doesn’t know how to make Jane giggle. He doesn’t know how to make Jane still in the way Maura did in a grungy bar booth that one time the Sox were down by one going into the bottom of the ninth, with only one slow swipe down her back.
He is ashamed to admit he tried, for weeks after, to calm her down with a similar movement, in situations far less dire, and it never worked.
She has looked at him in love, and she has looked at him in lust, but she’s never looked at him in awe, the way she does with Maura.
This is better. He could have happily married Jane. And - by the way - she would have happily married him. But they never would have lasted and they both knew it. And he wouldn’t have ever made General.
But he is a General. And he has a baby on the way. A baby he already has a picture of. A baby he can come home to and cuddle any time he wants for as long as his leave will allow. While his baby’s moms go enjoy themselves, or solve murders, or hover over them both.
Jane is taken care of. And his baby is taken care of. And he has a ManCan.
And he stays up late every night strategizing on screens with the other Generals before he can close his laptop and go to bed. And every night he awes over more stars than his South Boston upbringing could have ever allowed him to even imagine
But now he knows from now on, he’ll leave every meeting charting the stars for home. To Jane, and their beer nut baby.
And Maura.
For the baby he already loves. And that baby’s moms.