Always Home for Sunday Dinner

M is for Mom Part 1

It was morning and yet the sky was still dark. He had tried for hours to fall asleep but he couldn't put his mind at ease. There was a specific day he had on his mind and now Detective Daniel Reagan was sitting by his window with a cup of coffee in hand, forfeiting to his racing mind. While it was normal for him to wake up at 5am, this one wasn't normal. For all he could think about was his mother. As days were getting closer, he was getting closer to the anniversary of his mother's death. His mother Mary passed away years ago from breast cancer, and while some time had passed, every day they passed her birthday, mother's day or the anniversary, it was like reopening a fresh wound. So there he sat sighing heavily trying to figure out how to control his emotions in the next upcoming days. Sometimes it felt as though he was getting better at handling it. But there were days when he knew he needed her, and that she would no longer be there. Before he did have someone else. A person that he could lean on in those times. Someone that his mother said gave her some peace before she had left them because she knew he would be fine as long as he had her. That person was Linda. And he didn't have that anymore. This time he would be braving the day alone. And that made him long for the two women missing in his life even more.

But life still moved on. And soon he found himself wiping away the stray tear and heading downstairs to start his day. He had a job to go to and kids to take care of. That is something that had to come first. He made breakfast, got ready for work, woke up his youngest son, checked in with his eldest away at college, and soon they were all out the door to start their days. Danny tried to keep his mind off of his mother and the anniversary as best as he could. But the more he tried, the more he thought about his mother, and in turn his late wife. But as he pulled up the 54 Precinct, he lifted up a shield to protect his heart, stoned off all emotion and walked in with a placid expression on his face as best he could. But he knew it would only be a matter of time before someone questioned him, for he was never the best at hiding how he truly felt. He walked into the building and greeted everyone that passed him, but only part of him meant what he was saying. He finally reached his desk, and flopped himself down to finish paperwork. He had never been so grateful to be working on paper work; he just wanted something to take his mind off things for the day.

"You feeling okay Reagan?" his partner Detective Maria Baez asked him. Damn. Of course she would be the first to notice something was off with him.

"Yeah I'm fine why?" he said, the sentence filled with half truths.

"You look hell," she said bluntly.

"I'm fine partner," he repeated. 

Just then their boss Lieutenant Dee Ann Carver called them from their office and he knew that would mean there was a new case. He sighed and looked in her direction, his partner getting up and grabbing her things as their superior spoke.

"We have a shooting on 8th Avenue," she informed them, "Uniforms on route to the scene as we speak."

"We're on it boss," Baez said, and Danny pulled himself out of his chair and grabbed his coat before following his partner out of the building.

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Danny was eerily quiet for her liking. He simply kept to himself and was a lot quieter than he had been normally. She knew that he tended to do that when things bothered him. It was funny; he always seemed to get so hotheaded and need to be pulled back but when something was on his mind, it was almost as if he didn't want to talk about anything. And she could tell this was the case just considering how he white knuckled the wheel and never looked at her once. Instead of starting up conversations with her, he stayed tight lipped as he drove. She considered maybe asking him again but she had a feeling about how that would go; even Danny's version of "talking about it" was barely getting down to it. He would say something that just seemed like he was trying to get you to forget it. Asking seemed like throwing gasoline on a lit match. So she opted for talking about their newest case instead.