A Family Affair

12

Jay's decision to step outside for a moment for some fresh air alone hadn't proved successful when he was joined by Adam moments after having shut the back door behind him.

Adam gave him a gentle smile and moved across the patio to sit beside him on the bench, turning toward him once he was seated. "You alright, buddy?" He questions, showing worry on his face.

Jay doesn't answer for a beat as he continues rubbing his forehead, as if trying to stop the throbbing pain in his head. He slowly nods as he drops his hands, squinting his eyes as he looked back to his friend. "Yeah, I'm fine, it's just really loud in there." He sighs.

The younger man shrugs. "I mean you did organize a three-year-old's birthday party, what where you expecting? A quiet place?"

Jay opens his eyes completely to shoot his coworker a glare. "Shut up." He speaks through his teeth subtly as he keeps the fixated stare.

Adam then shoots the detective a puzzled look. "What's so special about a third birthday anyway? It's not like one of those milestone birthdays."

Jay sits back into the bench, having been leaned over putting this weight against his legs. "Hailey and I have always been working. She spent her first birthday with Will and her second with a nanny. And even this party was thrown together in the last two days because we weren't sure if we were gonna have a case come in at the last minute."

"But it's not like she's definitely gonna remember it." Adam reasons.

The older detective nods. Adam has a point because there was a chance Macie might not remember this, Will had said the latest first memory someone can have develop is at age eight, but at the same time most people have their first between three and three and a half, so there is still a chance she could.

"Yeah, but we are," Jay says, "I still feel a little guilty about the fact we had been so involved in the case we were working we didn't notice it was her first birthday until that lunchtime. Even if she doesn't remember this, we wanted to do something special for her, because it's the first year we weren't working."

Adam smiles, putting his hand against Jay's shoulders. "Well thanks for inviting me to this thing," he says, gaining a small returned smile from Jay before Adam furrows his brows, looking around the back garden as if looking for Macie, "Speaking of her, where is she?"

Jay points over his shoulder, toward the door leading back into the house. "She's with Will in the living room."

Despite the fact the doors into the garden were shut tightly, and little to no noise could be heard coming from inside the house, the two men were cut off from saying anything else by the sounds of loud cries coming from Macie inside the house. The cries weren't as they usually were, they weren't her normal cries, she was screaming bloody murder.

Without a beat passing Jay leaps up from the bench, his heart already beginning to race in his chest as he ran over to the door and slid it open with no care at any damage he might cause because of the force, dashing into the house and toward the living room, where he had left Macie in the care of his brother. As he ran past the stairs to enter the living room he almost ran into Hailey, who was running as quickly as he was down the stairs.

In the room he found Will struggling to pick Macie up from the floor as the toddler screamed her lungs out in pain. From where Jay was standing he could see the large crimson line running down the side of his daughter's face and that's when he jumped forward, slightly pushing his brother out the way and managing to pick Macie up into his arms in the first attempt, the girl clinging on for dear life.