Kate walked into her apartment wearily. Another long night of painful
discovery and unmet expectations. Yet another face off with Angel. She
knew he knew what had happened in that wine cellar. She knew he knew
what had happened in the dress shop. She could understand his silence.
She'd seen plenty of people take the fifth. But this tonight had been
different.

His associate, Wesley...something, had been shot and nearly killed. He
took the news impassively. How the hell could he do that? One minute he
was all enraged that zombie cops were cleaning up the streets - okay,
so their methods were questionable, but the streets in that
neighborhood were clear of muggers, rapists, and murderers for once -
and the next he couldn't be bothered about a man he'd worked with for
more than a year. A man he'd once gone into a burning building to
rescue.

Kate had never cared for enigmas.

She went to the kitchen and grabbed a beer out of the refrigerator
automatically. She unscrewed the lid almost without noticing she'd done
so. The first swallow went untasted, barely noted by her brain. She
set the bottle down on the kitchen table with a thud and a sigh.

Dropping her ass into a chair and her face into her hands, Kate tried
to will the tears not to come. She'd refused to shed them back at her
fathers' grave when she was with Angel, but now, alone, she could no
longer hold up the wall over her heart.

She knew what people thought of her. Bitch. She'd heard it whispered
behind her back most of her life. Nut. She'd been hearing a lot of that
one lately, too. Well how would they handle it? The people who rushed
to judge her so quickly. They would go a little crazy too, if they
realized the monsters under their beds were real.

And then to discover that they were not only real, but far more
complicated than she'd ever wanted to believe humans could be, well,
her brain couldn't wrap itself around the idea.

All her life there had been good guys and bad guys, in neat bundles of
character traits. Cops were good guys. They locked up the bad guys so
other good guys would be safe to go to work and come home and raise
families. That's what she'd learned at her father's knee, and it was
pretty much the only lesson he'd ever bothered to teach her so she
clung to it as a lifeline.

The line was ready to snap.

She downed the rest of the beer quickly, though she knew from
experience it wouldn't bring her the comfort she needed. There was only
one thing that would make her feel better.

Before she could even fully process the thought, she'd picked up the
phone and hit the speedial.

A voice came across the wire.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Joyce. It's me."

"Kate? Are you alright? You sound a little down."

"Rough day. I just needed to hear your voice, if that's okay."

"Of course it is. And the girls are both out, so we don't need to worry
about that. What happened?"

"I, um, I had to deal with some bent cops tonight. And I ended up
taking a side trip to my father's grave. It wasn't easy."

"Oh, Kate, honey, I know that wasn't any fun. Do you need me to come
up?"

"No, not right now. I know you want to spend some time with your kids.
They need you. Besides, you said something about another buying trip
soon, right?"

"As soon as I can arrange it." There was a brief hesitation. "It may be
longer than I was originally planning. Dawn, well, she got some...news.
It was a bit rough on her. But I'll come visit you as soon as I can."

"No, that's fine. You have to take care of your kids, right? And they
don't even know I exist."

"It's not that I don't want to tell them, Kate..."

"It's just that it's been a rough few months for them. I know."

"I will tell them, I promise, just as soon as things settle down a bit.
They've already been through so much lately."

"Yeah. I know." She wiped her unruly eyes. She didn't want to cry.

"They don't even know about me. They think their father left because he
was with another woman. We didn't think they were ready to deal with
the fact that it was because I was seeing another woman."

Kate breathed a shallow, bitter laugh.

"And we all know a lesbian is the weirdest thing they've ever seen.
They should see what goes on here, sometimes."

"You'd be surprised what goes on in a small town like Sunnydale.
They've seen a lot of things no one should ever have to see. I just
want to keep them safe."

"Maybe I should just hang up. I don't want to fight. Not right now."

"No, Kate, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that. I just...I know I
have a bad habit of saying whatever comes to mind. I didn't mean they
needed to be protected from you. I'm more worried about how they'll
react to my secret. And to the fact that I've kept it so long."

"Yeah, I know. Secrets have a way of coming back to bite you in the
ass, don't they? I don't like hiding, Joyce. I'm tired of it."

"Just a little longer, okay? Dawn's really fragile right now."

"Not just that, Joyce. There's some other things I've kept secret.
Things that might scare you."

"I don't know; it takes a lot to scare me these days."

"Well you haven't seen what I've seen."

"Maybe not, but I'll never know until you tell me what it is."

Kate hesitated.

"I can't say it. Not over the phone. I have to do this face to face.
Can you understand that?"

"As long as you're not planning to tell me you've found someone else, I
think I can take it. And you can tell me whenever you're ready. Just
don't wait too long, Kate."

"They got the tumor. You're okay now."

"Tumors aren't the only things that can kill, you know."

"I'm a cop. I know about lots of ways to die you've probably never
heard of. But you're not gonna die, Joyce. You're gonna live a long
time."

A long moment of silence ensued. Finally Kate broke it.

"Joyce...if something had...gone wrong, with the operation...would
anyone have known to call me?"

The sigh on the other end of the line wrenched her already battered
heart.

"I made a new will, right before. As soon as I got the news about the
tumor. I wrote letters for a few people and put them with it. If
I...hadn't made it, you would have gotten one."

"But just a letter?"

"No, I left you a few things in the will, too. And I explained about
you in my letters to the girls. In case I wasn't here to tell them
myself."

"Five years, Joyce. It's been five fucking years. Why are we still a
secret? We've made love and made plans and whispered over the phone for
five years. It's time your kids knew about me. About you. About us,
dammit. I know you're scared, hell, so am I. My father went to his
grave never knowing who or what I was. Don't do that to your kids.
Don't let them find out from a Goddamn letter."

"You're right. I've been so scared of what they would think of me, I've
used every excuse I could come up with to put it off. Can you
understand that?"

"Better than you know."

"Okay. We'll tell them. Note the use of the term 'we'. I want you here
when they find out."

"Yeah. Sure. That's good."

"When do you want to do this?"

"I could take a personal day. Hell, they've been trying to get me to
take a few ever since my dad died. They'll be glad to see the back of
me for one day, anyhow. So, you tell me. When?"

"I need to make sure Dawn is really doing better, and that's not just
an excuse, honestly. She really is very fragile right now, and I don't
want to upset her. So, maybe, in a couple weeks?"

"Okay. Two weeks. Two weeks from today, I march up to your door and we
tell your kids we're in love."

"That's exactly what we'll do. And I do, Kate. I love you."

"I love you, too, Joyce. Thanks. I feel a little better now."

"So do I."

"You know something, Summers? You're probably the biggest pain in the
ass I know, but you always end up making me smile. No matter how shitty
I feel when I get on the line, I'm smiling by the end of it. How the
hell do you do that?"

"Probably the same way you always make me smile no matter how grumpy
you're being. You bitch and moan at me, but you keep me honest."

"We really are some pair, aren't we?"

"No. We're some couple. Just hang on for another two weeks, and we'll
go public, honey."

"Two weeks. I think I can make it that long."

She hung up the phone. She smiled slightly. Two weeks.

Then she could be with Joyce forever.