Author's Note: Ow my feeeeeeeeels! This episode hurt—why must our hearts be torn apart at the end of every episode? Why? Reese's loyalty to Finch! Finch catching Grace before she fell! It hurts, blast it all. Ahem. Anyway. The title for this is from the song Medicine by Daughter—you know, the song that played the previous time we had our hearts broken. I just thought that Fusco would hang around and help Grace pack and I had to write something after that episode or I'd explode.

Pick it Up

No one told me outright who this Grace Hendricks lady was, but I wasn't a detective for nothing. I let her lead the way up the steps to her front door. With the key in the lock she paused and looked over her shoulder at me. I'd been inspecting the street for strange—well, stranger—guys in suits. I nodded and trailed her inside.

Something on one of the tables near the door caught her eye and I followed her gaze. Even though I'd already worked out the connection between Glasses and Grace, seeing the photograph of him and her still took me aback. He looked so damn happy—they both did. It was hard to get past the image in my head of the guy I knew. She picked up the photo, held it in both hands like it was sacred. "Did you know Harold?"

I considered my answer and hoped it was the right one. "Yeah... yeah, I did."

She watched me with an expression on her face I couldn't quite decipher but knew instantly I didn't like. She looked almost... disappointed. "You couldn't make it to the funeral?"

"I, uh, couldn't get out of work," I lied.

She picked up a suitcase, led me to her living room and left me. The room seemed to double as her studio—a wooden box of art supplies, expensive-looking, was tucked in beside an armchair. Even though she never saw Glasses, I could see his wealthy fingerprints all over this place.

Works-in-progress were propped on two easels, smaller paintings were framed on walls, and there was a stack of some artistic magazine called The Boroughs. I picked one up and flicked through it—for a magazine supposedly about art, it sure as hell had a lot of writing in it.

I recognised Grace's name on the second page—she'd painted the cover. It was a landscape; the sky was blue, the buildings grey—seemed about right, but then I'm not much of an arty guy.

I started to tear up copies of The Boroughs and used them to wrap canvases that would fit into the suitcase. I left the front covers she'd painted intact—after all this, tearing one up seemed like a violation. She checked in on me to make sure I was taking good care of her precious paintings.

From his old photo frame Glasses watched me work.

THE END