They did live happily ever after, even if the "ever after" part of it took some getting to.

Jane won a Fulbright scholarship at the end of her senior year. She would go to Vienna to study composition. She told Maura excitedly that Vienna has produced more composers than any other city. She spoke of the trip like a spiritual awakening.

Maura broke up with her.

Later she would say that she did it so that they could both experience life outside of the constraints of their relationship. She'd say that until that year, Jane was the only person she'd ever kissed, and that she couldn't fully commit to a life with her until she knew that kissing others did nothing for her.

Really though, when she thinks back, she can remember nothing but a monstrous, all encompassing fear that the pianist would call her from a smoky café in Austria to tell Maura she'd met the love of her life. It was a phone call that the dancer did not believe she could survive. So she made the decision for both of them.

So they spent Maura's senior year apart. Maura tried to forget Jane, The Girlfriend in favor of Jane, The Long Distance Friend. She dated two men and three women, and the last woman lasted almost the entire spring semester. She was a nice woman, a fellow dancer, and Maura was very, very fond of her.

But Jane showed up for their graduation, army duffle over her shoulder, looking tan and mature and gorgeous, and Maura knew right then that there would never be a future with anyone but her.

They stood face to face at the end of the ceremony, Frost and Susie off a ways, waiting for the coast to be clear.

"I dated other people," Maura said bluntly, determined that there would be no secrets.

Jane shook her head, looking at Maura like she hadn't just been in one of the most interesting cities on Earth. "You're fucking beautiful," Jane responded.

"I didn't love them. I tried though, with a couple."

"I don't think there was one girl in Europe who can compare to you, Maura."

"I didn't take off the necklace you gave me. Not once. Not even when Cam said she was in love with me."

"I'm in love with you, Maura," Jane had said. "Fuck Cam."

And Maura had laughed, and stepped forward to kiss the pianist, her girlfriend. Her future wife.

Behind them, she'd heard Frost sigh, relieved.

"Oh, thank God," Susie had said. "Thank God."

…

But the first two years after college scattered them. Ian followed Xavier across the country in a last ditch attempt to save their relationship, and they didn't hear from him for a year, until he returned home, thinner and heartbroken, to crash on Maura's couch. Susie found her voice in a Jazz band based out of Chicago, and Jane and Frost both landed internships in Boston.

When Maura looks back on that time, she remembers overage charges on her cell phone, and a Skype account that was constantly turned on. She and Jane didn't break up again, but both of them found it to be the hardest two years that they'd spent in a very long time.

Maura, alone in the city, dancing long hours for not enough money or reward, found herself once again sharing space with Bette, her roommate from freshman year.

Bette was lead guitarist for a little indie band, that had a strong gay and lesbian following, and mostly played the bars in Hell's Kitchen. Although they'd lost touch in the years since the suite, Maura found that they fell back into the same slightly distant, companionable relationship that had dominated the last three months of their college cohabitation.

"What do you hear of George?" Maura remembers asking Bette once, for she hadn't seen their former roommate on any of the stages or in any of the audition rooms.

"She's an accountant," Bette had said. "She has a six month old, and a husband - you remember that scrawny saxaphone player that was always hanging around her?"

Maura did, vaguely.

"I got a Christmas card from her last year. She's gotta weigh like two fifty, at least. I've never seen her looking happier."

Maura had been unable to articulate the relief or the joy that this brought her.

…

Jane's mended relationship with her parents had remained intact, if fragile, until Thanksgiving three years after Maura's graduation, when Jane announced that she was moving back to New York to live with Maura, and pursue her music career there.

Her mother had burst into tears, and her father had demanded that they discuss the matter "family only," on the back porch. Jane had stood, helped Maura stand, and they had left without another word.

There was no reason for Jane to look back. Frankie was on his own by then, with a steady girlfriend and an apartment in Jamaica Plains, and he and Jane had about as close a relationship as two people could have without verbal communication. They texted constantly, and to this day Maura knows Jane has a Google alert for fires in Boston. He sends presents and a card every holiday and birthday, and his letters to Jane are always long, his spindly handwriting cramped right up to the edge of the paper.

"I have two brothers," Jane said in an interview once. "One of them knows me almost as well as my wife, and the other one would not even know himself if he looked in a mirror."

On the Thanksgiving that Maura and Jane walked out, Tommy was away at his latest rehabilitation center.

No, there was finally no reason for Jane to look back. And so she didn't.

Maura still wonders if the break had been coming for a long time, and if Frank's implication had just been the excuse Jane needed to cut ties. Either way, she never asks.

On the ride home that night, Jane had reached across the gearshift to take Maura's hand. "We'll never judge our kids," she'd said.

Maura had been grateful to the darkness for hiding her giddy, exhilarated face.

…

So they all found their way back to New York, and to each other. Of course they did. The winter of their fifth year out of Juilliard found them all together in a warehouse like loft in the meatpacking district.

They were six. Three neat sets, by then, because Frost had finally kissed Susie, and because Ian had found Nekos.

Bette drifted away uptown after her band broke up, and Maura both felt the loss, and did not. She was already aware by that point, that there would be people in her life that would wander in and out, and that as long as she had enough sense to recognize who to hold onto, she would be alright. So the six of them moved in together. All together. And there were three bedrooms, and two bathrooms, and not enough towels, and someone had to sit on an overturned trashcan when they all sat down for dinner.

And Maura loved it.

The day would come when they would all need space. Sometimes, at night, Maura dreamt of babies, and pets and a big yard to house them. And sometimes, over breakfast, she would see Ian's eyes rest too long on the realty section of the paper. She knew that there would be a day when Tuesday night beer and charades, and battling crowds for a Bocce court at Union Hall would have to be left behind.

But for now, they were all content to bump shoulders at the dinner table and the sink, and to steal metrocards and loose change off the communal shelf in the front hall, and to debate the latest New York Times article over a piece of pizza.

…...

It was Jane, actually, who found success first, taking even herself by surprise. Maura was there when she got the call that Vienna Teng wanted her song "City Hall" for her next album. She asked "what" so many times on the phone that the agent finally asked to speak to someone else, and when Maura got on the line he asked her conspiratorially "is she some kind of savant? Is that why her music is so brilliant?"

So Jane flew out to LA to work on her song with Vienna Teng, and then three weeks later she flew back again to teach and record "Love of our Lives" with the Indigo Girls.

She returned each time with something for Maura: a pair of promotional Oakley sunglasses that Frost coveted until the dancer let him have them. A beautiful pair of Oscar De La Renta pumps that made Ian nearly green with jealousy, and which became Maura's prized possession for the next decade. Each time Jane was contracted for a song, she'd shake her head somberly and refuse to get excited; sure that it was a fluke.

On April 1st, ten days before Jane's 28th birthday, one of her songs played on the radio for the first time.

Some people got it all. But I don't want nothing at all. If it ain't you baby. If I ain't got you baby…

They were all in the apartment at the time, Ian and Nekos with their feet in each other's laps and heads buried in books, Susie in the kitchen, and Frost, Maura and Jane ensconced at the dining room table.

They had all stopped what they are doing to look at the radio, perched on the edge of the kitchen island.

Some just want everything, but everything means nothing, if I ain't got you…

"Wha-" Jane stared wide eyed. "Is that?"

"Oh my God," Maura said, looking at Jane. And then she was laughing and dancing and they were all whooping and jumping up and down, and singing along. Maura remembers that they all knew the words by heart. Jane had been singing snippets of the song on and off for three months. And now Alicia Keys, Alicia Keys was singing the brunette's words through the radio.

Jane just sat in her seat at the dining room table, staring around at them all like they'd lost their minds.

After that, celebrities called the warehouse relatively often, and Frost and Ian nearly came to blows over answering the phone.

With her first substantial royalty check, Jane bought a second line and two hundred business cards.

She sent the rest to Constance Isles.

Maura's own mother still calls on the 15th and the 30th of each month without fail. They talk easily, like old friends. Sometimes Maura can hear her father in the background, but she never asks to talk to him and her mother never offers. Maura has heard Jane talk to him though, a handful of times, when she passes the phone off.

Jane has been more forgiving of Richard than Maura thought she could ever be.

Sometimes Maura feels betrayed by this. Sometimes she does not.

…

Frost and Susie were the first in their group to move because they were also the first to get pregnant. It was not planned, but when they found out, they were ecstatic. Susie had found her passion teaching voice at the Brooklyn Academy for the Arts, and Barry bounced from play to play, his sights set unwaveringly on the great white way. Jane helped them put a down payment on a condo in Chelsea and they got down to the late twenties business of nesting.

By the time Barry landed his first Broadway role three years later, they had two boys and were hinting at trying for another one. Maura held the eldest one at the cast party following Frost's premiere, burying her face in his tight little curls, and when Jane had discovered her, cuddled in the corner of the room with the little boy asleep in her arms, she had sighed affectionately.

"I'm in trouble," she'd said, looking into Maura's hopeful green eyes. "I'm in big trouble, aren't I?"

Barry would get cast in a cop drama later that year, and he and Susie would be in Boston for the births of their third and fourth child.

Jane, Maura, Ian, and Nekos would be present at each.

Ian and Nekos moved soon after that. They were looking into adoption, and wanted the caseworker to see that they had their own space. Maura can remember sitting with Ian, waiting for the moving van to come and take them to the Upper West Side.

He was thirty. They both were, and he had long since given up dancing for book keeping. He and Nekos ran four successful bakeries around Manhattan. Nekos was an amazing cook.

"Have we got it back?" Ian asked her, as they sat together on the steps that day. He was already starting to bald. He looked older than all of them.

She looked at him. "Gotten what back?"

"The friendship we had before I fucked everything up with Xavier. The closeness the five of us used to share. Have we got it back, Maur?"

It had dawned on her then, that Ian was the only one of their group that had paired up outside of a college relationship, and that he might feel that difference more than he let on.

"Had it gone?" Maura asked casually, though she knew they both knew the answer.

He'd smiled at her. "You've always been so smart," he said. "If you weren't such a breathtaking dancer, you would have made a great lawyer. Or doctor. Something like that."

She'd patted his arm then, pointing at the moving truck that was swinging around the corner. "You are a phenomenal man," she'd said. "That's the whole of it."

Collaboration had flashed through her mind then, and she could tell by his expression that he'd thought of it too.

"Yes," she said, standing to wave at the driver of the truck.

"We've gotten it back."

…

…

"Maura?"

Maura puts down her book and looks around.

"Mommy?"

"Up here," she calls back, and a moment later her daughter appears in the doorway, shadowed by Jane. She's been on the roof long enough for it to get dark. The night air is turning crisp around her.

"Dave's here," Jane says, nudging Gracie ahead of her. "Are you ready?" Dave has stayed in the city, continuing to design. The bond that Jane shares with him has done nothing but grow, especially since the birth of the twins.

She named him their godfather, and he is their go to babysitter, advice giver, and general life guru. He has his own children, two girls, and a kind, willowy wife, and the families will often meet in the park, or take the train to the high line, giggling behind their hands when people stop to look at them.

Wait...wasn't that...

Dave is an accomplished designer, with several magazine spreads under his belt, and he and Jane enjoy guessing which one of them has been recognized.

Sometimes, it is not either of them. Sometimes it is Maura who gets recognized.

Maura stands now, spinning once in her dress. "Yes," she says, " I'm ready. As long as this isn't wrinkled."

"You look bootiful," Gracie says, and Maura smiles, leaning down to pick the little girl up.

"Thank you honey, will you be a good girl for Dave, this time? No cops and robbers tonight?"

Gracie looks at her mother seriously. "Mommy," she says. "Leese serve justice. Don't you want me to serve justice?"

Maura raises her eyebrows at her wife. "Your daughter," she says.

Jane shakes her head emphatically. "Your daughter," she counters with a smile.

Yes. Her daughter.

Maura had wanted to use a surrogate at first. As desperate as she was for the two of them to have a baby, she feared what pregnancy would do to her career. She was the principle featured dancer at the New York City Ballet, and the title felt hard won, and difficult to keep.

But in the end, at thirty three, she'd rolled over in bed and told her wife that she would give it all up, in order to carry a child.

Two years later, back at Juilliard as a teacher, the papers announced Baby Constance Graces noted Songwriter and Dancer Wife With Her Presence.

Constance Grace Rizzoli Isles. Maura's mother had called in tears.

Jane wrote "Lullaby for a Stormy Night" that year. Vienna Teng picked it up, and the song hit number five on the billboard hot 100.

Three years later, Jane gave birth to the twins, Asher and James, and this time the paper proclaimed: Two Time Grammy Nominee Expands Family Two Fold with Ballet Legend Wife.

Both of these headlines are still framed above the mantel in their sitting room.

"Gracie," Jane says, shaking Maura from her reverie. "Go make sure your brothers are not torturing Uncle Dave."

The girl wiggles down from her mother's arms, and heads towards the little door that will lead her downstairs. Jane and Maura are left alone.

"Maur?" Maura hears the gravel crunch under Jane's feet as she moves closer. "You alright? You usually only come up here to do choreography."

Maura smiles. Jane is right. "I was just watching the city wake up," she says, turning to slip her hands around Jane's waist. "This suit looks good on you," she says into Jane's lapel. "It's cut just right."

Jane hugs her back. "Careful, Madame, we need to get there in one piece."

Maura pulls back. "You're going to win tonight, Jane," she says seriously. "I can feel it."

Jane's smile is a little bit sad. "Third time's the charm?" She tries to joke, but it comes out wobbly. She clears her throat. "Frost and Susie texted to say good luck. They'll be watching, and Nekos and Ian's good luck cake just arrived. That will be gone before we get home."

Maura chuckles. They stand and look out over the city in silence for a moment.

"Is it wrong?" Jane asks finally. "To want to win?"

"No," Maura says at once. "Not at all."

"Not even with that song?"

Maura sighs. The song is called "Don't Know Why," and Jane wrote it after the death of her father. Frankie had called on a damp day in March last year to deliver the bad news. He had been sick for a long time, and his passing was not a surprise. Although she thought she was being secretive, Maura knew Jane had paid for his treatment. Had paid for her mother and burnt out younger brother to stay in their house. Jane had listened to Frankie with dry eyes, and then begun work on the song almost the moment she'd hung up the phone. It was the last time she'd pick up Gibson that her father returned to her her sophomore year of college.

She didn't go home for the funeral.

For a couple months afterwards, Maura thought that Jane would reconcile with her mother, but it didn't happen. She knew that Frankie relayed everything from award announcements to school photos to Angela, but the woman never made any attempts to reach out to Jane herself. Maura finally decided it was for the best. She was relatively sure that Jane would not have answered.

Maura can still remember the way the chorus of "Don't Know Why" had hung around the house for days, haunting the rooms and hallways alike. That feeling had increased tenfold when Norah Jones had picked up the song, and every radio within fifty miles of them played it on a ten song loop.

My heart is drenched in wine.

You'll be on my mind

Forever…

"It's a beautiful, beautiful song, Jane." Maura says finally, squeezing the pianist around the middle. "It deserves to win. You deserve to win."

Jane slides her arm around Maura, and doesn't answer.

They'd left the warehouse eventually, after a one year old Gracie nearly fell down the elevator shaft. Maura had put her foot down, and they'd bought a building on the edge of Brooklyn Heights. Dave had done all of the interior design. From the roof, they can see the Brooklyn Bridge, and if they crane their necks, the Manhattan bridge in the background.

Frost had been incredulous at their apparent downgrade. "You could live anywhere," he'd said, during their weekly phone call. "You could live .where. And you choose…Brooklyn Heights?"

Neither Maura nor Jane had bothered to explain it.

Jane's phone buzzes, and she pulls it out of her jacket pocket. "Car's here."

"I think I'd like to go back to school," Maura says, not meaning to start the conversation now. In truth, it's something she's been thinking about for a long time, though always in the abstract. It hasn't become concrete until just that moment. "I think I'd like another career, Jane…is that terribly odd?"

Jane grins at the night sky and turns, pulling her wife towards her. She fingers the little golden necklace around her neck.

"Nothing you say or do could ever be terrible," Jane says. "You know I'll support you in anything. You know I love you to the edge of the earth and back."

The night is illuminated. "You're going to win," Maura says, pulling at the back of Jane's neck so she can kiss her.

Jane smiles against her lips.

"I already have."