a year of testing obviously hadn’t been enough, and I’d contracted it and probably given it to him. He made me feel so bad, so guilty, and so dirty. He acted like I’d tainted him, and told me I was lucky he loved me, or he’d divorce me for it.”
She paused to take another sip of coffee, and then said, “Word got out around the station, and interestingly enough, some of the other female officers started freaking out and getting tested. I wondered about that, and suspected he might have had affairs or something, but then Wally, one of Billy’s coworkers who oversaw the audio and video recordings of his undercover activities, came and told me that not only was it common knowledge that Billy had screwed half the female cops in our station, but when he was undercover he really ‘lived the life.’ Like really lived it: shooting up and screwing countless skanks and even prostitutes who hung out around the drug dealers. And he’d continued to do so after our marriage,” she added bitterly. “Wally said he was pretty sure that at least one of the prostitutes he’d been messing with for the last six months had HIV or maybe even full-blown AIDS, because she’d started looking really rough and losing weight the last three or four months.”
“Ah, Christ,” Mac muttered angrily.
“Yeah,” CJ breathed sadly. “Billy was nothing at all like my dad. He was just a really huge mistake.”
She peered down at her coffee cup, and gave it a half turn on the tabletop and then added woodenly, “I lost the baby.”
Mac started to reach for her hand again, but stopped when she stiffened. She hadn’t meant to, but didn’t think she could get through this if he touched her.
Acting as if that hadn’t happened, she said, “I guess my body didn’t handle all the stress and revelations well. Wally finished telling me what he had to say and I thanked him politely, like he’d just given me a weather outlook. Then I turned and started to walk away. I hadn’t taken three steps when these terrible cramps had me stopping and hunching over . . .”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Mac said, his voice breaking. This time he didn’t reach for her hand. Instead, he was suddenly out of his seat and standing in front of her. Before that could even register with her, he’d scooped her out of her seat, taken it himself, and settled her in his lap.
“I’m sorry,” he said, rubbing her back soothingly. “So sorry you went through that.”
“It was bad. The baby was far enough along that . . .” She paused and shook her head. It didn’t matter. Every miscarriage was a loss and bad. Sighing, she said, “I quit my job. I just couldn’t handle everyone knowing everything about me like that. Besides, the other detectives acted like they were afraid to be around me. Like just being in the same room might give them HIV. So, I quit and took a job at CSIS while I went through the divorce. I worked there a couple years, and then switched to the SIU and here I am,” she finished wearily.
Mac cuddled her close and kissed the top of her head, murmuring, “Thank God for that. I might never have met you otherwise.”
For some reason that made CJ smile, and she quickly dashed away the tears now leaking down her face and cuddled into him, allowing him to comfort her. She felt like she was finally grieving for all that she’d lost: her baby, her marriage, the man she’d thought she was married to, and even her own innocence. It was the first time she’d allowed herself to cry since it had happened, and it actually made her feel better. She supposed his reaction helped. He wasn’t acting like she was tainted or dirty or stupid, or anything else she’d been telling herself the last several years. In her head, CJ knew that having the illness didn’t make her any of those things, but feelings didn’t always listen to the rational part of your brain, and she had felt like she was. But with Mac holding her and comforting her, she felt a little less like she was.
“I think maybe I should try to go back for counseling,” she said suddenly.
Mac loosened his hold and leaned back to peer at her. “If that’s what you’d like.”
She smiled wryly. “What I’d like is to be normal.”
“What is normal?” he asked with amusement. “I’ve lived