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Ris is fourteen when she notices a painting left lying on Finch’s desk. Or, more accurately, a scaled down print of a painting. She probably shouldn’t be surprised, what with his obvious appreciation of the arts and all, but for whatever reason this particular painting of a bird sticks with her enough for her to Google it later that night. She learns that it seems to be a purple martin, though she can’t figure out any particular relevance to Finch himself. She tucks away the info into a corner of her mind, to be examined again if any further evidence comes to light. After all, maybe he just really likes birds.
A few weeks later, she’s definitely not using Finch’s computer while left to her own devices for a while — and absolutely not hacking into her school’s registry to change her assignment from some terrible pottery elective over to a study hall — when an e-mail alert pops up in the bottom right corner. She spares it a quick glance, because it’s probably just some boring college stuff, and the word “grace” catches her eye enough to pull the mouse pointer down and click to read further.
She doesn’t recognize the sender, and most of the body is gibberish, but she keeps seeing “grace” repeated in some weird pattern. Maybe it’s one of those cryptograms or something. Wouldn’t surprise her if he belonged to an encryption-of-the-month club. She leans in to give decryption a shot, even though it’s never been her strong suit, but heavy footsteps coming down the stairs cause her to jump back from the screen and out of the chair.
Reese ducks into the subway and immediately his eyes narrow at Ris, standling so nonchalantly next to Finch’s desk she might as well be whistling a tune. “What are you up to?” he husks, then steps past into the subway car.
"Nothing, nothing!" she reassures him, voice far too high-pitched to be even remotely sincere. She follows him around the corner and leans against the entryway to watch him fuss around inside his weapons locker. That repeated word, maybe name, from the e-mail still lingers with her as she drums her fingers against metal to match the repeated clunks from Reese’s guns. The question practically bursts from her. “What’s grace?”
Reese stops dead in his tracks, and turns slowly to face her. A few moments pass before he clears his throat. “What?”
Ris shrugs and rolls her eyes up to stare at the ceiling. “Grace,” is all she says.
A dark cloud seems to shift over Reese’s face, and he jerks back to his weaponry. “You should forget about that,” he growls. His voice takes on a tone she’s never heard directed at her, trying to intimidate her into silence.
She sighs and knows this is a lost cause. Getting info out of Reese, anyway, because obviously whatever or whoever “grace” is, it’s important to Finch and probably Reese. If it’s important to them, it’s probably important to mom and mama as well. And maybe Uncle Fusco, too. Andthat means she needs to get in on this loop as well.
Her mom turns out to be a similar stonewall; she just glares at Ris for several seconds over their dinner — bacon cheeseburgers — before telling her with a monotone to go finish her homework. Uncle Fusco gets real shifty-eyed when she asks him, and he fakes a phone call from the department to get out of answering. And Mama Root has basically vanished, like she does from time to time. Mom says it’s usually for a good reason when that happens, but she always looks a little angry anyway.
Ris takes it upon herself to hit the internet next, but even with the skills she’s inherited from her family, it’s hunting a needle in a haystack when the only clues you have are “Harold Finch” and “grace”. Eventually she gives up in frustration and files said clues away in case something else comes up.
She doesn’t have to wait long. The following week, she’s stretched out on the nearby cot when she overhears Finch and Mama Root exchanging words, more heated from his end than hers. Ris eases off the cot and creeps along the subway car to listen more closely.
"—needs to back off!" is Finch’s voice. Each word shakes with something that feels similar to anger but not quite.
Mama Root sounds almost…sad. “She’s just trying to help, Harold…”
"It’s been…too long," Finch says, the fiery edge to each word dulling significantly. "There’s nothing to gain from pursuing this."
There’s enough silence that Ris can run through what she’s heard without interruption, and the only conclusion she can reach is that they’ve found out she’s been asking about “grace”. A terrible guilt claws at her stomach, even if she couldn’t have known it would bother Finch this badly. She resolves to let the issue rest.
She hears the familar click of his cane against the concrete and she scurries back to the cot, stretching out on her back again just as both of them round the corner and step into view. They both smile when they see her, though Finch’s eyes look reddened and Mama Root’s strained from effort.
Definitely putting it to rest. It’s obviously too painful for everyone involved.
Her resolution lasts for all of a few hours, when her laptop beeps her out of a half-sleep. Groggy, she flings a hand off the side of her bed and scoops up the offending machine, flipping up the top to find an e-mail waiting. From that same unknown sender as on Finch’s computer, but this time the body isn’t a garbled mess. It’s clear as day to read and in all caps.
GRACE HENDRICKS. WILL YOU ASSIST?
Ris stares at the words, heavy drowsiness making it difficult to understand. “Who’s that…” she mutters, blinking bleary eyes and rubbing some goo out of their corners.
Her laptop flashes again in response, and a new e-mail appears. Instead of having a single line of demanding text, however, it contains several attachments. She clicks to open each, one by one, and unlocks the mysteries of this Grace Hendricks…and her relation to Finch.
She finds pictures, in most of which she can barely make out Grace by herself and them both together. Security cam footage, Ris deduces. It looks as though he’s kneeling in one, while Grace holds a book, like he’s…proposing. Another attachment contains some textual records of this Grace Hendricks — an artist, painter, and something about her work looks familiar — and Harold Martin — a freelance software engineer.
Martin.
Purple martin.
Ris chokes on a gasp as she stares at all the documents and footage laid bare. She understands, or is at least starting to, the importance of it all. Finch had a girlfriend, a fiancee, though as far as she’s aware, he’s never been actually married. She wonders what happened in the interim as she clicks to open the last attachment…and finds herself staring at a passport for Grace Ellsworth. It’s obviously the same woman, judging from the accompanying picture, but with the name change… Ris wonders if she just married someone else entirely after a falling out with Finch. It’d be the easiest explanation, probably.
Her screen flashes again and a new e-mail appears. WILL YOU ASSIST? it reads again, and she nods even though she’s pretty sure no one can actually see her. But then whoever this is did answer her earlier question, so maybe there’s some weird hacky webcam business going on.
"What do I need to do?" she whispers, staring into her laptop’s camera, and waits. A few seconds later, another e-mail flashes into existence. She hesitates for a moment, then clicks on it.
She’s a little tired when she stumbles out of her room for breakfast the following morning, after having spent all night researching Grace Ellsworth via less-than-legal websites that she’s seen Mama Root using in the past. The woman seems to have stayed in Italy since she moved there abruptly many years ago, and according to everything Ris is able to dig up, never married.
As she rubs her eyes, she puzzles over who would need her assistance in tracking down and presumably reuniting Finch with his long-lost love, but she’s kind of a sucker for a good romance. Secretly, because mom would probably angst — with guns, at a firing range — over her daughter turning into a sap. Hell, it might be Grace herself reaching out on the sly, scared after so many years of making direct, obvious contact. And who could resist that?
She’s fighting a grin — images dancing through her mind of Finch hugging the mysterious Grace as best he possibly can, in an aiport, as the music swells — as she sits at her mom’s tiny dining table, a bowl of Fruity Pebbles already perched before her, flanked by a cup of black coffee on one side and glass of orange juice on the other. She rolls her eyes at how mom and mama kind of silently duel each other for her breakfast beverage acceptance. Obviously, coffee wins, and Ris scoops up the mug to take a hearty gulp, just as Mama Root swings around the corner from the kitchen with a head-shake of disappointment.
"One day, you’ll give in to the juice," she says with a wink, then sits down next to Ris and drinks from her own cup. "What’s got you all cheerful?"
"Nothin’…" Ris mumbles around a mouthful of cereal. Probably best not to let anyone in on the scheme she’s cooked up with her laptop ghost.
Mama Root sets her cup down and starts to lean in to question her further, then pauses and gets that weird far-off look in her eyes as she stares over Ris’s head.
Another mission, Ris figures, from whoever it is that whispers through her mama’s implant. That had been a strange conversation, between her and mom and mama, about how cochlear implants work and speaking into Mama Root’s left ear instead of her right when possible.
The silence — or mostly silence, as Ris crunches away on spoonful after spoonful — lasts for several minutes, before Mama Root snaps back to focus and the corners of her eyes tighten. “I told her to stop…” she whispers, then looks at Ris. “Have you been looking into Grace?”
The namedrop jolts Ris, and the spoon slips out of her hand, splashing into the bowl and flinging droplets of milk everywhere. “H-How did you…?” she stammers, staring at her lap. She didn’t even make it twenty-four hours on her new secret mission before someone found out.
"Ris…" With a sigh, Mama Root leans forward in her chair and ducks her head to meet Ris’s eyes. "This isn’t yours to fix, sweetie."
Fix what? Ris wants to ask, but instead swallows around a dry throat. “Who is she?” is the question that actually comes, though she’s already gotten a pretty good idea from last night’s research.
Mama Root sighs again and stays quiet for a few moments, like she’s considering carefully her next words. “She is…someone Harold loved very much.”
Well, yeah, she got that much from seeing the footage cap of his proposal, but Ris at least knows better than to be snarky right now. “So, like you love mom?” she says instead. “Why’s she in Italy?”
There’s a flinch around her mama’s eyes, very slight and Ris almost misses it entirely. “Some bad men could have hurt her,” she whispers, “so we sent her away.”
"Bad men?" Ris asks, curiosity peaking. This is way more intriguing than her just bailing out on Finch for some other guy or something. "Like the ones you guys fight all the time?"
A ghost of a smile crosses Mama Root’s lips. “Worse. And Harold couldn’t go with her because we had…a mission.”
There’s more remaining unsaid, Ris is certain, but her mama can stay notoriously tight-lipped when it comes to secrets. She has to pry, though, or this’ll eat at her for a while. “Why can’t he go get her now?”
She must look agitated because Mama Root clears her throat and reaches out to gently rub Ris’s shoulder. “It’s just how life works out sometimes.”
Ris feels her heart thumping hard against her ribs. Not good enough. “But why?” she asks. Demands, really. “Why do you and mom get each other but he can’t have Grace?”
Her mama flinches again, more obvious this time. “Sometimes you just can’t go back to what you had before,” she murmurs. “Too much has changed. It’s too hard.”
Ris just shakes her head. She might only be fourteen but she knows damn well better that you can’t just cut yourself out of someone’s life cleanly. And Grace never married, or even dated extensively if everything she dug up is accurate, so probably she’s pining for Finch as much as he is for her. And someone wants them to find each other again, or she wouldn’t have gotten cryptic e-mails in the middle of the night. She voices as much to her mama, punctuated with a glare.
For like the billionth time this morning, Mama Root sighs. “I…can’t tell you about that,” she says. “Not yet.”
A-ha! She does know!
"Why not?" Ris blurts out, all those personality traits she picked up obviously from her mom screaming to the surface. "Is it the same person who tells you to go do stuff and pisses off mom and makes her watch Die Hard, like, all night until you show up?"
Her mama chokes deep in her throat, like she wasn’t quite expecting that. “I…yes,” she stammers. “But that’s all I can say for now. And we’ll talk about your mom’s Bruce Willis shenanigans later.” With a pointed roll of her eyes, Mama Root returns to her coffee.
Oh, they will indeed talk about this later, but Ris knows enough to tell when conversations with her mama have concluded for now. And she’ll drop the Grace thing, she supposes, because she doesn’t want tohurt Finch. She really does want to help him, but her mama’s probably right. Some things she can’t just fix, no matter how much she might want to. And right now, she’s more intrigued by this mysterious person who reached out to her in the first place.
One mission at a time.