Annabel Lee ─ emily prentiss

twenty-three

THE team wrapped up the case of the serial killer killing teenage girls in Westchester County, New York late at night. Normally, they would have been on the jet by 8:30 AM the next morning, but Derek wanted to hang back to attend the funeral of a cop killed during the case. Hotch arranged for the jet to leave in the evening. That meant Emily had several free hours after the 9 AM funeral. Her initial plan was to go into the town in search of a bookstore. On her way, she passed a phone booth with a phone book inside and had an idea. She went into the booth.

"Astor..." Emily muttered to herself, flipping through the 'A' pages of the phone book. She was fairly certain Evelyn's last name was spelled Astor, not Aster, because Astor was an old money name, and Evelyn was definitely old money. Sure enough, she found an "Astor, Evelyn" and a home phone number. Hopefully Evelyn would be home, seeing as it was Saturday. Despite being in a phone booth, Emily called from her cell. She waited with bated breath as it rang.

Evelyn was in her kitchen about to turn the coffee maker on when the landline on her counter started ringing. Her stove clock said it was 10:16 AM.

"Who the hell is calling me at ten AM on a Saturday?" she said as if Sebastian the golden retriever, whose whole body wagged as he followed her to the phone, could understand. She squinted to look at the caller ID on its tiny screen. Emily Prentiss, it read. Her first thought was how Emily got her number. Her second thought was that something had happened to Bel, because what other reason did Emily have to call her? She scrambled to answer. "Emily?"

"Uh, yeah. I—"

"Is Bel okay?" All of the worst possibilities came to mind: grave illness, car accident, head trauma.

"She's fine." It didn't occur to Emily that getting a call from her, especially early in the morning on a weekend, would probably be a shock considering they'd only ever spoken twice, both times because Bel was already on the phone. "No, I was just calling because I'm in the area for work, and I've got some time to kill before my flight home tonight. I was wondering if you might want to get coffee or something. I thought..." Maybe this was stupid. "We could meet."

She wanted to meet this person who was so important to Bel. She felt like she should. Evelyn probably wanted to hear how Bel was doing from her, since she knew Bel sometimes held things back to protect Evelyn. There was also something Emily wanted to ask her, something best asked in person.

"Oh." Evelyn was admittedly very curious about this Emily she'd heard so much about. She wanted to meet the person who would likely be Bel's permanent caretaker soon enough. As far as she knew, no adoption process was underway, but she was sure it was in the future. You couldn't not want to keep that kid around forever, and Emily seemed understandably taken by Bel. "I can spare an hour or two."

Thirty minutes later, Emily borrowed one of the SUVs the team had used the past few days (without permission) and started on her journey to the next county over. It was a bit of a hike, but she didn't mind the drive through the New York suburbs. She messed around with the radio dial until she found a station that wasn't static. She kept the first station she found on because it was playing "Since U Been Gone" and it reminded her of Bel, who'd brought home the Breakaway CD lent to her by a friend.

She was the first to arrive at the café where they agreed to meet. She knew what Evelyn looked like from a handful of photos Bel had from three years ago and one picture of Evelyn and Sebastian the golden Bel received via email (Bel now had a semi-Emily-supervised Hotmail account, where she received Sebastian photos and links to cute animal videos from Penelope). In the meantime, Emily ordered a hot coffee, black except for a tiny bit of creamer and sugar, and grabbed a table near the front door.

In her mind, Emily pictured Evelyn walking in wearing thousand-dollar business clothes and Louboutin pumps or something. She grew up in an old money circle—though nowhere near as old money as Evelyn, according to Bel—and that was how her mother's friends dressed. They wanted people to know that they were filthy rich. Emily wasn't entirely free of guilt there herself. Her shoe collection was easily worth several thousand dollars, and her professional wardrobe was worth even more. She was nowhere near as bad as the women she grew up around, but she wasn't cheap either.