"Happy birthday dear Helen, happy birthday to you!"

Helen Auden blew out the candles on her birthday cake. It was German chocolate, her favorite.

Ivy had spent the morning helping her mother make the cake. She was ten now, so that meant she was old enough and mature enough to help with important things, such as making her aunt a birthday cake.

She sat between Owen and Naomi, giggling with excitement as she watched Aunt Helen cut the cake.

"Ivy, I understand you helped your mother with this cake?" Helen said, watching her favorite niece with a wide smile.

"I did!" Ivy said, grinning. "I hope it tastes good!"

"I'm sure it will," Helen replied with a wink as she passed pieces of the cake to her nieces and nephew.

Ivy's eyes caught a glimpse of something shiny as her aunt leaned across the table to hand her a piece of cake.

"What's that?" Ivy asked, pointing to the golden heart that graced Helen's neck.

Ivy's question caught the attention of her parents, who turned to look at Helen's necklace.

"A gift from a secret admirer, Helen?" Richard teased.

"Only if that secret admirer is me, Ricky," Helen replied with a laugh. She brought her hand up to the locket, flipping it open to reveal a picture inside: it was the picture Vivienne had taken of Ivy, Naomi, and Owen the past Christmas. "A birthday gift to myself," she said.

"You can buy birthday gifts for yourself?" Owen asked while shoving his mouth full of chocolate cake. Frosting was smeared around his lips, and Vivienne rushed over to wipe his face with a napkin.

"Adults can," Helen replied, reaching over to gently flick her nephew's forehead.

"I can't wait to be an adult! I'm going to buy myself so many birthday presents," Owen said, turning his attention back to his plate, which contained a mess of crumbles that had once resembled a piece of cake.

Ivy's attention, however, was still on the necklace. She'd never seen a locket before, and she was a bit in awe. A necklace that you could keep something in. How useful!

"Do you want to see it, Ivy?" Helen asked, reaching around the back of her neck to unclasp the locket.

"Yes please!" Ivy said, nodding as Helen carefully placed the locket into the little girl's hands.

Ivy studied the golden necklace, running her fingers along the engraving on the heart. There was a daisy on the front, and Ivy remembered that her aunt's favorite flowers were daisies. That was why her mother always brought Helen a bouquet of them on special days, such as her birthday or on different holidays.

She opened the locket, looking at the picture of her and her siblings. It was such a small picture.

"How did you get this picture to be so small?" Ivy asked, looking up at her aunt.

"I have my ways," Helen replied, her nose wrinkling as she smirked at her niece.

Ivy shook her head. Sometimes, she believed that her aunt was magic.

She flipped over the locket, seeing that the back was engraved, too, with her aunt's initials.

H. G. A.

H stood for Helen, of course, and A was Auden. Ivy realized that she didn't know her aunt's middle name.

"Aunt Helen, what does the G stand for?" she asked.

Richard let out a loud guffaw. "Oh boy, I'd love to hear this one!"

Helen rolled her eyes. "That's a secret, Ivy."

"A secret?" Ivy repeated.

"Not a secret, Ivy Bee," Richard said. "Aunt Helen just hates her middle name. It stands for Gertrude."

"Gertrude?" Ivy laughed. "That's not so bad," she said, turning her attention back to the locket.

H. G. A.

"Ivy?"

There was a knock on the door and Detective Peralta stuck his head in, concern on his face as he checked in on Ivy. She was sitting alone in an interrogation room with a bottle of water, her head in her hands.

She looked up as Jake walked in, closing the door behind him. "Are you alright? Are you sure you don't want to go to the doctor?"

She shook her head, her cheeks red in embarrassment. She'd never had a panic attack on the job. It was mortifying.

She barely knew Peralta or Boyle, and for it to happen in front of someone they were interviewing was unbearable. She represented the FBI, and while she was in New York, she represented the NYPD too.

When she'd been hired on to the bureau, there had been some apprehension because of her anxiety disorder. If she found herself in a tense situation, there was no way that she could lose her cool. At the time she was hired, however, she hadn't had a panic attack since she was twenty. Even still, the panic attack in college was the last one she'd had, until that morning at the pawn shop.

Jake took a seat across from her, passing over a new bottle of water.

"I understand if you have to tell your captain about what happened," Ivy said, clearing her throat. "I'll likely be sent back to Washington."

Jake shrugged. "I don't know, I don't think we need to tell Captain Holt," he said. "Nothing happened. You made it to the car. No one saw anything. No one knows, besides Charles and me."

"I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder as a child," Ivy explained. "I haven't had a panic attack since I was in college."

"What happened in there, if you don't mind me asking? What triggered the attack?" Peralta asked.

"The necklace. The locket. It belonged to my aunt," Ivy said, swallowing the growing lump in her throat. "It went missing, years ago. I was surprised to see it, that's all. Especially in New York."

That wasn't all, of course. But it was all Ivy was willing to tell someone who was practically a complete stranger.

Peralta studied her for a second, clearly not believing Ivy that her panic attack had solely been triggered by seeing an old family necklace.

"We'll need to log that information with the evidence," Jake said.

"Of course."

Ivy knew that the truth would come out eventually, as they looked into the locket. All it would take was a simple internet search for Helen Auden in the Bay Area and Ivy would be on the next flight to D.C.

She needed to tell the nine-nine. She needed to tell the truth.

Besides, there were beginning to be too many similarities for it to be a coincidence.

"Well, let me know if you need anything else," Jake said, standing.

Ivy stood as well, knowing she couldn't afford to spend any additional time hiding out in the interrogation room.

"Wait, Jake?" She called out, squeezing the water bottle in her hand.

Peralta stopped and turned around, his eyebrows raised.

"There's more. There's ... there's a lot more."

He nodded. "Okay, so let's talk about it."

They sat back down at the interrogation table, and Ivy picked nervously at her cuticles as she tried to find a good place to start.

"The locket belonged to my Aunt Helen," Ivy began, clearing her throat.

"Yeah, you said it belonged to your aunt."

"She ... passed away when I was ten," Ivy said. "It was a homicide."

Jake's face fell. "Oh, wow, I'm so sor—"

Ivy waived off his apology. She'd received enough apologies from people regarding her aunt's death, and she didn't want to hear any more, unless they were from the woman's killer.

"The case is cold, and has been since it happened. There' s no clear motive, nothing out of place. Nothing to point in any direction, except that locket," Ivy said. She felt her heartbeat begin to rise, and her chest suddenly felt tight. Her eyes were burning, and she felt like crying. "She wore it every day. And it was missing from the scene of the crime."

She watched as Jake's face paled, and he looked as nauseous as she felt.

"And it's remained missing, until today?" He asked.

She nodded. "Until today."

"And it just happened to wash up with Gloria Houston's missing pearl necklace," Peralta said, frowning.

She nodded. "There's another similarity as well," Ivy said. "The way Houston was killed. One bullet to the abdomen, and one to the temple. It was the same way ..." Ivy paused to clear her throat. "It was the same way my aunt was killed."

"That certainly doesn't seem coincidental." Jake turned to her, sympathy in his eyes. "Look, Ivy. I'm sorry, but we're going to have to tell Captain Holt."

She nodded, a frown on her face. She'd be back in DC as soon as the FBI got wind of it. If there was a link between Helen's case and Gloria Houston's murder, then Ivy was too close to the investigation. Far too close.

Ivy knew in her mind that she could still be the best agent for the case, yet in her heart, she knew nothing she could say would sway the opinions of the higher-ups. It was disheartening, knowing she'd helped make so much leeway in the Houston case during her short time in New York, only to be sent back right away. It was especially painful knowing that she'd also uncovered a lead in her aunt's case. The first lead police had found since Ivy was ten years old.

Ivy had always been a bit over confident, even cocky. But it wasn't without proof. She was the best investigator that she knew, and she had the work to back it up. There wouldn't be a better detective on the case but Ivy, but it was a conflict of interest. She couldn't.

"Okay." Ivy stood, her stomach dropping. "Let's go talk to Captain Holt."

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ author's note ✫・゜・。.

hi, i don't have much to say other than sorry, i know it's been a while since i've posted!

thanks for reading :)

thoughts so far?

xx,

madi