A/N: This is part of my Private Lives series, which is long, though this works as a standalone too. Brief synopsis: Liz Olivet and Ben Stone were married from 1997 to 2007, upon which time they divorced. Liz is now married to Mike Logan, with whom she had a relationship in the past. She has one child, Caroline.

The title comes from a Joan Didion quote. That was the year [...] when I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in fact irrevocable and that it had counted after all, every evasion and every procrastination, every mistake, every word, all of it. Thank you to all my wonderful reviewers of this long series, especially Isabella2004 whose "Perception" series prompted me to make mine canon-compliant ;)

It feels strange, being here. How long has it been? Ten years, fifteen years? At least he remembers the first time he was here clearly. He and Pam had taken the crosstown bus from their home on the Upper West Side and arrived here, this startlingly nice building with friendly doormen and a beautiful marble lobby. There was even someone in the elevator to press the button for the required floor. The apartment where they lived with their mother was nice, but not this nice.

The door to her apartment had been open and Pop had been waiting for them in the doorway. He'd been smiling, which was a rare enough occurrence that the entire visit was memorable because of that, his evident happiness. He was just about to turn seventeen and Pam had just turned fourteen and their father had precipitously moved back from Paris. This was the first time they'd seen him since his return.

Pam, who was always Pop's favorite, ran into his arms. Pop had hugged her tight and then, when he got close enough, hugged him too. Their hug was awkward, because at that point they were very distant from each other. They'd barely seen each other during Pop's stay in Paris. He was back in New York every few months, but their reunions were stilted and awkward.

But Pop was happy then. He'd never seen him so happy.

'Come meet Elizabeth,' he said, and they'd followed him inside.

And now twenty years later he's stepping out of the elevator again and walking down the hallway to her apartment door. He flashed his State's Attorney badge at the doorman, who was young and obviously new, and made his way to the elevator without giving his name or the person he came to see. He hasn't seen her in years, though she'd been very loyal and conscientious, sending Christmas cards and birthday cards every year, long after she remarried.

He knocks on the door and after a moment, it is opened.

'Peter,' his stepmother says, surprised.

'Hi, Liz.'

She shakes her head slightly, as though she's trying to clear it. 'Would you like to come in?'

'Thanks,' he says, and steps past her into the apartment.

'Let's go into the living room,' she says, closing the door behind him. He follows her down the hall and takes the seat that she indicates. 'Can I get you something to drink? Scotch?'

'Thanks,' he replies. His stepmother-should he think of her like that anymore? She and Pop have been divorced for a decade-walks over to the bar tray and pours him a glass, then pours one for herself. She brings him his glass and then takes a seat at the other end of the sofa.

'I'm very sorry about your father,' Liz says softly, looking at him.

He takes a sip of his scotch-it's good, although he doesn't really like scotch. It was always his father's drink. 'Thanks.'

'I know that you two had a difficult relationship, but he loved you, Peter.'

He meets his stepmother's compassionate gaze. 'Did he?'

She nods. 'He was always so very proud of you.'

He lifts one shoulder in a shrug, the minimal amount of movement he can make to acknowledge her point without revealing the pain it prompts. 'He didn't show it.'

'He wasn't good at expressing emotion,' Liz says. 'But he loved you and Pamela more than anyone.'

'You're forgetting someone,' he says. 'Two people, actually-you and Caroline.'

She shakes her head slowly. 'No. I wasn't.'

He feels embarrassed, suddenly, as though he's trespassed on something, and looks down at his scotch. 'How is Caroline?'

He can see his stepmother smile out of the corner of his eye. 'She's doing well. She's a freshman at Yale.'

He's startled by that. He hadn't realized how old she was…

'Pop must have been proud of her.'

It's Liz's turn to shrug. 'He never had much time for her. He didn't want her.'

'I'm sure that's not the case,' he protests, looking at her. She looks as though she's off in her own world, her gaze unfocused as she looks out the window.

'No, it is true. He told me that once, and he meant it.' Something in her posture shifts and she comes back to herself, looking at him. 'I'm not telling you this because I want sympathy, or because I want you to feel guilty, because I don't. But you need to know-he did want you and Pamela very much, and loved you both, and felt horrible for the distance between you.'

'Thanks,' he says after a long pause in which he swallows back sudden and unwelcome tears.

'He would have wanted you to know that,' Liz tells him. They sit in silence for a while before she asks, 'have you seen Pamela?'

'No,' he says. 'I'm going to go see her after the funeral.'

'When was the last time you saw her?' his stepmother asks, her voice neutral.

'A couple years,' he admits, after thinking for a moment. Has it been that long, really? My God.

'She's changed,' Liz says. 'She's… she doesn't recognize people easily any more. I just don't want you to be surprised.'

'You've seen her?' he asks, startled.

'Yes,' Liz replied. 'We go up and see her on our way to Connecticut. Probably two, three times a month.'

'I didn't know.'

'It's important to us. She is important to us. I wanted my daughter to have a close relationship with her siblings.'

He feels guilt surge up, a sick, queasy feeling. He doesn't have a good relationship with either Pamela or Caroline. He didn't even know Caroline was in college. He'd ignored the invitations Liz had sent him to things and he hadn't read the letters enclosed in the Christmas and birthday cards. But besides that, even when he was around, he wasn't nice to Caroline. He was angry that his father started another family and resented Caroline. That wasn't fair.

He twists to set down his glass on the end table. There are a lot of photos, but he's startled to see one of him. In the photo he's nineteen and Pam is sixteen and holding Caroline, who had just been born. That was the first time they'd met her. Liz had really wanted to take that picture, he remembers. She said she wanted to have a photograph of all of the children. He'd hated it, not thinking of himself as a child, hated having to sit next to Pamela and hated that baby, and looking at this picture eighteen years later he can see the barely suppressed fury in his eyes. It was the only photograph of the three of them.

He meets his stepmother's eyes.

'I'm very sorry that I made you so angry,' she says quietly. 'I wanted to be a good stepmother.'

'You were,' he tells her, because it's the truth. 'I just couldn't appreciate it.'

He hears her sigh, but keeps his face averted, turned towards the pictures. There are many of Caroline, his half-sister, and looking at them he sees nothing at all of himself or his father or sister. She looks like her mother.

Meeting Liz for the first time, he remembers, ashamed now, thinking how beautiful she was and remembers feeling oddly, obscurely jealous of his father. He thinks that if he shared this with her, she'd have a field day.

'Caroline should be home any minute,' Liz says. 'She took the train down from New Haven.'

'I'd like to see her,' he says, surprising himself. Glancing over at Liz, he sees her own surprise quickly hidden behind the calm mask she constantly wears.

'I'm sure she'd like to see you,' she says. 'Why don't you join us for dinner?'

'Thanks,' he says slowly. 'I'd like that.'

'Good,' Liz says.

'Is your husband home?' he asks tentatively, unsure that he wants to meet him.

Liz shakes her head. 'He's out of town visiting his brother in Baltimore. He'll be back on Friday.'

They hear the front door open.

'Mom?'

'In here, darling,' Liz calls, and he's struck by the intensity and depth of the love in her voice, even if her expression still gives nothing away. She loves Caroline, he thinks. He never had this sort of love, not from his mother, who was long-suffering and resentful, nor from his father, obviously, who was never around. And he didn't have it from Liz, either, who had wanted to be their stepmother but who was stymied at every turn. But watching her as Caroline comes into the room, her mask set aside now, he knows that even if they'd given her a chance she never would have cared for them the way she totally and completely loves her daughter.

He's jealous that Caroline has had this sort of love.

'Peter!' Caroline says, startled, and he looks over at his half-sister. He hasn't seen her for years, since she was what, eight or nine, and she's an adult now. She looks like her mother, as he could tell from the pictures, but she suddenly reminds him a bit of Pop too, the expression on her face, the way she lifts her hand to touch her temple…

'Hi, Caroline,' he says, rising from his seat. He walks over to his half-sister and they hug awkwardly before she breaks away and goes over to hug her mother. He watches them, Liz stroking Caroline's hair as they embrace, holding her tight. No one has ever hugged him like this.

'I'm sorry about Dad,' his half-sister says to him. She's perched on the arm of the sofa next to her mother and he's still standing in the middle of the room, awkward, not sure what he's doing here.

'Me too,' he replies.

They look at each other, at a loss with how to proceed.

Liz the mediator, Liz the peacemaker, says, 'Peter is going to join us for dinner. Should we go out to eat or order in?'

Caroline looks at him. 'What would you prefer?'

'Uh, whatever you want,' he says, walking back to his seat.

'Let's order, if that's all right,' she says. 'It's miserable outside.'

Liz nods. 'I'll get the takeout menus.'

When she stands and leaves the room, Caroline says, 'I'm surprised to see you.'

She's blunter than their father. He says, 'I am surprised that I'm here, too.'

She sighs. 'Have you told Pamela about Dad?'

'I'll see her after the funeral and tell her.'

Caroline nods. 'I saw her last week.'

'You did?' He doesn't know why he's surprised-Liz just told him that they saw her often.

'Yes, before dinner at my grandmother's house,' Caroline says. 'I try to leave early from school to visit her.'

'That's very nice of you,' he says, feeling guilty that his half-sister has done more for Pam than he has.

'She's my sister,' Caroline says simply.

He feels choked up, suddenly, and looks down at the floor. Caroline doesn't think of them as her half-siblings, like he thinks about her. She cares about Pam, though it would definitely be easier for her to stay at a distance. Even before her disease started to make its presence known, Pam was mean to Caroline. Cruel, sometimes. Pam felt Caroline's arrival more keenly than he did, even though he was furious-probably because Caroline was a girl, and could be viewed as a replacement. And it was so clear to them that Pop loved Liz more than he ever loved their mom.

He looks at his half-sister. Sister, he corrects himself. She is entirely self-possessed and quietly confident, though he thinks that she is shy, too. But how unlike how he was as a teenager, or Pam…

'You look so much like Dad,' Caroline says, and to his mortification he buries his head in his hands and sobs.

He leaves after that, making his excuses, ashamed and embarrassed. He's not an emotional person, especially in regards to his father. But he feels sad, anguished, because he is dead, because he is gone, because they didn't understand each other and any attempt to do so now will serve no purpose.

The night is cold and it's sleeting, but it's not as bad as Chicago. His hotel is twenty blocks downtown and he walks them all, trying not to think. He's staying at a hotel because he needs the space. Liz and Caroline offered him the guest room, and Fiona, his father's partner, said that he would be welcome in their apartment. But he didn't want to be with his stepmother and half-sister, and he wanted even less to be in his father's space.

He'd called his father a few months ago, after talking to Paul. He'd told him that he'd called his father and apologized for being his son, for letting him down. And Paul suggested he try it, so he did. He couldn't come to the point right away, so he rambled on about his case, about Paul… he could hear his father's absentminded agreements as he did so-he was obviously doing something else at the time. So he came to the point and apologized. For letting him down. For being his son. For not being good enough.

Well, that had got his attention, and his father was silent, and-and then Pop had said, 'I appreciate that.'

When he made the call, he wasn't sure what he wanted him to say, or expected him to say. "You don't need to apologize." "I'm proud you're my son." "You've never let me down." Not "I appreciate that." An acknowledgement that he did let him down. That his father wanted another, better, son. He'd quickly said goodbye and hung up the phone and… that was it. The last time he spoke to his father.

Pop had emailed him a couple times after that, never addressing their conversation. He didn't write him back. He didn't even open the couple of letters he sent, which are in his desk drawer at work. He doesn't want to know what they say… but maybe he should open them when he gets back.

What Liz said… that Pop had loved him and Pamela, that he'd wanted them and been proud of them but hadn't wanted or cared about Caroline… he can't believe that. Of all of his children, Caroline was the one he should have wanted and been proud of. She went to the best schools in the city and he's sure she went to the boarding school her mother did, and now she's at Yale… and Pop had loved Liz. He remembers how devastated he was when they separated and later divorced. He must have loved their daughter.

But maybe not. Maybe he just wasn't capable of loving a child, his child, his children. Maybe there wasn't enjoy left over after he saved the world again and again. Maybe he only cared enough about Liz, out of all the people he was meant to care for, to show her that he loved her. He definitely loved her in a way he didn't love Mom. Obviously that wasn't enough, because they divorced, but… she had more of his love than anyone else.

He's five blocks away from his hotel. He doesn't know how he'll get through the funeral tomorrow, or where he'll scatter his father's ashes, or who should do that. Maybe he should ask Caroline if she wants to be there, and ask Pamela…

He doesn't know how to do this. When his mother died five years ago, she'd written everything out-the church, the readings, the burial. His father didn't do that-surprising, considering how firmly he controlled everything else. The family apartment, when his parents were still married, his apartment in Paris, his apartment here… everything was under his control, the way he wanted things, and that didn't really work with young children. And they could never recover from that bad beginning.

Three blocks from the hotel. A home. That's what he and Pam never had. Their mother was resentful and Pop was never around and after the divorce, Mom was just… she just checked out, sort of. She wasn't interested or involved in their lives. Maybe that had something to do with Pam's schizophrenia.

Caroline had a home. Even if Pop didn't want her, she had Liz. Liz was an involved mother and a loving one, and always had been. His half-sister was lucky; maybe she'd have a relatively normal life.

He's pretty sure that his parents are the reason why he hasn't ever had a longlasting relationship, the reason why he doubts he'll ever want to get married or have kids. He doesn't know what a functioning relationship looks like and he's damn sure he'd never want to hurt a child of his the way he's been hurt. The one constant in his life was Aunt Carol, his father's sister. They spent the summers with her, while Dad worked and Mom did whatever, and Aunt Carol loved them. But her house in Wyoming was never their home. It was always temporary.

One block. What happens next? He guesses that Fiona can pack up his dad's stuff. He knows that she'll probably want to keep some things, and he doesn't know that he wants anything. Is there something that his father had that would answer all the questions he still has for him? And there are so many. Why did he have children if he wouldn't be there for them? Did he care about them at all? What could he have done to win his approval?

He's at the hotel and he tilts his head back to look up at the awning, the heatlamps glowing redly.

Tomorrow is the funeral. Tomorrow he says goodbye.

He doesn't know that he's ready.