"Ma'am?"

Elizabeth sat back on the couch in her office, one leg propped on the coffee table, the other just underneath her, deeply focused on a thick, bound report of some kind. She held up a hand and slowly lowered it, trying to finish the last of a sentence before breaking her train of thought. She lifted her brow to him, her glasses slightly askew.

"It's two o'clock."

She looked at her watch, bit her lip. Yes, it was.

"Thanks, Blake. Are they ready for me downstairs?"

"They're ready to go, Ma'am."

She put a sticky note on the page where she'd stopped. She walked to her desk slowly, stuffed the report and a few other folders in her briefcase. She paused a moment at the desk, as if taking it in; her hand reached for the phone, and then hovered without picking it up. She bit her lip again.

"Your jacket, Ma'am." This interruption seemed to startle her. She moved her hand away from the phone and finished packing up the briefcase as Blake stood in front of her desk, the beige trench coat ready for her arms.

"You know you don't have to do this for me every time."

"That's what you say."

"And we're clear on this afternoon?"

"No calls sans war until 7, any updates to this behemoth couriered to your house."

"Thank you."

...

Elizabeth stood outside the SUV, alone. It was a beautiful day, breezy with just a slight chill in the air, as was the case in early March in Virginia. It took a little more than hour to get there, a shorter drive than she remembered. She'd planned to finish reading the report, another on the evolving environmental situation with Canada. Nadine had anticipated six months for a do-over on the thing, and now several months past that, it was still a work in progress. Instead, she'd held the report in her hand and watched as the familiar terrain of DC shifted into green hills and wide expanses of farmland.

Frank gave her a nod, indicating the expanse of field in front of her had been cleared. She took a deep breath and began walking up the slight hill, to a tree just beginning to flower with white blossoms. There was a stone bench beside the tree, just covered in the shade that provided a majestic view of the surrounding hills, the mountains and just beyond, she knew, a stream they'd hiked around as a family many times when they'd lived closer. She sat down on the bench, first her legs crossed, as she was apt to do now, and then open. She leaned back against the tree and smile for a moment at her own appearance.

"I probably seem like a mess," she whispered. Formal dress top, pressed and tailored pants and the same dirty white sneakers she'd been wearing for years around the house. "But I couldn't bring those heels out here. I'd sink into the ground. I'd be a real mess." She pulled the trench coat around her as a breeze ran its way through her hair, sending a chill up her spine.

"You know you didn't have to come alone." She sat up quickly, her heart racing.

"Henry."

He must've come up just after her and now, leaning against the tree, he held his hand out. She reached out for it as they embraced, tightly.

"I just thought... you've been so busy this week and I—."

"I know, I thought the same. I didn't hear from you so I just... came anyway."

She moved so that her arm wrapped around him, underneath his jacket, while his arm fell across her shoulders. She pressed herself close to him, feeling his warmth.

"I dream of the day when this is just a memory we can have from anywhere. That we can celebrate his life from wherever we are. But I don't know when that'll be."

"10 years. Hard to imagine it's been that long."

Their eyes fell together on the cemetery stone still underneath the shade of the tree. Adam Henry McCord. Named for her. Named for him. The pregnancy had happened at a rough point in their marriage. They'd argued for weeks about her going to Baghdad, and then argued over the kids, over Henry's job, and then they'd pushed through it. She quit the CIA, settled in at the farmhouse and through all that, Adam had been growing.

Everything was fine until it wasn't. It was a complication, a rare "thing" they couldn't really describe. Whatever it was, it happened in her eighth month and they knew then he wouldn't survive. They waited, desperate. In case it happened that he was born and fine or could be treated, in case they both could survive happy and healthy. He was born, he lived six hours longer than they were told. Long enough for Elizabeth and Henry to hold him, for the kids to meet him and for him then, to pass away slowly in her arms.

She wasn't working then, and they hadn't told many people outside their family - a relief when afterward, she wanted to stay at the house and be away. She wasn't distant, she'd just grown quieter and stayed withdrawn for quite a while as Henry worked with NSA and later, at UVA. She went through most of their library - sometimes cornering Henry when he'd come home with her thoughts Cold War negotiations and the travesty of the current political landscape. It wasn't too long before she was working at UVA with him and their life began to move, if in tiny steps, on.

"Feels like we were much younger then," Henry joked, trying to add a bit of levity. She scoffed.

"If only we'd known all the crazy that'd be thrown our way. That we'd ditch the farm for the city. That I'd sit here talking about my shoes." Henry motioned for them to sit on the bench again; she leaned her head on his shoulder.

"I was thinking about what he might've looked like – would he have Alison's dark hair like mine or lighter like yours," Henry said.

"Well, he had all that dark fuzz when he was born." She paused. "Do you think it was bad not to bring the kids?"

"No. They haven't wanted to come the past several years. We all mourn in our own way. This is ours."