"Leroy, what did I do at the funeral?"

"You mean other than showing up with a date?"

(Quote from NCIS S6E4, Heartland)

"A date? To a funeral? No! I wouldn't be that insensitive, not to Shannon and Kelly!" Jackson protested. He was glad nobody else was in the Stillwater General Store to hear the accusation against its owner.

Gibbs ignored the implication of his name not being mentioned. "Lydia Martin." The pricing stamp hit the top of the next tin with added force.

"Oh, yes. Lydia." Jackson stared out the window and into his past for a few seconds. "She died a few years ago, now. Nice woman. Shannon and Kelly thought so, too."

"She knew them?" The stamp slipped, blurring the price of the tomatoes beyond recognition. Gibbs ignored it and moved on to the next lid. He'd buy the damaged one himself. $2.25 was a small price to pay to keep his father from having one more thing to hold against him.

"They came out for a visit during your deployment, stayed a couple of weeks."

"A couple of weeks! You kept my daughter in the same house as your"

"Shop assistant." Jack interrupted the diatribe before things were said that maligned the people they cared about. "Lydia was my shop assistant. And anyway, did you ever know Shannon or Kelly to do anything they didn't want to do?" Jackson smiled. "Lydia and Shannon hit it off straight away. Kelly was a bit more cautious. Lydia eventually won her over with fudge and chocolate cake."

This time Gibbs did flinch. It hurt to hear the names of his beloved wife and daughter coming from the man who had completely disowned him after the funeral. "The same way she won you over?" he sneered.

"I suppose you're partly right," Jackson admitted, referring to the original accusation. "She had met them. She did like them. But she didn't think she knew them well enough to have earned a place at their funerals. So I asked her to come with me."

"That doesn't make me "partly right". That just makes me right." Gibbs shoved the box of tins to the back of the shelf beside the tinned mushrooms.

"You and I handle things differently. We always have." Jackson continued his musing as if Gibbs hadn't spoken. "Especially bad things. I crave noise, you seek out silence. I surround myself with people, you isolate yourself. I start talking nineteen to the dozen." He ignored the answering snort. According to his son, the normal ratio was already closer to Jackson's gross to Leroy's dozen. "You clam up tighter than a century-old rusty bolt. I would have gone crazy if I'd had to make that trip with only the radio and my thoughts for company. Just like you'd have tossed me out on my rear if I'd started pulling out photo albums and reminiscing with you over the stories behind them."

Gibbs wanted to disagree. He wanted to tell his father what he'd wanted to tell him all those years ago. That they were family, and that family trumped all. He and Jack were the only Gibbses left in the world. They should have been a team. Him and his father against the world. But he knew his father was right. He would not have reacted favourably to being forced to socialise.

He thought back to the day of the funeral. He pictured a woman who was not Anne Gibbs sitting by his father, clutching his frail hand and whispering softly to him. His fists clenched at the memory of his last surviving family member hunched over treasured pictures and telling a complete stranger things that no other non-Gibbs person knew. If he was being honest, if he'd have been able to think at all on that day he'd have realised even then that he was being unfair to his father. He didn't want Jack's hugs, or his memories, or his comforting platitudes. But he didn't want Jack giving them to anyone else either. It was a no-win situation for his only surviving parent.

"So I guess I do owe you an apology." Jack's statement jarred Gibbs back to the present.

"No, you don't," he argued.

Again, Jack continued as if there had been no interruption. "You should have been my first priority, not me. I brought Lydia along for my own comfort. It was selfish."

"Was it?" Gibbs questioned. "Seems to me, you knew what we both needed to survive, and you went and got it for us. I shouldn't be surprised. You always were wiser and braver than I was."