"Where's Mama?" Neal asked, and Ewan Gold didn't have an answer for him. Milah had vanished in the night, leaving little more than a note with the words I'm not coming back. Don't come looking scrawled on it in her handwriting. He wasn't actually too surprised, but so far he'd been able to keep his five-year-old ignorant of the particulars of their marital disharmony. Of course, now he had no choice in the matter.

"Come here," he said, pulling Neal into his lap. "We need to have a talk about your mother, son."

"When's she coming back?" Neal asked. "She said we'd go to the park today."

"We'll still go," Ewan said instantly. "But your mother won't be with us."

"Why not?"

He didn't really know what to say to that simple question. She'd abandoned them to run off with a boyfriend more than likely, but he knew he'd have to wait until tomorrow to file a missing person's report. It would be even longer before a divorce could be settled, and in the meantime poor Neal was going to be caught in the middle of it all.

"Your mother has gone away to become a pirate," he blurted out before he could stop himself. "Just like Long John Silver from your book."

They had been reading a Treasure Island picture book before bed that Neal was absolutely fascinated with. He'd especially liked the idea of pirates and adventures, and truthfully Ewan couldn't think of anything else to say. She might as well have gone off to become a pirate for all he knew, and maybe it would make things easier.

"Really?" Neal asked breathlessly. "When's she coming back?"

"I don't know for sure," Ewan replied. "But she loves you very much."

"Is she going to have pieces of eight?"

"I'm sure she will," he said. "And some good stories for you."

"Is she gonna miss me?" Neal asked with big, innocent eyes.

"I'm sure she will," Ewan said. The lie was coming easier now that he'd started it, and he wasn't sure he liked that about himself. "The most important thing is that she loves you and you love her."

"I'm gonna miss her," Neal said softly. "But are you sure she'll be back?"

Ewan froze for a second, but he nodded at last. This was absolutely going too far, but he couldn't take it back. He told himself that it would be better this way, and that Neal could learn the truth later when the sting would be less. He wasn't old enough to know the truth. There would be time later. He could learn the truth later.

"Hey, your mom called," Emma said as soon as Neal walked through the door.

"Belle's not my mother," he replied reflexively. They'd been having some variation of this conversation since their marriage. He and his father both seemed to find it easier to relay messages through their wives than directly to each other and he was extremely okay with that.

"Right," Emma said. "Well, either way she called. Your dad is retiring this year and she invited us to go up with Henry for a few days for the party."

"No," he replied instantly. "Absolutely not."

"Then you can stay home," she said, swapping the baby to her other hip. "Because I already told her yes."

"Why would you do something like that?"

"Because they're your parents – sorry, he's your parent," she said, glancing sidelong at Henry while the baby squirmed to be let down. "And they're Henry's grandparents. And you have never given me a solid reason why you hate them."

"I don't hate Belle," he grumbled, taking Henry from his mother. It was hard to hate a person who had basically raised you alone in spite of not actually being a blood relative.

"Then give me a good reason you don't want our son to know the only other family he has and I'll cancel."

It was a fair request, and Neal knew it bothered her that Henry didn't really have much in the way of extended family. Emma had grown up in the foster system and didn't have a steady home until she was fifteen. They still had contact with her foster mother, but it wasn't really the same dynamic as a grandmother and they both knew it. The problem was that Neal didn't really have a good reason to not want his son around his father. He had plenty of petty reasons, but no single thing he could point to and say This! This is why he's terrible! All he really had was three decades of hurt feelings, and somehow that didn't actually garner him any sympathy from his orphaned wife.

"I'm not going to enjoy it," he grumbled.

"I didn't enjoy labor," she replied. "So we can call it even after this."

"You can't keep using that excuse," he said. "He's almost two now."

"Hey, if you want to try to shove a softball through your most intimate areas we can talk about what I can and cannot do," she said. "Otherwise we are going to spend a week in Maine and I am going to have at least night where somebody else watches my son and it's going to be great."

"A week?" He exclaimed. "You said a few days!"

"A week is a few days," she said nonchalantly. "It'll be fine. We'll swim and have lobster."

He nodded in resignation and carried Henry into the living room while Emma went to their room, presumably to pack or call Belle to reassure her they were coming or something. He had no idea, and he couldn't bring himself to care either way.

"You're on my side, right buddy?" he asked Henry, bouncing the little boy in his arms and eliciting a smile. "That's what I thought."

It wasn't that Neal didn't love his father, it was just impossible to deal with the man. His father was a liar, plain and simple. He kept secrets, and Neal was just sick of never knowing quite what he could believe. He'd long ago given up on ever getting answers to the things he wanted to know. How could he ever forgive his father if his father wouldn't change?

xx

It had been a long time since Neal had been back to Maine, and the pink house he'd grown up in hadn't changed much. The house could use a new coat of paint and the flowers were a little overgrown, but for all his father's obsession with keeping up appearances the building had always had a slightly shabby air to it in Neal's opinion. They'd bought it cheap as a fixer-upper and he'd spent most of his teen years dodging loose wires and holes in the walls.

His father and Belle had made the house a diy project, apparently thinking it would be fun to do most of the work themselves and not bothering with the fact his father spent most of the year on the road for business. Neal often wondered why they hadn't bought a smaller, newer house that wouldn't require quite so much work, but then his father had always been the sort to want to do things himself.

"It's not too late to go to a hotel," he said hopefully, but Emma was already unstrapping Henry from his car seat and didn't seem to have heard him at all, or at least wasn't willing to acknowledge him.

This was going to be the longest he'd spent with his father in one place since he left for college. Hell, he hadn't even seen the man since his wedding.

"Hey! You made it!" Belle chirped from the porch as Neal followed his wife to the door.

"Yeah," Emma said. "Bit touch and go there on some of these backroads, but I wasn't going to let that stop us."

"I'm so glad," Belle said earnestly. "This must be Henry! Oh my goodness he's so big!"

"Say 'hi,'" Emma said to Henry, trying to angle him towards Belle who was cooing and waving to the baby. Henry didn't seem particularly interested in meeting a stranger and was smiling and burying his face in his mom's shoulder. "He'll be friendlier if you give him food," Emma said at last. "Like a labrador."

"I think I can manage that," Belle said cheerfully as she turned towards Neal. "How have you two been? I haven't seen you in ages."

Neal wasn't quite sure if that was meant as a dig or not, but it had been close to three years since the wedding and even longer since he'd been back home. No, Boston was home. Maine was just where he'd grown up and where his father lived with his wife. Home implied a lot of things that he didn't feel for this place.

"We've been good," he said. "Busy with work, you know how it is."

"I do," Belle replied. "Your dad and I were so proud when we heard about your last promotion. Branch manager is a big deal."

"Thanks," he said, glancing toward Emma and hoping for something to make this less awkward. She was struggling to keep Henry in her arms while he tried to get her to drop him. "Oh, honey, let me take him. He must be tired…"

He reached for the toddler but Emma turned the baby away from him.

"Oh, he's fine," she said. "Just wants to explore I think."

Traitor.

"Would you like to take a walk down to the lake?" Belle asked. "It's not too far and you can let him get his feet wet and pick some flowers."

"That's a great idea!" Emma said brightly. "Neal, can you take our bags inside?"

What choice did he have besides nodding and going back to the car to grab the suitcases while the two women waved and set off laughing and talking. The house looked so much smaller than it had when he had been a kid – or maybe he'd just built it up in his mind so much over the years.

The thought of the lake brought back unbidden memories of summers spent happily. The three of them making bonfires at night and of fireworks in July, or of running off with friends from school and wandering backwoods trails that the adults hadn't known of. There had been a strange level of freedom allowed him when they had been here, moreso than when they had lived in any other place.

His reverie was interrupted by the sight of his father standing there on the porch and watching him. Neal scowled at the interruption and slung Emma's bag over his shoulder as he tried to dig out the large tote carrying Henry's various necessities.

"Need any help?" Ewan Gold called out.

"Nah," Neal called back. "I've got it. Your wife lured mine down to the lake with the baby. They'll be back soon."

"That's good."

His father seemed anxious, and Neal wondered how much of it was a desire to see his grandson and how much was feeling the same tension between them that was always there. He slammed the car door shut and made his way back up the porch feeling more like a pack mule than a man. How could three people need so much stuff?

"Belle put fresh sheets in the guest room," his father said, holding the door open for Neal to walk through. "We put some things for Henry in your old room, but if you'd rather have him in with you guys I understand."

Neal nodded and preceded his father into the house before heading towards the stairs. He heard the steady tapping of his father's cane as the older man followed him at a distance. They'd put in new wallpaper in the time since Neal had left, and the guest room had been storage and a dream at that point. Otherwise, the inside was much as it had been and Neal had an easy enough time finding the bedroom to drop their things into. He'd let Emma worry about unpacking – payback would be his one way or the other, after all. He was also strangely curious about seeing his old room. His father said they'd bought some things for Henry, after all.

His father was still standing in the hallway when Neal emerged, and he moved closer silently as Neal crossed the hall to the door that had been his. Inside, a crib and a few unopened boxes of baby toys were the only indications that it had been longer than a few hours since Neal had left. His nicknacks still littered the shelves and his posters were still on the walls. There was even an old jacket still hanging off the desk chair, forgotten on a return from college for the holidays. Only the lack of dust on any of the surfaces told him that the door had been opened since then.

"We didn't know what he'd like," his father said. "But I thought it might be a good idea to have some things that can stay here for him to play with."

Neal didn't want that, and didn't like the implication that they'd be coming back enough for Henry to need a separate set of toys. But at the same time, what could he say that wouldn't start another fight? They'd only been here fifteen minutes and he was already sure this had been a bad idea.

"I'm sure it's fine," he said at last. "I'll let Emma show him when they get back."

His father nodded and set off for the stairs, leaving Neal alone with his thoughts and the oppressive reality of being back.