I came downstairs and saw Emma making breakfast. Eggs and bacon, from the smell.

"Hi, dad," she said, plating the food and sliding it in front of me as I sat at the table. She was brewing coffee, too. I blinked in gratefulness. Her mother had left me and took our son with her, but I still had Emma.

I didn't know what had happened, not to my marriage or my relationship with Emma. One had gently rotted from the inside out and one had miraculously strengthened. Spike, sure, I had cheated on her. I had felt the restless stirring of middle age making me crazy. I felt tied down and imprisoned by my family and my job and my responsibilities. This was true. But now, I was willing to work and to love Spike and our family and our home. She was the one with the reckless selfishness, dragging my child away from me. She'd wanted to take Emma, too. But Emma had elected to stay with me.

The phone rang and I let Emma get it. I suppose a certain tiredness has crept into my day to day existence. I didn't care who was on the phone. I was too tired to care. Would it be Spike wanting to reconcile? Did I even have the energy for that?

"Here, dad, it's Joey," she said, and my heart warmed every time she called me dad. It had taken us a long time to get to this point. I remembered when she was born and I was in grade nine, tall and beanpole thin, and at that point I'd never even kissed a girl.

"Hey, Snake, what's up?" Joey said, sounding a little over caffeinated.

"Not much," I said, trying to sound normal. I didn't feel normal anymore, not since Spike left, not since the disaster at school with the whole Darcy thing. I felt like the pervert everyone had almost thought I was.

"Listen, uh, I'm gonna be in town for awhile, visiting the parents, you know," I smiled in spite of myself. I was always happy to see Joey Jeremiah, "and I thought I could drop by for awhile. You're not too busy, are you?"

"No. Not at all," Busy was something I wasn't, not anymore. Emma took care of the house, with it being just the two of us. It was easy for her, and she didn't complain. My classes were on autopilot. I traveled my well worn path from my front door to Degrassi and back again. I had no desire to go anywhere else.

"Good. Okay. I'll see you later," He hung up and so did I. There was something on his mind, I'd known him long enough to be able to pick up on the subtle variations in tone that indicated worry. And it wasn't too much of a stretch to guess what he was worried about, or more accurately, who. Craig. That kid was giving him a run for the money.

"Seeing Joey today?" Emma said, smiling. I nodded and started to bring my dish to the sink.

"Don't worry about that stuff, I'll clean it," she said, taking the dish from my hand.

00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

We met at a coffee shop, not The Dot, overrun as it was with kids. I'd had enough of kids for awhile. Joey didn't just look over caffeinated, he looked frantic. I looked at the steaming white ceramic cup of coffee in front of him and didn't think it was such a hot idea. He blew on it and took a small sip.

"What's up?" I said, peering at him, his lined face, his bloodshot eyes.

"Craig," he said. I nodded. Of course.

"I thought Craig was in Europe?" I said, blowing on my own coffee. I thought back to his stint in rehab, his stays in homeless shelters, mental hospitals, psych wards. We both had kids from our wives' previous relationships. I had Emma and he had Craig. I had a living wife who wanted nothing to do with me, and he had a dead wife he couldn't let go. It was an odd parallel.

"Yeah, he's in Europe. But Ashley called. He's not doing well,"

I wasn't sure how much Joey really knew about bipolar, despite all the pamphlets the doctors had thrown at him over the years. It was a difficult to control mental illness. People with it were prone to going off their meds, prone to suicide. In fact, Craig was suicidal before this diagnosis. And add in his years of abuse, the deaths of his parents, and you had quite the recipe for disaster.

"So what can you do from here?" I said, sipping my coffee, feeling the slight comfort it provided. I knew I was lucky in this regard, Emma was mostly a well adjusted young lady, despite her bout of anorexia. As it was now she was taking care of me, not the other way around. I might be walking around with a low grade clinical depression.

"That's just the thing. I feel powerless," he said. I didn't want to point out that he felt just as powerless when Craig was living under his roof. He couldn't fix this. But I saw in his eyes that he wanted to.

"Joey, listen, about Craig. You shouldn't be constantly feeling like you have to save him or rescue him. He's an adult now, he's out on his own. He's not even on this continent. Maybe you should let go a little," Was my advice sound? I didn't know. I was tired of seeing him beat himself up over something so out of his hands.

He looked down, looked into the coffee cup like the answers might be there in the hot liquid.

"I know. But, you don't understand. I have to try and help him. I promised his mother I would,"

I closed my eyes. I could imagine that at the end of her life Craig's mother was being a little more honest with herself about her son's situation. She'd left him with a violently abusive man. She knew it would cause pieces that would have to be picked up by someone. But I felt a little angry with her for saddling my friend with such an impossible life long job.

"Look, Joey, none of this is your fault. Craig, what happened to him, the way he is, none of it is your fault. I don't know if you can go on cleaning up the pieces of every crisis. You provided him with a stable loving home when he needed one most. You helped him to deal with this mental illness. Now it's in his hands. If he's not taking his meds or they're not working, it's up to him to get himself the help he needs. You've got to let go, man,"

We can only do what we can do. Sure, when Craig was here, still a teenager and freshly diagnosed bipolar, he needed Joey, and Joey was right to help him. But now, it's been years, Craig didn't even live with him anymore. It was all a matter of letting go. Maybe that was what was upsetting Joey.

"Yeah. I know. He's so far away. It's just, I feel almost closer to Julia when I'm helping Craig, he's my link to her. He makes it feel like she's still here, because I'm still doing something that she asked me to do. It makes it feel like she's still in the world. Maybe that's sick. Maybe you're right. I've got to let go. I was actually thinking of flying to Europe. How crazy is that?"

We laughed, a laughter devoid of humor, just a flat scary hollow sound.