What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.
-Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Leaning on the kitchen surface watching his son play with balloons out of the window, he feels the familiar swell of uneasiness rise within his chest. It is cold outside, Eli and his friends wrapped up against the coming winter, and he can see each breath they take as they run. Fall light spreads across the scene, dancing on the children's skin, and yet he keeps back from the illuminated patch creeping into the kitchen, staying within the shadow the half down blind provides.

All he can think of is the day of his birth, seven years before: the blood staining Olivia's shirt, the cleanliness of Eli as he lay in Kathy's arms. The sound of her heartbeat resounding through her as he held her and thought he would never lose her, that they had come so close it could never now happen. They had cheated fate.

A half drunk beer rests on the side behind him, despite it being only lunchtime on his youngest son's birthday, and he rejoices in the silence of the house while everyone celebrates outside. He can hear their shouts and laughter but he's in his own world, and he's glad. It's been too long since he got to be alone, everyone watches him now, walks on glass and accepts his vicious crap with a patience that infuriates. He wants someone to slap him, to make him see the world. He wants to be called on it. Like she would.

It's only come to the fore again since her kidnapper was caught. It had faded over the years, they had stopped treading gently, but then that day came when he had come so close to the end, to the answers, and now they wait for him to break and shatter in a world without hope.

He's started counting days again. Days since her loss, days counting upwards to a never-ending total. All he really wants to do is count down to a zero, to a specified day. He wouldn't mind if he had to count ten thousand days till then, as long as he knew there was an finish line. But none is offered, and uncertainty is all he can rely on.

Nights are now spent lying in bed with no sleep, thinking of Hartman, their perp, her....her what? Killer? No body. Kidnapper? No person. Rapist? No semen. He knows the man is sat in a cell, locked away as he should be, but not for what he did to her. No justice for Liv. He obsesses over every detail of the man, can recite the facts of his birth and which schools he went to, the story of his life in official documents. He knows his height, his weight, his birthday, better than he knows his wife or children's. He has to know him to defeat him. But what will he win if he does, he wonders.

Picking up the bottle, he downs the half left in one go before moving automatically to the fridge to pull another free, relishing its chill. It's not until he has the cap off and is about to drink that he hears a small cough and a sigh behind him, and looks to see Kathleen standing, watching.

"Time was you'd have heard me thirty seconds ago," she says, no smile on her face. He drinks long and slow before looking at her again.

"Time was you'd have been drinking with me," he counters, a small voice telling him in his head that it is a low blow, that she is his daughter, but he has said it now and it won't be taken back, however much he flushes with sudden regret. She doesn't react though, and that is worse.

"Why don't you go outside and join them? Eli would love to have you play with him." He knows the meaning behind her words. Go be a Dad, the one you're not. Spend time with him instead of wasting away in here, shrivelling to nothing in the dark. She should just say it, they all should, but they fear his implosion. He glances at the window, the bright colours of their coats against stark skies.

"You remember when you first saw him? How tiny and perfect and untouched he was?"

She smiles,

"Yeah. He looked like a doll, except he didn't fit in his skin. And then he cried, and he was suddenly a real person, like it took a cry to make him whole. I never knew that before, that feeling of seeing someone become who they are."

He thinks on her words. On how each of his children had done that, gone from a swollen belly to a person. An unidentified future to a now, of blood and breath and tears. Of the day you stop imagining, and see for the first time.

"She did that. She saved him. She saved your Mom. And no one saved her," he's nearly finished the second of his beers and it tastes as bitter and as sweet as that day, when he was given a son and nearly lost so much, "she was there for him and I wasn't there for her."

It's words he has thought and spoken more times than he can bear, a nightmare lullaby that sends him to sleep in the silent hours of the night when he feels like the only person of the world awake, and not even the wind breaks the silence. "You weren't there, and you should have been."

Kathleen is looking at him, he can feel it but he doesn't dare look back. There will be pity in her eyes, perhaps resignation or frustration, perhaps the terrifying moment that all children have when they see their parents as weaker than them. Or at least nothing more than them. She must have that moment so often now.

"You can't save her, Dad. When are you going to realise that?"

He can hear a clock in the background, counting down time. The children will be in soon, for cake and candy, and the house will fill with noise again. But for now the question dulls his senses and all he feels is beer sliding down his throat, the cold of glass beneath his palm, and his sorrow that he has no answer for her.

When the silence becomes too unbearable, she stands with a much repeated sigh and walks from the room without another sound. He reaches for stability, the bottle, but misses, knocking it over so it rolls across the table, spilling beer as it goes. He watches, fascinated, as it flows onto the surface and over the edge, flooding the floor beneath with an expanding puddle. He waits until it stops, just drips sliding off the wood and rippling the beer when they fall, and gives the glass a small push, so it rolls and falls and shatters, just as expected. Cleaning up with no protection, the alcohol stings cuts that are made, and it is a relief.

Once he has done, he doesn't go, despite the pull nagging at him. But there is a calm in the knowledge that he will, soon, and he can stop holding his breath. It's easy now to stand and walk out into the light, to see his own gasps exhale before him, to grab his son and hold him close and do his best pretending.

It is the next day, as the banner and balloons float down from the walls and cake crumbs seem to scatter every place he looks, that he can act. The drive is full of nothing but gentle comfort, a numbness in the setting in motion something he cannot stop. That will not end until all is spilled and something breaks.

The sun has joined him, and he sits outside the gates enjoying its weak attempts at warmth and staring at barbed wire sharp against the sky, waiting heady minutes before moving. He shows his badge to the officer, and says,

"I'm here to see Daniel Hartman."