I've been thinking about writing this fic for a while. I've had some reservations about it, some of which will become clear to you as you read. I've decided to publish it after a lot of thought, because I do think there are parallels here that would be really interesting to explore, even though the show will likely not go on long enough for this to ever actually be in the cards.

It had been a week since Mother's Day, a realization Paige had when she noticed that the cards she'd gotten were still sitting up on the TV stand. She hadn't dusted since the night before the holiday and it was definitely time to take the cards down and tidy up. Rising from her desk, Paige crossed the living room and gathered the cards up, meandering down the hall to her bedroom and pulling the appropriate box out from the top of her closet. She had made it a habit, since her father had gotten sick, to save all of the cards she was sent.

She set the cards and box on the bed and wiggled the cover off. Last month's birthday cards were on top, and Paige stopped for a moment, noticing the bright blue one with the sparkling ladybugs on it.

Bri.

Paige remembered what it said inside. Happy birthday, Mrs. O'Brien. I hope thirty – six treats you great! The card had been sent only weeks before. Back when Ralph was still dating the girl. Back when Paige still genuinely believed that her son had found someone great and had things way more together at seventeen than she had.

Well, overall, he very probably still had things more together than she did when she was his age. It just turned out that Bri wasn't a part of that.

Her motherly intuition wasn't often wrong. But Brianna Schultz sure had had Paige fooled. For an entire year and a half.

She was tempted to rip the card up and throw it in a coffee can with a match. Thirty – six will treat me great, she thought, because you're not in my life – or my son's – anymore. But instead of tearing it up, she put the card underneath all the others. Soon, as more piled on top, her anniversary, the shower, the holidays, the last tangible evidence of Bri's involvement in her life would be buried.

And good riddance.

She knocked on her son's door as she headed back to the living room. "School starts in twenty minutes!"

The door opened almost immediately behind her, and Ralph followed her down the hall, his backpack over his shoulders. "When have I ever been late for school, Mom?"

"The other week when you and Walter got pre – occupied pulling apart your classmate's website design."

"It was still a learning experience!"

Paige rolled her eyes. Her son was well into his teenaged years, he shaved, he had nearly reached his adult height, and his voice had deepened years ago, but when he got defensive over something he and Walter had been up to, he reminded her so much of when he was younger. "You still need to get to school on time."

"College isn't like grade school, Mom. You can still get great grades when you miss class. Okay, okay," he said off of her glare. "I've got my backpack, I was already about to leave."

"Good, get out of here," she said, teasingly making a shooing motion with her hand. Ralph rolled his eyes, but she could see a corner of his mouth turn up as he turned and headed toward the front door.

After her son was gone, Paige went into his room, dumping his hamper into the laundry basket. He was great at helping her cook, at washing the dishes, at keeping his room clean and at doing his homework, traits she knew she was blessed to have in a teenager. But no matter how many times she reminded him, he always forgot that she did laundry on Thursday mornings and she wanted all the clothes he wanted her to wash in the laundry room by then.

That was something that both of the male humans she lived with had an issue with.

"Oh," Paige said in surprise when she entered the tiny laundry room to see Walter sorting his clothing. "Somebody is on top of things today."

"Well, you know," he said, sliding his arm around her back for a quick hug, "figured I should start doing more to make things easier on you."

"Pssssh," Paige said, swatting him with a sock, "I spent seven years raising Ralph alone on the brink of poverty, everything now is a cake walk."

"Really?" He asked, drawing out the word and raising his eyebrows.

"Don't worry," she said, hugging his arm and resting her head on his shoulder, "you're a critical part of my life, and you make things insurmountably better."

"If you say so," he teased. She lifted her head and kissed him, both of them grinning. "But you're still proud of me for the laundry thing, right?"

"Am I proud of you for remembering to do the one thing I always ask for you to do on Thursdays?" She asked, lifting her eyebrows. "Yes, actually, because for a genius you really suck at sorting your laundry."

"Well, we can't be perfect at everything, can we?" He joked. "I can do this laundry for you. You have more to do at the garage today than I do, and the earlier you get started, the earlier you can come home."

Paige was tempted. She preferred getting work done early and having more time in the evening, but laundry was actually one of her favorite household chores to do and had been for a long time. Of course, when you were eighteen the best part about laundry was putting shoes in the dryer and then sitting on it, but nowadays she just liked how calming the laundry room was. No one was trying to kill her or destroy the world. In here, disorderly things became orderly again, in the most literal sense.

But she really would like to be home from the garage by the time Ralph got home from his study group. The past few weeks had really made family time feel extra important.

"Go on," Walter said with a smile. "I'll be there by noon and both of us can leave by three."

She nodded. "That sounds like a great plan actually." Placing her hand on his arm, she kissed him again, quickly. "Thank you, Love."

With no one else at the garage by the time Walter got there – apparently Thursday afternoon was prime couple time – they managed to get back to the condo a good forty minutes earlier than predicted. And they had very nice forty minutes in their room before Paige settled into her favorite stuffed chair to read some e – mails she had received from prospective clients since they'd left the garage. One had sent a spreadsheet documenting some issues their company had been having, and Paige would have to show it to Walter before making a commitment, but it looked like an easy enough fix with both him and Sylvester on the job.

"Mom?"

Paige looked up from the document. She hadn't heard her son come in. "Yeah, baby? Are…" She frowned. "Is everything okay?"

Ralph looked about as uncomfortable as she had seen him in his seventeen years of life. "Uh…"

He was wringing his hands, fidgeting, and Paige felt concern mounting within her. She put her laptop on the coffee table in front of her and folded her hands, shifting her weight so she was facing directly towards him. "Ralph?"

His voice even sounded strange. "I really messed up. Like, it's really, really bad."

"Come here." Paige gestured, and her son slowly walked toward her. "What happened? Is it something with the car?" He wasn't Walter's biological son, but he had somehow inherited the love of fast cars all the same.

"No." Ralph bit his lip. "N – no, it's not the car." Paige wished she had stood up. He was tall now, as tall as she was, and with her sitting down, he towered over her. But everything about how he stood and how he was looking at her absolutely screamed fear and vulnerability and he didn't seem quite as tall to her as she knew he really was.

He stared at – or through – her for a long time, possibly even close to a full minute. And when he spoke again, Paige was very, very glad she was sitting down.

"Bri's pregnant."

Wanna throw out a few disclaimers here – there is no actual sexual content in this fic. Just like when I had Ralph dating Owen in my Serendipity – verse fics. Ralph is only about thirteen on the show, and while a few things are obvious here with his ex being pregnant, the content that is actually written for Ralph is going to be appropriate for how old he is right now in canon even though he's seventeen here. I was going to leave the last sentence of this chapter for the next one, but I wanted to get where I'm going with this out now in case it's something you don't want to read. If this makes you uncomfortable, or if anything else does because there are some sensitive topics discussed in here, not reading this fic isn't going to hurt my feelings as long as you aren't nasty about it.