Sara left for her weekly NA meeting just before 7 pm, leaving Michael to finish the school night bedtime routine. She hadn't been gone five minutes before Mike donned his jacket and bike helmet. "I'm going to Dylan's," he told Michael matter-of-factly.

Michael looked up from the professional engineering listings he'd been perusing in surprise. He knew Dylan was Heather and Larry's kid, but what on earth made Mike think he could ride over there at this time of evening? "Not now," he said with equal certainty.

Mike stared him down, helmet already snapped below his chin. "Why not? He has a new Wii game. He told me I could come try it, at school today."

Michael shut the laptop. Was he serious? "He'll still have it tomorrow," he said. He gave Mike a smile.

It wasn't returned. "It won't be new tomorrow."

Michael frowned. "That may be true, but it's a school night, and bedtime is 8:00. It's almost time for you to take your bath. You know that."

"Mom wouldn't care."

"Ha," Michael answered. "Right."

Mike simply continued to stare him down. He must really, really want to play this game. With a sinking feeling, Michael realized he may be out of his depth tonight. It made him feel off-balance; he and Mike had been cruising along so nicely. He grasped at a tactic he'd been given in their group therapy sessions: validation. "What do you do, in this game?" he asked. Mike perked up, obviously taking this question as a point in his favor. He described it in detail. "Sounds interesting," Michael agreed. "I understand why you're looking forward to playing it."

"So I can go?" Mike moved toward the door again.

"No, like I said, maybe tomorrow. After school. You don't have anything after school on Wednesdays."

Mike didn't like this answer at all. Finally, the gauntlet was dropped. "You're not in charge of me anyway," he decided. He turned back toward the door.

Michael sat stunned for a second. The hell he wasn't. "Go to your room," he heard himself say. God, had he heard that on a sitcom or something?

Mike looked a little shocked, but held his ground. "You can't tell me what to do," he whispered. He seemed to regret saying this the second the words left his mouth.

Michael stood, anger rising. "I just did."

Mike wavered in indecision, weighing his options, and must have come to the conclusion that he had none. He stomped up the stairs with a low grumble in his throat. "Take your bath," Michael managed to command, before sinking back down on the sofa, completely spent. What was that about?He was still sitting there, not hearing bathwater running, when Sara returned early at 7:45.

She looked at him, just sitting there, and said, "Where's Mike?"

"His room," Michael said slowly.

"Already in bed?" Sara asked, setting her purse down. "Wow. 15 minutes early. I'm impressed." She smiled, but when Michael said nothing, she looked at him more closely. "He is in bed, right?"

Michael shook his head. "Just…in his room."

"Why?"

This simple question seemed daunting to answer. He still felt a little stunned. "I think I put him there." Had he messed up? Or rather, how badly? "He was not behaving."

Sara sat down beside him. "Okay. Well, that will happen, you know."

It had never happened to Michael. Apart from his single tantrum about Panama, Mike was always so…so…perfect. He told Sara what had transpired, and she sighed. "He's used to only answering to me, it's true, but that's changed now, and he's going to have to get used to it."

"I hated saying no to him," Michael admitted. "And knowing he's angry with me…" The knowledge that he'd been willing to cause any sort of division between himself and his son after working so hard to build a bridge tore at his gut.

She nodded. "But you had to do it," she reminded him. She bumped his shoulder with her own. "This is the part that's not in the framed photos of birthday cakes, beach days, and pony rides, right?"

He offered her a pained smile. "Right. I think I get that now."

Sara looked thoughtful. "You know, it might be a good sign…that he feels comfortable enough with you to act up. They say that, anyway, about kids…they test you because they want to know that you care enough to punish them."

She sounded like a text book. "Who says that, exactly?"

Sara looked faintly embarrassed. " You know…'they'. The mysterious they of parenting books."

"Which you never read, because you find them worthless?" He smiled at her. He'd already scanned the numerous titles in the bookcase in the office.

She couldn't deny it. "You know you're going to have to go finish this, right? Follow through?"

He glanced up the stairs, like maybe Mike would appear there, freshly bathed and pajama-clad, ready with a heartfelt apology. When no such vision appeared, Michael rose from the couch. "Yeah, alright." He walked upstairs almost as reluctantly as Mike had. At his room, he eyed the lump under the Star Wars comforter that was his son, thought about Sara's explanation of rules equating to parental love, took a deep breath, and said simply, "Bath. Let's go."

The cover flew back, and Mike's face appeared. "I'm not dirty." He looked at Michael's determined expression and changed his tune. "But I guess I could rinse off."

Michael ran the bathwater and sat down on the toilet lid after Mike stepped into the tub. "Did I hear Mom come home?" Mike asked.

"Yep," Michael confirmed.

Mike looked up hopefully from the water. "Is she coming up here?"

"Nope." Watching Mike's small shoulders slump slightly, he yielded somewhat. "She'll come up to say goodnight, of course. Now, wash up, Mike."

Mike watched the path his fingers made, gliding underwater. "Just soap but not hair?" he asked.

Michael smiled at him thinly. "Sure, alright."

Mike picked up the soap bar and rolled it over his arm, then let it dive bomb into the water. "Maybe," he ventured experimentally, "Maybe you're in charge sometimes?"

Michael nearly caved when his son's eyes, so like Sara's, met his. "I'm not a babysitter, Mike. I'm your father. That means I'm in charge all the time, same as Mom."

He considered this while trying to retrieve the soap in the water. "But you do what Mom says?"

Michael tried not to smile again. "Your mom may be the expert on you, Mike, but I have news, my friend. I'm a fast learner." Mike actually giggled at this, and Michael reveled in the sound. "We'll figure this out," he said softly, "you and me. But you need to understand something, Mike." He waited until those hazel eyes landed back on him. "When I tell you to do something, you do it, or there will be consequences, just like with Mom."

Mike nodded quietly. "Yes, Dad."

Michael stopped himself from outwardly celebrating this victory. "Alright then. Wash up for real now. It's late." He held up a towel, and after a few minutes of scrubbing, Mike stepped into it. Michael wrapped it around his small body, absorbing the warmth of his wet skin through the material. Somehow, inside the terrycloth, Mike felt fragile as a bird in his arms. Damn, this fatherhood thing was intense. No wonder so many experts tried to weigh in on it. He forced his voice to remain authoritative. "Alright. Teeth. Pajamas. Bed."

"Don't forget story," Mike objected. "We haven't finished the solar system book." He talked around his toothbrush.

Michael nodded. "Alright. solar system book, then bed. You've got a deal."


They landed at O'Hare at 7 pm local time in the midst of a freak early season snowstorm. By the time they'd emerged through baggage claim, the snow fell in fat, heavy flakes that blocked out the glow of the streetlights outside. "Guess it's good we're staying in Chicago a few days," Michael said, noting the departures board, now showing mostly delays in red. Sara nodded.

Knowing the streets would be clogged with traffic, they took the Blue Line into downtown, Mike curled up between them on the bench seat of the train. He was sleepy; Sara knew it felt an hour later to all of them. "I only packed his fall jacket," she said to Michael, over Mike's head. "And I don't know what bag it's in right now."

By the time they arrived at their stop on River North, Mike had nodded off against Michael's shoulder. He shrugged out of his own jacket and handed it to Sara as he hefted Mike into his arms. "Put it over him, please?" he requested.

Sara walked a few steps behind him as they navigated the two blocks down Kinzie to the Westin, Mike just a lump of coat in Michael's arms. She knew how heavy he felt when asleep…completely dead weight. "Okay?" she called to Michael after the first block, when he paused to adjust the overnight bad slung over one shoulder. He had to be freezing in his shirt sleeves.

He turned in the snow to give her a smile. "I'm great." Something about the juxtaposition of Michael here in Chicago, in street clothes, carrying their son through the snow against her previous image of him in Fox River blue and gray, sent an intense jolt to her heart.

The lobby of the Westin was crowded with an overall chaos of stranded travelers, bellboys dripping snow from their heavy wool uniforms, and cab and Uber drivers warming themselves by the sleek modern fireplace. Mike stirred in Michael's arms. "Is it still snowing?"

"Sure is," Michael told him as he lowered him down to the ground. He stretched his arms experimentally; they must ache. Mike spotted chocolate chip cookies on a tray by the check-in counter, and looked to Michael expectantly. Sara felt a quick thrill to the sight: all their effort to reinforce Michael as an authoritative parent, equal in Mike's estimation to Sara, had been paying off. "Yeah, go ahead," Michael told him.

On the 19th floor, their room offered views of the river, and Sara stood there for some time while Michael tucked Mike into the master bed on the other end of the room; they'd move him later. She was still watching the snow drift between the bridges and high rises when he came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her torso. He drew her back against him, and she felt a shiver of contentment.

"I haven't seen this city in seven years," he said into the curve of her neck.

"Me neither. God, I've missed it. I had no idea."

He kissed her cheek, then released her. "I'm going to order us something from room service before the kitchen closes." She nodded, still watching the river. When their food arrived, she walked across the room to the small table where Michael sat pouring Perrier into two glasses. She froze at the sight of their meal.

"You're going to make me cry," she said softly.

He looked up at her, his mouth crooking into a smile. "As if I'd order you anything else."

She sank down into her chair, her eyes still on the filet mignon gracing each plate. It smelled amazing, but she truly wasn't sure if she could bring herself to cut into it. The promise of this meal had kept her going for so long. Michael raised his glass to her while reaching for her hand across the table. She took it. "To Chicago," he said quietly.

She let her glass clink against his gently, so as not to wake their son. "To us," she added.


The next morning, the snow had let up, leaving the city covered in white. They bought Mike a heavier jacket in the overpriced boutique off the hotel lobby, and set out for the Field Museum. "I remember coming here for a field trip in 4th grade," Michael said as they stepped into the cavernous exhibit hall. "I loved it."

"We had annual passes," Sara remembered.

"Of course you did." Michael rolled his eyes at her, but she just laughed. Sara was in a very good mood, he noted. Mike had gravitated to the full-scale T-Rex skeleton, and for the next few hours, they followed him from room to room while he enthused over every exhibit. Afterward, they grabbed slices of pizza before taking the El uptown to the park. Michael glanced at his phone as Mike tromped through the snow, making snowballs and lobbing them at his parents. "Linc can meet us for dinner," he told Sara, "but LJ's out of town for a internship." This sentence sounded like such a normal thing to say, it made him smile.

They crossed Lake Shore Drive to see the lake. It was bitter cold, and Michael knew the wind that had picked up would be worse on the water. He reminded Sara of this. "I just want to see it for a minute," she insisted.

When they arrived at the walkway along the water, Michael pointed out the skyline view to Mike, and then they began skipping stones across the lake surface. It didn't work well; ripples had risen on the water to form tiny white peaks. When he looked over, Michael noticed Sara had gone quiet. She stood on the concrete steps overlooking the lake, a contemplative look on her face. "Here," he said to Mike. "Try mine." He gave him the best of the smooth stones he'd collected, and moved to join Sara.

"Are you alright?"

She nodded slowly, rocking back on her heels a bit in the wind. She'd stuffed her hands into her coat pockets. "I came here, that night," she said slowly. She stared out at the horizon. "The night you escaped. I stood right here, for a long time. Deciding."

"Oh," he breathed. He followed her gaze across the water, trying to relive what she'd lived. Feel what she'd felt. He knew what he'd gone through: panic rising in his gut as he'd paced his cell with Sucre looking on. A double-edged fear: would the doorknob refuse to turn when he tried it? Had he already shut the door on any chance with Sara? He swallowed, his eyes stinging from the cold.

Mike wormed his way in-between them then, tugging on Sara's arm. "It's freezing here," he said. She looked down at him, then leaned up to Michael to place a soft kiss against his temple.

"Thank God I made the right choice," she said simply. To Mike she added, "Let's go. I know where we can find hot cocoa."

By the time they met Lincoln outside Troquet, the restaurant Michael picked after recognizing the name of the head chef on Yelp, her earlier jovial mood had returned. Not for the first time, Michael marveled at her resilience. He watched her and his brother embrace.

"You look good," Linc told her, and she smiled at him. Their relationship had changed, Michael thought, in the past seven years. They were closer, but in the way of people who had gone through something difficult together: with a slight discomfort, as though each reminded the other of something they'd rather forget.

Lincoln hugged Michael hard, greeted Mike with a bear hug, then acknowledged Michael's dining choice with a grumble. "Why this fancy bistro shit? Pop's on West Side not good enough for you anymore?" He glanced down at Mike and gave him a wink. "Bleep out Uncle Lincoln's bad words as usual, kiddo."

Michael laughed. "You're in my Chicago now, bro." It was still bitterly cold out, and he thought of that awful afternoon, so long ago, when he'd stood on the sidewalk outside Linc's place and berated him for losing his keys. God, he'd been an asshole. He clapped a hand to his brother's back. "C'mon and try it. You might even enjoy it."

The meal was decent, but not as great as Michael had been expecting. Maybe the Chicago culinary scene had slipped a bit in the past few years. Or maybe he was a different person now, one who cared less about celebrity chefs and Zagat ratings. They'd finished dinner and were waiting for the chocolate torte Lincoln had so helpfully pointed out to Mike on the menu when Michael heard a hearty, "Michael Scofield, in the flesh?!"

He looked up to see one of his favorite ex-colleagues from his old firm. "Mark Jacobson? Are you kidding me?" He stood and shook his hand.

Mark rocked back on his heels in amazement. "Thought I'd seen the last of you, man." He looked around the table, his eye snagging on Lincoln, who he obviously recognized. From Fox River Eight news coverage, perhaps? He had the grace not to say so. "You back? In town?"

Michael looked at Sara. "Just a visit, this time," he said slowly. "This is my wife, Sara, my son, Mike, my brother, Lincoln." He introduced Mark as a friend from Middleton, Maxwell, and Schaum. "You still there?" he asked Mark.

Mark laughed. "I'm actually a partner now, believe it or not." He gestured to Michael, addressing the table at large. "Course, this guy would be running the place by now, if he hadn't left. You'd have Thompson's corner office."

Michael acknowledged this with a smile. "Don't know about that."

Mark laid a hand on his shoulder. "But seriously, if you do return to the city for good, drop me a line, will you? I'd love to have you back." Michael hesitated, and Mark misread this as some type of job-seeking strategy. "I'll more than match whatever you're making now. Guaranteed."

Michael looked at his old friend with a raised eyebrow. "I don't know if I'd be exactly welcomed back with open arms."

Mark laughed. "Are you kidding? You're like a legend there. I'd be a freaking hero." He slid his card across the table. "Anyway. Call me either way. Let's catch up."

"Sure thing," Michael said. He rose to shake Mark's hand again as he excused himself from the table.


The next day, the sky shone blue, and when Michael checked on their afternoon flight to Cabo San Lucas, it showed on-time. They had several hours to kill. "Ready to go check out the loft?" he asked Sara.

It was only a short walk across the river from the Westin, and a half an hour later, Michael turned the key in the lock and opened the door. It was just as he remembered it: shiny, sparse, and sleek, all steel, granite, and marble. The bank of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city caught Mike's eye, and he immediately ran across the living space, tracking mud the length of the immaculate room. Sara let out a yelp and chased him down to pull off his boots. Michael stood in the entryway, watching them struggle with outerwear, while a feeling of contentment he'd never actually felt while living here came over him so thoroughly, he could scarcely breathe. Sara turned from the windows, an apology on her lips, then paused.

"What is it?" she asked carefully.

He smiled at her. "It's just…seeing you both here." He wanted to join them, but just couldn't yet, somehow. "The last time I was in here, that window was completely covered with research," he remembered. Sara looked confused. "Blueprints, newspaper clippings, schematics…Beautiful Mind, style," he told her.

She smiled cautiously at him. The idea probably alarmed her, and now that he thought about it, his wall had been alarming. Her photo accompanying the article about her work in India had been pinned right there, where Mike now stood counting the bridges visible over the Chicago River. The sight of his wife and child standing in the place of all that effort left him weak with gratitude. "Somehow," Michael said slowly, a simple truth dawning on him by degrees, "I didn't just get it all back. I got back far more than I ever started with."

A look crossed Sara's face. Love shone there, but laced with something more complicated. Hindsight, as she stared back at him? Thankfulness of her own? He went to them then, and wrapped his arms around both of them. After a moment, Mike wiggled under his arm, ready to explore the rest of the empty loft. Sara turned into him, holding him tightly. They stayed that way a while, at the window, until Mike returned, bored. "There's nothing else to do here," he observed.

Michael agreed. "Let's go learn to surf," he suggested, then laughed at Mike's whoop of agreement.


On the flight to Baja, Mike took the window seat, and Sara leaned her head on Michael's shoulder. "What did you think," he asked her, "about Chicago?"

She sighed. "I loved it. I think I'll always love that city."

Michael nodded. "But we can't live there," he ventured, then paused, giving her space to object. "Right?"

"No, you're right," she agreed after a moment. She lifted her head from his shoulder, thinking of the friend he'd run into at dinner. "Though you've said you liked your job there, and you could have that back."

"It wouldn't be the same," he said. "I realized last night I'm not the same person I was then. And I'll always be known as the mastermind of the Fox River Eight in that city," he added.

"And I'll always be known as the stupid female doctor who let you all out."

Michael objected to this description with a low growl, but surely he couldn't really argue. The events of the Fox River breakout loomed large in the local vernacular, as sensational stories always do. "And you love your job at the clinic," he noted.

"And unlike you, I don't think I could work in Chicago. Too many bridges burned." She imagined asking for her job back at Chicago General, and shuddered. "But what will you do, if we stay in Ithaca?"

He leaned back in his seat, hands braced together in front of his face, fingertips teepeed, as he did when giving something serious thought. She hadn't really expected him to have an answer, but he surprised her. "Actually, I may have a solution to that," he said. "But I want your opinion." For the next several minutes, he explained his idea, telling her he'd like to go back into structural engineering for himself, as a freelance consultant. How his email inbox was already cluttered with requests from everyone from tech firm CEOs to government sub-contractors to independent research facilities, all seeking his expertise in building security. "The CIA must sell their mailing lists to third parties," he said wryly.

"You want to specialize in keeping people out of buildings?" she asked. She marveled at the poetry of this.

"Yes," he said. "No more prisons. I'm done breaking people out, even for the right reasons, or on the right side of the law."

She looked at him in wonder. "I love it," she said. And she did. She really did.

He smiled in relief. "I'd have to travel sometimes, but I could work from home otherwise. Be there for Mike every day. We could live anywhere you want."

She laid her head back on his shoulder and reached for his hand to thread her fingers through his. "I love it," she repeated softly.


Baja was exactly as Michael remembered it, and nothing like he remembered it. He found the cheap beer, but had less interest in drinking it, and the hammocks on the beach still existed, but he vastly preferred the king-sized bed in the master of their bungalow rental. They spent their days at the beach, playing in the cool water of the Pacific and lounging lazily on the sand. Michael and Mike made intricate sandcastles with moats and secret tunnels and roads they 'paved' with buckets of water from the surf, though the sight of Sara in her swimsuit often made it difficult for Michael to concentrate on educating their son on foundational strength and structural integrity.

Toward the end of their first afternoon, Michael finally dropped into the beach chair next to Sara, letting his feet burrow into the warm sand as Mike put the final touches on their latest creation. "Bring the road all the way around," Michael instructed with a wave of his hand, before closing his eyes, the warm sunshine glowing orange behind his eyelids.

"Promoting yourself to supervisor?" Sara asked with amusement.

"It's how the world works," he smiled, eyes still closed. "I have to teach him why it's best to be the boss, not the laborer."

After a few minutes, he heard Mike's gradual approach toward the beach chairs, digging as he went. Michael should have anticipated what happened next; in fact, he chastised himself for not anticipating it, later. Mike's plastic shovel sank into the sand repeatedly, each time a few inches closer to the chairs, until predictably, it hit pay dirt in the form of the flesh at the top of Michael's buried foot. His eyes flew open at the quick stab of pain. "Ah!" he cried, congratulating himself on not swearing.

"Sorry!" Mike responded immediately, and Michael was already telling him it was fine, the pain from the toy shovel already gone, when Mike's eyes suddenly widened and his face drained of color. "Sorry!" he cried again, with twice the emphasis.

Michael looked down blankly at his foot, his three-toed one, which he'd liberated from the sand. Oh. Then, as Mike's reaction fully dawned: Oh, shit. It suddenly occurred to him that throughout the upstate New York fall, Michael hadn't been barefoot much. "No, Mike," he said in a rush. "It's alright."

The look on Mike's face would have been comical had he not been clearly gripped in terror at the thought of inflicting such an injury. He started to cry, his hands shaking as he clutched the shovel. Sara released a sound that seemed an odd cross between a laugh and a sob. "Mike, that happened a long time ago," she told him swiftly. "It's okay."

He still just stared at Michael's foot, while Michael stared at him, staring at it, until Sara guided Mike gently back by the shoulders to settle him against her lap. It was astounding, Michael thought with fatalistic resignation, how swiftly they could be yanked from idyllic tropical sunshine back into the past. He fought the futile desire to bury his toes back under the sand and out of sight.

"What happened to them?" Mike asked timidly, still looking at the space on Michael's foot where two toes should be. When Michael hesitated, he added, with a bit more confidence lacing his voice, "You won't lie to me, remember?"

Sara looked between them quizzically. "It's kind of a policy of ours," Michael told her.

"Guess I neglected to negotiate for that perk," she said quietly, but when Michael looked at her swiftly, her smile was tender. "I think I'll take a dip in the water," she decided, then rose gracefully to her feet, depositing a now overtly curious Mike into her vacated chair. Michael snagged her hand before she could walk away. "You've got this," she said softly, and then he was watching her long, lean legs carry her across the sand.

He tore his eyes away to redirect his attention on Mike. He didn't want to tell him he'd stepped on a pair of garden sheers. Why give his son an unnecessary fear of landscaping equipment? But he also saw no reason to give him an unnecessary fear of mob bosses carrying out prison sentences. He realized that sometimes, telling the truth didn't have to mean telling the facts. "Here's the deal with this question, Mike," he said slowly. "If you don't want me to lie to you, it's not one I can answer today."

Mike frowned. "Why not?"

He took a deep breath. "Because it's part of a long story that's too big for a kid. Even my kid, who's definitely much smarter than all the others."

Mike smiled at this. "But when will I be big enough for it?"

Michael definitely didn't know. "I'll know when. Definitely."

Mike continued to study his foot. "Does it have scary parts? The story of your toes?"

Michael nodded. "It does. But it also has good parts. Even big, not-for-kid stories have good parts."

Mike moved from his chair to climb into Michael's lap. His skin felt warm, dusted with a fine layer of sand. "Like what?"

"Well, after I got hurt," Michael ventured, "I felt someone holding my foot, just like this." He captured Mike's bare foot and cradled it very gently between his palms. "Even though it was bloody and gross and I was bawling like a baby."

Mike actually giggled. "Like a baby," he repeated.

"And when I looked up, who do you think it was, taking care of me, making me feel better?"

Mike's eyes alighted like he knew the correct answer on a pop quiz. "Mom."

Michael smiled at his certainty. "Of course your mom." They both looked out at the water, where Sara stood waist-deep in the gentle surf. "Should we go swimming with her?"

They made a dash for the water, and when they reached her, Sara looked between them with curious speculation. Maybe it was just the way she squinted into the sun, but Michael thought she looked faintly anxious, despite her confidence that Michael could handle the situation solo. "Dad says I can't know his toe story until I'm older," Mike informed her, and Michael watched the tense set of her jaw relax. "But you know what he said?"

"What?" Sara asked. They all paused as a small wave broke around them.

"He said he 'bawled like a baby!'" Mike laughed again, then watched his mother's reaction. "Did he?"

Sara just smiled, catching Mike under the armpits as he launched himself through the surf toward her. "Well, wouldn't you?" she asked.


In the evenings, they grilled fish at the house or dined out on breezy restaurant patios in Cabo, and at night, Michael tucked his son into bed with a kiss on his head, the lingering scent of coconut sunscreen and soap and seawater filling his nostrils. In his own bed, Sara smelled almost exactly the same, her long legs tangling with his as he grasped her sun-kissed shoulders, pulling her close to him.

Mike kept reminding them he wanted to surf, but Michael kept putting him off; he had a surprise…something he'd managed to arrange at the last minute. Their fourth evening at the bungalow, he slipped out after dinner, telling Sara only that he had an errand to run, and returned with a guest in tow.

"LJ!" Mike cried happily when they walked back in the door. He already wore his favorite Captain America pajamas; they'd returned just before bedtime. He flung himself at his cousin, who caught him and hauled him up for a hug.

"Hey little MJ," LJ laughed, adding, "Yeah, yeah, that's not his name," as Sara pulled him into her embrace, too.

"I had no idea you were coming," she said, with genuine joy, and to Michael's surprise, her eyes glittered with tears. Sometimes he forgot (let himself forget?) how close she and LJ had become under the thumb of Gretchen's captivity.

"When Uncle Mike called," LJ said, "I couldn't resist escaping Baylor for a few days."

Michael assessed his nephew in the lingering twilight filtering through the wisteria crawling up the pillars of the rental patio. He was certainly a boy no more. When Michael had first seen him after his exoneration, he'd been shocked, almost, at the confidence LJ now carried in his shoulders, the assuredness of his presence, the scared, angry child he'd once been eradicated by circumstance and character. Now, he had only a handful of credits remaining to finish his law degree, and Michael could easily envision him in a courtroom, fighting injustice on behalf of clients perhaps not very unlike his father.

After an hour catching up on the patio, LJ had mercy on Sara, who had been trying in vain to extract Mike from the adults to head to bed. "You'll want to be rested," he told his cousin, pausing for dramatic effect, "for surfing tomorrow."

Mike whooped. "Yes! Finally!" The excitement on his face sliced through Michael as easily as a knife through butter, infusing him with a surge of second-hand happiness. He tipped his bottle of beer at his nephew, gratitude and contentment and love suddenly threatening to undo him. He was almost glad when Sara turned away with Mike, afraid the intensity of emotion on his face would alarm them.

"How are you doing?" LJ asked succinctly when they'd disappeared toward Mike's room, and again, Michael was startled by his maturity. How many times had Michael asked his nephew this same question over the years, fretting about choices in his upbringing with Lisa or Lincoln, worrying over his grades or his friends or his decisions. Now, the tables were turned.

He owed him the same honesty he'd received, sometimes hedged, sometimes coerced, from LJ in the past. "I'm immensely grateful," he said slowly, "for this gift I have been given, all I've been given back." Testing out this assessment on his tongue, he decided it was accurate. After love, gratitude was the most intensely felt emotion of his current life. "And to be truthful, I spend a good deal of time just trying to ensure I don't lose it…trying to hold onto this second life, desperate not to break it, drop it, shatter it, ruin it somehow."

LJ looked thoughtful for a moment. "What you have, though," he finally answered, with a nod toward the direction Sara had departed, "isn't as fragile as you think."

The truth of this analysis hit Michael squarely in the chest. Had it been a physical weight, he would have staggered backward. LJ was absolutely right. "When did you get so damned wise?" he asked him.

LJ smiled. "I have some pretty smart people to look up to," he said. "And I don't know if you're aware, but I've been through some shit."

They were both laughing when Sara returned to sit back down next to Michael. "Who's been through shit?" she asked with a smile.

LJ laughed anew. "In this room? Take your pick."


The next morning, Michael sat with Sara on the cool sand watching Mike surf. Or rather, watching LJ push Mike around in chest-deep water, guiding his board into each small swell. It took awhile, but Mike finally caught a wave, paddling for all his might, not noticing that LJ's strong push from the back of the board ensured the momentum needed. Sara chuckled at his look of delight when he sensed success, followed by his look of mild panic when he realized he was actually on his own in the crest of the small wave.

"Yeah!" LJ yelled from behind, treading water in the surf. "Now stand, Mike! Stand!"

He tried, managing to get to his knees before flipping off the board into the water. On the sand, Michael tensed, ready to run into the foam of the spent wave after him, but Sara laid a hand on his arm. "He's fine."

He was; he came up sputtering but smiling sheepishly, scanning the water for his board. LJ had retrieved it, and they paddled back out together, rocking over the crests of the tame wave set that followed. "He's a good swimmer," Michael noted, as he watched Mike release his board to LJ to bob under a wave like a little seal. It sent a familiar stab to Michael's heart: this was just one more small piece of Mike-knowledge falling into place to complete the picture forming in his mind. He sighed deeply; not because of the swimming, of course, but because of the way this type of knowledge trickled in so agonizingly slowly, it seemed. Michael felt grateful (there was that word again) for each fact and figure he learned about his son, but each of these moments also served to remind him how little he still knew his own child.

"What's wrong?" Sara asked. She missed nothing, squinting slightly in the sunshine as she turned to study him.

Michael only frowned. He doubted he could make her understand. "I didn't know he could swim so well," he said dully.

He could tell Sara didn't know what to do with this explanation. He didn't know what to do with it, either. Getting to know Mike measure by measure was just how it was going to have to be. "It just makes me feel like a fraud," Michael said suddenly, and yes, that was it exactly. "Like I'm just play-acting at being his father."

"Because you didn't know how well he could swim?" she asked slowly. He could hear how crazy this sounded, but could stop himself from thinking this way. "I don't see why that matters," Sara argued, "when you're amazing with the stuff that does." He didn't answer, continuing to frown in the direction of their son, and she sighed in frustration. "You have stepped into his life and completely won him over," she pressed. "You have talked him through fears, fielded incredibly hard questions, navigated emotional landmines none of us felt prepared for."

"And then I take him to get his soccer uniform and don't know his shoe size," Michael added darkly.

"But that's the easy part," Sara protested. "At the hard part…oh, Michael. You have no idea how good you are at it. I know plenty of fathers who can recall their kids' clothing size but run from anything more complicated." On the water, Mike caught a second wave, and without thinking much of it, Michael gave him a thumbs up as he glided into the foam lapping the sand, earning him a happy grin. "See?" Sara practically wailed. "I wasn't even watching."

Something about her dramatic reaction loosened the guilt clutching at him. He managed a glib smile. "I'm pretty sure you're supposed to watch your kid when he's in the water, Sara," he told her, nudging her shoulder with his own.

She assessed him, and he waited, still smiling slightly, while she tried to decide whether he was teasing her. "Well, then it's a good thing you're here now," she finally said softly, threading her fingers through his and squeezing.

He took a deep breath, tasting salt and sunshine and sea, and released it slowly. "A very good thing," he agreed.