In which I should be writing RH but instead I am… not. Also watching the Hobbit. Still in my pyjamas.

Disclaimer: we get the promo for Still tomorrow okay I'm not ready?


Becky leaves for college when Audrey is sixteen. Audrey tries to be okay with it. It's not like Washington and Seattle are all that far away. A plane ride. That's all. So what if it's the other side of the country and she's three hours behind. That doesn't stop them from talking. And Becky said she'll be home for Christmas. That's only a couple of months. You can do this, Audrey. That's what Becky said when her bedroom was dark and it was late and she was trying so hard not to cry at the fact she has less than a week left with her best friend. Except Becky had noticed (of course she'd noticed)and she'd spent the next half an hour talking solidly of how amazing Audrey is. How strong and determined she is, just like her mother. Doesn't give up. Not when there's plenty of fight left in her. And she's a Junior now. Junior's don't get upset when their best friend leaves for college. And she can't be upset because Healy needs her. Healy who is finally starting to question why everybody else has a mother, but he doesn't. And every time he asks, their father he turns away, walks towards his office and locks himself in. So of course, he turns to his big sister. She tries to explain it to him the best way she can, tries to remember the way the doctors explained it to her when she was eight, she takes Healy to the hospital and asks one of the doctors there to talk him through it. They manage it more successfully than she could ever hope to.

Healy comes into her room one night. The first time it's a couple of weeks after the trip to the hospital and he crawls under her covers, small and tiny and shaking. Each visit gets more and more common, until he sleeps in her bed five nights a week. Audrey thinks he's starting to question his role in things, asking himself if he's the one to blame, if he put his mother in that hospital bed, doomed to never wake up again. She does her best to soothe him, cradles him and reads him bedtime stories, sings soft lullabies until he drifts off to sleep again. But then she doesn't. She lies awake, too scared to close her eyes in case he wakes up with yet another nightmare. He won't tell her what the nightmares are about, and Audrey doesn't think their father even knows about them, but she knows he wakes up crying, sobbing into his pillow for his momma until she comes in and rocks him back to sleep again.

At Christmas, she's there when Becky arrives off the plane. She'd been worried that now she's at college, going where she wants to in life, that she wouldn't have time for Audrey. Audrey the little girl, who's still in high school. But whatever fears she had are unfounded. Becky sweeps her up in her characteristic hug, and she still smells like watermelon. She's still Becky. They go for coffee, they talk. Becky gets Audrey to drive her home and she manages it without making too much of a fool of herself. She's proud of herself. She's never driven that far before, and not without her father or her sister next to her. Becky's parents greet her with the love and attention that she thinks she'd get back at home, if only they hadn't been struck by tragedy. There's no sign of grief in this house. There's pictures of Michael up on the walls, and his bedroom has remained untouched, but his family aren't wallowing in their grief anymore. They've let him go, and moved on.

Becky's parents have always offered to talk to her father. To try and convince him that letting Kate go will be better for everybody. Except, her father is stubborn and hard heading and he's grieving and he's still blindly hoping that the world will come to rights. That one day, the universe will realise just how much shit it's put their family through and it will make everything okay. Wake her up. Make her okay. Make their family whole again.