Author's Notes: Believe it or not, we're beginning to wind down towards the conclusion now. I'm going to estimate there are three or four chapters left. There isn't much Hobbes in this chapter but will be more coming up. Thanks for your patience and your reviews.

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When the rain lessened its intensity momentarily, Calvin darted back to his house from Susie's, using his light jacket draped over his head in lieu of an umbrella. As he jogged up to the back door, he caught a glimpse of a male form in the kitchen. The light from the inside was bright and strong compared with the hazy darkness of the outdoors where Calvin stood, and as the man inside turned towards Calvin, his face seemed almost luminescent in the clear light of the kitchen. With some surprise, Calvin noted that it was Victor, one of his father's best friends and someone that Calvin had known his entire life.

Victor was talking animatedly, and Calvin peered inside further to see his mother sitting at the kitchen table, listening closely. A flare of anger rose up in Calvin but died away in almost the same instant, leaving a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach. Calvin pushed open the back door and entered, stamping his feet pointedly on the welcome mat to both rid his shoes of rain and to signal his arrival.

Abby jumped up. "Calvin, there you are! Where have you been?"

"I got caught in the rain, Mom. I waited it out at Susie's."

"I see," Abby said as she took Calvin's coat and spread it across the washer to let it dry. "You remember Victor?"

"Sure." Calvin shook Victor's hand and attempted a smile. Victor was taller than David had been, and had always sported at least a moustache, and sometimes a beard, while David had always been clean shaven. His hair was a dark brown, almost black, and his eyes were a deep brown color which, as a child, Calvin had found almost mesmerizing in their warmth.

Victor and David had met in college, and shared an apartment while they went to law school together. Though they had worked in different cities, it wasn't at all unusual for Calvin to see Vic at least a couple of times a month, as Vic and his father went to baseball games together or went on day-long bike rides through the deepest parts of the countryside, leaving early in the morning and returning hungry but exhilarated right before Calvin went to bed at night. Victor and his wife had even spent several Christmases with the Haddocks, until Victor's wife Sadie, who Calvin only vaguely remembered as having long hair and a gap-toothed smile, passed away suddenly almost twenty years earlier. Victor had never remarried.

Victor smiled affectionately at Calvin. "A hand shake. You really are grown up, buddy. I thought I'd at least get a hug."

"I have to keep up appearances, I guess."

"Oh, baloney!" Victor laughed as he pulled Calvin into a bear hug. "The older you get the more you look like your dad, partner." He patted Calvin on the back and then let him go, his expression turning serious. "Calvin, I'm so sorry I missed the funeral. I wanted to be here, I tried – "

"It's ok, Vic – "

"You and your mom can tell me that all you want, but it wasn't right," Victor sighed, clasping his hands behind his back and beginning to pace in the kitchen. "I knew David for thirty years, Calvin. Over thirty, in fact. He was always one of my closest friends, even from the start. If it hadn't been for the conference in Switzerland – I tried to get out of it, I did. But I couldn't make it back in time." He sighed again and looked at Calvin. "I'm so sorry, buddy. I should have been here. But I can be here now."

Again the surge of anxiety and anger flashed instantaneously, but Calvin swallowed it. "Thanks for coming now, Vic. Dad would have understood."

"Hey, I'll always be around for you, Calvin," Victor said, patting Calvin on the shoulder. "I never had any kids of my own, so I've always considered you guys family. You ever need anything, you call."

"Sure thing."

Calvin and Abby saw Victor out, waving to him as he got into his car and sped away.

"Victor and I have had the loveliest afternoon," Abby said, smiling as she took off her earrings in the mirror of the hallway. "We had a nice lunch and then went and walked through our old neighborhood. Do you remember that house, Calvin? Oh, it was so long ago. It's when we lived across the street from Vic and Sadie, remember?"

"Not much," Calvin admitted, keeping his eyes locked on the small blue dot in the distance that was Victor's car.

"We moved here when you were four, so I'm not surprised. Anyway, it was a lot of fun. I hadn't seen him for nearly two months, your dad had been so busy..." Abby trailed off, moving back into the kitchen to tidy up before dinner.

"I want you to be careful around that guy, Mom," Calvin remarked over his shoulder.

"Vic? Why?"

"He's always had a thing for you. And now that Dad's gone, he's going to try to move in on you, that's why," Calvin replied, turning to meet his mother's eye. "I remember even as a kid knowing that that guy had a thing for you."

"Victor? Don't be ridiculous, Calvin!"

Calvin walked towards her. "Haven't you ever noticed the way that guy looks at you? Looks like he wants to sweep you off your feet and ride into the sunset or something. I think Dad knew it too."

"Calvin, please. If your father had thought that Victor was interested in me, he wouldn't have spent so much time with Victor. They wouldn't have been best friends."

"Only because Dad knew Victor wouldn't actually try anything. You're right, they were best friends, and Vic wouldn't have ever tried anything when Dad was around. But now that Dad's gone? It's a whole new day."

"You're being silly," Abby said as she walked back into the kitchen.

"I don't think I am," Calvin answered as he followed her. "Look Mom, he's a nice guy. But I don't think his interest in you is purely platonic."

"And so what if it isn't?" Abby said so quietly that Calvin wasn't sure he'd heard her correctly.

"Wait, what?"

"So what if it isn't?" Abby repeated, picking up a sponge and beginning to scrub down the counter. "Calvin, I loved your father. He was the love of my life, and it will take me a long time to come to terms with losing him so quickly. I miss the hell out of him, and I probably always will. There's nothing I can do to change that. But I'm not going to close myself off to the world and to new possibilities because David is gone. I will not be that sort of widow, Calvin. My life is not over, and I refuse to act like it is."

Calvin stared at her, jaw agape. "I can't even believe what I'm hearing. Dad's been dead for all of two weeks and you're already thinking about replacing him?"

"Calvin!" Abby burst angrily. Calvin was startled; he hadn't heard her use that tone since he was a kid getting into any kind of trouble he could find. Her eyes burned. "Your father – my husband – my David – can never be replaced. Even though he's gone, I will always love him. And right now, I am simply uninterested in any kind of romance. I won't be interested in a long time. But there will come a day when I'm ready for that sort of companionship again."

"Mom!" Calvin erupted.

"Calvin." Abby stopped scrubbing momentarily, looking at Calvin steadily. "I may be your mother, but I'm as human as you are, and I'm in as much a state of flux as you are. Our world just changed and neither of us is exactly sure what our future will look like. But the last thing that either of us should do right now is make finite decisions that aren't based in this new reality. I know children – even adult children – only ever really see their parents as parents, but if you're ever a parent yourself, you'll understand that there are many different dimensions of who you are as a person and 'parent' is only one part, albeit an important part, of who you are. There are a lot of other dimensions as well. Your dad knew that too." Abby threw the sponge back into the sink and faced the window above the sink. "No one else knew David as well as you and I did. Not even Victor. But there's a connection there. Does that make sense? Both Victor and I loved your father. In different ways, of course, but there are a lot of types of love." She turned back to face him. "Calvin, you know that your father loved you, don't you?"

Calvin sat down – or rather, collapsed – into one of the kitchen chairs, holding his head in his hands. Things were moving much too quickly. The world of his childhood and adulthood was colliding, becoming obscured in their connectedness, blurring boundaries and lines he didn't even know had existed within him. "Did he?" Calvin whispered. "Is that the truth, Mom?"

"Of course it is," Abby said, walking quickly to her son and running her fingers through his hair, a pained look on her face. It was the first time she'd seen Calvin show an emotion other than anger since he came home, and she was relieved. "Even on your worst days, Calvin, your father loved you with everything he had in him."

Everything he had in him. What an odd phrase, Calvin thought. He sighed. "Why did he make me get rid of Hobbes?" he asked quickly, wanting to get the question out before his nerve deserted him.

Abby stopped stroking his hair for a moment, taken aback by the seemingly random question. "Get rid of – Hobbes? What do you mean? Isn't Hobbes upstairs?"

"No, Mom, I mean – I mean..." Calvin got up and walked to the windows, where he leaned against the sash and stared out at the drizzle. "Why did you and Dad insist I stop playing with Hobbes? I mean, how did you come to that decision?"

Abby shrugged slightly, trying to gather her thoughts and remember that time. It seemed like it had happened a century ago. "Well, Calvin, I guess...I guess we thought it was just time. It's fine to have imaginary friends when you're a kid, but we thought it was time for you to start making real friends your own age." She sat down in the chair that Calvin had abandoned. "And, also, we thought the other children might start to make fun of you for still playing with Hobbes, and we didn't want to see that happen."

Calvin made an exasperated sound and shifted his weight without looking back at her. "Mom, I'd been playing with Hobbes for five years by that point. I was already made fun of by the other kids."

"Your father and I thought it would only get worse as you went to junior high, Calvin. We weren't trying to make your life miserable, I promise," she finished in a slightly bemused voice.

Calvin clenched his fist and set his jaw, his back turned to Abby. "Are you sure that's the only reason?"

Abby considered for a moment before replying, "Yes. Why wouldn't it be? What is this all about, Calvin? Why are you asking me about Hobbes, of all things?"

He licked his lips and continued gazing out at the rain silently for a few seconds, his mind desperately trying to translate thought into speech. "Did you...did you and Dad ever notice that my problems with you guys got a whole lot worse after I stopped playing with Hobbes?"

"We noticed your oncoming adolescence, if that's what you mean. You started becoming a teenager. A rather over-the-top moody and rowdy teenager, but a teenager nonetheless."

"But it was more than that, wasn't it?" Calvin said, turning to face his mother again. "At least, for Dad it was. He always wanted a son who was a miniature version of him, and Hobbes was standing in the way of Dad having my complete attention. Hobbes spent more time with me than Dad did, had more of an influence on me than Dad did, and Dad knew it, and wanted to stop it."

"Calvin, that is totally untrue," Abby said, rising to her feet.

"Then what?"

Abby shrugged, somewhat angrily. "I'm sorry that you feel we did a bad job in raising you, but all parents do the best they can for their children and we were no different."

"And we see how well that worked out," Calvin muttered as he began to walk away. Abby caught his sleeve and held him in place.

"Calvin, wait. Look, there's something we should talk about."

"Why?" he demanded, trying to gently pry himself away from his mother's grip.

"Because your father never could."

Calvin froze and looked up at his mother slowly. She had a strained, odd look on her face. "He wanted to, Calvin. But your father wasn't the type who could articulate it."

He studied her carefully for a moment before following her lead and sitting down in one of the kitchen chairs. Abby sighed and tucked a strand of graying hair behind her right ear.

"When you get to be our age, you tend to take stock of your life, and your dad was no different. One of David's biggest regrets was that he didn't spend more time with you. He told me so, on several occasions, over the past few years," she began in a low voice. "And we knew that that was why Hobbes was so real to you. David just wasn't around; he was too busy working hard to give us a nice life. It didn't occur to him until years later that a better life doesn't necessarily mean nicer cars or exotic vacations, that maybe it just means being around on a sunny afternoon to play catch with your son, or make his favorite meal, or help him with homework. Maybe...maybe it just means that you're a good enough presence in your son's life that he doesn't need any imaginary friends."

Calvin swallowed hard, not taking his eyes from his mother's face.

"David felt terrible that Hobbes was obviously filling some emotional void within you that he couldn't. When he asked you to stop playing with Hobbes, it wasn't because he was jealous or angry. He knew that you, just like everyone your age, were about to embark on a greater journey, that you were about to begin the process of becoming an adult. He just wanted to be there for that, Calvin. He was excited to see what sort of man you'd turn out to be, and all he wanted was to be a part of that process. And he couldn't do that unless Hobbes took a backseat in your life."

"But if Dad asked me to stop playing with Hobbes so that he could be a bigger part of my life, then why wasn't he?" Calvin asked, confused. "All we ever did was fight."

"Well, that's the unfortunate part," Abby answered slowly. "By the time your Dad realized he needed to be a bigger part of your life, so many years had elapsed since he was a presence that you didn't want much to do with him. You seemed to think he was trying to control you, or trying to run your life. I suppose you just didn't know him well enough to know that wasn't what he was trying to do, and building trust with you was difficult for him. All he wanted was to be a bigger part of your life, but of course it didn't look like that to you. Why should it? He knew that he'd asked you to give up the biggest part of your childhood. For him."

"So it...it backfired?" Calvin whispered.

"You could say that. Why do you think one of his biggest regrets was about not spending time with you? If he'd done it when you were very young, you wouldn't have had so many problems later on with each other."

"So he...he blamed himself for...for our problems."

Abby laid her hand across his. "He did. But he loved you Calvin, as I said. Maybe it didn't always seem that way – you two are so different – but he would have done anything for you."

"Taking Hobbes away wasn't out of malice?"

"Why would he do anything malicious to you, Calvin? He loved you. He just didn't always know how to show it, like a lot of men his age."

"And he never got to tell me that."

"No. But I'm telling you."

Mother and son sat in silence at the kitchen table for what seemed like hours, each lost in their own thoughts, hands still clasped together tightly. A few tears cascaded down Abby's cheeks but Calvin remained in deep concentration, replaying the conversation in his head over and over, until he realized the core of what Abby had been trying to tell him:

There was no resentment on David's part. No attempt to make Calvin into something he wasn't. David's love for Calvin had always been unconditional, even if they didn't always get along. David's only crime was that he didn't know how to show it, and he had just done the best he could.

Like any father would.

"I'm going to go upstairs for a while, Mom," Calvin said quietly, disentangling himself from his mother's grip. She gave him a small smile. As he approached the staircase, Calvin was only marginally surprised to see Hobbes sitting on the third step, smiling warmly at Calvin. He patted Calvin's shoulder as the two friends made their way upstairs, and as Calvin shut the door to the bedroom slowly he began to feel the telltale signs of his eyes watering.

"It's a helluva thing finding out your parents are human, hm?" Hobbes said, ruffling Calvin's hair. "With their own regrets, their own lives, distinct from their children. Calvin, if your dad hadn't asked you to give me up, you would have never known how much he loved you."

"And I loved him," Calvin whispered, sinking down onto the bed.

The next thing he knew, the sobs for his father that had never come before suddenly overwhelmed him, and he cried without restraint.