Jack had promised he'd call the next morning. At precisely noon, Julia jumped in her Porsche and drove like a bat out of hell to the address he'd given her in Philadelphia. When she got there he was sitting on the couch talking to another boy and a girl.

"Jack! You were supposed to call."

"Mom."

He stood up and turned towards her, the bandages on his face confirming her worst fears of the past 19 years.

"What did he do to you?"

"It's ok, Mom. I'm not hurt bad, I don't blame myself for anything, and hopefully I'll never see him again."

"What about Shawn?"

"I have a temporary guardianship for six weeks and he's going to decide what to do after that. Listen, Mom, did we ever get any letters?"

"The letters. Actually, I have them with me. I was planning on waiting until he turned 18, and you could see him without running into Chet, but I guess it's a little late for that now."

She pulled a sheaf of letters out of her purse and handed them to Jack. The top letter bore an excited introduction in a child's scrawl, floating above an image of two stick figures labeled Shawn and Jack ice skating. Nobody noticed the real Shawn, woken up by the yelling, come out of his room and listen to the conversation from the hallway.

"You shouldn't have kept these from me. He thought I was getting them and didn't answer because I didn't want anything to do with him!"

"That's what he's saying now that he sees he can guilt you. You have to be careful with this boy, Jack. Remember, he's his father's son."

"So am I, and I turned out ok. Look, I've been talking to Eric about him, and he's a good kid. He's not like dad, and he's been through a lot he doesn't deserve. Now I'm going to fix it, ok?"

"I'm sorry." Everyone turned around to see Shawn walk towards Jack from the hallway. "I should have actually explained why I had an issue instead of trying to just scare you off. I was scared of giving you a chance to lure me in with some sort of fake contrition and then screw me over again."

"You're still not over Chet, are you?" Julia asked.

"No."

"You're going to find that the hardest day of your life is the day you finally give up on Chet Hunter. It was the hardest day of mine, and I was terrified that if we ever met again, he'd talk me in to letting him visit Jack, so I made sure we never had reason to, but I should have found a better way to handle it, and I'm sorry for that."

"Aww…do we get to hug now?" Eric asked, standing up and advancing on Shawn.

"Eric! I still have second degree burns on my chest."

Eric stopped.

"Besides, this round of apologies isn't technically over until we let Cory off the hook."