Eric met Buddy halfway between Austin and Dillon. Buddy told him McGregor was "evil." That was Buddy for you, seeing the world in sweeping patterns of black and white, always certain his own hat was white.

"Are you sure you're not just pissed off he kicked you off the field?" Eric asked him.

"I hate his guts, but that's not the reason," Buddy said.

"Well, just out of curiosity, what is the reason that I am here right now?"

"What if I told you that I can make him go away and you could have your job back?"

Eric couldn't just put a man out of work and take back his old job partway through the football season. You didn't walk into a team mid-season. He had a contract with TMU. "I'd say it's crazy."

"I've seen Tami, and I've seen Julie. Tami's trying to be so brave and strong without her husband here."

Eric's jaw clenched. He didn't like his family being used as a tool in Buddy's booster machinations. But he also didn't like that Buddy realized what he was trying to deny to himself – that his family was falling apart, and it was his responsibility – as a man – to hold it together.

"I see Julie walking around in things she shouldn't be wearing," Buddy said, "and hanging out with kids she shouldn't be hanging out with."

Eric's jaw grew tighter now. Buddy was one to talk, when his own girl had been with Riggins. He was one to talk, but…it worried Eric, the way Julie had followed that useless Swede to that bar. When he was living at home, she'd had good sense in boys. She'd chosen a decent kid, one of the most decent kids he knew.

"And you know that little baby Gracie misses her daddy. You know it. First year of her life she never sees her daddy. Your family needs you." Buddy asked him, "If you could go back in time, and make the TMU job go away, and be the coach of the Panthers again, would you do it?"

Of course he would.

But he didn't have a time machine.

[*]

Julie refused to answer Tami's phone call. Her own mother's phone calls. She came home late with the Swede and made out with him right there on the side of the road, right in front of the house, as if she had no regard for her home life at all.

Tami had to drag her out of the car, to remind her she was still the mother.

And then Julie told her to go to hell.

To go to hell.

Tami slapped her hand right across Julie's face, hard. She stunned herself with the force of it. And Julie stood there, her young hand against her own reddened cheek, and told her, "You got rid of me when you had Gracie and Dad left."

[*]

Tami lay in bed that night, thinking about what she'd done.

Her father used to slap her like that when she said something disrespectful, when she was around eight, that last year before her mother kicked him out. Tami had promised herself she would never do that to her own children. She was going to be a calm, collected mother who never let her anger get the better of her. She was going to have conversations with her children. Deep, meaningful conversations, and her children would listen to her, because she cared.

She had to pull it together. She would pull it together, because she wasn't her drunk of a father, or even her sometimes distant, sometimes judgmental mother.

She was Tami Taylor. And she had to do this right. But she was no longer sure she could do it alone, and it was too late…too late to ask Eric to come home.

[*]

Eric was home in Dillon the next day. He went to the Panther's game. Coach McGregor pulled it off in the end by organizing the offense around Smash and using Saracen as a decoy. Matt picked a fight with Smash because of it and walked away from him spitting.

Eric watched it all with a mixture of shock and guilt. When and how had Matt become that kid? And would he have, if Eric had stayed in Dillon?

"Did you hear what happened at the game tonight?" he asked Tami that night as he sat beside her on the couch and took her into his arms.

"I hit Julie last night. Right across the face. I slapped her."

Her admission should have shocked him, but it didn't. It was as if some part of him had seen this coming - had expected it to come - had let it come. He felt an odd sense of displacement. He was here, and he was with his wife, but she wasn't his wife, not really, and he wasn't himself, not really.

Tami started crying. "I feel like I'm completely losing it. I don't know what's happening to our family."

He pulled her closer. "It's a'ight. It's a'ight," he murmured, holding her as tightly as he could. He didn't know what else to say.

She pulled away. "It's not all right." She sat forward with her hands between her knees and took a deep, steadying breath. "This isn't easy for me to say."

He waited silently.

She finally spoke. "I was wrong. I was wrong not to accept your offer to stay in Dillon. I need you."

He closed his eyes. "I need you, too, babe," he whispered.

"I was wrong, and I'm so sorry. I don't know how you're going to do it, but I want you to come home. I need you to come home. Please come home."

She started crying again, and he pulled her into his lap. She buried her face against his neck.

"I love you, Tami. I love you, and I'm going to find a way home. I'm going to be a husband to you, and a father to Gracie and Julie. I'm going to do whatever it takes to pull this family back together."

Through the tears, he could just make our her whispered, "Thank you."

When Tami was asleep, Eric went to see Buddy at the dealership, where the man was sleeping at his desk. He had to wrap on the window to wake him up.

"Are we going to rock and roll?" Buddy asked as he let him in.

Eric extended his hand. "I sure as hell hope I don't regret this." As they walked in to begin the scheming, Eric asked for a drink. He needed one. A scotch flavored drink.

[*]

Buddy called Eric at half time during the TMU game and said, "The eagle has landed." It took Eric a while to figure out what the hell Buddy meant.

Eric finished out the game, declined his fellow coach's invitation to celebrate, went back to his bachelor's pad, and started packing.

"The eagle has landed," he muttered as he folded his clothes and slapped them into his suitcase.

He'd have to take an enormous pay cut leaving TMU, but he'd been spending quite a bit just to live in Austin, and it looked as if Julie's grandfather was going to help put her through college, whether Eric wanted him to or not.

Eric didn't know where this old road would take him in the future, but he knew who would be walking beside him: the woman who had walked beside him ever since he was a broken teenage boy. It didn't much matter where the road led, he supposed, if he could just be with his family.

Eric had thought it would be nice working with adults for a change, but these college kids, they were big babies, most of them, only they were no longer young enough that he could truly influence them in terms of character. He still wanted to be a college coach one day, for the sake of the game, for the sake of the prestige, to prove to himself – and maybe to his father – that he could succeed. But right now, maybe he was meant to be at the high school level. Maybe that's where he was needed as a coach. Maybe that's where he could make a difference that went beyond the game.

He went to TMU's stadium one last time and stood gazing at the stark green, the goal posts rising heavenward. He'd once thought he'd wanted this job like a thirsty man wants water. But he knew now what it was like to truly miss something.

He wasn't going to miss this.

THE END

A/N: Please comment!