Just a couple of quick homages for X-Files fans in this scene, and then I think that's it for this episode. SPN fans will still need to pay attention til the end, though :)

"Give me the car keys, Sam. Me and Andrea are gonna go have a little talk with Michael. You'd better stay here and make sure the zombie apocalypse doesn't come back and take another poke at Jeffrey."

"I – I can't leave my father now – " Andrea protested.

Dean slid his hand under Andrea's arm and lifted her to her feet. "He's fine. Sam'll watch out for him. Your brother's the one who needs you now." Turning, he snapped his fingers and held out his hand. "Sam! The keys!"

. . . right . . . yes, because that was the right call . . . Dean was the best one to talk to Michael; he could identify . . . and Sam was the best one to . . . it was just seeing Dean suddenly so animated and decisive that had taken Sam off guard. He fished in his pocket and handed the keys over.

"Call us when Jeffrey comes round," Dean added.

Sam nodded. "And if Michael knows where the golem is . . ."

"I'll call you. Right." He guided Andrea out of the room and down the corridor toward the car park, and she allowed herself to be carried along in his wake.

Sam watched after them wearing a slightly perplexed frown. What had just happened?

"OK, I'll let her know . . . oh, this doesn't look good." Andrea was crossing the car park from the school. She had an anxious expression on her face.

"What? What's happening?" Dean could hear an edge of stress in Sam's voice; he didn't like being out of the loop.

"Michael isn't with her."

As Andrea opened the passenger door and got into the car Dean could still hear Sam's voice demanding answers Dean didn't have yet. For the present, Dean ignored him. "Your father's conscious. He's going to be fine." Good news first, he thought. "Where's Michael?"

She acknowledged the news with some measure of relief but her anxiety for Michael was still evident. "He's not in school. No one's seen him since before lunch. And he's not answering his cell phone."

"Well, let's not panic yet," Dean responded, trying to conceal his own growing unease, "he's probably at home."

"Dean? Dean!" Sam was snapping at the other end of the phone.

"Gotta drive now, Sam," Dean told him. "I'll call you when I know more," and he closed his cell. "Did you speak to Colby?" he asked Andrea as they reached the road.

"He saw Michael in the morning. He said he was behaving oddly – uncommunicative . . . He was quiet at home this morning, too," she recalled.

"How did Colby seem to you?"

She hesitated. "Upset. Confused."

Damn. He would be. He'd be feeling real isolated at school right now without his accustomed protector around to look out for him. It had been a bad call on Dean's part encouraging him to go back. "Did you tell him anything?" he asked Andrea.

"No, I – I didn't know what to . . ." She trailed off and stared out of the window for a few moments, then "that poor boy . . ." she whispered. She swallowed. "I wished Father had never met his mother; I wished he'd never been born . . . but I never – " She covered her mouth with her hand and closed her eyes as tears glistened at the corners of her eye-lashes. Then she lifted her head and gave Dean a searching look. "What are you going to say to Michael?" she demanded.

Dean glanced at her then returned his eyes to the road. "What are you going to say to him, Andrea?" he shot back. "There's a woman dead here and a kid without a home, your father's in hospital and Michael's in pain, and all because he needed answers his own family wasn't giving him. I'm not the one he needs to talk to. Nothing I can say that's gonna make things any better for him."

She was wide-eyed but she was absorbing what he was saying.

"How about it, Andrea? Have you got it in you to bury the past and find some words of healing for your brother?"

"I loved my wife . . ." Jeffrey whispered, and swallowed.

"You probably shouldn't talk," Sam urged.

"But it was hard . . . living with her illness . . . there were days, weeks sometimes, when she didn't dress, didn't get out of bed . . . and Samantha seemed so full of – . . . . . full of life . . ."

Tears glistened in the man's eyes, and Sam tried to return an expression of sympathy and understanding. Somehow he'd been landed with the role of confessor. He didn't know how that had happened. He couldn't even understand why someone would want to unburden their soul to a complete stranger.

"I thought I was in love with her . . . maybe I was . . ."

It wasn't Sam's forte. It wasn't in his skills base. He was used to doing his job, ganking the monsters and moving on. But it was getting that he could hear Dean clearing his throat even when he wasn't in the room. Apparently it wasn't enough to save lives. Apparently they had to mop brows and hold hands now as well.

"I thought . . . what Sarah didn't know wouldn't hurt her . . ." Tears were trickling down the man's face now. "She wasn't supposed to find out . . . but she did . . ."

Was that what Dean would do? Would he take the man's hand? Was that what was required here? Sam didn't know. He started to make a move to reach out, but his hands wound up under his own armpits. He wished Dean would call and let him know what was happening his end.

"I didn't know about the boy. Didn't know where Samantha was until Michael came home from school one day with Colby . . . and it was the same surname, and the same eyes . . ."

He wished the golem would attack. Fighting monsters he could cope with. That was what he did.

"And Sarah saw it too . . ." Jeffrey choked and his body started to quake with silent sobs. "No one was supposed to get hurt," he croaked.

What was he supposed to say? No one was ever supposed to get hurt. But you make mistakes, and people get hurt and people die and there's no coming back from that, no restoration you can make. There's no way of redeeming a life that's been lost. The dead stay dead and your penance is to live with that, because that's all you can do for them. Sam reached for the water jug, poured the man a glass of water and held it to his lips while he drank. He didn't know what else to do. What else could he offer the man?

You shouldn't seek absolution from the damned.

"There he is!"

They could see the house as they turned into the road and Michael was just going through the front door. Dean drove to the house and parked the car and they entered the house in time to hear the boy's exclamations of shock and anxiety, and the crunch of broken glass underfoot coming from the back room. As they joined him he turned to them white faced and wide eyed.

"What happened?" he gasped.

Dean and Andrea glanced at each other and Andrea's mouth opened but no sound came out.

"Think you can guess," Dean supplied. "Your pet creature's running amok. It attacked your father. He's in hospital."

"He's all right!" Andrea added hurriedly as Michael's ashen face turned from one to the other of them. "He's going to be fine," she assured him, "but this has to stop, Michael. This thing . . . has to be stopped. It's hurting people. It's killing people."

Michael shook his head slowly, mechanically. "No," he whispered. "No, she wouldn't. She wouldn't. I know she was hurt, she was angry, but Mom wouldn't hurt anyone!"

"Oh, Michael, sweetheart . . ." Andrea stepped forward and placed her hand against her brother's face. "You don't understand. . . . this thing you've brought back . . . it isn't our mother. It's a creature . . . a monster. It has no place among the living."

He stared blankly into space. "I didn't even think it would work," he murmured. "It was just a wish. They were just . . . words . . ." He looked up. "I just couldn't understand . . . how she could leave us. I wanted to ask . . . but she couldn't even speak . . ." He swallowed then, reaching into his jacket, he pulled out a bundle of letters and held them in trembling hands. "Sh – she brought me these." He turned pained eyes to his sister. "Are these why she died?"

As Andrea absorbed the handwriting on the envelopes her hand went to her mouth. She glanced at Dean then took the pile from Michael's hands, placed them on the bureau and drew her brother to the couch and sat down with him.

"Michael, you have to understand, our mother wasn't well. She had been ill for a very long time; long before . . ." her eyes strayed to the letters on the bureau then returned to her brother's face. "It was an illness that robbed her of her faith, all her hope and her joy. Michael, she loved us – all of us, and she wouldn't have done what she did if she'd been well . . . but the world can seem such a very dark place to someone who has lost their ability to believe . . ."

He stared searchingly at his sister and his lips trembled as he asked "she stopped believing in us?"

Andrea's eyes widened and filled with tears. "Oh no, sweetheart! No!" she assured him as she embraced him and held him in her arms. "She stopped believing in herself."