The parking lot was cracked and broken in places, straggly dandelions pushing up through the asphalt. Laura didn't bother looking for shade. It was a barren area, hemmed in by chain-link fences topped with razor wire, spaces marked off by faded white lines. Zak bounced in his seat, craning his neck as he tried to look in all directions at once.

"Is that my Dad?"

Laura's eyes followed his pointing finger towards a man in a light blue shirt and navy pants, standing at some distance beyond the fence. The man was dark-haired, but she could tell it wasn't Bill.

"I don't think so, Zak." She wanted to hug him, ask him if he had a picture of his father that he could look at whenever he wanted. She settled for patting his shoulder as she helped him out of the back seat and giving him her best reassuring smile.

"Dad's not that tall, Zak." Lee was doing his best to act nonchalant, too absorbed in the faded Mustang manual to be excited. Laura noted the pallor of the tight skin over his cheekbones.

"Lee? You okay?"

He stuck the manual back in the glove compartment, snapped his seatbelt open and grabbed the door handle. "Yeah—yes, ma'am. I'm good." He shoved his hands in his pockets and started towards the low block building in front of them.

"Lee, wait…do you have a pocketknife or anything? And I need your student IDs." Laura popped her trunk open as she talked, shoving her pocketbook in next to the spare tire. She accepted the small knives that both boys produced out of their pockets and put them next to her bag. Slipping her keys, driver's license and the student IDs into her pocket, she walked the boys to the reinforced door and hit the buzzer. After a static-filled exchange with the guard on the other end of the intercom, they were buzzed in, a blast of cool smoke-scented air hitting them as they entered.

She handed their ID cards to the guard as she took the clipboard out of his hand, trying to look like this wasn't her first time in a prison. She wrote all their names inside the printed lines, her pen faltering as she got to the "relationship" boxes. Penning "son" beside Lee's name, then Zak's, she tapped her pen against the clipboard for a second as she looked at her neatly inked "Laura Roslin". Sighing, she slowly wrote "family friend", thinking how inaccurate that felt.

She and the boys were escorted through a series of electronically locked doors before coming to the final barrier between them and the family visiting area…and Bill. She wished for a second that she still had her pocketbook so she could run a comb through her hair a final time, touch up her lipstick before walking through the door. She shook her head at her foolishness: this visit was for the boys, not her.

"Dad!" Zak yelled as he saw Bill stand up by a picnic table in the fenced open area. Lee was practically humming with tension as Bill walked towards them, Zak meeting him halfway as the boy ran into his father's arms. Laura and Lee stood and watched as Bill picked his younger son up in a bear hug, lifting his sneakered feet off the ground as he and Zak grinned until their eyes squeezed shut.

Putting Zak down, Bill came over to his other two visitors with a more tentative step.

"Hi, son." He stood in front of Lee, arms outstretched.

Lee stepped slowly into his father's embrace, lifting his arms to his father's shoulders. Laura thought it looked like the boy was trying to keep some distance between them and hoped she had made the right decision.

"Hey, Dad." Lee stepped out of his father's arms and stuck his hands back in his pockets.

"Hi, Bill." She smiled her professional smile she used for parents as she looked at the tanned, fit man in prison blues.

"Hi, Laura. Thanks for bringing the boys." His smile was easy and familiar, like they were meeting at the river park. Like they were anywhere but in a prison.

"I was glad to do it. And glad for the good behavior at school while we waited on the paperwork." She smiled at Lee, who finally allowed himself a small smile.

"C'mon, boys. Got something for you." He put an arm around each boy and shepherded them towards the picnic table.

Laura looked around the yard as she followed, taking in the other families sitting at other tables: a man held a baby in his lap, bottle in an awkward hand as he fed his son, a tired-looking woman sitting across from him smiling through dried tear tracks. Another man gently held an old man's hands with both of his as he spoke in earnest low tones. The mix of pained love and confinement was almost suffocating.

"Look, Miss Roslin!" Zak said as she sat at the table. "We got Vipers!"

Both boys were examining wooden models of Vipers carefully carved to perfect scale and sized to fit in one hand. Lee looked at his in silence as he ran a finger down the painted white and red body. Laura took the model Zak held, admiring the careful grooves and lines, the tiny black-painted cockpit in front. Both had "Husker" inked onto the side in tiny block script. Lee and Zak stepped away from the table, Zak flying his Viper through the air with Lee looking on indulgently, finally joining his little brother in pretend air battles.

"Those are amazing."

"Thanks." He smiled, bashful and a little proud." I've been making all kinds of models in the woodshop. The prison sells our woodwork in a gallery in town. They let me make a couple for the boys."

She looked down at his hands, marked with nicks and old healed cuts. She reached out towards him then stopped, unsure of her place here. Bill chuckled in his old familiar rumble and covered her hand with his. "It's okay, Laura. Hand-holding's allowed."

She let herself enjoy his firm grip for a second, then slowly pulled her hand out of his. "I don't think it's a good idea in front of the boys. I don't want to confuse them."

He sighed and folded his hands. "They're already confused. I don't think you could do anything that could make it worse. Their mother—"

"I know. Lee told me about the divorce." She thought she should probably add an "I'm sorry" to that, but couldn't bring herself to say the words.

"It's for the best. The boys don't need to see her catting around while she's still married to me, getting the idea that's what marriage is."

Something about his remark stung her heart. "You sound pretty pious, considering…everything."

He flushed and looked down at the table. "That was different."

Zak crashed into his father's side, turning the giggling assault into a snuggle. "What's different, Daddy?"

He looked over his son's head into somber green eyes. "Nothing, son. Nothing's different." He glanced up at Lee, standing over his little brother. "So, how do you like those Vipers?"

.

.

.

Laura slid to the end of the bench and looked out over the yard again, away from the Adamas. She wished she had something to read, something to write on, any prop to distract her from this sweet disastrous man…distract her from the fleeting fantasies that these were their boys, that they were a family having lunch in their backyard.

I should've come home more. I should've tried harder.

Bill's soft gruff questions about school and pets and boys' adventures faded into the background, the rhythmic tones of his voice punctuated by the boys' chatter lulling her as she sat in shade-dappled sun.

She had called him the day after he came to her school. They had started seeing each other again. Her father co-signed a business loan for the shop…the wedding was small…she sat with her chin propped on her folded hands, spinning impossible fantasies of unremarkable domestic life.

A sharp "That new, Dad?" brought her out of her reverie. Laura realized she'd been staring at Bill's forearms, thick-muscled and dark against the edge of the light blue rolled-up sleeves. She could still feel their strength around her. After all these years…

Lee was poking a dark outline that was barely visible under the edge of Bill's left sleeve. Laura watched as Bill slid the sleeve up a few inches.

"Yeah. I, uh…a guy in here does these. It's kind of against the rules…we both lost some yard time for it."

A surprisingly ornate "L" had been tattooed in blue-black ink into the skin of his upper arm, the bottom loop almost to his elbow. It was patchy in spots, that grayish-blue tone that screamed "prison tattoo".

"It doesn't look as nice as your Viper," Zak announced, frowning.

Laura finally looked at Bill's eyes then, the dark clear blue holding her gaze, almost daring her to look away.

"I'll get it re-done when I get out, Zak." His eyes never let hers go as he talked. "I'll either get it inked professionally, make it look right…or I'll get something over it. Turn it into something else." His eyes blazed for a second. "I'll decide after I'm free…see what seems right."

Tears pricked at her eyes as Lee hovered his forefinger over the ink. "That's for me, right, Dad?"

"Your name starts with an "L", doesn't it?"

Zak pouted and spun his Viper on the wooden table. "What about me? Where's my 'nitial?"

Laura blinked a few times to clear her eyes as Bill explained he'd get a "Z" after he got out. Lee looked at the letter and then shot a curious look in Laura's direction.

"Her name starts with an "L", too," he said.

"Yeah, it does."

Father and son studied each other, unspoken words passing between them. Finally, Lee nodded. "I guess that works okay."

Bill dropped a kiss on the top of Lee's head before the boy could pull away, face reddening. "Dad! Gods, I'm not a baby."

"Neither of you are babies, Lee…Zak. I need for both of you to be good for your mother, for your teachers, your club-uncles until I get out." He gave a solemn look to each boy in turn. "And mind Miss Roslin. This is a nice thing she did, bringing you up here."

"Yeah, but now I gotta write a paper."

Laura smiled at the boy's frown. "You'll live, Lee, I promise."

A shadow fell over the table. "Five more minutes, folks." The visit guard nodded at Bill. "Nice family, Husker," he said in a low voice.

"Thanks." The two men looked at each other with mutual respect, and Laura suspected there was a Viper tattoo under the guard's tan sleeve. The guard walked around to Bill's side of the table.

"Don't forget you've got contact privileges." He winked at Laura as he walked back to the entrance.

"What's that mean, Daddy?"

"That means I can do hugs and goodbye kisses." He was smiling now, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he looked lovingly at Zak, then Lee. The smile became serious when he looked at Laura. "For anybody who wants one," he added.

Each boy took a hug and kiss on the cheek with all the grace expected of boys their age, then stepped back. A smirk tugged at Lee's lips as he looked at Laura. "Next!"

"Lee, that's—"

Laura was cut off as Bill pulled her into a quick friendly hug. "Thanks again for bringing the boys. Seeing you…it feels good, even like this."

She could feel his heavy stare, like he was carving her face into his memory as deliberately as he'd carved the model Vipers. The yard, the world fell away as he touched her chin with his fingers, leaning in to give her a sweet, chaste kiss on her lips. Her hand rose to his chest, feeling his heartbeat quicken under her fingers.

When she smiled at him after they moved apart, she felt like she was eighteen again. His smile said the same: for an instant they were back to where they'd started, innocent, uncomplicated.

"Time, people," the visit guard said with finality.

"I gave permission for you to write me…you know, for the boys," she reminded him as she began walking towards the heavy door into the building, Lee and Zak by her side.

"Count on it, Laura."

"I will, Bill."

The door shut, making her feel like the prisoner as Bill, standing in the afternoon sun, disappeared from her sight. Three sets of snuffles echoed in the bare hallway as the guard guided them towards the outer office.

"Your father's a model inmate, boys," he said kindly. "Four guys in here got their high school equivalency papers because of your Dad's tutoring. Hel—heck of a model ship-builder, too."

Laura's back stiffened as Lee stopped in his tracks, then started walking again, muttering "must be nice to be them" under his breath.

The rest of the afternoon passed in a swirl of ice cream, driving, pizza and board games at her apartment until it was time for Laura to take the boys back to their mother. She was in their drive and had her hand on the door latch when Lee cleared his throat.

"You don't have to walk us in, Miss Roslin. You look pretty tired. We're okay from here."

She felt like a coward as she nodded gratefully. Bill's light kiss was still tattooed on her lips too strongly for her to be comfortable facing Carolanne tonight. She covered her relief with a strict "I expect that paper the first day we're back at school, young man."

He grinned, unfazed. "Yes, ma'am." His grin faded as he looked towards his house.

Zak sprinted to the door, Lee following with his characteristic slouch. Laura waited until she saw the door open, a flash of blond hair visible in the porch light. She slipped the car into gear and pulled away from the curb.

It wasn't until she parked the car in front of her apartment that she saw the figure on the seat beside her in the streetlight's glow. A miniature Viper lay in the seat where Lee had been, its perfection marred by a broken-off wing. She dug around for the broken piece, finding it shoved under the seat. She tried to remember if she had wood glue in her toolbox.

It wouldn't be like new, she thought, but it was still worth saving.