A/N Yes, I've been a bit quieter recently, but it was very exciting here because the sun finally came out and we got some summer. So I've been outside, which was lovely. I did manage to get this written though, because sometimes you just have to ignore the fact the two year old is parading around outside naked apart from pink Barbie gumboots and get on with your life. I'm sure it gave the neighbours a laugh!

Disclaimer: Not mine.

SPOV

I had a restless night's sleep with no Eric in bed with me. It was surprising how much I hated having all that room to myself with no one sleeping right up against me, or actually on top of me, or pinning my hair to the pillow so I couldn't move my head, or snoring loudly right next to my ear, or assuming that it was OK to go to sleep squeezing my boob like it was a cuddly, or pushing all the covers off because he was hot. I'd had all of that for so many years now that I was mostly used to it. And above all else it was comforting having that presence in bed with me. It was comforting having Eric in bed with me.

It was horrible being in bed all alone.

So I wasn't hanging around in bed for sleep-in Sunday, that was for sure. I got out of bed and wrapped myself up in my dressing gown and walked into the kitchen. None of the kids seemed to be stirring yet and it was eerie having the house to myself. Well almost to myself, Ivan had woken up and was padding around after me.

"He's not here" I explained, and Ivan gave me a look that I'm pretty sure meant he thought I was responsible for Eric's mysterious disappearance. Like maybe I'd buried him in the back garden in the middle of the night.

"Well, you go outside and have a look then" I said, and we walked to the bi-fold doors to the deck. I pulled up the blind and saw that everything was foggy and miserable. I opened the door and Ivan didn't look enthused about the outside world, so I kind of pushed him with my foot, before shutting the door behind him.

Ivan didn't look pleased with that development. And neither did Bella, who'd been coming up the stairs to the deck. She hissed at Ivan and Ivan whined. I opened the door again and Bella deigned to come in, and I shut it again before Ivan got ideas. "Go wees!" I said through the door and I hoped he understood.

I went back to the kitchen and looked around. It was quiet and empty and I wasn't quite sure what to do with myself. Bella had an idea of what I should be doing though, and she sat and looked at me pointedly until I made a move to pick up the animal's bowls and start filling them with food. Stan appeared and he and Bella had a set-to which I stupidly put myself in the middle of, only to end up with a lovely scratch down one arm. Eddie slunk in to be fed as well, Ivan whined at the door until I let him in, but as soon as they were all fed they were pretty much done with me and my company. I got some cereal and sat down at the table to eat it.

I was kind of lonely.

For a moment or two anyway.

"Are you up?" Sam asked, as he came into the kitchen.

"Yeah" I said. "Aren't your feet cold?" I didn't know how he could wander round with bare feet in the middle of winter.

"Nope" Sam said, looking around. "Are you making breakfast?" He looked at my bowl.

"I don't mind" I said. "Did you want to make your own?"

"Um…" Sam said thoughtfully as Tray bowled into the room, almost landing on top of him. "Watch it!" Sam said. Tray didn't reply. "There's no breakfast!" he said, looking at me.

"We were just discussing it. Sam was deciding if he wanted to make his own."

"Well…I don't" Tray informed me.

"I wasn't making anything fancy" I said to him, and his face fell. "I guess I could have Weetbix…" he said, looking at the pantry as though it might suddenly spew forth something better and more edible.

"Or we could do baked bean toasties?" Sam suggested, looking at me.

"Um…well. I guess" I said. "We can call it brunch." It was just bread and baked beans, after all.

"I'll get the sandwich maker out" Sam announced, as he pulled open the cupboard it lived in. Except it was the cupboard it used to live in.

"I moved it" I said. I'd finally managed to reorganise the kitchen. I'd been so worried on Friday it had seemed like the perfect time for a good sort-out and cleaning the bottoms of all my cupboards had taken my mind off things. For a while, anyway. But even then, I'd still been mulling over what might happen to Eric while he was away. And for some reason, I'd thought it a good idea to move the toasted sandwich maker. To one of the high cupboards. I'd asked Eric to do it for me when he arrived home, mainly, I think, just to keep him in the kitchen with me for a bit longer before he had to go back to his phone calls.

"It's up there" I said to Sam, pointing to which one it was in.

"Oh" Sam said, looking up. We both contemplated it for a moment and then I went into the laundry to get the step-stool. I was clearly going to have to find a new home for it I thought.

Or not. When I came back into the kitchen Sam was balanced on the kitchen bench, handing the sandwich maker to Tray who was hovering around him, looking pretty much like Ivan did when he was anxious about whether he'd get fed or not. Sam closed the cupboard and crouched in preparation for jumping down, and then he noticed me. "What?" he said, as he jumped onto the kitchen floor.

"Um…just. It's like living with chimpanzees…or something…" I said. I'd half expected him to grab hold of the light fixture and swing himself across the kitchen.

Sam shrugged. "Dad's away" he said. He was right in that Eric's absence did cut off our access to a lot of the stuff in the kitchen, but I worried that if he was that easily replaced after just a day, how well we'd be coping after a week. Or two weeks. Or three.

That was a depressing thought. And I couldn't figure out whether the fact that the kids were developing new skills to compensate was a good or a bad thing either.

It was all just a bit…not quite right.

Sam got out bread and he and Tray had a small sword fight with some of the cutlery before they got down to the business of actually making the sandwiches. Well, of smearing butter and dripping baked beans all over the bench-top anyway.

Eddie turned up and sat beside his bowl, looking at me. And then after a while looking at his bowl in confusion when it hadn't been filled. "You've already had breakfast, Eddie" I reminded him, but his little feline brain couldn't comprehend that one. In the end he ate some baked beans that had been spilled on the floor, and wandered off giving me a rather dirty look over his shoulder.

He'd no doubt be back in about five minutes to do the same thing again.

In the meantime, though, Felicia arrived. "Are you doing toasties for breakfast?" she asked Sam, before she'd said hello to anyone.

"Well, duh" Sam replied, carefully removing the latest batch from the sandwich maker. Tray was now sitting at the table with me, eating his sandwich, dripping baked beans all down his chin. Felicia gave him a disgusted look.

"Move over, doofus" she said to Sam. "I want to make one."

"Try saying please" I reminded her.

"Please move doofus" she said, and Sam took his sandwich and put it on the table. He looked at me. "Do you want a cup of tea, Mum?" he asked.

"Um…" I said, considering it. I looked at the coffee maker. No hope in hell of me getting that to work.

"Oh, go on, go on, go on, go on" Felicia said, as she took the cheese out of the fridge. She was getting further through the box of Bill's old DVDs and was now past Red Dwarf and on to Father Ted. It was an uncannily good impression of Mrs Doyle, I had to say. If she made it as far as The I.T. Crowd and started telling me to 'try turning it off and on' I was going to be annoyed though. I'd had enough of that to last a lifetime the first time around.

Sam took that as a yes and filled the electric jug and got it boiling before he sat down at the table with his sandwich, which was probably a smart move because Tray had finished and was eyeing it up.

Pam walked in, rubbing her eyes. "I didn't know it was up time!" she wailed. "No one said!"

"We don't have to say. You just get up" Felicia pointed out, as Sam gobbled the last bites of sandwich and jumped up to make my tea.

"But I did!" Pam said. "I got up and no one was up, so I went back to bed to read my books. And then I missed up time!"

I looked at her more closely and I could see the line down the side of her face where she'd clearly fallen asleep again on a book. "What time was that Pam?"

Pam shrugged. She was getting better at reading but time was still a bit mysterious. "There was a four…" she said, wrinkling her nose.

"At the beginning or the end?" I asked as her interpretation of even a digital alarm clock was fluid.

"Dunno" she said, looking around at what her siblings were eating. "I don't want toasties!" she announced. "I want French toast."

"Dad isn't here" Felicia said, and Pam's face fell.

"I could do it" I offered, but the look Pam gave me would have made lesser women burst into tears. Yeah, I couldn't apparently. There were some things you just couldn't replace.

Well, that wasn't exactly news to me.

Pam sighed. "I'll just have toast and jam then. Plum jam."

"Uh, there's no plum left…" I said, and Pam whirled around.

"Where'd it all go?" she asked, accusingly. As person in charge of shopping I somehow got blamed for all the stuff that got eaten, even when I wasn't the one who finished it up.

"I think you ate it…" I said, somewhat tentatively. It was probably a bit ridiculous to be wary of the five year old's reaction to being accused of eating the last of the jam. But I was. Pam could be unpredictable in her moods.

"Well…no" Pam said. "There was some yesterday morning, because I had it yesterday morning, and I haven't had any since, so it can't have been me. Someone else ate the jam. Someone stole my jam!" She looked around the room, accusingly.

"It's not just your jam" Sam pointed out and Pam's gaze fixed on him. "Did you eat it?" she asked, and I half-expected her to pull a large torch out and shine it in his eyes. Sam put a cup of tea down in front of me and ignored Pam.

"I think it was Tray" Pam announced. "He eats everything!"

"What?" Tray asked, looking up from where he was hovering around Felicia eating scraps of cheese. "I don't like plum jam."

"Well, someone ate it!" Pam said. "Someone ate all my jam and now I don't have any jam!" I hadn't quite realised that plum jam was the key to happiness for Pam, but clearly, it was.

"You ate it" Tray said. "You like it."

"I DID NOT!" Pam yelled. "I didn't! I wouldn't do that, because it isn't nice!" It was no good trying to pin stuff on Pam; she'd fight you to the death to deny it. We'd learnt that when she was a toddler and prone to pilfering stuff from her siblings. It didn't matter if the little pink stool she stood on to reach things was left behind as evidence of exactly what had happened, she'd still deny point blank that she was the person responsible for the mysterious disappearance.

"Um…" I said, trying to think how to diffuse the situation. This was when Eric was useful. Well, sometimes he was useful. There was always the chance that Pam would have accused him of eating the jam and then it would have really kicked off. Eric didn't take to being accused of things any better than Pam herself did, and the combination could be explosive.

"What about the jar?" Felicia asked casually, and Pam whirled on her. I tried not to think 'phew', but I failed. Call me a bad mother, but I was feeling kind of relieved they might fight amongst themselves and leave me out of it.

Shit, when had I turned into Eric?

"What jar?" Pam demanded. "The jar from the plum jam that SOMEONE ELSE ATE?" She looked around accusingly.

Felicia shrugged. "That jar you had yesterday, you were going to decorate it…with crayon?"

"Melted crayon" Pam confirmed. "You put them in a candle. Mum has to be there." She paused and thought for a moment. It was quite a long moment, and she kind of stared off into space, ignoring the way Felicia was now grinning at her.

"So, what do you think Daddy is doing now?" Pam asked me. "Is he having breakfast too? Is he having peanut butter toast? I'm going to have peanut butter toast because Daddy likes peanut butter." Hopeful that she'd distracted me enough, she walked back to the pantry to get the peanut butter.

Well I might have been turning into Eric, but Pam seemed to be able to channel him without even trying.

"It's not breakfast time there" Sam said. "It's lunch time." Pam ignored him though; too busy making her own breakfast.

I turned to watch Felicia wiping down the bench top with the sleeve of her favourite grey cardigan. I was going to have to prise that off her at some stage to wash it. It was looking pretty well-worn now, and was pilling and fraying, but there was no way she was giving it up any time soon.

And then when she turned around to sit down at the table with her own toasted sandwich I finally registered what it was she was wearing underneath the cardigan. "Um…where did that come from?" I asked her.

"I made it" she said, biting her sandwich. "I'm not making one for anyone else." She turned around and glared at Tray.

"I might make some more" Sam announced and Tray gave him the same look Eddie had been giving me earlier.

"No, the t-shirt" I said, pointing to it. "How'd you get hold of that?"

Felicia shrugged. "Found it" she said. Well that was pretty good going on her part because I thought I'd hidden it quite well in the laundry after the last time it went through the wash, with a view to slowly moving it in the direction of the bin. "I don't think Dad wants it" she continued. "He'd left it in the laundry with the dog-towels."

"Yeah…" I said. "Isn't it a bit big on you though?"

Felicia looked unconcerned. "It's for sleeping in; it's supposed to be big." I wasn't sure how comfy it was sleeping in something that was actually big enough to be a tent.

"It's kind of old…" I pointed out.

"Meh" Felicia said. "It's got a cool print. And it's from a concert."

"Mmm" I said, stopping myself adding 'from before you were born'. Felicia took a large bite of her sandwich and Amelia burst into the room.

"You're all so loud!" she shouted. "Why are you so loud? You woke me up!"

"It's up-time" Pam said, from her spot by the toaster. Now the mystery of the missing jam had been solved she was back to being the cheerful morning person she usually was. Amelia wasn't though, she wasn't much of a morning person these days and it was hard to remember back to the times when she'd been the one to wake us all up and demand we start the day.

"For you. Not for me" Amelia said, as she shuffled in. At least she wasn't wearing anyone else's clothes, although I had noticed the previous day that despite all the time she'd spent ransacking her own wardrobe in preparation for her date which wasn't really a date, she'd eventually left the house wearing my blue knit top with the scoop in the front and the back and my velvet blazer. It was nice that she approved of my choices in clothing; it just might have been nicer if she'd asked first.

"There's no coffee!" Amelia said, sounding horrified.

"There's no Dad" Felicia pointed out. "Mum's having tea."

"I don't like tea" Amelia said, wrinkling her nose up.

"It probably doesn't like you either" Felicia said to her, before standing up and taking her plate over the dishwasher.

Amelia opened her mouth to say something, but didn't get a chance as Tray came over to talk to her. With his mouth full. "So the movie was good?" he said, and Amelia wrinkled her nose at the sight of the half-chewed baked beans.

"It was OK" she said. "Lots of things blew up." I got the feeling she'd gone with Riley's choice.

"Awesome!" Tray said, enthusiastically. "Dad said he'll take us."

"But he's not here" Amelia pointed out. "So you can't go now."

"Yeah" Tray said, sounding a little sad. "What are we doing today, Mum?"

I looked outside at the still foggy morning and wished it was summer. Summer was easier. We could go to the beach at Pt. Chev and Amelia and I could sit and read in the shade, Felicia could swim, Pam could collect seashells and the boys could climb the rocks and swing off the branches of the pohutakawa trees. Much easier than a grotty day at home.

But it wasn't summer. And it was just me here to entertain them.

"I don't know" I said. "And right now, I'm going for a shower." I stood up and put my own bowl in the dishwasher before leaving the kitchen. I'd deal with the clean-up later, once they'd stopped going back for seconds, and thirds. And arguing amongst themselves.

I felt kind of numb. And I still missed Eric.

I showered and dressed and tried to tell myself that it made me feel better, but I wasn't really buying it. I walked back to the kitchen to start the inevitable process of mopping up smears of baked beans off everything when I heard Felicia say "You're an ass!" to someone.

"It's arse, you complete dimwit" Amelia yelled back. "Stop trying to be American. You're not American!"

And then the most bizarre thing happened. I heard Eric say "Amelia, you've been listening to your mother again. It's clearly ass." Except that part-way through, I realised it wasn't Eric, it was Sam. But it was a bloody good imitation.

I walked into the kitchen as everyone was standing around giggling, even Amelia. Sam saw me though, and stopped laughing and stared at the floor.

I felt like an intruder in my own kitchen. "Um…" I said. "That was, um, well…you sound like Dad." Sam half-looked at me, and then looked at the floor again.

"He does. It's funny" Tray assured me.

"I don't know how you do the accent" Felicia said. "I can't do the accent." She looked a bit put-out at that.

Sam shrugged. "I just can" he said. "The vowels are weird though." There were nods all round over that one. Well, apart from Pam who, despite the fact she'd been laughing at Sam, still obviously felt some residual loyalty to Eric. "They're not weird!" she insisted. "They're…um…American…"

"Same diff" Felicia said. "I mean, no one else around here speaks like that."

"Ella's mum does" Pam said.

"Bella?" I asked.

"Ella!" Pam repeated. "You know. Ella. From preschool."

"Oh" I said, realisation dawning. "She's Canadian."

"Same diff" Felicia said again, shrugging.

"I don't think it is…" Pam said. "Is it?" she wrinkled her nose.

"No" Sam said, switching accents again. "It is not, Pam. It would be like calling your mother an Australian, and you've seen how well that goes." The kids exploded with laughter again, even Pam, although she was a bit reticent about it.

And then something occurred to me. "Um…do any of you do me?" I asked, and there was almost immediate silence. A few eyes shifted to Amelia though. Hmm, maybe it wasn't just a case of borrowing my clothes then. But I didn't have a chance to press them further because Pam was still stuck on the American accent thing.

"I can't tell the difference" she announced, "because I've never been. No one took me! And I love planes! I was really good when we went to Fiji!"

"You snored on the way home" Sam reminded her. "Loudly."

"Shut up!" Pam said to him. "Just because you've been to Disneyland. I've never been to Disneyland. I never get to do anything!" She sighed dramatically.

"You always fall asleep whenever we do anything" Felicia pointed out.

"No I don't!" Pam said.

"Well…it's OK" Amelia said, consolingly. "You're just little, so, you know…you have to sleep a lot?"

Pam didn't take that well. "I'm not a baby!" she hissed.

Amelia shrugged. "You're only five" she said. I was tempted to point out how she'd been adamant she was a big girl when she was five, but it wouldn't do any good. And it wouldn't get Pam to get off the 'I've never been to the States' rant she was currently on.

"It's not that great in the States, anyway" Amelia said. "It's like here, but you know, everyone sounds like Dad…so that's, like, kinda weird. But not." She shrugged.

"I still want to go" Pam said, crossing her arms. She turned to look at me, and the other four followed her gaze.

"Well…maybe" I said, before I realised what I was actually saying. "Maybe we'll go back."

"I want to go now" Pam said. "I miss Daddy!" Yeah, I did too.

"It's booring without Dad" Sam said, looking outside at the still foggy morning.

"There's no coffee" Amelia grumbled, looking at the coffee machine which sat silently gleaming on the bench.

"We can't do anything fun" Tray said, and then he looked at me. "Not in the house anyway." Yeah, Eric was better than the Cat in the Hat on a yucky day.

"I hate winter" Felicia complained. "I hate winter and I hate it when Dad's not here. Even if I did get his shirt…it's a cool shirt." She looked down and smiled to herself. I guess she really did like that horrible old thing.

"It's all just sucky" Tray said, and there were nods all round.

They were right. It was kind of sucky without Eric.

But I think I had a plan.

EPOV

I walked into Dad's hospital room and looked at him, attached to all the machines. His skin was grey and sunken and if it wasn't for the fact that one of those machines was beeping on a regular basis, I might have thought he was already fucking dead.

I stopped and just stood there, unsure what to do. All of a sudden I was so fucking tired. I felt like shit, and I didn't want to be here. It was fucking awful, all so fucking awful.

I had just about decided to back out of the room, when Dad suddenly opened his eyes. He stared at me for a minute or two and I had the awful thought that maybe he didn't fucking know me and if he asked who I was, what would I say? Would I take that as an excuse to apologise and turn around and walk away?

But he coughed and then he said "You're here", and there was no fucking going back now.

"Yep" I confirmed. "I'm here."

"Guess you had to see if it's really true, huh?" he said. "If I'm really on my fucking way out." He gave me a disgusted look.

I shrugged. "I came" I said, I wasn't sure how else to explain it. I couldn't even tell you why I was fucking there. I guess it was what you did, didn't you? Even when you fucking didn't want to.

I sat down.

"Make yourself at home, I guess" Dad said. "I'd offer you a drink, but all you get in here is water."

A nurse came into the room, and gave me a small smile before she came over to check some of the machines. "Yeah, what do I have to do to get a fucking drink around here?" Dad asked her.

"You want some water Mr Davis?" she said casually.

"No. And you can fuck off and stop bothering me" he said, harshly. "You can all fuck right off and stop fucking hanging around like the fucking ghouls you are."

The nurse looked at him and pursed her lips, but she didn't say anything to him. She just walked towards the door. "I'll see you later on" she said to Dad.

"Fucking bitch" Dad muttered. "They're all fucking bitches." He didn't say anything for a few moments, but then he turned his head to look at me. The movement looked painful.

"So…you got away then?" he asked. "From her."

"Sookie."

"Yeah…I thought she had you on a pretty short leash these days. All those fucking kids. Surprised you could make it. Suppose I should feel pretty lucky about that. But I'm fucking dying. So forgive me for not prostrating myself at your feet."

I wanted to tell him to fuck off, to just shut the fuck up because he knew nothing about my life. And he didn't deserve to talk about Sookie and my kids. That was my fucking life and it had absolutely nothing to do with him.

But I didn't. I just sat there and stared at the wall. Dad looked like he was waiting for me to say something, but he didn't say anything else.

We sat like that for a while. And then another nurse came in. "Hi Stan!" she said brightly, "You doing alright? Oh, you got a visitor!"

"Yep" Dad said. "My son."

"Oh, isn't that nice!" the nurse said, patting Dad on the arm as she moved around the bed. "So I guess we'll be doing that sponge bath later on, then?" she said, giving Dad a wink. Fuck, really?

Dad laughed, and sat up a bit straighter in the bed. "You know I'll be holding you to that right?" he said.

"It's a date" the nurse said, leaning right over Dad. Surely she knew he was dying? And she wouldn't be getting an invitation to move in from him? Maybe she was angling for something from his will? Fuck, I didn't know. I didn't know what any of them fucking saw in him. Couldn't they tell he was a waste of fucking space?

"I'll leave you with your son, then" the nurse said, smoothing down Dad's bedcovers and then checking the level on one of the bottles attached to him. "And I'll be seeing you later on."

"You bring the wine" Dad called out to her as she left the room. I don't think he saw the look she gave me. Yeah, fuck. It was all just an act. That look, that was pure pity. And if she was feeling sorry for me, then fuck knows what she felt for Dad, but I didn't think it involved looking forward to spending quality time with him during a sponge bath.

She was just trying to make him feel better. And he couldn't fucking see it.

"That Bernice" he said, "She's one of the good ones. She fucking knows how to look after her patients. Fuck, some of them are hard fucking bitches. And I'd know about hard fucking bitches." He stopped talking, and he looked at me. "So she called you. She asked for your number. Asked the doctor for your number, and he asked me."

"Uh-huh" I said, wondering if this was going to turn into one of Dad's long fucking stories about how the latest woman had fucking up and left him for no good reason other than she was a bitch and didn't deserve him. I'd heard it all before.

"She wouldn't fucking stay" he said.

"Yeah" I said. I could understand why. It was fucking depressing being here. I guess once she figured her meal ticket was about to fucking die on her, she packed her shit and found someone else.

"She wouldn't fucking stay the first time either" he said. "She just…she never fucking wanted me." He stared straight ahead and not at me.

"It was…" I couldn't even believe what I was saying. "It was…her?"

"Yeah. Biggest fucking bitch I ever crossed paths with. Fucking ruined my life, and didn't want to stick around for my death." He paused. "I just…I just wanted her to stay…" and then he did the worst fucking thing he'd ever done to me in my life. He started crying.

I didn't know what to do. I couldn't really believe she'd called and then she'd just left. Left him. Left me. Again. Fuck. I didn't know what to feel.

But I couldn't be around Dad any longer. This was his pain, it wasn't mine. I'd moved on, I didn't fucking need her anymore and I'd be fucking damned before I'd shed another tear over her.

I'd needed him to do this thirty years ago, not now. It was too late now.

So I patted him on the hand, and I left.

Thanks for reading!