A/N: I feel badly that I am bringing chapter after chapter of nothing but angst! I warned up front this would be bleak, but now it seems especially so! Hopefully, you all will stick with me.

XXX

Mary's twilight discussion with Marshall, which had started off on such a promising note, left her feeling dismal and depressed come morning. The weather didn't help. It was a gloomy, grey Tuesday, and even though she couldn't hear the pitter-patter of rain, Mary suspected there might be a few droplets falling from the thick grey clouds. Sidewalks were strewn with ugly, unsightly brown leaves. Autumn's more regal shades of bright orange and deep crimson were beginning to fade, preparing for the long winter ahead in spite of the fact that Halloween was still several weeks away.

The sky outside was so dismal that Mary almost didn't wake up in time to take Melissa to school. Once she was out of bed and had secured her daughter's overall buckles, the pair of them sat across from one another at the island, both equally morose. The older mindlessly scanning the newspaper, the younger staring into her milky bowl of Frosted Flakes, they weren't exactly the most enthusiastic of individuals.

And yet, even though Mary had been hoping for a quiet morning, a chance to be alone with her thoughts before she ventured off to the hospital, that wasn't what she was going to receive. Every few bites of cereal, Missy would look up and study her, as though she were some new and rare specimen never before viewed up close. Each time the blonde caught her looking, she would glance away. While this behavior was odd, the inspector didn't possess enough will to ask what was going on. It seemed, however, that she was going to find out anyway.

Prim and proper, like they were about to discuss an important matter over drinks, Melissa laid down her spoon amidst her sugary milk, completely ignoring the fact that Mary wasn't even looking at her when she spoke. Dropped a bomb, more like.

"Mama?"

"What, sweets?" she was pondering the crossword, not that she had any plans to fill it in.

"Are you in love with Mark?"

So much for the crossword. Mary almost unseated herself in her shock. Crumpling the paper, creasing its previous folds, she threw it aside so fervently that she nearly clipped Missy's temple, but she was able to flinch out of the way in time. Once the threat of flying newsprint had passed, she looked meek, like she knew she had crossed some invisible line. Mary's look of total shell shock couldn't have been encouraging, but she couldn't help herself.

"What?!" whatever sleepiness she had still been enduring was long gone now. "Where on earth would you get an idea like that?"

"Nowhere…"

"Melissa," Mary broke in through her evasiveness very sharply, making sure she could tell that she was not going to be tricked by any sort of backpedaling now that they'd jumped into the deep end. "You don't ask a question like that for no reason."

But, the child was averting her gaze, as though frightened of what her mother might do if she was honest. It was plain she had not thought this through, had not considered what sort of rampage Mary would go on. The woman didn't want Missy to think she was mad at her, but this needed to be nipped in the bud – no beating around the bush.

"I'm waiting."

It was said in a rabid bark and, fearful or not, Missy could obviously see that vacillating any longer would only be worse for her. Therefore, she sighed a sweet, worn out little sigh and powered on.

"I saw him kiss you the other day."

Now Mary was more confused than ever.

"What are you talking about?" she racked her brains, but she didn't need to; she knew she and Mark had never locked lips – not the other day, not in Missy's lifetime. "We absolutely didn't…"

"He did!" her timbre was shrill, but resolute, with emphasis on the man, not the woman. "On your cheek! Right here, after I'd been playing with him in the backyard! I didn't imagine it – I saw it!"

Like an old roll of film was unwinding itself through Mary's subconscious, she replayed her conversation with Mark from Sunday evening. Now that she stopped and thought about it, she realized Melissa was right – he had kissed her. But, she didn't see why this was news to her daughter. Mark was an affectionate person; he'd been pecking Mary's cheek for years, and there was nothing more to it than that. Why would she take it to heart all of a sudden?

"And yesterday…!" she prattled on while her mother just sat stupidly with her mouth hanging open. "After school, when we were eating our French fries, you were laughing and playing around, and he touched your hand before we left."

Mary half expected her to add a, 'so there' but she didn't; she just faced the blonde, looking cross but just as determined. Arms folded over her middle, she stared the other woman down with a look of defiance, daring someone to say she was wrong.

There was no pretending that the inspector wasn't perplexed, but seeing how adamant her daughter was enabled her to take her foreboding down a peg or two. There was no reason to act like Melissa had committed some terrible faux pas. She was just confused. Why could be sorted out later.

"Missy…"

This was a bell going off if ever there was one. Mary never called her 'Missy.' Always, from day one, she had been 'Melissa.' It was more formal, less slipshod, less saccharine. She saw the merest sputter in her daughter's forest-shaded eyes that she recognized this transition, though she probably didn't know what to make of it.

"Mark is my friend. Friends have a good time – they touch each other…"

Abruptly, Mary had to wonder what Marshall would think if he'd heard that. The Mary he remembered had been very prickly about who could lay their hands on her.

"You've seen Mark act that way…countless times…" She was leaning in now, trying to glean even a smidgen of understanding out of her little girl's brutal stare. "Why is it bothering you?"

Her response was surprisingly fast, "Because you're not supposed to have fun."

Mary blinked uncomprehendingly, "I'm not?"

"No. Marshall is sick. He almost died because of me. How can you have fun and be happy after that?"

This revelation wasn't cheering, but at least it made sense. What Mary took away from it, even as she arched further back in her seat so as not to overcrowd the space, was that Melissa was most definitely not happy. She was the furthest thing from, and it was probably far more than simple displeasure. It was anxiety, it was feeling enormous responsibility for the circumstances, it was even the remote possibility that her mother might be moving on, even when that wasn't the case at all. Your mind went to the worst case scenario when you were beginning to drown, and that was exactly what Mary saw right in front of her.

Putting on her most gentle, reassuring face, Mary tried to speak to her child like an equal. There might be over forty years between them, but kids were a lot smarter than adults often gave them credit for. She was afraid of what additional bafflement would surface if she kept her in the dark.

"Sweets, I am not having fun…" it was a serious, bold statement, but it was honest. "I'm not having fun at all. I hate this. You must too, right?"

"Yes," she practically spit the word, still with her arms crossed over her chest.

"But, I'm not going to run right out and find a new husband just because Marshall's not quite who he used to be. I still love him, and I hope he still loves me…" Melissa looked as if she wanted to say something then, but Mary wouldn't let her. "I care about Mark very much, but I am not in love with him. I'm lucky if he makes me laugh now and then; he's a funny guy…"

Her daughter's look of insolence began to ease just a little more. She, too, knew how entertaining Mark could be when he got in his groove.

"…But, just because I think he's being a big goofball now and then doesn't mean I'm over what's happened to Marshall. It's still very upsetting…" she might not have needed to place so much inflection on 'very' but did it anyway. "You understand?"

Comprehension likely had nothing to do with it. Melissa had never once believed that Mary and Marshall were anything but hopelessly in love with one another. But, she would also probably be the first to admit that their rhythm had been entirely out of sync since the accident. She had every reason to believe that tempo might never return and that scared Mary as much as it likely frightened her daughter.

Here, on the edge of her stool, Frosted Flakes long forgotten, she was still probing her mother, trying to determine if she was being lied to. The miniature adult she could sometimes be was coming out of the woodwork and Mary suddenly began to feel like she was being x-rayed by those piercing, hardened eyes.

"Melissa…" going back to her given name might spark something in her, might urge her into being cruelly truthful about her insecurities concerning her home life. "The way you have dealt with this whole thing…I haven't said it enough, but I'm really proud of you…"

Briefly, she speculated whether this would translate to the child thinking she needed to keep her feelings inside. Mary opted to risk it, deciding the chance of Melissa reading into it that way was small.

"I know it hurts that Marshall doesn't remember you…" on a whim, she tried to place her palm on top of her tiny hand; Missy recoiled at first, but ultimately didn't shake her away. "It hurts me too, sweets…"

And, on a dime, she flipped. She yanked her fingers free, startling Mary further back into her seat; her look of quiet turmoil suddenly turned to one of untainted fury. A bellow that Mary had never once heard from her reserved, well-mannered little girl was unleashed, like a lion had been living deep in her chest all this time.

"It does not hurt you! He remembers you!" Mary could see the whites of her eyes blazing, filling up with pools of tears she hadn't known she could shed this early in the morning. "He thinks I'm nobody! He knows you and Stan and Brandi and Jinx – even Mark! But, not me!"

"Hey, listen to me…" now the woman was out of her chair, detouring around the island, trying to console, to make pointless promises she couldn't keep because she didn't know what else to do. "Just because he…"

Mary's hand shot out another time, tried to pull her ranting little girl to her side, but Melissa shoved her harder than she would've thought was possible given her miniscule stature.

"I HATE him!"

This clearly had the reaction she was hoping for. A viciously satisfied glare passed through her all-too callous features that she had stunned Mary – a person who did not stun easily. She wanted action, she wanted results, she wanted to be let loose from the miserable monotony she'd been stuck in for the past week. Being mean and nasty was how she planned to get there.

"I hate him…!"

"You do not, what you hate is…"

"I hate him!"

She was jumping up and down on the linoleum, the closest to a tantrum she had ever come, flinging her hands into the open, trying to rid herself of a sensation that just wouldn't go.

"I hate him and I hate you too!"

Oddly, it was this attack on her own character that settled Mary. She didn't know a lot these days, but she knew her child. The repetition of the same seemingly hurtful phrase over and over was so beneath her Melissa. On any other occasion, no matter how steamed she was, she would've used her words, she would've talked – even shouted – her way through it. Not now. She was lost, phrases turned into weapons, meant to injure, meant to maim – designed to make someone else feel as awful as she did.

A sadness seeped into Mary at the thought that this method wasn't going to work, because she felt nothing at hearing she was despised by her own flesh and blood. She knew the threats were empty; they wouldn't help Melissa in the long run.

And, seeing that Mary had barely blinked upon being insulted, she breathed hard into the open air, her glasses slipping down her nose from sweat perspiring around her eyes. Mary tried to motivate herself to stay calm, to not rise no matter how Missy continued to goad her. In spite of her daughter's usual maturity, she was the adult. She should appear to be in control, even if she was a wreck inside.

"Does hurting my feelings make you feel better?"

Such a simple question, said so softly, might be what set her off again. For a moment, she suspected Melissa might erupt another time, purely because it was an inquiry that Marshall might pose. So rational, so composed.

"No…!" but, some of her convictions faltered in the otherwise silent house. "I really hate you!"

"Why?"

An open mouth was what faced Mary, but nothing came out of it. Missy had been ready to pounce all over again, only to have no definitive answer. She'd slowed her down, at the very least. This was all becoming eerily familiar, in some ways. The inspector couldn't tally the number of times she had claimed to loathe Jinx – for reasons that were as feeble as the ones Melissa might soon give her.

And so, they just stood, one a smaller carbon copy of the other – one furious, one despondent, both experiencing what their counterpart was, just unwilling to admit it. In the quiet, Mary began to wonder if this was the alteration in personality that Shelley had warned against, but she wasn't so sure. She still thought there might be more, that a brief bout of blowing off steam couldn't be the worst of it. Who knew what was to come?

That didn't matter at the moment. In being coerced to give a basis for her malice, Melissa lost her thread. She was too kind, her heart too wholesome, to hold up such accusations for long. Mary watched in agony as her lip began to quaver, which meant the wrath would soon evaporate to make room for something far worse.

"You don't know why, huh?" Mary jolted almost politely, as though it were a natural question, said with no arrogance.

When Missy warbled out a reply, she was reminiscent of a frog – croaky, choking, guttural.

"No…"

Two letters was enough. It didn't come slowly, it came in a fleet. She burst into tears, slapping her hands over her face, smashing her glasses into her nose. Mary stepped over and smoothed her hair, cautious about initiating a full-blown hug if she was still caught in the throes of animosity.

"You're mixed up, Melissa. It's okay…"

Apparently, she didn't think so, "It is not! I was mean! Marshall will never love me again if I'm so mean!"

"Yes, he will, sweets…" there was no point trying to convince her he adored her still, because it was clear she wouldn't believe it. Patting her shoulder roughly she went on, "He would get it too; he really would. You're upset; people say things when they're upset…"

Her voice was muffled behind her hands, but her point couldn't be missed.

"I don't hate you, mama…"

So many second graders would never apologize two seconds after being such a bully – most wouldn't act contrite, period. Minutes ago, this girl had been screaming herself hoarse, desperate to seem bigger and badder than she really was. And now, she was in a shambles, ashamed for acting so poorly. That wasn't Mary running in her veins. That was Marshall.

"I'm sorry…"

"You don't need to be sorry," Mary assured her, and she stooped to the floor so that she would be eye to eye with her child when she finally came up for air. "I know you didn't mean it."

"I just want Marshall to come home…I want him to be like he was…I miss him so much…"

"I miss him too, sweets."

"But, at least you have Mark!"

"You have Mark too, girly…he's crazy about you; you know that…"

"But, Mark is your friend!"

At first, Mary didn't know what she meant, why she was reiterating what had already been said. But, once her brain got with the program, she understood why someone else having an acquaintance in this turbulent time was tearing her up underneath. Melissa didn't have a friend. There was no person whom she could rely on, to pour her heart out to, to commiserate and cry with. She might have a wonderful family, but few things could replace someone who chose to be by your side not because you were already linked, but because they wanted to be. Mary knew the rarity of a good friend. For years, Marshall had been her one and only. Her best.

"Hey…" she whispered, speaking over the stifled sounds still issuing from beneath Melissa's hands. "Look at me…"

Maybe to make up for having screeched at her, Missy listened without hesitation. Her spectacles were askew when she pulled her hands away, her skin blotchy and red. The ponytail Mary had tied in her hair was already coming out, the rubber band sagging halfway down her head.

Silently, she synched her locks back together and replaced her glasses to their proper place. Melissa simply stood and sniffled, ignoring all of her mother's movements.

"You know, when I was your age, I didn't have any friends either."

A sweetly bemused look flitted through the child's waterlogged eyes. This couldn't have been a total surprise to her, but it was also something she'd never heard before.

"You didn't?"

"Nope," Mary shook her head. "For some of the same reasons you don't."

A frown, "What do you mean?"

The blonde extended her arm from her kneeling position and placed it smoothly on Missy's shoulder. The shift in weight made her stagger slightly, but she didn't fall.

"I was different," this was an education she wouldn't receive in school, but she needed to be well-informed nonetheless. "Different scares people. I don't know why – maybe it's because they don't want to see themselves there, at the bottom of the pile, so they have to highlight just how superior they are. Or, people could just be jerks, I don't know…"

Melissa ran a finger under her dripping nose, fully intent on hearing the rest of the story. That same finger roved upward and wiped underneath her lenses, brushing the slickness away.

"I didn't have the…balance thing like you do…" this was a given, but Mary decided she would draw attention to it anyway. "And, I sure wasn't as smart as you are…" in many ways that meant Missy had a far harder time of it, because she had more attributes that distanced her from the pack. "But, all the kids knew how I lived at home. They knew all about my dad, and they knew he had run out on us…"

"But, shouldn't they have been sad for you? Why would they make fun of you because of that?"

"I don't know, sweets," Mary shrugged. "Just like I don't know why they judge you because you don't have a dad – at least not in the usual sense."

"I still sometimes wish I did," she said softly, gazing down at her toes and rocking back and forth agitatedly. "Just so they'd leave me alone. Just so there'd be one thing about me that's like everyone else."

This took Mary back to her mission with Mark, her goal to integrate him more fully into his biological daughter's life. It seemed that, even in spite of her misunderstanding about her mother's relationship with the man, the notion might still hold some water. Others likely would not agree, they would beseech Mary not to give into the demands of an eight year old who didn't know what she wanted. But, that wasn't why she was doing it. She wasn't doing it so Mark could possess a label, either. It was as she had conceived it in the beginning. She wanted someone there to alleviate the pain if Marshall slowly disappeared from their once-pristine existence.

"I suppose that's my fault, isn't it?" Mary mused with a sardonic chuckle. "I've been forcing all these men on you since you were in diapers…"

"But, if I had friends, that wouldn't matter…" the girl enlightened her to the real root of the problem, even if Mary wouldn't take it to heart and proceed with her original plan. "Don't friends love you for who you are?"

"They're supposed to."

"Then, I could have Marshall and Mark and Stan and no real friend would care that I have them and not a dad. Right?"

"I guess so."

"Nobody at school even knows what happened to Marshall, and they wouldn't care either. They should be sad for me, like all the kids in your school should've been sad for you when your dad left to rob banks, but they wouldn't be…"

"Do you know that for sure, sweets?" Mary didn't want to doubt her, but she was curious about how much she had gleaned from her classmates' immature behavior over the past few months. "You don't think they might be sympathetic?"

"No," she murmured. "They wouldn't."

And, if Regina Hodges was any indication, Melissa was probably right. Any school with that beast at the helm couldn't be overly concerned with the woes of its inhabitants. Just thinking about it made Mary's blood boil, but her daughter was looking close to tears again, and she didn't want to set her off another time.

"Are you sure you don't want to stay home from school today?" she had lobbied for this every weekday since the accident, but her proposal had never sunk in. "I could hang out here with you this morning and then I could call Brandi to come over this afternoon while I visited Marshall…"

Surprisingly, her daughter didn't implore Mary to let her tag along to the hospital, as she had done on every occasion before this one. She must not be up for forced small talk with her step-father – small talk devoid of riddles and brain power and teasing and all the amazing things Marshall usually had up his sleeve. Nonetheless, her retort to the woman's needling was the same as always.

"I need to go to school."

'Need' was awfully strong, but there could be any number of reasons why Melissa was holding onto this supposed desire so fiercely. Marshall, beaten and battered or otherwise, believed staunchly in the importance of academics. It might be in tribute to him that she plugged on, whether she wanted to or not.

"And you still don't want me to tell Miss Newman about everything going on around here?" Mark had made it sound like Mary was going to broach that conversation with the teacher regardless of Missy's opinion, but the mother wasn't going to traipse into such a minefield if it was only going to trouble the child further. "Because, I can; I wouldn't have to go into too much detail or belabor it or anything…"

Missy cut her off, her brow creasing, "Belabor?"

A new word. Apparently, her mind was hard-wired to spot them.

"What's that mean? I thought that's what's going to happen to Brandi when she's about to have the baby."

Mary really tried not to laugh, but the smallest of chuckles snuck out anyway. She remembered the eight year old's previous displeasure with showing any signs of joy given their situation and clamped down fast. Fortunately, Melissa didn't look incensed this time, just puzzled.

"That's labor, sweets. She'll go into labor – probably, anyway. That's what happens in the day or so before the baby is born; he'll start to move down the birth canal and eventually she'll push him out."

Not at all shy about explaining this, because she knew Marshall had already given her an abbreviated rundown of childbirth, Mary began to wonder how they'd gotten so far off track. But evidently, fresh information was even better than a fresh word, and Melissa became absorbed in a hurry.

"But, you didn't do that," she recalled, still scowling slightly. "The doctors cut me out of your belly – you didn't have to push me anywhere."

"You're right; you were different. Sometimes, if there's a problem with the baby or the mom – even if it's just a small one – they'll go ahead and cut the baby out just to be safe. Labor can last a long time and if it doesn't go right the baby could be in danger."

"That's not going to happen to Brandi, though?"

"I don't know," Mary conceded. "You never can tell with babies. Getting them out is pretty painful either way, but it's worth it. I know it was for me…" here, she cast her little one a loving smile. "I'm sure Brandi will feel the same way."

Melissa nodded, though she didn't smile back, and seemed to remember that this had not been part of the original conversation, rewinding to return to her earlier question.

"Then, what's belabor mean?"

"Just that…I don't have to make a big deal out of anything, I don't have to tell Miss Newman that this is some huge catastrophe…" even though it was. "I can just explain…what happened to Marshall and it distracts you sometimes because it makes you sad. It would make anybody sad, girly."

She tried to index just how many times she had used the word 'sad' in such a short space of time. You would think, what with Melissa's ever-budding vocabulary, that they could come up with some more distinctive phrases, but instead they harped on the same one again and again. In some ways, Mary still thought it was more fitting than 'depressed' or 'miserable.' 'Sad' made no bones about it. It was what it was.

But, however it was going to be described; it seemed Melissa wasn't sold on relaying her troubles to anyone who would listen. She might be more matched to Miss Newman than she was to any of her peers, but apparently she still had her pride. Mary would never pour out her sorrows if it wasn't necessary and it seemed Missy wasn't going to either.

Head wagging side-to-side, she concluded, "I don't want her to know. I want to be in that gifted class, and if she thinks I'm all messed up she might not let me go."

A light bulb might've popped up over Mary's head. While she didn't think what her daughter had just blurted out was the sole reason she wanted Marshall's misfortunate to stay in the vault, it definitely helped to string a few uncertain pieces together. It wasn't all about keeping your emotions to yourself.

And, while Mary was itching to say that a family tragedy wasn't going to prevent Melissa from being in any sort of class, they were running out of time if she wanted to make it to the class she was already in. Bringing up the fact that the inspector still had not made a move on the genius-front wasn't going to help matters either; best to brush it under the rug until she could have half a second to think about it some more.

"Then I'll stay quiet, but let me know if you change your mind, okay?" that was all she asked and she received a nod in return. "Run get your jacket and your backpack; we're gonna be late if we don't get going."

And, while she was glad to see her child dart off, tears dried and meltdown over as quickly as it had started, Mary still couldn't help thinking that sending her away into the big, bad world yet another time was a time too many. Surely she would snap soon if she continued running on empty. Surely she needed a break.

Didn't they all?

XXX

A/N: So many problems, so little time! Thank-you to those who are reading and reviewing! You guys are the best!