A/N: Thank you Mascaret and Organanation! Two more really brief chapters to follow, but this one should answer most of your questions. Thank you for reading, and enjoy.

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Della's House - A Los Angeles Suburb

"I call it my '25 to life' letter," she joked. She had to do something to lighten the mood, because he just sat there, staring at her. The look in his eyes was unreadable, which unnerved her. "Perry?" She prompted, before moving to sit closer to him. Now she was peeved. "I can't wait to have a word with Paul. I told him to give this letter to you only if I was sent away. To be perfectly honest, I never expected you to ever see it. You know you've never lost a case - why would you begin now?"

Perry ignored her attempt at levity, and instead remarked on one of the things he found so amazing about Della. "Your letter….even when you thought you might go to prison for the rest of your life...even then, your thoughts weren't self-serving….you were concerned about me, and what I would be going through. Why did you do that?"

"Isn't it obvious, Perry? I-" She couldn't say it to him, not yet. Not until she was sure of where they stood. Reading it to him in the letter was one thing, but here and now?

"I didn't want you to get down on yourself, in case things didn't work out the way you had hoped. I care about you, and I wouldn't want for you to suffer because of me."

"I'll never understand you, Della. You didn't want me to get down on myself for this, because you care about me, and you wouldn't want me to suffer if I wasn't able to clear you of your charges," he repeated. "Yet only a few years ago, you were willing to let me do both those things, weren't you?"

Della blanched at his words. "Perry, you don't understand."

He took the letter from her hand, looked at it for a minute, then folded it and tucked it in his inside jacket pocket, before standing. Della could only stare at him, her heart hurt, and her stomach dropped. Perry was going to walk out the door if she didn't do something.

Her relief was almost palpable, as instead of leaving, he began to pace the room.

"No, I don't. I came to see you, to tell you that I was giving up my position in San Francisco. I would have done anything that you asked of me. I would have stayed home and cooked you dinner every night if you wanted. Do you know what I did the day that I left you?" He turned to look at her. This was no rhetorical question; he actually wanted her to answer him, she realized.

"I assume that you drove right back to San Francisco. To be honest, I thought that you might have taken me up on my suggestion to find yourself another woman when you got back. That was the only thing I could think of."

"I didn't get back to San Francisco for another week. I stopped at an inn in Carmel, and sulked in my room the entire time. The only times I emerged from the room was when housekeeping came to clean, and I went for a walk. For God's sake, I began smoking again!"

"Oh Perry, you didn't. I should have known you'd take it badly. I'm such a fool."

He stopped pacing for a minute as he gathered his thoughts. "That entire week, I went over and over everything in my head, and I almost drove myself insane. I knew that being apart was hard for us, but you never gave me any indication that you were that unhappy. Della? I thought I knew everything about you, but it hit me then that I didn't, because I didn't know why you would do that to us. What did I do wrong? What is it that I did that hurt you so much, that you would throw away so many years of our being together? That would drive you into Gordon's arms? I need to know. I need to be able to make some sense of this."

"It's not anything like you're thinking, Perry. You didn't do anything to me."

"I had to have done something. Either that, or Gordon was giving you something that I wasn't. Oh God….is that it? No, that can't be it." Perry dismissed that thought almost immediately. "The man had absolutely no charm whatsoever. It has to be something I did, and Gordon was there to pick up the pieces." Perry sat back down on the couch, and took both of Della's hands in his. "I would have forgiven you for your affair with Gordon. It hurt me so much that I didn't know how I would bear it, but I would have forgiven you anyway. That's how much I loved you. I suppose there was nothing to forgive you for though, was there? I had done something egregious to you, and it was unforgivable. Whatever it was, Della, I am so very, very sorry."

"You know, Perry, it doesn't happen often, but when you get the wrong end of the stick, you do it in spades. You didn't do anything wrong."

"Then why did you drive me away? Even when I phoned - for weeks afterward - you wouldn't answer the phone. That's why I was so surprised when you showed up with Paul in San Francisco. Frankly, I still am."

"I had to see you, Perry. I wanted to talk to you, to explain why I sent you away, but I lost my nerve when I got there. Besides, we never could get Paul to leave us alone for more than 4 minutes at a time. Look, I think you need to know the truth. This is really hard for me, and I'm tempted to get the letter I wrote you from the book, but you should hear it directly from me." She took a deep breath, steeling herself for what she was about to tell him, unsure for once of how he would react. "I sent you away, because I had to."

"Of course. You were with Arthur, and my being there was most likely uncomfortable for you….for you both," he admitted

"Really, Perry, sometimes I think you're so busy formulating what you're going to say next, or envisioning imaginary scenarios in your head, that you don't bother to actually hear what I'm saying. There was no affair with Arthur, and you didn't do anything wrong. I sent you away on purpose. I told myself it was for your own good, and it was, but I should have had the backbone to explain things to you. We always said we'd be honest with each other, and yet I didn't even give you that courtesy."

"What exactly did you lie about?"

Della slid her hands from his, and began to twist them nervously around each other. "I didn't lie, exactly. It was more a….sin of omission. I meant to send you away, and to some extent, Arthur was complicit in it."

Perry nodded, but didn't say anything.

"The day that you came to see me….the day before my birthday….I was at a hotel, as I said. What I didn't tell you is where I was before that."

"I assume you were out somewhere with Gordon."

"Perry, I had an appointment, and I asked Arthur if I could borrow his car, as mine was in the shop. He offered to have his driver take me wherever I needed. Arthur overheard me giving the driver the name and address of the hospital, and he confronted me….asked me what my appointment was for. I told him it wasn't his business, but he demanded I tell him….insisted that if something was wrong, he wanted to know. Once I told him, he insisted on driving me himself, and then picking me up. He didn't want me to be alone."

"I'll bet he didn't," Perry flared. "You could have phoned me, and I would have driven you to and from your appointment." He was conveniently forgetting that she thought he was almost 400 miles away. "What was so important that you had to have company then?"

"If you'll quit interrupting me, I'll tell you. You mentioned on my birthday that it had been difficult to get in touch with me for a few weeks. I had had a doctor's appointment a few weeks prior, and when he was doing a breast examination, he noticed an….irregularity."

Perry wanted to interrupt, but wisely stopped himself. The lawyer in him had myriad questions he wanted to ask her, but instead, he merely nodded his encouragement.

"He sent me to get a mammogram, which he had scheduled for a week after my appointment with him. It took me a bit to get my head around the fact that he had found something, and I didn't think I would be able to speak to you without telling you everything. You know how good you are at drawing things out of people. I didn't want to worry you needlessly though, so I ignored your phone calls.

To make a long story short, the mammogram led to a biopsy, and the biopsy led to my….having a last minute appointment the day you showed up at the house. I was working that morning, and the doctor's office phoned me, and suggested I come in as soon as possible to discuss the results. Oh Perry, I had dodged your calls for weeks, unable as I was to share what could be nothing with the one man who would give me the support I needed. How could I put that on you, when you were so far away, and doing such an important job? When they told me that it was….that it wasn't nothing….I couldn't think of how I would tell you what I had already been through, and kept from you."

"My God, Della, you know you could have told me everything. I would have given up that job in an instant if you needed me."

"I know that, and I didn't want you to be pressured to do that. The day you came….the doctor told me that I had cancer, and we had to discuss treatment options. I was terrified, and when I was finished with the appointment, I asked Arthur to take me to a hotel. I didn't think I could be in the house - I needed to be around people. I know it doesn't make sense, but even being in the same building as others, made me feel not so alone. Arthur checked me in, and took me up to the room. I told him everything the doctor had said, and he stayed with me, and I let him…." this was one of the hardest things she had to admit to him - "I let him hold me."

Again, Perry chose to stay silent. This time though, it was because he was hurting too much. The idea that Della had gone through this ordeal alone - no, not exactly alone - and that it was Arthur Gordon who she had told, who had been there for her and held her, when it should have been Perry, was almost too much for him to bear.

"I just couldn't tell you, Perry." She repeated her sentiment from earlier.

"I wish that you had trusted me."

"Perry, do you remember when Paul got sick?"

"Of course I do. But what does Paul have to do with this?"

"When we got the call that he had had his stroke, and we rushed to the hospital to be with him….I had never seen you like that. I had to drive, because you couldn't even manage to get the key in the ignition, your hands were shaking so much. We were there with him every day, until the last. Seeing you go through that, heartbroken as you were….that was one of the hardest things I have ever had to witness. When he passed away, that was the first time I had ever seen you cry. I know you thought of Paul as a brother, just as I did, but the only thing I could think of when the doctor told me what my issue was, was that as hard as it was for you with Paul, it would be infinitely worse with me. I thought if I could drive you away, you might be bitter, of course, but you'd get on with your life, and I could skulk away and deal with my problems myself. I was trying to make things easier for you, without guilting you into staying with me, and taking care of a sick woman. Please, tell me you understand that, at least?" Tears were sliding down her cheeks. "I know you must hate me for keeping things from you, and I'll understand if you never want to see me again, but I need to know that you understand that I did it for you."

Perry shook his head. "Della, I don't think I can ever understand why you did what you did, nor can I forgive you for keeping something so important to me - to us - from me. Damn it, don't you know that I would have moved Heaven and earth to keep you safe, and get you healthy? I never would have left Los Angeles to go back to San Francisco, if you had just told me!"

Della spread her hands in a supplicating gesture. "I didn't want you to give up your life for me," she replied, her voice hoarse as she attempted, in vain, to hold back her tears. "I didn't want you to….and you did anyway," she added, the enormity of what he had done for her, after she had been so horrid to him, hitting her full force. The only thing she wanted now was for him to hold her in his arms, and tell her that he forgave her. If they never got back together, she could deal with that, she told herself, as long as they could still be friends.

He shook his head, and moved closer to her on the sofa, taking both her hands in his once more. The fact that they were trembling made him realize that whatever he said next would be the lynchpin on which their relationship hung. "And I would do it again," he whispered. "But more importantly….are you-"

"-I'm fine, just fine. I'll be even finer if you say you've forgiven me."

"I'll forgive you if you never again use the word 'finer' improperly," he smiled.

She held up three fingers in an oath. "Scout's honor."

"Come here," releasing her hands, along with the breath that he didn't realize he had also been holding as he waited for her answer, he held his arms open to her. "Come on," he urged, a bit more tenderly this time, waggling his fingers a bit.

Not needing any more incentive, Della flung herself into his arms, and allowed herself a good cry on his shoulder. "You said that you could never forgive me for keeping something like that from you," she reminded him, once her tears had abated. "But I'm so very glad that you did."

"Della, honey, the next time I say something like that, you remind yourself that I love you so very much, that there is literally nothing I can't forgive you for." He stood, then helped her up from the sofa. "Why don't you and I go upstairs?"

She gave him the most innocent look that she could muster. "Upstairs? What for? To check on the surgeon's handiwork? I can assure you, everything is exactly the same as it's always been."

"I'll be the judge of that." Perry countered. "Honey, the only thing I want to do is hold you. You let Arthur hold you when you needed it. The least you can do is let me hold you when we both need it."

They began to climb the stairs, Perry's arm around Della's waist, and her head leaning against his shoulder.

Perry felt compelled to ask. "You did only let him hold you, didn't you?"

Della scoffed. "Of course I did, and even then, it was only for about a half hour. Then I sent him home - alone. Do you think I could have a man like Perry Mason, and have my head turned by anyone else?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know. He was here in Los Angeles, I wasn't with you-"

"-You won't be with me if you keep up this line of malarkey. Do you want me to ask you if you had any other women in San Francisco?"

"You've made your point."

Della opened the door to the spare room. "Good. Then let's get to work."

"What do you mean?"

"You don't expect me to be held in the guest room, do you? Not when we have a far superior bed in our room, ready and waiting for us."

"Then why are we in here?" Perry asked. His eyes darted to the suitcase on his bed. He had seen enough tampered evidence to know when his bag had been rifled through. And he knew who the culprit was, too.

"Because I want you to put your things back where they belong. In our room. I'll take possession of these," she added, pulling the two framed photos from inside his bag. "The picture of us goes on the nightstand. This one of me, that can go in the closet. At the back."