The second half of October had been so intense that Jackie wished she had had a four-day weekend instead of just two.

After making the decision, they had spent a few hours talking about all they would need to do, change, or buy if the social workers decided to let them have Thomas. And after a night of restless sleep, they had spent the whole next morning talking with what felt like hundreds of people at the Social Services office. They left the office with awful headaches and were more than thankful for Kitty's invitation for lunch.

Somehow, they had managed to convince Kitty not to say anything about Thomas to anybody. They wanted to keep it quiet, lest it didn't work. Of course, Red knew too, but they didn't need to ask him to keep quiet to know that Red wouldn't say a thing.

Friday had felt like three days crammed into one. Steven had a lot of paperwork to catch up on both at the record store and the studio. What started as an overnight trip to Point Place had turned into almost a whole week. He had gone to fix an emergency with Groove's that had happened right after returning from a 5-day trip to Seattle with Angie. Between the paperwork he hadn't been able to finish in Point Place and all the stuff from his last trip, Hyde was already abundantly overloaded. On top of that, he'd had to add all the interviews with social workers and shrinks from Social Services.

Jackie had to finish the sketches for Mrs. Preston, who'd been very understanding when Jackie had called her asking for a few more days due to a family emergency. As soon as they returned to Madison Jackie had shown Mrs. Preston the designs she had hurriedly worked on in Point Place and had had to re-do several of them to accommodate her requests.

Besides Mrs. Preston's living room, Jackie was still in the middle of a hotel lobby do-over, going over patterns and colours for a studio set and finishing the last touches for an elderly lady's dining room. On top of all of that, another job had turned up while she was still in Point Place, but she had had her assistant push that for the following Monday.

The beginning of November was just as stressful as the previous weeks had been and neither of them had the energy to go back to Point Place for Red's Veteran's Day barbecue. Instead, they re-enacted their very first date again, this time in a hidden overlook on Hoyt Park that Steven had discovered a few months back driving Layla around to visit some friends. It wasn't quite like Mount Hump, but the view of the sunset was especially colourful that evening.

After that little respite they had dived back into their jobs and other appointments. They were both in great places in their lives: they both enjoyed their jobs, their relationship felt stronger than ever and their house was completely furnished and decorated – which had taken about two whole years.

"I guess we'll have to change a lot of things" Jackie commented looking around the house after getting a call from the social worker saying she was on her way.

Jackie was worried about all the interviews. Both she and Steven looked tired and stressed during the interviews and Jackie thought that it wasn't a good sign. During the last few months, she had learned to read people's facial expressions rather well, but the people from social services were nearly impossible to read, so she couldn't know what to expect. Fortunately, neither of them had ever been late to any of the appointments and the house - though not spotless as she might have liked, was clean and tidy enough when the social worker had shown up for the surprise inspection.

/-/-/-/-/

November 17th, 1983

6:32 pm

Hyde and Jackie's house.

They were exhausted. Steven had had to go to Point Place for the day to sign up some papers for Ryan and was planning a trip to New York for the week following Thanksgiving. Jackie had spent the whole day on her feet. Mrs. Preston had been a tough nut to crack. In the past three weeks Jackie had drawn the designs four times before Mrs Preston had been convinced, and today Jackie had spent most of the afternoon showing her fabric samples for the curtains, upholstery and throw pillows, and a big folder with wallpaper samples.

Jackie was starting to hate Mrs. Preston's living room. Ever since she'd started her business, she'd thoroughly enjoyed all her commissions, but this time it was only giving her headaches every other day. And today was one of those days.

After the month they had had, they were almost dreading Thanksgiving dinner the following week, but fortunately, Mrs. Forman had agreed to do Thanksgiving at WB's house in Milwaukee. This suited Steven and Jackie a lot more than going all the way to Point Place. And even though Milwaukee was much closer to Madison than Point Place, they had already spoken to WB about staying in one of his guest bedrooms. The idea of driving back home after Thanksgiving dinner, especially in the Forman's house – even if their apartment in Point Place was only 10 minutes away – was unconceivable.

"It's been almost two weeks" commented Jackie, not really eating her food.

"Kitty said it would take a while" replied Steven, also downcast, but trying to sound hopeful.

"Would you do the dishes?" asked Jackie after giving up on her dinner, her stomach was a ball of knots. "I'm going to lay down a little while"

She usually did the dishes every time he cooked dinner, but her head was killing her. She'd taken an aspirin, but it wasn't doing any good. Steven nodded silently and turned to the sink while she walked to the lounge.

The sound of Jimi Hendrix's guitar accompanied him while he washed, dried and put away the dishes. He was so enthralled by the music that he didn't even hear the doorbell ring. But he did hear Jackie's high-pitched cry coming from the front door.

He hurried through the swinging door still holding a cup and a teatowel and stopped dead in the middle of the hall.

There, on his doorway, was the social worker holding little Thomas in her arms. "Hi" said her, with a smile.

"Oh, my goodness!" exclaimed Jackie again, headache completely forgotten, looking back at Steven's astonished face, almost jumping up and down like she used to do on her teenage years whenever someone gave her something shining.

Steven left the cup and the dish towel on the nearest step on the staircase on his right and approached the door slowly, not taking his eyes from the little boy.

"Hey, kid" he greeted as he had the other times "remember me?"

Yay!