Alex was in the kitchen getting dinner ready. It was spaghetti night which means twice the mess as usual nights as he dumped the first jar of spaghetti sauce into the huge pot on the stove.

"Here you go, Daddy," Eli said, handing him the other jar of spaghetti sauce.

"Thanks, bud," Alex smiled at Eli, his little co-chef tonight.

Eli ran off to get the noodles as Alex put the other jar of sauce in the pot and turned on the burner to simmer.

Izzie always went all out with the homemade sauce and everything, but Alex made a version of spaghetti sauce that he and Jo used to make. It was basically just, roasted ground beef, two different kinds of store-bought spaghetti sauce, and a dash of fresh garlic and hot pepper flakes. Izzie hated it, but the twins absolutely loved it and she wasn't here to tell him what to do. So Daddy's spaghetti sauce it was.

"Alex!" He heard his mother call out to him from the office down the hall. "There's something wrong with my video call!"

"Just a second mom," Alex said as he put the can of sauce in the sink and wiped his hands.

"Eli hold off on the noodles and don't do anything in the kitchen until I get back," Alex said, taking the pack of noodles from him.

"Okay," Eli said as he scurried off to join his sister on the carpet as she played with their tablet. It was a little pre-dinner technology time and they were completely engrossed in it and didn't even notice as Alex left the room.

He walked down the hall to the little office Helen had in the corner of the house. Ever since the pandemic started Alex had moved back to Iowa to keep an eye on his mother during the lockdown. The library had closed and Helen struggled to maintain her schedule. Having Alex there had helped as he set her up with her therapist two times a week and she was able to help the kids with their school work in place of her work at the library. It wasn't perfect, but they made do.

Izzie wasn't with them as the two of them were fighting. Izzie was upset he wouldn't call her his girlfriend, despite their relationship and the fact that they lived and parented together. Alex tried to love her and he wanted to make it work, but he couldn't just jump all in. Izzie wanted to pick up where they left off. She wanted them to be together, so she could say she had the perfect life; a partner, and kids, and everything. However, Alex wasn't ready to fully love her like that again. Truth be told he was still in love with Jo. He needed time to let go of Jo and grieve the loss of his marriage to her.

The pandemic had put a strain on all of that and Izzie had opted to stay back in Kansas, although she called every day to talk to the kids. As Izzie continued to work through the pandemic, Alex was left alone to parent the twins when the schools closed. Before the shutdown, Alex hadn't been able to find a job and was just subbing for the Ped's attendings at the hospital Izzie worked at. With the quarantine that had transitioned to the occasional Zoom call consult and now he was mostly just a stay-at-home dad to the twins.

"I had the email on the computer and I clicked the link, but then this little box popped up and asked for a password, but I've never used a password before?" Helen explained as she pointed to the computer set up on the desk for a video call with her doctor.

She sat back in the chair and twisted her fingers as she looked up at the clock. It was five minutes past five and he could tell she was getting upset that the call hadn't gone as planned throwing off her schedule. She was going to therapy twice a week and had an extra doctor's video appointment every other week, on Friday evenings.

"Okay, let me see," Alex said as he pulled up the zoom meeting on the computer. He double checked the internet settings and went back to the original email. Alex quickly read it over. It was the standard zoom email with time and place and the passcode at the bottom. Alex clicked the link and waited for it to start up.

The Zoom started up but prompted him for the password and Alex quickly input the code and the zoom meeting connection started up on the screen.

"Thank you, Alex, but you should go," Helen urged as she put a hand on his chest and gently pushed him back.

Alex stepped away to give his mother her privacy, but then the video connected and a baby appeared on the screen. The baby couldn't have been more than six months old as the camera was angled to the floor so they could see the baby sitting up on a blanket surrounded by toys. The baby smiled as soon as the video started. They locked eyes with Helen and babbled excitedly before leaning towards her. The baby excitedly babbled, as they seemed to recognize Helen and she smiled as she looked at them.

"Hello, little one," Helen said as she leaned forward and waved at the baby. "I'm so happy to see you, but where's your Mommy?"

Alex stepped forward and smiled as he watched them interact. He wasn't surprised that the doctor put their computer on their coffee table and did Zoom meetings with their baby. They were in the middle of a pandemic and he had done the same with the twins when he consulted for a few Ped's cases at the hospital in Kansas City. Then he recognized the couch behind the baby. It was the white couch that Jo had bought for him with his money that she won after the ping pong match. The room around the baby was the loft in Seattle.

"Hey, do you see Grandma?" Jo's sweet voice came through the line as she sat down on the floor next to the baby and picked them up before sitting them in her lap. "I was worried when you were late. I was just about to call you, but I couldn't find my phone... Alex?"

Alex stood there dumbfounded as they locked eyes. Jo was just as shocked to see him as he was, but only for a moment before Jo grew angry and reached forward to end the call.

"No, Josephine, please wait, he's leaving," Helen pleaded with her but it was too late as Jo closed the laptop and ended the call.

Helen turned around and glared at him. "I told you to go."

"No you can't do that, you can't just tell me to leave when you've been video chatting with my ex-wife and her baby?" Alex said, he tried not to get too upset, but he couldn't help it.

Alex just stood there shocked as he thought about Jo and the baby in her lap, video chatting with his mother. This had to have been an ongoing thing as Helen had it scheduled out every other Friday for weeks. He remembered walking past the door one time and hearing baby giggles, he brushed it off as just weird feedback, but there was a baby.

It was Jo's baby. He didn't even know how she's had a baby. She couldn't have been pregnant when he left because the baby was around six months old and he'd only divorce her five months and twenty-one days ago. So unless she'd given birth right after he left Seattle the baby wasn't theirs and he'd certainly know if Jo was nine months pregnant before he left. The tally in his head of how long it had been since he left her was a constant reminder of the life he'd left behind.

"Just because you cut Josephine out of your life doesn't mean that I have to," Helen said, raising her voice as she twisted her fingers. "When you left she had no one, no family, I still remember the day she called me to say that you had divorced her. Instead of hearing it from you, I heard from my daughter-in-law that my son had two kids and an ex-wife in Kansas and that he was divorcing her to be with them."

"So what, you just took her side in everything?" Alex said, getting defensive as he crossed his arms.

"I'm not on anybody's side," Helen insisted, getting more upset. "I let you come stay with me and, I love you, Alex I do, and I love your twins, and I love being a Grandma to them, but I love having Josephine as my daughter-in-law, too. Before your divorce, Josephine and I called each other twice a month and after you left her I continued to call her, she never stopped taking my calls, unlike how you did. It's part of my routine and I'm so gracious that she still lets me be a part of her life. Her one condition was that I couldn't tell you that we were still in contact and I respected that."

Alex sat down in the chair across from his mom as he processed the information. He didn't know anything about Jo's life now. Meredith wouldn't tell him anything when they talk, despite how he asked occasionally.

"I'm sorry, you're right and you have every right to keep in contact with Jo," Alex said as Helen nodded and relaxed back into her chair. "How is she? The baby, is it hers?"

"Sort of, he's her foster baby and she's trying to adopt him. Josephine picked him up from the fire station after his birth parents dropped him off there and she's been fostering him ever since. His name is Asher, he just turned six months old last week," Helen said as she smiled and pulled out her phone, she quickly pulled up a picture of them and handed her phone to Alex.

Jo was holding Asher and they were pressed up against each other cheek to cheek. Jo had such a wide smile across her face, one that he had seen many times when she was joyously happy and it made him smile too. They had been trying for a baby before he left and it made his heartache, despite how happy he was for her.

"He's really cute," Alex said handing the phone back to his mother, but the image remained burned into his mind.

"Yeah he's such a sweetheart too, always babbling on about something," Helen said as she looks down at the picture.

"Why don't you text Jo and tell her that I'm gone. I won't interrupt your video chats again, maybe she'll call back," Alex said as he got up and went to the door.

"Thank you, Alex," Helen said standing up and reaching to put a hand on his cheek.

Alex just nodded and left. He went back down the hall and went back to the pot of sauce, but he couldn't get his mind off the image of Jo and Asher. He looked over at the twins. They were completely engrossed in the game they were playing. It was this water game where they had to draw a path to give water to an alligator so they could take a shower. Alexis was directing Eli's hand and trying to draw the path over him as they argued over the right path for the water.

"Alexis let your brother create the path for the water this time, you can do the next one," Alex said to them as he turned the heat on the spaghetti sauce down as it had started bubbling over while he was gone. "But just five more minutes guys and then I need your help to set the table."

"Okay," They quickly replied in sync, but didn't look up from their game.

It was easy for Alex to step back into the role of father for his twins and focus on the life he had in front of him, but he couldn't get Jo off his mind. Alex started the water for the pasta set before he got out a stack of four plates and set them on the counter where the kids could reach them. Then he walked back down the hall. Alex pressed his ear up against the door as he heard Jo and Helen talking while Asher babbled in the background. He heard Jo laugh at something that Asher did and he took in a breath as a knot formed in his chest.

He had regretted his decision to divorce Jo from the second he sent out the papers, but he was too much of a coward to take it back now. Alex loved Alexis and Eli with every fiber of his being and he didn't regret a second of his life with them. He just wished he could go back and tell Jo about them. He wished he would have asked her to co-parent them with him. He wished he would have done all this with her, but he didn't and he couldn't take it back now. So he just stood there and he closed his eyes as he listened to her laugh.