Mary walks upstairs, and into the room Wilson is in. She opens the door, and finds Wilson sitting on the bed staring into space. He does not notice she is there, so Mary stands there for a while, entranced. After a little while, he looks up and sees her.

"Hey." She says to him, walking closer.

"Come here," he says, pulling her down to his lap. Mary sits on top of him, and places her head on the shoulder of his good arm.

"Did you sleep OK?"

"Yeah, I did actually."

"Good. How's your arm?"

"Not too bad." He lies, and then moves in to kiss Mary on the lips. As he does so, he can taste the salt of her tears in her mouth. "What's wrong?" he asks her.

"Why do you think something's wrong?" Wilson just stares back at her. "I'm fine, honest."

"Then why do you seem so sad?"

"I'm not sad!" she protests.

"OK." Wilson says, not sounding convinced in the least. "You know, I don't know why you're lying to me."

Mary thinks for a second. She didn't know why she was lying to him either. All she knew was that she didn't want to tell him things she wasn't sure of herself. She kisses him, trying to get off of this topic. Wilson leans into the kiss, but quickly pulls away.

"Don't think that you're going to get away that easy." He says smiling.

"I can try, though, can't I?" she asks just before kissing him once more. Her hands go to his face as his run down her side stopping at the small of her back. Mary pushes him back onto the bed, and lies on top of him, never breaking the kiss. She is careful not to hurt Wilson's arm, inadvertently pushing her hips into his to support the weight of her body. Wilson moans slightly and uses all of his self-discipline not to do something he would later regret.

As things start to escalate even farther, there is a knock at the door. Wilson tries to pull away, so that Mary could answer the door, but she pins him down to the bed. She has no intentions of answering the door.

Wilson pulls away for a second. "Get that," he manages to get out before Mary's lips capture his once more.

"They'll leave." Mary says in between kisses.

They knock again on the door, this time harder.

"Mary? Can I come in for a second?" She can barely hear her father's voice as she continues to make out with Wilson, concentrating more on her sense of touch rather than sound.

She groans, and gets off of Wilson, helping him sit up as well. She smiles at him, teasingly, as she goes to open the door.

"Family meeting, downstairs, now." her father tells her.

"Who's in trouble?" Mary says on instinct. She immediately assumed the meeting was called to get her to leave.

"No one's in trouble. This meeting is about me."

"Are you OK? Are you sick? Is it your heart again?" She asks him so quickly her words are jumbled together.

"I'm fine, I just want to talk to everyone. Now come down stairs," he tells her. "And you too, Wilson." He adds, peeking his head around his daughter to put the 24-year-old man into his line of sight.

"But-"

"No buts. Besides, I think you've spent enough quality time with Wilson for one day. It won't kill to spend some time with your eyes on us rather than him."

Mary smiles. "OK Dad. We'll be down in a minute." She says, closing the door once more. She goes back over to the bed, and sits down next to Wilson. "Now, where were we?"

"Wait. Aren't we going downstairs?"

"We don't have to."

"Yes we do. You just told your father we would."

"Yeah, but this is a lot better." Mary leans in to kiss him, but Wilson puts his finger to her lips, stopping her.

"What do you think that's all about?"

"I don't know." Mary answers. "But if you really want to know, I guess we could go find out."

Mary and Wilson approach the living room to find everyone sitting waiting for them.

"Sorry." Mary says, taking the empty spot on the couch next to Lucy. Lucy scoots away from Mary, staring at her evilly. Mary takes notice to this, but says nothing. She takes the hand of Wilson sitting next to her, and places it in her lap. Lucy looks at the two of them, disgusted, and gets up. She stands next to her mother, who places an arm around Lucy. The two of them look scornfully at Mary and Wilson.

Wilson and Mary exchange glances. Wilson can tell in that split second when their eyes meet that this was bothering Mary, more then he could ever fully grasp. He squeezes her hand, trying to get her attention, but her eyes immediately go to the floor.

"Well, I wanted to tell you all that as of Sunday, I will be officially back at the church." Eric starts. No one seems enthused or concerned, so he continues. "I'm going to be giving my first sermon since October, and I'd like you all to be there."

"Wouldn't miss it for anything." Matt says.

"Ditto." Ruthie says.

"Yeah." Simon adds.

"I'll be there," says Robbie.

"Thanks." Reverend Camden says. "And, on a different note, I know that we're all going through a tough time right now. Some of us more than others…" he says, staring at Lucy, "but this isn't easy on any of us. It's scary when you trust someone and they, um, turn on you."

"But they don't just suddenly snap for no reason Eric. Something had to happen for him to act this way." Annie says, surprising everyone. The whole group turns and stares directly at Mary. She looks toward Wilson for comfort, but he doesn't know what to do. He doesn't know how to assess the situation.

"Wilson can't help you." Lucy says angrily. "Besides, he's not the one we're all angry at. He hasn't done anything, at least anything you haven't forced him into doing."

"What did I do?" Mary asks, her eyes starting to tear up.

"What haven't you done?!" Lucy screams at her. Mary looks around to the rest of her family, and can tell by the looks on their faces they all feel the same way.

"You know what, fine." Mary says standing up, full out bawling. "I've tried and tried and tried for you guys to treat me the way you should be treating me, like a normal human being, but I give up. I don't understand why you all still think I'm such a screw up. I'm not perfect, but neither are any of you, and if you want to continuously toot your own horn, then fine. I'm out of here. I don't know why I came back here to begin with." Mary runs out the front door, and slams it loudly behind her. She climbs into her car, and drives away. She doesn't know where she is headed, and can barely see through her tears, so she slowly starts to drive down the street, and out into the heart of GlenOak.

Wilson stands up, not sure of what to do. "I, uh, I…"

"Come on Wilson," Matt says standing up next to him. "Let's go and get her. " Wilson nods. "You know," Matt says to his family, "She's been upset over all of you the entire day. And I think she has enough to worry about without always having to consider if you guys will continue to stand by her. She's your sister, your daughter, it should be a given. Didn't you guys learn your lesson when she came home last year?! Why do we always have to chase her away?!" Matt screams, then walks out the door, Wilson on his heels.

Mary has no clue where to go, but decides to head to the church. At least her father won't come looking for her there. She pulls into the parking lot, and continues to sob. She was really lost, and she didn't even have Wilson with her to help. She had to go through this all by herself, and she isn't strong enough. So much has happened to her in the past six months that she hasn't had enough time to adjust. First she moved to Fort Lauderdale, then she broke up with Jack. The next thing she knew, she was back together with Wilson, trying to keep his mind off of Billy, while attempting to strengthen their relationship for the fourth time. Now she's in GlenOak, her family hates her, and the love of her life was just shot at by her sister's soon-to-be-fiancé. Mary's sense of self isn't strong enough to tackle two of these problems at once, let alone all seven. She can't do it anymore. She needs some time to help herself.

As she continues to think, now about how she is going to apologize for this mistake, a car pulls up next to hers. She sees it's the family van, and is pleasantly surprised to see Matt and Wilson inside. Wilson gets out of the van and gets into Mary's car, clutching her closely as soon as he sits down inside.

"Why didn't you tell me that's what you were upset about? I could have helped you."

Mary doesn't answer- she doesn't have an answer to give him. She just continues to cry as Wilson draws her closer. After about ten minutes, Matt knocks on the car window. Mary turns around, and Matt opens the door. He bends down and hugs his sister, trying to ease her pain.

"I love you. And forget all of them. You're right, you shouldn't have to try that hard for them to like you. So don't, and let them figure out what they're missing." Matt tells her, not expecting a response. He looks towards Wilson. "You can drive her home, right?" Wilson nods. Matt says goodbye, and leaves Mary and Wilson alone in her car.

Mary starts to calm down, and finally speaks. "I want to go home, home as in Ft. Lauderdale. They don't want to be around me, and I don't want to be around them. I've tried for the last time. They can apologize all they want, it isn't going to do anything. They've had their last chance."

"You don't really mean that, do you?"

"Yes, I do. This is the way they always seem to treat me, except this time it was really bad."

"But they're your family. You love them."

"I do love my family, but those people aren't my family. My family wouldn't treat me like that."

"Yeah, well-" Wilson can't even finish because Mary starts to cry again. Wilson kisses Mary's lips benevolently, and continues to kiss her for nearly a half an hour. "Let's go home." Wilson tells her after she seems to have subdued.

"But-"

"No buts. I'm driving you home and you're going to settle all of this. I'll help you."

"I'm so sorry for dragging you into the middle of this."

"Don't worry about it. I'm your boyfriend, it comes with the territory."

Mary and Wilson switch seats, so that Wilson's sitting in the driver's side. He starts up the car and pulls out of the church parking lot, and heads in the direction of the Camden home. As they take the five minute drive to the house, both of them wonder if things will ever obtain any sort of "normalcy"- between Mary and the Camdens or even Mary and Wilson as lovers. Wilson didn't know how he was going to fix this wonderful mess Mary had managed to get herself into, but he was sure going to try. Things would never be the exact same at the Camden house again, but isn't change the spice of life?

The End ***I know that I posted earlier that I was going to put an epilogue to this story, but I have no incentive to finish it. I wrote about four chapters of it, but I don't want to finish it. So, in case you are wondering, I'm not. Maybe one day I might, but in all honesty I don't plan to. Sorry.