Author's Note: This is a tenative ending -- I'm not fully convinced I like it, but I like the fact that it's open ended and it doesn't answer all the questions about what happens next. I guess for me it makes it a little more realistic (if these stories ever can be) and thoughtful. I also like the reflection of how the characters have grown as people by being thrown into roles that are foriegn to them. Let me know what you think. -Jac

My strongest coping skill has always been repression; there is so much of my childhood that I don't remember simply because I have repressed all the things that have threatened to hurt me. My father's funeral is much the same. The day was a blur in which I only remember a few things. I must have been numb; I must have sat still watching the people around me as if I had been caught in some horrible dream. Most of my days have felt like that; most of my days have a derealization that prompts me to question if the events they contained have really happened.

I think it has been four days since the funeral. It could have very well been four weeks; all the hours have seemed to become the same. All the days seem vaguely alike. Each day is built around a carefully constructed routine that Garrett thinks will help me begin to adjust to all the changes in my life. I wanted to argue that these weren't just changes; the events of the last few days managed to completely restructure my life. Nothing from here forward would be the same. My foundation was gone; I was no more than an unstable house swaying in the wind. I wasn't anchored to something or someone. It was the most insecure feeling I had ever felt. I told Woody that it was like drifting in the wind. He agreed. He said that it never gets better; you just get used to searching for something or someone to reconnect to . . . you look to find something that could be your foundation.

I spent my first night alone since Dad died. Nigel offered to cancel his date and Garrett volunteered to spend the night on the couch, but I was sick of the constant stream of people wandering through the front door. I had barely a minute of silence to fill with my own thoughts. People always wanted to talk; I wished that they had realized that they hadn't given me a chance to even think about how I was feeling. I planned to spend the night thinking; Woody asked me to call before I packed up and ran. Garrett told me not to do anything stupid. I appreciated their concern, but I was too tired to run or self-destruct. Tonight, I needed to do nothing but think.

Dad's room was packed up. All that remained was the furniture and a few personal items that I couldn't bear to part with. His possessions were few; he liquidated the house the minute his eyes fell upon the home of the Pogue. He kept only what was necessary to survive. I didn't blame him; most of our possessions reminded us only of the distant unhappy memories that seemed to plague our lives. The few things that remained were reminiscent of happier times; a knick-knack from a weekend spent in the Cape and seashells collected from a beach in Florida. Florida was our first and our last family vacation; Mom was too sick to be able to travel. Dad couldn't leave her at home alone, so we rarely ventured outside of Boston. I remember rarely even venturing outside the neighborhood.

I stripped the sheets from Dad's bed. I laundered them and replaced them on the bed making sure that all the corners were perfectly creased hospital corners. I dusted the mahogany wood on the bureau and the armoire. I opened a window despite the brisk January air; I needed to do something to breathe new life into the vacant house.

I had begun to make plans to leave Pearle Street in favor of living in my childhood home. I had begun to pack up my bedroom, which had barely changed since I was eighteen years old. Dad had left all the posters and décor as I had liked it. I regretted never cleaning up the room as he had asked me to do three days before I left for college. It pained me to put those memories away, but looking at the mementos made me realize just how much I had grown as a woman in the last few years. It was both a comfort and something terrifying. It dawned on me that I was a middle-age, single woman alone in the world. That was something that suddenly scared me more than I could even imagine.

"Cavanaugh," I said as I answered my cell phone. I was cleaning the living room. Dad never lifted up the knick-knacks when he dusted; he just dusted around them. It made me laugh. It was one of those quirky things that made me love his efforts as a single father. He did a great job; I never thanked him for that.

"Jordan, I just wanted to make sure that you were doing okay," Woody said. I was doing okay; I was caught in memories triggered by old high school yearbooks and photographs that had been tucked away years ago. Those things made me happy; I spent an hour laughing at the pictures of junior prom. Paul had taken me; he accidentally stabbed me with the pin when he put on my corsage. Paul awkwardly kissed me good-night. I went home thinking that Paul was the man I would marry; ten days later, he told me that he planned to enter the clergy after high school. I spent an entire weekend crying into my pillow. Dad asked if I needed to go to the doctor for what he assumed had something to do with 'woman problems.'

"I'm okay. I've been cleaning the house. I found some old pictures and yearbooks . . . it's keeping me busy," I replied.

"I just wanted to make sure you were okay," Woody replied. I don't think people had expected me to be able to keep things together as I had. I had been very stoic, but that was an illusion. I hadn't had the time to be anything other than stoic. I didn't feel as though I could break down in tears in front of people I didn't know; I had only cried in front of Garrett, Woody, Nigel, and Lily. They were the only people that had made me feel comfortable enough to cry . . . to be vulnerable.

"Thank you," I replied. The tension was still there; no matter how hard we tried to bury all the feelings and all our excuses for bad behavior.

"I'm in your driveway. I thought you might want some groceries," Woody said with a slight pause. He tried so hard to make things tolerable; he tried so hard to mend a relationship that had been broken into a million pieces. At the funeral, Detective Capra asked me when it all began to fall apart. I immediately knew what she was talking about. It probably began to fall apart the minute that James was in the river, since then it's just been crumbling slowly and painfully. The minute we momentarily stopped the inevitable path of relationship destruction, something else happened. It always did.

"I'll let you in," I replied as I hung up the phone. He stood at the door with two bags of groceries in his arms and a gallon of milk slung on one of his fingers. He smiled awkwardly; I could tell that he was trying to determine exactly how mad I was that my quiet evening had been disrupted. Being with Woody was different, he didn't push me to talk . . . he didn't push me to do anything. He was a quiet comfort that I had recently begun to enjoy; although Garrett reminded me to be careful, the memories of his own parents seemed to have softened Woody. It made me realize that maybe it was time that I began to let him back in.

"Are you just going to stand there and stare at me?" Woody asked. I hadn't realized how lost in my thoughts I was.

"I'm sorry," I said as I reached out to help him, but he ordered me to go sit down. I followed him into the kitchen.

"You don't need to," I replied.

"Jordan, I know how you cook . . . I'm sure that every delivery man in Boston has been over to this house in the last week. You need to eat something decent," Woody replied.

"Are you the mother hen again?" I teased. I had called him that nearly a week ago. I remembered that. I remembered the way he looked at me. I remembered the way his eyes nearly begged me to eat the Chinese food he had brought over.

"Not funny, Jordan," Woody replied as he placed the bags on the counter. I began to help him unload them; I never realized how well he knew me. He had purchased all my favorite foods and drinks. I had always prided myself on not letting people know me, but I didn't realize exactly how much I had let him creep into my heart. I spent so much time denying that I had let him become a large part of my life; if it weren't true, I wouldn't have gotten mad about Devan and Sam. I wouldn't have spent evenings alone in my apartment secretly wishing that he was having a rotten time with his date.

"How are you doing?" Woody asked. He would ask that whenever I had gotten too quiet. I hated and loved that question all at the same time; I loved how much he cared about my wellbeing, but it was still too painful to think about exactly how I had been ground down to such a low level of functioning.

"You know," I replied.

"Have you eaten yet this evening?" Woody asked. I hadn't; I hadn't eaten all day. I hadn't felt the need to eat; I was more concerned about packing away all the memories that I wasn't quite ready to face yet.

"No," I replied as I sat down at the kitchen table. I hadn't realized just how tired I was.

"I'll make you supper," Woody replied.

He did make me supper. He made me macaroni and cheese that didn't originate in a blue box or a yellow box for that matter. I watched him; we barely said a word to each other. He told me that he found the recipe in one of his mother's recipe boxes just a few years ago when he decided to sell their family home so Cal could go to college and get settled in California. It was a rather short explanation, but his actions spoke volumes.

He sacrificed so much for other people. He was uncomfortable being on the receiving end of attention. When things became too personal and the spotlight was on him, Woody was afraid. He was afraid to let people see his weakness; it was hard for him to be vulnerable. He didn't have the luxury of ever being vulnerable; he had raised a child when he was nothing more than a child. It had taken so much for him to be vulnerable enough to let me become a part of his life; a part that he desired to make permanent. I wondered why I never realized that before. I wondered why my most coherent thinking was always done in times of crisis.

"You okay?" Woody asked again as he pushed a bowl of macaroni in front of me.

"Just thinking," I replied.

"About?" Woody asked.

"Cape Cod . . . junior prom . . . things that didn't seem to mean anything until . . .," I replied, "The number of good times were really disproportionate compared to the bad times."

He didn't say a word. He didn't need to. He just waited patiently for me to finish.

"I miss him . . . I missed out on so many years with him. I was so obsessed with my mother that Dad never got the chance to move on with his life. He was married to a ghost . . . a ghost with secrets that tormented us for years," I replied.

"It's over now," Woody replied. I really wished that it was just that simple. Things were never that simple; there were so many unanswered questions. There were so many times I didn't apologize. I would live with that guilt forever.

"It doesn't feel over," I replied.

"But this time it is . . . there aren't anymore answers, Jordan. Some things just end up going to the grave with people. The questions that you want answered . . . you probably don't want the answers . . . you might be disappointed with the answers," Woody replied. There were certain questions that I didn't want answered . . . my paternity . . . what did Malden do to me between his office and the alley . . . who killed my mother. Some of the answers scared me. I told myself that the answers didn't matter anymore; it was time to move on with life. It was time to start thinking about the future rather than fixating on the past. I was determined to do that.

"I know," I replied.

"So do I get to see these yearbooks that you unearthed today?" Woody asked. He smiled.

"No, I was thinking about burning them . . . I don't think the 80's were all that kind to me," I replied.

"I'm sure you were always beautiful," Woody replied. I could feel myself blush.

We did end up looking at old pictures. I told him stories that I hadn't ever told anyone before. I told him about Paul. I told him about my psychotic college roommate. I playfully slapped him when he told me that I made for a really cute Catholic school girl. It was like time disappeared; maybe it was more like we turned back time to somewhere between the kiss and California and the Malden debacle. It was somewhere markedly safer than the last few months.

Woody asked me if I thought that I could trust him. I told him that I wished I had seen this vulnerability months ago; I wished that he hadn't always pretended to be something or someone other than who he really was. He told me that he didn't want me to see him as broken. I understood; I often let him be the one that was strong for me. I let him protect me multiple times. Woody asked me to stay vulnerable; he asked me to stop pushing people away.

"I know trust is fragile, but let's try this thing again. I don't want to lose you again. I don't want to play the games . . . let's not waste anymore time. I know this probably isn't the right time . . . I know you aren't ready, but can you at least think about this?" Woody asked. He took me off guard because I wasn't ready. I could tell that he had put thought into his admission; he looked worried . . . he looked scared. Trust was fragile, but I didn't think he would back out as he did last time I was ready.

"I'm not sure when I'll be ready, but will you wait for me?" I asked. He smiled. I swore that I could see the tears filling his eyes. He wrapped his arms around me . . . I knew it would take time, but I hoped that maybe someday Woody and I would be able to rebuild the foundations that we were lacking.

"So does this mean that your quest for cowboys, leather boots, and barbeque has come to an end?" Woody asked as I began to drift off to sleep on the couch.

"Only if your quest for bimbos and blackjack is over," I replied unknowingly in my sedate haze.

"Fair enough," Woody said as I drifted off to sleep.

Out of the beauty that I had found on Earth, forgiveness . . . second, third, and forth chances . . . might just be the most beautiful thing.

FIN