It took be about a four hour panicked phone call to Mindy before I realized that I hadn't completely blown it. I wanted so much to tell Ephram that this was his son, that he'd had a son. I couldn't though. His heart was already broken and I couldn't make things worse.

Months went by. Ephram went into grief counseling a couple of times a week, and tried to put his life back together. Delia graduated from NYU and I was there to cheer her on. I ended up giving about 75 autographs, but it was worth it to see her. I don't think Dr Brown was too happy to see me, but that was tough. If my presence pissed him off that was an unexpected bonus. I decided that I needed to get off my ass and do some work, so I went back into the studio. The boys weren't quite ready so I decided to make a solo album. It was something I'd thought about for a while and my manager, and the rest of the band were happy with the idea so I ran with it.

It took me a lot longer than I expected to write the songs. I finally had the chance to play about with the musical style. It's funny when you've been playing one type of music for 10 years and you suddenly realize that you don't even like it any more. Maybe that's some kind of metaphor for life. You just exist for years at a time, drifting by just putting one foot in front of the other, but never really thinking about what you're doing. Then you stop and realize that you're not living and you're not exactly sure how you got where you were. You have all these routines that used to mean something and now they're essentially meaningless.

It was September before the album was almost finished. I was actually quite proud of it. It didn't sound much like the stuff I played with the band, so maybe it was a leap of faith. It was just stuff that I liked and that I hoped other people would like.

It was all my own stuff except one; a song that Mindy Smith had sung called One Moment More. I couldn't figure out where I first heard it, but then I remembered that Delia had played it in those horrible first days after Katie died. It said a lot about death, and saying goodbye. At first I though I was singing it as some kind of tribute to Katie, and that would have been ok. I was still planning on a dedication in the album notes for her. But it was all wrong when I thought about it. The song talked about loosing someone you love and I barely knew Katie.

It took me a lot of time before it dawned on me what I was thinking when I sang that song. I was thinking about the past. I was trying to hang on to the past for just one more moment and it was keeping me from moving on. I should have realized that a long time ago. It was like another one of those routines that I had. I reacted in the same way to things rather than dealing with them. I was trying to maintain the same relationship with Ephram long after I should have accepted that we were two different people than we were 10 years ago. And I was trying to protect myself from Ephram getting mad and rejecting me rather than telling him the truth and seeing where the chips fell. I can be incredibly slow at times.

The album was released in October and did quite well. I think maybe some of the band's fans didn't like it that much, but tough, I recorded it for myself not them. Ephram and I stayed friends, surprisingly. We met up a couple of times a week, and every so often I'd see a story in some magazine that insinuated we were dating. I made my manager send a letter to every one, reminding them that Ephram and I had known each other for years and that he'd lost lost his wife.

The holidays were hard, but Delia, Ephram and I spent them together and coped by drinking a lot. Neither of them really wanted to go back to Everwood. I didn't blame them. That town is like hell in the mountains.

Before I knew it, it was Grammy time again. I was nominated for One Moment More. I'd released it as a single and it had done great. That was pretty cool. It was strange how much the Grammy's were a big deal to me again this year. Maybe it was because I was there on my own this time, or maybe because I was making a conscious effort to enjoy life rather than just existing.

I didn't win anything, but it was cool just to be nominated. I'd invited Delia and Ephram as my guests and we hit the after show parties together. I found us a table at the back of the current party and together we started looking through the goodie bag I'd received. There was a whole host of cool stuff, but in there were airline tickets to anywhere in the continental US. Two airline tickets.

"Ephram, are you doing anything this week?"

"Huh?"

"Are you busy this week? I'm gonna use this ticket to go to Denver. It would have been my son's 10th birthday this week and I think I'm gonna go see him."

Delia didn't seem shocked at the news that I had a dead son. I guess Ephram must have told her at some point.

"Are you sure? I mean, won't I just be in the way?"

"I think I'd like the company. Besides, I think maybe we need to talk about some stuff."

Maybe it would be wrong to tell him, but I had to make a choice sometime. I think the way I had been living my life was more wrong though. I guess that if you hang on to the past you can't move forward and until you make a clean, honest break, whatever you do will seem wrong.