After he'd gone, Maggie spent the afternoon thinking of his soot-covered face and haunted eyes. She couldn't handle the pain she'd seen there. As if all the good he'd done had been taken from him. As if all the people he'd saved had vanished from his memory, replaced by the one man he had lost.

By the time Maggie got home, she had an idea. After giving her daughter a shower of kisses, she asked her mother-in-law to stay a little longer, so that she could run errands. A lot to do before tomorrow, she thought. She needed to get moving.

The next morning Jackie informed her with typical Long Island bluntness that she looked like hell. Maggie said that this was only fitting, since she did in fact feel like hell.

She'd spent most of the night taking calls, making visits, and finishing things up. Her head was muddled from lack of sleep but this exhaustion was tempered with excitement. She kept thinking of what she'd made for him the night before. She hoped that he would like it. Hopefully it would help ease the shock of finding out who she was. Hopefully it would help a lot of things.

His arrival today was earlier than usual. Without waiting for direction, he seated himself at the corner table. Maggie joined him there. "What, no physics this morning?" she asked him, referring to the array of photography magazines he was placing onto the table.

"Our experiment turned out so well that we got a homework-free weekend."

"Sounds like a good opportunity to sit around and do nothing."

"Wouldn't that be nice," he said, with considerable enthusiasm.

"You should give it a try. Everybody deserves a weekend off." She smiled at his thoughtful reaction. "I'll go get you the usual. You just sit tight."

Once again after delivering his food, she kept an eye on his progress, and refilled whatever plate she spied getting too empty. He was noticeably more relaxed today, sitting with a magazine on his lap and his chair tilted back on two legs; a seemingly precarious position that worried Maggie not in the least. She doubted if the hand he had on the table holding him steady could have been removed by a crowbar.

Into relative quiet of the near-empty diner came Dave's booming voice. The regular was at his seat at the counter, deep into this morning's edition of the paper. "Take a look at the pictures of that fire," he said.

Jackie leaned over the counter to see. "What a mess. Do they know what caused it?"

"Arson. The Bugle says Spider-Man was behind it. Some kinda mafia connection-"

"What have I told you about that rag?" Maggie strode over to the man and tore the paper from his fat fingers. "I will not have this crap at my counter."

"Hey, take it easy, Maggie," Dave said, leaning his considerable stomach back from the counter and almost upsetting his plate of pork roll.

"Shame on you, believing this garbage." After shoving the paper into the trash, she grabbed the coffee carafe and headed to Sport's table. Halfway there, she heard Dave speak again in what he probably considered a low voice.

"What did the Bugle ever to do to her anyway?"

"Not her. Her guardian angel."

"Her what?"

"Her guardian angel. Spider-Man."

Maggie almost dropped the coffee cup she'd picked up from Sport's table. His head was still lowered as if reading, but his eyes had darted towards her at the mention of his alter ego.

"Spidey saved our Maggie's life a few months ago," Jackie went on, before Maggie could even begin to think of how to stop her. "Right before you started coming in."

"Oh yeah? What happened?"

"Kept her train from takin a five story dive onto the Manhattan streets after that psycho with the arms hijacked it is what."

Maggie watched Sport lift his head, his brows pulling together, his eyes widening, as realization and memory echoed on his face.

"You must have seen it," Jackie went on. "It was all over the news."

Maggie stood paralyzed, her heart throbbing against her chest, clutching the coffee mug so tightly that her fingers ached. This was not happening, she thought. He could not find out this way.

"No way," Dave said. "You were on that train, Maggie?"

Maggie watched the young hero lift his wide blue eyes to look up at her. "You were in the first car," he said, his voice low enough so that only she could hear.

She nodded, unable to say the words.

Lines pulled at the corners of his mouth and eyes as he remembered. "You had a baby with you. A little girl."

"My daughter," she said, past a growing tightness in her throat. "Erin."

She watched his expression melt from shock to confusion. "Then you know… And all week…"

He paused, and as she looked down at him Maggie saw something in his expression she had never expected. Oh my God, she thought. He's afraid.

"I should go," he announced.

He stood and stuffed his magazines into his backpack. "No- please-" She shook her head at his frantic motions. "You don't have to- I mean- I wouldn't- None of us would-"

"I know." He shrugged on his coat. "I should still go."

"But I have something for you," she said in a weak voice. "From all of us…"

But he was already striding through the diner towards the front door, and before she could utter another word, he had vanished into the crowds outside.

She stood by the table staring down at his chair long enough that Jackie came over to her. "Don't ask," Maggie choked out, and disappeared for a long while into the kitchen.