Week 10 - UDC 8

46. Raise

Helen got Nick to move so she could look into the backseat at Pete and found he was leaning back with his eyes closed. She wanted to say something, to explain the situation clearly, but now was not the time. She could tell it wasn't and she stood up to look at Nick again with a sigh. "I think I'll be explaining it to him later."

"Probably." Nick sighed and bent to look in, then looked at her again. "Is this what it feels like to be a parent, Ma? Uncertain and-"

"Oh Nick," she chuckled as she caught him in a hug. "Someday, you won't even have to ask. Uncertain? Yes. All the time. Over and over again." She let go and pushed him toward the door. "Let's go home, huh?"

47. Juvenile

He slid carefully into the back seat and sighed as he pulled the door closed. Nick glanced at Pete, then at the jacket he was holding to himself. "I want to ask..."

"Tired," Pete muttered at him, almost a hiss, and Nick winced.

"...but right now I'm not going to." Nick waited while both his parents got in and his father started the engine, and his mother looked back at both of them. She wanted to ask, too, obviously. "Pete?"

"Yeah?"

"Was it your father's father, or your mothers?" He put a hand up when his mother opened her mouth and she stopped, frowning at him.

The answer came after a minute or two... "Mom's. Month and a half, spring of '68." When no more questions came, Pete looked at him tiredly. And then a growling noise sounded between them and he was giggling again.

"Dinner it is," Walt acknowledged humorously. "Probably a nap, too."

"Not that tired, Mr. Bradshaw!" Except that Nick was actually looking at him and knew that was just a juvenile protesting reaction, which was a relief to hear, really.

48. Mature

As he prepared to back the car out of it's parking place, Walt got his chance to actually look in the back seat at the two of them. He wasn't surprised by the tiredness or the giggling behavior about now, from a kid who probably had so much experience keeping himself unnoticed that when he finally got tired enough, the mature facade evaporated. "Maybe not, but sleep and food are good things."

Pete simply blinked back at him, and then was startled again when Helen deposited a small plastic bag with cut up fruit and carrots in it, in his lap. "Uh..."

"Eat," she said simply and Walt wanted to kiss her again for thinking ahead. Nick didn't seem surprised, either, for she'd done the same with him through multiple growth spurts.

"You think he's having one," Walt whispered at her and she nodded, attention on the boy as he opened the baggie and started munching on it's contents.

"It'd make sense."

49. Growth

At the house, they unloaded the trunk and Walt saw to the box, only pausing at the envelope of pictures on the very top, labeled "From five undeveloped rolls of film found in Nora's Dresser, '66 to '70" in neat cursive. That... somehow, he could see Miss Lowell finding those and doing exactly this, and he'd only met her today.

Inside the house, in the kitchen while Nick put the groceries away and Walt set the table, Helen had Pete take his shoes off and stand against the wall near the refrigerator. "Why are we doing this?"

"For reference," Helen told him as she leveled a pen on the top of his head and then made an even line and put a date beside it. "And because milestones are important."

Pete stared up at her. "Enough to mess up the wall?"

"Yes, Pete. Enough to mess up the wall."

50. Elder

Later, after they'd gotten a very tired Pete Mitchell off to bed, Walt studied his son as he sat on the floor in front of the couch, reading his biology textbook. "Why did you ask about which grandfather it was? How did that even come up?"

Nick didn't answer at first, and then sighed and raised his head to look at him. "While you were talking to Mr. Finney? A nurse came up to us that knew him, and dropped some details. I was clarifying, Dad, because otherwise it's just confusing." He glanced toward the hallway that led back to the bedrooms. "I can see it, you know? The part where Pete wouldn't have wanted to be away from his grandfather, even to go to school. Especially if the hospitalization was sudden, like it appears it was."

Oddly enough, he could picture that, too. "Hmmm... how you coming with that chapter?"

Nick chuckled suddenly. "The process of cell division seems really uncomplicated after today."