-

It didn't.

Mom had made it past the two-month mark, something the doctors found remarkable, yet Charlie hadn't seen her once. In fact, Charlie hadn't stepped one foot off the Eppes' property the entire summer. He had even turned down offer to teach a summer class.

Don was still frustrated. What did P vs. NP how to do with Mom? Why was it more important that seeing her? She was slipping farther away each day. Dad spent every free moment at the hospital.

Don went to work when he had to. But it was hard. He was the new guy on the block, and while he was no rookie, it was still hard getting used to the way the LA field office worked. Some days he found it hard to stay focused on work when he was the one holding things together at home and he tried desperate to not let it show among his fellow agents.

But cases were difficult to juggle around hospital visits, and he knew he could only get so much personal time before everyone started talking and asking questions. Still every night he managed to make it back to Mom's room, Chinese takeout for Dad and him, a small egg drop soup for Mom if she could manage to keep it down. They watched Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy, but something was still missing.

Charlie.

Charlie always rolled his eyes at the questions missed by Jeopardy players, and pointed out the different mathematical strategies a contestant could apply when making their wager in final Jeopardy. He'd also calculate the odds that a contestant would land on the Bankrupt space on Wheel of Fortune. Don, however, always guessed more correct letters. He wondered how Charlie could be a college professor when he thought "beneath" had three e's in it.

It was another night. Another time Don pulled into the driveway after visiting hours were over and saw the cracks of light coming from the garage. Dad sat in the front seat and his weariness resonated.

"She looked good today," he said as Don pulled the keys from the ignition.

"She did," Don agreed. And it was true. Mom was more aware today and seemed to be in less pain. She managed to get through a game of Scrabble and talked about what she'd read in the newspaper that morning. For a second, Don might have even been able to believe the doctor's were wrong and that she was getting better, but he knew that wasn't the case.

It was just too much to take.

"Your Aunt Eve is coming on Friday. Her flight gets in at 4:30. Could you-"

"I'll pick her up," Don promised. "It's late. We should..." Don eyes couldn't help shifting to the garage.

"Your mother isn't angry with him. Why should we waste our time yelling?" Dad reached for the door.

"Because he should be there. Family sticks together," Don insisted.

"Yes, they do," Dad agreed. "I can't say I understand your brother. I probably never will. But your mother made me promise not to harass him. She seems to know what he's doing. I don't know why the guilt isn't eating him alive. Because it's certainly affecting me."

Don didn't answer him. He heard his father open the door, watched him walk past the garage towards the house.

The guilt was affecting everyone.

Charlie needed to wake up to reality. Now.

Don pushed open the door, heard it slam behind him. The car keys jingling in his hand and he shoved them into his pocket.

He yanked the garage doors open.

Charlie didn't notice. Charlie, chalk in hand, stood in front of dozens of blackboards, entranced by the numbers and letters across them.

"Charlie. She's dying! She's in the fucking hospital and wasting away to nothing and you can't even tear yourself away from a stupid unsolvable math problem to visit?" He planted himself between Charlie and his precious chalkboard.

Charlie blinked, but stayed still. "I'm on the verge of a break-through. I need time."

Don saw red. "You don't have time! She's dying now." Before he even realized what he was doing, he grabbed Charlie by his shirt and turned him up against a board covered in his equations. The chalk fell from Charlie's hand and snapped. He heard the pieces roll and then stop, leaving only the sound of their breathing.

Charlie swallowed. "Don, you're hurting me."

Don immediately let go of him and stepped away, surprised at what had happened. He didn't expect such force from himself, yet he couldn't help thinking Charlie deserved it.

He noticed his hand was trembling slightly. He raised it, studying his fingers a moment, then he lowered it back to his side. "You need see her. She's our mother," he pleaded

"I need to finish this, first. I can't go if I can't finish this," Charlie answered, avoiding Don's eyes.

"Charlie, look at me." Don grabbed Charlie's chin and forced the brown eyes to focus on him.

"You need to," he insisted.

"I can't."

Don let go of him. What did he mean he couldn't? How could let her go without saying good-bye? How could he live with that?

"Don."

He turned. Dad was standing in the driveway.

"It's late," he said, his eyes pleading.

Don knew Dad was right. He shouldn't be wasting his time. Her time.

"It is," he agreed and walked away. As he closed the garage door, he saw Charlie bend down to pick up his fallen pieces of chalk.

--

It rained the day Mom died. The sky was completely gray and long after the monitors were quiet, the raindrops continued to pelt the windows, running down the panes and looking every bit like tears.

Don stood in the corner of the quiet hospital room and listened to the sounds of Aunt Eve comforting Dad.

Don watched the rain and wondered if miles away, still locked within the garage, Charlie even knew she was gone.

Really gone.

Then, and only then, did he cry.

--

When he pulled into the driveway, the garage door was open. Charlie was sitting in the middle of the concrete floor, staring into space.

Don shut off the car, and got out. He stopped into front of Charlie. Charlie peered up, his eyes sad.

"She's gone, isn't she?" he asked, his voice so soft that Don almost didn't hear it.

Don swallowed and took a deep breath, trying to contain his own emotions. "Yes," he finally said.

Charlie lowered his gaze and put his head in his hands.

A moment later, Don noticed that every single blackboard in the garage had been completely erased.

--

--

Dad couldn't pick out a dress. There were several spread out across the bed, each one connected to its own memory or story.

Don sat on the edge of the bed and touched the lace of one.

"She wore that one to services," Dad recalled. "When we went." He pointed towards a faded lilac one. "That one she wore the night of our thirtieth anniversary. How am I supposed to know which one is right?"

"Any one you pick is just fine, Dad," Don told him quietly. "She'd respect any choice you made."

Dad sighed. "Lilac it is. She never looked more beautiful on that night. You know, she wore a lilac dress on our first date."

"Your first date? Mom wore a lilac dress in the cafeteria at work?"

Dad smiled. "No. But that wasn't our first date. That was when I met her. And I found out she was actually dating someone in my office at the time. I'd almost given up, but I'd already took one look at her and knew I'd marry her and it never left my mind. So even though she was still dating Pete at the time, I asked her out."

"And she said yes, right?"

He shook his head. "No. She said she could never date two men at the same time."

"Oh. Well, than what happened?"

"Three days later she broke things off with Pete. Our first date was three days after that. We were married four years later. She was amazing." Dad picked up the dress and studied it.

"She was," Don agreed.

--

The funeral was hard. Sitting shiva was harder, especially since it had a long time since Don had ever been to services or followed tradition. Family came, cooked, and did the chores for a few days. Charlie left the garage, put on a tie, and looked more uncomfortable than Don had ever seen him look in his whole life.

Dad was coping as well as any could who'd lost his wife.

Don returned to his apartment for the first time in a week.

Despite the cold hard facts, it still didn't seem real. Mom had been in the hospital for so long that when Don didn't see her at the house he didn't think she was dead. He kept thinking she was at the hospital and that he could visit her later, after he'd watered her garden.

It was the first night that he sat down at the dining room table with Dad and Charlie for dinner that he knew it was real. Dad had made dinner, placed it on the table. The place settings were perfect and he even used the right potholders.

Yet the dinner was completely silent as each one of them looked across the table to the empty chair.

They ate quickly and Don cleared his dish as soon as he could. He was loading it into the dishwasher when he noticed Charlie standing in the doorway, his own plate in hand.

"She's really gone, isn't she?" Charlie said.

Don reached for his plate. "Yes, Charlie, she is."

Charlie was silent a moment. "Does that mean you're going to leave again?"

Don looked up from the dishwasher. It was such a simple question, but he wondered why Charlie was asking it. Yet, he knew. Even though Dad was the only he'd truly told, Charlie wasn't stupid. Naïve and pig-headed, yes, but he did noticed some things. Whether or not he chose to acknowledge them was a different story.

Would he stay in Los Angeles? He'd moved here for Mom and had spent hours in a house he'd barely seen in years.

Charlie was waiting for his answer. He thought back to what Mom had told him years previous, and the conversation they'd had before her death. Charlie looked up to him. Charlie listened to him. Charlie was proud of him. Charlie needed his family.

If only Charlie had listened to him in the end, but Don knew, in a way he may never quite comprehend, Charlie had.

Don shook his head. "No. I think this is where I belong."

And he knew that somewhere, Mom was smiling at him.

--