"What's this?" Frank was shaking the bottle of Midol with the red X on the cap.

Nancy looked over at him, her mind racing. "Just some old pills."

Sam was unpacking her own room, which just meant taking a toy out of a box, playing with it for a few minutes, and then unceremoniously dumping it onto the floor as she picked out something else. Nancy was going to go behind her, but after lunch, maybe after a nap.

"Why'd you save them?" Frank asked.

"Habit," Nancy replied.

Frank peered at the expiration date. "They're out of date," he said. "I'm going to toss them, if you don't mind." He smiled at her.

Nancy shrugged. "That's fine," she told him, smiling back, ducking into another box.

They'd had an argument, once he'd returned to find the two of them at his parents' house. She had never been so angry toward him. He protested, when she tried to make him see what could have happened, that it hadn't. That she and Sam were fine. They would be more careful, they would have a better security system installed, he would pay whatever would make her feel better, but it would be all right. He was just glad they were safe.

For him, the argument had ended that night when he had turned to her, reassuring, and she had accepted his embrace.

He tossed the pills at the already overflowing trash can.

She knew what his reassurances had meant. He hadn't been away from the two of them for more than a few hours at a time since, but he would leave again. Just a question of when.

--

"You made it back okay."

"We did," she said. "We're in a new house now. He had a moving company go in and get everything, so I didn't even have to walk back in."

"That was nice of him." Ned's voice was expressionless.

"He's going out of town again," Nancy said. "So we're coming to River Heights for a little while."

"Oh."

Nancy sighed. The frustration she had felt at their last conversation, the frustration when she couldn't smack Frank when he went through his long speech about how it was very important and he was the only one who could go to Mozambique and it would only be for a few days and lives were at stake, began to boil over. She hated being on the other end of the speech she herself had given so many times. She hated feeling powerless and useless, and alone. Looking back, she was surprised Ned had taken it so well. But even then, she'd never heard him like this.

"You're mad at me, aren't you."

"I'm not mad. I just want you to be safe."

"We are," she said. "Thanks to you."

"It was nothing," he said, and she counted her breaths, waiting. "Maybe we'll run into each other."

"Maybe."

The wind was blowing ripples on the lake. Frank was putting Sam to bed upstairs. Nancy flipped her phone closed and wondered why he'd answered, why she hadn't heard the muted laughter and gentle chime of a restaurant, some other streaked brunette pointedly clearing her throat somewhere beyond him.

The sliding door opened and Frank came up behind her, put his arms around her waist. "Everything settled? I wish I didn't have to leave."

"Everything's settled," she told him, but she wondered and hated herself for it. He was only leaving because he had to, same as she always had. They were the same. If things had been different, she might be the one sitting up late, going over the case, exhilarated by the prospect of another problem to solve. Maybe even with him.

"We used to have so much fun together," she whispered, leaning against his shoulder. "I loved every second I spent with you."

He squeezed her gently. "I still do," he said.

--

"You're the sweetest little girl I've ever met," Bess knelt and told Sam. She glanced up at Nancy. "And I babysat a lot of kids."

Nancy nodded seriously at her daughter. "She did," Nancy said. "So you must be good."

"You like ice cream?" she asked Sam, whose eyes lit up.

Sam was leaning over the ice cream counter, in Nancy's arms, studying the tubs intently. Bess let out a laugh. "Checked your mail lately?"

"Why?" Nancy asked, as Sam braced herself on flat palms, her breath fogging on the glass.

"Wendy's decided to throw another reunion party this summer. Not at the beach house, though. She's going the conventional route. Hotel ballroom and open bar, and Patrick's not invited."

Nancy smiled, remembering the last reunion Wendy had thrown. Ned had been her date then, and Wendy had been one of Patrick's many targets. "He's still locked up, right?"

"Of course," Bess rolled her eyes. "There's no way she would even have thought about it otherwise."

"Hmm," Nancy said. "I'll have to see if Dad got any mail for me. I don't think anyone else has my address, except you guys."

"Yeah, you did your best to drop off the face of the earth," Bess said. "Sam, what did you want?"

"She wants chocolate and sprinkles," Nancy replied. "Like always."

--

Ned had to have been waiting, not leaving this meeting to chance. When she brought the running stroller out in the morning, he jogged by her father's house in sweats.

"You planning to kill me and collect the insurance money?" she called out to him, smiling.

He smiled back. "Not yet," he said. "Don't cross me, though."

They jogged together, falling into the same familiar wordless rhythm. He slowed to keep with her as she pushed the stroller. Sam craned around to look at him, then yanked back in, giggling. Nancy followed his lead to the park, and when they stopped for a breather they were just outside. He raised his eyebrows and Nancy followed him in, their sneakers crunching against the frozen winter grass. The sky overhead was dim and dull, glaring, but she had bundled her daughter up against the cold.

"So nothing else has happened? No suspicious characters hanging around?"

Nancy nodded. "But, I still... I just hope that when we go back, they won't have wrecked the house I just finished putting in order."

He looked over at her, then, rubbing his mittens together. "I worry about you."

Nancy smiled, speechless, and when Sam made a frustrated noise Nancy turned the stroller around to face them. Sam looked back and forth between Nancy and Ned, then started to work on taking her mittens off.

"That's what friends do."

He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. She was almost afraid to meet his gaze. "I don't think we should," he began, then looked down at his bare, paled hands. She saw his jaw working under his skin.

"That we should be friends anymore?" she finished, blaming the wind for the sudden tears stinging her eyes.

"That we should see each other anymore," he finished, slowly. "I think emails would be, would be good. For a while."

"Until when?"

He shrugged. "It's all so sudden," he said. "I don't see you or hear from you in close to three years, and then you're back, and..."

"I understand," she murmured. "I-- I kind of felt the same way. So much has changed, and, and I do want to be your friend. If we can. But." She sighed.

Sam had taken her mitten off and was offering it to Ned, tentatively. He took it in his hand, the tiny pink wool swallowed by his palm.

"I'll still worry about you," he murmured. "I just." He laughed to himself, under his breath. "I just need some space."

"It's okay," she said, rubbing the edge of her mittened hand over her eyes. "I don't blame you. It was too soon."

They began the trek back to the house, the wind biting through the edges of her coat, the line of skin between the cuffs and her mittens, but the closer they came, the slower she found herself going, the slower he was going. Sam cried out in anger as the first slow series of drops fell from the sky.

"Let me just," she said, and Ned stood just inside the doorway of the quiet, empty house as Nancy freed Sam from her stroller and coat. When she looked back at the doorway, it was empty; he was gone.

She walked out onto the porch and Ned looked over his shoulder at her. He was nearly at the edge of the yard, but the lock of their eyes stilled him. He turned around to face her.

"It's just too hard for me," he said, through the space between them, his hair and shoulders darkening under the rain. "I thought I could stand it, but I can't."

Nancy closed the screen and came to the edge of the steps, the freezing rain falling on her bare face, and under his gaze she felt like her entire body was shaking, just under her chilled skin. "I never meant to hurt you."

He ran his hands through his hair, slicked it back. "So when I said I needed some time, you decided to give me all the time I needed."

Nancy sat down on the front steps, watching his chest rise and fall, in angry puffed breath. "The day I found out..." She closed her eyes. "I was on my way to see you when I found out I was pregnant with her."

"To tell me about your decision?" His eyes were blazing.

"To tell you that I wanted to be with you," she said. Her breath caught in her chest. "That you were the one I wanted. Not him. Ned, I never meant for this to happen."

"You never meant to sleep with him." Ned was looking over her shoulder, at Sam, who had come to stand at the screen door, watching them.

Nancy buried her face in her hands. "I didn't know how to tell you," she mumbled. "So I didn't."

Sam made an impatient noise behind her, and she glanced over her shoulder, at her daughter, her eyes red-rimmed, mouthing some appeasement. The furrow was between her eyebrows again.

Ned shook his head. "I thought you'd decided to be with him. And then, I saw the announcement in the paper..." The sky opened up above them, drenching her tennis shoes, her knees, but Ned remained on the lawn, gazing at her, his expression almost impossible to bear. "And I must be a fool, because seeing you even now, it hurts too much."

Nancy walked out to him, then, the cold soaking through to her skin, her heart breaking. "You must hate me."

Ned shook his head, forced the words out. "I hate the fact that you're with him. But I can't hate you, no matter how much I try. I can't look at you without remembering. Without... we need to stay away from each other, Nan. Until."

"Until when?"

"Until I can stop feeling this way about you."

When she finally found the strength to lift her head, soaked to the skin, her face flushed with tears, he was gone, and she was standing on her father's lawn alone.