Thanks to everyone who read and to MelsieR, Callisto's Moon, and Ghostwriter for reviewing.

The man on the screen continued to drone on, gesturing at the various tapestries hung on the walls around him, but Caitie had long since lost interest, and she was pretty sure that Jamie had as well. If he'd even been paying attention in the first place. Brianne was still focused, but it was an art show so that sort of went without saying.

It wasn't like Caitie had never been to a funeral before. She hadn't been to a lot of them, granted, and technically all of the others had been Jewish, but the process as a whole hadn't been completely unfamiliar. But those other funerals had been for her grandmother and her great-uncle and some kind of aunt a few times removed, people who'd been considerably older and had died of natural causes, and if their deaths hadn't been expected, exactly, they hadn't come as a shock either.

Kenny's had come out of nowhere, of completely unnatural causes, and this was all totally messed up. And she couldn't imagine having been in Jamie's shoes and being the one to find him. To try to give him CPR to bring him back.

Jamie was sitting with his back against the rocking chair, his arms crossed on his knees and his head on his arms, and with another quick look to confirm that Brianne remained engrossed in whatever was going on on television, Caitie scooted over beside him and nudged his arm lightly.

He blinked and turned, and it took him a moment to focus on her. "Hey. Sorry. Did you say something?"

"No. I just wanted to see how you were doing."

He shook his head. "I don't...I have no clue. Everything's all weird right now. And it doesn't even feel real, you know? I mean, Kenny's always been there. Always. And now..."

Caitie hadn't met Jamie or Kenny until middle school, but they'd been practically joined at the hip back then. They'd lived in the same building, spent all their time outside of school together, all of that. That had changed when Jamie had gone into foster care, but Kenny's had always been the first place that he'd run to when something had gone wrong with one of his placements, and even when Kenny had been at his most obnoxious Jamie had stuck by him in return. Even when he'd found those damn needles.

She shifted a little more to lean against Jamie, and his arm came around her shoulder. Neither of them had had a clue what to do at that point, because the obvious, talking to Kenny, hadn't accomplished a damn thing. They'd tried, and he'd blown off their concerns like they were talking about eating too much candy or something. And his mom never noticed anything, and it wasn't like there was anyone else who would help. If she'd told her mother or her aunt they'd only have insisted that she stop hanging around with Kenny, the teachers at school would have used it as an excuse to kick him out for good and probably thrown a party as well, and when it came to trying to tell their other friends... Well, Brianne would have blown up at him, especially after the whole huffing mess, and that would have accomplished worse than nothing especially given the way that Kenny's temper had been flaring up lately. And there was nothing that the other boys could have done either. "It's so totally messed up," she said quietly.

"Yeah."

Before she could say anything else there were footsteps from the hallway where Jamie's current foster father had disappeared after they'd gotten here after the funeral, and he re-entered the living room a moment later.

"Hey. Are you kids hungry?"

"Not me," Jamie said. "Caitie? Brianne?"

"No thanks."

"No thanks what?" Brianne asked, finally turning towards them.

"Alex wants to know if you're hungry," Jamie said.

"Oh. Yeah, not me either. Thanks, though."

Alex nodded. "All right. But I'm going to make myself some dinner before my shift, so if any of you change your mind you're welcome to come help yourselves. And I think we've got about half an hour before we'll need to go so I can get you home before I have to be at the hospital. Hopefully that'll be enough time for you to finish your movie."

All three of them nodded, and Caitie was a little surprised that he ruffled Jamie's hair lightly before heading for the kitchen. And more surprised that Jamie seemed okay with it. Heck, he almost seemed to lean into it, and even if she didn't officially know what had happened with Jamie's father, it hadn't been hard to put some of the pieces together even as a preteen. Jamie had never invited her over to his apartment back then—her or anyone else; Kenny didn't count since he'd lived in the same building, and he hadn't exactly been asking friends over either—and when Jamie had disappeared from school about a month before the end of sixth grade the teachers had suddenly had looks when they read past his name in the attendance sheets. Kenny had refused to say anything, but when Jamie had reappeared at the start of the summer he'd had a cast on his arm, a lot of fading bruises, and the first of many foster families. And a very bad reaction to men touching him extending to her then seventy-year old Uncle Albert which was when you knew things were serious. These days he didn't react anywhere near that violently; he still didn't like it when one of the principals caught his arm or whatever, but he didn't do more than tense and pull away at the first opportunity, either. But she'd still never seen him move into any kind of physical contact with an adult.

Then again, if he'd been here since last Thanksgiving... She did a quick mental count. She wasn't totally sure, but that had to be close to the longest that he'd ever lived anywhere in all the time that she'd known him. Doubly so since she knew that he wasn't cutting out at night to sleep on Kenny's floor or Faustus' bunk bed or anywhere else given his complaints about curfews and groundings and all of that.

She didn't know much about Alex, but both Jamie and Val said he was okay, and he didn't have a problem with her and Jamie talking on the phone sometimes which was more than most of Jamie's previous foster families had offered. Jamie had freaked a little about her confronting him that one time, but he hadn't seemed like he was afraid of anything, he'd just kind of been generally horrified.

Which, she didn't know what he'd expected from her at that point. He'd turned himself into a shadow-person that week, and someone had had to do something.

"He's really a doctor?" Brianne asked quietly, moving closer to them as Alex disappeared around the corner.

"Alex?" Jamie nodded. "Yeah. Why?"

"I don't know, I just thought that doctors were supposed to be, like, rich or whatever. This place looks like my house."

Jamie shrugged. "He works part time at the hospital and part time for the ambulance service because of his back, but I guess things are fine. He never seems to worry, anyway. And it's not like he needs a big house or anything; even with me staying here I just kind of took over the spare room that he wasn't really using."

"Well, at least this time it's a real room and not a porch," Caitie said, making a face. She still couldn't believe that that place had been considered livable. In the summer, maybe, but last winter had been cold.

"No kidding." I haven't got around to hanging any posters or anything like that yet, but at least if I do it won't be to block the wind."

Brianne perked up a little more at the mention of posters, but Jamie obviously wasn't in the mood to talk about room decorations, and eventually all three of them returned their attention to the screen. Or at least the general direction of the screen since Caitie still wasn't particularly interested and Jamie seemed to be looking right past it.

"Hey. I'm afraid we need to get going," Alex said, coming back in from the kitchen some indeterminate amount of time later.

Caitie and Brianne nodded, hugging Jamie goodbye and then heading towards the garage, and Caitie was more than a little surprised to turn back and find Jamie accepting a quick hug from Alex as well. At first he was speaking too quietly to be heard, but Jamie nodded a few times in response, and after a moment Alex nodded as well and stepped back. "I mean it. No motorcycle and no disappearing act, but you can call if you need to. I won't have my cell on me, but I'll leave a message at the nurses' desk to put you through as long as I'm not with a patient."

"I'll be okay," Jamie said. "Really. I think I'm just going to go to bed anyway."

"Just in case, then. Try to eat something, and I'll see you in the morning."

Caitie turned around and hurried after Brianne before either of them caught her watching them. It was still odd, and she'd see if she could get more out of Jamie later when things had calmed down a little because Jamie was right and everything was weird right now, but maybe he really was settling in here.