All familiar characters and events are Janet's. Mistakes are mine. Olive's breakfast and shirt-idea I spotted online.

I'm proud of my wife for countless reasons, but today's edition is due to Stephanie not seeming fazed to call her father back despite what this 'meeting' may entail. She gets that whatever he says is on him, not a reflection of her. But what hit me about how much she's changed from the day I met her, is she wasn't willing to give up breakfast with our daughter or my family just to sit through a likely infuriating coffee break with a member of hers. Those who care about her come before those who grew her now.

"Wasn't that sweet of your GrandPapa to turn your pancakes into a unicorn for you?" Steph asked Olivia.

"I could have made my mi nieta love me even more, Carlos," my father said to me, "but as I've done for our Julie, I chose whipped yogurt to make the mane instead of the whipped cream your sisters always requested. I don't want to ruin our breakfast by engaging in another health versus moderation debate with you."

"I would've waived one for today," I told him.

"Thanks for not changing out the horn," my wife said to her father-in-law, taking a bite out of the pointed cone normally used to hold ice cream. "Its little bacon ears are pretty good too."

"I'm happy that you've been able to appreciate it as much as Olivia does."

"I do appreciate everything that you and Mama Manoso have done for us. Look how Olive is two-fisting the unicorn's nose. This may be the first time she finishes an entire meal without making one of us wear half of it. Even your son took pleasure in making its blue eyes bigger by squishing the blueberries."

"Because they can be a choking hazard, Babe. That's the only reason I stepped in."

"If you say so, my darling boy," my mother added, softening the sarcasm with a kiss to my cheek. "We all know that you would do anything for your children on top of slaying every dragon that ventures too close to them."

The good mood and easy conversation that always flows between the five of us, six when we called Julie, was made glaringly apparent when we left our apartment an hour and a half later. Olivia and the Rangedogs were happily taking turns getting attention - and likely more treats - from their doting grandparents so Steph was okay with heading to the lobby.

We both agreed she wasn't going to the Burg. None of us would feel comfortable talking about anything involving Stephanie and her parents in public. And neither my wife or I want Olivia to witness a conversation that could easily go very wrong. That left having Gene direct Frank to a meeting room on the first floor of our building.

I purposely made sure my father-in-law was left waiting for us. His eyes nervously darting from his daughter to me, told Stephanie what she already knew.

"I would say don't worry about Ranger, Dad, that his bark, or in this case his phone call, is worse than his bite, but I'd be lying. He borders on obsessive when it comes to taking care of his girls and I, which is why he's with me. If you're here for a reason other than pissing Mom off, his presence shouldn't change what you want to say."

"I'll add that if you're here for yourself and not your daughter," I told him, "the door's right there. You can head right back through it."

"Ranger ..."

"You didn't expect me not to call him before this took place, Babe. And you certainly didn't expect me to sit here quietly either."

"I didn't, but you're supposed to at least let me speak before you start backing me up."

"You have the floor."

"Why now?" Was what she asked Frank.

"You said something at the birthday party ..."

"I said a lot of things on Olive's big day," she pressed when he paused. "You'll have to just ask what you want to know. If you're not ready to hear what I have to say, I guarantee this conversation isn't going to go well."

Frank sat down and appeared to need a moment to regroup. Steph, however, happily checked her cell and showed me the text my mother had just sent her. "Sorry to interrupt, but I couldn't resist sharing this," she wrote above a picture of ninety-percent of Olivia's body basically being engulfed by Steph's bulletproof vest. Only her nose, brown eyes, tips of her ears, and two pig tails were visible. Her blue and purple 'I'm A Snugglesaurus' T-shirt was entirely hidden.

"So much for them being able to keep up with her," I said to my wife.

"What do you mean? Their babysitting skills are on point. Olive could literally only be safer than she is inside that vest if they had wrapped her in bubble wrap first."

"You make a valid point."

"What happened to you, Stephanie?" Frank blurted out, interrupting our moment.

She sighed. "I grew up, Dad."

He shook his head in frustration. "No. I mean when you were young. Your mother said it wasn't something she could discuss."

"That sounds like her. She can't talk about it, but I had to live it."

"Did someone hurt you?"

"Yes. Many people ... too many times to count."

"And you think I'm one of them?"

"In a way. You helped make Val and I, but that was about it. You never seemed to care what happened to us after we were conceived."

"I did. I do."

"You don't know how much I wish I could believe that. If you did, you would've put yourself between Mom and us the way Ranger becomes an unmovable wall between his kids and anything that could potentially hurt them. But since you're talking about a specific incident, not how Mom behaved every minute of her being one, I'll give you the gist. Morelli used to lure all the neighborhood girls into his garage. And to put this in terms you'll understand, he'd poke around under their hoods, or more graphically ... my little ruffled skirt. I was five."

Frank's face disappeared into his hands as I pulled my wife close. No matter how many times she tries to make some semblance of sense of her past, I still have to talk myself out of killing someone. Because this is about what Steph needs, she got a supportive hug and a kiss to her temple from me, not even a hint of the burning rage I'm feeling all over again.

"Wonder Woman has nothing on you," I whispered, never meaning it more.

"That son of a bitch," Frank spat.

"Yeah. Joe was also the son of an asshole, but he's already dead. You can't kill him twice."

If it were at all possible, I'd arrange that too.

"What's really sad, is I didn't even know what Joe did - to everyone it seems - was wrong. I was too young to fully grasp the magnitude of the act. I just thought it was a game I wasn't understanding the rules for or fun of. Do you know when I realized it was something bad?"

Frank didn't answer, just raised his eyes to her and waited for her to continue.

"When I got home and Mom noticed my Underoos were on inside out. She told me never to tell anybody about what happened or they'd treat me differently ... that they'd say I'm a dirty or bad girl. The kicker was her advising me not to tell you because you'd kill Joe and then you'd be in big trouble. I'd apparently already did something horrible. I wasn't about to get my dad taken away by the police because of something I did."

"Helen was right about one thing … I would've killed the bastard had someone told me!"

"You're not helping, Frank. Change the attitude. Now," I warned him. "Or you're out of here."

"I'm okay," she told me, before addressing her father again. "So you would've killed Joe for touching tiny-me, but not for writing about teenage-me over the entire Burg? I made sure you didn't know about the garage-game, but every Burger and their grandmother knew about the Tasty Pastry encounter thanks to the jerk. You didn't threaten him, you didn't go out yourself and clean it off or paint over his odes to his assholiness. And you definitely didn't stop Mom - or even appear mad - that she grounded me for it. You do know that I'm also your kid, don't you? The only thing you did was take away my driving privileges after I ran over him."

She took a breath while I tried to will the strength of my body into her now shaking one. But like the warrior she is, she not only stood her ground, she was braced to defend it until the end.

"Are you sensing a theme here, Dad? I was punished for not only what I did, but the crap everyone else did to me too. Which is probably why I married Dickie ... because I thought he's what I deserved. And I got tangled up with Morelli again for the same reason. Not once did you sit me down before I attempted to commit myself to one a-hole, or even when I succumbed to a dictatorship with another, to say that you're sorry for not being the best male role model which led to me picking total losers before Ranger. You never said that you're sorry you weren't there for me, but you would miss me when I went away for college. You didn't even say that you're happy for me when you learned Olivia was on the way or wish us well when Ranger and I got married. Anytime you'd take your eyes off the TV or your dinner plate and notice my existence, you'd appear like you were trying to figure out why I was bothering you, or on bad days ... your eyes would briefly flash something I took as resentment that I finally got out and now you're stuck alone, taking the brunt of who you married."

"Stephanie ..."

"Let her finish what she has to say," I ordered my father-in-law.

No way am I letting her carry around the weight of what she's been waiting decades to unload.

"What always bothered me is why was a five-year-old left unsupervised for long enough for Joe to find me and then isolate me? Mom's given the impression that there were always rumors circulating about the Morelli boys, so why wasn't I ... and every girl that saw the inside of that garage ... collectively protected. I'd think a couple of boys would be easier to keep a neighborhood watch on, than having to deal with punishing the entire female population of the Burg for falling victim to them, followed by needing to help us clean up the mess we made of our lives afterwards. Did you and Mom really trust everyone around Val and I? Did it not matter if I wandered off? Or were you guys actually hoping I would be taken by someone and not found, since I wasn't the kid or the boy you were hoping for?"

"I'd never ..." Frank started, but my wife wasn't finished.

"I trust every single person in this building with my life, but I still know where Olive is and who she's with at all times. Now that I'm thinking about it, maybe I should actually thank you instead of criticize you, because I learned how to be a good parent by doing for Olivia what I wanted for myself. While she was still growing in me, I set up a place where I could write letters to her. She's years away from reading them, but I wanted her to know just how loved she and Julie are. Poor Jules gets the emails as I write them. I need them to know how much their Dad and I love and want them even when we're not sitting right beside them."

"I didn't ..."

"No, Dad, you didn't. I've always felt that you cared more about how my cars are running than how I'm functioning. And all these years, a baby, and a husband, later ... that feeling hasn't changed much. I think you care about Val and I, and our girls, more than Mom does, but since she doesn't appear to care at all ... that's not really saying much."

"What do you want me to do?"

"That you even have to ask that means you're not ready to change," I informed him. "The reason why Helen was so against Steph and I being together, but all for having a Morelli son-in-law, is because I love your daughter with every cell in my body and don't believe one thing about her, beyond her parents, needs changing. She wasn't getting an enabler or co-controller with me. My wife deserves to be surrounded by people who know her worth and appreciate what only she can bring to their lives. You're not going to continue to do drive-by resurrections of all times you weren't there for Stephanie. You either Man up and Daddy Down now, or don't bother trying again."

"I can't fix what you and Mom won't even admit is broken. Val may be okay with just getting what amounts to parental cut-outs, but I'm not. I'm done taking everyone else's share of the blame. I'm tired of listening to Mom tell me all the reasons why she can't love me, while I'm supposed to love her unconditionally. I'm never going back to being everyone's screw-up. I'm NOT a screw-up. Yeah, I've made mistakes ... a ton of them ... but I'm not the only one who has. Mom did for having kids only to use them as players in creating her warped idea of the perfect family. You have for starting a family you weren't interested in participating in. I'm sorry if you both want to continue to live like this, but I'm out."

"Stephanie and our daughters are not going to be weapons you and Helen use against each other either," I warned Frank. "You can choose to stay with your wife, or I can get you some help so you can start recovering from her, but my family and our home are not going to be where the battles between the two of you are fought."

"We aren't," my wife agreed. "No one can change the past, not that I would if it altered who I am and what I have now, but I'm not going to torture myself for thirty years into my future by living my past on repeat everyday with you and Mom. I wanted something better, and I have it - plus a whole hell of a lot more than I ever expected. You have to ask yourself if you want to be part of it in a new way, because I'm not about to make Olive live what I barely survived."