A month and a half later

Kitty was in the kitchen baking when Donna came clomping up from the basement.

"Bye, Mrs. Forman." She headed to the sliding door.

"Donna, honey, before you go, has Eric written to you lately?"

"Er, not since the break-up letter, no, Mrs. Forman."

"Oh honey, I'm sorry to bring it up, I'm just wondering that's all. He must be really busy. I've only received one letter this month! Ahahaha!"

"That's okay, Mrs. Forman. I'll see ya later, okay?" She gave a smile and a wave. "I'm gonna go meet Randy at Grooves."

Argh! Friends? What friends? And again in her short life, Jackie felt completely alone. She was alone, for she had no family to speak of and the only people that she had in Point Place were her friends, and the parents of her friends.

She touched her cheeks and her fingers came away wet. Tears. Again. She was deathly sick of crying all the time. She grabbed her diary. Again.

Dear Diary,

Today was another horrible day —

Screw it! she thought, throwing the book across her room in the apartment that she shared with Fez. She was sick and tired of venting in another inanimate object. She craved the human contact that she once had before everything fell to pieces and everyone seemed to leave her life. Writing in a crummy book that was fast running out of empty pages and soaked with tear stains just didn't cut it anymore. She flopped back on her bed and stared at the ceiling, counting the little depressions and cracks on the surface.

Suddenly she sat up and reached for a sheaf of papers on her desk and started scribbling.

Dear Eric,

Today was a horrible day —

The first letter she wrote to Eric Forman started as nothing more than a craving for a human touch, someone she could share her feelings with without fear of cruel taunts and burns that would be fired back at her. It started with nothing more than having to tell anyone, a real person, a friend, if he could be called that, how much the situation at home with Steven, with Donna, with the utter loneliness that she was facing everyday was eating her alive. She never really expected a reply. Or for that someone to care enough to write a three-page letter back.

Eric never really knew why he found himself writing a reply to Jackie where he couldn't bring himself to write a decent letter to anyone else. Only that he knew that sleep eluded him yet again that night. And images that he was desperately trying to forget rose unbidden when he closed his eyes. And perhaps also because she was the only one out of his circle of five friends that had… What? Mattered the least to him? So it was almost like starting a new friendship? A clean slate. No expectations. Or maybe it was simply the fact that she had written. And that the things that she wrote about seemed removed, yet not so at the same time, from his life at home. Happier times. Or maybe because he needed an escape, to read about and live someone else's life for a while.

Or maybe because to a certain extent he understood what it was to be like in a personal hell that no one and nothing can seem to breach.

Five weeks later

Jackie trudged back to the apartment after another hellish day at work. She had been screamed at, sent on wild errands, served endless cups of coffee to Christine St George and her 'VIP' guests, got sent back with getting the coffee order wrong, and a list of other things that made up a typical day at work in the life of Jackie Burkhart, former queen bee of Point Place.

Sometimes she wondered why she even bothered getting up in the mornings to go back there. Oh yes. The simple matter of room and board. Work or starve. Work or end up homeless. It was really a simple choice when it came down to that.

She unlocked the door and immediately zoomed in on a stack of mail sitting on the coffee table. Her spirits lifted and she kicked off her shoes and dove for them. She tossed envelope after envelope aside until she found the pale blue one that she had been waiting for. She hugged it gleefully to her chest and put the kettle on to boil before heading to her room to read the much anticipated letter from Eric.

Dear Jackie,

I realize that it has only been three days since I last wrote to you, but I find that you pop into my mind pretty often. Thanks for the latest issues of Superman and X-Men, and I see that you've managed to send me a copy of Playboy as well. You can't do that! I'm a teacher, it's a respectable profession.

Jackie rolled her eyes and stifled a laugh. God he was so geeky, she thought fondly. She slowly read through the rest of his letter, savoring his words, and stopped when something caught her eye:

—when it's hard for me to sleep, I head out for walks and I wonder about the strangeness of life. At the series of events and coincidences that led me here to Africa—

A slight frown marred her perfect features.

-nights here are beautiful. You'll love them. Sounds of nature (meaning bugs and owls and such) are amplified because there isn't a city full of people to drown it out.—

—You can hear your own thoughts, though I'm beginning to long for pretty much anything to drown them out. I realize that I don't like the sound of my own thoughts that much after all.

Oh and hey, I'm out of Blow Pops so send more with your next letter, okay? The kids love them and I hand them out as a reward when they do really well on their assignments.

Hear from you soon.

Always,

Eric

The kettle whistled, pulling her out of her thoughts. She swung her feet off the bed and headed to the kitchen to turn the gas stove off, the furrow still there between her brows, and wondering at what Eric was not saying.

"Hey, Mrs. Forman."

Jackie pulled the sliding door open and stepped in with a smile. She had brought along a basket of fruit and a bottle of Peach Schnapps for Kitty, in part because she felt guilty that she hadn't been to visit as often as she used to when she was living with the Pinciottis.

Kitty turned from the stove where she was stirring a huge pot of pasta sauce to let out a small shriek and give her a huge smile.

"Jackie! Oh how are you, honey? You haven't been by in a while!"

She walked over to Kitty and by sheer instinct moved forward to give the older woman a warm hug. Kitty was surprised, Jackie's greetings usually weren't so effusive, but she smiled and returned the hug.

"It's good to see you, dear."

Jackie laughed, feeling like she had come home after a long time away. "Here, Mrs. Forman," she said, handing over the basket and bottle of Schnapps, "these are for you."

Kitty gave her a delighted look and ushered her to the table to sit down. "Thank you, Jackie. Here, have some brownies, I just baked them this morning." She placed a plate piled high with gooey brown goodness in front of her, then returned to the stove where her sauce sat simmering.

Jackie took large bite of The Best Brownies Ever. "God, these are so good." She swallowed a mouthful. "Are you gonna send some to Eric, Mrs. Forman?" she asked, expecting a long monologue from Kitty on the subject of Eric.

To her surprise, Kitty frowned, and stopped stirring to put a hand on her hip.

"Oh I always do, honey." She turned back to the pot again, but Jackie could see that something was bothering her. She took another huge bite and patiently waited for Kitty to continue.

"It's just that… Well, Eric hasn't been writing as often lately, and I wonder if he's been upset about Donna and—" her voice dropped and she hissed "—Randy."

Jackie stopped chewing. She was surprised that Eric hadn't written to his mother, considering that she was receiving three or four letters from him a week, but she hadn't really thought that it was because he was bothered about Donna. She made a mental note to ask him about it in her next letter, though she was willing to bet the last dollar of her very meagre bank balance that it wasn't the thing with Donna that was not sitting right with him.

She carefully thought through what she should say next, wondering if Kitty would be upset if she knew about the frequency of her correspondence with Eric, and yet needing to reassure her somehow.

She swallowed her brownie. "Eric wrote me recently, Mrs. Forman. He uh, I think he's very happy there. He did say that he had a lot to do. So uh, I think he's okay with Donna and Randy, you don't need to worry about that."

"Oh, that's just great that he wrote to you, dear." She looked up from her pot and smiled a strained smile.

"Heaven knows no one else seems to write him." She banged the spoon around in the pot a couple of times. "Kids going in and out of my house everyday but everyone seems to forget that he's over there all alone and they just move right on with their lives." Kitty flapped her hands in indignation.

Jackie heard the word 'blonde harlot' muttered under her breath a couple of times, but wasn't sure if it applied to Donna or Sam or both.

"Now you," —Kitty waved the wooden spoon at Jackie— "you continue to write him, you hear? My baby boy there all alone and none of his friends seem to remember that it's his parents' house they're traipsing in and out of."

"Yes, Mrs. Forman."

After that, Jackie found herself swinging by the Forman household like she used to, only the main reason for her visits was to sit and chat with Kitty. She scheduled her visits around the rest of the gang's, and took great pains to avoid coming over when she knew that Steven or Sam would be there.

Jackie was filled with a desire to simply talk about Eric, which was hardly surprising seeing that he was the only good thing she had going in her life right now, and Kitty could go on and on about him without wondering in the least about Jackie's sudden interest in her son.