"Come here girl." The woman made kissy sounds with her mouth and patted her knees. Danielle quickly bounded over.


Peggy watched her little boy from the stairs. Thomas was carefully putting into place all the pieces of the puzzle that he had been given that morning. She sighed. This was one of the rare moments he wasn't too scared to do anything, one of the moments where he was perfectly calm; lost in his own world. She had always wondered what went through her boy's mind, what caused him to be so wildly unpredictable.

Raising Thomas never was easy. From the days where he was a mere baby things had been problematic. Neither she, nor Walt had paid much notice of his excessive crying; assuming that it was perfectly normal. Then even as a toddler he cried quite often, not letting up, until he was placed back to where he usually slept. It was a miracle that he could even walk, often when he was still in what should have been a phase of learning, he would throw a tantrum until she picked him up again. Things only got worse from there, he couldn't really speak, with most of his vocabulary consisting of a few loose assemblages of words and phrases that he picked up from his parents. He never really interacted with anyone else, even children of his own age. The slightest thing could put him in an absolute state; a sound that was a little too loud, a new place, a fly.

She averted her eyes from him and tried to think of anything else. "Dinner tonight, call Elizabeth-"

"Is everything okay dear?"

Without turning to face Walt, she responded. "Everything's fine. I just have...a lot on my mind right now."

Walt chuckled. "I worry about him all the time too you know."

"This is no laughing matter Walt!" She snapped at him. "Our boy has problems! Problems that we don't understand! Problems that no doctor that we've been to understands! How are we supposed to raise him! Make sure he has a good education! A good life! When we can't even understand him! Our own child!"

Walt was unfazed by her rant and spoke accordingly. "Peggy, I promised you the day our son was born that I would give both of you, a life of luxury." He pulled her in close to him. "Don't worry yourself over such trivial things my dear."

"Trivial." She mentally scoffed.

"He'll grow up, shape up, this is just a phase, I'm sure of it."

Peggy didn't feel that way, she felt like her husband, a drunkard nonetheless, was writing this off, writing off the fact that their boy needed help and fast.

"Now." He continued. "We should start preparing Thomas for his trip to Jim and Elizabeth, you know how that Aunt Sarah of yours' hates to dawdle."

Her face scrunched up, in annoyance. "Walt...is that really a good idea? I mean- you know that Thomas isn't fond of leaving home and I'm not fond of having him out of my sights for such a long time."

As usual he waved her worries off. "Oh don't worry about that. The doctor who told us that he shouldn't travel, can't even tell us what's wrong with him- he'll be just fine, maybe he'll even have fun. You told me that your sister has eight dogs! What more could a child ask for?"

She turned away from him and mentally sighed, as she closed her eyes.