Frank Reagan had gone to the river. Not to the cemetery, because somehow this was the spot where he felt closest to Mary. She was in everything, everything he saw and did and thought, but here, with the sound of water and the creaking of the dock beneath his feet, she seemed real still. He leaned on the cold railing, looking at his own hands gripping the wood. Feeling the cold air burning his lungs as he breathed.
He had let his family down.
It was an uncomfortable thought and a sobering one, but Frank faced it squarely. It was solid at least, the first solid thing he'd managed to keep in his mind for a long time, and he knew somehow that the way back to his family, to life, laid past uncomfortable but truthful thoughts like these.
He had let his family down, something he had promised himself and Mary and his children, simply by virtue of fathering them, a long time ago.
Mary's death had been sudden – barely a month between her diagnosis and her last breath, breathed onto his collar as he held her. He could feel the ghost of it now, just below his collarbone. Her death had left him reeling, at first, and then frozen. In time, maybe, unwilling to face the fact that he was still bound to clocks and suns while she had gone into eternity. He had lost all contact with reality, or so it seemed to him now. Was it really him, passing through his own house with such indifference? Looking at his own son, with his own shock at his mother's death written all over his face, without seeing him?
He had wrapped himself in his own grief and his own selfish anger at losing Mary. Completely ignoring Jamie, Joe – Joe was drinking, his mind pieced the clues together for him now with vengeful clarity – Danny, Erin, Linda…
He dropped his head on his hands and, for the first time since Mary died, allowed himself to truly understand that she was dead. His eyes blurred, and he allowed the tears to come.
He was aware, sometime later, of someone behind him.
"Dad?"
Danny and Erin were both there, faces pinched and wary in the bleak light of the moon. He straightened, feeling impossibly tired, and ran a hand over his wet face.
"I'm here."
"Dad," Erin said again, her voice choked, and then she took two quick steps forward and hugged him tightly. "Oh God, we were so worried."
"Did Jamie call you? Is he alright?"
"Yeah, he called me." Danny's voice was a little more cynical than usual, a sure sign that he was fairly close tears himself. "Linda's with him, he's about as fine as can be expected. Gramps told us we might find you here. Didn't know if it'd be on the dock or off it."
Frank reached out a hand to him, glad when Danny moved closer and gave him a gruff hug. Then he stepped back, so that he could look them both in the face.
"I'm sorry," he said. "That I worried you."
"We're just glad you're alright, Dad," Danny said, while Erin said, "We forgive you, of course, Dad," at the same time.
"We'd better get back to the house."
"I need to call Gramps first," Frank said. "Before he calls up the National Guard."
There was a payphone on the corner, and Frank went to it. He felt better, although he had no right to it, with Erin and Danny close in the darkness. And knowing at least that Linda was with Jamie. Jamie alone, leaving him alone, that had been the most unpalatable thought in an entirely unpalatable evening.
He dialled, and the line was picked up at the second ring.
"Henry Reagan."
"Hey, Pops."
"Francis?" There was anxiety in his father's voice, and a lot of relief. "Where are you?"
"I dropped the ball, Pops."
Henry was silent for a beat.
"I take it you've got your head on straight again?"
"I hope so. Enough to know how badly I've failed my family, at least."
"You did."
Henry had never been one to tiptoe around the truth, and not for the first time in his life Frank was thankful for it. He didn't need sympathy and empty platitudes right now. He needed to get his head out his ass and fix this.
"How do I…can I fix this, Pops?"
"This is your family, Francis, you fix it whether you can or not."
"I hurt Jamie, Pops. I don't know if he can forgive me for that."
"That's his burden to work on, not yours. But that boy loves you, as least as much as you love him, and his only concern right now is getting you back. All of ours, really."
"I'm not gone, Dad," Frank said softly. "Not anymore."
