Bear with me guys, I KNOW it gets really sad here. But trust the process :) One of my biggest purposes in writing this story is to show how everything can go wrong, yet it can still be made right in all the ways that paint a beautiful picture in the end. Isn't that what so much of life is about?

The song inspiration for this chapter is Say Something by A Great Big World.

Chapter Text

Suzi stared down at the aluminum boat in her hands, tarnished since that night at the river so long ago. Before she had realized it, she had taken it out of the box, not even bothering with the carefully placed tape anymore.

Her hands began to tremble slightly, so she quickly put the boat back into the box. For all of that early romance and happiness, it had gotten them nowhere. Young people could be idiots - they had no idea the kinds of things that could happen to people. Awful things that bled the joy right out of you. She and Judd didn't believe in anything coming between "true love" back then. Maybe if they had…

… Then it wouldn't have hurt so badly and come as such a surprise when devastation splintered both their hearts into a million pieces.

Suzi stared at the next item for several minutes before she dared to touch it. She had kept all of the "other things"… but Judd deserved this in his box. It was fairness that bid her to put it in here with these things after the divorce. He was Ezra's daddy, after all.

Finally, she brought a finger up to trace the shiny green edge of the little toy train that lay there.

The idea had always been that they would have children – maybe several.

That's what Judd had wanted, and she had humored him by letting him believe it would work that way. In fact, who knew? Being with Judd made Suzi feel like just about anything was possible, so landing a couple of successful pregnancies didn't seem so pie-in-the-sky when charged with the energy of their voiced hopes and dreams.

Even though in the back of her mind she had wondered right from the very start if she would be able to carry it off.

Endometriosis. It was what her doctor had diagnosed her with during her college years, and the pain it rendered her at certain times of the month gave Suzi a pretty good idea that she was ill-conditioned for getting pregnant. Her doctor had tried to give her hope by saying that a later successful pregnancy might be hard, but it wouldn't be impossible.

But, even as responsible a girl as Suzi was, she knew from then on that getting knocked up would be a long-shot, which was why she had so easily given in to Judd for the first time under the stars in the grass outside the abandoned train on that heady, exhilarating night she would never forget.

Throughout the rest of the time they dated, he hadn't seemed worried a bit about what could come of their frequent steamy rendezvous, probably because he alluded to his plans to marry her right from the second they became serious. By the time they did get married, there were too many other things to think about and timing for starting the family they'd commented about every so often was just never discussed.

It was two years into their marriage before Judd finally came out and asked her that, if they weren't doing anything to keep her from getting pregnant… and had been "uncareful" this long… what did that mean?

"I'm not trying to rush things, Suzi, we got plenty of time. But, I guess I'm just kind of surprised it hasn't… already happened by now," he'd danced around the uncomfortable family planning topic with care one night as they sat on their porch. She had been waiting to see how long it would take for him to start asking the question, particularly after their recent dinner with Frank and his wife, who had brought over their two little girls. Judd had been more captivated by the children of his good friend than she'd ever counted on him being.

"Unless you're doing something you haven't told me about, and… I'm not bothered by it or anything…" he continued. "Just, maybe we should talk about when to go..." he shifted a bit, "…see somebody. Make sure there isn't anything wrong."

It was only fair for him to ask, but Suzi balked at the topic, and didn't give him a satisfactory answer for a couple more months. She wasn't quite sure if it was fear that made her not want to tell him she could have reproductive problems – fear of him being frustrated she might not be able to have a child for them – or if it was pride. But either way, when she finally broke down and gave him the full story, she realized things would've been so much easier had she been honest right from the start. The discussion launched their first big fight.

"And this is why I didn't want to tell you," she angrily plunked down the tea pitcher on the table when he went all too quiet at the news.

"Well I guess I just want to know when you were planning on telling me, Suzi? I mean am I really that hard of a guy to talk to?" he'd fired back. "It's not like we can't work through it, but… it's maybe just a little bit important if I always took for granted we were gonna have kids."

"If we're supposed to have them, we will, Judd. That's how I've always handled thinking about it, that's how I have to handle thinking about it. So don't give me a hard time over this. I mean don't we have plenty of other things to make our lives special? We have each other, for one thing. Can I just… know that I would be enough for you, if?"

As luck would have it, the phone rang right at that moment, calling Judd away to the rail yard for a long haul. The one difficult part of their railroad family life was that her husband was on call almost every single day, and she never knew at what point he would have to leave and she might not see him for hours or even well over a day.

But right now? They needed the space.

And it worked. When Judd came back, the first thing he did when he came in the door was embrace her and apologize for his attitude about her news. She accepted it readily, issued her own apology, shed a few tears of relief, and the whole matter was behind them. They vowed to leave whether or not they would ever have children in fate's hands for now, and not to let it come between them.

This was the way it worked when you were newlyweds. And thankfully, Judd kept his end of the promise.

They made their life together beautiful in all the other ways they cared about. Except for the unpredictable part of life for a conductor's wife, Suzi stayed happy and plugged into everything about Judd and his world. She continued to work her own job as a nurse in the local emergency room, and together, they always had stories to tell each other, friends to go out with, and plenty of moments to enjoy and savor between the two of them.

Perhaps it was because the pressure faded away that, nearly five years to the day they were married, it happened.

Suzi always felt afterward that she knew the very moment she became pregnant – it was a rainy morning in Brewster, and Judd was just getting out of the shower to prepare for another long haul when he caught Suzi's eye. She hadn't even realized, as she sat in bed with the blankets pulled up around her snugly, that she was smiling a little while looking out the window at the droplets gathering on the windowpane, twirling a loose comforter string around her finger absently.

"What is it, you look like you're keeping some kind of secret," he chuckled, running a hand through his wet, tousled hair as he went to open a drawer.

"I don't know, I'm… I just feel different. In a good way," she added quickly. "Don't ask me why, I just… woke up like this."

The morning sickness commenced pretty soon after, and at that point, Suzi felt like she needed no more confirmation. But of course she knew she couldn't just leave this up to her own hunch. After a late afternoon doctor's appointment in which she received the news loud and clear, she made a bee-line for the rail yard.

She had never seen Judd so excited.

It was a sweet chapter, her pregnancy. She experienced some of her sickest days, her worst moods, and her biggest body dissatisfactions, but in the end, there was Ezra Dane Stewart.

And everything changed.

Suddenly, her career wasn't anywhere near the everything she'd thought it was. Suddenly, she wanted to get in touch with her parents again. Suddenly, Judd was starting to protest being called away from all the little moments of their life so much.

Ezra was a blonde-haired bundle of energy and affection. He had Judd's deep-set sea blue eyes and Suzi's own upturned nose. The ends of his hair soon flipped up in what looked to be the beginnings of curls, another inheritance from Judd. He was their own perfect miracle.

Ezra's babyhood was the purest joy Suzi and Judd had ever known, but it was over much too quickly. Not only that, but soon, working full-time and raising a little one, largely alone during weeks when Judd was out on the train, became pretty stressful for Suzi to manage. Judd certainly made enough money on his own to support them if Suzi wanted to quit work and stay home, but she was afraid that as much as she loved Ezra, she would feel far too isolated if she left the bustle of the ER altogether. So she initially chose to gear down to part-time and enroll the toddler in daycare two days a week.

Suzi made it through exactly three weeks of leaving Ezra with someone else before she decided she couldn't handle it. Sheepishly, she informed Judd that she put in her notice at the hospital.

"He was bitten today! BITTEN! This is the kind of stuff I'm talking about" Suzi exclaimed, turning the TV off for the night. "I'm paying these people to make sure this stuff doesn't happen!"

"I somehow didn't think that would last long," Judd laughed over the decision, lying on the couch tiredly one night as he lifted little Ezra up in the air over him to simulate a plane ride before resting the squirming, giggling little boy against him. "But you do know, kids do bite. It's part of the whole deal. We just need to make sure he knows how to bite back. Nobody better to teach him that than his Mom." His eyes sparkled as he smiled over at Suzi.

She couldn't help but chuckle. Suzi knew she was fiery, and Judd was too, in his way. Ezra's chances of being docile weren't very good.

So Suzi became a stay-at-home mom for the next three years. She had expected it to be boring at the beginning, but it turned out to be anything but. The more time she spent taking care of Ezra and having fun with him, the more she realized how dull her job had truly been compared to full-time motherhood.

Around the time Ezra started kindergarten, Judd began to train as an engineer. Suzi braced for what she assumed would be yet another big distraction for him from their family life, but she soon realized she hadn't given her husband enough credit. He worked hard to make his dream of becoming an engineer come true, yet he worked equally as hard to spend enough time with Suzi and Ezra when he was home. On some nights, he staggered in the door just long enough to get about five hours of sleep before leaving out again. It was almost physically painful for Suzi to see how exhausted he was, and she did all she could to keep things as calm and predictable as possible at home so that he could truly rest when he got the chance to be there.

If Suzi were to be honest, though, a thin vine of sadness still always snaked its way around her heart each time he left out for a long haul. She realized then more than ever that in all likelihood – or at least until he had worked long enough to establish seniority and more stable hours – she would never get to see as much of Judd as most other women get to see of their husbands. Ezra missed him too, and Suzi could tell that nothing was as hard on Judd as leaving out on a trip when Ezra begged him not to go.

But Judd, in all his creativity, came up with a way to ease the pain of his absence for their son. He began buying small toy train cars that hooked together, and every night he took a last minute call out, he started presenting Ezra with a new train piece before he left. Ezra soon learned that with his dad leaving, something good came of it too – he had his own train to take care of. Suzi never tired of watching the expression on Ezra's face when he lay in the middle of the living room floor, lining his trains up and pushing them slowly down the toy tracks.

She also knew it made Judd proud for another reason: railroad was largely a family business. Ezra came into the world with Judd already hoping and expecting that one day, any son he might have would work alongside him at AWVR and eventually take his place. He wanted Ezra to have an appreciation early for the trade he would hopefully inherit.

But it was not to be.

Ezra played with trains only until he was six years old when they, along with the rest of his toys, were boxed up and hidden from sight. Family and friends saw to this, as they feared it was the only way Judd and Suzi wouldn't come completely unglued.

Just after Ezra's sixth birthday, he had his first playdate with a little boy named Gavin from his first grade class. On her way back to the Stewart's house with both boys in the backseat, Gavin's mother instinctively swerved to miss a deer and swung the SUV into the path of an oncoming 18-wheeler truck.

"Your son didn't suffer, Mrs. Stewart. It was very fast, for all three of them." The police officer who came to the door to deliver the news knelt next to Suzi, who lay face-down on the ground, sure she would never be able to move again.

The next few weeks dragged on in an agonizing slow-motion as Suzi ate Xanax tablets and slept. The moments in between took her breath away with the pain. She barely remembered her son's funeral, or the faces of the people in their lives who came and went to provide food, a clean house, and shoulders to cry on.

Judd was in shambles. The rail yard gave him almost a month off for bereavement, but it was barely enough time for him to become functional again. Suzi was aware, somewhere in the back of her medication- and grief-drugged mind, that they needed each other right now above anything. But all she seemed to remember of Judd during that time was that he locked himself in the bathroom for almost two entire days after Ezra's death and sobbed in heavy, guttural noises that Suzi had never heard a human being make before.

After a couple months, though, all but the very closest friends had drifted back to their own lives. Judd had been back at work for a little while, but had taken to having way too much alcohol before runs in order to stay sane through the long hours on the tracks. He came home numb and spent, and fell into bed, where he stayed until the next run. Suzi was of little help to him, busying herself as best she could by cleaning every inch of the house, rearranging every piece of furniture, and making calls to see if she could get her job back.

"I want to move," was the first thing she said to Judd that she could actually remember later. She whispered it in the middle of a long night when she knew he wasn't asleep either. "Out of this house."

All he did was take her hand and give it a squeeze in reply.

It took about three months before the haze of grief wore off enough for them to have a coherent conversation about what to do next. "Suzi," Judd began one day, as they sat eating their dinner together quietly. "I know we talked about moving… but this house is the only thing left. It's all we've got of the time we had him, and I don't want to be anywhere else. I want to walk past his room and remember him playing in there. I'm asking you to really think about this."

"I've already thought about it, Judd, and I can't stay."

"How about if we keep the house, but rent something else just for a little while? Then… maybe you'll feel okay about coming back here when enough time's gone by. We can just try it. Please."

Suzi knew it wasn't quite fair for her to make demands that they deal with their shared grief in her way only, so she complied. But after an entire year in a town house Judd rented for them, she was no more ready to go back to the big empty house on Walker Street than she was the day they drove away.

Judd resented her for it her unwillingness to go back, and she knew it. But she felt unable to budge on the point.

By this time, Suzi had gone back to work, though asked to be transferred to the surgical floor. The idea of coming across a victim of a bad car accident in the ER, particularly a child, was too much for her to risk. So she immersed herself in learning a new area, getting to know new coworkers, and staying as busy as possible.

Judd finally finished his training as an engineer, and landed the position he had so coveted for years. He threw himself into his own work with more gusto than before, and soon, Suzi began to feel her own resentment building up at his constant absence.

The erosion had officially begun.