Quartermaine Mansion, Exterior-

There were plenty of times when Lois wondered just why she had decided to come back. Yes, she was obligated to at least give her condolences for Lila's passing, but that didn't mean that she needed to stay around. It wasn't like she was particularly wanted around the mansion, Tracy and even Edward made that perfectly clear. It was only because of Monica's decree that Lois was allowed to make the mansion her home, although it didn't necessarily feel like a home.

The beautiful woman stood and looked out at the sky. Although it was winter, and although it was still cold, the sky was beautiful, a bright azure blue color that could be found only in the most perfect of places. The sky never looked that good in the old neighborhood, all the smog and other pollutants making it impossible to see anything that was even remotely beautiful. She remembered the days that she and Sonny would spend looking up at the sky and saying that they were going to go somewhere that would be a place where they could actually see the stars, see the moon, see everything that they were supposed to see. It made Lois happy to know that they had both managed to get to that place, although to say that the journey had not been full of mistakes and regrets would have been entirely false.

Even in the dead of winter, Lois still found something beautiful about the rose gardens. Perhaps it was the spirit of the wonderful woman who had once cared for them with every fiber of her being. Lois was something of a superstitious person, she truly believed that Lila was still connected to the house, like she was still protecting the people that she loved, and if there was one thing that Lila was good at, it was keeping the people that she loved safe. Even though she was elderly, even though she didn't look like she had much fight in her, Lila did indeed have a lot of spunk, spunk that would spring into action the moment it was necessary.

It was at the rose gardens that Lois felt the spirit of Lila Quartermaine at it's strongest. She took her index finger and lightly traced along the dirt where the roses would grow again, but without the touch of Lila, would they actually be that beautiful? Sighing, she turned her blue eyes up to the sky and whispered, "I wish I could have spent more time with you. I wish I could have brought Brook Lynn back to see you more. I wish you were still here, Lila. We're all so confused without you. You were our heart, our soul… you made this family an actual family."

"Lois?" Ned was watching from the door, to far away to hear Lois's words, although if he did hear them he would have been touched, and he would have agreed. Ned, being the oldest, took Lila's passing the hardest out of all her grandchildren, because he was the one who spent the most time with her. Dillon barely knew her, Jason… well, there was no telling what he was feeling, if anything, and Junior didn't even have the dignity to come around and say his final farewells. Lila would have wanted AJ to be there, but Ned was glad that he wasn't anywhere to be seen. AJ had put the family in a position that Ned was still trying to dig them out of, and it was best that AJ stayed away, so that Ned didn't have to think about killing his cousin when people were busy mourning the passing of Lila.

Hearing her ex-husband's voice, Lois summoned the strength of will to make her appear like nothing was wrong. While her back was still turned to Ned, she wiped away the formations of tears in her eyes with her very unique and large nails. Her ruse as ready as it was ever going to be, Lois turned around and smiled, "I thought you had some business meeting that you needed to take care of, Ned."

"It finished early," Ned beamed proudly with his accomplishment, "I managed to talk them into giving ELQ a chance, hopefully we'll be able to do something about the debt that we have. I know we can turn a profit again, Lois, I just need people to have a little faith in the company. A little faith in me."

"I've always had faith in you, Ned," Lois smiled, "always."

"Nice to know that someone does…"

"You'll fight for the company, Ned," Lois walked over to him and held his hand, "it's always been very important to you. You wouldn't just let it die. I know you. You're stubborn and you're loyal to your family. Sometimes a little too loyal, but who can blame you for that?"

"You did…"

Lois turned her eyes away, "I needed someone who could give me more than you could give me, Ned. I understood how important your family was, how important your company was, and I even respected you for having such strong ties to them, but… I just didn't see where my needs could fit in with your schedule. I didn't think that they could, and I think I made the right choice."

"You should have given me time to try and find a way to make it work…"

She shook her head, "If I had waited, I would have only ended up hating you. I didn't want to hate you, I never did, and I don't want to do it now. You're still important to me, I still care a lot about you, but I know that any chance that we have of being in each other's lives is as friends to each other and as parents to our daughter."

"So… there's no chance that anything else could happen?"

Lois laughed, "There's always a chance, Ned, always, but I'm not going to say that it's a very strong chance. You've got so much on your plate, and your mother can't stand me. Yesterday she made me feel like I was the least welcome being on the face of the universe…"

"Have you ever thought that my mother is just upset at the way that you left me and took my daughter away from me?"

"I had thought about it, yes, but then I realized that thinking that would also mean thinking that Tracy Quartermaine actually cared about someone other than herself for a few seconds out of her pitiful existence, and I quickly realized that it would never happen."

"My mother loves me, Lois. She loves me, and she loves Dillon. She loved Grandmother. You saw the way that she was when she heard the news, you saw how hurt she was."

"And that was pain that I would have never wished on anyone, even her," Lois did remember. It was the first time that she ever saw Tracy Quartermaine openly weep. A part of Lois wanted to go over and offer some comfort, but she knew that Tracy would never take it, and it could only make her go off. "But now, Tracy is back to being the person that she's always been."

"I don't think she is," Ned replied. "I can see it in her, Lois. A part of her is gone because of Grandmother's passing. She puts up this wall that nobody can chip through, not even me or my brother. But it's up there because she's nursing a hurt that is never going to go away."

"I guess even cold hearted monsters like Tracy can actually feel pain."

"I feel it, too…"

"Of course you feel it," Lois couldn't believe that Ned would assume that he was like his mother. "Just because you come from your mother doesn't mean that you're anything like her. You're not, not really. You and your brother have managed to somehow find a way to be as different from Tracy as you possibly could, for the better, I might add. If you had been anything like Tracy, even as cute as you are, I would have never even married you, and then we'd never have Brook."

"She wants us back together, you know."

Lois nodded, "Every child wants their parents to get back together if they're not, that's just the way that their minds work. I told Brook a hundred times, and I'm going to keep on telling her that there's nothing wrong with feeling something like that, for wanting something like that, but she can't keep on holding out blind hope that it's going to happen, because odds are that it won't."

"And you're okay with that? Just crushing her dreams like they don't matter to her?"

"My job as a parent is to make sure that my daughter doesn't give in to things that she's never going to get. I nurture everything that I can, Ned. If she wanted to be the president of the United States, I would do everything I could to help her reach that dream, because those are the kind of dreams that people should have."

"I have a call to make and I have to make it soon because if I don't make the call then the offices will close, time zones and all that."

"Don't let me stop you."

"I'll see you later, Lois," Ned replied as he walked back inside the house, looking over his shoulder at Lois, who had turned around again, the drapes blowing her visage in and out of sight. He lied about making a call. He wanted to tell her that he missed her, and that he knew that she missed him, but, apparently, it didn't matter. Nothing was going to put the two of them back together. "I'm sorry, Brook, I tried…"

Park-

"So Durant just came to Port Charles, like that?"

"Yeah," Damian nodded, wishing that it wasn't true, but he had seen the man with his own two eyes, heard the hateful things that Durant spouted off without any regard for the feelings of the people who he was insulting. Such a horrible man. In a way, Carly was like that, at least at first, but Damian sincerely doubted that Durant would ever change, and Carly had.

"I didn't know that he was that intent on destroying Sonny…" Maxie also knew that Durant had another mission on his mind: destroying Damian's reputation. She just didn't know why Durant had come, and even now it wasn't making all that much sense. "But he doesn't know… about Carly, right?"

"I don't think so," Damian sat down on the cold bench, holding Maxie's hand. "I hope not. I don't want Carly or my brothers to be involved with that man."

"And it wouldn't help that he's also your step-grandfather."

"And dad's father-in-law…"

"I'm sure Bobbie regrets even sending the two of us to go and see if we could find him in New York on New Years Eve. I know I do."

"I do, too," Damian gripped her hand tighter. "But Bobbie can trust us not to say anything about him and Carly, right?"

"Of course she can. I don't like Carly, you know that, I won't even pretend to care about her, but I care about your brothers, Damian. They're important to me, and I wouldn't want to see them get hurt."

"Trust is so important to my family, Maxie," he let go of her hand, only slightly. "My father… his biggest issue is being able to trust people, or not being able to trust them. He's left people on the curb just because they did something that he thought broke their trust. Look at his relationship with his father. They're barely able to get through a conversation with each other that doesn't involve me or my brothers without coming to blows. And then there's Uncle Ric…"

"Trust is important to everyone, Damian. Everyone wants to know that they can trust the people that they love."

"I know I can trust you," he said as he gently put a free hand on her cheek. "I can look into your eyes and I can know that whatever you're going to tell me is the truth."

"I feel the same way about you." But she knew that it wasn't true, Damian couldn't look into her eyes and know that she was going to tell him the truth, because she had already lied to him before. She had followed him, broken the trust that he placed in her… but she did it for good reasons. If he would have been with Georgie, for example, she never would have gotten so worried. It wasn't because Georgie was her sister, either, it was because Georgie and Damian didn't have anything in common. Brook and Damian did. They had music, their parents were best friends… it was like everything that Maxie wanted to have Damian like about her just happened to be the things that Damian probably liked about Brook.

"You know how important you are to me, don't you?"

"Of course I know," she couldn't take it anymore, the guilt that he was pouring onto her. "Damian…" she whispered his name so softly that there was probably no way that he would hear it.

"Lies hurt so many people, Maxie. Lies and betrayal. I've had to deal with that before, with my family, both from my father and from my grandfather. I'm just glad that I have someone like you in my life, someone that I know won't do something like that to me. It would kill me inside."

Maxie kissed him on the lips softly, mostly just to get him to stop talking, because each word was like a dagger to her heart. She didn't think that what she did was so bad, but the way that he was talking to her made it seem like he could take it in another way, a way that was much less pleasant, and she couldn't deal with that. She wanted him to keep on loving her, even if it meant keeping the guilt inside of her for the rest of her life.