With a groan, Bobby shifted in the bed and turned onto his back. Slowly, he opened his eyes. In addition to the throbbing of his arm and the burning in his chest, his head was pounding. "Daddy?"

He turned his head toward the crib, where Maggie slid out of the rocking chair and approached the bed. "What are you doing in here, mouse?"

"Mommy telled me I could sit in here with you if I didn' wake you up."

"Why aren't you playing with your brother?"

"I was, but he's takin' his nap an' Mommy said I could sit with you." She studied his face and reached out a tentative hand to touch his cheek. "Are you sick?"

"No." He slowly sat up, and his chest screamed a protest. He swallowed a groan of pain, dropping his chin to his chest as he closed his eyes and struggled with it.

Maggie scurried from the room, finding her mother in the kitchen. "Mommy, do you gots Daddy's med'cine?"

Alex turned from the sink and grabbed a towel to dry her hands. "For what, sweetheart?"

"His arm hurts."

"Is he awake?"

She nodded. "He just waked up. I left him alone, jus' like you telled me."

Alex grabbed a pill bottle from the refrigerator and filled a glass with water. Maggie followed her to the bedroom.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed, head resting on his left hand. She sat beside him and gently rubbed his back. "Maggie said you're in pain," she said softly. "Is it more than just a hangover?"

Slowly, he turned his head toward her. She knew from the bright pain in his eyes that it was and she held out the bottle, setting the water glass on the nightstand by him. He ignored the bottle, concentrating on her. "I...I'm sorry," he said softly, taking her hand. "I..." he looked away. "I was overwhelmed..."

Maggie approached them, stepping up to her father and placing her hand on his knee. He looked into her dark, intelligent eyes, filled with worry, and he saw a mirror of himself. A tremor ran through him and he touched her cheek. She placed her fingers on his hand and asked, "Why are you sorry?"

He didn't know how to explain it to her, so he replied, "I didn't mean to worry you."

She slipped alongside his leg to encircle his waist with her arms. He enveloped her in a warm hug, resting his cheek lightly on her curly head. His eyes closed for a moment. Opening them, he shifted his head and looked at Alex. "I...I guess I was kind of...useless...last night."

Alex shook her head. "We managed fine. Maggie was a big help. Does it matter if I say I understand?"

He met her eyes and he saw that she did understand why he had such a meltdown. His lips set in a grim smile and his hand strayed over his injured chest. He opened the bottle and dumped two pills into his hand, swallowing them with the water. He handed the bottle back to her and leaned down to kiss Maggie's head. "I'm going to shower."

"Don't get that cast wet," Alex cautioned.

Maggie moved out of his way as he rose and waved a hand, snapping, "Yeah, yeah, I know."

They watched him leave the room and Maggie looked up at her mother. "He's a little grouchy."

Alex laughed and hugged her. "A little. Come on. Let's make him something to eat. Maybe a shower and some lunch will make him less grouchy."

Maggie nodded. "Okay, Mommy."

The hot water helped relax his tense muscles and the pain in his chest eased. It seemed unlikely she'd damaged a rib, but she sure did bruise the hell out of it. The bruises on his chest were deep and purple. One of them, the one that hurt the most, was an odd shape, and he wondered if she'd managed to grab something before the nurses came in. He didn't remember if she had or not. All his attention had been focused on subduing her without hurting her. There was a very good reason he never, ever wore his sidearm, or even his backup, when he went to visit her.

By the time he finished his shower, the medicine had begun to work and the pain was fully manageable. He put on a clean pair of jeans and pulled a light blue dress shirt out of the closet. After slipping on a white t-shirt, he pulled it on and went to work on the buttons, deciding against a tie. Pulling on his socks and shoes, he left the bedroom.

The first thing he heard was laughter. Tommy was up from his nap. Pausing in the doorway to the living room, he watched the two children playing on the floor with their kitten.

His mind wandered to the past, and he wondered what it had been like before his mother got sick. He had few memories of his very early life, and most of those involved his grandparents. His father was absent from many of his childhood memories and his memories of his mother, for the most part, were not good ones. In many ways she remembered a childhood that was different than the one he had lived, but that was a manifestation of her disease: delusions and departure from reality. He often wondered if it was all a matter of perception anyway. But perception or reality, he was determined to do everything in his power to see that the memories his children formed were good ones. Maggie had already been touched by the hand of evil, and he desperately wanted to protect her from the rest of the world. It was a source of deep grief for him that he couldn't. He could not protect any of them from the evil in the world. All he could do was arm them against it with strength of character and love. Of the three of them, though, it was his son he worried most about. Fundamentally happy, Tommy had a sensitive soul that would be easily hurt by the world at large. A time would come when neither he nor Alex would be there to protect him, although something deep inside him told him that Maggie always would be. He smiled as he watched Maggie lean over and hug her little brother. Yes, Maggie would always be there for her baby.

Alex looked up from where she sat on the couch with Molly, frowning when she saw the dress shirt he wore. He hadn't prepared for a day with the kids. He was going out, and she didn't need three guesses to know where he was going. Half a second later, Maggie and Tom spotted him. "Dada!"

Tom ran into his arms, and he lifted his son with a wince of pain. Maggie, however, hung back, and he noticed. He gave Tom a kiss and set him on the floor. "Go play, buddy."

He watched as Maggie turned away and returned to the floor with her brother. With a sigh, he let her be, but he knew he was going to have to talk to her soon. He strolled to the couch and sat beside Alex, looking down at the alert baby in her arms.

Her round little face, not yet filled out with the fat of babyhood, looked elfin to him. He grazed his hand over the light fuzz that covered her head. Darker than Tom's hair, it wasn't as dark as Maggie's. In his estimation, she looked like she was going to be a good blend of both siblings. He was well aware that another little person had claimed his heart and would probably be walking all over him in another year, just like the rest of the family did. Molly kicked her feet and waved her arms at him as he adjusted the tiny oxygen cannula under her nose and she sneezed. It had already occurred to him that there was yet another cue he had missed the day before: his mother had not commented on the oxygen Molly still needed.

Shifting to the side, he placed a gentle kiss on Alex's temple. "I am sorry."

"I know," she answered. "I understand. But I'm not the one you need to talk to." She nodded her head toward Maggie. "She understands you very well, but she doesn't quite get what's going on with you right now."

"I know. I'll talk to her."

Before addressing his departure, she said, "I found Tommy in with Maggie this morning. He had a nightmare and she heard him before I did, so she took care of him. She comforted him and got him to go back to sleep."

"A nightmare...no..." He closed his eyes. "My baby."

She touched his arm, but he pulled away from her and she let him go. There would be no dealing with him until he calmed down, and that could take awhile.

Opening his eyes, he watched the two kids giggling at Mischief's antics with a little rubber ball and a piece of string. It didn't pass his notice that Maggie glanced toward him every few minutes. "She wants to fix him, just like she wants to fix me."

Resisting the impulse to reach toward him again, she said, "Just like you, she wants to fix the world."

"And how do we tell her it can't be fixed? Or do we wait for her to figure it out herself, like I did? It's a cruel world, and she's already had a taste of that."

She sensed a darkening of his already melancholic mood. "Bobby..."

He shook his head. "I should be going."

She knew the answer before she asked the question, but she asked anyway. "Where are you going?"

"Out to Carmel Ridge."

She looked down at the baby in her arms. "I thought, maybe, a nice quiet day at home would do everyone some good."

He was tempted. It would be so much easier for him to just remain at home but he had obligations that predated the responsibilities of his vows to her. He shook his head. "I...I have to go. You know that."

She suddenly felt deeply unsettled. "Take Maggie with you."

He stiffened. "No."

She kept her voice low. "I can have her ask you."

"Don't do that to me. I can't take her, Alex. Do you want me to tell you what I saw and what I felt the first time I saw her sedated and restrained? I was eight."

"So let her stay at the nurses' station. She'll be company for you on the ride out there and back. It will give you a chance to talk to her and reassure her. She's really worried about you."

"She worries too much for a five-year-old," he growled irritably.

"She takes after you."

"Don't remind me," he snapped as he pushed himself off the couch and went into the kitchen.

Maggie looked up and watched him stalk off stiffly. "He's still grouchy," she observed.

"Just a little," Alex agreed.

"He's goin' out. Is he gonna go see how Gramma's doin'?"

Alex nodded as she rose and laid Molly in her playpen. "Yes, he is. He has to go."

Maggie handed the string in her hand to her brother and told him to keep playing. Getting up, she followed her mother into the kitchen, but she remained in the doorway and listened.

"Bobby, please...you really don't need..."

He turned toward her from the coffee pot, sloshing coffee from his cup onto the floor. "What do you know about what I need, Alex? Whether I need to be alone or not? I've been dealing with this all my life and what I don't need right now is to take Maggie with me!"

Maggie was taken aback by the venom of anger in his voice. She'd never heard that tone before and it scared her a little. But this was her daddy and there was something very wrong with him. The doctors and nurses would take care of Gramma. Daddy needed someone to take care of him, especially when he refused to let Mommy do it. "But I want to go with you, Daddy."

The coffee mug slipped from his hand and shattered on the floor as he realized she'd heard what he'd just said. He stared at her, and she decided she would do her best not to give him a choice in the matter. She knew he could make her stay home, but she was going to try her hardest to convince him to take her along. "I'll get dressed," she said, determined.

He frowned, confused. What the hell had just happened? Without saying a word, Alex began to clean up the shattered remnants of his cup. Looking at her, he could tell by her movements that she was very angry. "I'll get that," he offered, his tone subdued, contrite.

Without a word, she shifted her shoulders, dropped the ceramic pieces on the floor and left the room.

"Fuck," he muttered under his breath as he leaned down and angrily grabbed at the broken ceramic, slicing a gash in his finger. Dropping to his knees, he watched the blood drip onto the floor. "Great. Just great."

Alex was watching Tommy play with Mischief and she looked up as Maggie came into the room wearing dark jeans and a pink sweatshirt with her white sneakers. Tommy looked up, too, and he realized what was going on. "Me, too!" he announced. "Me go!"

Maggie dropped to her knees beside him and said, "Not this time, Tommy. I gotta go with Daddy out to see Gramma."

Tommy's faced paled and he panicked. "No! No Gramma! No owies! No go, Maga! No go, Dada!"

Maggie hugged him. "Daddy's gotta go, and he shouldn' go alone. You can stay here with Mommy and take care-a Molly and Mischief."

He looked up at her, then scrambled to his feet and ran to his mother. "Mama!"

She gathered the sensitive little boy in her lap and reassured him. "It'll be all right, little man. Maybe we'll go over to see Uncle Mike this afternoon."

"Unna My?"

His little face lit up and Alex gently stroked his blond curls. "Yes, baby. We'll go see Uncle Mike."

Bobby came out of the kitchen with his hand wrapped in a bloody paper towel, not stopping on his way into the bathroom. Alex placed a gentle kiss on Tom's head and set him on the couch, motioning to Maggie to watch him. She followed Bobby, stopping in the doorway to watch him hold his still-bleeding hand under the running faucet.

Grabbing a hand towel, she smoothed it on the counter beside the sink. Gently, she took his hand and turned off the faucet. Placing his hand, palm up, on the towel, she patted it dry and leaned down to study the cut that ran half the length of his index finger. She pulled out the box of first-aid supplies from under the sink and began to clean and bandage his finger. Quietly, she said, "Talk to me, Bobby."

He hesitated before shaking his head. "I...can't," he murmured. "I don't know how to put it into words. There's...too much in my head right now."

"Maybe we can work through it. We'll never know if we don't try."

"Not now, Alex. Maybe when I get home tonight we can try. Just...don't expect miracles."

She heard the pessimism in his tone and she knew he was convinced he would not be able to work through his thoughts and emotions with her. She honestly believed there was nothing they could not get through if they faced it together, but she was still trying to convince him of that.

He shifted his weight as she wrapped his finger with gauze. Maggie, he knew, was going to be full of questions, and the last thing he wanted was for Alex to have to field questions that were, by right, his to answer. "I was hoping for a little more time before I had to do this," he murmured softly.

She looked at him as she reached for the tape. "Do what?"

"Explain my life to Maggie. I don't know what to tell her. I won't give her details of how it really was. She doesn't need to be haunted by a past she did not live, and I don't want to be responsible for causing her any more nightmares."

She smoothed her fingers over the tape and let them trail over his palm as she considered her next words carefully. "Sometimes it's easy to forget that she's only five. You don't have to tell her anything, Bobby. It's perfectly all right to tell her no."

He watched her fingers circle his palm. "And leave her imagination to fill in the blanks?"

"Do you really think that anything she could possibly imagine would be as bad as what you lived?"

He raised his eyes to look at her as he closed his hand around her fingers. She was right. There was nothing in Maggie's experience that would let her imagine how his childhood had been. That was marginally reassuring to him. But he still had to figure out a way to answer her questions without adding fuel to a fire that would generate even more questions. She flexed her fingers in his grip and he released her hand. "Thank you," he murmured, moving past her to leave the bathroom.

She put the first aid supplies away and followed him into the living room, where he was pulling on his overcoat. She watched him lift Maggie's coat from its hook and retrieve her hat and mittens. "You are going to stay with the nurses," he warned, his tone leaving no room for discussion.

She accepted the condition for the moment, recognizing the tone he rarely took with her and knowing it was not the time to debate him. There was still plenty of time for her to negotiate. "Ok, Daddy."

As he held her coat for her, Tommy slid off the couch and ran to them, once again in a panic. "No go, Dada! Maga, no!"

Bobby lifted the toddler in his arms and hugged him, patting his back as Tom rested his head on his shoulder with a quiet sob. "It's all right, Tom."

Alex came over and touched Bobby's arm. After a moment, he kissed Tommy and let her take him. Maggie hugged her mother's waist and patted Tommy's leg. Bobby gave Alex a quick kiss on the cheek and opened the apartment door, holding it for Maggie. He followed her into the hall and closed the door without a glance back.

In the back seat of the car, Maggie swung her legs into the seat in front of her and looked out the window. The sky was a heavy gray that promised snow. She remained quiet, thinking, as he negotiated the city streets. "Daddy?"

"Yes, Maggie?"

"Are you still grouchy?"

He sighed heavily. "I'm fine," he answered.

She hesitated, reading the unsettled tone of his voice. "That's not a answer," she complained.

He bit his lip a little too hard and he tasted blood. Yes, he was still grouchy. He rubbed the back of his neck in frustration. "A little," he conceded.

"Is it a bad time to ask you a question?"

He wasn't sure he was up for one of Maggie's questions, but he didn't have it in him to discourage her curiosity. It was his natural curiosity that contributed largely to the few successes in his life, and it was from him she had inherited it. "What's your question?"

As Maggie sat in silence, gathering her thoughts to word her question the proper way to get the answer she sought, he thought about how amused Alex always was at Maggie's ability to spin him in circles. It was a ride he wasn't fully prepared for, but he would deal with it. Finally, Maggie spoke. "When did Gramma get sick?"

This was a conversation he never wanted to have with her. He had managed to avoid it so far, but the previous day's attack raised issues that would haunt her unless she had answers. "When I was little, just a few years older than you are now."

"Did she hurt Uncle Frank, too?"

She had seen pictures of Frank in his mother's room, so she knew who he was. "Sometimes."

"Will I ever see him?"

"No, Maggie, you won't."

He had not meant to sound harsh, but he did, and she looked sad. "You don' ever see your brother," she mused, more to herself than to him, it seemed. "I would be sad if I couldn' see my brother ev'ey day."

He sighed. "My brother is very different from Tommy."

Whether he intended to or not, he reopened a dialogue with her. "Is he sick like Gramma?"

The discussion was making him nauseous, but he had never been dishonest with her and he rarely avoided giving her the answers she sought, even to difficult questions. "No, not like Gramma. He's sick a different way."

"You don' see him 'cause he's sick?"

Recalling what she had said about not holding illness against her grandmother, he knew he had to word his answer carefully. Although his brother's addictions were part of the reason he refused contact, they were not the only reason. Subconsciously, he rubbed his upper arm. "It's a lot more complicated than that, baby. His illness isn't like the flu or a cold, and it's not why I don't see him. There are a lot of reasons."

"Like what?"

She wanted to understand because she could not imagine anything that would make her not want to see her brother. Bobby sighed heavily and swallowed his unrest. "I don't know how to explain it to you, Maggie. You won't understand and it's not something I can really explain to you right now so you will."

"Will I unnerstand when I'm big?"

"Probably."

"Can you tell me about it when I'm big?"

"If I have to."

A prolonged silence led him into a false sense that the conversation was over until she said, "You're not sick, are you, Daddy?"

He heard the worry in her voice. "No, baby. I'm not."

"Will you get sick like Gramma?"

His gut clenched and his nausea increased. "No. If I was going to get sick like that, it would have already happened."

"What about Mommy?"

"Mommy is fine, baby. Gramma's illness can't make her sick."

He tensed, waiting for her little mind to draw the next obvious conclusion, that she and her siblings could get sick like his mother. She didn't let him down. "So she can' make me or my babies sick, too?"

"You're fine right now, Maggie."

She studied him, and there was no mistaking the tension in his body. Her questions were upsetting him, and he was already upset enough, so she decided it was time to stop asking for now. "I'm sorry, Daddy."

He glanced at her in the mirror. "For what?"

"You're more upset now."

He sighed deeply and pulled the car over to the side of the road. Turning in his seat, he reached his hand toward her and she wrapped her fingers around his. "Don't be sorry because you want to know, Maggie. I'm the one who's sorry. I've been in a bad mood and I've taken it out on you. I shouldn't have done that."

"You just been grouchy. It's okay."

"No. It's not. I...I'm just having a bad day."

She nodded. "I know. I have bad days sometimes, too."

He tried to smile, squeezed her hand and turned back in his seat, pulling back onto the road. As they got closer to Carmel Ridge, Maggie asked, "Can I go into Gramma's room with you?"

"No."

"Please?"

"No."

She sighed and fell silent again, determined to give it one more try once they were there.

Bobby stepped into his mother's room, alone. Maggie had given one more try to changing his mind, as he'd expected, but he refused to cave to her this time. She didn't seem surprised, and she'd given him a kiss, and one for Gramma, when he left her with the nurses.

The smells and the sounds of the room and its surroundings were as familiar to him as the beat of his heart. She was laying on the bed, restrained and sedated, as he knew she would be. He moved away from the door as it opened and one of her regular nurses came into the room. "How are the children?"

"Maggie came back with me, but my son is still upset," he replied quietly.

"I am so sorry that happened."

"You and me both. I really tried to protect them from that side of her. Their memories should have been good ones, but now...I royally screwed that up."

"It wasn't your fault. This was unexpected."

He shook his head. "There were signs. I missed them. Or rather, I ignored them. I hoped I was wrong, but I wasn't."

She touched his arm sympathetically. "Don't beat yourself up over it. These things happen, unfortunately."

"How is she?" he asked by way of changing the conversation.

"Not good. We let her wake up first thing this morning."

"And?"

"It wasn't pretty."

This nurse was fairly new, and he realized that she was trying to spare him further pain. He appreciated her effort, but there was no need. He had been through this more times than he cared to remember. His mother's bad times had come to outnumber her good ones years ago. "She was looking for me."

"Not you, no. The little boy she thinks you are right now."

"My son."

She nodded, lightly touching his elbow, sympathy in her eyes. "Yes."

He looked away and continued to fill in the blanks. "She was yelling about demons."

She had a lot of respect for Frances Goren's son. Some families dissociated themselves from family members with mental illnesses, but this man was not like that. He was very involved in his mother's care, and he knew the patterns of her disease. "Yes, she was."

"If she wakes up now, she'll look at me and see my father."

He knew well how it went. She would yell at him to find that damn kid and teach him a lesson for running away from her. She would demand he chase the demons from her boy, so he would be good again. He remembered living through it the first time, and reliving it through her delusions was no less painful. Frank had escaped many of the beatings by staying out, leading her to believe he was studying with a friend when he was really out drinking and getting high. That had not changed. Frank was still gone and here he was again, taking care of Mom, being the responsible one. And he was so damn tired.

The nurse touched his arm. "You should probably wait for the doctor. There are other concerns."

He frowned. "Like what?"

"Her blood pressure is too low and she's developed an arrhythmia. They aren't sure yet what it means."

She gave his arm a sympathetic pat and left the room. Alone with his thoughts, he sat down in a chair near the bed, the weight of his world wearing heavily on his shoulders. As he waited for the doctor, his thoughts grew darker. Dangerously, he reflected on the people who were important to him. His mind stumbled over the course of his friendship with Mike Logan, and he realized Mike had been a better friend to him than he deserved. Mike had reached out a hand to a friend in need, and as payment, he'd received nothing but grief...a car accident in Texas that nearly took his life, a son born 500 miles from home, a painful bullet injury...

And Alex, the better half of everything he would ever be, deserved so much better than he could ever give her. Finally...his children...a sweet baby girl born too early because of his carelessness...a happy little boy now suffering from an attack he had failed to see coming...and Maggie...tears stung his eyes and his throat closed on him. Maggie...In the past, she had always been able to save him from the darkness in his soul that he constantly fought, but something had changed. The darkness had touched the ray of light he had clung to for the last five years, and that light had dimmed. The tenuous grip he had been able to maintain over the past few years was slipping, and he could find nothing inside him to reinforce it. If he had been thinking straight, he would have called his wife, or Logan, but he did neither. All he knew was that every life he had touched, in his estimation, would be so much better without the despair he brought them.

The nurses played with Maggie as their duties allowed, and there was always at least one sitting at the station with her. She kept looking down the hallway toward her grandmother's room, wishing her father would come out, but he didn't. Her concern increased when the doctor came and went and still, he didn't come out. "Is my daddy okay?"

"Yes, sweetheart. He's fine."

Maggie wasn't sure she believed her. She needed to see him to know for certain he really was all right. She wanted to go down the hall into Gramma's room, but she had promised him she would stay put. Daddy always kept his promises to her, and she would do the same for him. So she sat there and worried.

Fifteen minutes after the doctor left, Bobby came out to the nurses' station. He held his hands out toward Maggie and she scrambled into his arms. Setting her on a high counter, he caught her eyes and softly said, "I'm going to take you in to see Gramma, Maggie. You...you should tell her good-bye."

Tears welled in Maggie's eyes. "You won' bring me to see her no more?"

His own eyes moist, he answered, "I can't, baby. Gramma's going away, and she won't be here any more."

"Where's she goin'?"

"Gramma is dying, baby, and she doesn't have much time left."

She stared at his face, so filled with pain she hurt for him as well as for herself. Her tears spilled over onto her cheeks and she threw herself against his chest. Silently, he carried her back to his mother's room.

It was late when he carried Maggie to the car, sleeping soundly in his arms. She had asked him to call Alex more than once, but he had shut down on numerous levels. He was barely functioning, and thinking straight was one of the abilities he lost. He was convinced that he had already pushed Alex to her limit and he refused to trouble her further with his mother's concerns. She had enough to deal with taking care of his traumatized son. Tom would freak if he was brought back out to Carmel Ridge, and he wouldn't handle it any better if his mother left him behind to make the trip. So he refused to call, sitting silently beside his dying mother's bed while Maggie quietly read to her from the books Gramma had bought for her after her very first visit. Where the Wild Things Are, Goodnight, Moon, The Cat in the Hat, The Very Hungry Caterpillar...

He set her in her carseat and buckled her in. Sliding behind the wheel, he pressed his head against the steering wheel, but he did not start the engine right away. His mind was spinning in circles, spurred on by his emotional instability. He wasn't sure what was going on in his head. He only knew that he hurt, and there had to be some way to soothe that pain, to cope with the depression that had settled on him and now held him securely in its grasp. He had few coping mechanisms—only two, in fact, that he used regularly, both readily available if he sought to use them. He started the car and headed back toward the city.