Without a word to Mac, he went into the guest room, grabbed a set of running clothes from the basket on the floor and tossed it onto the bed. He sat down and changed, obviously very upset, knowing that he needed to be by himself and blow off some steam if he stood any chance of sleeping that night. Once dressed, he shoved his ID into the pocket on his shorts, zipped it up and headed for the garage door.

Mac intercepted him on his way to the door. She saw him dressed in running clothes so her query was useless, but she asked anyway not knowing what else to say. "Where are you going?"

"Out," he snapped. "I need some air."

"Harm, it's late," she told him. "Its after nine and the roads are dark..."

"That's what reflective shoes are for," he answered, trying to move around her.

"I don't want you to go out there now," she told him. "I...please, let's sit down and let's just sit down."

"I can't right now, Mac," he said. "I need to blow off some steam, try to clear my head."

"You need to blow off steam..." she sighed. "That's..."

"Please, Mac," he said, his voice gentle but firm. "I'm not angry, I'm...hell, I don't even know what, that's why I've got to go out for a bit."

"We should try to talk," she said. "Dr. McCool said..."

"I know what she said!" replied Harm, raising his voice in frustration. "I also know what I need right now and that's to go take a run, so please, move out of my way, Mac, or I'll go out the other door."

"Harm..." she began again."Fine," she moved out of his way. "Run, that's what you do best."

With a hurt look on his face and a shake of his head, he moved past her and out the door connecting the garage and the kitchen.

Mac didn't know what to do. She knew how badly he was hurting because she was hurting herself. Sometimes she wasn't sure if he wanted to try and save their failing marriage and other times he was ready to fold into a pretzel to please her. It just didn't make sense. She went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. She saw one of Harm's beers he kept there and was sorely tempted, but instead she reached for orange juice. She poured the juice into the glass, and as he hands started to shake she spilled a bit of it over the side of the counter. Seeing the juice spill and feeling her heart jolt, she let out the sob she'd been holding in since they left Dr. McCool's office. Wiping her eyes, she walked to the sofa and picked up the cushion that Harm had leaned against when he was talking to Lucy. It smelled like his soap, a scent that usually comforted her, but now only made her feel more alone.

He walked back through the door, the same one he'd stormed out of only a couple minutes earlier. What he saw when he looked at the sofa made him feel about two inches tall. Closing the door behind himself, he hurried over to the place his wife was seated and sat down beside her, hoping she'd look at him, but understanding if she didn't.

Mac didn't even notice Harm was there so lost was she in the pit of her despair. She had to be the worst wife in the world, saying what she'd said about his father, and the worst mother too, making little Lucy endure their inadequate explanation. She should just, if for no ones sake but Lucy's and DJ's forget about this and move on. They'd always buried the hurt, why should now be any different.

He reached over and laid a hand on her knee. "Mac?"

She pulled her knee back from his hand.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."

She lifted her head from her lap, "I thought you needed to blow off some steam," she bit out through her sobs.

"I though I did," he said, running his hands through his hair. "I got as far as the end of the driveway and realized that what I need is...you. You're right, we need to talk."

She wiped away at her tears once again, "Our daughter is very upset."

He nodded. "I know. I knew she would be, but there are some things you just can't make sound...good."

"I know that..." Mac replied. "You..." She got that far before his cell phone rang.

Mac looked at the offending phone, "You better get that," she told him. "I'm going to take my pill and wash my face. Then maybe we can talk rationally."

"'Okay," he said, walking towards the bar and picking up the phone. He flipped it open to read the Caller ID, and rolled his eyes as he answered. "What do you want?"

"You missed an appointment," was the first thing she said. "Last week."

"No, I - " he thought for a moment, and realized she was right. He'd missed the sonogram appointment, not that he was anything more pressing on his mind or anything.

"Yeah, I did. Lucy was sick and there was no way I could get to Baltimore."

"Likely story," she sighed. "If you want to go back on our agreement that's fine, just remember that if you break your end of the deal I can break mine."

"You can save the tough talk and the threats, Annie," he said. "Mac knows about what happened in Mexico and she knows about...this."

"You told her?" Annie was surprised. "What happened to the poor sick little princess that needs to be sheltered?"

"Watch it!" he spat. "Don't you talk about my wife like that! I didn't tell her. I was going to, but as fate would have it, the night I planned to tell her is the night she figured it out for herself."

"I apologize," Annie replied, her voice softening. "I'm just not feeling well myself these days."

"Yeah, well, deal with it," he said, not feeling the least bit sorry for her. "I've got enough to worry about. Why did you call me, just to bawl me out for missing that appointment?"

"No," she replied. "I wanted to tell you that I have another one for Monday at seven and I was thinking you'd might want to go. He said we might get to see the baby and hear the heart beat, the last time there was just the heart beat."

"I can't make that one, either," he said. "I know, I said I'd go to these and now I'm not going, but things here have been pure hell for the past 5 days and I can't possibly get to Baltimore in the middle of it."

"Maybe I can send you a picture," she sighed. "Is the little one very sick or...?" She was switching to the mode she's been in when they'd been together, soft, gentle, and loving.

"She's sick enough," he replied. "But getting better."

"Ear infection?" Annie asked.

"No, sinus infection," he said. "Kids get sick, though. She'll be fine. If you don't have anything else, I need to go."

"Just one more thing," Annie said. "Take care of yourself, okay. You sound horrible," she told him.

"I do? Well gee, imagine that!" he said sarcastically.

"I'm worried about you," she told him. "You're still my friend if nothing else."

"After this...thing," he said, unsure of what to call the situation they'd gotten themselves in to, "I wouldn't count on it. I've got to go now. Goodbye."

Mac heard most of Harm's conversation as she busied herself cleaning up the orange juice spill in the kitchen and counting the days on their calendar since her last period. This is what she was doing when he joined her.

"Can I help with anything?" he asked softly.

"No, I'm okay," she said stopping and counting again. "Who was that?"

"Oh, uh, Annie," he said, bracing for the daggers that were surely coming his way.

"What did she want?" she asked. Then to herself, "Twenty nine, thirty, thirty one..."

"It's not important," he said. "She was the last person I needed to have called me tonight. I'm sorry."

"That's okay," she sighed. "You have a responsibility." Then "Damn it!"

"What?" he asked, walking over to where she stood looking at the calendar. "What'd we miss?"

"Not we," she sighed. "Me. I'm five days late."

He looked at her as his eyes grew wide. "You're what? Wh...? What does that mean?" He thought for a second. "Oh, Mac, surely not..."

She shook her head. "We're not that lucky," she sighed. "I'm guessing the miscarriage through off my regular cycle. But if I'm late..." She left that opened for him to draw his own conclusions.

"Well, now let's stop and think," he said, suddenly very interested in the goings on of his wife's cycle. "Is it even possible, I mean timing-wise and all? Can you remember?"

"I don't know..." She sighed. "Our anniversary was only ten days ago...I guess maybe, I don't know."

"Do you have any tests left in the cabinet?" he asked.

"One," she replied. "In the big bathroom."

"Well, go take it," he encouraged.

She looked at him and the faintest of smile came over her face. "Come with me?"

"Okay," he whispered, the faint smile on his face matching hers.

They made their way to the back bathroom inside the room she was using. He got the test down and left her to her own devices to take it. She opened the door when she was finished and they sat on the edge of the bathtub waiting for the three minutes to be up.

He nodded and stood up, walking to the vanity and taking the stick in his hand. He looked at it, then held it at arms length and looked some more before bringing it closer again.

"Harm, what does it say?" she asked, feeling her anticipation and excitement growing.

"I'm not sure," he said quizzically. "I think there's a second line, but it's not real clear."

"Let me see," she told him. "It's not that hard to read."

She took the stick from him and looked at it herself. He was right, it looked like the second line was there, but it wasn't dark enough to tell for certain. She did just as he had done and held the test out at arms length to determine if she could see he second line any better that way.

"See what I mean?" he said sweetly. "It's there, but it's not."

She nodded. "Yeah. I know with Lucy and DJ the second line was almost as dark as the control line; we could see it from all the way across the room. This one...I just don't know. If you can't see it close up, it's probably not a positive, right?"

She studied the test sick. "Kind of...I think. Here, you look, I can't tell."

He took the stick once more and looked at it carefully. "It looks very light blue to me" he said. "Let's go look in a different light." As he went to leave the bathroom, she grabbed his arm.

"No," she said. "We can't do this to ourselves. We took the test; it wasn't conclusive, bottom line."

"But Mac," he said. "You could be-" She cut him off.

"I know" she said, "but we won't be able to tell one way or he other tonight, and we'll just make ourselves crazy with this damn test. Let's just put it aside and go have that talk we both needed so badly a half hour ago, okay?"

Harm lingered behind in the bathroom to freshen up and Mac made her way out to the kitchen. This kind of talk called for food at least on her part. She took some of his veggie lo mein out of the fridge and heated that up for herself. For Harm, she dished up a bowl of fruit salad and carried both to the living room table. A second trip yielded two iced teas and a blanket for her legs. She sat down then and waited for him.

Harm took his time in the bathroom. He needed the breather, the space, but at the same time he needed to hide in his wife's arms while she told him she was sorry for what she said, like he was certain she would do. He looked into the bathroom mirror and surveyed his face. He was exhausted. He'd barely slept in over a week now, first being away from home and now being away from Mac. Not to mention the mattress on the lighthouse room's bed was soft and drooped a lot.

After splashing some water on his face and changing out of his running clothes into sleep attire Harm joined Mac on the couch.

"Snack time?" he asked her lifting the plate of fruit salad.

"I thought having something to do while we talked would make it easier not to start pawing at each other," Mac replied. "I never thought…"

"Thought what?" Harm asked.

"I never thought that something we'd put so much stock in would hurt us so badly," Mac sighed.

Harm was silent a moment then, "What should we talk about?"

"I think it would be a good idea if we talked about things we felt during the session," Mac commented.

"Things he felt during the session," Harm thought. He couldn't forget the things he'd heard or felt during the session.

"I guess it came from him," he recalled her saying. "He always had a tendency to be selfish…selfish…selfish…"

"Please tell me you're not going to bring my father into this…"

"Victim you mean…victim…victim…victim…"

"I'm having a real hard time understanding how you could call yourself a victim when it comes to my father," said Harm, taking a small bite of his salad. "I'd like to know why you feel that way, if you'll tell me."

She sighed, "That's not what we're supposed to be talking about."

"But I need to know, Mac," he said insistently. "That just kind of came out of nowhere this afternoon, and it hurt to hear it, and I'd honestly love to know what's behind it."

"Since I've met you you've been obsessed by your father, and not just with finding him, but with being what he was. He was a pilot, so you had to be a pilot. It didn't matter that you had a wife at home, a pregnant wife. It didn't matter that the baby was due before your tour would be over all that mattered was you had to go and fly like your father did," she explained.

"Mac, like you said, you knew that when you met me. It's not like I surprised you with any of that; it was all right up front for you to see. You know I had to be gone right before Lucy was born. You also know that I didn't want to go, but it wasn't up to me. I know you've never really liked me being a pilot, despite what it says on your shirt, but I've learned to accept that. Why can't you accept the other side of things?"

"You have a selective memory, Harm. You knew I was pregnant when you requested a change of designator. Why in God's name would you ever do that?" she asked. "Did you want to leave me alone with a baby to raise like your father? Do you want to mirror him that much? We all ready know you and he have the same...issues...Why not the same fate? Why not the same desire to serve your own interests no matter what the consequences to other people?"

"Hey, don't go attacking my dad like that" he said, placing the fruit on the coffee table. "He was fighting for his country and so was I. Yes, I knew you were pregnant when I changed my designator, that's a big part of why I did it. I wanted my baby, our baby, to live in the safest country possible, and I had to do my part to make that happen. Don't think I didn't give any thought to her possibly growing up without me, because I promise you that thought went through my head about a million times a day. Remember which picture I had taped to my instrument panel? Do you?"

Mac shook her head, "Whether I do or I don't doesn't make a damned bit of difference. And for the record I'm not attacking your father, I'm attacking you."

"Oh, well that makes it all okay then, huh?" he asked sarcastically, hating the direction the conversation was going. "I had a picture of you, Mac. Remember the one Harriet took of you at the picnic right after I deployed, and you sent it to me? You were pointing to your belly and smiling, I forget exactly how far along you were, but you were pretty big. I kept that with me at all times; it was either in my pocket or taped up in the cockpit. I hated being away from you, but it was something I had to do. I know you're afraid of me flying, and you probably always will be, but like I said, I've come to accept that. I don't like it, but I know I can't change how you feel. Can we please, though, leave my dad out of this?"

"No we can't," she replied. "Because he's a huge part of it Harm. He's a huge part of you, he's a huge part of us. If he never got shot down, if he never was taken prisoner and sent to Russia, if he never escaped, we wouldn't be together, I accept that. What I can't accept is you having to...to do everything he did right or wrong. He was a good man by any standards, but he made mistakes, two if I count correctly, large ones. Now, you've caught up to him."

Harm thought for a moment, and when he realized what she was saying, he felt lower than a dead man's boots. She meant the two women his father had been with while still married to Trish. One was a pretty young singer who visited the USS Ticonderoga with the Bob Hope USO Tour right before the mission he never returned from. She was hurting, he was hurting, and they sought comfort with one another for a night. The other was Sergei's mother. "Mac," he said, looking down at the floor. "Of all the ways I've strived to emulate my dad, you have to know that's not among them. Not even close. Anyway, his circumstances were totally different than mine. He didn't know if he'd ever see my mother again, not that that made it okay, but it does explain it, sort of. Me, I just screwed up."

"At least you admit that much," she sighed. "But isn't it the same I mean...you're father didn't know if he'd ever see Trish again, you didn't know if I'd ever be who you married. You can rationalize your actions and his anyway you want to but either way you both betrayed your vows, you both lied, you both cheated."

"What? Wait a sec" he said. "I'm not reading you. I'd already married you when I...screwed up, hence the whole definition of 'cheating' on you. You're not making any sense."

"Its simple Harm," she bit out. "I'm not the same woman you married. I've changed and not for the better." She rose from the couch and went to toss her lo mein in the trash.

"Is that what you're trying to say?" he asked, following her into the kitchen. "You've changed because of your disease, and that makes you 'not the same woman i married', and that's why I did what I did? That's not true, Mac. You are the same woman; you can't help it if your body betrayed you. That's not your fault, but what I did is mine. God, I'm trying my damnedest to take responsibility here and accept the blame for what happened with Annie and all the fallout that comes with it, but I can't have you blaming yourself like this."

"I'm not blaming myself," Mac argued. "I'm just trying to find some way to exonerate you so I can live with you because otherwise...I..." She lifted her hands up to her face, forgetting the glass bowl she held in her hands. It fell to the floor and broke with a loud clatter.

He hurried over to her, taking her by the shoulders and carefully moving her away from the broken glass on the floor. "Mac, please, look at me" he said, hands still on her shoulders.

"No!" she shouted and began to cry. "I can't...I can't look at you!"

"Then talk to me," he said. "I came back tonight because I needed to talk to you, and you needed to talk to me, but so far all we've done is engage each other in a fantastic pissing contest! Please, talk to me, Mac!"

Still she refused to look up or to speak. She fought his hold on her. When he didn't relent she commanded, "Let go of me!"

"Fine," he said, releasing his hands from her body. "Fine." He walked out of the kitchen and down the hall to the guest room and closed the door in a huff.