"Uncle Jack, can I have the potatoes?" Shawn asked, his mouth already full of turkey and cranberries as he pointed at the bowl of mashed potatoes that was sitting across the table directly in front of his uncle.

Jack passed them to his nephew, grinning slyly as he glanced at Henry out of the corner of his eye. "Did I ever teach you how to play Potato Ball?" he asked.

"No…" Shawn shook his head, intrigued. "What's Potato Ball?"

"Oh, God, Jack!" Grandpa groaned, laughing as he rolled his eyes. "Don't start with Potato Ball again! You and Henry did enough damage with that when you were kids!"

"What's Potato Ball?" Shawn asked again, looking around at all three adult as the table, doubly interested in this game now that it appeared to be both banned and potentially destructive.

"Knock it off, Jackie," Henry growled, passing the peas to his father. "You're not teaching Shawn Potato Ball."

"Why not?" Jack laughed. "He'll pick it up quickly. It only took me an afternoon to teach him how to hotwire a car last time I was in town."

"You taught him how to do what?" Henry almost exploded, dropping his fork on the plate.

"Oh, come on." Jack shrugged, snatching a roll out of the bread bowl and tossing it up in the air, catching it neatly with one hand. "It's a valuable life-skill. Do you have any idea how many times hotwiring a car has saved my butt?"

"I don't care, Jack! Don't teach my son how to hotwire!"

Grandpa rolled his eyes, pushing back from the table and slowly standing up. "Who wants some wine?" he mumbled, walking back towards the kitchen.

"Oh, that's a great idea!" Madeline called after him, laughing. "Let's introduce alcohol into the situation!"

"But what's Potato Ball?" Shawn demanded for the third time, not caring that his father and his uncle were currently locked in a stare-down.

"Nothing," Jack shrugged, finally just dropping the whole issue. "I'll teach it to you later, Kid."

"You can tell me about it when we go fishing tomorrow!" Shawn told him, a brilliant idea occurring to him. "Dad's taking me fishing tomorrow…do you want to come, too, Uncle Jack? He can come, too, right, Dad?"

Henry shrugged impassively, a look passing between him and his brother. "There's room in the boat," he mumbled. "Dad's coming, too."

"Sure," Jack mumbled back, returning Henry's unaffected shrug. "I'll come, Shawny. Why not?"

"Yea!" Shawn cheered happily. "And you can put the worm on the hook for me…because that's just gross."

Jack laughed. "Oh, yeah, Henry." he grinned sarcastically. "You're really rubbing off on the kid."

"Shut up, Jackie." Henry muttered.

Grandpa came back into the dining room at that moment, carrying an unopened bottle of wine. "I couldn't find the corkscrew, Mad," he said, placing it on the table as he sat back down.

"I saw it earlier." Jack said, quickly jumping up before Madeline could move. "I'll get it."

He practically ran into the kitchen before anyone could tell him to sit back down. Henry glanced at his wife questioningly, but she just shrugged.

"Actually," she spoke up a minute later, gently folding her napkin and dropping it next to her plate as she pushed back from the table. "You just brought the red out. There was a bottle of white I wanted to open…I'll just grab it."

She walked into the kitchen, feeling Henry's eyes following her every movement as she crossed the room.

She didn't look back at him.

Jack was heading out the back door when she walked in. He quickly let it slam shut behind him when he saw her.

"Hey," he cleared his throat guiltily, gesturing at the corkscrew on the counter in the center of the room. "I found it."

"I see that."

She crossed to the counter and picked it up, then hung up the phone, which was laying off the hook on the counter.

"What's going on, Jack?" she asked quietly.

He took a step away from the door towards her, grinning. "Don't worry, Mad. I wasn't calling another woman. You know you're the only girl for me."

"Knock it off," she ordered sternly, for once not laughing at his quip. "Just tell me the truth. For once. What the hell is going on with you?"

His grin faded as his eyes met hers and he saw the concern written in her expression.

"Nothing."

"Liar."

"Mad--"

"Jack." She cut him off sharply, not about to listen to another one of his stories. "I don't want to hear anything but the absolute truth."

He sighed, looking behind him at the kitchen door, making sure no one else was in ear-shot, then came back in. "It's nothing," he assured her. "I just hit a snag with one of my partners…we don't see eye-to-eye on a fifty-fifty split. The moron thinks fifty percent is half!" he snorted and laughed, but the laughter quickly died in his throat when Madeline's face just grew more somber.

"It's not a big deal," he promised. "Really."

"Is he after you?" she asked, not about to let him off the hook without a full explanation.

Jack just shrugged. "Yeah."

"Is that why you're back in town?"

"Yeah."

She sighed, resting her hands against the counter. "You were leaving again. Weren't you? And you weren't even going to tell us. You were just going to walk away and not look back."

"I don't have a choice, Mad," he shook his head slowly, walking back towards the door. "He caught up with me. And I really don't have time to waste listening to an hour-long Henry lecture. I have to get out of here. Fast."

Madeline put the corkscrew down and came around the counter. "Do you have any idea what my life will be like for the next two months if you just walk out that door without so much as a goodbye? If you just disappear again."

For once, Jack didn't have a response, so Madeline just pushed on. "I'll tell you what my life will be like, Jack, because it's the same every time you do this. Henry won't sleep for two months, which means I won't sleep for two months. Of course, he won't admit the reason he isn't sleeping is because he's wondering if his little brother is alive. He'll just complain constantly about anything and everything except what's really bothering him, which means I'll have to hear about anything and everything except what's really bothering him."

She paused for a moment, taking a step towards him. "And you just told Shawn you were going fishing with them tomorrow, which means I'm going to have to see the look on his face when he finds out you lied. Again. Henry will cover for you because he always covers for you, but it's still going to hurt him, Jack. You're his uncle. He wants to be just like you."

"What do you want from me?" Jack asked, spreading his arms helplessly. "I don't have a choice, Mad. If I don't get out of here, he's going to come looking for me."

She shook her head. "Then just go, Jack."

He turned back to the door, looking over his shoulder one last time before opening it and stepping outside. "Tell Shawny I'll be back."

"He knows," she smiled. "You always come back…eventually."