From across the restaurant, he sat with his arms crossed, watching Amy sitting in her great-grandmother's lap. Her baby fists grasped Jack's fingers across the table.

Jen had passed early in the day, and though he had known it would happen, he still felt shocked. He would not see her later, the next day, or the day after that. And now, watching his daughter, he felt more lost than he had imagined he could.

He made his way over to the table, giving Mrs. Ryan an absent-minded kiss on the cheek. There was no other way for him to express a degree of grief he knew they shared. He wished for a way to tell her that he was not fit to be a father but all he could manage was a slight graze of her shoulder as he walked away.

The heavy thump of footsteps followed him back to the kitchen. Usually it was his sanctuary, the one place where everything worked. Nothing went terribly wrong and whatever did he knew he could correct. He could not fail in his kitchen. The last thing he wanted was for anyone to remind him that that all changed outside of that room by bringing it in.

"Look, man, I came back here to clear my head. Be alone. Grams needs you out there more than I do here."

"She is your daughter, Pacey." Jack's voice was urging, but equally sympathetic.

"You know, that is the second time I have heard that yet it still does not feel true." He sighed, deeply. "She is my blood, Jack, but she is yours in all the ways that matter. She belongs to you like Jen did. At the heart of all of it, she was yours."

"You gave her the greatest gift of her life, man. And I don't just mean Amy. You accepted Jen as is, long ago. Before I ever touched her life.

"We all throw around the term 'soul mate' like it is something more than a word when it is simply that. Me and Jen, Joey and Dawson. It is all just nonsense to make us feel less alone and more connected to humanity. Feelings have no acronyms because they're visceral, conscious. I could give Jen everything with little exception. She was never afraid to love me because there would never be a time when I would not love her back. You, on the other hand, challenged her heart in a way that frightened her but at the same time gave her a reason to feel anything at all. That makes her just as much yours as she was mine, Pacey. You gave her a greater meaning, with your love and with Amy, and you gave her a place without ever asking anything of her."

He could not bite back the tears or the ignore the harsh truth of Jack's words, no matter how much easier doing so would have been. Forgetting his love for Jen would have been plausible if she had not loved him back, and given him the purpose Jack seemed to think he gave her.

"Jack, I don't -"

"You don't have to believe you can," Jack asserted, as if he were omniscient, hearing the scramble in Pacey's head. All thinking does is trip you up, make you doubt yourself. You just do it." Jack's attempt to edge his voice paled in the light of his compassion. "Jen didn't want Amy to chase after love but more importantly she didn't her to run from it. You can be the one to teach Amy what Jen was talking about. You give her a place and someone who will help her to find in what love means." He put his arm around Pacey's shoulders, half hugging him. "So why not go out there, and get a head start on knowing your daughter?"

***

Her tiny body was nestled effortless in the crook of his arm, her blond hair tickled his neck. Though her observations were indiscriminate, her expression betrayed her. She could feel an absence. It manifested itself in sad shades of blue that matched his eyes perfectly.

"I remember the first time your mother talked about you. It was long before you were even a thought. She looked beautiful, sitting cross-legged on that ugly secondhand sofa she loved. Her hair was tangled and sticky because it was so hot that afternoon. I cooked a magnificent dinner, which was probably not the smartest thing to do considering the heat but your mom asked me to."

Amy whimpered at the sound of the word. He adjusted her position, tucking her closer to him. He knew how she felt.

"We talked about the future and what we wanted to do. My dream was a restaurant and she encouraged me to do it, throwing around the words 'amazing chef' and 'savvy mind for business.' I said, jokingly of course, that would happen the day that she moved to the suburbs and got the white picket fence, the two kids and the dog. She said she was living in Brooklyn with her cat and Grams and that would be as close as she would get. Still, she admitted that she thought children wouldn't be so bad."

She twisted the toy in her hands lazily. He would have to learn whether or not that was a sign of ambivalence or simply typical little girl behavior.

"It was a point we agreed on, both thinking we could prove better parents than our own. She said she thought I would be a great father, especially to a little girl. Then we mused about what we would name our children."

He looked down at her. He was hesitant but he swept a few stray hairs from her face with his other hand. Her big eyes stared up at him, engaging and inquisitive, as if she had been holding onto every word of his story. Trying to make memories of her mother.

"She wanted her children to have names that were as simple as they were beautiful. I suggested Amy for a girl. That is what she really wanted. A little girl." He sighed. "I guess I gave her that sooner than she had expected."

"Mama…" Her hands were raised up, a finger extended out towards the sky.

He cocked his head, swallowing hard. "Yeah, about that. She…well, you are looking in the right direction. Your mom is an angel now. She always was but now she is in a different place. So…it is just you and me now." He patted the front of her shirt, "But she'll always be in your heart. You'll know how much she changed so many lives, mine especially, and how loved she was. How much she will always love you."

Clutching at his face, she smiled a queer smile, with a right sided dimple ever prominent. He knew then that she had gotten the best of both of them.