"So I just said it wrong," Cuddy explained. "It's not like sleep. Something totally different. And it doesn't happen all the time. Whenever we leave, we're just going to work or such, like we always have, and we'll be back, just like all those other times." And God forbid that one of them get hit by a car or something, but she wasn't about to give the girls any more to worry about.

"Not going to die?" Rachel asked.

"No, Rachel." House raised an eyebrow at her, and she could almost hear the sarcastic thought, even in today's turmoil. She ignored him. "We're fine."

Abby crawled up tighter onto House's lap. "You okay?"

"I'm fine," he reassured her. "We're both fine."

The girls settled in against them as if Velcroed. They did seem reassured, but they weren't loosening their grips yet, either.

Daniel had long since lost the battle the girls were still fighting, and he was sound asleep in Sandra's arms. Wilson looked at him, then at the girls and the clock, and House saw the thought. "Take your sprog and go on home, both of you. If you keep hanging around, we'll have to start charging rent."

"We can stay the night," Wilson offered. "Or Sandra could take Daniel home, and I could stay in the guest room . . ." He trailed off, not wanting to remind them of what had happened in one of the guest rooms.

"Go home," House repeated. "Besides, you need a good night's sleep tonight before going to work. First thing tomorrow, you can check out those samples from the ME and figure out what we're dealing with here and how it would have been treated."

Wilson sighed softly. He had a full day of patients tomorrow, too, the more full because of rescheduling today, but even more, he was still worried about his friend, and he wasn't entirely sure that launching into a hypothetical course for treating Blythe posthumously was the best approach.

House heard the concern and, of course, resented it. He stiffly stood up, Abby still attached, and started to limp around the room. "It's relevant, Wilson. This is family history here."

Cuddy abruptly jumped as a new thought hit her. "Oh, God. You need to get checked out in case . . ."

House rolled his eyes. "Lisa, I had the most thorough physical of my life including a full body scan earlier this year, thanks to Patrick. We know I don't have cancer, and my heart is fine, too."

"What's cancer?" Rachel asked, eyelids drooping.

House jolted to a stop, wishing he had two good legs so he could kick himself. Damn it. The girls were too young to be exposed to all they had been today. Wilson helpfully tried to explain. "It's a very bad thing that none of us have, so you don't have to worry about it. When I'm at work, I fix people with it." Sometimes.

Rachel accepted that with a yawn. House abandoned his living room orbit; he was not only annoying his leg but making all of them aware of his annoyed leg, even the girls. He sat back down on the couch. "Go home, Wilson," he said again.

Sandra silently passed the decision to Cuddy. After a moment, she nodded. "We'll call you if we need you. Thanks so much for today. Good night."

"Good night." Sandra handed Daniel off to Wilson and stood up. Her eyes rested briefly on House, but the trite words he was cringing in anticipation of never came. Instead, her sympathy showed itself in how she quietly, without further comment, left, as if it had been a routine social visit.

Once the door had closed behind them, Cuddy looked down at the girls. "It's almost bedtime," she suggested. It was actually quite a bit past it.

Both girls came to life as if injected with IV caffeine. "NO!" Rachel protested, and Abby, unusually for her, was a barely delayed echo.

Cuddy looked guilty. House spoke up. "The sooner we all go to bed, the sooner tomorrow gets here. Tomorrow, we can watch another movie, maybe play in the snow some." He might slip away at some point to go check on those samples himself at the hospital, but he knew that Cuddy wouldn't let either of them actually go to work. He wasn't sure he wanted to be at the hospital long anyway. Too much unspoken sympathy would be there, and the spoken would be even worse. He felt the anger kicking up again. Why hadn't he noticed something? And why hadn't she said something, at least last night at the end when she had to be aware of problems?

Cuddy tried to pick up his idea and run with it. "He's right, girls. We all need to go to bed now, and tomorrow, we'll do some things together."

An idea suddenly occurred to Abby. "Your bed?"

"You want to sleep in our bed tonight?" Both girls nodded vigorously. Cuddy sighed and looked toward House. One of his nightmares would hardly reassure them, and she was under no illusions what tonight would be like unless she could talk him into knocking himself out.

"You've got your new little piano bed, Abby," House countered.

Rachel seconded that motion. "Abby in her bed, me with you."

House gave a faint grin. "That's not fair, Rachel."

"Don't care." She hugged Cuddy more tightly.

House looked down at Abby, firmly attached to him. Cuddy was silent, not pushing. "All right, girls, you can sleep with us. Both of you, though. But it's only for tonight. Okay?"

They immediately agreed. House shifted Abby over and stood up. "So let's all get ready for bed."

Twenty minutes later, the girls were totally out, nestled between them. The lights were still on, and House and Cuddy sat up against the headboard and looked at each other across their daughters. "What did Patterson say about them?" he asked softly.

She recapped the advice, at least the getting over it quickly part, although the philosophy of mistakes pep talk got much shorter handling.

House nodded. "Jensen said pretty much the same, just shorter. No big deal, reassurance, they'll be fine." He reached down, resting one hand on Abby. "Tomorrow. . ."

"I was thinking I should call Marina to tell her we'll be here after all, and she can have another day off if she wants."

"No, she needs to be here. Help push the girls back into routine. We can work on leaving her with them for 5 minutes while we walk around the front yard or such. Slowly reinforce the idea that we aren't going to disappear forever when we leave."

"That's a good idea, Greg." The unspoken postscript suddenly registered. "You weren't thinking about leaving them here while we go to Lexington, were you?"

House stiffened up, drawing a murmur of protest from Belle, who was on his leg. "They don't need to go see that."

"Greg, we can't leave them here for several days without us. Not right now when they're so worried."

"Jensen and Patterson both said they'd get over it quickly."

"With us being there. With reassurance. Not with us going off immediately on a several-day trip. You're thinking just because Thornton's going to be there. . ."

He immediately hit retreat. "This isn't about him. They don't need to see something horrible like a funeral as young as they are."

Cuddy stared at him. The denial on Thornton was too sharp, but there was sincerity behind the back half of that statement, too. "Greg, a funeral isn't a horrible thing. They aren't going to be scarred for life by seeing one. Us leaving them right now would bother them a lot more." He was silent, all walls up. She reached across Rachel and Abby to touch his arm. "You know, you don't have to go to the funeral yourself. We could all just stay here."

She could feel him trembling faintly beneath her touch. "I have to go. You can stay with them if you'd rather."

"Oh, no. You're not getting rid of me in this. If you go, I go." She looked at his chiseled features and squeezed his arm. "You don't have to do this to punish yourself, Greg. You didn't do anything wrong."

He suddenly pulled away, reaching for the nightstand drawer where he always put the routine meds while he was asleep (they were either in his pockets or locked up while he was awake). He quickly shook out the evening Vicodin and the sleeping pill, full dose on the sleeping pill, and gulped them down without water, effectively calling time on conversation for tonight. Cuddy recaptured his arm, hoping he would feel the connection. Jensen was right; arguing with him would do no good right now. He wasn't ready to hear yet.

A few minutes of silence passed. His eyes were getting heavy now. He started to slide down from his sitting position, then paused and reached for his cell phone on the nightstand. Turning it on, he pulled up his address book and offered it to her. "That's Thornton's phone number. Somebody needs to tell him that the . . . that Mom has been released by the ME. You'll drive yourself crazy wondering if you couldn't touch base now and then on the arrangements, too." His hand was shaking slightly with tension in spite of the drug pulling him down. He didn't put any limits on conversation for her, but his eyes were pleading.

Cuddy copied the number over into her phone. "Thank you, Greg," she said. She leaned across the girls to kiss him. He slid the rest of the way down and closed his eyes, unable to fight it anymore. She captured his phone where it had dropped from slack fingers and put it on her nightstand, then picked up her own again. She looked at the clock. 9:30, but he was in a different time zone, too. What a long day. Under Belle's watchful gaze, she dialed.

Thornton answered on the second ring, sounding puzzled. "Hello?"

"Thomas? This is Lisa." She kept her voice low, but the girls, emotionally exhausted, were almost as far out as House was.

"Lisa? Is Greg all right?" She heard the quick concern, the worry that something new might have happened since this morning.

"Yes, he's okay. He gave me the number." She looked back over at her husband. "Thank you so much for offering to make arrangements. That means more than you could know."

"I'm glad to do anything that might make it easier." Thornton paused. "Not that this is going to be easy anyway. I know that. Can you talk right now?"

"Within reason," she stated carefully. "He's asleep."

"Don't worry; I'm not trying to take advantage of things for a little fact-finding for myself."

"I know. I'm supposed to tell you, the ME's office has released the body. They know you're handling things. So you can call and set it up to get her flown back. Mercer County; I don't have the number offhand, but I'm sure it's on the internet."

"What killed her?" he asked.

"She had a heart attack, but it also turns out she had cancer, already metastatic. She might not have had much more time anyway."

"Poor Blythe. I wonder if she knew."

"I doubt it. She isn't . . . wasn't that good an actress. She might have been ignoring symptoms, of course, just putting off getting checked out. I can easily see that." Her voice sharpened up suddenly. "Listen, damn it, there are enough unfinished ends here already. If you haven't had a thorough physical yourself lately, go get one. You don't have permission to die yet."

"I'm fine," Thornton assured her. "I just had a complete workup two months ago. I'm not fond of unfinished things, either, and I have no intention of checking out any time soon. I'm going to be flying to Lexington tomorrow morning, and I'll call the ME. Greg said there was a prepaid deal at the same funeral home where John was." He spat out the name like a curse.

"Yes. Be careful about what's on record, though. John probably set it up for her, too, the way he wanted it. He never let her be an individual."

"I'll just go by what I heard her say myself and make it up from there."

"Thank you. It would probably be easier if you called me with details." House was going to be pushed to the limit by going; he didn't want to talk about it. "And if you have any questions, just let me know."

"I did have a few already, actually, and I was wondering how to ask without getting his back up. First, timing. When I was there for the trial, it was very obvious that he ran down physically in the late afternoons. Is that something that always happens, or was it just that slimy defense attorney pushing on him? What's the best time of day to shoot for?"

Cuddy suddenly smiled. How Housian of Thornton to notice that physical pattern and try to apply it forward, though she could also imagine his mental acrobatics trying to come up with an acceptable way to ask his son that. "You're good at details. I don't know why that should surprise me. It was a lot worse than usual at the trial, but yes, in general, by late afternoon, the pain is starting to get to him unless he's wrapped up on a case or something and too focused to notice. He takes a little time getting moving in the mornings, too. I'd say late morning to early afternoon is the best time for this."

"All right. Second, the people. Probably everybody there is going to know the basic background after all the media during the trial. I'm sure Blythe's friends were aware of things. I haven't seen her since John's death, though. Did she ever mention any social groups lately? I was thinking if there were places she always went and groups she always saw once she was a widow, it might help if I went there and notified them, sort of to take the initial reaction and just let them talk. Maybe they'd have less for him at the funeral. Discreetly, of course; I wouldn't share any secrets, but it might help them to get some of it out first. Let them get a bit more used to the idea before he arrives and have more time to think about it and edit their comments."

"That's a wonderful idea. She's mentioned a senior citizen's center, and I think she was in a travel club. Do you know where she lived?"

"Yes, the house they retired to. I've visited a few times over the years. Assuming she didn't move after John's death, that is."

"No, it's the same house. Her neighbor, I think her name is Patsy. Talk to her. She can tell you."

"Thank you. And don't worry, I won't overplay it. Listening to people talk while looking perfectly innocent myself was what I did for most of my career in the Marines, so I've had a lot of practice. I won't tell anybody but the funeral director that I'm setting things up. I'm just an old family friend. Some of her friends might even remember me from John's funeral. There was a Patsy there, probably the same one."

Cuddy closed her eyes, almost feeling like she did when handing off a task at work to someone she knew would do a thorough and excellent job at it.

"Is there anything else you think I should know?" Thomas asked. "I'm not asking for details, just traps I might want to avoid."

She considered it. "No eulogy from him. That's too much. And I know people like to put on those funeral meals afterward, but I'd avoid that, too. He isn't going to feel like sitting down with thirty people and eating after the service. I can't think of anything else at the moment, but if I do, I'll call you."

"How is he taking it?" Thornton asked.

She looked at House. "He's . . . I'm not sure I should tell you that."

"Don't, then. You said back at Christmas that there were things going on besides just a visit even before this complicated everything. I don't need to know what they are. I'm just concerned."

"I know."

"And how are you doing?"

Tears abruptly welled up again, and she fought them back. She couldn't break down again. Even if House was totally out, she might wake the girls up. "I'm . . . dealing with things."

There was a skeptical silence, and she could almost picture the quirked eyebrow, but he didn't push. "Do you have friends up there who are helping you?"

"Yes. Yes, we do. I'd better let you go, but you can call me. It's all right."

"I will." He paused. "I'm sorry, Lisa."

She cleared her throat. "I am, too. By the way, don't use those words to him."

"I won't. I did hear all the testimony at the trial. Goodbye, Lisa."

"Bye, Thomas. And thanks again."

A click, and he was gone. Cuddy slowly pushed the end button, then pulled the number back up in her address book and looked at it for a long moment. Maybe this crisis could also be an opportunity, to quote Patterson. But they had a long and treacherous road ahead, even so. She leaned across her family, kissing each sleeping girl in turn and then her husband. Finally, she turned out the lamp and lay down herself. Sleep wasn't as long as she had feared in coming.