A/N: Hi, readers! Short update today. Next up is the doctor's appointment plus Jensen finishing the letters.

Please remember that there was a couple of month gap between Superstition and H&F. Other conversations have been had; other info has been exchanged. Each story itself is a comprehensive glimpse of that point in time (so there is nothing major happening during H&F that I won't mention in this story), but there are usually intervals in between the stories. When the time is right in the plot, you sometimes get a summary mention later of part of what happened in the intervals on major points, for instance an upcoming conversation about how much Thomas has been told to date about the girls, but you aren't ever going to have every word that has been exchanged. So don't assume that the knowledge base/situation at the end of Superstition matches up 100% with that of H&F with nothing more learned by characters about each other in the meantime. There will also be a short gap between H&F and Father's Day, the next story.

I'm looking forward to getting to Father's Day, which really is almost entirely about one day, albeit a significant day on a whole bunch of levels. It's a Friday night and then extensively on a Saturday and is very much a House and Thomas story where Thomas is making his first (nontrial) visit to Princeton, and they try spending a "test" day together. Then after that, there will also be a little bit of a time jump to the next story, which is another case story with a lot of team, though with family members always around the edges.

Thanks for reading and reviewing!

(H/C)

Jensen finished the latest letter and added it to the growing "finished" stack. That pile was a little larger than the unread letters and now had taken over the box. Instead of picking up the next letter in line from the pile of unread ones on his right leg, though, he reached for the door handle. "I'm going to take a break for a few minutes and stretch my legs," he announced.

House put down the game, leaving his electronic car to spin out of control without a second thought. "You mean it's time I did," he snapped. "I don't need a babysitter."

Jensen slid out of the van, moving the box and the unread stack off his lap and onto the seat. He picked up his Coke. "I need a break for a minute," he repeated. "Join me if you want to." Without further debate, he simply closed the van door and walked off.

House, left alone ready for a fight but without an opponent, picked the game back up, pointedly not getting out, even though now that he thought about it, his leg was telling him he'd sat still longer than it wanted. The new round was just as low a score as the others today, to his annoyance, and he was just as distracted. He kept shooting glances at Jensen when he thought the other man wasn't looking, but he realized after a minute that Jensen really wasn't keeping an eye on him. He hadn't even looked back in House's direction. Instead, the psychiatrist was walking up and down the parking lot, never going far from the van but genuinely stretching his legs. He was even rotating his shoulders a little as if trying to release tense muscles.

An annoying pang of conscience stabbed at House, and he put down the game. Reaching around into the back seat to retrieve his cane, which was propped across the gap between the two car seats, he tweaked the leg, and as he cursed and made a more careful turn back to face forward, cane now in hand, his eye happened to fall on the box of letters. He honestly wasn't trying to read them; they were just in his visual way. The last letter Jensen had finished was flipped over on top of the stack, with the signature page facing upwards, and House paused at his mother's signature.

How many times had he seen that over his life? Probably less often than many sons had, but the total was still impressive. It was easily legible, but somehow, on this decades-old letter, it struck him as tight, kept within firm boundaries, the loops not relaxed. Perhaps in a way it had been admitting what she couldn't face herself, that her life wasn't perfect after all. He tried to remember if her signature had relaxed more in her farewell letter to him, even as emotionally charged as that had been, and he shifted to reach in his wallet for the letter to compare the Blythe from decades ago with last summer's Mom. He froze partway as he noticed two words in the last line directly above her name on this old letter. Wonderful time.

Bile rose in his throat, and he turned firmly away and swallowed several times, forgetting signatures, just wanting, no, needing some fresh air himself now. He opened the van door and started his painstaking descent. He looked for Jensen; the psychiatrist was near the end of his informal track, about twenty feet away, almost ready to turn around and walk back this way.

At that moment, Jensen's cell phone rang, and he stopped and pulled it out. His voice was low, but House saw more of the tension go out of those shoulders. Trapped between wanting to join Jensen as far better company than his thoughts, yet wondering if he should give him some privacy, House stood briefly, then closed the van door. Jensen reacted to the sound, turning around halfway and spotting him. The psychiatrist smiled at him, but he held the distance, although his posture was open. House debated for a moment, then walked toward him, and once he started that direction, Jensen came on to meet him halfway. He was still on the phone - talking to Mark, House realized - but they walked along together on his former track, and Jensen slowed his stride a little to match as House carefully stretched the kinks out of his leg.

"Yes, it is. . .a useful trip, though, even if it's been a hard one. I'll be back in New York tomorrow night. I think our plane gets into Newark around 5:00, and then I've got the drive, of course, so it will be well into the evening before I'm home. . . maybe Saturday. . . that sounds good. I need to lose a few games of chess to get back into routine. I was playing Dr. Wilson the other night, and I won. . . I will. . . all right, I'll see you this weekend. But thanks for calling, Big Brother. Bye." Jensen ended the call and pocketed his cell phone.

Back and forth they walked, silently, but it was a comfortable silence. House's stomach settled down, and the memories retreated. He was the first to speak. "What was it like growing up with a family?" he asked.

"Well, it certainly didn't mean we never had problems. We'd get on each other's nerves at times, and people all had their moods and bad days. I also had a brother who never seemed to do anything wrong. We were friends, and we're also bonded mentally beyond that, but he annoyed the hell out of me now and then."

House grinned. "I'll bet he knew exactly when you'd been doing something you shouldn't."

"Definitely. He knew when I was doing something I shouldn't. Didn't even have to wait until he ran into me later. Mark took after my mother in temperament. She was always steady as she goes. Now, she was stubborn. She had quiet digging your heels in down to an art form when she wanted. But I don't think I ever once saw her get mad. He was like that from day one, they said."

"Who do you take after most?" House asked, fascinated.

"My grandfather."

"The one whose desk you have in your office?"

"Yes. He was a lot more hot-headed. It took me quite a while to realize that, because I got to know the seasoned version that had been maturing for decades. But he spent a lot of time talking to me once I was about 11 and they moved close to us, and he said he was really a hell raiser in his young days and had to learn how to handle himself. Actually, he sounded a lot worse than I ever was as a kid. But it helped having him around. I think that's probably what it was most like growing up in a family. There was always someone there, available if needed. We didn't ever have to go through problems alone unless we were just being stubborn idiots at the time. Which did happen now and then. But overall, we supported each other, lived together, worried together, had good and bad times together. That was what it was like being in a family."

"You had good parents," House pointed out. Jensen nodded. "So what did this grandfather add to the mix? Wasn't he kind of redundant if you already had people there for you?"

"No. Everybody has their own individual flavor, and his matched mine very well. Sometimes, getting the same message from another source makes all the difference. My parents did try to talk to me about keeping my temper, but it never sank in all the way. Sometimes, too, the effect is cumulative, and bringing in one more person tips the scales and makes it finally click. I think it was both with me and my grandfather. We had chemistry, and never discount chemistry. There are some people you simply click with more than others, from childhood on. But also, while my parents did a lot for me, in my case, it helped to have a stabilizing influence beyond that. He added to everything they had tried to tell me, and he helped crystallize it over my teen years. Circumstances helped, too, of course."

They turned around. Jensen took a drink from his Coke, then continued. "It's all a mix, like a stew. Yes, it might have been a fine stew still with one less ingredient, but if you add the right extra ingredient, it really has an extra flavor to it that's delicious. Not that it was ever perfect. When I was starting to control my temper, I got too focused after that on doing things, like my job eventually, and I think I set myself up for that fall I took when one of my patients committed suicide. I had learned to forgive others - that's a big part of family, too - but I never really learned before that to forgive myself, so when I made a mistake with a patient - or thought I had - I simply couldn't deal with it. My grandfather was dead by then, and my father died during that bad time, but Paul - that's my therapist - really helped once I was willing to ask for it."

"What about your mother and Mark? You said family was about being there for each other. So where were they when you were going through that?"

"They were there. You don't hear people until you're ready to, though. But they were still there, waiting, doing what they could and hoping I'd see it soon. Like I said, having a good family isn't the cure for all of life's problems." They turned around again at the end of their track and walked on for a while in silence. It was Jensen who broke the silence this time after a few minutes. "I made an error in judgment last week. That whole last session Tuesday night was a mistake."

"You tried to stop us anyway, and I . . ."

"We should have stopped earlier. Not there in the heat of it, but after that afternoon's session. I never should have gone on that night, but I was trying to give both of you some conditional closure and end on a better note than we had left it that afternoon. But we weren't going to get everything tied up nicely if we'd had a whole month of sessions at it. Instead of trying to find a tidy ending point, which was impossible, I should have just called a halt where we ended that afternoon. I think both of you would have agreed to that if I'd suggested it, not in the middle of a session but say after dinner, some neutral time when you both weren't already engaged and charged up at the moment. That was my mistake, and I apologize to you for that."

Jensen took a deep breath. "But I do not and cannot know if it made any difference at all in what happened to her. We'll find out more from her doctor, but even then, I'm sure it won't answer all questions. She was deliberately withholding relevant information from us, although I think she really believed what she was telling herself, that it wasn't a big deal. We'll never be able to totally work out where all the puzzle pieces fit together here."

House sighed. "I still . . ." He trailed off and hit the tip of his cane on the ground with a little extra frustration at the next step.

"I know," the psychiatrist said. "We can work through this, but it's going to take time."

House limped on, thinking. As they came up to the van on their next lap, he veered toward it, and Jensen followed him. Together, they climbed back in. Jensen picked back up the letters in progress and continued reading. House retrieved his game, but it was a little while before he turned it back on.