They rearranged the van positions before diving into a full session. House wound up in the very back seat, the longest one, sitting propped against the side with his legs stretched out and two new heat patches working on his thigh. He had applied them in a stall in the restroom inside Walmart, but then he had decided reluctantly as they exited that even with the patches, he'd better not launch into this session sitting in the front of the van and half twisted sideways to face Jensen. There would be plenty of tension already without adding more from posture, and his leg wasn't liking this day, even with regular stretch breaks. At least it wasn't that cold, quite nice for January, but the strain of today's appointments and of being a spectator on the letters had headed straight to his thigh as usual, annoying him further. Jensen would put the pieces together, but he suspected that the psychiatrist already had a good idea how his leg felt just now anyway.

Sure enough, Jensen had no comment and not even any silent analysis when House opened the sliding door without explanation and climbed to the back. The psychiatrist simply unfastened the car seats, piled them in the passenger's front, and installed himself in the middle seat after closing the door. Propped up against the opposite side with his own legs stretched out along the seat, he was almost directly facing House now, only the back of the seat between them, and neither of them having to twist for eye contact.

House jumped straight to challenge, seizing the psychiatrist's statement as if almost twenty minutes hadn't passed between. "You said there wasn't enough from the letters alone. But Thornton had more than just the letters."

"Yes, he did," Jensen agreed. "He had those ten brief visits over the course of your entire childhood, but you as well as John were deliberately trying to hide things from him on those."

House shuddered slightly. "At least I was after the one when I asked him to get us out of there." That had been when he decided that his instincts were wrong and that the man didn't like him or have any interest in him after all, in fact believed that his hell hole of a life was where he belonged.

"Which visit was that?" Jensen asked. "How many?"

House, caught unprepared there, had to take a moment to count. "The third one," he said. "He visited a few weeks after my fourth birthday. That was the first time I'd seen him. And he . . ." He trailed off. He still remembered the confused 4-year-old impressions of someone who, even on a 1-day visit, seemed genuinely interested in him, thinking he was somebody special, even complimenting him on a few things that young Greg had thought weren't anything remarkable at all. Nobody else in his world had been like that. It was the difference between the sun and the stars, hitting him powerfully even then. His mother had praised him for routine things like dressing himself, but she seemed to miss early thought processes and world analysis that Thornton had noticed at once.

Jensen gave House a moment, and he continued. "He came back a little over a year later. Then the time when I was six, and that's when I asked him. That was a week after the glue." He shivered again, started to reach for his thigh, and changed course halfway, fingering his wedding ring. Its solid reality, its perfect unbrokenness steadied him. "After that, it was two years before the next visit; that was the one with the broken lamp. He stretched it out a little more from then on after I asked him for help."

"Each of those three was one day?" Jensen asked.

"Yes."

"So three days of direct observation. He already had dozens of letters by then. It's not much, especially given that John was deliberately misleading him, and you even on those first visits were already trying to hide it from the world. Later, you were specifically angry at him, but even early on, you knew you couldn't be open with people as a general rule. Even when you asked him for help, you didn't come outright and say what your life was like."

"I couldn't," House snapped. His breathing was picking up a little.

"I know," Jensen said, his voice soothing. House couldn't help responding to it by this point; they had too many emotionally touchy miles in these sessions behind them. "Because of the threat against your mother, you had to conceal things. I know that. But Thornton didn't." House didn't reply, and Jensen left that point for a related one. "You said something inaccurate a minute ago."

House couldn't help taking the bait there. "What?"

"You said it was the first time you had seen Thornton when you were four. Actually, it was only the first time you remembered meeting him."

"Technicality," House grumbled.

"No, it isn't. From your point of view, there's nothing prior to that in your history with him. From his, on the other hand, he had two solid years of direct observation. He was there during your mother's pregnancy and during your first year. He saw that himself, not in letters. He saw John being proud of you." House did reach for his thigh there, all the shields going up. The fact that John had actually loved him at first had been a very difficult bite to swallow and had dominated their sessions recently before the Christmas disaster. "I know that's very hard for you. We'll get back to working through those early memories. But that is what Thornton saw, directly, with his own eyes. And that, I think, is the foundation for the whole tragedy of him missing it. Without that to build on, even with your mother's letters misleading him, I think he would have noticed little clues more on his visits. He said to me himself that night in the park that it's hard to get to thinking about someone one way, with substantial evidence there, and suddenly flip it 180 degrees and wonder what if everything actually was opposite to that."

"Oh, yeah, I'm sure he had excuses," House said.

"No, he admitted himself that it wasn't an excuse. It was background, but he wasn't claiming it as an excuse. He feels horrible about missing it all. He would do anything to take that back. But he can't. All he can do is try to be there now."

"Well, that he's succeeding in. Can't turn around the last week without banging into him."

"Why?" Jensen asked. "What was the catalyst for this trip with us all being together?" House looked away. "Your mother's death. If he was able to cause that in order to let him get some time with his family, he's not simply a good plotter; he's God, and a very petty and cruel version at that."

"He might be using it, without causing it," House persisted.

"Then why haven't you asked him to leave?" Jensen changed tracks quickly, wanting House to think about that but not get defiant on it. "Those letters are . . ." He paused long enough to be sure he had House's full attention. "They are totally deceptive. There is nothing there beyond a few little moments that could be any child and that she herself brushes off. Like I said, I would have been fooled myself, especially if I had the background of those two good years in person." Even focused intently on his patient right now, Jensen was warmed by the fact that House had accepted his analysis of the letters. He had claimed additional information available to Thornton, but he had not suggested that Jensen had misread them.

The next topic was likely to be even more touchy, though. The psychiatrist paused for a drink from his current bottled water, and House's eyes narrowed. "What? You're stalling."

"I was thinking during those appointments today, especially the last one. The letters fit right in with her attitude toward her own health. Your mother had an incredible knack through life for believing what she wanted to. To her, like Dr. Sauer said, it wasn't even a lie. She could not accept at the moment that anything was truly wrong."

"Why?" House burst out. "What was so important about Christmas? She didn't even know about those conversations then, and Nichols said she was still locked in on it."

"I'm frustrated about this, too," Jensen assured him. "She should have mentioned it. She definitely should have told us when the idea of those sessions came up. But it was a genuine family activity, and most of her - her delusions, through her adult history, have involved actually having a happy family. That was what she always wanted in life, I think. Right now, finally, she had it in reality. Not a perfect family, but nobody gets that. She did have a happy one."

"But she could still have had it. Hell, she might even have been able to get things fixed if they could do just cath and angio instead of CABG, and she still could have come for Christmas, no schedule revision required." He abruptly remembered the cancer. That could not have been fixed quickly in the cath lab. He sighed. "Do you think she knew subconsciously that it was major, that this might be her last Christmas?"

"I don't know. The two big options here are pure denial or some sort of punishing herself for the past, but I don't think she would have involved you in punishing herself. Probably denial is the biggest part, but there is one thing that struck me. Was that letter to you written back during the trial like I guessed?" House nodded. "The will was dated a few years ago, shortly after her accident."

The light dawned, a point he himself had missed in the emotional impact. "The will was on top of the letter in the piano bench, even though it was older."

"She either took out the will alone later or took out both of them to reread and then replaced the sealed envelope for the letter. Now we don't know that that was after this doctor's appointment, but at some point since writing that letter, I think she had been thinking of her own mortality and just wanted to reassure herself that everything was arranged."

House clenched his fingers and jumped when his thigh protested. He made himself let go. "She was thinking about it, even if hypothetically, but she still couldn't have told us?" He felt tears welling up and blinked them back, switching into anger. "Damn it, Mom!"

Jensen nodded. "She was aware of the chance on some level. But she still never said a word, probably denied it to herself most of the time. And that's why there's nothing we could have done here. She wasn't willing to be helped. Yes, there were other mistakes, but bottom line, she wasn't willing to be helped, and without that, we couldn't have helped her. She chose not to face it, right up until the end when she was feeling unwell and could have walked down the hall to alert two doctors but went to bed instead. It wasn't your fault, Dr. House." House was staring at the far side of the van, not at Jensen, but he looked thoughtful. "And even if we had helped her," Jensen went on carefully, "even if she had accepted her doctor's advice, talked to us, gone for a catheterization, she still had cancer, and the ME thought she was already terminal. Even without us making mistakes or without her denying things, this probably was her last Christmas all along. Nothing would have changed that."

House had started fiddling with his cane, playing it like a piano. As usual when getting backed into an emotional corner, he jumped tracks. "Those letters," he said. "There's really nothing there?"

The psychiatrist sighed. "No. They could be pure fiction. She missed it. And she had far more opportunity to see it than your father did." House flinched at the title. "In fact," Jensen went on, "I really think you don't need to read those letters ever. Not even one at a time, spaced out through sessions like I suggested this morning. The only thing it would accomplish is wiping out the positive memories; the emotional hit from them would be too large for you. And that would leave you with an inaccurate picture, too, because there were positive memories. You've mentioned some of them. She was in total denial, and she missed an enormous amount in your childhood, but she also did love you, and there were good moments. Don't take those away from yourself. If you can just accept the fact that there weren't clues in the letters without seeing every detail eventually for yourself, that would be better. Once in a while, Dr. House, it's okay to leave something buried in the past and not dig it up." Jensen looked over at the box, flaps neatly folded. "There would be only more pain here for you with no benefit."

House stared at the far side of the van, thinking. When he finally spoke, it was on a different subject. "Lisa asked me this morning why I didn't at least call him Thomas."

"Did you tell her?" Jensen asked.

"Yes."

"Well done. She understood it, too, didn't she?" House nodded. "It's a valid reason. That's something you're going to have to work out with him but probably down the road. This last week has had far too much happening all at once for you. It's okay to feel overwhelmed by that. Thornton understands that. He knows this is hard on you."

"He's the one who sent me that one letter in the first place," House snapped, the old anger rearing its head again.

"He probably considers that a mistake now. He's as susceptible to them as the rest of us. But he was desperate to have you believe him about the music. And if he hadn't brought them up, when your mother, I assume, mentioned them in her letter, you would have attacked him immediately for withholding information."

"Yeah." House had thought that already yesterday. "I still can't believe he kept them all these years." He squirmed in the seat. "But I have a right to be cautious with him. I have to think of the girls."

"Yes, you do. But I think you're trusting him more with them by now than you're trusting him with yourself. You left him there today."

"With Cuddy and Wilson both supervising. Plus Marina. That wasn't a safety risk."

"How many security guards would you want there if John were with them?" Jensen asked.

The thought of John in the same room with his daughters almost literally made House feel sick, and he swallowed a few times. "Besides," he said, trying to distract himself, "I could hardly toss him back out of the suite when he looked so tired I wasn't sure he could walk down to his room."

"He's an old man," Jensen agreed. "In good shape to all appearances and obviously still active, but he is 75, and he'd had a very tough night."

"I thought he'd sleep on the planes. I didn't expect him to look that bad."

Jensen shook his head. "I imagine he had a hard time getting to sleep even in his own bed for a few hours. He really cares about you, Dr. House. He didn't surprise me at all this morning by how he looked, and I'm sure he didn't Dr. Cuddy either. He would have been worrying every minute of that trip."

House shifted again. "I . . . this is too much at once."

"Yes, it is. It's all right to take time with it. This is a huge issue for you, and it should be. I don't think you could make an immediate final decision on this yet, and that's understandable. But just let your mother teach you one last thing as we do go on. Life is uncertain."

"I learned that a long time ago," House snapped. "Like when I was three."

"I know." The deep sadness, not pity but sadness, in Jensen's voice made him meet the psychiatrist's eyes again. "Your girls won't have to learn it like you did. They do have a happy family. Remember what Dr. Sauer said, too. Your mother was happy right now."

"I still wish she'd talked to us."

"So do I." House drifted off into thought again, doing a differential on the far side of the van, and Jensen left him alone. Instead, he analyzed the other man's posture, his hand protectively on his leg, the chiseled lines of his face. House was hurting, physically as well as mentally, but he wasn't quite yet at the end of his rope for the day. He was still very tense, too. He hadn't let go fully of even some of what he could during this trip. Today had been an odd catharsis for Jensen, the letters and appointments backing up his own self-analysis from yesterday, but House hadn't reached that point yet. Finally, House looked at his watch, and Jensen could almost see him thinking about the others back at the hotel. "For right now," Jensen asked, "what do you want to do?"

House sighed, remembering his thought from the waiting room. "I want to go back home," he said. "I want to get back into work again, doing what I know."

"So do I." He waited, hopeful but letting House work it out.

House drummed his fingers on his cane again, then spoke slowly, softly. "But I don't think I'm quite ready to yet."