A/N: Sorry for no weekend chapter. I worked myself into the ground outside Saturday and did such a good job on it that I had no energy left for writing once I quit. Ah, spring!

My own illicit digging in the dark memory (graves not included): When Mom was married to her second husband, we lived on the square of a small town in an apartment over his store. The square was utterly bare, containing maybe two trees. That was it. Mom, the gardener and landscaper, was offended, thinking that it reflected poorly on the town and also lamenting the "lack-a-vista" from her window. She went to the city officials and offered to landscape the courthouse lawn at her own expense. They refused, saying it would be "too much bother." Mom then bought bulbs, mentally landscaped it out, and planted bulbs on the square from 1:00 to 3:00 a.m. each weekday morning for a few weeks while this little, sleepy town was dead. I thought this was hilarious. (Second husband did not and didn't see the point in such a fuss over plants.) Anyway, I asked Mom if I could join her in this criminal activity. She agreed, so out we both went the next several mornings, wearing dark clothes, armed with bulb planters, always taking note of the nearer of the two trees for rapid hiding behind if a car were heard approaching. Fun times. And some weeks later, the town had flowers on the square, neatly arranged, lining the walks and in beds at the corners. The authorities probably guessed but never did anything, and we watched carefully at the first mowing. The man mowed around them. Classic Mom in her better days. The world needs flowers and is going to have them whether it wants them or not, though she would ask first.

Hope you very much enjoy this chapter, my favorite in the story.

(H/C)

The two men stood absorbing the scene, and then House approached for a closer look, curious now as to technique. The only thing left clear on John's half of the stone was his name, though Blythe's side was untouched. On John's, everything else was now covered, the Marine insignias around the edges and also the lines of his self-written lying epitaph. Under the flashlight, there had been a vague hint of patches, but if you hadn't known what it looked like before and weren't looking closely, it might easily have escaped notice.

Jensen walked up with him, playing the flashlight closely around the uppermost patch where a Marine insignia had been. House put down the box of letters and ran his left hand around the edges of the area. The patches were made of that thinnest plywood that can be bought in small pieces of a foot square for crafts and little projects. They were each cut neatly to size, apparently applied to the stone with some sort of superglue or model cement, and then spray painted over the top, a near-perfect color match to the body of the stone.

Jensen knelt, aiming the flashlight around the base, and came up after a minute's searching with a few pieces of sawdust. "Not too much left. I think he tried to clear it up or blow it away."

"The wind was blowing a lot more on Monday night," House mused. "Do you realize how much time it took to cut all the pieces to size and do this in the dark? Damn." Another piece of the puzzle fell into place. "His foot. He didn't hit it in his room on something while tripping; he kicked the tombstone. I thought examining it that it looked a lot more like a deliberate strike than just running into something. He really whaled it."

"You must have thrown him for a loop noticing his foot Tuesday morning," Jensen said. "Obviously he didn't mean for us to know what he'd been doing that night."

"Pretty quick on the story, though. He thinks on his feet, bruised or not." House stared at the stone. "Why would he do all this if he didn't want to make a statement to me with it?"

"Answer that yourself," Jensen insisted. He felt over a few of the patches for himself. "Nice job." After a minute, he reached into the Walmart sack, withdrew the can of black spray paint, and silently offered it to House.

House was still staring at the tombstone. He didn't take the can of paint. His plan had been to viciously mark out the lying areas and then, tomorrow morning, to go to a stone company and have them come remove the whole thing immediately, just leaving the site blank for the few weeks it would take to have a new stone carved.

Grudgingly, he had to admit that Thornton had done him one better. Unlike big streaks of black paint, this was subtle enough to have a good chance of escaping notice or, even if notice, objection by the cemetery staff during this non-mowing season among the thousands of other stones here and might well have lasted up until the new stone arrived. Any friends of his mother's close enough to visit her grave would also know enough of the back story that they would think he had done it himself and not raise the point. The monument company arriving ultimately with the new stone would probably have made the same assumption. No, Thornton's scheme was designed to postpone notice until long past House going back home. Meanwhile, while waiting for the new stone, Blythe still had her name there. As did John, that much if no more.

But why go to all this trouble if he didn't want to score points from it? House squirmed, uncomfortable with the direction of those thoughts. He took the paint can but set it down on the ground, postponing any fate for it, and picked up the box of letters again.

He took two awkward, stiff steps to his mother's side, turning his back on the stone. At least it had been reduced to just a stone, hard and cold and dead. It wasn't John's laughter or John's voice now, and whatever ghosts might be watching them tonight, John was no longer one of them. It was hard to bend over, and his leg was already ramping up its protests tonight, but House managed to use the cane to push the flowers aside and clear a patch of a few feet. Fresh, newly disturbed dirt was revealed, ready for the digging.

Jensen handed him one of the shovels. House had already considered technique here. Using any sort of foot force would be out of the question, either leg. He would have to lean on it like a substitute cane and use entirely his upper body to push the blade down. It would still hurt at that, but at least it would, even if tediously, be possible. He dropped the cane to one side and took his first shovel full. No easier than he had expected. He gritted his teeth, deposited it to one side, and came back for more. Jensen worked with him, keeping pace, not taking larger bites of earth or more frequent blows than he did. After a little while, House stopped to lean on the shovel for a minute and take a quick breather, resting his leg. He was sweating.

The psychiatrist stopped along with him, and then, as he waited, muttered, "Shut up, Mark."

House couldn't help grinning. He had never expected to smile or to laugh during this self-imposed mission, but he hadn't expected a lot of things he'd run into so far. "Does he wonder what the hell you're doing?"

"Yes. I've got keep-out signs hung up clearly right now, and I don't think he'll call, but he's definitely suspicious. Fortunately, he does realize I'm an adult now. It's not quite like when I was a kid, but he's always had the big brother complex, even if he only earned the title by twelve minutes."

"I would have sucked as a big brother," House said thoughtfully.

"No, you would have been fun. Might have given your parents gray hairs a little sooner, but you would have been a good one."

Your parents. House looked at the slowly growing hole at his feet. How different things could have been, and yet . . . he could imagine the world without John, even if as in a sci-fi movie, something totally apart from his reality. But he couldn't quite wish that he had known life without her. With her and elsewhere, yes, but there had been good moments, as Jensen said. So much could have been different - but it wasn't. He appreciated what he had had, at least from his mother. And now and then, as he had told Cuddy and Jensen a few times, she had let him be able to pretend that nothing was wrong, that things were normal, because she didn't know otherwise. That occasional oasis of escape had been priceless.

He picked up the shovel again, and they resumed digging. When the hole was about a foot deep and maybe two long, they stopped. "That ought to do it," House said. He propped himself against the shovel, not bothering to pick up the cane, and retrieved the box of letters. Crumpling up the first few pages, he dropped them into the hole, and Jensen took out the box of matches from the sack. He handed them over, and House struck one and dropped it in. The paper flared up, blazing brightly for a minute in the fire pit although staying below ground level, out of reach of the light wind (and hopefully out of reach of any guard's eyes). Then it shriveled, the writing vanishing slowly, and lost all substance.

House had debated simply burying the letters, but he knew that while they would eventually decompose underground, he would be unable to stop wondering about the process mentally and following it from Princeton. The chances of somebody else digging them up, though remote, would also gnaw at him. Keeping the box elsewhere or giving it to Jensen or even back to Thornton wouldn't work, either. If he had access to the letters, someday, in some moment of weakness, he wouldn't be able to resist reading them. No, he needed them gone, utterly destroyed, and no better place for the ashes than here in her grave.

Page by page he added sheets, crumpling each, feeding the flames. He and Jensen watched in silence, and unexpectedly, he could feel the fire warming him, feeling good in January. At the end, he dropped the box in, and the greedy fire consumed it, too.

As the flame was dying, another thought struck him, and he turned back toward the van, then looked at the fire. It would take him too long. "Would you go get that medical chart?" he asked softly. Jensen gave his arm a squeeze and then left without saying anything. House listened to his firm, confident, uncrippled strides. He returned in under a minute with the chart, and that, too, went into the fire, page by page. Finally, there was nothing left but gray, fluffy ashes and embers.

Embers. Like Thornton's horse. House looked over at the tombstone again, then turned away. He started putting the dirt back in the hole. That was a little easier than digging; he could use the blade of the shovel to scrape it in. Jensen helped him fill the hole level, and then House bent over with difficulty. Gently, carefully, he rearranged the flowers back over her grave, and that task the psychiatrist left to him alone. House wavered a bit straightening up; his leg was really hurting now. He stood there, looking at the flowers, silent tears running down his face. She had loved him. He knew that, had always known it. He wished to hell that she had been able to talk to him, and yes, she should have noticed what was going on with John. But he didn't doubt that she had loved him. As he had loved her.

Finally, he turned away, looking at the stone again. Jensen bent down to retrieve his cane, offering it in exchange for the shovel, and House took it. He surveyed Thornton's handiwork a final time. Seizing the flashlight in his left hand, now free, he turned back toward the van. "Get the paint," he tossed over his shoulder as he started limping away. He heard Jensen behind him, the rustle of the sack as the unused black spray paint returned to it, the clink of the shovels. Then the psychiatrist was beside him again, catching up easily, and they returned to the van together.

"I'm proud of you," Jensen said as he started the van.

House was leaning back in the seat, utterly drained, both hands resting on his thigh. He thought of Cuddy at the words, and then he thought of Thornton the other night saying that. Then he thought of Thornton going from the hotel after that back out here to the cemetery, spending what had to be a few hours altering the stone, then kicking it with all his might at the end. Then returning to the hotel and never mentioning or using the episode. House sighed.

Jensen paused carefully at the entrance to the cemetery, picked his moment, then turned on the headlights as he pulled out onto the road. House watched his face as he drove, suddenly realizing that Jensen himself looked tired. "Thanks for today," he said gruffly.

The psychiatrist smiled without looking over. "You're welcome." At that moment, the swirling cherry and blue lights lit up behind them, filling the interior of the van.

"Shit!" House snapped.

Jensen pulled over and waited. "Might need Mark's help tonight after all. He can post bail."

"Cuddy would do it for you, too. Or she can do you and Wilson bail me out; he owes me one."

Jensen lowered the window, and they both heard the firm tramp of authority approaching. "License and insurance, please," the officer said briskly. House fished out the rental paperwork from the glove compartment, which included insurance, of course, Cuddy being Cuddy, and Jensen added his driver's license to it and handed them over. The policeman studied the license. "Middletown, New York. You're a long way from home."

"I'm going back tomorrow," Jensen replied. "We were down here for a few days for a funeral." House had to admire the delivery, not playing too hard for sympathy but still putting the fact out there, along with an implied explanation of last-minute farewell if they had been seen exiting the cemetery.

The officer's expression softened. He looked at the other paperwork. "This is a rental car?"

"Yes. We got it at the airport."

"You're not listed as an authorized driver, though."

House spoke up. "I am." He handed his own license over. "My wife and I are both on the paperwork. I was driving earlier today, but I was just too tired tonight, so my friend took over. It's been a long day." He shifted just enough to draw attention to the cane.

"Gregory House." They heard the recognition in his voice. Yes, the police of Lexington were familiar with his name between the trial and, the year before, the capture here of the PI breaking into Blythe's house. "You're here for a funeral?"

"My mother," House said. "She had a heart attack last week."

"My condolences." The policeman handed the two licenses and the paperwork back. "When you turn the van back in at the airport tomorrow, be sure to tell them that the right tail light is burned out. Good night, gentlemen." He turned away, and the firm tramp of authority receded.

Jensen closed the window, and he and House looked at each other and both laughed, a soothing balm over the sore edges of today and this whole trip. "Are you ready to go back?" Jensen asked once they both could speak again.

"Yeah." House leaned his head back against the headrest, and Jensen pulled the van back into traffic, heading for the hotel.