On the following Saturday, Louisa wandered into his consulting room just as he was finishing some patient notes. She looked around and frowned, remembering Margaret at the airport. "Martin?"

"Hmmm?" he replied as he finished the last of the stack and looked up at her. She looked beautiful standing there, next to the window with the sunlight streaming in on her. He felt the all too familiar fullness in his chest that usually accompanied these moments, the feeling that his heart might burst with the joy of her.

"Where's your clock?" She asked as she glanced around. There was something in her expression that made him wary.

"Which one?"

"You know, your grandfather's clock…the one Ruth found in Joan's storage. I know you were working on it … before…"

"Yes, I was; repaired it actually. It works perfectly now."

"So where is it?"

"Er…um…" He didn't really want to revisit the day he told his mother to leave; the day he cut her out of his life.

"Martin?" She was looking at him intently now, her eyes demanding answers. She knew he was withholding something. She knew the answer of course, but what else had happened that day?

"My mother took it when she left." He was uneasy.

"Oh." Louisa frowned and cocked her head slightly. "Why would she take it? She didn't seem especially interested in it while she was here, but then she didn't seem particularly interested in anything."

"She wasn't. She had seen me working on it and knew it was valuable." He paused, deciding if he should tell her the rest. "She came here for money."

Louisa looked at him sharply. "What? I thought she came to tell you about your father?"

With a heavy sigh, he decided he should tell her about that day…after all, he had promised to change. "After you left in the taxi…" He closed his eyes, fighting back the hurt and despair of that day. "I was very upset, as you can imagine. She was in the kitchen…tried to be motherly with me but of course, she hasn't a clue as to how to do that. Said it was just the two of us now. I didn't want her here, didn't want it to be the two of us. I asked her why she had come…really. She gave me some rubbish about my father and how he told her he wanted her to tell me that he was sorry, that he did love me. But he'd suffered a stroke and the facts didn't match. So I asked her about it and got to the truth. He didn't say any of those things; he couldn't have. So I asked her why she was really here. She said she needed money…that my father had died almost penniless. She had no place to live."

"How awful," Louisa interjected, "that your money is all that she was interested in."

"Is it? I suppose. It is the way my parents always behaved. I'm not certain that either was capable of any true emotion, at least where I was concerned. But I knew it could be different; you've shown me that," he said as he looked up at her imploringly. "And I'm beginning to believe… " his gaze wandered away as his mind settled into a hazy thought.

"Believe what, Martin?" She asked softly.

"…that I am able to love and…be loved," he replied in a whisper.

"Oh Martin," she sighed as she stepped closer to him, reached over and caressed his cheek. "Yes, you are."

Martin relished her touch, took comfort from it. Perhaps talking to Louisa would help; they were growing closer, it seemed. "I didn't want her here anymore or in my life ever. She gave birth to me but she wasn't a mother…Joan was, if anyone was my mother. I told her I wouldn't give her anything and she asked if I would see her penniless, without a home. I replied that I wouldn't see it, that I wouldn't see her ever again. Then I told her that I had a patient to visit and I wanted her out by the time I got back. I left and when I came back she and the clock were gone."

"I saw her at the airport. We…exchanged words, but I didn't realize what had happened. I'm so sorry, Martin."

Martin frowned. "Sorry for what? You didn't cause it, any of it. All you did was show me that things can be different; I can be different and I was different for a time, before I shut down again." He paused before continuing. "Ruth said she remembers me as a small boy, very vulnerable and sensitive and she remembers me two years later, almost completely shut down. I feel I've been that way all of my life…shut down, shutting others out…trying to hide from people. Joan managed to crack through…some. But you… you broke through all my barriers. It frightened me as much as it thrilled me. It still frightens me. I don't deserve you, Louisa. I'm not the kind of man who can be happy…can make you happy. I'm not sure I even understand what happy is. But I want to; I've never wanted anything more."

Tears were rolling down his face by now. He couldn't hold it in anymore, all the hurt, the distance, the fear that had been his life until he met Louisa. And he was still afraid, afraid he wouldn't be able to work beyond his past.

She took his hand in hers, holding it her chest, over her heart. "Martin, I never realized…I mean, you've mentioned things from time to time but I never knew how starved you were as a child."

"Starved? No, I…"

A small smile cracked the corner of her mouth. "I meant for love, for approval, for all those things children need from their parents. We will work through this, Martin. You have talked to me, told me more in these past few days than in all the years we've known each other. It helps me to understand. And I think it helps you too."

He looked at her with tenderness "You do help me; you and James. But I feel so inadequate, so I retreat to what I know I am good at, being a doctor. I don't mean to retreat; it just happens. Please don't let me …I don't want to retreat from you."

Settling on the edge of his desk, Louisa looked at him thoroughly. Then with a playful glint in her eyes, she asked his medical opinion. "So Dr. Ellingham, do you think I am healed enough to properly show my husband just how very much he means to me?" She glanced down into his lap and looked back up with twinkling eyes.

Martin's eyes grew wide as he realized what she was implying. "Louisa, no! It's too early; you need more time to heal."

Leaning over and tugging at his tie, she smirked. "That's a shame, because I have really missed him... in that way."

Ignoring the creases she was likely putting in his tie and the reaction she was causing in his trousers, he looked up into her smoky eyes and as happened so often, he became engrossed in them. "He has missed you as well. But you need more time to heal and he needs time to … to get better too." Still, something changed within him as they gazed at one another. He thought perhaps, maybe he felt… happy.