After the guest room door closed behind the Cuddys, Thomas sat in the recliner debating. Lisa knew Greg better than he did, and she had said that Greg needed a few minutes by himself. But how many were a few minutes? It was Thomas' opinion that Greg had spent far too many minutes by himself in life. Retreat did help sometimes in processing things, though. Obviously, Blythe's death was all stirred up again for him. Thomas had always suspected more there than he had been told, but he knew better than to push. Even what he knew, Greg finding his mother dead that morning, was enough. It had only been a few months ago, the memories still vivid.

He thought his son needed some company, not pressure for details but simply company. But would Greg agree? If he went out there, the immediate suspicion from his son would be that he wanted the rest of it, to fill in the blanks in his knowledge, to protest the in-laws, something. Greg still equated company from others so often with pressure and expectations, even fault finding; the concept of companionship and support without other motives was slow in building. And whose fault was that? Damn it, if he'd just seen more on those few childhood visits and intervened.

Thomas sighed and shifted. Looking at his watch, he decided to give Greg four more minutes - that would make it an even 9:00 on the nose - and then go out to keep him company in the back yard. Tossing out the question of blame, an unproductive road that he knew every last pothole of anyway, he looked toward the guest room and let his curiosity work on that puzzle. He'd love to be a mouse under the bed in there listening. He could hear low but intense speech behind the door, Lisa's voice only, but couldn't make out the words.

At that moment, Belle caught his eye. The white cat emerged from Greg and Lisa's bedroom, low to the ground, cautiously advancing foot by foot as her ears swiveled. Thomas smiled. "The coast isn't clear, but it's at least moderated at the moment," he said. She walked with exaggerated care down the hall, diverting to pass the guest room on the other side, and then broke into a trot across the living room. She stopped at the foot of his recliner and looked at him as if trying to assign blame for the disruptions of the evening. He was at least quiet and still and increasingly familiar, though. She crouched.

"I'm about to get up in a minute," Thomas warned.

That, of course, was an invitation. She jumped up neatly into his lap, turned around twice, and settled down, still far from relaxed. He scratched her ears, and she purred. "How often do they come?" he asked her. She stared at the far wall, the distant gaze and her alert posture at odds with her purr.

Thomas looked again toward the bedroom. He had learned much more about Lisa tonight. On one level, it had been reassuring; as everybody had told him for weeks, there were issues there larger than he was. He wasn't responsible for disrupting that relationship. It was obviously a tense one already. Several more things also had been explained about Lisa. Just watching her greet her parents, addressing her mother as "mother" in the tone in which she might welcome a business associate at a social event, spoke volumes. Like a prospective donor, one far more powerful that she herself was, come to inspect her domain and pass judgment on how well it was being run. Her father, speaking of business, was clearly successful in that world and unfortunately had extended that expectation onto his daughter. Not that he didn't love Lisa; Thomas had seen true pride there, and he and Susan obviously adored the grandkids. But he had apparently had trouble letting his daughter know as a child that she didn't have to impress him as much as his business deals did in order to earn his approval.

Susan, now, was a type Thomas had a little bit of familiarity with, though with her own differences. She reminded Thomas of Tim's mother-in-law. That woman had expressed her emotion in terms of organization, structure, and price tags. It wasn't that she didn't feel emotion. She just wasn't sure how to let herself feel it. So she tried to keep things under control instead, giving her daughter a structured, "stable" (as she had called it) childhood. Little spontaneity, little permission to laugh, constant fear of mistakes. Tim with his grandfather's playful streak had been a whole new world for Maggie. Thomas was glad that Lisa had Greg now. He'd be so much good for her, teaching her to let go a little.

Susan was also the source for Lisa's unacknowledged fear of horses. Her whole attitude at Rachel's enthusiasm over Ember had been so identical to and even stronger than Lisa's that Lisa's had been unconsciously copied from it. The exterior worries over the germs, the potential injury, hid an unacknowledged phobia beneath. Hopefully Lisa would be able to work out of it gradually, helped by love for her daughter. He doubted Susan would ever work through it at this point. Furthermore, he doubted Susan saw anything that needed working through there.

His watch hit the hour, and Thomas gently moved Belle aside and stood. She flick-lashed and glared at him, then realized that the spot where he had been sitting was nicely preheated. Kneading the cushion, she settled back down, and he gave her a final apologetic scratch on the ears. "Hold the fort," he told the cat. Then he slipped out the back door, going to his son.

(H/C)

House's momentum carried him halfway across the yard as he left the house, but it then abandoned him like a car running out of gas, and he stopped in the middle of the yard. He could feel his body trembling. Damn it. He had been trying so hard to keep the memories of his childhood at bay, but it was the memory of that bedroom last December that had overcome him. He could still see her lying there, already cold and stiff, could still feel his own desperation as he had tried to revive her. But it had been no use. She was dead. Permanently, irrevocably dead.

He was aware of his breathing speeding up, and with slightly fumbling fingers, he reached for the meds and fished out an Ativan. So much for his goal of the week. One of his main goals set firmly for himself back last Monday, anticipating the old man's arrival that night, was to manage to make it through this week of change without a panic attack. Until tonight, he had.

The pill dissolved under his tongue, and he could feel it steadying him. He blinked, fighting the tears back down. "Damn it, Mom," he whispered to the darkness, "why couldn't you talk to me?"

Slow minutes ticked by in the dark. He could feel time marching on, even though he was still wearing his daytime watch. That felt wrong suddenly. He wished he had his grandfather's watch, which did have a comforting, decades-old tick.

The threat of tears retreated a little, as did the memories of that morning. He tried to focus on other moments with her, replacing the bedroom of death as Jensen had told him.

Cuddy. He'd left her in there alone, abandoned her like a coward and run. She was still having to deal with her parents. But damn it, he could not watch another family fight like the one that had preceded Blythe's death. He simply couldn't take it. Probably nothing would happen, but if it did . . . the guilt would be crushing this time, both for him and for his wife. But he shouldn't have left her alone on the front lines.

No. Not alone. She had the old man with her.

The old man. What must he be thinking about tonight's events? Did he regret his move yet? Still possible to reverse it, even if expensive. His house back in St. Louis had just gone on the market. The furniture could be reloaded, the truck with the horse turned around. He still couldn't imaging anyone choosing him over that former settled life. The in-laws on top of it were too much to ask for anybody. He wouldn't even blame him.

Footsteps sounded across the yard in the dark. Not her footsteps, and he stiffened up, waiting for the announcement. Thomas came up beside him.

Nothing. The old man simply stood there, about a foot between them. He didn't say a word. House was determined to wait him out, but he broke first in spite of his intentions. "So you've decided you should apologize for getting your poor, crippled son blown up that day in Philly?" It was a harsh, brittle challenge, not even starting at the crux of the matter, the decision to move back, but at least it would get the ball rolling.

Thomas sounded annoyingly matter-of-fact as he replied. "No. And you aren't a cripple, Greg."

House snorted. "Better get your eyes checked, old man."

"You're not," his father persisted. "You've simply got a bad leg."

"Semantics."

"No, it isn't. Suppose that Abby got hurt and was going to have a limp from now on. Would you take every possible opportunity to call her a cripple?"

House was silent. "You aren't a cripple," Thomas repeated. "And as for that day at the track, you were a wonderful partner to have alongside me. I remember thinking at the time that I sure could have used you with me on some missions I've known. You're good, Greg. Thinking on your feet, every moment. It's a gift."

"That you credit yourself for?"

"No. That I appreciate. I would appreciate it in a stranger, and I appreciate it even more in my son."

House fell into silence again. As usual, the old man wasn't reacting quite like he expected. He waited. Nothing. Thomas seemed perfectly content to star gaze out here in silence standing next to him if he wished, although House hadn't actually noticed that the stars were out until now. Not that much was visible with the city glow. He envied the few he could see up there, light years away from in-laws. Finally, House made himself ask it. "When do you leave?"

"I'm not leaving, Greg. I live up here now."

House shook his head. "Sure you want to after tonight?"

Thomas laughed, sounding genuinely amused. "Actually, I was just thinking a few minutes ago that I feel even more like a family member now. Things like this never get trotted out in full view of mere guests. You really think I'd give up a life with you and Lisa and the girls because of your in-laws? Every family has a few members who get more on your nerves than others, Greg. I even thought that we might bump into them accidentally at some point rather than setting it up, although I hoped I was wrong."

"You're not mad about that?" House asked.

"No. There aren't many things that make me mad, Greg. In fact, you already know the major ones. Routine family ins and outs don't come close to making the list; those are just life."

House filled in the only two occasions he had seen or at least heard. Thomas that night after the verdict, deliberately terrifying the defense attorney. House could still remember the icy fury in his voice, too intense to be scripted, unaware that his son would ever hear him say it. "You attacked my son, you son-of-a-bitch." The other time had come a few months later, when in his constant poking at the old man he had made an unkind crack about Emily and hit a nerve. But then, while House had been waiting to see what happened now, Thomas after reacting sharply, leaving no doubt that a line had been crossed, had simply gone on as if nothing had changed between them. House was still bewildered by both of those episodes when he analyzed them.

Which reminded him of something. "So you know now that we hired a PI to check into you."

"I suspected that back in July, Greg. Not that your man wasn't good. I just sharpened my instincts in a harder school than he did. I knew somebody was watching me that first night after I followed the defense attorney home, and I got the same feeling a couple of times at the hotel after that. He wasn't there the night after the verdict, though. I thought he'd finished his report and given it to you. Did he leave a bug?"

"Yeah."

"And that's how you must have heard me with Stevenson." There was the hint of satisfaction there, Thomas' own curiosity about something finally confirmed.

House was still stuck on the timetable. "You knew in July? And that didn't bother you?"

"From you, no. You had every right to check me out. I could have thrown him off, but there wasn't any point. I had nothing to hide from you." House didn't reply. After a minute, Thomas went on. "If you want DNA tests run, Greg, I'm perfectly willing to give a sample."

House considered the offer, and to his surprise, he felt himself tensing up on it. There was basically no doubt of the biological fact left. The startling resemblance between him and his grandfather and between him and Tim, his musical talent, the gift for languages, the time table . . . He was 99% sure. Which, as he had often told the team, wasn't 100%. Doing the test would irrevocably remove that last percentage point and seal the fact. It would become a reassuring black-and-white answer on a page. But if, if, if that miniscule random chance came through and the answer was negative, House suddenly realized that he couldn't go through this again. He could not do all this again, plugging yet somebody else into this slowly forming spot labeled father. If the test was negative, the whole last year would have been for nothing. He couldn't do that any more than he could face another parent having a heart attack after an intense family quarrel. For just this once in his life, 99% sure was enough, and he would forgo the scientific proof. "No point in blowing good money on it when we know the answer," he said gruffly. He waited, afraid for a moment that the old man would offer to pay, but Thomas simply nodded and changed the subject.

"Lisa's mother reminds me of Tim's mother-in-law." House turned a little to face him, listening. "She was a dragon. Tim and his wife agreed when they were married that they would never in their lives reside in the same state as her parents. She didn't approve of Tim at first, and she didn't approve of me. She thought Tim laughed too much. Made it sound like a fatal fault. Maggie hadn't laughed near enough in life before meeting Tim. I think that was half of the appeal at first."

House chuckled. "Does sound familiar."

"That woman really loved her daughter, though. Some people just aren't as good at expressing it. She thought organization was the way to show love."

"That definitely sounds familiar. Those two aren't always as stiff as tonight - they're pissed off right now - but they never really know how to relax."

"They don't like 'prises," Thomas quoted, amused at Abby's statement.

"No, they don't." House suddenly chuckled again. "Wouldn't have minded seeing their expressions at that first moment."

"They were priceless. I was worried about the girls right then, but I know I would have automatically filed the looks of shock to appreciate later. I'll draw a caricature at some point in a few days, and I'll spend an hour or so privately looking at it to get it out of my system so I can face them seriously after that."

"I want to see it," House demanded. Thinking of the first sketch of John's tombstone, he'd love to see what the old man might do with her parents.

"You can. They can't."

"Definitely not. They'd never give you a chance at all if they saw that. So they just drove up?" House asked.

"Yes. I was playing with the girls in the front yard, and the car pulled up. And they asked who I was, and Rachel introduced me before I even had a chance to."

House grinned, picturing it. "She's irrepressible." He went serious a moment later. "Did the girls handle it okay?"

"Yes. Lisa's parents were trying not to upset them. We silently agreed to postpone discussion until later."

House sighed, suddenly aware of the house waiting behind him. "I can deal with family, Greg," Thomas reassured him again. "And there are far worse than those two. They mean well. But no matter who shows up at this house, I'm not moving back to St. Louis. I'm here."

"Guess we ought to go back in," House said. "You left Lisa alone with them."

"She hauled them off for a private conversation. The only one I left was Belle."

House turned around, then jerked to a halt. Cuddy was on the back porch, standing there watching the two of them. "How long have you been there?" he demanded.

"Since talking about Tim's mother-in-law," she said. "I didn't want to interrupt you two." She walked down the couple of steps into the yard. "We have some new house rules that hopefully everybody understands better now."

House gave her an admiring look, recognizing the decisive chin tilt. "You're hot when you get mad, you know it?"

She came on up to him. "I'm sorry, Greg," she said. After a minute, she turned to Thomas, who had been hanging back a few steps behind his son. "And I am so sorry that you got dumped in the middle of this tonight, Thomas."

He raised an eyebrow at her. "Do I get a kiss, too?"

She gave him one on the cheek, then looked back at her husband. "They're going to stay around Princeton for a few days."

He nodded. "Dynamite couldn't shift them."

"But," she continued, "they're going to get a room somewhere. They aren't staying here."

He stared at her in open admiration. "Wow."

Thomas nodded. "Wow. You've got a great one here, Greg."

Cuddy hooked her husband's left arm through her right. "Come on. They want to get to know you, Thomas. Or at least, they realize that they're going to have to. And please, keep any caricatures to yourself, or just between you and your son."

"You don't want to see them, Lisa?" Thomas asked.

One brief moment of temptation, and she dodged it by heading decisively toward the back door. House looked over at his father and caught a familiar-looking smile. No, really, no point in doing DNA tests. It wasn't that he was afraid of it; it simply wasn't necessary. Waste of money. That was all. Together, the three returned to the house.