Sorry this took so long to update. I had my files saved in Doc Manager in handfuls, and since it was taking so long, FF wiped them all out. So, I apologize for making you wait so long. Hope its worth it!

Disclaimer - If you recognize them, they're not mine

.::7

The clattering sound of the screen door smacking shut jolted Shelly awake.

"Mo-om?" she could hear Diedre call out into the darkness of the house.

"Living room," Shelly returned, reaching up to snap on the table lamp as she swung her feet down off of the couch. She quickly swiped at her eyes and ran her hands through her hair, but knew it was useless. If Shelly even looked only half as bad as she felt she would still scare her daughter. Sure enough, the teenager dumped her bag on the floor and hurried over to the couch.

"What happened? What's going on?"

"Calm down, Dee. Nothing's wrong with me," she saw the girl visibly relax a notch and felt the guilt rise up in her chest. All Diedre's life she always got scared whenever Shelly was sick. With good reason. If anything ever happened to her mother, Diedre's only other option would be a father that never even knew she existed. And now Shelly was offering her a defunct gift. She could finally know her father, but for how long depended on whether this crazy treatment actually took. The burden of sixteen years of guilty mistakes and good intentions felt doubly heavy tonight as Shelly drew her daughter into her arms. Offering up the eleventh prayer of the day she took a deep breath and tried to think about how to begin.

"I got a call last night from your father's friend," Shelly finally began.

"The nice one with the brown hair?" Diedre interrupted, and Shelly gave her a wan smile.

"Yes, Dr. Wilson. He called to tell me that Gre-your father, was having some problems and that now he was sick. Very sick." Shelly could see the outline of Diedre's lower lip quivering below her and gave her a quick squeeze. Diedre returned the pressure so Shelly just continued on. "So, this morning Dr. Wilson organized a little get together to figure out how to help your father, and I went along."

Here Shelly tugged Diedre up so she could look into her daughter's eyes, the clear blue depths dimmed and darkened by her anxious feelings. "I - I know I told you we'd only tell him when you're ready, Dee, but at this point he needs to know. It's possible the only way for him to get better is with a transplant, and you might be his only option for something like that."

A fat tear spilled over onto Diedre's cheek and a strangled sob erupted from the back of her throat. She pushed the back of her hand against her mouth in an effort to keep the rest of her emotions contained, but the tears started rolling faster and she hastily swiped them away.

"S-s-so, he knows?" she struggled out. Shelly nodded. "Did he say anything? Does he want to see me?"

Shelly smoothed the sandy hair behind her daughter's ear. "He didn't really say anything. He was angry at first. At me, not you. He was angry that I kept you a secret from him for so long. And he was angry that I didn't think he could handle knowing he had a daughter." Shelly bit her lip and conceded Greg's point. If she hadn't been so scared, the best time to have revealed Diedre was after Stacy had left him. She had even gone to see Greg after the infarction with the sole purpose of coming clean, but the feral creature so tortured by pain and sadness frightened her, and she felt more determined than ever to protect her small daughter from knowing such fear from a man Diedre so desperately wanted to love her. From then on Shelly bided her time by taking Diedre to catch glimpses of her father. Lectures, conventions; it was easy to smuggle in a small charming girl with big blue eyes and ask maintenance men if there was a chance she could just show her daughter backstage, or the control booth for a school project. But faced with the realization that there may not be much time left for Greg made Shelly feel like a thief, robbing her daughter out of potential opportunities for connecting with her father.

"Is he dying?" Diedre's small question snapped Shelly back into the present and she tried to keep her voice steady as she answered.

"His liver is failing. He's had a drug dependency problem and one of the side effects is liver damage. It's finally caught up with him." She watched her daughter's eyes darken - so much like Greg's - and braced herself for the storm that was coming.

"So that's what I get? Years - 16 YEARS of waiting, and he has how much time left? Couple months? A year?" Her anger shot Diedre off the couch like a cannon and she began to pace back and forth in the small living room as she dragged her fingers through her hair. "Hi Dad! Nice to meet you. Do you think we could grab a cup of coffee or go see a movie before you drop dead?" she mimed in a mock-cheery falsetto.

Shelly pressed her lips together into a thin line and remained silent, and Diedre narrowed her eyes at the sight.

"But no, that's not even all, is it? He needs a transplant. His liver, right? I'm just supposed to go under the knife and cut my liver in half for him when I don't even know him? Why should I? Would he do the same thing for me?"

"We aren't talking about a liver transplant. Yet. James and the other doctors think that a stem cell transplant might be enough to correct the damage, and I still have your cord blood saved up. So at this point I don't know if you need to do anything more than get a blood test. Maximum is a bone marrow transplant if the cord blood cells don't work out." Shelly could see some of the fight going out of Diedre at her answer, and tried to settle herself with a deep breath.

"So what do we do now?"

Shelly shrugged he shoulders. "I'm not sure. I was thinking we would wait. When I left him, I said he had to make a decision and I haven't heard anything yet, so - "

"So I STILL have to wait for you two to get your act together? What about me? What about what I want?"

"Dee -"

"NO! Don't 'Dee' me. I think I've waited long enough to know the guy. And now he's dying and you want to wait around a little more? Why don't we just sit on our hands until he kicks the bucket and then it will all be tidy and neat for you. You won't have to go through any pain or embarrassment of having your ex-lover meet his illegitimate daughter!"

"That's ENOUGH, Diedre," Shelly finally yelled as she rose from the couch. "You're allowed to be angry, but you're not allowed -"

The ring of the telephone startled both of them silent. Two pairs of eyes fixated on the object as it gave another innocent peal, and then Shelly started towards it. "I'll get it."

Picking up the receiver in shaky hands she tried to keep her voice even, and was relieved that she sounded more normal than she felt.

"Hello?"

"Shelly?"
"Oh. Hi Greg." Shelly quickly looked in the direction of Diedre who was standing across the living room, her blue eyes wide with a mixture of anxiety and anticipation.

"I want to speak to my daughter," was his crisp reply.

"Yes, certainly," she responded, and then slowly extended the receiver to her daughter. "It's for you, Dee."

Diedre slowly crossed the room and took one last searching look into her mother's eyes before grabbing up the receiver and putting it to her ear.

"Hello?" the young girl whispered into the phone. "Daddy?"

Two towns over in a small, dark, living room in Princeton, House's face smiled as the tears started to fall off his cheeks.

"Hi Diedre. I got your message," he managed to say before he was interrupted by the girl sobbing into the phone.

Back in Hamilton, Shelly watched her daughter cry tears of joy before retreating into the kitchen and closing the door on their little reunion. As she crossed over to the sink she looked out the window to see the moon shining down bright and lovely into the field beyond, and she smiled through her own tears. A full moon. She should have known.

-tbc