Hey all! Thanks so much for your continued support. Another chapter here! I'm basically done — just some edits — so will hopefully be wrapping up by Wednesday. There will be some editing at that point, but we're in the home stretch!

Home, is where I want to be

But I guess I'm already there

- Talking Heads

November

"Uncle Don! Aunt Sloan!"

"Hey, Maddie," he says as his niece jumps into his arms and practically knocks him over. Behind her, his brother, sister-in-law, mom, and nephews trickle out of the house. "Oof. You know, you're in what, fourth grade now?"

"Yep!"

"That's way too big to be jumping into Uncle Don's arms."

Maddie grins, baring shiny, new braces. What the hell? She's growing up too fast. Is their kid gonna do that? "You gotta get used to it!" She dives to hug Sloan tightly. "Can I feel the baby kicking?"

"Hi, Maddie. Yes, but he usually likes to move more when I'm sitting still, so you probably can't feel anything right now."

"Maybe later?"

"Absolutely," Sloan promises as she lets Clem out of the backseat. The dog makes a break for the tree line to relieve herself. "Hey, Mitch, Melanie. Alison," she says as the other members of the family catch up.

"Hi Sloan," his mother smiles and goes in for a hug. "How are you feeling? Was the drive down very bad? You look gorgeous, I love that blazer." She really does — she's wearing a houndstooth hunting blazer that looks like something out of Sherlock Holmes, with burnt orange fabric lining the undersides of the collar and lapels, a white silk tunic, and slim, dark-washed jeans. His wife is super-hot, super-stylish pregnant.

"Thank you, J. Crew, actually. It wasn't terrible, no — my back sort of hurts from sitting on the Turnpike for so long, but otherwise fine," she smiles at Melanie. "How did you do this three times, exactly?"

"Just wait till labor," Melanie advises with a smile as she and Mitch both go to hug Sloan. Alright then — he's got the nephews. They like him better. But nope — they head for Sloan too, and give her a hug. He notices that Mason, almost eleven and in fifth grade, is nearly as tall as Sloan now.

"What am I, chopped liver?" he finally complains as they all fawn over Sloan.

"Fifteen years I tell you to give me grandchildren and you don't listen; a year after I meet Sloan, she's pregnant with my grandson. Of course I like her more," his mother chides smoothly. "Mason, Matt, help Uncle Don with the bags."

"I was there too," he protests as the boys grab the stuff.

"You should really stop talking now," Sloan smirks as Melanie and Alison guide her into the large house. "Can you grab the pies too?" She whistles for Clem, who trots after her.

Sloan's never actually been to Mitch's, despite the fact that they've been married for over a year. When he finally enters Maddie is showing Sloan all her various photos and medals —"I got this for tying for sixth in the spelling bee," "This is my honorable mention from my golf league last summer," "Here is my field hockey team photo, right after we beat Agnes Irwin," — when he and the boys enter with enough crap to keep them clothed for two weeks (they're leaving on Sunday). Michael is sitting on the couch in the family room, watching the parade, and Matt jumps on the couch next to Michael once he's dropped the bags. Melanie and his mom are clucking in the kitchen, and Mason immediately escapes to wherever the preteen goes to avoid his family. Don feels officially useless. Happy Thanksgiving.

The holiday, which had been boring and superficially perfect as a child — he, his brother, and their parents always spent it at one of his two aunts' house eating a lot of turkey and then passing out as his uncles watched football — became a seriously complicated, frequently protracted negotiation in his twenties after he found out he had two much-younger siblings, Adam and Lily, from his father's years-long affair; Mitch married Mel, bringing her parents and brother into the equation; and his mom married Michael, who brought four kids by two ex-wives to the table. The year he was twenty-nine — no, thirty-one — they had tried to do everyone at once, thirty-nine relatives jigsawed together by marriages and remarriages: Mitch and Mel and their kids and Mel's parents; Lily and Adam and their mom and stepdad and their stepdad's single sister; his stepsister Lena and her boyfriend and kid; his three stepbrothers and a husband, a wife, and two kids between them; Michael's first ex-wife and her new husband; his two aunts and their husbands and five kids and four spouses and four grandkids. It had been a disaster — his mom and Gina had argued over the proper way to make stuffing, one of his uncles had asked Daniel the logistics of gay sex, and somehow Lena's kid broke a wrist. He'd never been so happy to be single.

Since then, they'd split the groups, with Mitch and Mel doing most holidays with her family, and his mother and Michael spending at least Hanukkah with his kids and Christmas with her sisters. His "chronic bachelordom" (his mother's words, not his) and the fact that he frequently had to work at least one if not all the major holidays in the Thanksgiving-New Year's corridor gave him license to slip through the cracks, which he had always taken advantage of. He enjoyed it — family, he'd long believed, was best enjoyed in finite doses and with a clear exit strategy. But now he's three months away from having his own kid and his own family, and Sloan's parents are ridiculously present and engaged, despite living all the way across the country, and it makes his own lapses, with his own family, that much starker. He understands the value of trying instead of tolerating now, in a way he wouldn't've even a year ago.

Thus, he is here. He's not quite tense, it's not unpleasant, but it is … new. He's on his best behavior.

"These pies look delicious — did either of you bake?" his mom asks skeptically. "Because while that would have been a lovely thought, I'm not sure I would trust the execution."

"God no. See the bakery label on it?" He opens the fridge and decides that, since Thanksgiving is special, it's not too early for a cider.

"Don did go all the way to Brooklyn to pick them up yesterday, so there was a considerable amount of effort put into them," Sloan calls from the living room, where Madison is showing her the choreography to … a tap dance, maybe? There's a lot of flailing of the arms.

"All that time and energy, we would've been perfectly happy with something from the grocery store down the street," she clucks.

"Wait till you taste it, Mom," he reassures her. Nothing makes this woman happy, he swears. "There's no way whatever the hell Gristedes had can top the pecan rum or the apple cranberry from Four and Twenty Blackbirds."

"So, Don, you going to show Sloan around Lower Merion while you're down here?" his mother asks as Sloan approaches, having finally seen every artifact of Madison's childhood thus far. Or Maddie just got bored with her. One or the other.

"I … wasn't planning on it," he turns toward her. "Do you want the Don Keefer Memorial Tour? Or can we, you know, do fun things?"

"Actually, the memorial tour sounds fun. See the high-school football field where you seduced all the women —"

"Those would be the tennis courts, and there was one," Mitch pops in. "And he was damn lucky to get that action."

"Excellent. The tennis courts, and the movie theaters where you got to second base, and the coffeeshop, where you hung out after school. Or was that not a thing, way back in Generation X?" she teases.

"You are a Milliennial by three days!" he exclaims. She'd been harping on that point since a segment she'd done earlier in the month. He thinks of a couple places she might like to see, though he's mostly coming up empty. "We could drive around on Saturday before we head back to New York," he suggests."If you really want." He really does not want — he doesn't even know if he remembers where all that stuff is — but he'll leave it up to her.

"I really do. Can you show me where Tina Fey was born?"

"Next town over," he says. "Fifteen minutes that way," he points toward Upper Darby. He'd actually met her a couple times (kids' theatre, when he was in elementary school and she was in high school) but teasing Sloan was fun.

"Don, I actually told Gina that Saturday would work for lunch with Adam and Lily. They can't do tomorrow; Lily and her friends are shopping."

"Oh, sure," he says. "That work?" he asks Sloan. Even before the disastrous Thanksgiving four or six years ago, he and Mitch had always tried to take Adam and Lily out at some point over the holiday weekend to celebrate. They weren't family in the traditional, have-holidays-together sense, but there was something to be said for a blood connection. When they had been in elementary school, it had been so simple: the four of them splitting a bag of hamburgers before catching whatever animated movie was opening that weekend. Then it became day trips to museums and plays in Philadelphia. But it was becoming increasingly harder to fit into their schedules as they got older and Mitch and now him added to their families: Last year, for instance, Adam (who had been a college sophomore), had been studying in Morocco, so his mom and Lily had gone to see him there. The year before that Madison had been at a gymnastics meet in upstate New York. Now, Lily has a full social calendar.

"Of course," Sloan says, popping a grape into her mouth. "I haven't seen either of them since the summer. It'll be fun." Adam had spent the summer interning at a "boutique consulting firm" (whatever the fuck that meant) in the city, and he and Sloan had gotten close. And Lily had taken summer classes at NYU, where she was applying early-decision, and so they'd let her do her laundry at their place and they'd taken them both out to dinner a couple of times. It was the most he'd seen either of them in years.

"So, Sloan, have you two decided on a name?" His mother asks, changing the subject. While she likes Adam and Lily just fine, and would never tell him or Mitch not to see them, it's (pretty understandably) not her favorite topic.

"Not yet," she shrugs. "He has to have one when we leave the hospital, so I'm sure we'll come up with something."

"And what are you going to do once the baby comes? You're taking some time off, I hope," his mother asks.

"I mean, I'm going to take maternity leave," Sloan says. "Probably February, March, and April. And I'm not teaching next semester. I feel bad about that, actually; I only taught one class this semester."

"Nanny, then?" Mel asks. It's conversational, nonjudgmental; nevertheless it sets Don a bit on edge. He doesn't want Sloan stressing out.

"There's an AWM daycare, but you have to get on the waiting list two years in advance, and two years ago we weren't dating, so joke's on us," Don says.

"Next time around. If I make it out of this," Sloan says lightly. "But yeah. We'll have a nanny."

"How is that going to work, with your hours? You two are at work sixteen hours a day," his mom says.

"I mean, I don't really have to go in till noon or so, and Sloan gets off at eight. There are worse hours for a nanny in New York."

"You guys really want to keep those hours after the kid's born?" Mitch asks. "Because no offense, Don, they suck already."

"We have contracts," he shrugs. His had just been re-signed in June, with a promotion and an extra title. No way he's quitting.

"Because contracts have never been broken," his mother points out.

"Look, Mom, we like this," he shrugs. "Will me getting off at 11:30 work for forever? No, but when the bean's not even in preschool, it'll probably work pretty well."

"It's important for you two to make time for each other, too, that's all I'm saying," she shrugs.

"Luckily, we work together," he says.

"Sloan, don't let him get away with thinking seeing each other is the same as spending time together," Mel says.

"If either of us felt ignored we'd talk about it," she smiles. "It feels, some days, like things are happening super fast. But we do still have time, and we have a plan for the first couple months. I think that's as far out as is safe."

"You guys are handling having a kid this quickly awfully well," Melanie says. "I remember when we got married all we wanted was to go on adventures for the next five years." Don tries not to snort; they were pregnant within two years.

Sloan shrugs. "This is plenty enough adventure for us," she says, tracing shapes on her stomach absentmindedly.

It's a lazy day; Melanie and his mom handle the cooking while the rest of them sit on the couch and watch football (well, everybody but Sloan watches football. She reads The Economist as she somehow manages to steamroll his fantasy team). Around two the kids head up to change, and he and Sloan get their first and only responsibility of the evening — setting the table. Madison walks behind him, dropping five dried corn kernels next to each plate.

"What are these?" he asks, sifting two between his fingers.

"The Pilgrims had them," she informs him. "We just learned about them in school this year. At the first Thanksgiving, the Wampanoag brought game and vegetables, but the Pilgrims still set out corn to remind them about when they only had five kernels of corn a day. You say one thing you're thankful for for every kernel."

He holds one up and teases Madison: "Well, this one is for Game of Thrones and this one is for coffee and this one is for —"

"No, Uncle Don! Real things. Like Aunt Sloan and the baby and your nice apartment and you get to live in New York far away from Mason. Yours is the easiest, honestly. You have a lot to be thankful for."

He looks at Sloan, rearranging the silverware across the way. "You might be right, Madison." Sloan hears him, and sticks her tongue out playfully.

They sit down for dinner not long after. The kids share first (Matthew is thankful for Iron Man, which is somehow acceptable; Mason drags his feet before finally saying he is thankful for Kendall Jenner, which is somehow not), then Mel and Mitch, then Michael, and finally his mom. Then it's Sloan's turn. "Well," she says. "First, um, I'm thankful to be here with all of you, and that you've accepted me so easily into. I'm also thankful that this pregnancy, so far, has been pretty easy. Minus the morning sickness, which was terrible," she slides two pieces across her plate to count them off. "I'm thankful for the bean, and I'm excited to meet him next year. I'm thankful for Don — it's been … just, thank you. And I'm thankful for my own parents and sisters, even if I don't get to see them all the time."

"Lovely," his mother smiles. "Don?"

He shifts uneasily, then starts gamely. "Well, I'm thankful for this great meal — thanks, Mom and Mel, for making sure we don't starve today. Or within the next week. And I'm thankful to be here with you. And, um, obviously, Sloan, I'm thankful for you and the bean. I'm thankful for my job. And … Honestly, there's a lot that I could say for my fifth. And that hasn't always been true. So, I'm thankful for that — how much extra I have right now, in my life." He smiles at Sloan, who smiles shyly back before taking his hand and squeezing it.

It's a good dinner, filled with too much food, and the pies are universally praised (He eats two and a half pieces of the pecan rum). Afterwards, he and Mitch are conscripted into dish duty, since Mel cooked and Sloan is pregnant, which everyone understands to be a free pass at chores. His mother being his mother, she supervises them; when Mitch goes to argue with Mason about whether or not he can ditch the family and go hang out at the basketball courts (seriously, the thought of raising a teenager is terrifying), Alison leans over his shoulder to observe his dish-washing technique. "This looks good on you, Don," she says, out of the blue.

"The dishtowel?" he asks, flipping it over his shoulder.

"No, you. Doing this. Being … domestic."

"I remember you telling me when I was ten I could either wash my own dishes or eat off the floor, so …"

She rolls her eyes. "Yes, please, be obtuse and wreck our moment. You know what I meant."

"Not, really, no," he trills, setting the final pot in the rack and wiping his hands. "I'm very dense. Just ask Sloan."

"These past few years, you've been happier than I've seen you since you were fifteen and decided the only place for the weight of the world was firmly on your shoulders," she says. "This, being settled, being married, getting ready to be a new dad. It works."

He shrugs. "It better. Kid's coming no matter what." People keep saying this, like it's a goddamn fact, like the theory of evolution or the heliocentric theory, and he's absolutely not convinced. He's kept Sloan calm, and they'll get the hang of it eventually, but everyone's absolute faith in their ability gobsmacks him.

"Don …" she says.

"Yeah?"

She just kisses his cheek. "You guys are going to be great at this. I'm proud of you both."

"Alison, Don?" Sloan swings her head into the kitchen. "Mitch wants to put on It's A Wonderful Life? I haven't seen it, but he says it's a holiday classic and you two have to join."

Don groans, because of course she has not seen the damned film. "OK, we're going through the AFI's classic-film database and filling in these egregious gaps in your cultural knowledge," he says. She just smirks and heads out.

The next day, she prods him up nice and early, ready to explore his hometown. "Why are you so excited about this?" he grumbles as he showers and she brushes her teeth.

"I've never been here," she shrugs. "And you don't talk about it much," she works the words around a mouthful of toothpaste.

"We've never been to Japan," he points out, since she spent five solid years living in Tokyo.

"No, but I'd like to take you there. And we've been to San Francisco. You spent eighteen years living here, and I spent two living in San Francisco, and we've been to San Francisco."

"Well, we'll see it today." He's got some places that he wants her to see. He's got a list.

"I want the full Don Keefer origin story. The high school. The tennis courts. The library."

"The field in which a kindly farmer and his wife found me and raised me as their own?"

"Or the lab where you got bitten by a spider," she retorts. "I'm serious. I don't think I even know the name of your favorite teacher."

He isn't sure he knows hers (unless 'her father' is the answer, which it very well might be), but he answers, "Mrs. Kennington. She taught English literature and coached debate."

They skip breakfast at home, and he takes her to the Lee's Hoagie House for breakfast sandwiches Fluffya-style. They stop at the Wawa to get hot apple cider and hot chocolate, ordered from the computer terminals, and then head over to the high school, which was rebuilt in 2010 and is all modern architecture and vast parking lots. The doors are locked because it's a holiday, so they walk the track around the field behind the school, which is still the same as when Don went there. It's strewn with leaves, and he talks about his one mediocre season running track.

"Where did all the kids go to make out?" Sloan asks, craning her neck behind her as they sit on the bleachers.

He laughs. "It wasn't a doo-wop movie," he says. "Nobody came out to the football field to make out."

"Where'd you go, then?" she challenges.

"The natatorium," he confesses — there had been an empty storage room there that was great for sneaking around. "This wasn't the one we used, though. They built a new one when they built the new school."

"So I don't get to see where you seduced the famous Katie?" she pouts. He's mentioned his high-school girlfriend to Sloan a couple of times and she's always been just slightly irrationally suspicious of her.

"No," he laughs. "But as far as I know her brother still lives around here if you want to meet him." He leans forward and kisses her. She tastes spicy, like cider. "Come on. Let's head to the park."

He drives them the five minutes to the park, where the tennis courts and baseball fields are. The three-sided tennis shelter has his teams' two state champion and three district champion plaques, and he shows her those before they play a game of imaginary tennis on the courts. They wander over to the baseball fields next. "Did you play? You've never mentioned it." Sloan says.

"Yeah," he says, kicking at the dirt. "I was six when the Phillies lost to the Orioles in 1983 in the Series. Everybody played. Teeball through eighth grade."

"Why'd you stop? You've never even watched a baseball game." He supposes this is strange enough that Sloan would notice; he, like Will, has an affinity for basically any sport.

"Interfered with tennis," he says. It's only a half-lie. He feels guilty, so he adds, "My dad used to bring us here. Mitch loved it. We'd run the bases out of season."

"Mitch played at Villanova, didn't he?"

"Yeah, he was always better at it than I was," he says. He kicks at the fence. "You want to see the restaurant I worked at in high school? Only job I was ever fired from."

She grins widely. "Absolutely. And I have to hear why you were fired."

After lunch at Morello's, they go to the theatre where he'd performed and the mall and library before heading into Philadelphia to check out the Barnes Foundation's new space and see the Magic Gardens and do some shopping. Sloan insists on picking up a couple Philadelphia-themed onesies for the bean. That evening is packing, answering emails (because of course), and chipping away at the mountain of leftovers in Melanie's kitchen. He's not going to lie, it's a pretty good day.

The next day, they head downtown, because Lily is insistent that they have to check out Han Dynasty — they'd taken them both to the New York outpost over the summer and Lily swore the original location was better.

"Guys!" Lily shouts, moving toward them as they approach the restaurant. "Oh my god! How have you been?" She is startlingly adult and vivaciously green-eyed, and she's dyed the tips of her dark hair pink. She's got an Army surplus-style jacket over a Little House-style flowered dress, black tights, and lace-up boots. Adam, the much more sedate sibling, is in a North Face and jeans. "I'm so excited to see everyone. Well. Not you, Mitch. I saw you, like —"

"Friday, when I paid you forty bucks to watch my kids? Yeah. Good to see you too, Lil," Mitch snarks before giving her a hug.

"That's how much Lily makes? I could watch Matthew for that!" Madison says. "Mason just stays in his room the whole time."

"I do not," Mason says. They're the first uncoaxed words Don has heard all weekend.

"How's it going, Adam?" Don asks as he hugs Sloan.

"Pretty good," Adam says. "Just waiting to hear back from McKinsey to see if I got into their summer analyst program. Studying for the GMAT too."

"You should wait to take those until you hear back from McKinsey," Sloan advises. "You don't want to go to b-school until you have to."

They grab seats and order, Sloan and Adam still chatting about jobs in finance and consulting and Lily and Madison and Matthew going on about some movie they saw last week.

"Are you excited about the baby, Don?" Lily asks as they tuck into noodle bowls.

"I mean, yeah. It's a lot, to get ready for, but we're excited."

"Still no name?" Mel checks.

"Still no name," Sloan confirms.

"But are you excited to be a dad?" Lily clarifies.

""Oh. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean … A little terrified, but excited."

Lily grins. "I remember when we were in, like, elementary school, and you would take us to the museums and to the zoo and to plays. Before Tomas. It was great."

"We did have fun, didn't we?" Don laughs. God, he had had no idea what he was doing. He'd just tried to fumble his way through without fucking them up.

"Do you … Would my dad have done those things?" Lily says nervously.

Conversation suddenly stops. The topic of their mutual father is rarely brought up; the kids know enough details and it's in the past.

"Dude, Lily, he did that," Adam says. "You were too little to remember, but he used to take us to movies and stuff."

"I'm sorry, I don't remember," Lily says. "He died when I was six, you know. I don't remember him at all."

Don looks over Lily to Sloan, who bites her lip. He shifts his glance to Mitch, who shrugs. "He … He was pretty physical. You always could feel him in a room, you know? He was always busy, always working, yelling on the phone or whatever. But he was always the center of attention. His employees loved him; he was always making a deal at some country club or whatever. And he was always moving, always busy. He slept maybe five hours a night, was competitive, but was also running all the time, playing golf, playing baseball, playing basketball. He was the star quarterback at his high school, did you know that?"

"No," Lily says. "I knew he played basketball though."

"Minus his smoking, he was pretty active," Don says. "So yeah, he would've done those things with you. Probably not museums, but everything else, yeah. He would have done those things for you."

Lily twirls her fork. "He wasn't around much for you guys either, was he?"

"Nah, he was … working," Don says. That's what he was always told, though he knows that's not true at all. Adam and Lily are living, breathing proof of that. "Look, guys … Parents are humans too, you know. He wasn't perfect. But would he have taken you to the zoo, and loved every minute? Yeah." He doesn't know what else he could tell her. It was doubtful he would've posted their photos in his office, or gone to Lily's volleyball meet, or taught Adam how to drive. If he had lived, he would have disappointed them in so many ways big and small that Don doubts they would have been able to have a healthy relationship. He disappointed Don in all those ways, and he was his legitimate kid. But he's not going to say that. "He left you guys funds for college. He cared."

Lily gives him a strange look. "I know, Don. I just didn't know what he was like, you know, as a person."

Mitch laughs. "Remember that fistfight he got into at the Phillies game once? Started it by pouring a full cup of beer on a jerkoff Yankees fan's head after he called you a fu — a name. A bad, bad name. Dad got so pissed at him. Convinced the cop to arrest the other guy too."

Don laughs. "That's the kind of guy he was." It's true. It showcased his best and worst qualities.

They head to the Mummer Museum to show Sloan all the weird exhibits, and then it's time for them to head back to the city. He doesn't want to drive late at night. Lily will be in New York in two weeks for an overnight class trip, and they agree to sign her out of the hotel and let her stay with them.

"That was nice," Sloan murmurs, eyes closed, as they drive away from his mother's, Clem safely in the backseat. "Thanks for the tour yesterday."

"It was fun," he agrees, taking her hand.

"And always good to see Lily and Adam," she says. They pass the exit for King of Prussia, and she says, "Hey, your dad built that, didn't he?"

"Developed the expansion," he corrects, then makes an impulse decision. He swats the turn signal and exits onto a winding road.

"Where are we going?" Sloan asks, alarmed, sitting up straighter.

"You'll see," he says. Ten minutes later, he rolls to a stop on a gravel shoulder on a quiet road. Sloan looks around and immediately gets it. She falls silent, looking at him.

He opens his door and jerks his head with a slight smile. "Come on," he says. "This way." He opens the door to let Clem out too.

As they exit the car, she reaches out his hand, which he takes. He hasn't been here since the funeral a dozen years ago, but he still has the route memorized. They enter the cemetery under a wrought-iron gate, hook a left, wander down a path and then an ancient set of steps, then across a meadow with a small pond to a more recent clutch of graves. They stop in front of the gray stone Don and his brother picked out. It looks significantly more weathered. Donald David Keefer, 1951-2002. Where your treasure lies, there your heart lies also. Sloan's quiet.

"He went by Dave," Don starts. He's never told her much about him — not out of distrust and not because he was emotionally closed-off, but because it was so far removed from their lives that he didn't bring it up. There was nothing he could do or say, so why bother? He was a pragmatist. But memories came pouring out. "He hated the name Donald. So he decided to give it to me, obviously. His mom went to Ravenhill — the snooty girls' Catholic school — and was friends with Grace Kelly's sister. Both of his parents' families lost a lot of money in the Great Depression, though, and by the time he came around they were pretty cash-poor, so he went to public school, which my grandmother hated. He went to Penn State, and met my mom when she was still at Bryn Mawr. His dad died in a car accident when I was about five — drunk driver — and his mom passed away from cancer when I was working at Newsweek. He had one sister, my Aunt Maribeth, but they had some big falling out over the Vietnam War and Nixon, so we didn't actually meet her until his funeral. She lives in Texas in a refurbished Airstream with a lot of wind chimes and corgis, last I heard. Never had kids." He takes a deep breath. Sloan looks at him, concerned and expectant. She gives him the quiet he needs to organize his thoughts. "He was allergic to strawberries and grass. He always wore these hideous pastel polo shirts, and liked to clamp a cigar between his teeth even when he wasn't smoking. He had this big gold chain watch, and a serious mustache in the 1980s. He loved baseball. That was kind of our thing, the … Keefer men's thing. He was always busy, always making a deal, building up Keefer & Sons, you know, for us, so we really didn't see him a lot. My mom always left a plate of dinner in the microwave for him, you know? But he always took us out of school on Opening Day, even during the mid-80s when the Phillies sucked. And always a couple of other times in the spring. He would just show up, and fake some sort of family emergency, a sick aunt or a dying puppy or whatever. He'd spin these stories that absolutely nobody would believe, and we'd go down to watch a game. He'd usually do it on doubleheader days, so we'd come home at like ten p.m., drunk on cotton candy."

"That sounds pretty great," Sloan says.

"Yeah," he says. "I loved it. He was tough to talk to sometimes, and always busy, and always telling us it was for us that he worked so hard, right? We didn't get a lot of time together. So when I got older, I followed his lead one day in eighth grade. My friends and I cut out after fourth period, took three buses to get to the Vet, watched the Phillies play the Mets. Mets won, of course. The Phillies sucked that year. And when we were leaving —" he stops, then continues, "when we were leaving, I saw my dad. His arm was around a woman. Didn't figure out until years later it was Gina. Hell, she might've even been pregnant with Adam at the time. It would make sense. I didn't say anything, not to him, or Mom, or Mitch. I just …"

"Stopped loving baseball?" Sloan surmises.

"Yeah," he finishes. "I quit the team the next year. Focused on tennis instead. Made my mom happy. By that time, the … facade my parents had been putting on for years had started slipping, since we were older, and they started spending time apart. And … that was that. That was my shitty relationship with my father."

She's quiet. "That part actually doesn't sound so shitty, you know."

"What?"

"The sneaking out, the going to baseball, the sharing something you love. That doesn't sound shitty; that sounds nice. I get why you don't want to ever watch baseball again, and it's … heartbreaking, but it's a nice memory."

"One of the few nice ones in a slew of awful ones."

"Look, I'm not condoning it at all. The way he treated both your mother and Gina is appalling. But you said it to Adam and Lily today … Parents are complicated. They're flawed. Sometimes in really big ways. But flaws means having good qualities as well as bad and I would hate … I'd hate for you to still think that all those years with him were a total wash, just because of his flaws. The good doesn't have to — and can't — erase away the bad, but it's still there, right? You had fun faking your aunt's death and eating too much sugar at the ballpark, right? I think that's important."

She's right, of course, like she usually is. "I don't — I … the bean. He's going to hate us at some point, isn't he?"

"Probably. Mason was giving me panic attacks all weekend," Sloan admits. "But hey. You'll be a great dad."

"How?" he asks suddenly, his voice cracking uncomfortably. He keeps hearing that, and he's suspicious. It's something that's been agitating him, like a hard-to-reach mosquito bite, since Sloan announced she was pregnant. He'd purchased twelve parenting books, and he still had no idea. "I legitimately have a pretty bad example. I've never seen great fatherhood in action." They're going to be fine, but good? That's an entirely different thing.

"Because you're a good guy," she says simply. "And you know it was a bad example, so you won't emulate it. And you're much different than your dad. Don, he was what, a twenty-five-year-old wannabe businessman with an empty bank account when you were born? Forced into a marriage because your mom got pregnant? You're not like him. You want to be a great dad, you're ready to be a great dad. And you will be. We'll fuck some things up along the way, but we're going to try, so we'll be fine. I know it," she looks at him searchingly, one finger tracing his cheek. "Can that be enough?"

He initially wants to say he's not sure. He's not. He's ready because they have to be, not because he is. But Clem barks at a bird, and he's transported out of his memories and his wallowing back into his current life, back to his wife, who has so much strength and so much faith in him. And he says, "Yes." Clem yanks at her leash, restlessly ready for the chase, and he straightens. "We should get going."

"Yeah," Sloan says. "Thank you for bringing me here."

"Thank you for coming," he says, and they head quietly out.

It's long past noon years in the future, and he's in the middle of another numbers meeting with Reese and the heads of the finance, advertising, and marketing departments. He's in a suit, and his two iPhones are buried under printouts of Powerpoints and Excel spreadsheets. There's a fucking projector hooked up, though they haven't advanced slides in fifteen minutes. His assistant knocks on the door and says, "Don? It's your son's school. They said they couldn't get you on your cell."

He digs around in the pile for the phone, and noticed three missed calls — one from the school, one from Sloan, and one from their nanny, a grad student at NYU who is definitely supposed to be in class right now. All are from within the last four minutes. "Shit," he says, jumping up. "I'll be right back."

Ten seconds later, the Trinity secretary is telling him about how the little guy is in the nurse's office with a fever, after vomiting up his lunch. "Yeah," he says. "Gimme twenty. I'll be there." He pops his head back in. "So sorry, but the kid is sick—"

"Can Sloan grab him?" Jake, the head of finance, asks.

"She's on air at three," Reese replies. "Go. We'll finish this up in the morning."

He calls the car to meet him in the lobby, yells at Amanda to clear his schedule, and he's heading up Riverside Drive within two minutes. Lloyd, the driver, waits outside to glare at anyone who might dare suggest they're double-parked, and he takes the stairs two at a time until he's inside the hallowed halls of the ridiculously expensive, ridiculously exclusive where his kid is a (whip-smart) first grader. He follows the Picasso-inspired kindergarten artwork to the main office, wading through third-graders en route to gym in the process. The secretary waves him through to the nurses office, where the little guy, who looks absolutely miserable, is lying prone on the cot.

"Hey buddy," he says, crouching to take in the clammy face and the pinched, tired eyes. "Mrs. Simon called and said you're not feeling too well, eh?"

"Daddy," he croaks — the childish term itself is a clear sign he's miserable. "I wanna go home."

"Yeah, we're going," he says. "You got your bag?" He nods and points. Don grabs the knapsack, lifts up the kid — no way he's walking — and turns to exit. "Do I need to sign?"

Mrs. Simon shakes her head. "No need, Mr. Keefer, we'll take care of it. And tell Mrs. Keefer and the girls hello. Feel better, honey, alright?" The kid just moans.

They're in the apartment within ten minutes, and he takes one final look at his work iPhone. One hundred-thirty-six messages in forty minutes, and an additional forty in his news-alerts folder. He turns the damn thing off and tosses it on the kitchen counter. It'll just stress him out. He takes out his personal phone and texts Sloan, who's in the throes of show prep — "Got him. We're at home." Last he texts the nanny to pick the girls up from preschool, but take them to the park to stay away from the sick-o. Then he pockets that phone.

The little guy starts making retching noises, and they run to the bathroom so he can puke (apparently, it was chicken-nuggets day at school). Then it's upstairs for PJ's, a quick and negotiated shower, and medicine (a miserable transaction), then back downstairs to park in front of the TV. Don rolls up his sleeves and plants an empty trash can at their side. "Don'tcha have work?" the kid mumbles sleepily, his head in Don's lap. "D'you gotta make some calls?"

"Nah. It'll wait, buddy. You want to watch 'Monster's Inc 3'?"

"When's Mom on?"

He checks his watch. "Maybe twenty minutes."

"Can we watch Mom?"

"Sure," he flicks to ACN, where the current market analyst (not nearly as attractive as Sloan, though nobody is really as attractive as Sloan) is talking stocks.

The kid shifts around, agitated and uncomfortable. "I didn't pull you out of meetings, did I? You're not missing work, are you? You're 'mportant."

He leans over to kiss his son's (hot, too hot) forehead. "You're more important, OK?" He pauses. "I don't say that, do I?"

"Say what?"

"You know, that I'm very busy, that I'm missing work, that I have a meeting? Do I say stuff like that a lot?" He and Sloan try and be good about not having phones out in front of the kids, but he doubts he's particularly successful at that. He is important, and there's a lot of pressure — on both him and Sloan — to balance, to juggle, to take on way too many responsibilities. It gives the kids so much, but comes at a cost.

But the kid shakes his head. "Naw. But you are important and so is Mom. Look — there she is!" TV-Sloan appears, stern and smart, telling everyone to tune in to her show. An announcer says she's the name you can trust most in the afternoon.

"Yeah, show's starting soon."

"Who's she interviewing today?"

He thinks for a second. "I think she's talking to the Senate Minority Leader."

"'S he important?"

"He's a jackass."

"Quarter," he holds up a hand. Don roots around in his pocket and comes up with two dimes and a nickel. He hands them over, and they're immediately inspected closely before being deemed an acceptable substitute. They're tossed on the table next to the sippy cup of 7-Up.

"You know, you should invest that, kiddo. Put it away from college."

"Daddy, only Mom can give investment advice. Or Grandpa. You know that."

"Shhh, she's kidding about that."

"No, she's not."

"Show's starting, watch Mom," he urges with a nudge.

They make it through the top of the hour and as soon as the commercial break starts, his phone — as expected — rings. "Y'llo," he says.

"He's home, with you?" Sloan checks. She has two minutes.

"Yeah, you wanna talk to him?"

"Uh, yes."

He holds the phone down. "It's for you."

The kid takes the phone. "Hi, Mom. Yeah. Yeah. No. Then Dad got me. I feel better. Yeah. Love you." He sticks the phone above his head, and Don grabs it back.

"Hey."

"Is he running a fever?"

"Yeah. We took some kids' Motrin. I sent the girls to the park with Kariin, but he's holding down some crackers and 7-Up."

"I'm coming home right after the show."

"You always come home right after the show."

"Still. I feel terrible."

"Don't, alright? We got it under control."

"How many meetings did you have to move?"

Eight. "Don't worry about it."

She sighs. "I could've —"

"Sloan, no you couldn't've." And no matter what, it's better than last year when she was at Davos and all three kids got the stomach flu. "Don't beat yourself, alright? You need to get back on air." The commercial for LifeAlert is playing; that always plays right at 4:02.30. She has at most twelve seconds before the A block.

"Shit. Love you. Bye."

She's back on the screen, perfectly composed, talking to the sheriff of a small town in Georgia that currently being hunted by a serial killer.

Within seconds, his son's asleep, and Don's leg follows not soon after. He watches the TV mindlessly, almost mechanically filing away notes on Sloan's show — the producer didn't cut quickly enough; something funky is going on with the red in the chyron; she keeps smirking at a Senator's borderline-inappropriate last name — but mostly, he just sits. He runs his fingers through the kid's hair (curly like his, but almost as dark as Sloan's), and traces his his knuckles against his cheek to see if the fever drops. Eventually it does, but there's still another round of barf and some whining before the kid says, "I want Jell-O," in a very clear voice. Don heads the kitchen, routs around, finds some cherry jello, tops it with some whipped cream from a cannister because the kid's having a sucky day and whipped cream makes you feel better. When he comes back with two bowls — dads should get treats too — the kid is half-up, looking peaked but not deathly. He grabs his bowl from Don, says, "Thank you, Daddy," and curls against Don's shoulder, slurping happily at the spoon.

"No problem," he says. He checks his watch. "Game's starting," he says. "Want to watch."

"Who're they playing?"

"The Braves. Harper's back in action."

"Yes please," the kid requests, and Don flicks to ESPN for the game. The Phillies head onto the field, and his son sits up a little straighter to watch, his color improved immediately. Don smiles. It's not a bad afternoon.