John Eames was laid to rest Sunday afternoon. His children discussed all the details among themselves, and they all agreed to hold the after-service gathering at Alex and Bobby's home. Alex thought it was a good idea. Bobby had been having such a rough time, and she thought he would be more at ease in his own home. It did not occur to her that he might be unsettled by having so many strangers invade the home he considered private until it was too late. Family was one thing, but many of the mourners were friends of John's. Although gracious, Bobby was very restless, and Alex felt bad about that. When she'd asked him about the gathering, he'd agreed, but now she wondered if it was just another concession on his part to make her happy.

Mike would have made the gathering more bearable for Bobby, but after the services, he talked briefly with Bobby and then he left. When Alex asked where he'd gone, Bobby shrugged his shoulders. "He said he had some business to take care of. I didn't ask for details."

Alex was surprised by his grouchiness, then she wondered how much he'd actually slept over the past few days. He was obviously fatigued, and again she felt bad for not noticing how tense and irritable he'd been until now. She had been preoccupied with making the arrangements, and the fog of grief that held her in its grip had clouded her days. She'd gone to great lengths to keep herself busy, mainly with her siblings, so she didn't have time to dwell on her loss. She knew she would not be able to handle addressing the children's questions, so she left them to Bobby, who seemed to be holding up better than she was.

While Alex passed the long days with the siblings who shared her loss and Bobby channeled his energy into the children, at night when they came together, there was silence. After polishing off a tumbler of bourbon, Alex crawled into bed, into Bobby's arms. He held her close, lightly stroking her back and her hair, demanding nothing from her. She felt comforted by his strong embrace as he held her, and she was relieved by his silence. Belatedly, she realized Bobby had barely spoken at all, remaining just as rigid and stoic as he had the night John died.

Bobby had been very close to John, much closer than she'd realized at first. There were many things she was realizing only now that she should have been aware of all along. She made up her mind that it was time to have a real heart-to-heart talk with her husband, once they resumed their normal routines and the shock of John's death had passed. Right now, she had a houseful of people to feed and make small talk with. Bobby would find a place among their guests where he would be most comfortable and he'd pass the time in as much solitude as he could find.

There were lots of people in the house, many of whom Maggie didn't know. But they had been friends of her grandfather's, a lot of them cops like he'd been, and they were nice. So were their wives. Most of her cousins were outside, playing ball in the yard with some of the adults. She'd been playing with them, after changing from her church clothes, of course, but she was taking a break with Harry and Zeus. They were hot and hungry. After washing her hands in the downstairs bathroom, while she waited for Harry, Maggie looked into the family room. They had a new couch in there, one her father and Uncle Mike brought home a few weeks ago, and Daddy was sitting there now, talking to Uncle Kevin, who was his favorite among her aunts and uncles, except for Uncle Mike. She wondered why Uncle Mike wasn't there.

When Harry came out of the bathroom, they went back to the living room, where their parents had set up a long table. Then the adults filled it with food. She grabbed three plates from a stack near the potato salad. Handing Harry a plate, she set the other two plates side-by-side on the table. After making Harry a ham sandwich and adding potato salad and macaroni salad to his plate, she made a pastrami sandwich with mustard for one plate and a bologna sandwich for the other. Putting potato and macaroni salad on each plate, plus a little cole slaw, she added a pickle and a fork to the three plates and a few olives to the pastrami plate. Zeus gobbled up everything she dropped on the floor. Carefully, she carried the two plates to the family room. Harry followed with his plate.

Bobby was now alone in the family room, still on the new couch. Zeus trotted over to him, jumped up onto the couch and climbed into his lap. He stroked the puppy's soft fur and scratched behind his ear. Maggie placed the two plates on the couch beside him as he put Zeus on the floor. The puppy laid down at his feet as Maggie put a plate on Bobby's lap. She climbed up onto the couch and pulled her plate onto her lap. Harry followed suit, climbing up to sit beside Maggie.

She took a bite of her sandwich and patted her father's arm. "You gotta eat, Daddy."

He hesitated before taking a bite of the sandwich she'd made for him. He wasn't really hungry, but she had gone to the trouble of fixing it for him. She watched him. "Is it good?"

"It's the best pastrami sandwich I've had in a very long time. Thank you, baby."

"You're tired, aren' you?"

"What makes you say that?"

"Your eyes are tired."

He wondered if he would ever be able to hide from her. He leaned over and kissed her head. "I'm fine. How are you doing?"

"I'm good."

Bobby looked at Harry. "And you, Harry?"

"I'm good, too...uh..."

Bobby sensed he had something more to say, and he waited, taking another bite of his sandwich. After a minute, Harry said, "Mommy said it's okay to feel sad."

"She's right."

"Do you feel sad, too?"

"Of course I do."

"Do you miss Grampa?" Maggie asked.

"Yes. I will miss him every day."

"F'rever?"

Bobby nodded. "Forever."

Maggie took a bite of her potato salad. "An' Gramma, too?" she asked.

"Of course."

Harry listened to them silently. After a moment, he spoke, slow and tentative. "I miss my first mommy sometimes, but I'm not sad anymore b'cause she's gone. Mebbe I didin love her for real. Am I bad 'cause she's gone an' I don't miss her no more?"

When Maggie remained quiet, Bobby knew they'd had this discussion before and she had been unable to answer Harry's question well enough to alleviate his concern. He watched the little boy as he fidgeting, knowing he was afraid of the answer.

Harry was confused because he felt so much grief for John and so little for his own mother, and he couldn't come to terms with that. His father had been a very bad man. People often said that Maggie had her daddy's eyes and Tommy had his mommy's smile. Maybe he had gotten his father's...bad.

"No, Harry. You're not bad," Bobby said gently.

"Are you sure?" he asked earnestly.

Then he sat back suddenly, hands covering his mouth. He almost knocked his plate from his lap. Maggie steadied his plate while Harry watched Bobby with frightened eyes. Children were never supposed to question adults. Harry remembered, shortly before he ran away from home, the teacher had been talking about jobs and careers. Her job was teaching children, she explained. Then she asked the children what their parents did. Maggie's mommy and daddy were police officers and Devon's daddy climbed buildings, kinda like Spiderman, to clean the windows. Harry had no idea what his father did, so that night, he asked his mother. She had not given him an answer, but she told his father about his query when he got home. He trembled at the memory of his father's rage, of how he'd hunted him out and beat him for it. His question went unanswered and the next day, when the teacher asked him what his parents did for a living, he began to sob uncontrollably. Maggie had comforted him while the other children stared and he shut down for the teacher after that. She asked Maggie to walk him to the nurse's office, and on that walk, he told Maggie that his father had gotten very angry the night before, though he'd omitted telling her about the beating. That was when Maggie began to worry about him...and when began to trust her.

Bobby recognized Harry's reaction, and he knew the child was remembering the past. He chose his words carefully. "Yes, Harry. I'm sure. You have a loving heart, and now you have parents who love you as well. Your fears will fade over time. The past is only a memory and it can't hurt you. Your mother has a place in that past, and eventually you will find the right place for her to be. There is no right or wrong to it. She'll be where you need her to be, just as we will. It's your life, Harry, and you get to choose the place people have in it."

"So...it's really okay to love the mommy I have now?"

"Of course it is."

The little boy seemed to relax, trusting Bobby's assessment. He took a bite of his sandwich. "Mommy said it was okay for me to have my party on your birthday."

"Yes, it is."

"But I was thinkin'...I don't wanna take your birthday away from you..."

Bobby smiled. "You won't. I'm glad to share the day with you."

Actually, Bobby was relieved that the focus would be taken from him. He'd never been comfortable with birthdays...or any other holiday. He did not, however, want his own apathy to rub off on his children. He wanted them to look forward to celebrations, rather than dread them as he had been conditioned to since childhood. He looked at Maggie. According to Alex—and Mike—this child he adored had been conceived on his birthday seven years ago. What should be a pleasant memory remained a void in his mind, a cause of grief within the moral sensibilities he'd worked so hard to cultivate. He had conceived a child with another man's wife. To this day, he berated himself for his weakness, for the crime of passion to which he'd succumbed. The only thing missing was regret. He could not force himself to regret this child he so loved. He did, however, harbor a resentment, one he chose to bury deeply, toward Alex for letting it happen. She'd gotten what she wanted, and that was what had mattered to her. That night, it seemed, had set the stage for the relationship that followed. Alex always got what she wanted, no matter the cost to him.

He rose from the couch and set his plate aside. Leaning down, he kissed Maggie's head. As he passed Harry, he reached out and lightly ruffled the little boy's dark hair. Harry didn't flinch or draw away, and Bobby gave him a tender smile. He left the room.

Maggie watched him leave, frowning. She wanted to object to his departure, but she sensed he was troubled and she let him go. Sometime, he needed to be alone and this was one of those times. She didn't understand why he was so deeply unsettled, and she wished she could fix it for him, but she knew she could not. She sat with Harry and they finished eating. Then they returned to the backyard with the puppy to rejoin the fun with their cousins.

Alex found her husband sitting alone on the front porch. She wished Mike was there. He would keep Bobby entertained and distracted. Without his friend, and with her so busy with other duties, he was too much alone. He hadn't been sleeping and the deep fatigue intensified the darkness he felt inside. She sat beside him on the steps and held out a beer. He looked at the bottle in her hand, then he looked at her. She saw suspicion in his dark eyes. He didn't take the offered bottle.

Reaching out, she gently grasped his hand, pulled it toward her and placed the bottle in it. "It's okay," she said softly. "I promise."

He took the beer but didn't open it, still wary of her intention. Lack of sleep had made him paranoid. She watched him for a few minutes. "Bobby, I'm sorry. I was wrong."

Her admission surprised him. She rarely ever admitted fault. "About what?" he asked, genuinely puzzled.

"I took away every coping mechanism you have and left you floundering. All you have left is withdrawal, and I've found that is the one thing I can't handle from you."

He cocked his head to one side. His brow furrowed. "So you're giving this one back?"

This was not going as she'd planned. She thought he would be happy that she was conceding to him. He'd won this battle. He did not seem to see it as a victory, though. "I was wrong to take it away in the first place," she said. "I don't know what I was thinking. Maybe I wasn't. I just...I felt you slipping away from me and I didn't know how to draw you back."

"So you thought trying to control everything I do would accomplish that?"

She shrugged and looked at the walkway that led toward the sidewalk. "I don't know. I had to do something."

He still hadn't opened the beer, so she took it from his hand and opened it for him. Handing it back, she said, "How did this happen, Bobby? How did we drift so far away from each other?"

He didn't have an answer. Every life had eddies and currents, and it seemed that the ones in their lives had pulled them in different directions. The only thing anchoring them in the same part of the stream was the children. Finally, he took a drink from the bottle. "I...I guess it's my fault," he said. "I...I thought I knew how to be a good husband, but I was wrong. I don't have the first clue. You know what you want, and I try to live up to your expectations, but I always fall short of the mark. And every time I do something that I want or need to do, it's the wrong thing and you get upset with me. I try. I try hard. But it's never good enough."

"I guess I am pretty hard on you. I...I remember what I had with Joe, and I remember that it was good, but it wasn't all good. And what I had with Ricky was terrible, but it wasn't all bad. I guess this time I was looking for perfection."

He looked at her, his eyebrows raised. "And you thought you would find that with me?"

She laughed a little and rested her head on his shoulder. "Okay, maybe not. But I thought that with you, maybe I had more of a blank canvas and I could create the exact picture I wanted. Somewhere along the way, I forgot to consider what you wanted."

He twisted the bottle in his hands. "All I ever wanted was to make you happy."

"But you lost yourself in the process. You have given in to me so often, now that's what I expect, regardless of what you want." She looked at him again. "Tell me that you don't resent me now."

He wanted to tell her what she wanted to hear, but he couldn't lie to her. "I'll work through it," he said.

"But I don't want you to work through it. I want you to tell me about it. I need to know what's in that beautiful mind of yours."

"No, Alex. No, you don't. Trust me."

"How can I share your life if you close off so much of yourself to me?"

"That was where I made my first mistake. I was so much in love with you I never realized that to be with you was to share myself with you. If I'd known that, I would never have taken that step." He tapped his temple. "It's a very frightening place, in here. It's not somewhere you ever want to go, and it's not someplace I would ever let you be. I close myself off to protect us both. There's nothing beautiful about me. It's dark and angry and frightening. I'm sorry. The third time is supposed to be a charm, but for you, it turned out to be a curse."

He set the half-full beer down on the porch between them. "Thanks for the beer."

He got up and went back into the house, leaving her alone with his dark words hanging heavily around her. She knew there was a way to get through to him. She just had to find it.

Alex didn't see Bobby again for the rest of the evening. She got the children ready for bed and tucked them in. Then she went searching for him. She found him in the basement, at the worktable he'd set up for messing around with woodworking and model building.

She looked over his shoulder at the model boat on which he was working. "When did you start that?"

"A couple of months ago."

"Is it done?"

"Almost. I made it for Harry, for his birthday."

He set it gently on a stand and sat up straight, stretching his back. "Bobby, you're wrong," she said softly.

"So what else is new? What am I wrong about this time?"

She rested her hand on his back, and tears filled her eyes when he stiffened at her touch. "You are not a curse. Of all the men I've loved, you are the most real. You're challenging and loving and patient and...and...I have been so unfair to you. I took advantage of your love when I had no right to do so. And I never stopped. I guess it became a bad habit I never saw fit to break."

"I was careless," he said. "I gave you three children when I never intended to give you one. Each of them will have the black cloud of mental illness hanging over their heads for at least half their lives. I don't know what to think about what Maggie said about seeing angels, but it scares the hell out of me. I look at you, and all I can see is anger and unhappiness, and I know that I put it there. So much is broken, Alex, and I don't know how to fix it. I don't know if it can be fixed, and that scares me, too. I...I have a lot of faults, but until recently, I never thought that loving you was one of them."

"Do you regret them?"

He looked confused. "My faults?"

She smiled at his expression, and she felt her heart swell. "No. The children."

"Regret them? No, not at all. They are the only thing in my life that is pure and good. I may never have intended to be a father, but I feel that they are the only thing in my life that I did right...and that was always because of you. They were conceived in love, and that's the purest a child can be."

"If we conceived another child now, would he be as pure?"

He twisted on the stool, alarm in his eyes. "What?"

She almost laughed. "I'm not pregnant," she assured him, and the panic left his eyes. "I just want to know if he would be as pure as the other kids."

"Are you asking me if I still love you?"

"I guess so."

"Alex, I'll go to my grave loving you. Every day, I love you more. But sometimes all the love in the world isn't enough."

"So what would make it enough?"

"I don't know. Respect, maybe?"

"You don't respect me?"

He shook his head with a small smile. "I respect you plenty. You're the one who doesn't respect me. If you did..." He shook his head. "Maybe if you respected me a little, we wouldn't be in trouble now."

"Bobby..."

He shook his head and placed two fingers over her lips to silence her protest. "Don't. Lying to me won't spare my feelings. It's my fault, actually. If I had the balls to stand up to you and tell you no once in awhile, maybe then I would have earned your respect." He sighed. "It was just never a big thing to me, letting you have your way. But then, I turned around and I found I was no longer entitled to an opinion...except where the children are concerned. That's the only time you ever seek my opinion. Otherwise, it's always what you want, the way you want it."

"When was the last time you had a good night's sleep?"

He reached out to touch her, then changed his mind and withdrew his hand. "A good night's sleep?" He made a noise. "I can't remember back that far."

"Okay, then...the last time you slept at all?"

He sighed. "I've been dozing here and there, enough to keep going without hallucinating, I guess. It's been enough."

"Like hell it has. Listen to you."

"Alex, just because I'm admitting the truth doesn't mean I'm sleep-deprived."

"You are sleep-deprived, and it's not the truth. You're depressed and paranoid, and that is from lack of sleep. You can't go on much longer like this."

He looked down at the floor and she finally reached out, pushing her fingers through his hair. "Listen to me," she whispered. "I'm going to be totally honest with you. I admit, I like to get my way, and I always appreciated that you gave it to me. But I've been pushing it lately, and I know it. I just never expected you to crack. As long as you were willing to give, I was happy to take. But I made a mistake in never giving back. Then, when I did try, it backfired in my face and made everything so much worse." She paused when her voice began to waver. Closing her eyes, she gathered herself, and when she opened them, she found him looking at her. Steeling herself, she went on. "After Ricky, I was so determined never to let a man take advantage of me again, I forgot all about the man I was with. Otherwise, I would have realized that you would crawl to the moon and back for me and never ask why. But I've taken advantage of you far too often, and when you do ask for a little leeway or understanding, I've been too stingy to give it. You think I don't trust you or respect you or need you...but I do. I'm so sorry. Just tell me what I can do to fix it."

Finally he moved. He slid his arm around her waist and drew her closer to him. "You can't fix the past. What's done is done. But you can change the future. If you think you've done wrong, you can change the way you do it."

"You don't agree with me?"

"I don't know. I can understand why you went so far the other way. It's the same reason that I let you do it. You deserved to be spoiled, so I spoiled you. It got so much out of control because I let it. You're right, I would do anything for you. All you ever have to do is ask. And all I need in return is a little respect and some trust. Alex, for years, I was there for you, waiting, because I loved you. I'm still here, and I still love you. Maybe that's my biggest fault...or my biggest blessing. Maybe it's both. I don't know. But I don't want to go through the rest of my life without you. You're the one who makes it all worthwhile."

"What about all the things I've done wrong?"

"What about them? They're over and done with. There's nothing to be done about them, so let them go and start over. Every day is a chance to start over again."

"Can you let them go?"

"I already did, long ago. Alex, if I could forgive my mother for what she did to me, forgiving you is a walk in the park. What have you done that's so bad?"

"I gave you three children you never wanted."

He tightened his arm around her, and she rested her head on his shoulder. "Never, ever think I don't want them. They are the light of my life. No regrets there, Alex." He paused. "Maybe I wish I'd been there when Maggie was conceived..."

Her fingers lightly stroked the back of his neck. "I didn't make her by myself."

"You know what I mean. To this day, I don't remember a thing."

Turning her head, she kissed his neck. "Maybe you should let go of a little of that morality you carry around."

He tipped his head, giving her better access to his neck. "I thought that was one of the things you liked about me."

"Hmn...you could loosen up, just a little."

Eyes closed, he groaned softly. "I'll try."

She worked her way along his jaw to his mouth and he pulled her firmly against him. Withdrawing a little, she ignored his protest. "Why don't we see if we can't do something about that insomnia of yours?"

"Alex..."

She silenced him with a kiss. "We'll talk some more after you've slept. We'll work this out, I promise. I won't let you go, Bobby. I love you, and I want the life I have with you...as long as you want it, too."

He nodded. "I always have."

"Then we have a common goal. Come on. You can finish the boat later."

She took his hand and led him up the stairs. Outside their bedroom, he stopped. Much of the tension he'd been carrying had drifted away, replaced by a bone-numbing fatigue he had been fighting for days. She looked up at him. "What's wrong?"

He paused a little longer before replying, "Sex isn't always the answer."

"That depends on the question. Tonight, it's the answer."

He studied her. "Then...are we okay?"

"I don't think we ever weren't. We just...got a little off track."

"We still have work to do."

"It's a marriage. We'll always have work to do. But it's the best job I've ever had."

"Do you mean that?"

"Yes. I do." She saw his hesitation, the same paranoia-fueled wariness she'd seen when she offered him the beer, withdrawing her prohibition without petition. She reached up and gently pulled him closer for a kiss. "Sealed with a kiss, a token of love," she whispered. "I mean it."

He blinked a couple of times, then he gave in. Leaning in for another kiss, he let her lead him into the bedroom, surrendering to her and then, finally, to a deep, dreamless sleep.