A/N Sorry this took so long to post. Life got a little crazy there for a while. I hadn't planned on this chapter being part of the installment, but Andy's comment to Sharon regarding no one ever having taken as good care of him as she did when he was sick got me thinking about Andy's childhood and I wanted to meet his family. I got very involved with the Rossi-Flynn's and what I planned on being one chapter has now morphed into two.

The drive from Greenwich to Brooklyn took an hour, but Sharon had been so lost in her feelings of sadness after saying good-bye to her parents she hadn't noticed how uncharacteristically quiet Andy had been on the long drive. It took the angry honking from cars behind them to pull her out of her melancholy.

"Andy, the light's green," Rusty said from the back seat.

Sharon glanced over to see that Andy too seemed lost in his thoughts, his tight jaw and the white knuckled grip he had on the steering wheel indicating that those thoughts were not completely happy ones.

"Hey." She drew his attention with a hand placed on his thigh as he pressed down on the gas and the car moved forward. "Is everything okay?"

"Yeah. Sure." His smile was meant to be reassuring but it was weak and half-hearted, never reaching his eyes.

He wasn't fine. He had a much more complicated relationship with his past than Sharon had with hers and driving down these old familiar Bay Ridge streets had his stomach churning with the contradictory and sometimes painful emotions associated with his childhood.

Taking a turn down Third Avenue, a bustling thoroughfare of restaurants and shops with the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge looming in the distance, it was as if time had stood still. Unlike most of Manhattan and much of Brooklyn, Bay Ridge had so far escaped gentrification. Other than some new businesses it looked remarkably similar to as it had when he was growing up.

"You see that pharmacy there?" He pointed. "It used be an Italian grocery store, owned by my Uncle Dominic. After school, my cousin's and I used to swing by and he would slip us slices of the best aged salami and provolone. Then he'd give us each a cannoli to go, but only after we promised not to tell our mothers we were snacking before supper. He was a great guy, Uncle Dom. Sometimes, at the end of the month when he knew my Aunt Loretta's social security check was running low he'd give me a couple packages of meat all double wrapped in paper to bring home to her."

"Your aunt lived with you?"

"No, but close. She lived in the apartment across the hall from us with her three kids. She was a widow. My Uncle Sal was killed in an accident on the docks and sometimes she had a hard time making ends meet. My aunts and uncles would pitch in to help out. I can still remember Uncle Dom pinching my cheek saying "Tell 'Retta it's about to go bad, better she and the kids eat it then it get thrown out."

"He gave her bad meat?" Rusty grimaced.

"Nah. It wasn't even about to go bad. It was just a way for her save face. So it seemed less like charity. No one likes taking charity, even from family."

From his grudging tone, Sharon suspected that Andy was speaking from experience. "He sounds like a very nice man," she said.

"He was." Sharon was pleased to see Andy's face softening as he began reliving the happier memories of his youth.

"That store over there, it was Canter's Pharmacy and Deli. They had the best egg creams in the borough. I used to get a little allowance from my grandfather for helping out at his restaurant. The first thing I'd do is go to Canter's and buy a big chocolate egg cream. God I missed those when I moved to California."

"What's an egg cream?" Ricky asked on a yawn from the backseat. He'd slept for most of the drive down.

"No offense, but it sounds kind of disgusting," Rusty added.

"Oh, no, kid. Egg creams were the best. It's really just an ice cream soda without the ice cream. Chocolate syrup, seltzer water and milk. Canter's used to add condensed milk to make it a little sweeter. I had a cousin who worked there and she told us the secret."

"So, no eggs?" Ricky asked.

"No."

"Then why do they call it an egg cream?"

"I don't know. They just do."

"That's kinda dumb."

Sharon bit back a smile at Andy's exasperated look to the heavens at Rusty's comment. But, he let it go.

"See, up there ahead? That's Guiseppe's. I'll pull in so you can get a closer look."

The restaurant was housed in a large brick building and with its red and green awning and the word, "GUISEPPE'S" written out in gold lettering it had an old world Italian feel to it.

"So, this is the family restaurant." Sharon eyed the building with interest. She'd heard so much about the place; it was nice to put a face to it.

"This is it."

"How long has it been in your family?" Ricky asked.

"Since sometime in the 1920's. The story that we were told was that my great grandfather Giuseppe came here from Sicily around the turn of the century with his brother Vincenzo. They stayed with a cousin who had immigrated earlier and sold stuff out on the street over in Little Italy."

"Like peddlers?"

"Yeah, I guess. Eventually they had enough money to buy a storefront here in Bay Ridge and started the grocery store I just showed you. They worked there together sharing the profits. Vincenzo didn't have any sons but Guiseppe had two, Dominic and my grandfather Anthony. My grandfather liked to help prepare the food they cooked to sell in the store so when he married my grandmother they saved up enough money to buy a restaurant. When they first started here the restaurant was just was a hole in the wall. They only had six tables, but as business got better, they were able to keep expanding. A lot of Italians were moving in and they wanted food from their homeland. You know, whenever I smell spaghetti sauce, it brings me right back here. My grandfather made the best spaghetti and meatballs I've ever had. My mother and my aunts helped in the restaurant and we kids were all expected to help when we could. I did dishes and bussed tables and later when I got older, I even got to do some food prep. One of the perks was getting to eat as many of Nonno's meatballs as I wanted. When Nonno got too old and sick to run the place my Uncle Michael, his only son, didn't want the restaurant so he sold it off to one of my cousins."

"What about your mother or your aunts?" Sharon asked. "Didn't any of them want it?"

"I think any of them could have run the place, but Nonno was Old World."

"A nice way of saying he was a chauvinist," Ricky scoffed derisively.

Sharon turned in her seat and gave her son a delighted smile of pride. She had raised her boy well. "And a product of his times and culture I'm sure," she added.

Andy nodded. "It was okay for the women to help out, but he never would have expected them to take over running the business."

"Hmph. Typical." Sharon crossed her arms under her breasts, and then turned with a look of curiosity. "Doesn't your sister Peggy own it now?"

"She does. Peg's always loved to cook. I guess it's in the genes. My mother couldn't afford college for any of us so Peggy worked her butt off and saved up enough money to go the Culinary Institute of America, up in Hyde Park. She ended up buying out our cousin and brought Guiseppes back into the immediate family. She started out as the owner/chef and brought in her boyfriend Luke in as a sous chef. They met at the Institute. Eventually they got married and started running things together. After she got sick, he took over as the chef and she stuck to running the business. But now that they've got her thyroid hormones on an even keel she's back in the kitchen again."

"What do you mean sick?" Ricky asked.

"She had thyroid cancer and had to have her thyroid removed."

"Oh. I'm sorry. Is she okay now?"

"She is. It was quite a few years ago and thankfully she's cancer free now. Hey, guys, you see those windows up there over the restaurant?" Both boys looked up. "When I was really young, I lived up there in that apartment. It was TINY. You wanna talk about tripping over people? It felt like we were living on top of each other. There was a living room, a kitchen and only two bedrooms. My parents had one, my four sisters had the other and my brother and I had to sleep out on the couch."

"Out on the couch? " This was news to Sharon. Before they'd become intimate and he'd been injured and was staying in her condo he'd made a comment about being used to sleeping on couches before Rusty offered up his room, but he'd never spoken of his childhood bedroom being the couch. "That had to be tough, not much in the way of privacy." She felt slightly chagrined thinking about the large colonial home she had been raised in and that she and her siblings had all had their own bedrooms.

"Huh. Privacy? What privacy? I don't remember ever having any privacy when I was growing up. That's what happens when there are six of you. We did move to a new apartment when I was seven. It's the one my mother still lives in today. I thought it was mansion compared to living over the restaurant. This time we had three bedrooms. My four sisters still had to share, but Joey and I got a room too. My grandfather Flynn was a wood worker and he made furniture so he made us this great bunk bed, even engraved our initials in it. Can't tell you how nice it was to have my own bed and not to have sleep with Joey's stinky feet in my face."

While the boys laughed, Sharon cast him a sympathetic look and took his hand. It was just like Andy to use grudging humor to cover difficult emotions.

"Hey, no, "he said, reading the pain in her eyes. "I don't want you feeling sorry for me. That isn't why I told you. I just want you…I guess…I just want you to know where I come from."

She nodded and lifted his hand, kissing the back of it. "I want that too."

Andy pulled away from the curb and started making his way a few blocks over to show them where his Flynn grandparents had lived.

This curious need he had to reveal himself to Sharon was completely new to him. He'd never felt it with anyone else in his life. In fact, he'd been more likely to try to put his past behind him than share it. But with Sharon, somehow he'd known from the start that it was important she know the real Andy Flynn, warts and all. That's how he'd first known it was different with her. All those other women he'd dated, they never got below his surface, never knew the real Andy, never got close enough to own his heart. And he'd been fine with that. In fact, it was the way he wanted it. Light and easy. But with Sharon, he was in it for the long haul and he'd needed to know that he could trust her with his checkered past. That she would be able to accept both who he was now and who he had been. There were very few people he trusted in his life. Sharon, with an ex-husband who was a pathological liar and a job in Internal Affairs that required her to search for the truth amongst all the lies and misconduct in the department, understood that all too well.

Honesty was extremely important to her. It was a deal breaker. He'd learned that the hard way, having almost blown it with her by, if not lying, allowing his family to believe that they were a couple before they officially were. When she'd found out, she had been hurt and wary of him, her trust shaken. The walls he had been so carefully tearing down had seemed to go back up in an instant. It was a lesson he'd learned well and he now made it a point to be completely honest and upfront with her.

Strangely enough, it was easier for him to open up to her about his alcoholism than it was his childhood.

His problems with alcohol were less complex, less conflicted. He'd been examining and discussing his addiction in AA for 20 years. The shame had disappeared a long time ago and had been replaced by a strong need to help others who were grappling with the disease as he had. And it was no secret in the department, he didn't try to hide it. In fact he'd found that his experience was useful in his job as a detective. He was able to delve into the mindset of an addict, which was often helpful in bringing in criminals or dealing with witnesses.

His childhood was different. The classic middle child in a large lower middle class family, he had often felt lost in the shuffle and ignored, never important enough for special attention or anything new. He wore his brothers and cousins hand me downs, played with their used toys and never rated a shiny new bike. When he was sick, his mother had most often been too busy to take care of him and he'd ended up under the care of one of his sisters. As a child he had vocalized how put out he felt by that, how unfair it all seemed. But as an adult, it felt disloyal to complain. His parents had worked hard, very hard, and they'd done the best they could. He'd had a roof over his head, clothes on his back and food in his belly. So they hadn't had much time for him. So there were a lot of things they couldn't afford. There were many kids who had far less than he'd had. To this day, it bugged the crap out of him when dirt bag criminals used a tough childhood as an excuse for the crimes they committed.

"Here we are," he said pulling up in front of a tidy little brownstone. "This is where my Flynn grandparents lived. It's only five blocks from where I lived with my parents but when I was a kid I thought they lived in the country because they actually had trees on their street," he said.

"It is a lot quieter here," Sharon commented while taking in the more residential area. In the early 20th century it was the difference between the Irish who had come a few decades earlier and were moving steadily into the middle class while the newer Italians were still fighting for a foothold in the community.

"Your family all lived pretty close to each other," Rusty said. For someone who hadn't had any family until he'd become a member of Sharon's, it was hard for him to wrap his mind around that.

"You have no idea, kid. My mother used to say that when one of us sneezed someone else blew our nose for us."

"Uh, gross. "

Andy gave a soft snort of agreement.

"Did you spend a lot of time here," Sharon asked.

"Every Sunday. After mass we'd come here to Grandpa and Grandma Flynns for a big Sunday dinner. It was always meat and potatoes here, never pasta. All my Irish aunts and uncles would be in and out through the afternoon. After lunch me and my sisters and brother would all go out and play stickball and touch football with my cousins in that alley over there." He could still see the laundry hanging on the lines over their heads, sometimes dripping down on them while they played. "Sometimes we'd go over to the school a block over and play basketball in the schoolyard. We were never inside playing video games." He turned to look at the two gamers in the back seat, each of whom rolled their eyes at him causing Andy to laugh. When he turned back to the front, he saw a slow grin curving on Sharon's lips, dancing in her eyes. "What?" he asked, pausing in his walk down memory lane.

"Do you realize that every memory you've told us since we got here involves food? "

He mulled that over for moment then shrugged. "I guess you're right. Having a grocery store and restaurant in the family, food was the one thing we never ran short on. Whenever my mom was cooking a big meal, she would say to us, 'We may not have much but we sure do eat well. 'Besides, don't they say taste creates the strongest memories?"

"I believe it's the sense of smell."

"Well, smells are associated with food and most of my happiest memories revolve around food. Even the more recent ones."

"What recent ones bring you happy memories? "

"Our first date at Serve. Every time I smell lemon and garlic, I think of the shrimp scampi you ordered for dinner that night and I remember how nervous we both were, even though we had been out to dinner together dozens of times before.

She gave a soft laugh. "I was nervous. And I remember kicking myself for ordering the scampi."

"Why?"

"Because it's loaded with garlic and I thought you just might kiss me good-night. I didn't want to have garlic breath."

"I'll let you in on a little secret. I love garlic. Besides, I was so nervous about how you might react when I gave you a real kiss I didn't even notice."

"A real kiss?"

"Yeah, you know, lips and tongue. I finally had you on a real date. I was done with that cheek business. "

"Oh, seriously you guys, we're right here in the backseat," Rusty groaned. He did not want to be reminded of the way his mom had entered the condo after her first date with Andy, her fingertips lingering on her lips and a dreamy look in her eyes. He had known right away that the Lieutenant had kissed her senseless and that it looked like he was going to become a much bigger part of their life. Though he hadn't been ready to face it then, it had been pretty apparent that his mom was falling in love.

Speaking of smells, when Andy opened the door to his mother's apartment and ushered Sharon inside, her senses were immediately assaulted by a tangy combination of tomato, basil and sautéing garlic, along with the yeasty fragrance of freshly baked bread. She hadn't eaten much for breakfast. It was always hard for her to eat when she was emotional and as much as she looked forward to getting home, saying good-bye to her parents always made her emotional. Now her stomach growled with frustration.

Two women rose from the couch when they entered, one slim with short black corkscrew curly hair, angular features and the same dark brown eyes as Andy, the other shorter, bustier, her hair a lighter chestnut brown and her eyes a bluish green. The lighter woman, Sharon recognized from Nicole's wedding. Mary Margaret Flynn Boudreaux. Peggy. The sister Andy told her he was closest to.

"Hey, if it isn't Mr. Hollywood." The smile on the dark haired woman's face belayed the sarcasm dripping in her tone.

"Hey, if it isn't my favorite sister."

"What are you talkin' about?" Peggy cuffed him lightly. "I'M your favorite sister, not her."

"You know I can't play favorites. " He grinned and pulled Peggy into a hug. "You're all my favorite sisters."

"Now you sound like a politician." The dark haired woman gave him a very Flynn smirk.

Andy snorted. "Huh, that'd be the day. Sharon," he turned to his bemused fiancée who was thinking that this woman was a female version of Andy. "This is my sister Maura. Maura, meet my fiancée, Sharon Raydor."

"Hi, nice to meet….Oh my God…Did you just say fiancée?"

Andy's grin broadened and he lifted Sharon's hand to show them the ring. "I did. It took me a while but I finally got the nerve up to ask this beautiful woman to marry me and by some miracle, she agreed. "

"Well, it's about time." Peggy punched him in the arm then gave Sharon a big hug.

"What do you mean by that?" Andy rubbed at his arm. What was it about him that caused the women in his life to continually smack him?

"I mean, for all your life you've led the girls a merry chase. It's about time a girl led you a merry chase."

"Well, she sure did that. " Sharon gave him a flirty little shrug in response to the sidelong glance he set her way.

"Congratulations. It's nice to meet you, Sharon." Maura eyed the stylish, posh looking woman in her skinny jeans, stacked heeled ankle boots and double breasted red wool blazer. The look was casual, not flashy in the least, but Maura worked at Saks and knew expensive high quality clothing when she saw it. The snug fitting Pierre Balmain blazer alone was worth at least a couple grand. She hadn't been at Nicole's wedding and had instead had received a thorough description of Andy's date from Peggy. Lovely, elegant, classy, smart, those had been the words Peggy used, but though they all fit, they did not really do Sharon justice. Yes, she was stunning, beautiful sage green eyes, high cheekbones that gave her a slightly regal air and the most gorgeous mane of glossy russet hair that Maura had ever seen. But there was something more. Something in the way she presented herself, her posture, the tilt of her jaw, the intelligence shining in her eyes; it all spoke of a confident woman who knew exactly who she was and where she was going. An uptown girl to her brother's downtown man. A woman far different from Andy's first wife and the other women she had seen him date over the years.

Sharon was not oblivious to once over she was receiving from Andy's older sister. Maura's coolness and the slight suspicion in her eyes were far different from the warmth and openness she'd experienced with Peggy when they'd met at the wedding. She and Andy had shared a table with Peggy and her husband Luke and they'd hit it off right from the start. Maura was edgier, sharing her brother's cynicism and tough outer layer. Andy had mentioned fighting a lot with Maura when they were growing up and now she knew why. They were just too much alike.

Andy was just starting to introduce Ricky and Rusty to his sisters when Nicole, Dean, Emily and the boys all arrived. Amongst all the noise of their greetings a small woman with a short bob of straight silver hair, still threaded with a few dark strands, stepped out of the kitchen. She was wiping one hand on the apron she had tied around her waist, while the other leaned heavily on cane.

"Well, look who finally made it. You're here! "She let go of the cane and threw open her arms in an effusive gesture.

"Yeah, I'm here Ma." Grinning broadly, Andy stepped into his mother's arms; lifting her slightly off her feet and making her squeal like a young girl. The woman looked tiny and frail in the arms of her 6 foot 1 inch son.

"Be careful with her," Maura warned. "She had to have that hip replaced.

Sylvia Rossi Flynn glared at her third-born. "I am not an invalid. Don't go spreading my business to the world."

Maura rolled her eyes.

"Andy's getting married, Ma," Peggy said, thwarting the mother/daughter argument that always seemed to erupt between the two fiery women.

"Oh!" Sylvia's frown disappeared and she beamed at her youngest son. "I was hoping that's why you wanted to stop by with Sharon. She crossed herself. "I've been praying for this. " Shuffling along with her cane, she made her way toward the woman she had seen only in pictures. Just before her granddaughter's wedding, she had suffered a small stroke and sadly hadn't been able to attend. So, like Maura, who had been taking care of her as she recovered and was also unable to go, all she had to go on when it came to her son's girlfriend were pictures, a description from Peggy, and all the superlatives Andy used that made her out to be a combination of Mother Theresa, Celtic Goddess and Wonder Woman.

"It's very nice to finally meet you, Mrs. Flynn."

"Oh, no, no, no." Sylvia ignored Sharon's outstretched hand and pulled her into a hug. "No Mrs. Flynn. We are not strangers. You're family. You're going to be my daughter. You can call me Mama."

Sharon's eyes screamed 'help me'as they met Andy's over his mother's shoulder. Andy bit back a smile. Sylvia Flynn was definitely a force to be reckoned with.

"Andy."

Andy turned at the soft voice, so different from all the loud Brooklyn accents. His eyes widened with recognition, his face softening.

Intrigued by Andy's reaction, Sharon curiously eyed the woman standing in the doorway. Her hair, what she could see of under the modified nun's veil, was as dark as Maura's, streaked with silver, but it was straight rather than curly, cut close crop to her head. And, unlike Maura's angular features, her face was rounder, fuller and her eyes blue, like Peggy's.

"Antonella? Ma," he turned an accusing look on his mother. "You didn't tell me Nell was back."

"We wanted to surprise you."

It was a hell of a surprise. He hadn't seen his eldest sister in almost 20 years.

"Well? Are you going to give me a hug?"

"Uh, yeah, of course." Andy's hug was tentative, nothing like the ease he'd had with his other two sisters.

"Still feel weird hugging a nun?" Antonella's lips twitched with amusement. Andy flushed. It was the very thing he'd said to her when she was a young novice and he still a teenager struggling with the fact that his beloved eldest sister, the woman who was a second mother to him, was leaving them to become a dreaded nun of all things.

"Andy can't help it. It's probably PTSD from all the knuckle rapping's he got from the nuns at St. Patrick's," Maura quipped.

"Wait. The nuns would hit you?" Rusty's eyes widened. "We didn't have that many nuns at St. Joseph's but the ones we had didn't hit us. Did they ever hit you guys?" He turned to Ricky and Emily who both shook their heads negatively.

"California banned corporal punishment from all schools in 1986," Sharon said. "But when Andy and I were in school that was one of their means of discipline."

"Not that it ever happened to you, I'm sure." Rusty's lips twisted wryly. "I bet you were a real goody two-shoes."

"Don't be so sure about that." Emily raised an eyebrow her mother's way.

"Wait. You got your knuckles rapped?" Andy turned to Sharon with surprise. "What did you do?"

"Nothing too sinister," she assured him. "I got caught in my English class reading 'The Thorn Birds' when I was supposed to be reading 'The Lives of the Saints'. "

"Ohhh…I can see the nuns getting their panties in a…."he broke off abruptly at the look his mother and Sharon both sent his way. "Uh…getting worked up about that," he amended.

"Why? What was the Thorn Birds?" Rusty asked.

"A torrid romance novel." Emily's eyes sparked with amusement.

"It was not torrid," Sharon protested, "especially compared with what's out there today. It was certainly no "Fifty Shades of Gray. " It was a book about the forbidden love affair of a young woman and an older priest," she explained to Rusty. "Later it was made into a mini-series. It was pretty scandalous in its day and we were told not to read it."

"So, little Sharon O'Dwyer did have a bit of a rebellious streak." Andy loved that he was still learning new things about his ladylove.

"I don't like people telling me what I can and can't read. Thankfully we've moved beyond that now."

"Yes, we have." Antonella stepped forward lifting the ring that Andy always wore on a chain around his neck. "You still wear this. "

"Of course." When Andy squeezed his sister's hand with affection, Sharon noticed the shine of tears in Antonella's eyes. It seemed like there might be more of a story to that ring than just that it had been his father's.

"Well, Sharon, would you like a tour of the apartment?" Sylvia asked.

"Oh my God Ma, "Andy groaned. "Other than the bedrooms and the bathroom, there are two rooms in this place. You're seriously going to give her a tour? Look around Shar," he gestured broadly to encompass the kitchen and living room, "this is it."

"Andy." Sharon tapped him on the arm with a look of warning, then smiled sweetly at Sylvia. "I would love to have a tour of the apartment."

Sylvia gave her son a look of pleased triumph and took her soon to be daughter in laws arm.

Andy wasn't wrong; the apartment was very small considering how many people had lived in it. Following Sylvia around she tried to imagine eight people living in such a confined space. It was no wonder Andy was looking forward to them finding a house and moving sooner rather than later. Even though her condo wasn't that small and there was only the three of them living in it, there were still privacy issues and she knew it wasn't home for Andy. They needed a home where they could spread out, a home that wasn't hers and wasn't his, but was their's.

It wasn't just that the apartment was small that struck Sharon; it was the old-fashioned vintage feel to it. Walking through the rooms was like stepping back in time in a way that was far different from the antiques in her family home in Connecticut. The wallpaper in the living room and kitchen looked like it hadn't been changed since the 1970's, each room having a variation of the gold, brown and orange flowers of that era. Milk glass dishes of candy sat on two-tiered end tables straight from the 1950's. The bedrooms reminded her of the times she'd slept at her grandparents home, cabbage rose wallpaper, chenille bedspreads, more milk glass in the hurricane lamps that perched beside the beds and ivory ball fringe curtains.

Of the three only one bedroom was different, the one that had been shared by Andy and his brother Joe. That one was more masculine with blue and beige plaid wallpaper.

"It still looks almost exactly the same as when I was kid. How come you never re-did it Ma?"

Sylvia shrugged. "By the time you kids were all gone and I might have thought about redecorating, your father was gone and your Nonno was sick and I didn't have the time or the energy. And when I did, I found I didn't want to change a thing. It brings back good memories, of all you kids and your father."

"We've tried to get her to update, at least take the wallpaper down and paint the walls," Peggy said. "But she's just not interested in joining the 21st century."

"I-"

"Speaking of memories." Andy quickly interjected before an argument might erupt, and walked over to the one of the windows opening it out to a fire escape. "We didn't have air conditioning and sometimes on hot summer nights it could get unbearable in this room. On those nights Joe and I would sneak out onto this fire escape with a blanket a pillow and try to catch the breeze off the East River so we could get some sleep."

Sharon shuddered at how dangerous that could have been.

Sylvia rested her head against Andy's arm. "Do you remember that night it was so hot, still in the 90's at almost midnight and your father packed us all up and took us down to Coney Island?"

"I do." Andy smiled warmly at the happy memory. "That was a great night. There were a few people there escaping the heat, "he explained to Sharon, "but nothing like the daytime crowds. It felt like we had the place to ourselves. We swam in the dark. I still remember how cold the ocean felt on my hot skin." He turned back to this mother. "You packed us corned beef sandwiches, lemonade and peaches and after we cooled down we had a midnight picnic and then we all fell asleep on the beach."

"Good memories," Sylvia nodded resting a hand on Andy's arm.

"Yeah Ma," he covered her hand with his and gave her a tender smile. "Real good memories."

"Okay everybody," Sylvia called out. "Sit, sit."

There wasn't enough room at the dining room table to seat the whole family so they'd added a mishmash of card tables that actually made things a little homier. Sharon had not considered dinner at her parents to be a subdued affair, but they had been quiet as church mice compared with the Flynn's. It started with the serving of the meal. Instead of the orderly passing around of food that she was used to, everyone simply called out for what they wanted and somehow it ended up in front of them. They were a noisy, rowdy group full of opinions and good-natured teasing. At one point, Sharon looked down the table and she was sure that every person was speaking at once, many with wild gesticulations, and she had to wonder who exactly was listening. She found it rather humorous even though she was getting a headache.

Once everyone had their plates full and they began to eat the conversation calmed down a little bit. Sharon took a bite of her lasagna and turned to Andy with narrowed eyes.

"Liar." She nearly purred.

"What?"

"Christmas Eve you told me that my lasagna was just as good as your mother's. It was not. This is to die for."

"Yeah, well, what you're eating is full of sausage and meatballs. You made yours with butternut squash and veggies. Not exactly a fair fight."

"It's all right, dear." Sylvia placed a hand over Sharon's. "Andy said that you struggle with cooking."

"Did he?" Sharon turned narrowed eyes his way.

"Ma!" Andy dropped his fork with a clank. "I did not say she struggled with cooking. I said she didn't LIKE cooking."

Sylvia shook her head, waving a hand dismissively. "Same thing. You don't like something you don't do well. Don't worry, honey, my mother in law was Irish and she was a terrible cook too."

"Ma, stop it! Sharon is not a terrible cook."

Far from being outraged, Sharon was amused.

"To be fair," Sylvia ignored her exasperated son and focused on Sharon. "Nobody can cook like we Italians."

"Nobody, Ma? What about the French?" Maura's grin was impish, leading Sharon to believe she knew the war she was about to start. Within seconds, the table erupted in an argument over French cuisine vs. Italian. Andy had referred to Maura as the troublemaker in the family and now Sharon could see that for herself.

Andy leaned in close to Sharon so she could hear him over the cacophony. "Your lasagna was delicious. Just different."

"Well, say that next time. You don't have to spare my feelings when it comes to cooking. Now, if we're out on the firing range and you tell me I don't shoot well, we might have a problem. "

"Andy? Sparing your feelings?" Peggy looked at her with astonishment. Her brother was not exactly known for his tact.

"He was never afraid to complain about something he didn't like before," Maura added. "Did you break him or something?"

Andy glared at his older sister. "Maybe I grew up. You ought to try it Maur."

"Ahh…He's got your there," Peggy laughed. Maura was the biggest complainer in the bunch.

"So," Sharon turned to Andy's mother in an effort to ward off a sibling argument. "Andy was telling us on the way up here that when your husband bought this building he rented out the rest of the five apartments to members of your family. That must have been so nice having everyone so close." Though she was happy her two eldest children had successful careers she missed them and wished they lived closer to home.

"Hmm…Sometimes. My Patrick felt that family made more reliable tenants." Sylvia leaned toward her as if to tell her a secret. "You're Irish so you know how they are. Clannish."

"And the Italians aren't, Ma?" Andy laughed. "Come on, La Familia."

She titled her hand side-to-side "Eh, maybe a little."

"The only people not related to us in the building were the Abramsky's, "Andy said. "They were Jewish and lived on the third floor. Alan Abramsky was one of my best friends. God I used to feel so sorry for that kid."

"Why?" Sharon paused in buttering a soft dinner roll to inhale the aroma. The butter was garlic infused and smelled divine, reminding her of their earlier conversation in the car regarding garlic and their first kiss. Scent was definitely a memory trigger.

"He was an only child," Andy said, accepting the basket of bread Sharon passed to him. "But that wasn't why I felt sorry for him. I could have used a little of that peace and quiet once in a while." He grunted with a soft laugh at Maura's kick to his shin. "Alan's parents were nice people but everything about them seemed so, I dunno, foreign."

"The Abramsky's came here from Poland and their accents were very thick," Sylvia explained.

"Yeah it wasn't just that, Ma. Around here, everyone seemed to have an accent. I guess what seemed so different about them was this kind of sadness they both seemed to have. Even as a kid, I noticed it. One time when I was over there playing jacks in Alan's room I left to go to the kitchen to get a glass of water. Mrs. Abramsky had music playing and she was just sitting in a chair staring into space crying. I had never seen anyone cry in silence like that. I ran in to tell Alan. I thought something was really wrong, but he didn't seem surprised. He said his mother got that way sometimes, especially when she listened to Yiddish music. It made her think of the family she lost in the war."

"World War II?" Nicole asked. At her father's nod, the table grew even quieter. They all knew where this story was leading.

"Terrible thing," Sylvia shook her head. "Terrible, terrible. So many broken, displaced people came here to rebuild their lives after the war."

"I didn't know about any of that back then. I just always felt bad for Alan because he was never allowed to do anything fun. His parents were so overprotective. My friends and I used to hop on the subway on hot summer days and head down to Coney Island, or we'd go over to the pier to fish in the river or hang out at my grandfather's furniture shop learning how to use his tools, but Alan's parents never let him come with us. He could play out on the street with us, but he always had to be in sight of the building. I'd look up sometimes and see Mrs. Abramsky just staring out the window watching us." Even though he'd been so young, he'd known there was something in the way that she watched them that was so different from the other parents in the neighborhood. "I tried to get him to sneak away with us a couple times but he said he couldn't. He said his parents had enough trouble in their lives; he didn't want to cause them more. I didn't really understand what he meant by that until one day when I got really mad and complained to my father about how mean the Abramsky's were to Alan. That's when he laid it all out for me." Andy could still remember storming into the apartment, slamming his baseball glove down on the floor and the feel of his father's big strong hand on his shoulder asking him what was wrong.

"Laid what out?" Nicole asked. Her father had never spoken of any of this to her before.

"Why things were the way they were with the Abramsky's. When he told me the reason that Alan never had to go to family dinners and why he wasn't surrounded by grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins like me was because they had all been killed in the holocaust, that kind of hit me like a ton of bricks. As a kid, I couldn't imagine my entire family gone like that, I still can't. And it wasn't only their parents, brothers, and sisters. They both had been married and had children and both lost their spouses and their kids in the camps."

"Awful, just awful." To everyone else at the table the horrors of the war were ancient history, things that happened well before they were born, but for Sylvia it was real. She had been only 12 when the war ended but she'd had older brothers who had fought overseas and even though the adults tried to shield the children from hearing about the abominations in Europe and the Far East, she heard the stories and was old enough to somewhat understand them.

"Dad said that both of the Abramsky's were very sick and nearly starved to death when they met in one of the camps that were set up for survivors. They got married in the camp."

"So quickly?"

Sharon glanced down the table at Rusty. "I think maybe when you've lost everything; sometimes you just need someone to hold on to."

Rusty's chest tightened. That made sense. After his mother had ditched him for the second and final time, he'd been so afraid of losing Sharon and the life that he had with her; he'd hidden threatening letters from a serial killer to keep from being taken from her and put into the witness protection program.

Sylvia agreed. "I talked with Chaya, Mrs. Abramsky, about that when she and Sol first moved in. She said that on the surface she hardly knew Sol, but they knew each other's hearts and had the shared experience of what they'd gone through in the camps and when you're that alone in the world you just want to belong to someone again."

"That's just so sad."

Andy gave Emily a sympathetic look. She was so much like Sharon, so filled with empathy. The only difference was that Emily wore her heart on her sleeve, while Sharon hid her emotions, only sharing them with those she loved and trusted.

"It's also a fact that when you go through something as life shattering as a war you just want to put it behind you, start over and choose life. That's what my Patrick did and that's where all you baby boomer kids come from. I had six of you. Chaya had trouble though, she nearly died in that camp and she and Sol didn't think they would be able to have children. Chaya was almost 40 when Alan was born."

"Dad said they came here with absolutely nothing except the promise of some Jewish refugee program to help them when they got here. I mean, can you even imagine? Then he told me in full detail everything he saw when his division helped to liberate one of the concentration camps. I won't get into that here, we're all eating and…"his eyes settled on the two little boys at the end of table. "I'll just say that he described what he saw as hell on earth."

Sylvia nodded. "It lived with him until the day he died. Twenty-five years later he was still having nightmares."

"There are some things you just can't forget." Andy's eyes met Sharon's. They had both seen horrors that would live inside them forever. "That day was the first time Dad ever really talked to me about the war. A couple times, I got him to tell me about the scar on his leg where he'd been shot on D-Day, but most of the time he just said that war was ugly and I didn't need to know about that ugliness. But he'd never talked about liberating the camp until that day. "

As a young boy wanting to hear his father's war stories, Andy hadn't understood that. It was only once he'd become a cop and a father that he had come to an understanding of why his father kept his stories close to the vest. There was an ugly side to humanity, a dark underbelly in the world they lived in. His father had seen it and so had he, and they'd both done their best keep their children innocent of that darkness. To separate all that was good in their world from all that was bad. The only thing Andy regretted was that his father had not lived long enough for him to share his experiences with him. Maybe if he had, maybe if he'd been able to turn to his father, he might not have chosen alcohol as a coping mechanism.

"Did it help?" Sharon asked,

"It did. It made me appreciate all the family I had around me, even if they did annoy me. And it helped me understand why the Abramsky's were so overprotective of Alan. They weren't being mean. They'd just already lost everyone they loved once. He was the only living relative they had in the world so they were afraid of losing him too."

"That had to be tough on Alan though. " Ricky speared another large meatball and dropped it on his plate.

"It was. But he wasn't the only one. My sponsor Jake's parents were also holocaust survivors. It was rough for him. Because of what they had gone through, like Alan, he felt responsible for making them happy. He wanted to be perfect, didn't want to ever worry them or cause them pain, which we all know isn't possible. When he failed he felt guilty, when he felt suffocated by them, he felt guilty. Eventually that's how he became an alcoholic. Anyway, that's why my dad rented to the Abramsky's; he knew what they had been through and wanted to help them out. He-"

"Hey Ma, we finally made it." The door to the apartment banged open, a woman stepping through shaking snow from her dark hair as she tossed her jacket over the arm of a chair. "Issie, take your boots off, don't track snow through Nonna's. You too Pauli." A little girl of around eight or nine promptly sat and began pulling her boots off while the man did the same. "Better late than never."

"The story of your life." Andy rose and gave the woman a hug. "Sharon, everyone, this is my youngest sister, Gina and that's her daughter Isabella and her husband Paul."

"Hiya" Gina shook Sharon's hand. "I don't know what Andy has told you about me, but I'll give it to you straight from the horse's mouth. I have two other children but they're older, in college. They're going to stop by later to say hi. Issie here was an oopsie baby, I didn't expect to be having any kids over 40, I'll tell you that. But, what are you gonna do? What?" She paused when Andy rolled his eyes.

"Nothing, just waiting for you to take a breath."

"Gina has no filter," Maura said.

Gina smirked at her sister, then looked down at Sharon. "That's why you're going to want to sit by me. I'm the one that will tell you everything."

"Oh then, by all means, sit." Much to Andy's chagrin, Sharon scooted her chair over so Gina could sit beside her.

"Play nice," he warned. Gina grinned broadly.

"I always do.

TBC