"I love history class with you mama," Avery grinned, completing her worksheet. "It is my most favorite time of the day."

"It is?"

"Well at least of the school day. My favorite part of the whole day is when the boys come home."

"I like that part too."

"I also love science class with daddy. I like how fun it is to do projects with him and especially when the boys and you join us. I miss my friends at school but I enjoy doing school at home too."

"That's good. Daddy and I really like being able to teach you at home for a while. We have fun coming up with lessons for you."

"I thought you might. Next year will I go to regular school again?"

"Probably. Maybe even after Christmas, we'll just have to see how you do."

"Math is still most hard for me. Will I need math when I grow up?"

"Some kinds of math. Other kinds you won't use as much."

"Will I use it when I am a mama someday?"

"Yes. How else are you going to help your kids with their homework?"

"Maybe my husband will be gooder at math than I am. What about for being a chef?"

"You have to use math then too, but it's the kind that makes sense to you, with fractions."

"Oh, I like that kind. And how about my other job of being an animal doctor?"

"You will use lots of math for that."

"Great. I see all of my dreams just getting stoled away by big mean numbers."

"Oh Averylin," Lindsay chuckled, sitting down next to her. "It won't be so bad. Just in the last two weeks you've gotten so much better at math. It's starting to make sense, isn't it?"

"Sort of. Like when I find patterns."

"Exactly. Patterns help a lot and you're starting to find them all on your own. That's a big hurdle and you've jumped it. Yeah, you do have to work hard, but that means that you'll remember it better."

"Well okay then I will suffer for my art."

"What? Where did you hear that?"

"From Sarah. She told me it when she twisted her ankle at ballet. She said she was in pain but sometimes you have to suffer for your art, or the things you love. Like how I have to take Thomas on walks even when it is hot outside."

"Oh, I see."

"Yes, it is a good lesson to learn. Because not all things come easy to everyone, and if we can understand other people and what they suffer, then we will all be nice to each other."

"Avery, if everyone in this world could understand that it would be a much happier place."

"Yes, it would. Hey, since we learned about the Pony Express could I run out and get the mail?"

"Yeah, go ahead."

She ran out of the house while Lindsay gathered up all the school supplies and put them away. Homeschooling was going so much better than they'd anticipated, and Avery was an eager learner, often wanting to do tomorrow's lesson early because she enjoyed it so much. They were still working on getting her caught up from the summer, but they were sure that in a few months she would be right where she needed to be. If only her confidence in herself hadn't been so shaken, she probably would have finished the school year out a lot stronger. Avery could accept faults in anyone else and never think less of them, but accepting it in herself was much more difficult.

"We got a lot of junk today," she reported, coming back into the house and slamming the door behind her. "Oh look it is a card with my name on it! Mama! It's from auntie Hannah! And there is one for Coley and one for Ben too! Can I read mine and you can help me if there are big words?"

"Of course," Lindsay assured, going through the stack and hoping to find a letter from Hannah for Adam. There wasn't one, but they kept in touch through e-mail more often anyway.

"Uh-oh, what is this word?"

"Scorcher."

"What does that mean?"

"Look at the whole sentence and see if you can guess."

"It says "Summer isn't so fun in Arizona, every day is a scorcher." What happens to Arizona in the summer?"

"Well, it's usually very, very hot."

"Oh, is scorcher an exaggeration like she is gettin' real burned up in the sun?"

"Yeah."

"Oh okay. Back to reading."

She went into the living room and curled up on the couch, chewing on her finger as she read.

"Mama, Hannah says that she wishes she could come back to New York and be with us all the time. She said she misses us but that she needs to be where she is right now. What does that mean?"

"It just means that Hannah had some stuff in her life she wanted to get better at, and she's figuring that out there."

"Oh. When I write her back, could I invite her and Grandpa for Christmas?"

"That sounds good. I know daddy would love to see both of them."

"Yep. I will write her back tonight. Look it is three o'clock! Time for my boys to come home from school! Can I make the snacks today?"

"Go for it girl. I need to go get ready for work."

"Oh. How long do you work today?"

"Just four hours, Jo said there is a lot of evidence to go through and everyone is already working overtime."

"Oh good that is not long. Will you come home in time to do bedtime with daddy?"

"Sure will."

"Fabulous. Go get ready. I will take care of the boys."

Lindsay chuckled and went upstairs, changing out of the shorts and t-shirt and into something more work appropriate. The days were fuller now with Avery's schooling on top of the activities the boys were taking part in and while they managed to get in family time as much as possible, she still wished some things were a little more streamlined. She and Adam were both working on the weekends, which meant the kids were spending a lot of time home alone. They tended to finish their homework and do chores and often ended up at the Messers by the afternoon, but it was giving all three of them a big taste of responsibility and independence.

"Hey."

Suppressing the huge grin that wanted to break out across her face, she looked up and saw Adam leaning against the door jamb, watching as she turned the freshly washed slacks right side out.

"Hey."

"It's no pants day at work," he teased. "You look just fine."

"You're very funny."

"I try. I really want to come in there and kiss you but last time I interrupted you on your way to work I managed to knock you up as well."

She blushed slightly, fighting the urge to welcome the interruption, and she put the pants on as a silent final word on the matter.

"I'll be home later."

"I know."

"Stop lookin' at me like that, mister, I don't have any sick days saved up and the kids will be awake."

"I know. It's just been a while."

"I'm very well aware of how long it's been. I'm sorry."

"Hey, nothing to be sorry for. All of this is a process. We'll get there."

"Soon, hopefully. I really miss you."

"I miss you too."

"Despite that, I'm a lot happier now than I was before."

"Me too," he agreed, reaching over and tucking her hair behind her ear. "You're pretty."

"Thank you."

"How'd Avery do today?"

"Good. I marked the pages she can do for homework tonight. She needs some more work on her handwriting, she kept getting mad because it didn't look like mine. So maybe if she sees yours she'll feel better."

"You think my chicken scratch is endearing."

"Yeah until you wrote toilet paper on the grocery list and I thought you wanted trout fillets."

"You're supposed to question things like that!"

She giggled and leaned up to kiss him.

"I gotta go, but I'll see you in a few hours."

"It's a date."

"Adam you can't tell me that the lines of communication were open on that," Lindsay sighed, pulling her feet up into the chair. "There was zero discussion."

"So you didn't want to boys to do baseball?"

"No it's not that. Yes, we talked about it almost a year before and we both decided that we'd try it out but then we never said another word about it and you just signed them up and didn't say anything to me."

"I thought it was okay, I thought we were on the same page."

"We were at one point, but then you went ahead and signed them up and never told me anything. So I come home from work and they tell me we have to leave in half an hour for their first practice but I have to feed them first. They didn't have anything to wear, I had to write checks for their uniforms and for other team stuff and then I find out that I have to be the snack mom for the next week and the boys are on different teams so I have to make enough for both. Then we get to the park and Ben is practicing at one field and Colton is at another all the way across the park. Meanwhile Avery is having a tantrum because she didn't get dinner and it's hot out and she has to run to keep up with us and the entire thing would have gone better if you'd taken two minutes to tell me they were signed up and hand me the paperwork and write it on the calendar."

Adam's expression didn't change but Dr. Schell observed the entire rant with lifted eyebrows. Finally after three weeks of sessions he'd gotten them to actually argue something out, which seemed counterintuitive when taking the betterment of marriage into account, but he had to get an idea of how they communicated.

"I know you weren't trying to screw with me and it wasn't some petty vindictive thing, but it really felt like it."

"So what you're upset about is not being included in the decision."

"That and the intentional lack of communication."

Adam sighed and nodded, turning slightly to face her.

"Okay, I will admit, I was a jerk on that one. Why didn't you say anything before?"

"Because I knew that I would flip out on you about it and you would get defensive and we wouldn't get anywhere. It was quieter to just not say anything. Which I understand now is a stupid idea."

"I'm sorry, Linds. I didn't do it to hurt you, but I should have realized how it would feel. I honestly thought the boys would have said something earlier, but that's no excuse for me not talking to you."

"I'm sorry I didn't talk to you about it when it happened. I should have let you know I was upset instead of just letting it fester."

"So do you both feel resolved on this issue?"

They glanced at each other and nodded. Once they got things out in the open, it didn't take very long to put them to rest, and they were finding that forgetting wasn't the goal as much as clearing the air.

"Alright. Adam, you'd mentioned that there was one thing that you wanted to discuss as well?"

Adam shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He hated bringing up things like this because he never seemed to do it well enough, always seemed to make Lindsay feel terrible for something she shouldn't feel terrible about. He could hear himself sounding judgmental and he hated that he couldn't do this as gently as she could.

"Okay, um… Linds, I don't really know where I fit in with you anymore."

"What do you mean?"

"It used to be that you needed me. You had a bad day or needed to talk, you would come to me for that. And now it's like you're doing it yourself. You'll still talk to me about things but it's always after you've dealt with it yourself. If you can't rely on me and trust me to help you through things then I don't know what I'm supposed to do."

She sighed gently, wondering the same thing.

"Look, remember when I went to DC for a month? After two weeks you flew down because you missed me and needed me. And at the time I was concerned that you were becoming too dependant on me. It was almost like you couldn't function without me there. Now it's the total opposite."

"First of all, when I flew down to DC, I wasn't in a completely normal frame of mind. I was really depressed for weeks before you left and I never said anything because if I did, I knew you wouldn't go. And the depression had very little to do with you leaving, it was just the cycle of it over again. It was hard while you were gone but I probably could have handled it just fine if I'd been mentally there. That said, it's not that I don't need you, Adam. It's just that we've both trained ourselves to deal with things alone. It takes time to get back to letting each other in."

"Let's face it though. You're better now dealing with this by yourself than you have ever been when letting me help you."

"Adam, I am not better, I'm just really good at faking it."

"Why do you feel like you have to fake it?"

"I don't know anymore. I think that we did it this way for so long that it's hard to break the habit. I don't want to have to keep putting things on you like that so I act like everything is okay but it's not. Yes, it's gotten easier in the last month but I still have times where I can't stop thinking about Rebecca and worrying about her, and I still feel guilty about the whole thing. I worry about us all the time, and no matter how much better things are, I don't trust that the other shoe isn't going to drop."

"Lindsay, I'm not going anywhere. No matter what happens, no matter what either one of us do, we're going to be okay. No other shoe is going to drop. There's not even a shoe, okay?"

She let out a half laugh.

"Adam I do need you. I want you and I want to be able to talk to you about things. I just don't know how anymore. It's so much easier to deal with it alone, I don't have to figure out what I feel, I can take it a moment at a time."

"So I make it harder?"

"No, I do."

"Then how do we fix this?"

"I don't know Adam. I was stubborn when you married me, did you really think it would change?" she asked with an amused flick of her eyebrows.

"No, but at the time I thought it was cute. Linds, all those things you think I will do, the things that keep you from confiding in me, are those the things you do when the situation is reversed?"

"No, of course not."

"Then why would I do those things?"

She looked down at her hands and stayed quiet for a moment before he reached over to rest his hand on her knee.

"Linds."

"It's because… up until recently you didn't seem to care."

She didn't meet his eyes and he pulled his hand back slowly as her words sunk it. It was true, he had acted like he didn't care a lot, but he thought that was soothed over now. He thought she understood why it had happened, though he supposed that didn't make it okay.

"I'm sorry. I always care about you but I've done a crappy job of being there for you."

"I'm sorry I haven't let you in. Neither one of us are very good at this."

"No we're not."

"We used to be decent," she sighed, scrunching her nose. "Did we get too old?"

He chuckled and shook his head.

"I think we got lazy. We used to put a lot more effort into things like this and it seems like we take it for granted sometimes."

"A lot of times."

"Clearly this is a bad habit that you're going to have to work hard to break," Dr. Schell noted. Both of them were surprised to hear him, they had both forgotten he was even there. "Any thoughts as to how to do that?"

"Isn't that what we're paying you for?" Adam asked before he could stop himself.

"I take that to mean you're not sure what to do in this situation?"

"Not specifically, no."

"There's a few things you can do that will start to make communication a habit again. First, I want you to set aside time for each other. Start with twenty minutes a day, work your way up to an hour. In addition to that. a lot of people find that taking a minute or two during the day for a quick text helps a lot. It doesn't sound like much, but it puts the other person into your mind more often. And that's part of the goal here, to get you two to be more in sync again. So over the next two weeks I want you to try that."

"Okay."

"But wait, there's more. I have a feeling that there are a lot of things that both of you still want to discuss and I think you're ready to do that without a referee."

They glanced at each other and nodded, agreeing with the assessment, just as they'd agreed to space out their remaining sessions. They both felt ready for that next step, they both trusted that they could make things work. And they hadn't been in that place in a long time. It was good to be back.