A/N: As we enter the holiday season, from one stranger to another, I wish you all a happy time. Whether that looks like slowness or busyness for you, I hope you enjoy the season, even with all the sadnesses it can bring. (You're not alone there).

Hope you enjoy this story.

November 22, 2007

The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade blared on in the living room where the kids sit half-asleep and half-watching. Elizabeth is just in the room over with a stack of papers on the table. The turkey had been put into the oven hours ago, and Henry's parents would be here within just a few hours—the highlight of the entire holiday season, that is, when Henry's family comes to town.

Her head rests in her left hand while her right one holds a red ink pen, occasionally marking on the papers in front of her before adding a grade to the top. She grabs the next one from the stack and turns the front page face up, reading the title first, "Espionage and Intelligence Operations: The Silent Battle of the Cold War" and sighs a little. At least this one seems like it might be more creative than the one she'd just given a seventy-four to titled "What I Think About the Cold War." She checks the name underneath the title, seeing that it's Blake Moran, one of her better students this semester. She does the normal Chicago-style format check and sees he met all his marks. When her eyes catch the date on the page, the date it was due, she wants to groan a little more.

"Babe," Henry says with a quiet chuckle, making her look up across the table at him. She sees that he's reaching his arm out with a pen in his hand, too, his own stack of papers next to his left hand, "You good over there?"

"I just took too long to grade these," she says, referring to the November 2nd due date. Seeing as it's now Thanksgiving Day, the 22nd, she took way too long to grade. Although it's only her first semester teaching, she still is finding it hard to adjust from being an analyst.

He smiles a little, "If it helps, these are from October 30th." He says guiltily, waving his stack of papers in the air for a moment and giving himself a face, "Life happens, you gotta roll with it."

She blows a hair from her face that had escaped her ponytail, "I know you gotta roll with it," she says, almost mockingly, "But I'm just…"

"Hey…"

She looks up at him again and sees he's giving her that look—the one that he gives whenever she's hurt or whenever she's being too hard on herself, and this time it happens to fall into the second category. "I'm just struggling to adapt, that's all." She admits, then hears Jason start to whine in the living room that he's hungry. "Mom…" Stevie whines after him, "Jason is hungry."

"Got it," she says, pushing her chair back from the table.

Henry takes her hand before she can move away from the table, "I've got breakfast. You sit here and finish grading."

"You have more than I do." She reminds him.

"I've been doing this for quite some time now," he says, raising his brow, "This is old news to me. I've got this, you go do what you need to do."

She shrugs a little, "And I appreciate that," she says genuinely, "But I'll at least go see what they want and then I'll probably let you do the cooking." She says softly, just thankful he really was willing to drop what he was doing and help her.

She sets her pen down and pushes the rest of the way from the table, running her hand through her hair and going into the living room. The first thing she sees is the television showing an image of a giant Kermit the Frog staring back at her, or at least that's what it feels like. She crosses her arms over her chest for a moment and watches as Matt Lauer chats on about the parade and what's coming up next in the lineup, and she leans against the door and watches as her three kids are scattered around the living room. Stevie is on the couch curled up in the corner, leaning against the arm of it, Alison is leaned back in the recliner, and Jason is laying on his stomach in the floor with his head propped up on his hands. "What do you guys want for breakfast?" She asks softly.

Jason turns to her excitedly, "Cimm-uh-min rolls!" For a six-year-old, he was pretty good at speaking, typically, but "cinnamon" was still hard for him.

She nods and rubs the side of her face, trying to think if she has cinnamon rolls in the fridge. "Cinnamon rolls," she murmurs, turning away and heading back toward the kitchen. "Cinnamon rolls?" She says to Henry, looking at him quizzically. "Do we have any?"

"We do," he says, getting out of his seat and walking to the refrigerator, pulling a tube out from the door. "I put them behind the salad dressing."

"That way our kids will have never found them." Elizabeth realizes, smirking a little, "A genius I married, I tell you."

Henry smirks and kisses her on the top of the head. "Grading." He reminds her, and she pouts a little and closes her eyes.

"I'm so tired of reading about the Cold War."

"I'm tired of reading about St. Augustine."

"That's a lie," she states quickly, flopping herself back down in the dining room chair and sliding her paper over toward her.

"You're right," Henry says, smiling at her over his shoulder. "I always enjoy reading about St. Augustine."

"Have you always?" She asks after a beat, narrowing her eyes. "I mean, does it get better?"

"Does what get better?" Henry asks, popping the tube of cinnamon rolls and laying them out on the tray.

She gestures over the table wildly, running her hands through her hair as she finishes. "This…grading…teaching…" She says breathlessly, finally allowing herself that groan that she'd wanted to let out earlier. "I'm not sure I'm adjusting well to this life, Henry."

He turns to her with a tray full of cinnamon rolls and lays them on the counter, his eyebrows raised up high, "Are you saying you want to go back to the CIA?"

She shakes her head, "Not really," she admits, "It's no different than when I left last year. But what…is this what I'm supposed to be doing with my life? Grading papers about the Cold War that," she pauses and picks up a paper she'd already graded, "That start with, 'The Cold War was not cold, surprisingly,' and just keep going for the rest of my life like this?"

He laughs sadly and sits down as the oven preheats, "Well," he says, "It changes sometimes. Sometimes you get students who really try to make the assignments click for themselves, but yeah, you always get these guys in there," he says, picking the paper up that she's now tossed over to the side, glancing over it and cringing as he reads the first few lines.

Her hands rub over her eyes tiredly, "I'm just not sure I'm cut out for this life—the boring, mundane—"

"Hey," he interrupts her, "It's not mundane or boring."

"Maybe not for you," she argues, "But I'm used to being out there and changing lives, not teaching a bunch of ungrateful kids." She says, continuing right away, "You don't get what the adrenaline rush is like when you finally make progress on the big…puzzle you're always solving." She states.

He cocks his jaw to the side and stays quiet, and when his eyes drop down to the table, she knew she'd messed up then. She was just about to talk again when he lifts his hand up slightly from the table, "Don't…not yet." He murmurs. She can tell he's trying that thing that they learned long ago to pause for a few seconds before reacting, but it's hard for the both of them still to do that.

"I didn't—" she starts again but stops herself when she sees him look at her.

He swallows thick, "I came home and took this job because we wanted a family—because we had a daughter already whose life I was missing out on." He says, "So don't…don't tell me about changing lives, Elizabeth, I get that. You think it wasn't a hard adjustment to come home from flying fighter jets—a major adrenaline rush, I might add—every day to teaching freshmen about the Sacraments when they don't give two shits?" He continues, and she cringes a little when she hears him cuss. He very rarely uses anything more than "hell" or "damn," neither of them do. He looks down and clears his throat, "It's all about how you look at life and what you choose to be important in your life, what you choose as a priority."

When he hits her with the priority thing, she feels like she's been punched in the stomach. She looks away and hears the oven beep but continues to look away while he just stares at her for a few moments. He finally stands up and puts the rolls in, no longer making eye contact with her at all. He shoves the oven door shut and tosses the mitt on the countertop before heading straight into the living room and sitting down on the couch, on the opposite end of Stevie.

As he walks by, she watches him, feeling her breathing get heavier as he doesn't even look at her. She swallows the lump in her throat and cuts her eyes back down to the papers in front of her, taking a deep breath and trying to steady herself before she breaks. She picks the pen back up into her fingers and plays with the top of it, pushing her thumb into it over and over as she mindlessly stares at Blake's essay. Her other hand is twisted around, her palm pushing into her mouth as she focuses on not getting upset over this. Not today. Not when his family was about to come, too, and make everything more hectic.

The thought of him being mad with her while his family are also on their way here makes her want to cancel Thanksgiving altogether. The only way she gets through an entire McCord family Thanksgiving is when she and Henry are making jokes secretly or stealing kisses in the kitchen—that's how it's always worked ever since she's been a part of this family. The McCords are a weird bunch who have never fully accepted her, but she has no plans of going anywhere. She never had plans of going anywhere, either, but the McCords sure thought she would leave Henry when she got "bored" with him.

Here she is, seventeen years, three kids, and a good bit of trauma later, still sticking by his side.

She scoots the chair out from the table and grabs her coat, throwing it over her shoulders and walking hastily out to the pasture. The fields were covered in a fresh layer of snow and the horses were covered in their extra layer of fluff—hair and fat, that is—with little snowflakes stuck in their manes and tails. She leans against the fence and watches as they stand there, blowing hot breaths out of their noses and letting it mix with the frosty air in a little condensation dance.

Her fingers are messing with the ring on her left hand, twirling the diamonds around a few times. Her rings are always a little bigger in the winter—a little roomier, that is, between the white gold and her skin. She stares down at the glimmering stones and lets a breath out of her own, watching as her own condensation flies away into the ether.

What was she doing with her life? She should have reconsidered more about quitting the CIA—it was her dream for so long to be an analyst and she had it, and then she just threw it all away because of what? Because the ethics were falling behind? She should have stayed and advocated for them to catch up—for them to practice more principled procedures.

And yes, she shouldn't have grilled Henry about adrenaline and this job she feels is boring. She knows he's sacrificed his dream, too, and the way she talked to him in there makes her shut her eyes now and deflate a bit. If it was a little warmer, she might have tears to cry, but she's pretty sure they're all frozen somewhere in her face.

Is this job really all that bad? She has good students, like Blake Moran, for example, whose paper she should be grading instead of having a self-loathing party out here by herself. But then she has students like Aiden Myers who, quite frankly, she expects to see on the FBI Most Wanted list one day. The Aiden types push her buttons to the maximum extent and try to get away with whatever they can. Those types don't care to learn about the Cold War, or really about anything else. They're in college for one of two reasons (or sometimes both): 1. To party; or 2. Because their parents are making them.

Elizabeth thinks for a moment and shakes her head, knowing right then she won't make her kids go to college and be someone else's problems to deal with. If they don't want to go, that'll be their decision. They'll get jobs instead. She can't imagine making her kids go to college when they don't want to be there.

She jumps when she feels a hand slide across her shoulder and around the front of her arm, pulling her from her trance that she'd been in while thinking about college and teaching.

"It's hard to adjust," Henry says in a much softer tone, and she immediately wants to turn her face into him and just cry. She doesn't always feel like she's earned his forgiveness, but he always gives it anyway, even without her asking for it most of the time. Much like now. "But you'll get there. And if you give it a shot and realize it's not for you, then you can do something else."

She sighs defeatedly, "Like what?" She asks, "There's not many career pamphlets out there for washed up CIA analysts."

When she hears him snort, she also sees the puff of condensation rise from his nose just like how it was with the horses. "I don't know," he says, "You'll figure something out." He says and waits a few moments, pulling her body into his in front of him. She leans backwards into him, appreciating that he's wrapped his arms around her entire body and is laying his head on hers—the body heat from him is keeping her much toastier. "Dictator McCord has a nice ring to it."

It's her turn to snort this time, and she cranes her head around to look up at him with a smirk, "I don't know if I could be a dictator." She replies, "I can't even get our kids in bed on time most nights, do you really think I could set a curfew for an entire nation?"

Henry smiles and presses his lips to her forehead, and she smiles, too, and looks back at the horses again. She watches their breath as they stand out there so peacefully, seeming like the cold isn't even bothering them. Which of course it never has bothered them, in all the years that her parents had horses, but she still sometimes feels a twinge of cruelty for not letting them inside the house and building a fire for them. No, the barn does enough for them, but they obviously are fine out in the cold since they haven't barricaded themselves in the wooden shelter.

"What was this really all about this morning?" Henry finally asks after a few moments of silence.

Elizabeth swallows thick, reaching her hands up to hold onto Henry's arms that were crossed over each of her shoulders. His hands were clasped in front of her body, surely trying to keep themselves warm. Before she could think of a good answer, he clears his throat.

"I think I know."

"You do?"

Henry nods a little, "I know it's a stressful time with my family coming and all," he says, "But I also saw the box in the trash."

"The box?" Elizabeth asks, furrowing her brows and turning around in his arms. "What box?"

"The Clearblue box."

"Oh God," Elizabeth mumbles, clenching her eyes shut as tightly as she could and leaning forward into his body, her palms resting heavily against his chest to keep herself upright.

"I had my suspicions with the way you've been acting lately, but…" he shrugs a little and looks down at her, "Are you really pregnant?" He asks quietly, bringing his hand up and running it through her blonde hair.

She shakes her head, "No," she says quickly, breaking a little half-smile and looking at him with a mixture of innocence and guilt, "I thought I was." She admits, shrugging one shoulder and tilting her head a bit, "I took that a few days ago, actually, because I've just been…I've felt off." She confesses and looks up into his eyes, "So I thought that might be a possibility, but then when it was negative, I…I don't know." She breathes, feeling defeated once more and leaning into his chest with her forehead.

He squeezes her tightly and rests his chin on her head, "Did you want to be?" He asks softly after a moment.

She swallows thick and closes her eyes, "I don't know." She mumbles against his jacket. That was the truth, too, she didn't know that she really wanted to be pregnant, but seeing it come up negative was also upsetting for some reason.

When she'd taken the test, she told herself that she's thirty-nine, that they'd agreed Jason was going to be their last baby, and that this would be ludicrous if she is pregnant. And when it came up negative, it was a rush of emotions she hadn't expected. She'd been telling herself all those things, but the disappointment she felt in herself was a lot to deal with, and she hadn't been able to shake it.

"I think…" she starts again, pulling away and looking up at him, "I think I've just lost my purpose," she whispers, feeling the tears start to prick at her eyes. When his face becomes a bit blurry, she knows she's about to lose control over her tears, "I mean, I knew what I was. I was your wife, their mother, a CIA analyst who did really…really good things for this country, Henry," she breathes, batting her eyes a few times to see more clearly, "And I thought, somewhere in the back of my mind, I think, that if I was pregnant that would redirect my purpose again—it would give me that feeling of importance again." She admits, looking down at her hands on his jacket.

He wraps her a little tighter and brings his hand between them, lifting her chin up a little, "Your purpose hasn't changed just because you changed jobs, Elizabeth," he whispers, "You're still my wife, my best friend," he includes, adding extra emphasis on that by raising his brows, "And you're still the mother of our three beautiful children, even though it might not feel like they need you quite as much." He says. "They still do, they'll always need you, even as adults they'll need you."

She looks down and watches as a few tears drip between them, "Yeah," she whispers, thinking about her own mother. She often gets this image of an older version of Suzanne, but she, of course, can't ever know if that's actually what she would look like. As she gets closer to her mother's final age, Elizabeth thinks she probably looks more like her, but most of the time when she looks in the mirror she just sees her dad. When she sees Will, on those rare occasions that she sees him, that's when she sees a spitting image of Suzanne Adams.

"Sometimes I still need my mom." She whispers shakily, halfway hoping that he didn't even hear her. It was too vulnerable, and she immediately regretted it as it left her lips.

But instead of saying anything about it, he just squeezes her tighter and holds her in his arms, "You'll find that sense of purpose again." He whispers, "It might not be as strong of a sense as you had when you were an analyst, and your sense of purpose might not be teaching, either." He explains, "But you'll find it. I have no doubt in you that you will find what you're supposed to be doing on this earth."

She swallows thick and turns her face so that her cheek is pressing into his chest, just nodding a little to acknowledge that he spoke. He's right—she will find it, even if it feels like she's being blown around in the wind right now.

"We have three kiddos in there who love you so much," he reminds her gently, "And you've always been purposeful with them, babe, every single day they've been alive." He explains.

Again, he's right. They've always been her anchors whenever she felt like she was being blown away. She remembers coming back from Iraq and seeing those three babies waiting for her in the airport. Jason was still little enough to be held in Henry's arms as Ali and Stevie both held signs up for her. She had rushed into all of them that day, and now the urge to rush into them all again is surging through her.

"Thank you," she whispers.

"For what?" He asks.

She wipes her face as she pulls away, "Making the holidays acceptable," she says, "Without you and the kids…I don't know…I don't…" she smiles sadly as she tries to find her words, "I don't know what my holidays would look like without you and our children, Henry," she admits, "I don't have…other than Will, but he's gone all the time, and I don't have family…"

He smiles sadly and wipes the tears from her face again, wiping the residue on his pants, "Sorry we come with the extended McCords," he admits.

She smiles a little and shakes her head, "I don't know that I'd want it any other way," she admits, even though they do get on her last nerve. The house is always lively when they're here at least, and she's never had to have a quiet holiday again since college.

Henry is turning and holding his hand out for her to walk back to the house with him, and she takes it while looking at him, blindly following him to the house. She swallows thick, silently thanking God—something she maybe should do more—that this is the man who saved her from quiet holidays, who gave her the gifts of her children who hold her steady, and who loves her with all he is.

Papers could be graded later, she decides, and she plops herself down with her husband and her kids to watch as the Rockettes perform on the television.