"Mum? Do I have a gramma and grandpa?"

She glanced away from the toy Tim had asked her to fix. "Where did that question come from?"

His five-year-old frown looked more like a pout, and she quickly killed a smile. "Billy has two grammas," he answered. "Tom has a grandpa and gramma, and Liz has two grammas and two grandpas! Why don't I have a gramma and grandpa?"

She should have known this would arise soon enough. Jenny had been barely six when she asked a variant of the same question.

"You do, sweetheart, but they don't know they have you."

"What's that s'posed to mean?"

She laughed gently. He had learned that phrase from his father. "Your father's parents died before you were born, Timmy, but I made my parents mad a long time ago. They told me I had to choose between them and your father, and I chose your father. They haven't contacted me since."

"They dis—" He stumbled over the big word, "disoweded you?"

"Do you mean disowned?" He nodded. "No, they did not disown me. They told me I had to choose, and when I chose to leave, they didn't try to restore contact."

He did not answer for a long moment, considering that. "Don't they love you?"

"Of course they love me, dear. They're my parents." Where was he going with this?

"But—" He broke off, frowning again in the heavy thought of a child confused. "You love me. You said so. Does that mean you'll make me choose between you and my friends?"

She quickly dropped the repaired toy to wrap him in a hug. "No, Timmy. I'll not make you choose. There is always more to any argument than what you see on the surface, especially with grown-ups. Your gramma and grandpa have many reasons for not sending us a letter, and the biggest one is probably fear. Grown-ups can be silly sometimes, but never more so than after a fight."

"Can you send them a letter?"

If only it were that simple!

"No, dear. I have to wait for them. They know where to reach me." She had made sure of that. An address change had gone to her childhood home with their last move, and she did not need to sign it for Mum and Father to know which name to assign. They had only stopped talking to one of their two children, and David had never married.

"Why?"

"Why what?"

A smile at the fixed toy competed with shallow irritation at expanding his question. "Why can't we send a letter? I could write it!"

"Timmy—" She paused, thinking. She had clearly promised not to initiate contact, but would her son's letter count as 'initiating'? She had not prompted him, and he had practiced his writing enough in the last months that he would need very little help. "What would you say?" she asked instead of halting the effort.

"Dear Gramma and Grandpa," he said immediately, only to hesitate. "That's how you're s'posed to start, right?"

She could not stop another small laugh. "Yes, dear."

"My name's Timmy," he continued. "Mummy says I haven't met you cuz of an ar—argu—a fight, but fights are stupid. Jenny says so. Why won't you come visit us? Love, Timmy."

So few sentences that could end decades of longing. Her hope of reunion would not let her stop him.

"A fine letter," she told him. "Are you sure you want to send it? They may not answer."

He nodded quickly. "I wanna send it, Mum!"

"Alright." She ruffled his hair, earning another pout as he straightened it. "Go get paper and an envelope from Father's desk."

He scampered off as she stood, and she firmly killed the hope that bloomed at the plan. Mum and Father had been furious when Charles announced his place on a trade ship, and they had argued for weeks trying to convince him to leave or her to turn him away. Their little girl deserved a husband, they had said, not an absent promise of eventual return, but Charles had never treated them with anything but respect despite their abuse. They had never seemed to understand that she would take a few months per year with Charles over not having him at all, and when disagreements turned to fights and fights became threats, their ultimatum had been painfully easy. She had chosen the one who did not make her choose.

Timmy charged back into the sitting room, breaking her out of her thoughts as she finished clearing a place on the table.

"Do you want to use a pencil?"

He quickly shook his head. "Letters use ink."

"They do," she agreed, "but they also must be legible." And he had scattered more ink with his last attempt than had formed into letters, but she did not add that.

"I can write it!"

Another chuckle tried to escape at his insistence. "Alright. Try it once with ink."

Carefully gripping the pen, the tip of his tongue poked into view as he cautiously dipped the nub in the inkwell and formed two crooked letters. She said nothing when the vowel turned backwards, and he wrote the first sentence with only a few splotches. A proud grin appeared. The nub disappeared into the inkwell again, and the rest of the letter slowly followed.

"Is it lej-ledge—Is it right, Mum?" he asked when he finished.

"Legible," she provided, leaning over his shoulder to read his note. Every e was backwards, and several words were misspelled, but she could easily read his writing. He wiggled a happy dance in his seat when she said as much.

"Now what?"

"Now you address the envelope. Are you ready?" He nodded, and she slowly recited the address, spelling the larger words so the post would deliver it correctly. When that was done, she coached him through folding the paper to fit, and he happily placed the stamp then added his own decoration to the seal.

"Can we send it now? When does Father get back?"

She glanced at the clock. Charles' ship was due to return with the evening tide, but that was nearly an hour away. They would have just enough time to detour by the post pillar on their way to the docks, and Tim skipped beside her on the sidewalk, the letter clutched in one hand.

"Do you think they'll answer, Mum?"

No, she did not, but that was her own fear talking. "I don't know, but don't you worry about it. They will, or they won't, but no answer doesn't mean they don't love you."

He darted away from her to drop the note in the post, returning immediately to take her hand. "What would it mean?" he asked after a moment.

"It could mean many things," she answered as they turned a corner, "none of them bad, and it is not for you to worry about that either. You have done all you can by writing them a letter, and there's nothing you can do now but wait. Remember what I told you when your friends announced a ship had gone down?"

"Worry about what you can change."

"Exactly. Worry about what you can change, Timmy, not what you can't, and don't be borrowing worry from tomorrow, either. There's nothing you can do to change tomorrow's problems, so let tomorrow take care of itself. Today is enough. Your Grandpa taught me that."

"Jenny says that, too," he announced. "Did she send Grandpa a letter?"

Jenny was not as assertive as Tim, and she had accepted the story with quiet aplomb before resuming her play. Jenny would never have dreamed of sending a letter to someone she had never met.

"She did not. You thought of it first."

A wide grin split Tim's face, and he let out a small whoop. He so rarely did something before his sister that even a letter was cause for childish celebration.

"Are she and Daniel gonna meet Father's ship, too?"

"She planned to, but Daisy got sick last night. They decided to spend an afternoon with us in a day or two."

He wrinkled his nose as the reminder of his young niece. "Daisy's loud, and she doesn't do anything fun."

She could not stifle a laugh. "She is barely a year old, Timmy! Give her another year or two, and you will have a playmate who thinks the world revolves around you."

He harrumphed just like Charles did when he disagreed but refused to say it. "She smells bad, too."

A familiar face up ahead cut off a reply that he used to smell the same, and three men detoured when they spotted her. Charles leaned heavily on his shipmates, hopping more than walking, and a hand on Timmy's shoulder prevented his enthusiastic hug as they hurried closer. What had happened? How badly was he hurt?

"I'll be alright, Lila," he said when he saw her concern. "The boom broke loose in a windstorm, and it sent me overboard. Doc said I shattered my ankle when my foot caught the rail on the way down. It's more an annoyance than anything."

The splint on his left foot peeked beneath his pant leg, but she saw no sign of other injury. She quickly claimed a kiss, smiling against his beard when Tim made a disgusted sound.

"How long until it heals?"

"Two or three weeks," he answered with a half shrug. "Happened off the coast of Africa."

Two or three weeks. Charles would chafe at such a long time without action. She would have to enlist Timmy's help to keep Charles resting.

"Father!"

Unable to wait any longer, Timmy ducked free of her hand and darted forward, only to stop just before he would have collided with Charles' right leg. Small arms wrapped around her husband's hips in a cautious hug.

"You're not s'posed to get hurt, Father," he said seriously, looking up with his chin against Charles' trousers. "That's my job."

Her husband's deep laugh easily cut through the noise of the crowd parting around them, and the sound pushed her worry away as Charles carefully balanced to return the embrace with his right hand. How she had missed him this month!

"This just means you will get to be my little helper for a while," he replied, still grinning. "Think you can be feet for me?"

Timmy nodded quickly, releasing the awkward hug so they could turn their steps toward home. "I'll help you, Father! Mum says I'm a good helper!"

He smiled but made no reply, looking at her instead. "The captain said he would wait for me to heal before leaving, so I will be home for about a month this time."

That was weeks longer than any shore leave yet this year. At least something good had come out of his injury. "Maybe you should get hurt more often."

The other men chuckled with him that time. "My wife feels the same," one replied. "Name's Dawson, by the way. Nellie told me last time that I should convince the cap'n to stay home for a few weeks."

"Ah," Charles broke in with an air of understanding. "So you are responsible for the swinging boom."

The other man laughed again as Dawson scowled, but Charles continued before Dawson could form a retort.

"Don't teach my son that word."

Dawson's grumble carried over Lila's laugh, but shouting on the street ahead prevented her from pretending umbrage.

"Look out! No! Grab his head! Get out of the way!"

The crowds parted to reveal a horse galloping down the cobblestones, a driverless cab bouncing wildly behind it. The frightened animal made directly for them, and the cabbie chasing it was only making the situation worse. The men dove to the side, Charles supported between them as she shoved Timmy with everything she had.

He hit the ground several feet away, but she had no time to follow before everything went dark.

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Thanks as always to the two who reviewed Somnolent Warnings. :)