The house looked almost the same as the picture in his hand.
It still held the same two chairs on the porch, still had the same pale blue color on the outside, though now worn down and chipping away. The rows of flowers along the path leading up to the steps, however, had dried up, turning into crackling dark sticks; no green or pink shades in sight.
What had once looked like a home was nothing but the shell of it and he couldn't help but find it appropriate. The family that had once lived inside it — a father and a daughter — that stood happily in front of it, smiling in the picture he held so tightly up in front of him for comparison — was no more. The man had broken it and not cared to try to repair it.
Knowing what his mother's childhood had been like, he could see how she would've been happier here, why she'd held such affinity for a father who had never fought for her, not even once. Not when she was a child, witnessing the abuse of her mother and spending every bit of energy she had avoiding being a victim too. Not when she'd needed help and support to face the consequences of her choices, of her actions as a young adult, despite her good intentions. Not when she'd experienced a traumatic plane crash and returned with him, a small baby, and needed help to get back on her feet.
He'd all but thrown her to the wolves, choosing to keep his rank over his child.
He'd given up on her, like everyone who'd been in her life before the crash had.
He knocked on the door, shifting his weight anxiously but trying not to fidget. Grandma Margo didn't like it when he fidgeted. But he couldn't help it. This was a life-changing moment. One that could forever seal his perspective on the man his mother had referred to as "grandpa" when talking to him his whole life.
Ever since he could remember, she would tell him stories about her childhood — mainly when he, too, was a child. Of how her dad had taken her fishing and hunting and hiking. He remembered doing most of those activities with her, too. Learning to love the outdoors, climb trees, and respect nature.
The front door opened with a creak, leaving just the screen door between him and the old man who stood on the other side, a confused look on his face. He could hear old country music playing somewhere far inside the house and, once again, was reminded of his childhood. Of standing on his mother's toes to dance with her as a little boy and of dancing with her more recently, while she still could, before it had gotten too difficult.
The man before him was most definitely the man from the picture. Time had not been kind to him, his wrinkles making him look even older than his seventy years on Earth would have on their own.
The older man took him in just as he did him, he could see his mind trying to work out who the young man on his doorstep could possibly be. It was clear he wasn't expecting any visitors.
"If you're selling Bibles, I've already got them, son."
He wanted to laugh. Of course, the button-up shirt and dress pants would give him that impression, but after 12 years of private school, he'd gotten used to dressing well.
He could still hear the conversation he'd caught his mother and Grandma Margo having the summer before he turned 6. He was supposed to be playing in his room, they hadn't even seen him standing in the hall, peeking over at them, but he remembered how reluctant his mother had been to send him to a private school and how insistent his grandmother had been.
In the end, his mother had relented and admitted that it had been the right choice. She'd set him up for a wonderful, bright future. A future she wouldn't get to witness.
He took a deep breath, trying to keep his nerves and emotions at bay. "I'm here to see Sam Austen."
"Well, this is him. How can I help you, boy?"
"My name's Aaron Austen," he continued, slowly, watching as the older man's face changed and darkened. "I'm your grandson."
Aaron counted to five in his head, taking a deep breath for each number and trying to remain calm.
It was a technique his mother had taught him, something she'd learned from his uncle Jack, to overcome fears. He had, as a child whenever the scary dreams about his birth mother, Claire, being lost haunted him at night. But more often than not he used it to not lose his temper. He'd always thought his uncle Jack should've tried that. Then maybe the few good memories he had of him wouldn't be clouded by the one time he'd seen him yelling at his mother and making her cry.
One.
His grandfather had welcomed him in and they'd sat together, across from each other, on the worn-down leather couches in his living room. As he took the room in — the faded floral wallpaper, the fishing paraphernalia — he felt like the house looked lived in, a stark contrast to the friends' homes he'd gotten so used to visiting in California.
Two.
The way he'd asked him questions about himself, but avoided any attempts at a conversation about his mother bothered him. That wasn't why he'd gone there, he didn't want to know Sam and he didn't want him to know him either. He was there for his mother, not for anyone else.
Three.
There were no signs of his mother around the house.
He'd requested to go to the bathroom and there hadn't been a single picture in the hallway – none, zero, nada. All there'd been was pictures of Sam fishing or pictures of Sam with his Army buddies.
He struggled to see his mother as an Army brat, waiting for her father to come home from the war, but it seemed all she'd done was wait for him anyway. Then and now.
Four.
When he'd returned, Sam actually brought up his mother.
Something about the way he said "Katie" every few short sentences had stirred something up in him.
All the pent-up frustration of seeing his mother tear up when she told him stories about him, of overhearing conversations between her and Claire when something big was happening in their lives, and how much she'd wished he'd been there at every one of them. How she'd held his hand at the hospital and said that her only regret was never looking for her dad.
"And then she killed a man and I-"
He didn't make it to five.
He shot from his seat, fighting every instinct in his body to put his finger in the man's face. Uncle Jack had done that to his mom, he'd seen it, he remembered it clearly. He remembered the fear in her face. He'd sworn to never do that to anyone.
"She took matters into her own hands when authorities wouldn't, when her mother wouldn't! She did it to protect someone she loved, not because she wanted blood!" The older man gave him a startled odd look. "I'm not saying what she did was right, but where were you, huh? If you'd been there, maybe she wouldn't have had to watch her mom get beat up every day."
"I did try! When Diane and I got a divorce-"
"You didn't try hard enough." Aaron spat it out like a sharp knife and he saw that he'd hit a nerve. Sam sat back down, but his eyes never left his.
He was panting as if he'd just run a marathon, his ears ringing at his own outburst. As he looked at the man, he saw nothing but a weak shell, not unlike the outside of his house. "You left her with them," he continued. "You left her no choice."
At that, Sam lowered his head. If he had to guess, he'd say the man felt shame, but his face gave nothing away. "She wasn't mine. I didn't have a choice."
"There's always a choice."
The ringing in his ear increased, a deafening sign of the anger boiling within him. His grandfather's selfishness had resulted in nothing but pain for his mother, pain she tried to hide and tell herself wasn't worth feeling, but pain she blamed herself for either way.
"When the Oceanic Six came back, Mom and Uncle Jack lied to protect me. She wasn't my mom, they'd lost her in the jungle on the island. They lied because if they didn't, I'd have no one."
The older man looked at him, shocked at the revelation, but saying nothing. Aaron continued. "When they found out my Grandma Carole was still alive, mom felt trapped. She says that's part of why Jack wasn't around for a long time, but then he came back and we were a family."
Aaron smiled at that memory. He had plenty of good memories from that time, though most of them, he assumed, came from seeing so many pictures of the three of them around the house his whole life.
Jack had left them. And then he'd died. But his mom had never let go.
She'd never even allowed herself to try and find love again. "You guys are more than enough," she'd say.
"Then something happened, I can't ever really get it when they tell me and I've asked a few times now. Mom told Grandma Carole the truth. And then she went back to the island to find my birth mom and bring her back.
"All mom ever wants is to do the right thing, but it doesn't always work out. Still, she did it, she got her back. And my birth mom, Claire — she wasn't okay, so she couldn't keep me, but Grandma Carole took care of her and I stayed with mom."
Aaron could feel himself calming down as he spoke. He could tell Sam was listening. Tears were streaming down both of their faces, though neither acknowledged them.
"Grandma Carole and my other mom, they came around often. Every other weekend, they'd come and stay with us and we'd do something fun like go to the zoo or Disneyland. And Grandma Margo too. Uncle Jack's mom… She stuck around, and helped mom."
Aaron dried his tears on the sleeves of his shirt and took a deep breath. No one outside of the Oceanic 815 survivors and their immediate families knew about this and, although Sam was family, he wasn't sure he could consider him part of his.
"Mom could love me and I'm not her kid. Grandma Margo could love me and I'm not even really her grandkid at all! They fought for me and did the best they could for me. I will never understand why you couldn't fight for my mom."
There was a pregnant pause between them. For how long, neither of them knew.
"Why didn't you go see us, when we landed?"
He asked it so quietly that Sam hardly heard him. To him, the hearing loss was the worst part of aging; always having to inconvenience people by asking them to repeat themselves. But after years of gunshots and explosions, he should be grateful that the hearing loss was at the minimum expected for his age and not much worse.
"I wanted to, but I hadn't retired then. And she was still a criminal. I had to wait for them to drop the charges or take her to trial. I didn't retire until you were four."
"But I read the articles, there was a trial and they cut her a deal. Why didn't you go see us then?"
"Diane sent me a letter. She said Katie didn't want her around, that she didn't let her see you." He wrung his hands together as if to avoid physically reaching out to the boy. "I was scared she would do the same to me."
"Because you abandoned her when she needed you most." It wasn't a question. Both of them knew it. "What if I told you she needs you now and it might be your last chance?"
When they found out about the cancer, it was already too late.
His mom had been enraged, mostly with herself. "I should've seen it coming!" she'd told Claire, angry tears streaming down her face as she paced a hole in the living room floor before she let herself fall onto the couch.
He remembered feeling equally mad. He knew Grandma Diane had died of cancer and couldn't wrap his head around why that wasn't something they'd looked for whenever his mom had gone in for her yearly check-ups. But no matter how many books he threw across his room, nothing could change the reality, his mom had ovarian cancer and it had metastasized to other organs.
Time left: 6 months.
It was selfish of him to ask her to try all the options, even if the doctors told them they were of no use. He didn't want to lose her, he was only seventeen at the time and he wanted her to be at his graduation, to see him getting into college like they'd talked about so often. He wanted her to be present for as long as possible and if trying different treatments could stretch her life a little bit longer, he wanted her to give that a shot.
Time left: 5 months.
She'd done it for no other reason than to give him that, warning him not to hold out hope for some miraculous recovery. He couldn't say he hadn't, but he knew better than to get his hopes up. He knew his mother was right. She always was.
Time left: 2 months.
A week after his high school graduation, she started to lose her hair.
It had always been her favorite feature on herself, along with the freckles she'd grown to love. When the treatments started to thin her hair and make it fall in patches, she'd decided to just shave it off and take back some control. He'd joined her, shaving his own white-blond hair off.
She'd gotten worse not a week later.
Time left: unknown.
As his hair started to grow back, she'd brought up how much the buzz cut he was sporting reminded her of her father, the one she'd known as such in childhood, the one she'd loved. She'd told him how much she'd missed him over the twenty-one years they hadn't seen each other, how much she wished some things in her life had been different, especially when it came to him.
That had sparked his whole mission of finding the man and bringing him to her.
He took a deep breath before he knocked on the door, bracing himself for what awaited on the other side.
He'd only been gone for two days, but her condition had worsened significantly. Claire had kept him updated on everything the doctors were saying and he'd rushed through Los Angeles, as much as the heavy traffic would allow, until he made it to the hospital, grandfather in tow.
When he opened the door, his birth mother rushed to hug him. Her puffy red eyes told him she'd been crying, but it wasn't until he saw his mom that he realized why.
While he hadn't been too late, thankfully, her appearance told him there wasn't long left. He approached the bed carefully, feeling Sam follow him into the room. The older man stopped at the foot of the bed, taking in the sight of the woman he'd once called his daughter. Aaron continued until he stood beside her, taking her cold bony hand in his own.
"Mom, it's me. It's Aaron."
His words were met with a groan. Her fingers squeezed his very lightly, but he took it as an acknowledgment that she'd heard him and was aware of his presence. "Mom, can you open your eyes? I have a surprise for you. Come on."
He watched as she fought to do as requested, urging her on with soft encouraging words. She struggled to focus her eyes on his face, but seeing him there, she smiled tiredly up at him.
"You're the most precious thing in my life and I'm so proud of you." Although she didn't tell him, he could hear it in his head, feel it in her touch and the way she gazed at him, as if she had. Because she had, many times before, ever since he was a little boy. She'd told him before when she'd been on trial and had to be detained for the duration of it, she'd told him when she'd left for the island to rescue his Claire and again when they'd both returned. She'd told him whenever either of them was sad, whenever he hit a new milestone, whenever she felt like he needed to hear it.
He watched as she realized they weren't alone. As she turned slowly and let her eyes fall upon Sam, at the foot of the bed, holding onto the narrow railing there.
She didn't fully register who he was until he smiled and the familiar small scars on his face scrunched up just like she remembered. "Daddy…"
"Hi, Katie. Hi, baby."
