Reading Time: 133 Minutes

Title: The Strength of Responsibility
Series: The Weight of Actions
Series Order: 2
Author: Bythia
Fandom: 9-1-1
Genre: Contemporary, Family
Relationship(s): Maddie Buckley & Howard “Chimney” Han
Content Rating: PG-13
Warnings: canon typical violence, discussion of canon domestic violence, discussion of Postpartum Depression, discussion of past suicidal thoughts, in parts not Chimney friendly
Beta: starlitenite
Word Count: 93000
Summary: When Maddie left to get help for her PPD, she didn’t expect to find her family in shambles once she eventually returned. It is a struggle to deal with the consequences of her and Chimney’s actions, but in the end, there is only strength to be found in taking responsibility for her life and the future she intends to build for her daughter.
Artist: Twigen

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Chapter 11

Albert smiled cheerfully as he opened his laptop and started the video call to his father. He knew that the conversation ahead of him would be a difficult one, but he was still looking forward to seeing his father and to talking with him. Albert knew that his mother was probably asleep already—he had just come off shift, and that meant in Korea the evening had already turned into the night. Usually, he didn’t call his parents this time of the day, but—not surprisingly at all—his father had asked him for a conversation as soon as he had gotten the email with the invitation to Jee-Yun’s DoljanchiDoljanchi traditional Korean celebration of a child’s first birthday. There had been a reason Albert had sent that email right before his shift had started; it had given his father nearly a whole day to work through his emotions.

“Hi, Dad,” Albert said as soon as the call connected. “I’m sorry for being late, our last call ran half an hour over the end of our shift.”

Chul-Min nodded with a small, not very happy smile. “How was your shift?”

In the beginning, right after Albert had finished his courses at the academy and joined the 133, his father had questioned his decision with every call, every story Albert had shared about his work, but that had thankfully stopped a little while ago. There was still the disapproval in Chul-Min’s voice and eyes whenever they talked about Albert’s job, but at least he had stopped outright questioning him. Albert knew that for the most part he only needed to out-stubborn his father on these things. He had already done that with his decision to come to Los Angeles and stay here at least for a couple of years, and now it also seemed to have succeeded with his chosen career path.

Albert shrugged. “It was okay. Nothing big happened, though we were pretty much at one call after another the whole night, some of them pretty crazy. And it wasn’t even a full moon!”

Chul-Min frowned and leaned his head to the side in a way Albert knew was asking for further explanation.

Albert laughed. “That’s something of a superstition around here, I guess. Shifts on a full moon and on Halloween are cursed with multiple strange calls one after another for hours. I have already been warned to fear if ever Halloween and a full moon line up on the same day. That happened in 2020, so I just missed it, but everyone is still talking about it even more than a year later. Thankfully the next one won’t be until 2039.”

Buck had looked up that information not too long after Albert had been released from the hospital after his accident. He had been visiting to entertain Albert and distract him from his discomfort, talking about the stories he had heard about that shift and never tiring of mentioning how relieved he was that A-shift had had that day off. In the middle of that, he had pulled out his phone to look up when the next full moon on Halloween would be, loudly wondering if he should already put in for vacation during that whole week, only to come to the conclusion that he would probably not get granted vacation more than eighteen years in advance.

Albert laughed when his father only looked at him with raised eyebrows, much the same as he had done when Albert had come home from school with the most fantastical stories he and his friends had made up during recess. “And apparently, that superstition also goes for the use of the word ‘quiet’ in any fire station. Chimney and his shift got to experience that last year, and I won’t doubt that one for a moment after what I heard about it.”

“Speaking of your brother…” Chul-Min sighed and turned his head to the side. He visibly straightened his back and Albert could see his father’s hands shake slightly. “Your email surprised me on several levels.”

Albert sighed. “Yeah, I figured. Which is the reason you are still awake at 1 am your time.”

“I would not have expected Howard to celebrate Doljanchi for his daughter,” Chul-Min said hesitantly. “He has not been respectful of many of the traditions his mother and I taught him when he was a child. As he just proved again with the name he chose for his daughter.”

“Maddie named their daughter, as far as I know without even consulting Chimney before making the decision. She chose the name to honor Chimney’s mother, as is tradition around here in many families,” Albert said.

“But Howard did not protest,” Chul-Min said darkly, fisting his hands on the table before seeming to remember himself and pulling them out of view of the camera.

His father wasn’t prone to share his emotions so openly with Albert, and Albert had only learned from his uncle that his father had not always been this reserved. Albert and his mother had both learned to read every little sign Chul-Min would show, though sometimes it was difficult to notice them. His mother had speculated more than once—carefully out of the earshot of Chul-Min—that losing his first wife and practically also his older son had made him hide what he was feeling. Albert had never dared to ask his father about it directly, but after everything he had learned from the Lees, he thought his mother was right.

“I don’t think so.” Albert shrugged and bit his lip. “But if he did, it was something done in private between him and Maddie, and no one would have been privy to it. He might have protested but given in to her in the end.”

Chul-Min sighed deeply. “It troubles me very much that he took his mother’s name for his daughter, and even knowing it is part of his wife’s culture won’t change how I feel about it.”

Albert winced. “Maddie isn’t his wife, and she won’t ever be. They are separated, have been for a couple of months already. They are working their way to being co-parents right now.”

He had been very careful not to tell his father anything about what had been going on between Maddie and Chimney. As much as Albert wished his father and his brother would reconcile, and as much as he hoped to eventually be able to build a bridge between them, he was very careful about not sharing anything with either that he wasn’t sure they wouldn’t mind the other one knowing about. Their father didn’t know about Chimney’s struggles, just as Chimney didn’t know about their father’s plans to retire soon because of some health issues he had been fighting for a while already.

Chul-Min lowered his gaze. “I assumed they had married when you told me they were expecting a child.”

Albert averted his gaze. “I’m sorry if I misled you about that. I don’t think Maddie would have ever … She has a very difficult past, and I don’t think she would ever want to be married again.”

“Difficult past?” Chul-Min asked alarmed, leaning forward slightly.

Albert sighed. “She was married before and her late husband was … a terrible man. All of this happened before I came here, mind you, and I have only heard snippets of the story. But as far as I understand, he tried to kill her when she left him.”

“But he is dead now?” Chul-Min asked in a low voice Albert hadn’t heard very often from his father. It never boded well for the person who was subjected to that tone.

“Maddie killed him in self-defense.”

Chul-Min nodded. “Good for her. A man who does not respect his wife’s wishes deserves nothing less than what he is prepared to dish out against her.”

Albert nodded, very familiar with that sentiment from his father. Though, this time he barely refrained from flinching. This was just another reason he would never tell his father what had been going on with Chimney, and why Albert hoped he wouldn’t ever learn about it through other sources. There was enough their father was disappointed about concerning Chimney, not respecting Maddie’s wishes was not something Albert wanted to put on that list as well. He was convinced there would be no returning from that in his father’s mind, while Albert could still hope that everything else standing between Chimney and their father now could be overcome with enough time and patience.

“I was also surprised that Howard thought to invite me at all,” Chul-Min said after a moment of silence, and Albert was glad he didn’t ask any more about Maddie’s past.

Albert bit his lip, ducking his head a little. “That wasn’t Chimney, to be honest. He isn’t very involved in the preparation. The Doljanchi was Maddie’s idea, in the first place. She wants her daughter to grow up with as much of both of the cultures she comes from as possible. Maddie even started learning Korean for her daughter. I guess they’ll learn alongside each other.”

Chul-Min sucked in a breath, his eyes shining with barely concealed hope. “Has Howard…”

Albert shook his head, cursing himself for not being more careful with delivering this information. He knew how much it stung for his father that Chimney refused to speak Korean, and that it felt like the worst kind of disrespect from his son. “I think he will eventually speak Korean with his daughter, if only to help her learn and to not set a bad example for her. But I don’t think … I have talked a lot with the Lees about the time right after Chimney’s mother died. I think for him speaking Korean is too tied up with his grief for her, you know?”

Chul-Min swallowed and nodded slowly. “Does Howard even know Maddie invited me?”

Albert sighed. “I’m not sure.”

If Chimney knew about it, he had probably either protested the idea or laughed it off, fully expecting their father not to come anyway. Watching his father now, Albert wondered if Chimney offering the invitation would have changed anything. Maybe if there had been a sincere invitation from Chimney himself, their father would have put everything aside for the chance to reconcile. But for that to happen and to be successful, Chimney would have needed to be in a much better place mentally than he was right now anyway.

“It doesn’t matter,” Chul-Min said after a moment. “It’s too late to arrange a visit to Los Angeles in time, and I would assume Maddie and Howard would have already been aware of that when they sent the invitation. But I will, of course, send a present. I think it would be best if I send the documents to you so that you can hand them over.”

Albert raised his brows. “Documents?”

Chul-Min huffed. “I’ll make sure my granddaughter will be able to get the education she desires and deserves. And I have to assume that neither of her parents’ jobs will lend themselves to enough opportunities to put aside money for her education. I had already started to prepare a trust fund, but I couldn’t finalize it without her name.”

Albert made a face. “Yeah, I might have intentionally avoided telling you her name.”

“I don’t fault you for that,” Chul-Min murmured. “Your mother sends her love and would appreciate a call in the morning if you can arrange it. She misses you terribly.”

Albert smiled and nodded. “I’ll be home. Tell her to call me as soon as she has time.”

“You haven’t been home in much too long, son.”

“I know.” Albert sighed. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to manage a visit in the next couple of months either, not as long as I’m still in my probationary period, I think. But you are always welcome to come to visit yourself.”

For once, there was no outright denial about that invitation, and Albert had a hard time keeping his grin from his face. One day he would have badgered his father enough to break his resolve of never returning to Los Angeles. He made a mental note to sit down with Maddie and make plans to regularly send pictures of Jee-Yun to his parents. It might not necessarily tempt his father, but it would definitely tempt his mother, who wouldn’t make any difference between Jee-Yun and any child Albert would eventually have. Maybe he could even confide in Maddie about his plans to bring his father and brother back together.

Before the silence could grow too heavy, Albert started to talk about Jee-Yun and the preparations for the Doljanchi he had been pulled into by Anne. He was usually careful not to talk too much about the Lees with his father, but his conversations with John of late had made him reconsider his conviction that his father might resent them for the role they had taken on in Chimney’s life. He barely refrained from sighing in relief when Chul-Min asked a couple of questions not only about Jee-Yun but also about the Lees.

The call ended soon after, and Albert leaned back in his chair, wondering how much easier the conversation had been than he had expected. Before he could make any sense out of that, though, there was a knock on his door and Albert nearly fell out of his chair in surprise.

Albert blinked in confusion when he opened his door to find Buck in front of it. “Hey. Did I expect you?”

Buck raised his brows. “Weren’t you? After that call last evening to Eddie I would have thought you’d expect either him or me to come over and get a couple of answers.”

Albert took a deep breath. “Right.” He stepped to the side. “Do you want a coffee? How was your shift?”

“Very slow,” Buck said. “I brought breakfast burritos made by Abuela. I’m willing to share them with you in exchange for coffee.”

Albert laughed. “I’m not sure my coffee is in any way comparable to Mrs. Diaz’s breakfast burritos.”

“Nothing is,” Buck agreed, grinning brightly. “But the coffee will do anyway. So, why the hell did you ask about that video last night?”

Albert shrugged and went to the coffee maker to deliver his part of breakfast. “I don’t know what more I can tell you than what I told Eddie yesterday. I met this old friend of Chimney’s, who was hanging out with Chimney, recognized him, and thought he might be able to make see Chimney the light.”

Buck huffed.

“Hen vouched for him!” Albert said. “And the way Chimney talks about him, it’s pretty clear that he still looks up to Eli even all these years later. What’s the thing Chimney used to say about Eli? Everything he knows about being a paramedic he learned from him, right?”

Buck sighed and dropped down onto the chair Albert had abandoned and carefully placed the bag he had brought with him on the table. “Not sure how much of an endorsement that really is after everything that’s happened recently.”

Albert frowned and eyed Buck carefully. “What do you mean?”

“Everything Chimney knows about being a paramedic? Doesn’t seem to be much as soon as it’s a personal situation he has to face.”

Albert winced. “That’s about Maddie, huh?”

“We all failed Maddie last summer, but no one more so than Chimney,” Buck muttered, arms crossed over his chest. “I’m convinced as a paramedic he should have known not to let himself be roped into Maddie’s fears, and he should have reached out for help instead of helping her hide. So, yeah, I’m not sure his mentor was as great as he makes him out to be.”

“Fair,” Albert muttered. “But he seemed like a good guy, and I believed him that he was worried about Chimney. I think his idea to show Chimney the video was a good one. And I’m glad Hen helped me convince Eddie of that as well.”

Buck rolled his eyes. “I don’t know how that could help, but okay.”

“I think Chimney has created some fantasy of what happened for himself. I think that’s pretty much his coping mechanism for everything, and sometimes he goes too far with that and then doesn’t know how to get out of it again.” Albert turned when the coffee maker was done and carried the two mugs over to the table. “Does Maddie talk with you about Chimney?”

“Sometimes,” Buck said carefully. “But I don’t think as much as she would if we weren’t still working on repairing our own relationship.”

Albert nodded. “Understandable.”

“Why did you ask?”

Albert shrugged. “The situation between them is pretty tense, and the biggest reason for that is Chimney’s inability to … accept her boundaries, I guess. He still believes they’ll eventually be back together. And I think Maddie is very near to reaching a point where that will lead to her cutting off all contact with him.”

Buck winced. “Fuck.”

“Exactly,” Albert agreed. “I know Maddie doesn’t want that for Jee-Yun’s sake, so I took the opportunity that presented itself to me yesterday. I admit, I’m getting a little desperate about this situation.”

John had told him how he had needed to practically throw Chimney out of Maddie’s apartment, and Albert didn’t know how much time Chimney still had to pull his head out of his ass before Maddie would have had enough. Albert honestly was surprised she hadn’t already made that final step after Chimney had ignored her requests to leave her alone in her home. He wouldn’t tell Buck about any of that, though. If Maddie wanted to tell her brother about it, she would do that in time, and if not, Buck didn’t need to learn about it.

“Have you heard anything from Chimney since yesterday?” Buck asked.

“No.” Albert shook his head and pulled the bag with the burritos over. “Any preferences about which one you want to have?”

Buck shook his head, then carefully put Albert’s laptop to the side and held his hand out silently.

“Chimney isn’t too happy with me anyway, and Eli will have told him that I got that video for him, so I don’t expect Chimney to call me for quite a while,” Albert said. “I’ll probably learn through the Lees how Chimney reacted to it. He doesn’t actively shut them out the same way he does with me at times.”

“Do you think there is any chance for Maddie and Chimney to find a way to stay friends?” Buck asked quietly.

“Definitely,” Albert said with as much conviction as he could muster. “Maddie doesn’t want for Jee-Yun to grow up with only one parent. Or with parents who don’t talk to each other. And I believe she is determined enough to make that happen, even if she has to drag Chimney into accepting that kicking and screaming. The biggest problem right now is that she is still healing herself, and that doesn’t leave much energy to fight Chimney. But my brother won’t know what hit him once Maddie is at a point where she can concentrate on setting his head straight.”

“You just said she is nearly at the point of cutting contact,” Buck said with raised brows.

Albert shrugged. “She can do that for a couple of months and still tell Chimney all about himself later on, can’t she?”

Buck grinned. “I guess.”

“And do you doubt for a moment that Maddie is capable of that when she isn’t struggling with her own health anymore?”

Buck bit his lip, but after a moment he started to laugh. “No, you are right.”

Albert nodded. “I just think if Chimney drives her so far that she has to cut contact for a while, he’ll really regret that in the future, and that it might permanently break something between them that won’t be repairable. Not being romantically involved doesn’t mean they can’t still be a family. Driving Maddie so far that she has to cut him off could mean exactly that. But he doesn’t listen to anyone because he weirdly thinks the Lees and I have taken Maddie’s side. As if there are sides in this.”

Buck sighed. “From his point of view there probably are sides. The kind of support he and Maddie get from the three of you is very different.”

Albert shrugged and concentrated on his burrito. The food Eddie’s Abuela made needed to be savored, and he didn’t want it to be spoiled by talking about Chimney’s stubbornness. Buck thankfully joined him in silence until they were done eating.

“Is it bad that I think I’m the one who put the thought in her head that she could cut Chimney completely out of her life?” Buck asked. “And that I’m not even remotely sorry about the fact that she’s actually contemplating the idea?”

“In your place, I wouldn’t want my sister anywhere near Chimney, to be honest,” Albert muttered, staring at the table. “I’m surprised how much you support her in trying to rebuild a friendship with him.”

“I know she is doing it for Jee-Yun, and I support that,” Buck said. “Jee-Yun doesn’t deserve the situation her parents are in right now, and she doesn’t deserve her childhood to be burdened by that. From the way Maddie keeps reacting to Eddie’s and my friendship with Taylor, I think it’s a foreign concept for her to be friends with an ex, which could also contribute to the whole situation.”

“Everyone is confused about your friendship with Taylor,” Albert said with raised brows.

Buck only rolled his eyes.

“They’ll get there,” Albert continued. “I refuse to believe anything else.”

“Do you think Maddie might be prepared to physically leave at some point?” Buck asked.

Albert frowned. “Why do you think that?”

“You have more contact with her right now than I do,” Buck murmured, not meeting Albert’s gaze. “And … I just wonder if she won’t eventually feel safer with taking Jee-Yun and leaving altogether instead of keeping fighting. She does that, you know?”

“As far as I know, she ran right to you when she left Doug,” Albert said.

“Not to stay, though. I made her stay, but that hadn’t been her plan in the beginning. She had planned on just passing through after seeing me, and never stopping running. And sometimes I wonder if she regrets staying, at least in part. He might never have found her if she had stayed on the move.”

“But she also would have spent the rest of her life fearing him,” Albert said. “I don’t think you need to worry about that, really. Neither that she regrets staying, nor that she will leave again. She is building herself a life here, Buck. Even more than she did before. And maybe more importantly, she is building a life for Jee-Yun here.”

Buck blew out a breath. “I hope you’re right.”

“Should we have invited Taylor as well to Jee-Yun’s Doljanchi?” Albert asked.

Buck blinked surprised. “Why?”

Albert shrugged.

“I’m already not sure inviting me was a good idea,” Buck said hesitantly. “And Eddie and I aren’t sure yet if he and Chris will come with me. I mean, Chris is so excited you wouldn’t believe it, and I’ll be content to keep my distance from Chimney as much as possible, but …”

“That doesn’t mean he’ll not make any kinds of jabs against you, or cause a scene outright?”

Buck shrugged.

“Let’s see what the situation looks like in a couple of weeks, okay?” Albert asked. “I understand your worry, and I understand why Eddie and you wouldn’t want to bring Chris into that kind of situation, but maybe Chimney will surprise us all. I really think he is on the cusp of getting a clue after seeing him yesterday. And all three of you are family, so it would be really great if you could all come.”

Buck sighed. “I hope you are right. I’m not looking forward to having to explain to Chris that he’d miss such an important day in his cousin’s life.”

Albert laughed. “That boy has you wrapped around his little finger, huh?”

Buck blushed and grinned bashfully. “Eddie keeps telling me I need to find better footing as a parent instead of keeping to my very comfy role as more of a favorite uncle.”

Albert pointed a finger at him. “Don’t expect that I’ll give up the role of favorite uncle for Jee-Yun just because you are telling sob stories about being a parent!”

***

Chimney shuffled from one foot to the other as he waited in front of Hen’s door. It had been difficult to make sure that neither Karen nor Denny would be home, but he wanted to have an undisturbed conversation with Hen. It had been two days since Eli had forced him to watch the video Taylor had made of his confrontation with Buck, and Chimney still felt unsettled and out of step with the world.

Hen should have come home from her shift several hours ago, and Denny should definitely be at school. Chimney hoped that Karen was at work because he really didn’t want her to be part of this conversation, if only to not feel outnumbered again. Sometimes it was much easier to talk with Hen alone.

When Hen finally opened the door, she stared at him silently for at least a minute. “You look like shit,” she said finally.

Chimney shrugged. “Haven’t slept in two days or something like that.”

Hen hummed.

“May I come in?” Chimney asked hesitantly.

He wasn’t used to Hen not inviting him inside right away, and this change in their dynamic hurt. Chimney was used to coming to Hen or Karen for support, and he hated that that hadn’t been the case over the past several months. The last time he had been here, he had stormed out after Karen and Hen had both asked him some very difficult questions, ones he’d had to face again over the last couple of days when Eli had brought them up. The difference was that Eli hadn’t let him storm off but made him answer those questions.

Hen raised her brows but then she nodded and stepped to the side. “I’m not the one who ignored your calls the last couple of weeks, you know?”

Chimney sighed. “Yeah. I’m sorry about that.”

“How is Eli?” Hen asked.

Chimney stopped and blinked. “How do you know…?”

“When Albert called Eddie the other day, we were all on shift as well. I had to vouch for Eli before Eddie would do whatever Albert was asking him for. And I didn’t even get out of Eddie afterward how Albert had found you and Eli in the first place, or what Albert had wanted from him.”

“Albert asked Eddie for that damn video so that he could give it to Eli,” Chimney muttered darkly and fell down on the couch. He rubbed his hands over his face. “Because Albert and Eli thought I needed to see it. Though, I was convinced he would have asked Buck and not Eddie. Why did he ask Eddie?”

“You’ll have to ask Albert that.” Hen kept standing beside the table and looked down at Chimney. “You hadn’t seen it before?”

Chimney shrugged. “Why should I have?”

“In preparation for the trial you had to face?” Hen shook her head. “Honestly, shouldn’t you have made sure you were familiar with the evidence being brought against you?”

Chimney huffed. “That whole thing was a farce, and you know it. And it didn’t come to a trial.”

“Have you seen the video now?”

“Yeah.” Chimney blew out a breath.

Hen sat down on the other couch, still staring at Chimney with an unmoving face. “That the reason you haven’t slept?”

Chimney nodded.

“If you are here to talk, you should talk, you know,” Hen muttered, frowning. “I can’t read your mind and I’m really not in the mood to have to pull every single bit of information out of you.”

“You’re angry at me,” Chimney muttered, turning his head to the side to avoid Hen’s glare.

“Angry is only a very small part of what I’ve felt concerning you over the past few months,” Hen said. “I’m mostly worried because you have been so irrational most of the time. I’m disappointed and hurt because whenever I didn’t wholeheartedly agree with you, your go-to solution was to cut me out and ignore me. But yes, I’m also angry, because you ignored everything everyone had to say to you without even taking any of it into consideration. You can’t be wrong, so everyone else had to be wrong instead, right? You do that sometimes, and it was never something I liked about you, but usually, you snap out of it pretty soon again.”

Chimney flinched.

Hen stayed quiet and eventually leaned back, crossing her arms over her chest. Chimney sighed when he understood that she wouldn’t make the first step in this conversation. He didn’t even know what exactly he wanted to talk about with her. He had come here because he always came to Hen when he needed to vent or help with something.

“I still don’t know why everyone believes I’m the bad guy here,” Chimney muttered petulantly. “I made some mistakes, okay, but no one has even given me a chance since October!”

“How is Maddie?” Hen asked.

Chimney flinched. “I don’t know. Haven’t seen her in a couple of days, nor heard from her. She … told me not to contact her until she called me.”

Hen hummed. “And why’s that?”

“We had another argument,” Chimney murmured. “And she told me I was reminding her of Doug.”

“That has to have stung. At least I hope so.”

Chimney frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Hen shrugged. “I’d hope something like that would finally penetrate your thick skull. I don’t know anymore what else could do that except something that really hurts. You say no one has given you a chance, and I’m not sure a chance for what you’re even talking about, but you haven’t listened to a single person in months either. And most importantly you haven’t listened to Maddie. I’m still appalled by your assumption you would move in together again soon when I remember very clearly how you came here when you needed to deal with recognizing how hurt Maddie was by her past after she told you about the boundaries she had set for herself concerning men in her life.”

“I haven’t called her or tried to meet her anywhere, okay?” Chimney spat. “I hate this silence, and I just know it doesn’t help us fix anything, but I am waiting for her to call me!”

“Good.” Hen leaned forward, bracing her arms on her knees and folding her hands. “That’s a little progress at least. I really hope you’ll stick with that resolution and give Maddie the time and space she needs.”

Chimney huffed.

“What’s been keeping you from sleeping since you saw the video?” Hen asked. “I know what kept me from any restful sleep for nearly a week after I saw it.”

Chimney frowned. “Yeah?”

“Your lying in the first place, which you still haven’t explained to me, and for which you also haven’t apologized,” Hen said. “The way I had behaved with Buck because I had believed you over him when he was the injured party in this and there had never been any denying that. And especially my worry about you and Jee-Yun, and my regret that I supported you instead of holding you back when you took her on that road trip. The last time you got into a car after being anywhere close to that upset, you were not even half as distraught as I saw you on that video, and you ended up with a piece of rebar through your head because of an accident that was at least in part caused by you.”

Chimney sucked in a breath.

“So, I spent a week having nightmares about you and Jee-Yun ending up in an accident, even though by the time when I was having those nightmares, Jee-Yun was already in the custody of the Lees while you were in the custody of the police.”

Chimney stared at Hen, barely able to keep breathing. He saw the worry she was talking about even now in the hard lines of her face, in the slight tremble of her hands. “I would never endanger my daughter!”

Hen sighed. “I don’t doubt that you believe that. But I also don’t doubt that you didn’t intend to nearly kill yourself back then, and you still nearly succeeded in that. And when you left Buck’s place, you were in a much worse mindset than when Tatiana didn’t accept your proposal.”

Chimney felt a weight settle on his chest and he swallowed against the lump in his throat.

“So yes, I was suddenly terribly worried about you and Jee-Yun,” Hen continued. “And angry at myself, because while I thought I was supporting you, I had actually done the complete opposite. I didn’t tell you about the arrest warrant—despite everyone, most importantly Bobby and Karen, telling me I should—because I thought it would only be an unnecessary burden for you. Because I was convinced the whole thing would blow over, hopefully before you ever had to deal with the police when they discovered there had been evidence tampering with the video. It couldn’t show what Buck said it showed because you had told me otherwise, right?”

Chimney shuddered and wrapped his arms around himself. He already knew what the next question would be, but he hoped Hen would keep it to herself. He really thought he had dealt with enough difficult questions the last couple of days without finding answers to any of them.

“So, I’ll ask again: Why did you lie to me?”

Chimney stubbornly stared at a point on the wall beside the kitchen door and clenched his teeth.

Hen was silent for a long time before she leaned back with a heavy sigh. “You know what the worst part is? Karen keeps telling me that I shouldn’t be surprised you lied to me because it’s what you do. It’s what made her take a step back from your friendship after you lied about me dying on the job. It’s what you did to every woman you dated before your accident. So, either it was just luck you didn’t lie to me before, or I just never found out about it before.”

“Bullshit!” Chimney jumped up, his hands fisted at his sides. “That had nothing to do with you! I just knew Buck would use this to turn Maddie against me! Not that I was wrong about that, was I?”

“You don’t think your lying to Maddie is what turned her against you?”

Chimney flinched, mostly because Maddie had said the exact same thing to him.

“I think you lied because you knew you had fucked up big time and were trying to cover your own ass,” Hen said. “I also think you left the next day not because you were looking for Maddie, but primarily to flee from the consequences. Because you didn’t know any more about Maddie’s whereabouts than you had the day before, or even three days before. The only thing that had changed was your confrontation with Buck.”

“You wanted me to stay here and have to deal with Buck on top of everything else?” Chimney shouted enraged. “He let me think Maddie might have killed herself for eight days! He saw how desperate I was and didn’t tell me anything about Maddie’s call or what she had told him!”

Hen sighed. “You didn’t tell him anything either, did you? You didn’t tell him she had PPD even after she had left. You didn’t tell him she might be a suicide risk, so how could he have known to reassure you? But could we stop talking about your hatred for Buck and just talk about you for a moment?”

“I don’t hate Buck,” Chimney said irritated.

“Don’t you?” Hen asked. “Because it sure seems like it with how you are turning everything bad or unpleasant that happened lately around to be his fault. But honestly, let’s put Buck aside and talk about you, Chimney. You said seeing the video has robbed you of sleep. What exactly about the video did that?”

Chimney opened his mouth and snapped it shut again. He stared at Hen, who just watched him calmly. “It’s not really the video but something Eli said.”

Hen smiled carefully. “Okay. Like to share?”

Chimney sat down again and rubbed his hands over his face. “He says with that video, no matter how driven I was by panic and desperation, there is nothing I can do or say that will make Maddie unsee the possibility of me being violent.”

It stung to say those words out loud himself, and it still felt terribly unfair, but throughout two sleepless nights, Chimney had started to accept the truth of those words. And he also recognized that there wasn’t any use in wishing the video had never been made, or that Buck had never shown it to Maddie. She had seen it, had seen a moment of violence from him, and as much as he hated it, he had promised her years ago to adhere to her boundaries concerning that—even if he had forgotten that for a while.

Hen didn’t say anything, and when Chimney looked up at her, she was watching him with an unreadable face.

Chimney sighed. “I’m sorry I lied to you. And I promise you, I never lied to you before.”

Hen nodded slowly. “I’d love to believe that, Chim. Really, I would. But you’ll have to put work in to get that kind of trust back from me.”

Chimney frowned unhappily. “I miss you.”

Hen sighed deeply. “I miss you, too.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Chimney muttered desperately. He hadn’t known what to do for longer than he even wanted to admit to himself, and he had somehow hoped that talking it out with Hen would lead to some miraculous enlightenment.

“You need to get your shit together,” Hen said without much compassion. “Which is what I also told you last time you were here. I’m glad that Eli seems to have finally broken through your stubbornness. How long will he be in town?”

“Two more days.”

“Maybe the three of us can sit down together tonight and make a plan to answer that question of yours about what you should do to get out of the situation without losing even more than you already have.”

“You’d do that?” Chimney asked surprised. She had been so distant and dismissive that he had come to expect he’d be sent away at any moment.

Hen sighed. “You are my best friend, Chimney, of course I’ll help you. Just because I didn’t agree with your worldview over the past months and I couldn’t support you in the way you were expecting me to, doesn’t mean I won’t support you in any way I can.”

Chimney swallowed and suddenly had to fight against tears burning in his eyes.

Hen left her place with a huff, sat down beside him, and pulled Chimney into a sideways hug. “You created a really sticky situation for yourself here. But we’ll salvage as much as we can, okay? And I think that might even be more than you fear right now.”

Chimney shrugged, not bothering anymore to hold his tears back. He knew that the one thing he wanted back was impossible, and that was the real reason he hadn’t slept since Eli had shown him the video. It had broken his conviction that he could win Maddie back eventually, and he didn’t know who he was without her anymore.

Chapter 12

Maddie sat on the bench right outside the Contact Yard and watched Buck with Christopher and Jee-Yun. They were sitting on the ground, surrounded by a whole herd of baby goats, all three laughing as if there wasn’t anything wrong in the world. It warmed her heart to see them this way.

Maddie had opted to stay outside of the petting zoo area and explained it by having to look after the wagon Buck had bought for their trip because he had been dissatisfied with the option they could have rented at the zoo. The truth was that she felt tired and was glad to have a while to relax and catch her breath. They had been at the zoo for four hours now, and neither Buck nor either of the children showed any signs of exhaustion—though Jee-Yun had taken a short nap a while ago, not bothered at all by the noise of the people and animals around them. Maddie didn’t see their little group leaving the zoo before closing time now, when she had truthfully not expected to stay for longer than half the day.

She watched with a smile as Buck carefully supported Jee-Yun, who was standing in front of him mesmerized by whatever Christopher was explaining to her. The little boy had been talking non-stop since they had arrived, telling Jee-Yun everything he knew about the animals they saw, and interpreting answers or questions from her babbling that seldom contained a real word. Maddie had heard from Buck about his trips to the zoo with Christopher, but she hadn’t known until today how dedicated either of them really was to it. It appeared that they were also both very determined to pull Jee-Yun into their little tradition, and Maddie already foresaw a lot more days like this coming in her future.

Maddie pulled out her phone to take some pictures of them, as she had done throughout the whole day already. She sent the one she liked the best to Eddie: Buck watching the two children with a beaming smile while Christopher carefully guided Jee-Yun’s hand to hold out the little treats they had gotten for the animals, Jee-Yun’s mouth opened wide in wonder as one of the goats licked her palm. That done, she started to scroll through the rest of the photos she had taken throughout the day, just because the app was already open. She hadn’t hesitated to take pictures whenever the mood struck, and she was very grateful for smartphones and digital photography.

Maddie remembered the few occasions she had been able to take Buck on trips like this one. Their parents hadn’t had any interest in spending any special days with them, but there had been some days when she had been able to convince their father to drive them somewhere, promising to look after Evan on her own. And as soon as she had her driver’s license, it had become much easier to take her brother places, to show him more of the world than just their street and the way to school. She had used to buy those little disposable cameras to keep mementos of those days, and every single picture that hadn’t turned out right had broken her heart, though she had treasured the rest all the more.

Maddie shook her head to drive away those thoughts. She had lost all those pictures now, and she didn’t want to think about that part. She would make sure to save the pictures she had taken today in several places, just to make sure something like that wouldn’t happen again. Maddie also planned to create a little book, one for Eddie and Buck and one for herself, with a selection of these pictures, and she started marking some of the pictures for that project while scrolling.

The one she had just sent Eddie, but also the one from a couple of minutes earlier, when Christopher had groomed one of the goats with a brush. The one where Chris and Jee-Yun were sitting on fake giant lily pads in a small pool when they had been in the Rainforests of Americas section. Also the one Buck had taken when they had watched the bird show just after leaving that section, and Christopher and Jee-Yun on Maddie’s lap had stared into the sky, both open-mouthed and awed by the birds. And of course, most importantly, several of the ones they had taken while at the playpark, especially those with Jee-Yun and Christopher climbing all over the fake animals like the crocodile and the gorilla, making funny faces and posing for the camera.

“Aunt Maddie!”

Maddie flinched a little, thrown out of her musing. “Hey.” Maddie looked up smiling. “All done playing with the baby goats?”

Christopher nodded as he sat down on the bench beside her and leaned in to look at her phone. “What were you looking at? You looked really happy about it!”

“Christopher,” Buck said softly but in a clearly warning tone. “What have we said about privacy and other people’s phones?”

Christopher bit his lip and leaned away from Maddie again. “Always ask for permission first before looking at someone’s phone, and accept without protest if the answer is no.” He sighed deeply. “I’m sorry, Aunt Maddie!”

Maddie chuckled and shook her head. “It’s alright. Buck is right, of course, but in this case, I didn’t mind. I was just scrolling through the pictures from today. And of course, I also had to send a picture to your dad of the three of you surrounded by baby goats.”

Christopher huffed. “Good. Then, next time he’ll come with us once he knows what he’s missing! He really could have helped Abuelita tomorrow!”

Maddie bit her lip for a moment because it was her fault that Eddie wasn’t with them, and Isabel Diaz’s request for help was only an excuse engineered on Maddie’s behalf because she didn’t want Christopher to know she had asked for Eddie not to come. While planning their trip to the zoo, she had needed to admit to herself and Buck that having Eddie with them as well might be too overwhelming for her in the long run. It was days like this that she noticed the most clearly just how far she still had to go in her recovery, not only from the PPD but also from the isolation she had inflicted on herself over the last year. Thankfully, Eddie and Isabel both had been very understanding.

“I’m sure next time he’ll come with us,” Maddie promised, vowing to herself to talk about the problem with her therapist so that she wouldn’t need to break this promise. “What’s next on the plan?”

Christopher watched her with his head tilted to the side for a moment before he nodded as if he had made a decision. “Buck said I need to ask you first, and it depends on your answer.”

Maddie raised her brows. “And why is that?”

“The next stop on our plan is the Lair. Because we need to show Jee-Yun that there is no reason to be afraid of reptiles and bugs. You need to respect them like every other animal, but when you leave them alone, they usually don’t want to harm you either. And some of them are really interesting.” Christopher sighed. “But Buck says you’re afraid of bugs? That he had to rescue you from every bug you saw when you were children!”

Maddie bit her lip to hold back her laughter and glared playfully at Buck, who stood on the other side of their wagon with Jee-Yun perched on his shoulders, who was happily clapping her hands against his head. “What lies about me are you telling your child?”

Buck laughed. “No lies at all! I remember very clearly the first time I had to rescue you from a spider in your room when I was five and you screamed so loudly that I’m sure our whole house shook!”

Maddie huffed and turned back to Christopher. “Do not believe a single bit of the lies my brother is telling you! I might have squeaked a little bit, nothing more!”

Christopher grinned and nodded. “Buck likes to exaggerate sometimes.”

“Hey!” Buck protested. “And I thought I was your favorite!”

“You can be my favorite and I can still recognize your flaws, Bucky!” Christopher explained, chin raised high, his whole face glowing with mischief.

Buck huffed, and Maddie said chuckling, “Okay, let’s go to the Lair and make sure Jee-Yun will be able to carefully carry the spiders she finds in the house outside by herself, because I’m pretty sure she won’t get a little brother to rescue her from the creepy crawlies.”

Christopher nodded and patted Maddie’s knee. “I would come if she called. But we live pretty far away from you. I’m not sure how helpful that would be then.”

Maddie ruffled his hair. “I’m glad to know Jee-Yun has such an awesome big cousin like you! Do you want to hitch a ride on the wagon or walk?”

Christopher eyed the wagon and then Jee-Yun thoughtfully. The children had been switching between riding in the wagon or walking—in Christopher’s case—or being carried—in Jee-Yun’s case—throughout the whole day. Christopher had usually decided to ride with Jee-Yun whenever she had been in there, the only exception being when she had taken her half-hour nap on their way to the petting zoo.

“I’ll keep Jee-Yun where she is for a while,” Buck said.

Christopher nodded. “Then I’ll walk.”

Maddie took the wagon as Christopher stood and started to slowly follow him, Buck walking right beside her.

“Are you alright?” Buck asked quietly after a little while.

Maddie nodded with a smile. “I already know I’ll be terribly exhausted once the day is over, but I’m really glad you invited us. And I’m also not opposed to repeating this kind of day. But maybe not always the zoo. There are other things to be explored in and around LA, and I can’t believe how few of those I have seen so far in the years I’ve already lived here.”

Buck bumped his shoulder softly against hers. “Good idea.”

Maddie grinned and shrugged. Spending the whole day with her brother in a setting like this had made her painfully aware of how little time they had really spent together since she had come to LA and he was finally part of her life again. They had met for coffee or a meal in different settings plenty of times, but that had always been limited to a couple of hours, and it wasn’t anywhere the same as creating the kind of happy memories they were today.

She hadn’t even noticed that she missed outings like this, nor that she hadn’t gone on anything like this in a very, very long time, either with Buck or others or even just on her own. And again—just like losing her childhood mementos of her adventures with Evan from before she had moved out of her parents’ house—it all came back to Doug and the so often unexpected influence he still had on her life. She had started working through that part of her life while she had been in the clinic in Burbank and was continuing to do so, dedicating part of her therapy to it much more seriously now than she had done after escaping him.

Maddie reached out and laced her fingers with Buck’s for a little while, blinking rapidly to hold back her tears. Moments like this, when she recognized how long the road ahead of her still was, made her both sad and happy at the same time. Sad for her past self, for all that she had missed because she hadn’t even known how hurt she still was and how much it still influenced her. And happy for her future, because days like this were glimpses into the future she wished to find, and they reminded her why it was important to continue fighting for it, even on those days when that fight seemed to be unbearable.

***

“How do you have any energy left?” Maddie complained when Buck finally sat down beside her on the couch.

Because they had carpooled to the zoo—Maddie and Jee-Yun coming over to Buck and Eddie’s place in the morning and going to the zoo in Buck’s car from there—Maddie had decided to accept her brother’s invitation when they had returned to his house and stayed for dinner. At the moment, it even looked as if she would spend the night in the guestroom, though she was wary of accepting that invitation before Eddie had come home and agreed as well.

Buck grinned brightly. “Hen would say it’s because I’m a child at heart as well. But I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Playing with the kids just doesn’t feel exhausting to me at all.”

Maddie sighed. “Let’s hope I’ll grow into the same resistance you have shown to exhaustion today, at least to some degree. Then you wouldn’t have needed to send Christopher to his room.”

Buck shook his head. “Spending an hour or two reading will help him wind down. And this way he’ll be ready to turn out the light and go to sleep as soon as Eddie is here to wish him good night. It would have been the same even if you and Jee-Yun hadn’t been here. I guess she is already asleep?”

“Was out like a light before I was even done changing her diaper,” Maddie said smiling. “It was a very exciting day for her, so I’m not surprised.”

She had been surprised about Buck providing a pack’n’play as well as some clothes for Jee-Yun that were only a little too big. It had been Christopher who had proudly explained that they had needed to be prepared for visits from Maddie and Jee-Yun, and that Eddie and he had been out to look at pack’n’plays in a store and asked the clerk all kinds of questions to make sure they made the right choice. They even had a baby monitor ready, the receiver sitting in front of them on the table now.

“It was a good day, right?” Buck asked and reached for the bottle of wine Maddie had opened for them to fill his glass.

“It was a perfect day,” Maddie whispered. “One I really hope we can repeat soon. With Eddie next time, if he wants to join us.”

Buck smiled. “You sure?”

Maddie nodded. “It was easier than I thought to step away for a couple of minutes when I needed a break. So yeah, I’m sure. He’s family, right?”

Buck turned to Maddie and leaned sideways against the back of the couch. “I’m glad you enjoyed the day. I missed you, missed just spending time with you. The last time we spent the whole day hanging out together like today was before you left for college.”

“Yeah, I realized that as well earlier,” Maddie agreed. “I’m not sure how often we’ll manage to arrange a day like this once I’m working again, but I’d like to do something like this at least every other month.”

“Sue has been so supportive of you, I’m sure she’ll be amenable to requests concerning your schedule. I mean, Eddie’s and my schedule is known, so maybe you can convince her to line your schedule up so we have shared free days on weekends during the school year. It might be a little easier to coordinate time any day of the week when Chris’ school is on break.”

“I’ll wait on such a request until I have worked again for a couple of months,” Maddie murmured into her wine. “Like you said, Sue already did a lot for me. I’d not want her to think I’m taking advantage of her generosity.”

Buck nodded.

“I got an email from our parents last week,” Maddie muttered. She put her glass on the table and folded her hands in her lap.

Buck made a face. “That can’t have been good.”

“Albert said it would be the right choice to invite our parents to Jee-Yun’s Doljanchi. And Chimney’s father as well. Even though we both knew none of them would come.”

“Why invite them, if you already knew the answer?” Buck asked after a moment of silence.

Maddie shrugged. “To have a reason to ignore them in the future. And to have a reason to send them packing again if they ever change their mind about wanting to be involved in their granddaughter’s life. I already printed out their email and filed it away in addition to the digital copy I made.”

Buck blinked. “Did I miss something?”

“I never should have invited them last year,” Maddie said quietly, not meeting his gaze. “I mean, I don’t really regret it because … you deserved to know about Daniel, and I don’t think I’d have ever been able to talk about him without a push. But wanting them back in my life, wanting them to have any part in Jee-Yun’s life was always a mistake.”

Buck reached out and put one hand over hers, rubbing his thumb softly against her wrist. “Sounds like I did miss something.”

Maddie sighed deeply. “They weren’t overly … When they were here, I noticed, but not really, you know? I was too distracted by first Mom bringing up Doug, and then the whole Daniel reveal, and how angry they were at me for telling you about him.”

“I’m really not following you.”

Maddie huffed. “They wrote, in these exact same words, that ‘if I already had to bring a child like Jee-Yun into our family, I could have at least given her a proper name, and should also raise her properly instead of subjecting her to’ … No, you know what. I’m not repeating that any more than what they really called my daughter.”

The email had been a punch in her gut, and she had spent half a day crying over it. Thankfully Jee-Yun had been with Chimney that day, so Maddie had had over twenty hours to get over the rage and hate and pain that email had inflicted. She had expected quiet disapproval from her parents, because that was what they did, what they had always done for as long as she could remember. Not the blatant vitriol they had sent. She had brought it up in therapy later, which had only led to another bout of crying, and she was glad that she didn’t have the same reaction now anymore.

“We should just disown them,” Buck muttered darkly. His fingers had closed tightly around her hands.

Maddie nodded. “I’m sorry that I tried to pull them back into our lives. It’s better if they stay on the other side of the country. And at least we can be sure there won’t ever be a reason for them to want to see Jee-Yun. It will be better for her if she never has to meet them.”

“Do you regret following Albert’s advice?” Buck asked.

“No. I’m glad, honestly. Because he was right. They showed their true face, I think for the first time—in my life at least, maybe even their own. I have never heard them use any of those words before. When I invited them last year, I thought … I didn’t think Chimney’s skin color would be a problem, you know?”

“Might not have been if you hadn’t dared to have a child with him,” Buck said. “That’s the kind of people I think they are. They’ll frown at everything they dislike, but as long as it isn’t part of their perfect life, they’re happy to ignore it. Did I ever tell you why they decided in the end against coming to therapy with me to work on our relationship?”

Maddie frowned. “No.”

“I mentioned an ex-boyfriend during that first and only session,” Buck said. “I didn’t even think about it. I just wanted to explain how I had mentally taken a huge step away from any relationship with them because that ex had taught me that I needed to take care of myself. Our joint session abruptly ended at that moment because our mother demanded that I should get therapy for my perversion first before I wasted their time. Naturally, I decided to never waste their time again at all.”

Maddie sucked in a breath and stared at Buck wide-eyed. “You never told me about that!”

Buck shrugged. “It seemed to be really important to you to have them in Jee-Yun’s life, and I didn’t want to stand in the way of that. I’d have quietly endured seeing them at birthday parties and such, but I wouldn’t have agreed to another family dinner like the one you surprised me with when they were here.”

Maddie winced a little and sighed deeply. “I’m sorry I pressured you into that.”

“You’re working on that, and that’s all I could ask for,” Buck said. “With Daniel added onto Doug, I understand a lot of things about you a lot better now, Mads. I understand the situation we found ourselves in during our childhood a lot better now, too. I’ve also come to understand why you weren’t able to tell me about him on your own, and I’m sorry that the way I reacted hurt you even more. But … I won’t ever apologize for how I reacted.”

Maddie smiled sadly. “And you don’t need to.”

She knew in retrospect—and because when she had talked about it in the clinic, she’d had to face some very uncomfortable thought exercises putting herself in Buck’s situation—that while she had thought at that moment she was being supportive of her brother, she had been anything but. It had been a shitty situation for both of them, and she shouldn’t have expected Buck to cater to her needs without any regard for his own.

“So, what we have learned from this is that the people who call themselves our parents won’t be part of our life again, right?” Buck asked. “No trying to mend bridges again, no inviting them to anything anymore, no visiting them. We’ll just ignore they even exist and hope they are so put off by our life choices that they’ll do the same for the rest of their lives.”

Maddie nodded. “Yeah.”

“Good. And have you heard anything from Albert about the invitation to his father?” Buck asked.

Maddie shrugged. “Not yet. But Albert said he’d probably not come but would send a present in any case. I think he has a very different picture of their father than Chimney.”

“Not surprising,” Buck said. “I mean, that was already true for your picture of our parents versus mine. And we only have nine years between us, and at least a partly shared childhood. There’re twenty years between Albert and Chimney, and Chimney hasn’t seen his father in person for longer than Albert has been alive. But that means we probably won’t need to prepare for any drama ensuing from their father showing up, right?”

Maddie nodded. “You are coming, though, right? And Eddie and Chris, too?”

She had invited Buck as soon as she had been sure they would have a DoljanchiDoljanchi traditional Korean celebration of a child’s first birthday for Jee-Yun, but she hadn’t received an answer yet. Maddie didn’t need to ask why Buck was hesitating about it, but she didn’t want him to miss it. There wasn’t any way she could see that Buck and Chimney would ever be able to repair their friendship, but she hoped that they could at least be able to both attend family holidays like this one peacefully. They wouldn’t even need to interact with each other.

Buck sighed, and leaned back a little bit, pulling his hand away from hers. He took a sip of his wine instead of answering, and Maddie watched him with a little frown. She knew when he was trying to avoid an answer, and she wasn’t happy to see him do that now.

“I will be there without a doubt,” Buck said finally. “Eddie and Chris are another matter altogether.”

“Chris seems to think otherwise,” Maddie said carefully. “When you went to change Jee-Yun’s diaper during our afternoon snack break, he asked a lot of questions about the Doljanchi, and he knew quite a lot about the traditions involved.”

Buck sighed. “Yeah, I know. He’s really excited about it. He’s also a little jealous that he didn’t have a special first birthday party.”

Maddie laughed. “He’ll have a special birthday party all of his own when he turns fifteen, right?”

Buck pursed his lips and shook his head. “A Quinceañera is only celebrated for girls. Chris had been complaining about that as well. There have been a couple of cousins on Pepa’s side of the family who reached that milestone recently or are preparing for it soon, and he isn’t happy to miss out on that either.”

“You still have a few years to figure that out, right?” Maddie said grinning. “Though, that might not be as much time as it seems to me.”

“Oh my god!” Buck fell back and threw his free arm over his eyes, nearly spilling his wine over the couch and himself in the process—Maddie was suddenly glad she had chosen a white wine—and shoved a foot against her knee. “Do not talk about that! We are not talking about Chris growing up! Eddie and I are living in happy denial as long as possible!”

Maddie laughed and managed to put her glass on the table before spilling anything herself. Riling Buck up by reminding him of Christopher growing up was by far the best pastime she had ever known. Which of course meant that she wouldn’t stop doing it, even though she suspected he would pay her back for it as soon as she started to feel the same about Jee-Yun.

After several long minutes where Maddie had laughed herself into hiccups, Buck sat up with a groan to rub a hand soothingly over her back, and answered her question. “Eddie and I will decide spontaneously if he and Chris will come with me, okay? It’s something we’ve decided not to think about right now, not until the day before.”

Maddie nodded and leaned against Buck who wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “That’s alright. We’ll plan for all of you to be there, but I won’t be surprised or hurt if you are the only one to come.”

Buck pressed a kiss against the top of her head. “You have no idea how good it feels to see you laugh like this. Even if it’s at my expense and about my pain at Christopher growing up too fast.” He huffed. “And just so you’re aware, when Chris feels he’s too old to come to the zoo with me, I’m stealing your daughter to continue the tradition!”

***

Maddie sighed as she closed her exercise book and stared at it for a moment, not sure if she hadn’t bitten off more than she could chew with her plan to learn Korean. The first class was over, and despite her preparations with Albert, Anne, and John, she had felt so much more clueless than everyone else in the room seemed to be.

“Hey.”

Maddie looked up startled to see standing in front of her the young woman she had been partnered with during the first talking exercise earlier when they had practiced greetings and introducing themselves while their teacher had come around the room to correct their pronunciation. Her name was Hannah, and Maddie only remembered that because they had repeated the phrase to introduce themselves to each other at least twenty times. She didn’t remember anyone else’s name, even though there had been an introduction round right in the beginning.

Maddie smiled. “Hey.”

“Would you like to get coffee?” Hannah asked with a shy smile. “I mean, if you have time.”

Maddie blinked. “Uhm, yeah sure. I’ll need to pick my daughter up from daycare in two hours, but I don’t have anything to do until then.”

Hannah’s shoulders sank down in relief and her smile grew a little wider. “That’s great. I saw a place just around the corner on my way here earlier. We could go there?”

Maddie nodded and packed away her books in a hurry. They were the last ones still in the room besides the teachers, and Maddie wondered for a moment how long she had stared at her closed book while overcome with doubts about her decision.

“Please tell me I’m not the only one who felt a little overwhelmed by this first class,” Hannah said quietly as they left the room.

Maddie laughed, not only because of the question but also because of the way Hannah was carefully watching their two teachers to make sure they hadn’t heard her.

“It was pretty overwhelming,” Maddie agreed, not bothering to lower her voice. “The last time I tried to learn a foreign language I was in high school, and I remember that introduction being a lot softer. I guess they think they don’t need to sugarcoat the workload for adults.”

“I wish they would!” Hannah muttered, sounding a little desperate. “I tried French in high school but dropped it after a semester. I spoke English and Spanish at home, so I took two years of Spanish after that to get my language classes in.”

Maddie nodded. “I took Spanish in school, too. Wasn’t my favorite subject by far, but I get along for basic things even twenty years after finishing school.”

“We need to turn right,” Hannah said as they left the building. “You were pretty good already with the phrases we learned today.”

Maddie shrugged with a grin. “My family prepared me. I think they might be a little put out that I’m not letting them teach me. I just don’t want to burden them with even more, and I think a structured learning environment like this class might be really helpful for me. I always did better in classes that gave me more structure to begin with.”

“Your family?”

“My ex, my daughter’s father, is Korean. His brother and foster parents have declared me family. It’s all a little complicated.”

“And the ex?” Hannah asked hesitantly.

“We are still figuring out things,” Maddie said. “But Jee-Yun has been starting to learn her first words, so I need to stay ahead with my Korean.”

“That’s really sweet of you,” Hannah said.

Maddie shrugged. “People keep saying that, but I’m really just … I want to be able to understand my child, always. So, I need to know the languages she is growing up with.” She paused and bit her lip. Maddie felt she should return the question about Hannah’s reasons for learning Korean, but she didn’t know how to ask that without sounding rude.

Thankfully they reached the small cafe before the silence could turn uncomfortable, and they were distracted by looking for an empty table they could agree on. After they had sat down and had nearly immediately been attended to by a waiter, Hannah watched Maddie with an amused grin.

“I think you are the first person who hasn’t just assumed I should already know Korean based on my appearance alone,” Hannah said eventually.

“Anne—Jee-Yun’s de facto grandmother—she’s third-generation Korean-American. And her parents decided to not teach her Korean growing up in an attempt to fit in better. She learned Korean on her own later in life, and she doesn’t really like to talk about that part of her life at all.”

Hanna sighed and nodded. “People assume I should know Korean and it sucks. It’s especially bad when I’m with my training group and we have new people joining us, or we’re meeting with others for joint training sessions. So, when I knew for sure I would be between jobs this month, I signed up for this class despite my misfortune with learning foreign languages. I’m holding onto the hope that ten years after finishing high school, I’ll just have matured a little more about studying languages.”

“Training group?” Maddie asked.

“I signed up for Taekwondo classes shortly before I started middle school,” Hannah said. “That was my way to connect to my birth culture that I know nothing about. We have been to training camps where people from all over the world came together. It’s happened half a dozen times that some Seonbea-nimSeonbea-nimhonorific title, in this context: Master who had been invited from Korea to train us tried to get my help when their English failed them. The first time that happened, I was so embarrassed I nearly dropped the classes altogether.”

Maddie made a face. “I’m sorry.”

Hannah shrugged. “No one’s fault. I’ll never regret that my parents adopted me, even though they don’t have a single bit of Korean heritage themselves. I couldn’t have wished for better parents. They were my foster parents first, and it just clicked, you know? We had other foster kids in the house coming and going throughout my whole life, most of them waiting for extended family to be found to take them in. They didn’t hesitate to keep me when it was decided that identifying my birth parents after their car wreck just wouldn’t happen.”

Maddie blew out a deep breath. “I’m sorry for the loss of your parents.”

Hannah smiled sadly and turned her head to the side. “I was too young to remember them, or the accident. The only reason I survived was because I had been pulled out of the already burning wreck by a very nice man who went on to become something of a grandfather to me afterward. He said my parents were already dead when he reached the car, and I honestly never dared to question him about that.”

Maddie bit her lip and nodded. “I have friends who are foster parents. For a while, they struggled a lot with letting the kids go again.”

Hannah laughed and shook her head. “Oh yeah, I can imagine. I always only saw the other children as friends, and I was glad to see some of them go again. With others, I keep in contact with them to this day. But I know for my parents it sometimes takes a pretty big toll on them emotionally. And I’m sure I wouldn’t want to do the same as they are still doing. It’s already hard enough for me to let the kids at the hospital go after they have been in my care for weeks or months sometimes.”

Maddie leaned forward curiously. “Are you a doctor or a nurse?”

“Nurse. Wouldn’t have had the nerve for medical school.”

“I was a nurse for more than a decade before I came to LA,” Maddie said grinning. “ER, though. I couldn’t have done pediatrics. I bow my head to everyone who can do that, really.”

Hannah chuckled. “I’ve heard that before. I find it very rewarding for the most part.”

Maddie looked down at the table and blew out a breath. “I had two brothers. The older one died when he was eight, I was nine. And he had been sick for a long time before that. When I was in nursing school I had to do a rotation in pediatrics, and those were the most horrible weeks of my life.”

Maddie frowned and bit her lip, startled that she dared to even bring Daniel up with a stranger. Before her most recent therapy, she had barely been able to talk about Daniel with Buck and Chimney, and even then had only done it when she had felt pushed into a corner with no other choice. And when she had been in the clinic, it had still taken her a long time to even hint at that lingering pain in her past, let alone mention Daniel’s name or the circumstances of his death. Maddie didn’t know why she was suddenly able to mention Daniel to a stranger, and without feeling like she would burst into tears about it any moment.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Hannah said quietly.

Maddie smiled sadly. “I’ve thought about him a lot since my pregnancy.”

“How old is your daughter?” Hannah asked.

“Her first birthday is in a couple of weeks.” Maddie pulled out her phone and brought up the photo story of the trip to the zoo. “That’s Jee-Yun. And my brother and my nephew.”

Hannah happily indulged Maddie in listening to tales from the zoo while going through the pictures. They had already ordered a second coffee by the time Maddie noticed how much she had talked about Jee-Yun without giving Hannah any break. She leaned back in her chair and felt her face grow hot, muttering an apology.

Hannah laughed. “No need to apologize at all. You are a new mom and clearly weren’t expecting children in your life at all. That’s what I got from some of the things you said, at least.”

Maddie shrugged and grinned bashfully. “It was a complete surprise. Didn’t seem like a good option anymore after I turned 35. That’s one thing being a nurse kinda screws with, right? We know all kinds of medical details others never even think about. I … there was a night shift pretty early on after I finished school where we could only save the baby when the mother went into premature labor and had some additional complications. That was a geriatric pregnancy as well. Some things I saw on the job just scarred me for life.”

Hannah took a deep breath and nodded. “One reason why I wouldn’t want to work in the ER. That the reason you changed jobs?”

Maddie shook her head. “That decision didn’t have anything to do with the job. And in the beginning, I thought for a while about returning to nursing eventually. Sometimes I still miss it, but being a dispatcher is also very rewarding. It helps people equally, but in a different way, you know? And with a small child now, being a dispatcher is a little more predictable than being a nurse in the ER.”

“Probably,” Hannah agreed. “The shifts in the ER at my old hospital ran wild sometimes. I’m starting at a children’s hospital next month. They don’t have an ER there, but I think I’ll eventually miss the stories those nurses would tell the rest of us sometimes.”

“I’m sure I can think of a couple or a hundred of those stories to help you miss them less.”

Hannah grinned. “I’ll come back to you about that.”

“I’ll trade you for fun stories of your own about the children. Working with them, there have to be a ton of those stories!”

“There are!” Hannah agreed, grinning. “You know, I’m really glad you are in this class as well. One reason I’m working with children is because it’s easy to connect with them for me. That’s somehow never the case with adults, and I was really worried about sitting all alone in this class.”

Maddie bit her lip and looked down at the table, smiling shyly. “It’s the same for me. And I’d be really happy about a new friendship.”

She didn’t know what exactly she had expected out of the class except for a lot of hard work, but she was pleased with how the day had turned out. It seemed as if Albert had been right. If Maddie stayed open to experiencing new things, everything would turn out alright in the end.

Chapter 13

Chimney tried to force his leg to keep still, but as soon as he stopped concentrating on it, it started to bounce again. The last couple of days had been nerve wracking and exhausting, and he knew the conversation he was facing now wouldn’t be any different. He loved Eli and Hen dearly, would call both of them his best friends even though he hadn’t had much contact with Eli over the past years, but at the moment he also hated them a little bit. He felt miserable over every single conversation he’d had with them since they had teamed up against him, and knowing that they were right wasn’t making it any better.

“You asked us to gather here, Howie,” Anne said softly, breaking the uncomfortable silence that had reigned in the living room since Chimney had sat down on the couch. “You’ll need to tell us why. We can’t very well read your mind.”

Chimney nodded slowly. “I need to apologize.”

He was met with silence, and when he finally looked up, Anne, John, and Albert all met him with different expressions, each one a strange mixture of hope, exasperation, and disbelief. Chimney sighed and rubbed his hands over his thighs, fighting hard against the urge to flee.

He had somehow hoped they would make it easier for him, but he couldn’t exactly fault them for their hesitance. Eli and Hen had made sure that he had recognized a couple of very painful truths, and they had also convinced him he needed to be proactive in repairing the relationships he had damaged over the last couple of months. Maybe he should have done this with each of them alone, but then again, that would have meant doing it three times.

“I know I’ve been … It’s been a couple of pretty difficult months, and I know you have been trying to help me and support me but I didn’t exactly … appreciate that most of the time.” Chimney looked down again, feeling uncomfortable looking at any of them while being met with their silence. “I … For the most part, it really didn’t feel like support for me. It felt more like being sidelined by everyone, but I know … that’s on me. So, yeah. I’m sorry for being unreasonable and an ass more often than not. And I’m sorry for … not hearing what you were saying.”

“That’s a very sudden change,” John said roughly. “Though, you have been very subdued the last few days.”

“Is this about Linsey?” Albert asked.

“Linsey?” Anne said with a little frown.

“I was meeting two friends in a bar, and we interrupted a domestic dispute that ended with a young woman getting hurt when she fell, and my two friends nearly ending up in a brawl while I took care of her injuries,” Chimney said.

Albert huffed. “They did end up in a brawl, though they managed to subdue their opponents pretty quickly from what I heard. Linsey said something to you, and even she noticed that it hit you hard when she had only just met you minutes ago, and was in a pretty tough situation herself.”

Chimney bit his lip and shrugged. “And you thought it was a good opportunity to pile more on me by giving Eli the damn video?”

Albert huffed out a laugh. “Seems to have worked, didn’t it? You really needed a wake-up call, Chim. And none of us was able to give that to you no matter how hard we tried. I kinda hope you’ve seen that for yourself now.”

Chimney sighed and rubbed his hands over his face. “Maybe.”

“Are you talking about the video of … the incident?” Anne asked in a clipped tone.

“Yeah. Albert got it from Buck, and Eli made me watch it.”

“Not Buck,” Albert said. “He wouldn’t have given it to me for various reasons. And I really didn’t want to bother him with that. I asked Eddie, and once Hen had vouched for Eli, he was happy to provide a copy.”

“What does that video have to do with your apology?” John asked skeptically.

Chimney inhaled deeply. “Eli made me watch it, and it was … not what I had expected. Not what I thought I remembered, somehow.”

John watched him with a troubled frown and Anne had her hands folded tightly in her lap. Chimney couldn’t read either of them at the moment, and he nervously shifted in his seat until his back was pressed firmly against the backrest. He didn’t know how to put into words what watching the video had done to him, and he wasn’t even sure how open he really wanted to be with them about this.

“You have been very focused on seeing only your own side in all of this,” John said after a prolonged silence. “I know you to be more empathetic than that, usually.”

Chimney bit his lip and shrugged. “Didn’t feel like anyone was seeing my side. Still doesn’t feel like that, to be honest. But I guess I’ve come to see that the truth is somewhere in between. And that I might need help to sort through some of my thoughts and emotions. Professional help, I mean.”

Anne leaned forward, her frown deepening in a way Chimney knew to be worry. “I thought you were already going to therapy?”

Chimney sighed. “Sure. But…”

He trailed off, biting his lip and averting his gaze. He had talked big after Christmas about doing more therapy than the LAFD was asking of him, and on paper that was even true. He had gone more regularly than the department had required, and he had wasted two weekends on workshops designed for the anger management program he had been referred to by the court, but he had very deliberately only done the bare minimum to have his participation recognized.

Chimney knew how to do that, had been successful with it for years because he had never seen how any of it was of any use. But other people thought it would do something, and he knew that sometimes making a good impression was more important than anything else. Chimney thought it had worked with the department at least, and probably even with the court, but it clearly hadn’t helped with any of his personal relationships.

“It was all just big talk,” Albert said, rolling his eyes.

“I did go to the appointments!” Chimney protested. “Hen and Eli believe they might not have been focused on the real problem, though. That it’s not really anger that’s my problem. They both pointed out I might be suffering from PPD as well, and what I did so far only targeted the symptoms but not the cause, and therefore wasn’t actually helping and might have even made it worse.”

Hen had also pointed out in a quiet moment between just the two of them that the issue might have been recognized during therapy if he had actually put in the work. Chimney didn’t know if he agreed with that, but he wouldn’t share that thought with anyone else anyway.

“That does sound plausible,” Albert said softly. “Have you already looked into other kinds of therapy?”

Chimney nodded. “Hen encouraged me to reach out to Maddie’s therapist in Burbank, the one I met several times for joint sessions in December. They specialize in women with PPD, of course. But I got a referral for two places and I have appointments with both in the next two weeks to see where I’m more comfortable.”

There was a moment of silence, and then John said, “We are proud that you are taking this step, Howard. I very much hope it will give you the chance to finally overcome whatever mental pain has been torturing you. And we are here for whatever you need.”

Chimney bit his tongue to hold back the bitter reply that came immediately to mind. Albert had said there were no sides for them to take, but being evicted out of his own apartment by John had very much felt as if John had taken a side. The memory of that moment was still deeply painful, even though Chimney had recognized in the meantime that he had been treating Maddie unfairly at that moment.

“Will a new therapy plan interfere with your return to work?” Anne asked quietly.

Chimney shook his head. “No. I’ll have to organize that around work, and the people I’ll see about it already know that and also the kind of work schedule I deal with. I can’t afford to miss work any longer. Not after being suspended and put into a new house. My new team can hardly learn to trust me if I’m not there.”

“You had your first shift yesterday, right?” Albert asked. “How was that?”

Chimney grinned, glad for the moment of reprieve even though he knew the difficult parts of the conversation weren’t over yet. “It was really good, actually. They were happy to welcome me on their shift, and there seem to be no assholes on the shift so far. And Tommy is a good captain. Lou-Anne, my new paramedic partner, is good at the job as far as I could see. She won’t be a second Hen, of course. No one will ever be that. But we’ll be able to work together well enough, I think.”

There had been a couple of calls where they hadn’t agreed on how to act, and both Lou-Anne and Tommy had had to remind him twice that he wasn’t the one with seniority anymore, and he wasn’t the one calling the shots on this shift. Lou-Anne was the one making the tough decisions, not him, and he would need time to get used to that. Chimney hoped that once Lou-Anne had learned to trust him she would also learn to listen to him more. He needed to be patient for that, though, and he knew it.

Anne smiled warmly. “That sounds like a very good first day back.”

“It was,” Chimney said, holding back any comment about it not feeling like being back at all. He had already complained about that to Hen during an early morning phone call, and she had not been very sympathetic with him, reminding him that she had needed to get used to a new partner as well. At least Tommy had tried to distract him from being homesick during the shift. It was an experience Tommy and he shared, after all.

“And it was a slow shift,” Chimney continued. “So we had a lot of time to get to know each other in between calls. The calls we did get were pretty simple, as well. I hope that will hold true for a couple more shifts. It’s strange to be the new one this time, to not know the dynamics of everyone around me anymore. I feel too old to learn those by trial through fire.”

Albert huffed. “Didn’t you tell me that was the best way to learn?”

Chimney grinned. “You had a horrible first shift right out of the academy. I needed to tell you something to lift your spirits and have you look forward to the next shift instead of dreading it.”

Albert rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest, glaring at him.

“So, you think you’ll be happy at your new station as well?” John asked.

Chimney nodded. “I think so.” And if not, there was at least nothing that could be worse than his first couple of months or even years at the 118.

“Have you also already apologized to Maddie?” Anne asked softly.

Chimney flinched and shook his head.

“Well, I think that should be your next step, shouldn’t it?” John said.

Chimney swallowed against the lump in his throat. “The last time I talked with her, she told me she didn’t want to hear from me again until she called me. And Hen has warned me that any apology would lose a lot of its honesty and value if I broke the boundary she set for me.”

“Yeah,” Albert agreed with raised brows. “Reaching out to apologize for walking all over her boundaries and promising to not do it again, while actually just doing it again would contradict itself.”

“It’s difficult to wait,” Chimney murmured. “I miss her. But I guess I’m not allowed to feel that way anymore.”

“You are allowed to feel whatever you feel,” John said. “What you aren’t allowed to do is make others suffer because of that. And that is what you did with Maddie since she came home from the clinic.”

Chimney flinched again. “I … really didn’t see it that way until recently. I’d never want to hurt her, I just … I don’t know. I’ve been pretty confused about a lot of things recently.”

“Maybe it is good then that you don’t have any direct contact with Maddie for the moment,” John said. “That gives you time to work through that confusion, and maybe work out why you reacted so strongly and … irrationally to some things.”

Chimney sighed deeply. “Yeah, maybe.”

“We are here to talk about whatever you need to talk about,” Anne said quietly.

Chimney bit his tongue and nodded. He already felt he had talked the whole situation to death with Hen and Eli without coming to any conclusion or solution that felt satisfying to him, and he didn’t know how talking with the Lees or Albert could change that. But he was nonetheless glad for the offer.

***

Chimney sat on one of the recliners in the Lees’ backyard and stared up into the night sky. It was his first four-day break since joining the 217, and it felt strange for once not to wish that break would be over much sooner. He was used to missing his co-workers at the 118 when he wasn’t on shift, but after three shifts with the 217, he didn’t see himself ever coming to that point with his new team.

“I’ve made us tea.”

Chimney flinched and turned his head to Anne, willing his heartbeat to calm down again. Usually, he heard the back door being opened, especially when it would be falling closed on its own as it had to have done now, since Anne’s hand were full putting down a tray with a teapot and two cups on the little table right beside the lounger Chimney had chosen.

“Thank you?” Chimney muttered, frowning in confusion.

“How are you?” Anne asked without looking at him as she poured tea into both cups. “You have been very quiet, even more so since our conversation a couple of days ago.”

“The last two shifts were exhausting,” Chimney said. “Didn’t leave much time for anything else on the day off in between.”

Anne hummed and sat down, her hands wrapped around her steaming cup. “That does sound like a very handy excuse, Howie.”

Chimney gritted his teeth and shook his head silently.

“I need to apologize to you as well,” Anne said after a moment. “I’m very relieved about the conversation you had with us the other day, and by seeing you seek out the help you need without being prompted by anyone else. But seeing how difficult it is for you to confide in John and me has also … highlighted our own failures even more.”

“What are you talking about?”

Anne sighed. “Months before your mother died, I made her a promise. And I renewed that promise later to you personally, though I’m not sure you remember that. I promised to be here for you, to stand in for your mother, because by that point we knew that she was fighting a losing battle. I feel I broke that promise somewhere along the way. And looking at some of the things you are struggling with now, I have to believe that happened just after your mother died.”

Chimney frowned. “I still don’t know what you are talking about.”

Anne bit her lip and stared down at her cup, her hands shaking slightly. “I think John and I failed in helping you process your grief over losing your mother. I’m so very sorry for that, and I honestly don’t know how to ever fix that.”

“No,” Chimney said quietly. “You and John are the reason I didn’t go off the rails after that. You gave me something to hold onto, and you showed me every day that I still had family, even if it wasn’t family by blood!”

Anne looked up with a sad smile. “That is not quite the same as helping you process your grief in such a way that you wouldn’t be haunted by it later on. And you clearly are haunted by that grief still. Some of the things you’ve done and said since becoming a father have made that very clear, at least to me. I honestly … I would like to advise you to include talking about your mother and about losing her to your new therapist as well. I think … your reluctance to let go of Maddie as a romantic partner despite everything she said might very well be rooted in that as well.”

Chimney wanted to dismiss it out of hand, but Eli’s voice in his head stopped him, cautioning him to listen and hear what others were telling him. “What makes you think that?”

“Your reluctance for Jee-Yun to learn Korean, most of all,” Anne said. “There are other things I was a little startled by, but this one worried me very much.”

Chimney rolled his eyes. “Really? Why is that such a big deal for everyone?”

“I resented my parents for a very long time over that issue, you know?” Anne said. “I would have loved to grow up learning Korean. I would catch a couple of phrases and words while spending time with my friends, but I was never able to really learn anything because my parents made it very clear what they thought about it, even though they never outright forbid me to speak Korean. They were convinced that only speaking English would somehow give me an advantage. I felt ashamed for the longest time over wanting to know the language of the country my family came from. My brother didn’t speak to me for several years when I started learning Korean, because he believed I was disrespecting our parents with that choice. And he holds it against me to this day when our parents have been long gone.”

Chimney frowned. “That’s different, though.”

“How?” Anne asked. “My parents denied me a part of my cultural heritage to such a degree that for a long time it became very difficult to like them at all. From my point of view, it won’t cause any damage to have Jee-Yun grow up knowing both languages, and let her decide for herself later on if she wants to drop speaking Korean or not. That won’t be any work for her at all. But denying her that knowledge early on will make it very difficult for her to catch up with something she might feel she should have known all along.”

“I don’t even know if I can still speak Korean,” Chimney said darkly. “I’d probably only teach her all the wrong things. And she doesn’t need to know Korean to get along. English will be all she needs!”

Anne sighed. “You can learn Korean again, Howie. It will come back to you much faster than you anticipate, I think. You still understand it just fine. Do you really want to set yourself up to possibly be resented by your daughter? I know how difficult it is to learn a language later on in life, especially when every teacher looks at you and assumes you should already know the language.”

Chimney made a face. “Sounds like you had a bunch of horrible teachers.”

Anne chuckled sadly. “That might have been part of it. But I always felt they were right. I always felt my parents had taken something from me. I still feel that way about them, and I don’t think that will ever change. I don’t want your daughter to feel the same way about you.”

“You don’t know that she would,” Chimney protested weakly.

“No, of course not,” Anne agreed softly. “But it’s still a risk. But honestly, I don’t think Maddie will leave you any choice in this. She will make sure Jee-Yun grows up knowing Korean, and learning about Korean traditions through Albert, John, and me if you don’t want to have any part of it. Maddie has started learning Korean herself, she’s been to the first couple of classes already and very much enjoying them.”

“I hate that she is making decisions about our daughter without even talking about it with me!” Chimney spat, fisting his hands and barely refraining from jumping out of his seat.

Anne sighed. “If you two figure out how to build a co-parenting relationship after all, you will need to learn to talk to each other much more openly than you seem to have done so far. But that is a problem you’ll have to face later.”

“And if we don’t figure that out?” Chimney asked.

Anne cocked her head and eyed him intently. “Do you think you won’t?”

“I have no idea what to expect from Maddie at this point.”

Anne sighed. “I think that’s true for her as well. You made her feel pushed into a corner when you refused to leave her alone. Especially when you refused to leave her home after your last argument. That incident is something else that made me see just how much we failed you. Neither your mother nor John and I raised you to disrespect anyone in that way, especially not an intimate partner. You made her feel unsafe in her own home, and that is just not acceptable behavior.”

“I know,” Chimney murmured, turning his head away.

“Whether you intended to or not, that kind of behavior from you rightfully made her wary,” Anne said. “And in the end, however Maddie decides to resolve this situation, it will also be about what she wants to teach your daughter about respecting her own boundaries. I was very relieved the other day to see you finally taking a critical look at your own behavior. You have come precariously close to making Maddie break off any contact with you. And that could very much entail that she’ll go to court and take away your rights as Jee-Yun’s father. That part won’t even be difficult with the situation as it is now and Maddie’s history with domestic violence. Protecting the child in a case like this is also about protecting the mental health of the mother.”

Chimney felt his insides go cold. “You really think she would go there?”

Anne nodded. “Yes.”

“And would John and you support her?”

Anne sighed. “We would continue to support both of you, Howie. As we have done all along. You said it didn’t feel like we are supporting you, but we are. Telling you that you are in the wrong, that you are making terrible mistakes, is not the same as not supporting you. We have made sure you spent a lot of time with your daughter by bringing her here and then taking her back to Maddie later on so that Maddie can keep the distance she needs at the moment. If Maddie decides she needs to make that distance permanent for the sake of her own mental health, we would make sure she can have that while still giving you the visitation with your daughter you deserve.”

Chimney rubbed his hands over his thighs and shook his head. He couldn’t imagine that scenario at all, and hearing Anne talk about it so calmly made bile rise up in his throat. She clearly had already thought about it a great deal, even had a plan ready for it.

Chimney took a deep breath and pressed his trembling hands against his legs. He felt as if someone had punched him in the gut hard enough to take his breath away. If Anne had made plans for what to do if Maddie cut him out completely, it had to be a decision that was already nearly made, and he suddenly saw his whole world crumble down around him. This was the exact thing he had tried to prevent all along, the reason why he had pushed so much when Maddie had seemed to be pulling away from him more and more.

‘You made her feel unsafe in her own home.’ Anne’s words from earlier echoed in his head, and looking back to that argument with Maddie now, Chimney could even see that in the way Maddie had held herself, in the way she had looked at him, had shied away from his touch when he had reached out to her. Chimney shuddered and pressed a hand against his mouth, not sure if it was to hold back the bile in his throat or the sob that still escaped him.

Chimney flinched when Anne was suddenly sitting beside him, but he didn’t fight her when she pulled him into a tight hug. He shook his head, but he had no idea what to say. He accepted her hug and let her rock him from side to side when the sob was followed by tears. He couldn’t fight the tears or the sobs in the face of the realization that he might have just ruined every chance of a future with Maddie because he hadn’t seen how he made her feel.

***

Maddie closed the door to the bedroom quietly, a soft smile on her face. There had been nights, especially since she had come home from the clinic, where she had spent hours just watching her daughter sleep after putting her to bed, and she had nearly lost herself in that sight again. But she couldn’t let Josh sit in the living room all by himself indefinitely, so she had eventually turned away from Jee-Yun’s bed.

Maddie froze and stared at her kitchen with a frown for a moment. “Did you honestly clean up my kitchen, Josh?”

Josh chuckled. “And I got out the wine, and two glasses for us. I think every little bit of work someone else can take over is a win for you, isn’t it? And doing our dishes was really no hardship. Sit down and relax. You have earned yourself a break.”

Maddie huffed and glared at Josh, but she walked around the couch and sat down.

Josh grinned as he poured wine into her glass. “Do you remember that time when you brought me home from the hospital, and you had cleaned not only my kitchen but also my living room by the time I woke up the next morning?”

“That was required so that I could sleep on your couch,” Maddie said, her chin raised defiantly. She had to fight against a grin, though.

“Sure.” Josh watched her with raised brows. “Because you decided you couldn’t leave me alone for the night after I got beaten up. I don’t remember ever inviting you to stay the night.”

Maddie chuckled. “Thank you for the help, but it really wasn’t necessary.”

Josh shrugged.

“Also, thank you for coming over. Going out isn’t always easy now. And I’m reluctant to miss out on a night with Jee-Yun when I have her with me. It still feels so weird when she isn’t here.”

“I’m happy to enjoy your cooking any time,” Josh said. “And I’m happy to bring over takeout if you don’t have the spoons to cook. I think we should try to not have me cook, though.”

Maddie laughed. “Agreed.”

“Motherhood looks really good on you, you know?” Josh said softly. “Seeing you with your daughter is a delight. I don’t think I have ever seen you as genuinely happy as when I can watch you interact with Jee-Yun.”

Maddie felt herself blush and averted her gaze. “That’s very kind of you to say, but…”

“No buts,” Josh interrupted her softly. He scooted over and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “The last year was hard, yes, but that doesn’t change what I see, what everyone else sees. You love your daughter, and you have already put a lot of work into your own health to be able to be a good mom. That’s all that matters.”

Maddie leaned into the hug and closed her eyes for a moment. “I feel like I’m failing her constantly. I don’t know how much she already understands about this situation between Chimney and me. How much it’s hurting her, how much trauma it is causing her right now. And the longer we take to figure this out, the more it will hurt her.”

“How are things with Chimney?” Josh asked.

Maddie sighed and shook her head. “I honestly have no idea. The last time we talked, it was this huge fight that ended with me practically fleeing from this apartment because he wouldn’t leave. I told him not to contact me until I called him. He … hasn’t even so much as sent me a text message since.”

“That’s good though, isn’t it?”

Maddie shrugged. She pulled away from Josh, and he readily pulled his arm back, even scooting away from her a little again and turning to face her.

“Is it, really?” Maddie asked. “I didn’t expect … It’d be the first time he respected a boundary I set since I came home.”

“Some time has to be the first,” Josh said.

“I guess,” Maddie murmured. She took a sip of her wine. “It just … feels weird. Maybe I didn’t expect anymore that this would actually happen. And now I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“You are exhausted. And I think you are in a fight-or-flight mindset at the moment. You are expecting a fight, so it’s making you feel unsettled that it’s not coming.” Josh smiled sadly. “I think you can afford to give Chimney one more chance, to hope one last time that he won’t disappoint you.”

“One more chance?” Maddie asked, biting her lip.

Josh nodded. “At some point you have to say, ‘This is enough!’ And I think you have reached that point. Just by seeing how unsettled you feel right now about Chimney staying away for a change.”

“Shouldn’t I tell him about that at least?”

Josh huffed. “No. And honestly, didn’t you do that already? Before you ever started dating him even?”

Maddie made a face. “There wasn’t a child involved then, though. I … I have thought about breaking off all contact with him, and how that would work. I don’t see it working at all, not without taking Jee-Yun’s father away from her. I can’t do that. I can’t have her grow up without her father.”

“Why not?” Josh asked.

“He is her father!”

Josh sighed. “I’d like to propose a thought experiment, though it might be a little offensive, and I know it’s not an accurate comparison.”

Maddie frowned. “Okay.”

“Let’s say you’d had a child with Doug,” Josh said and Maddie flinched. “And let’s say as awful as he was to you, he had been a good and loving father. Would you have brought up the same argument just because this child was his and you had to find a way for that child to stay in contact with him?”

“No.” Maddie didn’t even need to think about it.

“This isn’t much different,” Josh said. “Not when having contact with Chimney is affecting your mental health in such a way that it’s endangering you. Because if your mental health is compromised, your daughter’s will be as well.”

“So far Anne and John have been handling everything so that Jee-Yun can spend an equal amount of time with each of us,” Maddie whispered. She pulled her feet onto the seat and wrapped her arms around her knees. “We can hardly expect them to do that until Jee-Yun is old enough to make the way from one apartment to the other on her own, though.”

“Have they said something like that?” Josh asked.

When Maddie turned her head to look at him, he had raised his brows and cocked his head to the side in a way she knew meant he thought she was being an idiot.

“No.”

Josh huffed. “They have taken on a grandparent role for her, right? And they have done so happily?”

“Yeah,” Maddie shrugged.

“So, trust them to actually be grandparents,” Josh said. “That does include stepping in for their grandchild in those situations where the parents can’t be there for that child for whatever reason.”

Maddie took a deep breath.

“I know your parents are really shitty examples, but from what you have told me about the Lees they are nothing like your parents. They took in Chimney as their own, didn’t they? And they happily accepted you into their family, and continue to do so even now when Chimney and you are broken up.”

“I know,” Maddie whispered. “It’s just…”

“It’s hard to trust people,” Josh said quietly.

Maddie shrugged and then nodded. She hated sometimes how difficult it had become to trust people, and how normal it had become for her to doubt people’s words and actions. It was even more difficult when she really thought about the origins of her trust issues while talking about it in therapy, and she realized she could trace it all the way back to Daniel becoming sick and her parents making promises only to break them.

“So, make a contingency plan,” Josh said. “Just in case they do change their mind at one point. I don’t believe they will, but having alternate plans will make you feel better. And they will come in handy in any case if something happens or they get too old to still provide the help they are right now.”

Maddie blew out a breath. “I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know what such a plan could look like.”

Josh hummed quietly. “We’ll come up with something, even if it takes a little while. You don’t need to have an answer right at this moment.”

Maddie smiled and rested her chin on her knees. She felt the tears gathering in her eyes and blinked against them. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“You aren’t alone,” Josh said. “You have friends, and not just me, even though you might not feel that way sometimes.”

“I made a new friend, even,” Maddie said. “Someone I met in the Korean class I’m attending. We’ve gone to get coffee after every class so far. And next week she’ll probably meet Jee-Yun and me when we are done with the baby swim class.”

“That sounds great.”

Maddie sighed. “It is. And it somehow … It just happened, and it was so easy.”

Josh chuckled. “Of course it was easy. It wasn’t difficult when we became friends either, was it? I think what you need the most is to learn to trust yourself again. And from what I’ve seen, you are on a good way there.”

“I’m not sure I ever really trusted myself with anything,” Maddie murmured.

“And that has your parents’ horrible behavior written all over it,” Josh said. “I’m glad to see how much progress you’re making in overcoming that.”

“It’s startling sometimes to recognize during therapy how many of the things in my life that I’ve been unhappy about for such a long time all go back to my childhood. I don’t want that for Jee-Yun. But with this whole fight with Chimney, I don’t see how I can prevent it.”

“I think that a big part of the reason you are fighting with Chimney at all is to make sure your daughter won’t grow up having to fight the demons her parents handed down to her,” Josh said. “Establishing those boundaries now instead of later on in her life is important, because I’m positive that as long as you are keeping any fights far away from her, she won’t be negatively impacted by the situation right now in the long run. Have you talked about those worries with your therapist?”

“Not really.” Maddie shrugged. “Not in any kind of detail, at least.”

“Then you should put that on your list.”

Maddie bit her lip, grinning. “Yeah, okay. That’s probably true. I’ve been more concerned with talking about finding a new apartment lately.”

“You are looking to move out of here?”

Maddie nodded. “Jee-Yun will need her own room sooner rather than later. We always knew this wasn’t a place where we could raise a child long term, but we didn’t want the stress of a move while I was pregnant. And I’m glad now we hadn’t already found a new apartment for us together. I’m not sure I’d have been comfortable staying there. I’m honestly really looking forward to a place that’s just mine and Jee-Yun’s.”

“Have you already started looking?”

Maddie sighed. “Not with as much dedication as I probably should. It’s difficult to find time and energy for it around everything else, and doing it alone is an additional burden.”

“I’d be happy to come with you to look at places,” Josh said. “I’m sure Linda would be happy to volunteer for that as well. And I can’t imagine Buck would tell you no.”

Maddie shook her head. “I don’t want to bother Buck with that. He’s busy with his own family.”

Josh hummed. “Okay. Then Linda and I will help you with that. Do you already know what you are looking for?”

Maddie laughed. “You can’t just volunteer Linda without asking her!”

Josh raised his brows, pulled out his phone, and started to type without saying anything. Maddie huffed, but his phone chimed with an answering message almost immediately. Josh sent her a triumphant grin, and then he was holding the phone out between them, the dialing tone over the speaker only sounding twice before Linda picked up.

“Hey Maddie, Josh! I heard something about planning a house hunting?”

Maddie dropped her forehead against her knees, laughing. “Hey, Linda.”

“Maddie was just about to tell me what she is looking for,” Josh said grinning. “And I thought it would be good if you were part of that discussion right away, instead of Maddie having to repeat it later all over again.”

Linda laughed. “Agreed. Though, next time I’m expecting an invitation to dinner and wine as well. And of course to play with the little angel! Your daughter is the best of your whole deal now, Maddie. No contest. That’s the burden of parenthood!”

“You don’t have to offer help just because Josh pushed you into it,” Maddie said.

Linda huffed. “Do you really think that badly of me? I’m offering help because you are my friend! And of course, because helping you house hunt and move will give me lots of opportunities to steal your daughter for a couple of hours!”

Maddie grinned and inhaled deeply, feeling happiness bubble up inside her that she wasn’t quite sure she would ever get used to.

Chapter 14

Maddie stopped in front of the door leading to the Lees’ backyard for a moment to gather her thoughts. Chimney was already waiting for her outside and she watched him for a moment, biting her lip and overcome by doubt. She wasn’t sure if she was ready for this meeting, but Jee-Yun’s birthday was only a week away, and they were at a point in planning her DoljanchiDoljanchi traditional Korean celebration of a child’s first birthday where Maddie felt she needed Chimney’s input. It would also be a good test to see if his apparent resolve to accept her boundaries would hold even after she had made a step in his direction.

When Maddie finally opened the door, Chimney turned his head to look at her and jumped up as soon as their gazes met. He stayed where he was, though, rubbing his hands together nervously and waiting until she had come near enough that they wouldn’t need to shout to hear each other.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted out.

Maddie stopped and stared at Chimney open-mouthed. She hadn’t expected an apology, and she especially hadn’t expected him to sound this miserable.

“What for, exactly?” she asked warily.

Chimney swallowed visibly. “Everything? I mean, there is a lot I’m sorry for, a lot I shouldn’t have done.” He took a deep breath and straightened his back. “Most of all for how I behaved since you came home. Especially for … our last argument. I … should have left when you asked me to, and there is no excuse for why I didn’t.”

Maddie nodded slowly. “There really isn’t. I’m glad you see that now.”

Chimney sighed and lowered his head. “Yeah. So, I’m really sorry for that. And I promise you it won’t happen again. I probably can’t promise to never be a dick again, but I won’t be that kind of dick again. I don’t want … I’d never want you to feel threatened by me, and looking back now I know that’s how I made you feel.”

“But you didn’t know in the moment,” Maddie said.

She crossed her arms over her chest in such a way that she could hide her shaking fists from him. If he thought that last statement was reassuring, he was very much mistaken. Until she had gone to Burbank, there had been no one in her life who had known more about her time with Doug than Chimney. That he hadn’t recognized her emotional state at that moment with everything he knew was not a point in his favor.

“I don’t know.” Chimney shrugged and carded his fingers through his hair. “Maybe I didn’t want to see it. Because I very clearly see it looking back now. I … John keeps telling me I have been much too focused on only seeing my side in the whole situation, and maybe he is right.”

“That does sound about right, yeah,” Maddie agreed. “I was glad when you followed my request not to reach out to me again until I called you.”

Chimney shrugged silently.

“Let’s sit down,” Maddie suggested and waved at the recliners. “Probably more comfortable. And we have a couple of things to talk through.”

Chimney stared at her for a moment with a little frown before he nodded and sat down. Maddie sighed deeply and chose a place on a recliner that was a little farther away from Chimney. He was clearly unhappy about something, and she assumed it was about her not just accepting his apology. She wanted to, and before she had left in the fall, she would have accepted his apology at face value, but she had worked too hard on herself in the past few months to still do that. Chimney had broken her trust in more ways than she could count, and a simple apology couldn’t bring that back.

“May I ask what brought on that change in your behavior?” Maddie asked.

“A friend gave me a wake-up call,” Chimney muttered. “And asked me some very uncomfortable questions over and over again until I relented and gave an honest answer instead of what I wanted to be true. And then he got Hen and they teamed up against me.”

Maddie bit her tongue. That didn’t tell her as much as she would have liked, but maybe knowing about Chimney’s journey wasn’t something she had any right to.

“I’ve been looking into another therapy plan,” Chimney continued quietly. “I’ve finished the therapy the court and the LAFD mandated, but … honestly, that didn’t do anything. And Eli and Hen made me see that some of the things I feel aren’t … they are neither good nor normal.”

“What kind of things?”

Chimney inhaled deeply. “I’m angry about a lot of things I shouldn’t be angry about. And … I don’t know. My mind keeps going back to planning our shared future when you’ve made it clear that won’t be happening. I can’t seem to stop. I just … forget somehow how much has changed between us.”

“What I’m getting from this is that me cutting contact with you was the right thing to do and it helped you to come to grips with some things,” Maddie said. “And that we should keep that arrangement exactly as it is for the moment.”

Chimney flinched. “That’s not what I want.”

“I know. But it clearly is what both of us need. Because honestly, I’m not very comfortable sitting here with you.”

Chimney looked up and looked first at her and then at the recliner sitting empty between them. “Yeah, I got that.”

Maddie sighed. “So, we’ll go back to no contact until we are both in a more stable place emotionally.”

“Do you really think that is the best course of action?” Chimney asked hesitantly. “I … had hoped we would go looking for apartments together after all. One for each of us, of course. I still haven’t started looking for one yet, and the commute from here to the 217 is horrible.”

Maddie took a deep calming breath. “I don’t want you anywhere near my new apartment, Chimney. For the time being, I’ll probably not even tell you where it is once I find one.”

Chimney flinched and turned half away from her.

“Anne and John have been a really great help with bringing Jee-Yun from me to you and back, and they have both assured me several times that they’ll continue to do that even after you have moved out of here,” Maddie said. “Albert, too, for that matter. And I don’t … It’s become very, very difficult to trust you, Chimney. For a little while there, I wasn’t even sure if I could return to the apartment after our last argument.”

“I’m so sorry,” Chimney murmured.

“I hear you,” Maddie said quietly, her voice breaking at the end. She cleared her throat. “But it will take time to believe you. And until I reach that point, until I can trust you again with certain things, I don’t want you to know where I live. I … haven’t talked about that part with Albert or the Lees yet, but I know they’ll honor my decision if I ask them not to tell you where my new apartment is.”

Chimney nodded slowly. “I understand.”

“Good.” Maddie sighed. “I’m glad about your plans to continue therapy. Because I think that’s the only way we’ll ever be able to reach a point where we can be friends again. And where we can be co-parents for Jee-Yun without either of us suffering for it. Because I think right now we are both very uncomfortable and hurt from just seeing each other.”

Chimney exhaled slowly. “Yeah.”

“I think there won’t ever come a time in my life when I’m not going to therapy anymore, at least every other month or something like that,” Maddie continued. “My life has been too fucked up from the very beginning, really, to ever get over all of that. And we both owe it to our daughter to heal so that we can be good parents for her.”

“I know.” Chimney rubbed his hands over his face. He braced his elbows on his knees at the end and buried his face in his hands. “It’s difficult to recognize that I might really need that kind of healing.”

Maddie laughed mirthlessly. “Honestly, I think every adult needs that kind of healing. No one leads a perfect life without any mental pain or psychological damage. It’s just ignored for the most part because it’s still so taboo to talk about psychological problems.”

Chimney shrugged.

“Let’s talk about Jee-Yun’s birthday,” Maddie said.

“Do you think any kind of party is a good idea if you and I aren’t really talking to each other at the moment?” Chimney asked, raising his head to look at her with a little frown.

“Do you think it’s impossible for us to spend an afternoon together with our family and mutual friends and ignore the problems we have to deal with for a few hours?” Maddie cocked her head. “We weren’t able to celebrate Jee-Yun being born last year because of the pandemic. I would really like to do that now. I think she deserves to be welcomed into this world with a proper party. It’s the kind of memory I crave to have of my child.”

“You are the one who can barely bear to be in my presence,” Chimney muttered darkly.

Maddie smiled sadly. “No, I think it’s as painful for you as it’s for me, though for very different reasons.”

“I miss you,” Chimney said.

“I know. I miss the idea of the future we had.” Maddie shrugged. “At some point I’m sure I’ll start missing you. Which will be the point for me to try to become your friend again.”

Chimney watched her with an expression she couldn’t quite place.

“That was an exercise during therapy. To determine what exactly I miss about our time together. And what things I would have expected to miss, what things I would like to get back. And that’s definitely your friendship.”

Chimney smiled, and while it was very small and wary, it was still hopeful.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you have to face the same question at one point,” Maddie said. “But that’s also the reason I really want to go through with the Doljanchi for Jee-Yun, even if it will be exhausting for both of us and probably bittersweet a lot. We are both in a really bad place mental health wise right now, but that shouldn’t stop us from putting that aside for a day and celebrating our family, even though that family won’t be what we planned it to be originally.”

Chimney blew out a breath and stood, starting to pace around the yard while clearly keeping as much space between them as possible. Maddie watched him worriedly, thankful for the consideration he was showing. She felt sad for how clearly troubled he was, but she also knew there wasn’t anything she could do to help him with that. Those were things he needed to figure out by himself.

After several minutes, Chimney rubbed his hands over his head, disturbing his previously very meticulously groomed hair. He nodded. “No, you are right. I know this is important to you, and we really should be able to put aside our hurt feelings for a couple of hours. And maybe it will also be a reminder of what we are working for.”

Maddie couldn’t hold back her sigh of relief.

“It’s mostly all planned already, isn’t it?”

Maddie shrugged. “You said not to bother you with it when we talked about it last time. And Anne has been a great help with everything. I think she’s really giddy to get to prepare another DoljanchiDoljanchi traditional Korean celebration of a child’s first birthday. She keeps getting out all these old pictures of your Doljanchi and of Kevin’s.”

Chimney stopped mid-stride and turned to her with wide eyes. “Mine?”

“Your mom left her all your baby pictures. And she’s been proudly showing them off whenever Albert or I can’t distract her fast enough. So, practically every single time we have talked about Jee-Yun’s Doljanchi. You were a cute baby.”

Chimney blinked and blushed. “I didn’t know the Lees had those pictures.”

“Maybe you should ask about them,” Maddie said softly. “Anne has had a lot of stories about your early childhood she got from your mom. Things you have probably long forgotten. And then there are of course all those stories about your childhood she knows from her own experience.”

“Yeah.” Chimney closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I might do that.”

“Anne insisted on sewing Jee-Yun’s Dolbok herself,” Maddie said. “She is apparently nearly done, but she hasn’t shown it to me yet.”

“I remember that she did the same for Kevin,” Chimney murmured. “This is … I … We really can’t cancel it!”

Maddie raised her brows.

Chimney waved a hand around. “I mean … Anne’s involvement in this way is huge, you get that, right?”

“She is Jee-Yun’s grandmother in all the ways that matter,” Maddie said. “I didn’t need her involvement in preparing the Doljanchi as proof of that.”

Chimney rubbed a hand over the back of his head. “I might have needed it.”

Maddie smiled sadly. “Really?”

“I…” Chimney trailed off with a shrug.

“There might be no blood connection, but you are their son in all the ways that matter as well.”

Chimney turned away from her, but not in time to fully hide his tears.

“You still doubt that,” Maddie murmured.

Chimney shrugged silently.

Maddie sighed and resolved to talk about this with Anne and John to make sure they dealt with it. She didn’t know what to tell Chimney to reassure him, and it probably wasn’t her place to fix this anyway.

“You are right that we are practically done with all the preparations,” Maddie said after a moment. “We’ll have it here in the house. The only two things we really need to still agree on are the exact date and who we’ll invite. You are on shift on Jee-Yun’s birthday. It will probably be a little crazy to find a day where no one is on shift.”

Chimney laughed quietly, and Maddie was grateful that it sounded honestly happy. “The perils of everyone you know working on some kind of shift schedule. Has to be a day C shift is working.”

“Let’s decide who we want to have there first,” Maddie said.

Chimney nodded. “The Lees and Albert of course.” He returned to the recliner to sit down again.

Maddie nodded and took a deep breath. “Buck.”

Chimney made a face for a moment before he nodded. “I guess. Heard he is hooking up with Eddie now, so him and Chris as well?”

“Buck has reservations about that part,” Maddie said hesitantly. “I’d like to invite Eddie and Chris as well, because as much as I was surprised by that development, I think it’s a lot more than a hook-up for both of them. Jee-Yun and I went to the zoo with Chris and Buck, and Buck is clearly there to stay in Chris’ life.”

Chimney shrugged. “What kind of reservations?”

Maddie raised her brows. “You really have to ask? Buck doesn’t want Chris to see any kind of hostility between the pair of you.”

“And of course, I’m the one to be worried about in that scenario?” Chimney asked darkly.

“For Buck, sure. For yourself, that might be different, of course.”

“And for you?” Chimney asked.

Maddie watched Chimney for a long moment before she said, “Right now? I’m more worried about you, yes. The only time I’ve ever seen Buck lose his cool was during that trice damned visit of our parents I somehow thought would be a good idea. Though, I might be more worried about Eddie as well if we invite Chris and him.”

Chimney clenched his teeth. “I’m sure we can manage to not talk to each other for those few hours. But I’ll expect them to keep their distance as well. I won’t avoid them if they start to crowd me!”

Maddie nodded and forced her smile not to waver. “I’ll make sure they know what I expect of them. So, Buck, Eddie, and Chris are all three on the list. Hen, Karen, and Denny, I assume?”

“Of course.” Chimney sighed. “And I think that might already be everyone from the 118.”

“Not Bobby?” Maddie asked surprised.

Chimney shook his head. “I don’t think we were as close friends as I thought. And this will be a small family gathering, right? Just our closest friends?”

Maddie bit her lip with a frown, wondering what had happened between Bobby and Chimney. “Yes, just family and our closest friends. I’d like to invite Josh as well, and that’s everyone from my side already.”

“I’d have suggested Eli if he was still here, but I don’t have anyone else either.”

“Not your new captain? I thought he’s an old friend as well.”

Chimney shrugged. “Sure. But not that tight of a friend, and he wouldn’t know anyone but Hen. I think that would be more awkward than anything else.”

“I think that’s a very reasonable number of guests,” Maddie said. “Any more and I’d probably start feeling very overwhelmed fast. I’m still struggling a little with that sometimes.”

“So, we need a day where C shift is working and Josh isn’t on shift,” Chimney said.

“Me either,” Maddie said. “I’m starting back at work the day before Jee-Yun’s birthday. We pulled my start date forward a little bit because someone on my usual shift will be out for at least a month.”

Chimney smiled hesitantly. “You looking forward to that?”

Maddie grinned. “Very much. I couldn’t bear working when I quit, but now I’m so very relieved I can go back to something I know is so satisfying for me.”

***

Chimney thumbed through the leaflet with information about the building and available apartments with a frown. On paper, the apartment they were currently visiting had looked good, but he noticed now that he had overlooked the missing details in the floor plan that would have already told him that coming here was a waste of time. He should have known that apartment hunting would be just as horrible as the last time. It was the third apartment complex Albert and he were looking at now, and every single one had been a disappointment.

“Not good either, huh?” Albert asked, leaning against the kitchen counter and watching Chimney.

Chimney sighed. “The bathroom is way too small. And I don’t like how the second bedroom is laid out. When Jee-Yun eventually progresses to a bigger bed the whole room would feel cramped.”

“So, onto the next one it is. We have three more on our list today and then we need to make a new list,” Albert said. “For another day, though. We’ll have to hurry if we want to get through all three that are left today.”

Chimney nodded. “I hate looking for apartments!”

“I begin to understand why,” Albert said laughing. “How long did it take you last time to find your apartment?”

Chimney made a face as they left the place and walked down the stairs. “Not long, but that was also … I moved out of the Lees’ house just after Kevin died. I knew I didn’t have much time.”

“They wouldn’t have kicked you out without having something of your own, though,” Albert said with a frown.

Chimney rolled his eyes. “I know that now. Back then I was … convinced they couldn’t stand to see me anymore. It was my fault that Kevin was dead after all.” Part of it had also been that he hadn’t been able to face them anymore. Seeing them every day, being reminded of the pain he had caused them, had been even more horrible than losing Kevin. Even now that pain sometimes hit him in unexpected moments while spending time with them.

“You weren’t responsible for his accident,” Albert said. “He made the decision to protect someone else on a call, and he knew the risk. We all know the risks of the job we do. We had a very thorough education about that in the academy. I don’t think that changed much from back then when you and Kevin went through the course.”

“He followed me to the academy,” Chimney said, the old guilt and pain coiling tightly in his chest and making it difficult to breathe. “Which makes it at least in part my fault he died. But I really don’t want to talk about it, and I already know Anne and John have a different view than me on this.”

Albert huffed. “A very different view. They don’t blame you. And from all I have seen and heard, they never did.”

Chimney glared at him. “I said, I don’t want to talk about it!”

Albert raised his hand defensively. “Alright. It’s my turn to drive, by the way.”

Chimney rolled his eyes and tossed him the keys to his car.

“One last thing and then I’ll drop the subject of Kevin, okay? I think you really need to include that in your therapy. Talk about it with someone who is impartial, and who can help you work through your grief. And with that said, the topic is done. You really lucked out with your old apartment, though, if you didn’t take much time to look.”

Chimney clenched his teeth and got into the car without saying anything. He hated how everyone kept telling him what he should or shouldn’t talk about in therapy. Though he had only complained about it to Hen so far, and she had pulled back considerably on that front afterwards. She still clearly had her opinions about it, but she only offered them now when he explicitly asked. He probably should tell everyone else off as well at some point and request that they leave him alone to worry about his therapy. After visiting both therapists for a first appointment recently, he had only just decided the other day which one to choose, and he had a follow-up appointment scheduled to talk about a detailed treatment plan.

“I was also only looking for a place for myself back then,” Chimney said long after Albert had driven the car out of the parking lot. “But you are right, I still had a lot of luck with the one I found. I expect it to take a lot longer to find something suitable this time. It needs to be someplace where Jee-Yun can grow up instead of a bachelor’s pad.”

“And Maddie and you have restricted the search to places somewhere between the dispatch center and the 217,” Albert said. “That won’t make it easier.”

“We’ll both need to be able to bring Jee-Yun to school before our shifts start when that time comes, so we can’t live too far apart,” Chimney said darkly. “Would be easier if we looked for apartments together and could coordinate about it.”

Albert sighed without any further comment.

Chimney stared out of the window to the side, not keen on bringing up that discussion again either. Accepting Maddie’s request that he not know where her new apartment was for the time being was in his mind not the same as not complaining about it to his brother, especially about the logistical nightmare it would be. He understood her—and he was painfully aware that her decision about it was solely his fault—and he wouldn’t ever try to argue about it with her. But that didn’t mean he had to like it, though neither Albert nor Hen had been even a little bit sympathetic with him when he had brought it up just to vent about it.

“Maddie just started looking for herself,” Albert said. “I know she is looking at places tomorrow with Josh and Linda. But neither of you is in much of a hurry, right?”

“I don’t know. I’d rather be done with looking for a new apartment than spend months on the search.”

Albert laughed. “Sure. But finding the perfect place is important, isn’t it?”

“Is there such a thing as a perfect place?” Chimney muttered unhappily.

“Wow.” Albert still laughed. “Where did you hide that pessimism so far? Weren’t you all excited this morning to look at a new place of your own, or was that all just for show?”

“That was before we started looking and everything was just not it,” Chimney muttered.

“Maybe the next place will be better. Don’t lose your hope yet. We have just started looking!”

Chimney sighed.

Albert sobered up and turned to look at him at the next red light. “We are five minutes out from the next place according to the GPS. Care to share what’s really brought on that foul mood?”

“You aren’t my therapist,” Chimney said darkly.

“Yeah, and I’m very glad about that. Doesn’t mean I’m not here to listen to you, and at least to try to give advice.”

Chimney shrugged and was silent for a long time. When Albert had parked the car and killed the engine with neither of them leaving the car, Chimney blew out a deep breath and said, “Last time I moved out of the Lees’ house felt like my life was ending.”

“In a way it was from what I’ve heard about it, right?” Albert said quietly.

Chimney stared stubbornly out of the front window even though Albert had turned to him again. “I lost my whole family back then, and it’s just the same all over again right now.”

“You haven’t lost your family,” Albert whispered. “I’m still here. Anne and John are still here. Jee-Yun is still here. Hen is still here. And I know eventually Maddie and you will figure out this co-parenting thing, and maybe even a friendship. Your family doesn’t hinge on the state of your relationship with one person. Even if Maddie wouldn’t want to see you ever again, the rest of us would still be here with you.”

“I know that,” Chimney said through gritted teeth. “But it doesn’t feel that way.”

Albert sighed and put a hand on Chimney’s shoulder, squeezing it tightly. “I’m so sorry about how difficult the situation is for you right now. And I honestly don’t know what I can do to make you feel better, but I’m here, okay?”

Chimney shrugged and rubbed his hands over his thighs.

“Would you rather continue to stay with the Lees?”

Chimney huffed. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m pretty sure at some point sooner or later they will ask me to leave. Rather sooner than later.”

“I’d not be so sure about that,” Albert said. “They aren’t getting younger either. Having someone in the house to help them with certain tasks could appeal to them. And they have already created a room for Jee-Yun. You have your own room and bathroom there, and neither of them has said anything about you moving out. That’s all always coming from you.”

Chimney frowned and shrugged. It was true, Jee-Yun had had her own room in the Lees’ house since he had moved in with them to let Maddie have their apartment. While he had moved into the guest room that had previously been occupied by Albert, Jee-Yun had gotten her own room upstairs, even though she mostly slept in the crib in his room the nights she spent with him. Chimney was still often startled to venture upstairs to his daughter’s room, following the same tracks he had followed so often while growing up when he had gone to Kevin’s room.

That room had officially been a guest room for a long time, but Chimney didn’t believe Anne and John had ever truly let a guest spend a night in Kevin’s old room. Now it had been converted into a room for Jee-Yun with more toys than he thought any little kid needed, but Anne had tartly informed him it was the privilege of grandparents to spoil a child and that they already knew where to donate the toys and clothes after Jee-Yun grew out of them.

“I can’t stay with them indefinitely,” Chimney eventually said quietly. “I need my own space. And the commute to the 217 isn’t feasible long term.”

“Okay. But I still stand by what I said. Anne and John won’t ever kick you out of their house,” Albert said. “Wouldn’t be surprised to learn you are in their will to inherit the house. But that’s another conversation altogether. So, if you don’t feel ready to move out, we can table this whole looking at new apartments for a little while. Wait until you feel more comfortable in your skin again.”

“Maybe I just feel like shit because the last three apartments were one big disappointment,” Chimney muttered.

Albert chuckled sadly. “I don’t think that’s true. I know we closed this topic previously, but you are the one who brought it up again, so … you are clearly struggling with unprocessed trauma here, Chimney. Comparing this move to your last move when it isn’t the same at all.”

Chimney blew out a breath.

“You are an emotional mess right now,” Albert said quietly. “And you have barely started to recognize that and deal with it. No one will fault you for taking some time before dealing with the next big thing. And getting a new apartment is pretty big.”

Chimney shook his head. “It really isn’t that big, finding the right one is just annoying. Let’s look at this one to get the disappointment over with.” He left the car without waiting for Albert, and hoped his brother got the message that he didn’t want to revisit that topic any time soon.

***

Maddie trailed her hands over the top of the kitchen island with a small smile. She had already decided that this apartment wasn’t what she was looking for, but the kitchen might very well still change her mind. She had found a newfound joy in cooking since Anne had started to teach her family recipes. She had lost her joy for cooking somewhere between moving out of her parents’ house when she had started college and the whole ordeal that her years with Doug had been, and she hadn’t expected to ever find it again.

As a teenager, she had enjoyed trying out new things, and Evan had always been happy to be her taste tester, sometimes being much more honest about it than she had anticipated or appreciated. She hadn’t ever had a chance to teach him to cook despite the promises she had once made, but she was looking forward now to teaching Jee-Yun eventually, and to having Buck teach her daughter as well. She needed a kitchen big enough that two or three people could work in it comfortably for that.

“Maybe you should take another look at the bedrooms before you are seduced by the kitchen,” Linda said, which startled Maddie out of her thoughts.

Maddie huffed and rolled her eyes. “No, I remember perfectly that they are both entirely too small. And I’m not happy about the security of this building either. I would like to take this kitchen and put it in my dream apartment, though.”

Linda laughed and rocked Jee-Yun in her arms. “I’m sure we’ll find something that has a perfect kitchen and a nearly perfect everything else.”

“Not a fully perfect everything else?” Maddie asked with raised brows.

Linda looked at her skeptically. “Sure, if you want to still be looking when Jee-Yun starts high school we can wait for the perfect apartment to come around. Or to be built.”

Maddie made a face at her which delighted a laugh out of Jee-Yun. “You are horrible!”

“Hey, you should be a little nicer to your daughter’s new best friend!” Linda protested.

“That will only hold true until she sees Chris again,” Maddie said. “That was love at first sight for both of them.”

“Chris is basically her cousin, that doesn’t count,” Linda said with a pout.

“You really are just here to hog my daughter, huh?” Maddie asked, laughing loudly. “You haven’t pointed out anything good or bad about any of the apartments we looked at that Josh and I hadn’t already pointed out.”

“Of course. I’d also be happy to babysit whenever you need someone to look after her,” Linda said. “And you should be glad I’m here. Looking at apartments with a child in tow can be really difficult. This way I can keep Jee-Yun entertained, and Josh and you can concentrate on the important details of apartment hunting. Like not getting distracted by the perfect kitchen to such a degree that you forget the rest of the apartment isn’t child friendly at all.”

Maddie turned around to take one last look at her dream kitchen before she turned her back to it with a deep sigh. “Let’s go and hunt down Josh to get to the next apartment. This is really not as much fun as I thought it would be.”

Linda bumped her shoulder against Maddie’s as they left the apartment to look for Josh, who had gone to inspect the underground garage of the building. “You thought apartment hunting would be fun?”

“In my defense, this is only the second time I’m looking for an apartment of my own,” Maddie said. “And the last time Buck just knew someone who could arrange an apartment where I could put in the security I wanted. Not that that did any good in the end.”

“And Buck doesn’t know someone now?” Linda asked.

Maddie shrugged. “He did call the guy he had asked for help with my first apartment. And don’t ask me to explain how he keeps in contact with some random guy he met on a call. There are a couple of upper-scale restaurants he can get you a table in, even though they are usually booked out for months in advance. He said something about becoming the emergency in one of those himself, and how that kind of thing forges friendships.”

Linda bit her lip and turned her head away, but that didn’t hide her fit of laughter at all. “I know that story has been kept away from you at the dispatch center, but … Wow, how can you build a friendship out of that?”

Maddie frowned. “What has been kept away from me?”

“It’s a little bit of an urban legend mixed with a cautionary tale, because one of the dispatchers got into a little bit of trouble over it. Not a lot because it didn’t have any negative consequences for your brother, but still. He was dating that dispatcher at the time, right?”

Maddie nodded. “Abby. It was their first date, even. Should’ve recognized that as the bad omen it was.”

“So, she requested a friend when she called 9-1-1 and convinced that friend to help her with an emergency tracheotomy. Which worked, and probably saved Buck from more severe consequences, but it’s still something that should not have been done by someone without the right training. It’s one of those examples of ‘do not repeat the mistakes of your predecessors’.”

Maddie huffed. “And one that was kept from me because everyone knew Buck was my brother before I even set foot in Dispatch, great. But that explains even less about how he is good enough friends with the owner of that restaurant now to get a table there whenever he wants one. At least that’s what he says. Maybe it was just big talk.”

Linda raised her brows mockingly. “Would he do that?”

Maddie sighed. “No.”

“Would who do what?”

Maddie flinched and pressed her hand against her chest as she whirled around to glare at Josh. “Would you not sneak up on us like that?”

“Sorry?” Josh grinned sheepishly. “Though, to be fair, I didn’t really sneak. It’s a definite no from me on this building, by the way, even if they had another apartment with bigger bedrooms available. That underground parking garage is a big fat no.”

Maddie signed. “Yeah, I figured. For me, too. I vote for a lunch break. This is a terrible endeavor, but at least I have the two of you with me. Please tell me you’ll always come with me to look at apartments!”

Josh wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “We won’t leave you alone with the terrible nightmare that is apartment hunting. And I agree about lunch. Linda?”

“I saw a deli around the corner when we drove up here,” Linda said. “The next apartment isn’t too far away either, is it? We can walk to the deli and then to the next apartment from there. The neighborhood is no less important than the apartment itself.”

Maddie nodded. “Sounds good. The next apartment on my list is a ten-minute walk from here. Let’s get the stroller out of the car and head to that deli.”

“You can get the stroller, but I’m keeping the baby,” Linda stated, and then whispered something to Jee-Yun that made her laugh and wave her arms. In the end, she wrapped her arms around Linda’s neck and pressed a kiss against her cheek.

“You hadn’t put the kitchen as something important on the list,” Josh said. He let go of Maddie as they reached the door and held it open for them. “Which was clearly an oversight on your part.”

Maddie felt herself blush. “I didn’t know it would be important to me! Maybe I just fell in love with that one kitchen!”

“Or maybe we need to talk about the things that are important to you again,” Josh said. “Which is not a bad idea. You have seen a couple of apartments now, and there are other things like the kitchen that have turned out more important than we thought. You have also been much more critical about the layout of Jee-Yun’s future room than you were when we talked about what you’re looking for.”

Maddie cocked her head to the side as she pulled the stroller out of the back of her car before closing it again. “Really?”

“I noticed that, too,” Linda said. “You complained about both bedrooms in the first apartment having north-facing windows. Something about Jee-Yun needing to have the sun shine into her room for at least part of the day. Which I honestly don’t understand. No sun means it gets less hot.”

“No sun means she’ll sit in the dark the whole day!” Maddie said with a frown.

“Because she’ll sit in her room the whole day?” Josh asked with a small grin.

“On a day when she is sick, yeah.” Maddie huffed. “Sunlight is important!”

“So, no bedroom to the north for Jee-Yun,” Linda said chuckling. “Needs to go on our list and we can look at the layouts of the apartments we still want to look at today to double-check if we can strike any of them off that list without wasting a trip.”

Maddie pursed her lips. “Yeah, okay. I see your point. Anything else I didn’t notice was important?”

Josh tapped a finger against his temple. “I’ve kept a list. Also of things that seem to be less important than they seemed to be when we talked about what you are looking for.”

Maddie sighed as they turned down the street, led by Linda. “I would be so lost without you!”

“But that’s exactly the reason why you are not doing this alone!” Linda said. “We’ll find the perfect apartment for you, I’m sure of that.”

“Before Jee-Yun goes to high school?” Maddie asked desperately.

Josh turned to her wide-eyed. “What?”

Linda laughed. “Just a joke I made earlier. It might take a couple of months, but I’m positive we’ll find your new apartment before the year is even half over!”

Chapter 15

Chimney paused when Christopher suddenly appeared in front of him, his head leaning far back to look up at him with a small, thoughtful frown. The guests for Jee-Yun’s DoljanchiDoljanchi traditional Korean celebration of a child’s first birthday had arrived throughout the past half hour, and though Chimney had politely greeted Buck, Eddie, and Christopher as they had arrived, he had made sure to keep his distance otherwise.

Chimney relaxed a little when not only Eddie but also Albert ventured over to them, and Chimney hoped Christopher didn’t notice that. When they had arrived, Christopher had glared at him, pressing himself tightly to Buck, and Chimney hadn’t needed any more explanation for that. When Maddie and he had talked about including Eddie and Christopher in the invitation to Buck, he had not expected Christopher to be the one they needed to be worried about making a scene.

“Will there be a Doljabi today as well for Jee-Yun?”

Chimney chuckled, relaxing even further. “Yeah, of course. Albert will make his round shortly to take everyone’s bet. As if we’d pass up a chance to bet on something, even if it’s about a silly little fortune-telling game.”

Christopher nodded. “I’ve brought something for Jee-Yun to choose from!” He leaned one of his crutches against the wall and pulled out something from the small pouch he was wearing. “It’s from the zoo. And I think it stands for Jee-Yun’s love for animals. She loved the baby goats, but I think that was because she could pet them and not just watch them. I don’t think she can really decide on a favorite animal until she is much older!”

Albert squatted down in front of Christopher and took the goat figurine that was as big as his palm from Christopher. “Usually, the parents chose the items for the Doljabi, but I’m sure we can make an exception. Right, Chimney?”

“Of course,” Chimney said around the lump in his throat. He hadn’t asked about Maddie and Jee-Yun’s day at the zoo, mostly because he had been fighting against the hurt that came from missing out on such an outing. The trip had clearly left a deep impression on Chris, and Chimney felt torn between hating it even more for having missed it and being touched by Christopher’s clear acceptance of Jee-Yun as part of his family. He cleared his throat. “It’s a very lovely thought, Chris. Thank you.”

“You want to come with me when I’m taking everyone’s bets?” Albert asked. “I guess I can already make a note of what you are betting on.”

Christopher grinned brightly. “Yes, please!”

Albert nodded as he stood again.

“I’m voting for the goat, too,” Eddie said, chuckling. “I’ve seen the pictures. And heard all about the day at the zoo.”

“I’m voting for the stethoscope,” Chimney said, chin and brows raised. He’d ask Albert or Anne later to get him those pictures from Maddie. “Jee-Yun’s the daughter of a paramedic and a nurse, that’s really the only vote anyone should be able to make!”

“Duly noted,” Albert, said and winked at Eddie as he led Christopher away.

Chimney sighed and shoved his hand into his pockets, turning half away from Eddie. “I made a promise to Maddie about the three of you and I intend to keep it. I wouldn’t drag Chris into this anyway.”

“I was more concerned he would be dragging you into it,” Eddie said quietly. “He insisted on being told who had hurt Buck back in October. He guessed right eventually when we wouldn’t tell him. I didn’t know what his plans were when he came over to you.”

Chimney blew out a breath. “Okay.”

“I’m glad you invited Chris and me as well, despite everything else. He would have hated to miss his cousin’s big party.”

Chimney nodded, uncomfortable by the situation but also unsure of how he could end it, how he could turn away from Eddie without being rude. He was distracted by a delighted squeal of his daughter, followed by a loud shout of “Hal-beoji”. When Chimney turned to look for her, he found her perched on one of John’s shoulders, kicking her legs out and waving down to Hen and Karen.

Eddie chuckled. “That means Grandpa or something like that, right?”

“Near enough, at least. It should be HalabeojiHalabeojiGrandfather. She did manage it a couple of times already, but she likes to swallow all the middle syllables. It’s just been two days that she’s been calling John that. Anne is beyond put out that HalmoniHalmoniGrandmother didn’t come first.”

“I’m sure that’s coming soon,” Eddie said. “Especially if she is urging her on.”

“As long as they aren’t encouraging her to change her Papa for me to AppaAppaDad. I’m very happy to be Papa.”

“Don’t get too focused on that.” Eddie shook his head with a quiet laugh. “We tried teaching Chris to call me Papi. That worked fine in the beginning, but as soon as I came home for good I was suddenly Daddy and Dad. He hasn’t called me Papi a single time since. And one of my cousins started calling her father Paps when she was around eleven, and that held until she started college. So, in the end, they’ll decide all on their own what to call us, and we just have to roll with it.”

Chimney turned to Eddie with raised brows and a little huff. “I’ll keep that in mind. But I’ll still hope to remain Papa.”

Eddie grinned. “I still hope Chris will eventually call me Papi again. I’ll not bother you any longer. And thanks for accepting Chris’ offer even though it’s probably going against tradition.”

Chimney grinned. “No problem at all. I’m all for bending tradition to fit our own life. I hope he won’t be too disappointed when she doesn’t choose the goat, though.”

Eddie laughed and shrugged before he turned away. Chimney bit his tongue, holding back a last comment insisting Jee-Yun would choose the stethoscope. He didn’t have that kind of friendship with Eddie anymore, and he had known that since learning that Buck was dating Eddie now. It wasn’t a surprise—if anything, the surprise was how long it had taken them and that they had both taken detours through other relationships first. But it still hurt to have lost the camaraderie he had just gotten a glimpse of again. A year ago, he had been looking forward to talking with Eddie about their experiences of fatherhood, and now they weren’t talking at all.

Chimney turned to John, Hen, and Karen, intent on getting his daughter back until they would sit down to eat. He found Jee-Yun in Karen’s arms, though, when he reached them and resigned himself with a sigh to not getting her back any time soon.

“You know,” Karen said as soon as Chimney reached them. “I might just resent you a little for how stingy you have been with your daughter.” She adjusted how Jee-Yun was sitting on her hip. “You haven’t once visited us together with her yet.”

Chimney smiled tightly. It wasn’t the first time he heard something like that from friends, and he was tired of reminding them why Maddie and Jee-Yun had been sequestered away for such a long time. But he was glad to see how easily Jee-Yun accepted even strangers today, and how easy-going she was interacting with everyone. He had been a little worried about that when he had been on the road with Jee-Yun and had noticed how truly isolated she was. There hadn’t been anything he could have done back then, though.

“I’ll do better in the future,” Chimney promised. “I’ll even hire you as a babysitter when I need one. Not that we are in a short supply on that front.”

“It takes a village to raise a child,” John said. “And I think just part of the village Jee-Yun has available to her is gathered here today.”

“That’s true on both accounts,” Hen agreed. “I don’t know where we would be with Denny without all the help. And the village will just grow with every friend Jee-Yun makes. You have her in daycare now, right?”

Chimney nodded. “We’ll have our first playdate with a friend she made there next week. I’m more excited than I feel I should be.” He also was glad that it would be a first experience for Jee-Yun he would share with her, especially after having it rubbed into his face again that he had missed her first visit to the zoo. Chimney blew out a breath and resolutely pushed the pain away that threatened to overtake him when he thought about the fact that it would be another first only one of them would be a witness of, instead of Maddie and him both being there for it.

Hen chuckled and shook her head. “From my own experience, you’ll be at least as excited about all her firsts as she will be.” She hooked her arm with his and led Chimney away from Karen, John, and Jee-Yun, ignoring his quiet protest.

“I came over to steal my daughter back, you know? Not be dragged away from her again.”

Hen grinned. “I think she is very happy with Karen right now, and with all the attention in general. We’ll give her back when she is exhausted and grumpy. The un-fun part is always the thing the parents have to deal with instead of any aunts and uncles.”

“I don’t remember that with Denny!” Chimney complained. “I remember a lot of evenings babysitting where I had to deal with a grumpy baby!”

“That’s the disadvantage of being the last one in your friend group to enter parenthood,” Hen teased. “Everyone else already learned how to avoid grumpy babies and toddlers.”

“You are horrible and no longer my best friend!”

“All these lies!” Hen said mockingly before she sighed. She pulled him into the kitchen where they were a little separated from the rest of the party. “How are you doing?”

Chimney inhaled deeply and leaned against the counter, putting some distance between them. “I’m hanging in there, I think.”

“Eddie and Chris were okay?”

Chimney rolled his eyes. “I’m capable of having a civilized conversation even with people who resent me.”

Hen smiled sadly. “Which doesn’t mean you aren’t hurt by being shown the cold shoulder by people you care about. Chris is not subtle at all. I guess that’s something he still needs to learn.”

Chimney snorted. “No, I think the way he glared at me when they arrived was very deliberate on his part. I think he wanted to make a point. He was perfectly polite when he asked about the Doljabi. You might be missing out on placing your bet hiding out here with me. Albert and Chris are making their rounds about that right now.”

Hen laughed. “Karen and I already looked at the objects you and Maddie chose while Anne explained the Doljabi and the meaning of every object to Denny. And Karen and me, I guess, disguised by explaining it to our son instead. Karen knows how to place my bet.”

“Chris added a goat figurine,” Chimney said. “That’s why he came to talk to me. It shall stand for Jee-Yun’s future love for animals. He seems to think their outing to the zoo left a deep impression on her.”

Hen shook her head, grinning. “That boy is something else.”

“I appreciate your concern, but I’m good,” Chimney said softly. “The deal is to put aside all strife and pain for the day and to concentrate only on Jee-Yun. She deserves to be the center of attention today. And the rest of us deserve to have the memories of one day free of all worry and arguments.”

Hen pulled him into a fierce hug. “I’m glad you can see it that way and can also live by it. And I’m there tomorrow … uh, or whenever the next day is neither of us is on shift for you to complain to me about whatever you need to complain about.”

Chimney leaned into her hug, unable to say anything in return without betraying the tears he desperately tried to hide. He would need that opportunity to complain to his heart’s content to someone who would hold back their judgment unless he asked for it.

***

Maddie sat between Buck and Anne on the couch while the party gathered in the living room around the area where the coffee table usually stood. Albert and Chimney had carried it to the side before any of the guests had arrived, and Maddie and Anne had used it to create the Dolsang with all the food they had carefully prepared. Now the empty space was covered by a big sheet and Chimney had just placed the items they had chosen for the Doljabi on it, with one special addition that had made Maddie giggle several times already since she had seen it. She had changed her own bet after Christopher had made Albert show off the goat figurine.

Buck leaned into her and whispered, “I hope Chris’ idea was okay? I tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn’t have it.”

“I think it’s very cute,” Maddie said grinning.

Anne leaned over with a smile and patted Buck’s knee. “It’s perfectly all right.”

Buck nodded. “Thanks. I missed your explanation of the items earlier. I know the yarn is for a long life, right? The coins are for wealth, the stethoscope obviously for the hope Jee-Yun’ll follow either of her parents on a medical path.”

Maddie chuckled. “Chimney insisted, even though I’m not a nurse any longer.”

Buck bumped his shoulder against hers. “That’s the kind of profession that doesn’t leave you even if you aren’t actively working in it anymore, isn’t it? The pencil for a career as a scholar. The flute is obviously for musical talent. I hope you know that will be hell on your ears in the beginning, right?”

“I do remember your failed attempt to learn the guitar and the relief when you gave up,” Maddie agreed, smirking. She didn’t bother to tell him that she would probably be a lot more tolerant with Jee-Yun’s attempts to learn any instruments than she had been with him.

Buck lightly poked her with his elbow. “The rice stands for a life where she won’t lack for anything, right? The ball for talent in sports. And of course, Chris’ goat for her love of animals and maybe a career focused on them later on.”

Anne chuckled. “You got all of that right. As did Chris earlier when he explained it all to me instead of the other way around. You did a good job researching with him.”

“It’s something his mom apparently did with him,” Buck said quietly. “When he asked a question she didn’t know the answer to, she’d show him how she looked it up, reading aloud what she found and explaining any big words. It’s one of the positive memories of her he holds onto the most. Eddie has tried to keep that tradition up, but he sucks at research. At least according to Chris, who is very particular in how he wants his research to be done.”

“Keeping alive the memory of a lost parent is important,” Anne whispered with a sad smile. “It was great to see how interested Chris was in everything. He asked many questions about the Dolsang, why we had decorated as we had, and what the meaning of the items there was as well.”

“Quiet now,” Maddie shushed them when Chimney carried Jee-Yun to the sheet and sat her down in front of the items. Maddie grinned, overwhelmed once again by the Dolbok Anne had made for Jee-Yun. The skirt was dark green and the top was a very soft and light yellow that could in the right light nearly be mistaken for white. The skirt puffed up when Chimney sat Jee-Yun down, and Jee-Yun patted it with a giggle, completely uninterested in the Doljabi items in front of her at first.

She had been fascinated by the Dolbok ever since Maddie had dressed her in it around an hour before the guests had arrived. Every time Maddie had looked at her daughter since, if Jee-Yun hadn’t been distracted by the people around her, she had instead been playing with the fabric and rubbing her fingers over it.

“Look here!” Chimney patted the sheet in front of the items in a clear attempt to draw Jee-Yun’s attention to them. “You are supposed to choose one of these, not play with your Dolbok. Though we all have to agree with you, it’s the most beautiful one to ever exist!” He looked at Anne with a beaming smile for a moment, which made everyone laugh.

“I’m pretty sure that’s parental bias about the child wearing the Dolbok,” Anne said amused.

“Nah,” Chimney shook his head. “That’s all about the best HalmoniHalmoniGrandmother in the world who made it.”

When everyone laughed again, Jee-Yun clapped her hands, joining them in their joy and looking around at the circle of people gathered around her.

“See, Jee-Yun agrees as well,” Chimney said. “But now it’s your turn, sweetheart. Look at all these nice items.” He trailed his hands over the gathered objects and wasn’t subtle at all when he pushed the stethoscope a little more in Jee-Yun’s direction.

“No cheating!” Hen muttered from her place standing behind the couch Maddie was sitting on, but clearly loud enough for everyone to hear.

Chimney waved her off without even looking at her.

Jee-Yun leaned forward and started to inspect the items, a cute little frown on her face. Her face lit up as soon as she saw the goat figurine, and she nearly fell over herself as she stretched out both arms excitedly, grabbing the goat and with it the yarn right beside it because her fingers got tangled in it.

Chimney groaned, and his shoulders slumped down while Chris, sitting on the other couch beside Denny, cheered triumphantly.

“Who cheated now?” Chimney asked and turned to Christopher. “I don’t know how, but I know you did!”

Chris giggled. “Jee-Yun knows what’s good, that’s all.”

Jee-Yun turned in Christopher’s direction and waved the goat figurine at him, the yarn in her other hand tightly pressed against her chest. “Chis!”

Christopher beamed and slid down from the couch to his knees, crawling over to Jee-Yun. “You made the perfect choice, didn’t you?” He took the goat when Jee-Yun pressed it against his chest as soon as he sat beside her. “But next time we’re at the zoo, we need to start looking for a real favorite animal. Baby goats really don’t count for that.”

“I guess you don’t really need to worry about Chris not wanting to go to the zoo anymore,” Maddie whispered to Buck. “He clearly believes it to have an educational purpose concerning Jee-Yun.”

“She couldn’t say his name at all when we were at the zoo,” Buck said awed. “Though, she needs to work on her r.”

Maddie slapped Buck’s thigh. “Rs are difficult! Especially in the middle of a word. You couldn’t properly pronounce an r in the middle of words until you were four! Do not judge my daughter by a standard you couldn’t even meet yourself!”

Buck laughed. “It wasn’t a judgment, only an observation.”

“The first thing Jee-Yun will work on is saying HalmoniHalmoni Grandmother,” Anne said primly. “Rs can wait for a little while.”

Maddie was overtaken by a giggle fit and pulled Anne into a sideway hug. “She’ll learn that soon, don’t worry.”

With the attention diverting from Jee-Yun fast now that she had chosen her items and was already fully engrossed in whatever game Chris and Denny had pulled her into, the party guests spread out through the house again. Maddie listened for a while to Chimney and Albert’s bickering. Albert teased Chimney for not having placed the right bet, clearly enjoying reminding Chimney several times that he himself had bet on the yarn. Chimney, on the other hand, argued that technically no one had won the bet as no one had even thought to bet on two items.

A little while later, Maddie found herself sitting alone on the couch and completely engrossed in watching the children play. She enjoyed seeing how much care Christopher—and Denny as well—took with Jee-Yun, and how easy it was for Jee-Yun to interact with them despite their huge age gap. She hadn’t really made any friends in her own age group yet, though there were a couple of promising potentials in her daycare at least.

“Mind if I join you?”

Maddie looked up startled and found Karen holding two cups of tea and gesturing at the free space on the couch. She smiled at Karen and nodded. “Sure.”

Karen held out one of the cups to Maddie. “Anne asked me to bring this to you.”

“Thank you.” Maddie took a sip and closed her eyes in bliss while Karen sat down beside her. Anne was always doing some kind of magic with her tea, and one day she would hopefully figure out what exactly that was.

“How are you?”

Maddie cocked her head as she turned to Karen. “I’m good.”

Karen smiled softly. “That’s good to hear. You seemed a little lost sitting here by yourself.”

“I just enjoyed watching the kids,” Maddie said. “And I might have eaten too much, so staying seated is the best possible choice for me right now.”

Karen laughed. “Oh, I feel you. But that’s partly what an event like this is about, isn’t it? With all the food you put on the table that Anne clearly expected to all get eaten, that has to have been the only goal today.”

“True,” Maddie agreed grinning.

“I didn’t have a chance to ask Anne or John yet. What was so special about the soup in the beginning?”

Maddie grinned. “It’s called Miyeok Guk, and Anne used to bring over a new batch to heat up for me every other day the first two months or so after Jee-Yun was born. It is supposed to help with any healing after giving birth because of its nutritional value. I didn’t know that until we planned the meal for today and Anne told me about it. She said it’s tradition to eat this soup on your birthday to remember and honor the burden your mother carried before and after your birth.”

“That’s a lovely thought,” Karen said.

“I think it’s the only Korean tradition I’ve ever seen Chimney follow,” Maddie said. “He got some from a restaurant the day before and would heat it up for breakfast on his birthday.”

“If it’s about honoring his mother, I’m not surprised.”

Maddie smiled sadly. “Yeah.”

Karen sighed deeply. “I would like to think that Chimney and you are both my friends independently of each other, yes?”

Maddie raised her brows and turned to Karen so she could look at her without having to crane her neck. “Yes, I think so, too.”

Karen nodded. “Good. Because I feel I failed that friendship with you, and I wasn’t sure if that part could have been the problem. Which I know is irrational. I know how depression of any kind can just sneak up on you and surprise the person affected as much as everyone else.”

“No one failed me,” Maddie said softly. She might feel that Chimney hadn’t given her the support she had needed, and had even hindered her recovery at times, but she didn’t see even that as him failing her, at least most of the time. “No one is responsible for what happened but me.”

“We could have offered help if we had been there for you and Chimney more than we were,” Karen said. She huffed and raised a hand. “I know, it’s all … you are right, of course, no one is at fault for what happened, and I need to deal with my thoughts and emotions about this on my own. It’s separate from what I really want to talk about with you anyway.”

Maddie raised her brows. “Okay.”

“I’ve had to deal with a different kind of depression in the past,” Karen said slowly. “You might remember that time. It hit me hard as well, and in a very unexpected way. Half of it was the hormones I’d had to deal with while preparing for the IVF.”

Maddie nodded slowly. “I remember, yeah.”

“I’ve been in therapy ever since,” Karen said. “I got better fast because I’m a fixer. Hen had her accident and suddenly I had something to focus on, something to fix. There wasn’t any way I could have fixed my own situation. But Hen’s grief? That I could handle. But in the end, it was only a stopgap. I got through the upheaval in my hormones, but the grief for the children I wouldn’t have anymore, for the lost chance to experience a pregnancy myself, that was still all there.”

“So you went to therapy,” Maddie said.

Karen nodded. “And one of the first things I learned was that if you encounter that kind of low in your life once, you always have to be cautious of falling into a similar hole again.”

Maddie shuddered. “I talked about that already. I’m not at a point yet where I have talked about precautions, though. I’m seeing my therapist twice a week for now, once in person and once online. As long as that’s the case, there is no need for precautions, right?”

Karen smiled and held out her hand, palm up. Maddie took it and squeezed lightly.

“You are right, being in therapy for that regularly is a precaution all on its own. But that doesn’t mean you can’t already plan for when you won’t need that much therapy as well. Because that day will come.”

Maddie blew out a breath. “Doesn’t feel like that right now.”

Karen chuckled. “Of course not. The wounds are still very fresh for you. They need time to heal. And that won’t always be a straight path, either. Things can set you back, but that’s okay as well.”

“What are your precautions?” Maddie asked because setbacks weren’t anything she wanted to talk about, especially not today. She hadn’t had a major setback yet, though all the arguments with Chimney had been a series of small setbacks, as had been her inability to connect to any of the other parents at the baby swim class.

“A security network most of all,” Karen said. “One outside of Hen and my parents, because while I trust them immensely, I know they could easily fail to see that change in me because I know them too well not to be able to fool them, at least in the beginning. I’ve friends who know about my depression in the past, and with whom I have talked about what it looked like last time, how my behavior changed. That’s not completely foolproof, of course, but it gives me a kind of security. Because I know they’ll look out for all kinds of changes in behavior. And for some of them, I do the same. I met some of them through a support group, one I’m still attending at least once a month. Less to help myself right now and more to help others.”

Maddie took a deep breath. “Are you inviting me to that support group?”

“If you want to take a look at it. But not really. Other support groups might be a better fit for you. The one I joined is explicitly for women who deal with failed IVFs, and the reality that their wish for a child won’t be met by them carrying that child. But there are others you can look at, and I’m happy to help you look. But no, what I’m talking about is working on our friendship, for me to become part of your support network. Because we are already friends, and I want for you to be able to reach out to me the next time you feel overwhelmed by anything.”

Maddie blinked back her tears. “That sounds nice.”

Karen squeezed her hand. “That’s what family is there for, right?”

Maddie grinned and nodded, leaning her shoulder against Karen’s. She was happy to accept a one-armed hug from Karen and let her gaze wander over the room. Being caught when you were struggling was exactly what family should be there for, even though Maddie had never experienced that before she had come to LA. It was a little overwhelming to experience it now, but it also was one of the best things she had ever felt in her life.

She had found—no, made—a family for herself who loved and cared for her, even in moments when there was strife and arguments inside that family, even when she was part of said conflict. Despite everything that had happened over the last year, she couldn’t have wished for a better place to be in her life.

***

“You are just a sore loser!” Albert said as he slapped Chimney lightly on the shoulder.

They had prepared little presents for all the invited guests, and another little present for those who correctly bet on the item Jee-Yun chose. John had tasked Albert and Chimney with getting those giftbags and writing the names of the winners on the tags. Thankfully, they had gotten a couple more of these prizes, because, between Buck, Maddie, Eddie, and Chris all betting on the goat and Albert and Josh betting on the yarn, there had been more winners than expected.

Chimney raised his chin. “So what?”

“Just because Jee-Yun will have a long life and love animals doesn’t mean she won’t also be interested in medicine as well,” Albert laughed.

Chimney stared at him thoughtfully. “You are aware that fortune-telling is not really a thing, right?”

Albert grinned and shook his head. “I picked up the brush, you don’t see me becoming a scholar just because of a random decision I made on my first birthday, do you?”

“You had me worried for a moment,” Chimney said.

“Do you know what you picked up?”

Chimney shrugged. “No. I guess you can ask our father if you want to know. Of course, only if he bothered to remember it.”

Albert sighed. “He isn’t as uninterested in your life as you always make it out to be, you know? If you weren’t both so damn stubborn you could have reconciled a long time ago.”

“Have you seen him anywhere around here today?” Chimney asked darkly.

Albert huffed. “Your invitations didn’t exactly go out in a timely fashion to arrange a visit halfway around the world. I believe you received a very polite answer from him.”

“Which your mother wrote.”

Albert chuckled. “Probably. But only because AppaAppaDad is as stubborn as you are and doesn’t know how to talk to you anymore. But he did send a present through me. That’s why I asked Maddie and you to have lunch with me tomorrow. It’s a pretty big present, and we’ll need to go through some paperwork for it.”

Chimney turned to Albert and crossed his arms over his chest. “What has he done?”

“It’s an educational trust,” Albert said, busying himself with arranging the giftbags for everyone on the dresser beside the front door. Maddie and Chimney would give them to everyone when they left, so it was the best place to store them while the party was winding down.

“In other words, he is trying to buy my daughter,” Chimney muttered darkly and leaned against the wall, staring at his feet. “Throwing money at his problems is exactly what he does, isn’t it, believing they’ll go away with that, right?”

Albert sighed and decided not to argue with Chimney about their father. “Anyway, you won’t need to worry about Jee-Yun’s college days. And no one is stopping you from waking her interest in medicine. You won’t even need to worry about how to pay for medical school now if you are successful. Though, of course, others might try to wake her interest in other things.”

Chimney huffed.

“And AppaAppaDad said he’ll provide such a trust for all of his grandchildren,” Albert murmured. “In that tone that doesn’t leave any doubt about how he meant it. He is clearly expecting me to provide Jee-Yun with some cousins soon.”

Chimney snorted, and at least it sounded amused. “Jee-Yun having cousins to play with is probably not what he thought about when he said that.”

“However he meant it, it won’t happen any time soon,” Albert said. He turned to Chimney, happy to leave the arrangement of giftbags as they were. “Do you still regret the Doljanchi?”

Chimney rolled his eyes. “A little late to ask that question, isn’t it?”

Albert shrugged. “I’d hoped you changed your mind. I think this was a really nice gathering, and everyone here had fun. You included. You really can’t deny that, Chim.”

Chimney glared at him, but after a moment he sighed. “No, you are right. It’s … been nice. I enjoyed it more than I thought. And it wasn’t … I expected it to become complicated, or for some argument to arise.”

“Everyone is here to celebrate Jee-Yun,” Albert said with raised brows. “Not to argue about things that have nothing to do with her. We are all adults who are able to put any arguments aside for a while and concentrate on something else. And in the end, everyone here is one big family. And I’m really glad I came here and managed to insert myself into your life. I’m so very glad to be part of this family.”

Chimney looked down again, but that couldn’t hide his smile. “Would have never thought there’d come a day I’d say this, but I’m glad you’re here as well.”

Albert laughed and wrapped one arm around Chimney’s shoulder to pull him in the direction of the living room. “Let’s join the others again. Now that everyone is fed and we had the Doljabi people will probably start to say goodbye soon. At the latest when it’s time for the birthday girl to take a nap.”

Chimney didn’t protest, and soon enough they were both mingling among the guests again. Albert went from one group to the next, never staying long with anyone while trying to make sure no one was missing anything. Anne and John had both put so much work into this party that Albert was trying to take away as much work as he could now so that they could enjoy their time instead of worrying about their guests.

It took longer than Albert had anticipated for the party to break up, and in the end, it was Maddie and Jee-Yun who said goodbye to everyone first before they went up to Jee-Yun’s room so that they could both take a nap. Less than twenty minutes after that, Albert found himself alone with John in the living room. The guests had all left, and Chimney and Anne had left the house together, though Albert didn’t know where they had gone. He suspected they might just want to get out of cleaning up, and he was prepared to accept that for both of them.

“It was a good day, right?” Albert asked while they were carrying the rest of the food that had been left on the Dolsang into the kitchen.

Anne had managed to foist off a lot of the leftover food on everyone as they had left the party, but there was still a lot left and Albert already knew he would end up with more rice cakes in his fridge than he could realistically eat. He’d already decided to take as much as he could to the fire station for his next shift to share with his teammates.

“It was a very good day,” John agreed. “It was exactly how I think a DoljanchiDoljanchi traditional Korean celebration of a child’s first birthday should be. Close family gathered together.”

“I know my Doljanchi was a really big event,” Albert said thoughtfully. “And the ones I’ve been to that I remember were all pretty big.”

“Many families celebrate in that way, and that is of course their right.”

“But it’s not how you prefer it.”

John shook his head and pulled out several containers from the cupboard to store the food in. “We kept Kevin’s Doljanchi very small. Not as small as Jee-Yun’s was, but compared to our nieces and nephews’ Doljanchis, it was small with just over fifty guests, I think. I remember how befuddled your father was by it. Howard and his parents as well as the family of my own best friend were the only friends we had invited in addition to our closest family.”

“I’m a little glad he didn’t come today,” Albert said with a deep sigh. “I think … my parents wouldn’t have fit. Chimney would have resented them being here. And this was about the connections of family, right?”

John nodded. “As it should be.”

“What is the meaning of Doljanchi for you?” Albert asked. “I honestly never thought about it until recently. I know the history, of course, but growing up it was just a fun event if the food was good, but otherwise pretty boring. Though there were never many children my own age around at the Doljanchis my parents took me to.”

“I think it’s not so much about the relief and joy from the child surviving their first year anymore,” John said. “Because in this day and age losing a child in the first year is thankfully not a tragedy that befalls many families anymore, at least in Korea or here. But this first year is still always wrought with so much change and hardship. Maddie and Howard got the brunt of that in more ways than I’d ever wanted them to experience, but they also found at least the beginning of getting back on their feet again, didn’t they?”

Albert nodded.

“A Doljanchi for me was always about the family as a whole adjusting to the change a child brings, and to celebrate looking forward into that future, which often changed in more ways than new parents expect while preparing for the birth of their child.” John sighed. “A new child always changes the lives of everyone around them. That of the parents and siblings the most, of course, but also the lives of their grandparents, their aunts and uncles, and the truly close friends of their parents. But it’s an inherently good change that deserves to be celebrated.”

Albert blew out a breath. “I’m not sure Maddie or Chimney see a lot of what happened over the last year as a good change.”

“Right now, they wouldn’t, I agree. But they will eventually. Because as difficult as this time was, and as painful as their separation is for both of them still, I am convinced they both grew through this experience. And they both might have just learned what they truly value in their family. They have both found their way to start dealing with the change the last year brought. I have faith in Howard that he will catch up with the head start Maddie has on this. And that they will manage to co-parent Jee-Yun and both find peace and happiness in that situation.”

Albert swallowed and nodded. He had seen what John was talking about in both Maddie and Chimney lately, and he was especially relieved to see that change in his brother. It had been even more evident today when Chimney had managed to spend several hours in the same room as Buck, after he had talked for months about everything going wrong in his life being Buck’s fault.

Things weren’t perfect. It would probably be a long time before any of them would claim life was perfect and exactly what they had imagined it to be. But they had their family, as unorthodox as it might be.

Albert was convinced every single one of them was on a path of healing and on a way to finding what would make their life a happy and fulfilled one again.

 

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