Harris tried to hold on to the glimpses of his dad's face, but the black void swirled them away. They were so fleeting, he couldn't tell if it was memory or real.

This time, however, he would. He had to know if Dad made it out of the fire alive. Through the blur, he clung to Dad's drooping eyelids, graying stubble, and a lot of domed forehead with wrinkles crossing it.

Pressure released in his chest, because this couldn't be a memory. In a memory, he'd see Dad younger, with a sparkle in his dark eyes and a groomed beard.

Also, his shoulder wouldn't hurt so damn much. Dull at first, the pain gnawed into the muscle. When this wasn't enough, it spread to his ribs and all the way down his side. The smell of antiseptics and bleach floated on the surface of the heavier odor of sickness, like oil on water. Sort of sweet, but then nausea brought up chemical bitterness to his throat. He gagged. Oblivion seemed more and more seductive by the minute.

Wake up. Wake the hell up! He had to know for sure if Dad was okay.

The world warped around him, as he broke through the blur to consciousness.

"Harris?" Dad leaned forward in his wheelchair to be as close as possible. A hand without as much as a bandaid squeezed Harris' wrist. Tears glistened in the already bright eyes that would never grow old.

"D-dad?" The first word came out of his mouth as a cough, so Dad inserted a straw between Harris' lips.

Water. Harris waved it away without drinking. He'd hate to swallow the bile filling his mouth. "How... How long was I out?"

"Just over a week. They put you in a medically induced coma to help with pain."

"It worked." A chuckle escaped Harris, then grew into a groggy laughter so freely it shook something in his side loose. Damn thing hurt too, but he's now awake for good. "Really worked."

Dad's sagging face pinched. "You freaked me out, Son."

"I'm not crazy. Just drugged enough to find this role reversal funny." Harris lifted his hand again, trailing the IV, and grabbed at Dad's.

Dad wouldn't believe how many hours Harris sat in a chair just like this one, thinking shitty thoughts. But not this time. Not this time... Dad's hoodie and his Pretzel Fest 2012 t-shirt were crumpled, but fresh. His hair was in its usual nimbus, but recently trimmed at the temples. He'd been taking good care of himself. "Happy to see you're still kicking, Dad."

"Same to you."

Dad was fine. He was sort of fine. This left only one pressing question. "I need my phone." Harris patted the bed's handles until he found the remote to lift himself into a sitting position.

"Harris?" Worry flickered over Dad's face. "Maybe we should ask your doctor—"

"Screw doctors! I just need my phone for a second. Do you have it? Please?"

Dad stuck his hand into the pocket of his hoodie, then stopped to lick his lips. "I really should ask the doctor first."

"One quick text, that's all." Harris pinched his fingers to show how short the text would be.

Dad glanced around with a guilty look of a co-conspirator, then slipped the phone into Harris' hand. It was 80% charged, completely undamaged. Maybe Harris' last memory of the burning house falling on top of him was an exaggeration of a panicked mind.

Harris: Agatha, please run. The man is dangerous. If you don't want to see me again, I get it, but please, listen to me. Please! Run.

Kinda cheesy, but he hit send without thinking twice. Hopefully, Agatha didn't do the same thing as Desiree and blocked him. Fingers crossed, she'd get away from Oliver. Because Oliver was behind the fire. Nobody else was good for it. Nobody.

And... delivered. He had just warned Agatha. Nothing else could or needed to be done. Tension drained from Harris' neck, his shoulders sagged—the oblivion could have him now.

"Was that Ablaze?" Dad asked.

"Her name is Agatha." Harris jerked upright, sending a freaking blow-torch of stinging pain into his hip. The phone jumped out of his numb hand and tumbled to the floor. "Crap."

"Touchy, touchy..." Dad fumbled to lean far enough to pick up the phone, but, realizing the futility of his efforts, straightened back. His eyes glistened again. "Just look at us, the mighty Sarkisian breed!"

Warmth and guilt spread through Harris' chest. "Sorry..." he whispered. "I worry about her, you know?"

"All good. I get it. And I'm glad you have someone you care about. Because..." Sarkisian Senior dabbed the moisture from his eyelashes.

Oh. "The house?"

"It's gone, Harris. The Chief even called it some special word. What was it?" He snapped his fingers, searching for the term..

"Irreparable." Harris sighed.

"That's it!"

A property that would have to be demolished. After years of tinkering with everything in that house, fixing all its flaws, it was bitterly ironic that the official verdict for putting his heart and soul into it came to that. Unfixable.

Worse.

Cold dread gripped Harris' insides, but his skin flushed. He rubbed his sweaty face with his hand. "The insurance... the insurance—"

In this imperfect world, a piece of paper could destroy those he loves. One fucking piece of paper!

Dad's fingers gripped his shoulder. "I've been antsy about our finances since you went to Singapore. So, I went through the paperwork to see how bad it was."

"We were under." No, not 'we'. Harris sank them in deep, chasing his desire to fix an inanimate thing. Because a house is a thing. Only a thing. Now, it was too late to walk away. "I'm so sorry! I'll fix it somehow."

"Pish-tosh! The only thing you'll be fixing is yourself."

"Dad!"

"I needed a kick in the pants. You were doing your best and at your age, I would have done the same." Dad's fingers squeezed his shoulder again. "I wish you inherited something else from me, not making the same mistakes gene."

"I don't think there is such a thing, Dad."

"Anyway, the first thing I did was to reinstate the house insurance."

The grip on Harris' stomach eased, but only for a second. A kind of dull needle jams into his heart in place of the squeeze. He opened his mouth to ask where the money came from, but his Dad beat him to it. "I told you to accept help," he said. "So, I followed my own goddamn advice. Once I sold a few things, I really didn't need..."

Some of dad's precious pots weren't there when Harris tramped through their burning kitchen, but... "It couldn't have been enough."

"Well, no. After I've gotten over my pique, I called your mother."

"What?" This was the last thing Harris expected. "I mean... I called her too. She was on vacation."

Dad's chuckle was dry. "I needed her more, so I got through."

Sweat rolled down Harris' face, yet he was freezing. "So, we have insurance courtesy of Mom?"

"Yes."

"Yes, but...?" The way his Dad was sucking on his teeth, there has to be a dreaded 'but'.

"We're under investigation, Harris."

"Shit."

"You got to understand their point of view. I reinstated the coverage barely two weeks before a major fire broke out. It was arson, and..." He looked at Harris apologetically, then his shoulders slumped. "And I wasn't at home that night."

The puzzle pieces clicked together. Dad—unharmed. Never answering his calls on the night of the fire. Nor responding when Harris blundered around the burning house calling for Dad with all his might.

The hiccups—hiccups, really?—shook him. Dad tried to stuff the stupid paper cup into his hands again, but he pushed it away again. "Thank Heaven, you were out, but where did you go?"

"Lonita's place."

"In the middle of the night? What were you doing there?" Harris couldn't recall the last time his voice pitched up like that. He should really take a deep breath. Mellow out. Suppress the hiccups. He shut his mouth, held his breath for a count of twenty, then opened it to apologize for being nosy. "I guess you were working on one of their crime-and-chow blogs."

"No." Dad squirmed in his chair. "You're a big boy, Harris, so I'll leave it to your imagination to come up with the details of what I was doing in a woman's house in the middle of the night."

The mighty Sarkisian breed. Fortunately, Harris hadn't closed his mouth yet, so his jaw hung loose with a remarkable ease. Add hiccups to it, and he chattered like a demented squirrel. "D-do you mean what I think you mean?"

"Precisely." Dad's reply was all prim and proper. "For some time now, I've been spending the nights you were on shift at Lonita's place. I apologize for keeping it from you."

Harris couldn't help it. He blushed.

"And that's where I live now, and fully intend to continue doing so. I'm wrestling with the insurance company to get a place for you," Dad added.

"Drinking beer! Sending me out on stupid dates!" It all started making sense. "Dad!"

A deep, long sigh lifted Dad's chest. "My fault. Everything is my fault—"

"What are you talking about? I'm happy for you. Just wish you trusted me."

"Don't interrupt your elders. I taught you better than that." There was no snap in this admonition. Just sadness.

Empathic pang tugged at Harris' heart. Suddenly, he didn't want to probe Dad's silence. It had the feel of a shroud covering mummified remains of a monster.

But Dad no longer needed his questions to continue. "My biggest regret is that until I've gotten back with Lonita, I didn't stop to think of what I was doing to you. All I could do was sit in this damnable wheelchair! So I sat and navel-gazed."

Harris had decided not to interrupt, but a whispered 'Dad' came out of his mouth on its own. That one paltry word... "You've gotten back with Lonita? Just how far back?"

"A long way back."

"Before the divorce, right?" Before Jung chose the station's closet for a quickie with Mom?

"Before."

"I can't... I always thought you were a perfect couple."

"Harris, as a young man, I waited for love that never came. Your mother was everything your grandparents had wanted, and what I thought sufficed for a cloudless marriage. She laughed at my jokes after all. We made such good friends!"

Dad's voice was so bitter.

"You might think I've pushed you to follow into my footsteps. None could be further from the truth!"

"I don't know what to think, Dad."

"We did our best to fool everyone, including ourselves. And you. Actually, it's not even difficult to fool everyone, when you're basically friends with benefits, a mortgage and a baby, and don't give a damn beyond that. And... Harris, don't chew on your nails!"

Harris barked out a laugh. "Half my body is scorched, your marriage was a sham, and you're worried about the beauty of my nails?"

Dad laughed with a full, happy sound. "That's parental instinct for you. The same reason Shushana and I planned on staying together until you've moved out. Only, I foolishly assumed we had certain freedoms."

"Let me guess. You didn't tell Mom of your assumption?"

Sarkisians' shrugs could be more evocative than words. "When Shushana found out about Lonita, it blew into my face. Suddenly, our marriage had no end of passion, only it was the wrong kind. She got a lawyer, the divorce shark type."

"What?" How did he miss all that? "I was right there! And I didn't know?"

"You studied. Dreamt of saving people. We weren't so deranged as to destroy that for you."

Separate bedrooms. Chilling silences. Fake cheerfulness, when they ate together. The tension was there. He just... He ignored it. "Maybe I was like the three monkeys: saw nothing, heard nothing, said nothing. Because I didn't want to."

"Who knows? But unlike us..." Sarkisian Senior waved a hand in the air, a gesture so full of regret, it plucked at Harris' heartstrings. He accumulated plenty of regrets since the Hotel Avantgarde's fire.

"To cut the long story short, the lawyer wasn't content with just spearing me. He demanded Lonita to be in the hot seat too. Lonita couldn't do that, not with her plans to make a detective, then push for a place at the City Council. She broke it off with me. I was miserable."

"I'm sorry." Harris didn't know why he was sorry, but his dad looked pitiful and his heart went out to him. "I'm so sorry."

Dad glanced at him with a sharp warning. This story was far from over.

"That day in the car, I begged your mother to call off her bloody hound. To part on friendly terms... but she was like a flint. When that truck cut us off, I swerved, and then... It was like a dark spell, Harris. But I didn't black out. I knew exactly what I was doing, when I stepped on the gas to throw our car at that barrier."

This couldn't be true! He was hearing things, imagining them. Yes, yes, this must be it, a delusion, because his head swam. Everything in the room swayed so much, the world might as well go topsy-turvy. "I don't believe it."

"You should, and I should have told you back then. I should have told you I begged Jung to save Shushana. The impact knocked her out, but I was conscious. By then it sank in what I had done. So, yes, I begged Jung."

Harris dropped his head to his chest. Jung would never do the wrong thing on the job. He was this kind of an officer... "I'm such an ass."

"After the surgery, I suppose, Shushana had finally felt satisfied. Our drama rested like a roast and we got the non-combative divorce I wanted all along. I've grown wiser, since, but with you..."

"Dad!"

"Let me speak! It's long overdue."

Harris gaped. It was so unlike his dad to be forceful.

"I sat there, stuck like a duck in the muck. I watched you make the tales and did nothing." Sarkisian Senior shook his head, in dismay.

"Mom was with Jung. I saw them together," Harris mumbled.

"Harris, I wouldn't have batted an eyelash if she'd slept with every man in Wisconsin, so long as she let me go. It was stupid to find someone from your Station, let alone do it where you would see it, but that's water under the bridge."

It was. And it still hit him like a truck. How could he have been so blind! "Dad, I don't know what to say. I need... Where is that damned water?"

Dad inserted the paper cup into his hands. The ice in it had melted. Tepid water tasted and smelled faintly of antiseptic, but Harris guzzled it down to the last drop. He wished it was something stronger than water. Much, much stronger. "I need time to process. Do you mind... Can you give me some time alone?"

Harris didn't know how he scored a private room and who was paying for it. Frankly, he was afraid to ask, because all his answers had been screwy lately. But he was glad he had a room to himself, because he needed it. Desperately.

"Process and file it, Harris, that's my late advice. Shred it. I almost lost you because of my baggage and one moment of insanity."

Out of habit, the grin lifted only the right corner of Harris' mouth—on the burned side. He winced instead of a chuckle. "I had plenty of those lately."

"Noble moments! That's the difference between you and me. As a father I don't mind that one bit." A squint didn't hide the sheen of tears in Sarkisian Senior's eyes. He cleared his throat. "Hmm. You deserve happiness."

Maybe he did, but first, he had to earn it.

As Dad wheeled out of his room, Harris eyed the phone on the floor. A call with Mom would be exponentially more difficult than retrieving the thing. His life no longer had its backward compatibility. He needed to relive it in his head and set things right. Without it, he couldn't move forward.