IT WAS EERILY quiet downstairs, more quiet than it typically was whenever Reagan was home alone. And technically, she wasn't alone — Gracie was upstairs in her bedroom, occupied with a box of Disney VHS tapes.

Reagan was in the kitchen cleaning up the remnants of their dinner, trying to get her brain into the groove of a new work week. She had meeting the next day and a singer being signed out of San Francisco was coming by the office.

She couldn't focus on work, even as she tried to repeat her mental to-do list over and over again. All she could think about was Dave.

It was strange that after months of distracting herself from him, he'd wriggled back into her thoughts so prominently that she felt winded by the change. She couldn't stop wondering about him in Cabo, what he was doing, who he was with.

If he missed her.

Reagan winced at herself. The guilt she felt in such a question was eating at her. She'd crushed his heart right in front of his eyes before he'd left for the airport and yet there she was, twiddling her thumbs and hoping that in some corner of his mind, he was thinking about her.

She didn't quite understand where the sudden change had come from. She still felt at a total loss, unsure of whether or not their relationship would survive 'til the new year, but for some reason she found herself obsessing over him. Obsessing over the idea of him, like it was all of the sudden anxiety-inducing to know that he was out of the country.

It had started the night before, when she'd woken up alone in their bed gasping. Immediately she'd thrown her hand out, clawing up and down the sheets in search of him even though she knew he wasn't there.

That had jolted her.

Why had she done that? After all that time of pushing him away, she couldn't make sense of what had possessed her to wake up shuddering, her unconscious mind calling out to him.

Wiping her hands on a dish towel, Reagan glanced at the kitchen wall clock and saw that it was getting late. She needed to put Gracie to bed.

As she started her climb up the stairs, she nearly toppled back down them when she heard the sound of Dave's voice coming from Gracie's room.

"Reagan! Babe! Aw, don't be like that."

She froze, her eyes widening in shock. There was no way he was back — she may have been walking around as a zombie-fied version of her former self, but she definitely would have noticed if Dave had strolled through the front door.

Had it really come to this? She was hallucinating him being there?"

Then she heard the sound of her own voice, and it too came from Gracie's bedroom.

"Go away!" she was saying over a ripple of laughter.

Reagan hurried up the rest of the staircase and down the hall to Gracie's room, skidding to a stop by the opened door.

Gracie was sitting cross-legged on the floor, her back to Reagan and her head tilted so that she could look up at her television. The box of VHS tapes was sitting beside her and Reagan's eyes fell on the television screen.

It was Dave. On video.

He looked young and telling by the length of his hair, Reagan guessed that the video had been filmed sometime in late nineteen-ninety-two. He held the camera pointing up at his face, wearing his usual wide grin.

"Everyone, look at my beautiful wife. Isn't she gorgeous?" He elongated the word 'gorgeous' into several syllables, using a horrible attempt at an accent as he turned the camera shakily around.

Reagan's breath caught in her throat when she saw herself.

In the video, she was laying on the couch of their old Seattle house, one leg bent at the knee and her arms draped over her stomach. She was giggling even though she held a hand up, blocking the shot.

"Please stop," she laughed. "Give up the filmmaking dream already."

Dave's voice sounded from behind the camera. "It's more of a documentary."

Reagan could hardly process what she was seeing. She leaned against the doorframe, unable to look away as she watched the camera quiver while Dave walked around their house.

The box of VHS tapes, she thought. Gracie must have found the home videos that Dave had been fond of taking shortly after they'd moved into their Seattle house. He'd marked them all with same labels in his handwriting — R and D.

On the t.v. screen, she watched as Dave raised the camera, creeping slowly into what had been Gracie's room. He went to her crib and pointed the lens downwards, 'shushing' the camera.

"And that's Peanut," he whispered. He stuck his finger out and stroked Gracie's chubby cheek.

Reagan's eyes welled with sudden, hot tears.

"Believe it or not," Dave continued whispering to the camera, "I helped make this thing." He turned the lens back to his face and left Gracie's room, hamming it up with a waggle of his eyebrows.

"I plan to make many more of them. A whole army."

For the first time in what felt like forever, Reagan laughed. She did it quietly into the palm of her hand and through her tears. She hadn't genuinely laughed in so long. An overwhelming need to hold her daughter came over her.

"Gracie?" she asked gently, entering the room.

Gracie whipped around, seeing her mother and leaping to her feet. She scurried over to her VHS player and promptly hit pause.

"I'm sorry, Mommy," she told Reagan, wide-eyed.

"Why are you sorry, baby?" Reagan got down on her knees in front of her and held her hands.

"I was supposed to be watching The Little Mermaid. I told a lie."

"It wasn't a lie." Reagan nodded towards the television, discreetly brushing her fingers beneath her eyes to remove the trace of her tears. "Did you find this in the box?"

Gracie bobbed her head up and down. "Uh-huh. Look!"

She pulled the box across the carpet and pointed inside of it. Next to the neatly lined row of Disney movies was a collection of tapes with no cases. As Reagan had guessed, they were all marked by Dave according to year.

"Daddy made these," she explained to Gracie, touching one of the yellowed labels.

"I know." Gracie fidgeted as she stood, twisting the hem of her nightgown into her fist. "Can we watch them?"

"You want to?"

Gracie beamed and nodded eagerly.

Reagan looked cautiously at the tapes. She couldn't recall Dave ever having filmed them in an explicitly compromising situation that would need to stay far away from their daughter's eyes, but she couldn't guarantee that there wasn't plenty of cursing, drinking, and general twenty-something debauchery on the tapes.

That's what fast forward is for, she considered.

"Okay. We can finish the one you have in now."

She hit play and pulled Gracie into her lap, relaxing when she felt her head lean back into her chest. They both watched as the video picked back up and a twenty-three year old Reagan was back on the screen.

"Is she still asleep?" Reagan heard herself ask.

"That was me!" Gracie exclaimed, patting Reagan's thigh. "Mommy, you're talking about me!"

"Fast asleep," Dave said from behind the camera. The footage blurred as he moved quickly, joining Reagan on the couch and turning the camera so that it faced them.

The lens was inches away from their faces and as Reagan observed the close-up of herself, she saw the look that she was giving Dave. It was one of sheer and utter adoration, her eyes filled with so much love that it was almost sickening.

"What do you want to say to yourself, twenty years in the future?" Dave asked seriously. He was adjusting the camera as he spoke, shaking it slightly.

"Ummm," on-screen Reagan said, biting her lip. She laid her head on Dave's shoulder and stared up at him, smiling. "That I'm really glad that I married you even though you annoy the crap out of me?"

"And I'll keep annoying you, twenty years in the future." On-screen Dave buried his face into on-screen Reagan's neck, tickling her with a flurry of kisses that made her buck up off the couch. In the mayhem of the moment, he dropped the camera, the screen spinning as it fell.

"Dave, the camera!" Reagan said from somewhere in background, laughing hysterically.

The tape cut after that.

Reagan wasn't aware that she was crying again until Gracie adjusted herself in her lap, turning to face her.

"What's wrong, Mommy?" she asked, pouting her lower lip and threading both of her arms around Reagan's neck.

"Nothing, G," Reagan said hurriedly, dashing the wetness on her cheeks away. "I'm alright."

"Can we watch another one?"

"Of course."

She helped Gracie pick the next tape, popping it in and sitting back with her as history came to life again on the screen. Dave was behind the camera again in this one, except he was filming a fast asleep Reagan with Gracie, who was also asleep, on her chest.

He didn't speak, but when he finally turned the camera around to his face, he flashed a smile that spoke more volumes than any words could.

The scene changed, cutting to the next batch of film that had been compressed onto the VHS, and it featured Reagan sitting behind her drum kit with a tiny Gracie propped up in her lap, lightly playing the drums as Gracie squealed.

It was a never ending reel of memories, some of which Reagan had forgotten about. She held onto Gracie tightly as they watched, smiling whenever Gracie became excited at the footage of her as an infant.

They put in one more tape at Gracie's pleading request, and Regan informed her it would have to be the last before she went to bed. As Reagan hit play, she nearly jumped out of her skin.

It was her behind the camera on the screen this time, filming a bare-chested Dave in bed as she straddled his waist on top of him.

Oh god, oh god, oh god, she thought anxiously, scrambling for the off button to the VHS player in fear of what was about to play next in front of her six-year-old.

"Can you say it again," came Reagan's voice from the t.v.

"I love you, Reagan."

Her finger stilled over the off button.

"Again."

Dave's laugh rang out and when Reagan peeked at the screen, she saw that what was panning out in the footage wasn't sexual.

"I love you, Reagan," he sing-songed.

Something curled up inside of her and stole her breath away before imploding.

It was the scattering of a thousand feelings, of every single moment that she'd spent looking at Dave and seeing the rest of her life right in front of her. It was the echo of hearing him say 'I love you' with so much feeling behind the three words that she was convinced that for him, there was nothing better in the world than her mere existence.

Even the look on his face — she was realizing that it was a look reserved only for when he was with her. She'd never seen him wear it, not even when she'd watched him play a show, unless he'd been staring into her eyes. Someone else might not have noticed it, but she did. She knew the details of that look like she knew the back of her hand.

It was a look that conveyed the purest kind of love.

Reagan shut the television off numbly. She'd momentarily forgotten where she was until Gracie let out a whine.

"That one wasn't finished yet!" she protested.

"We can watch the rest tomorrow," Reagan said. Her limbs had lost all feeling and she stood up slowly, caught in the fog of the epiphany that had just hit her.

She attempted to scrape together some illusion of composure as she lifted Gracie into her arms and put her to bed, dropping a kiss onto her forehead before leaving the room. Gracie called out an 'I love you' and Regan returned the sentiment softly, closing the door halfway.

She didn't make it more than ten steps down the hallway before she pressed her back into the wall and sank to the floor, dissolving into tears.

She couldn't understand herself. She couldn't reason how she had ever thought for a single moment that her life without Dave was a life that she was willing to live.

It was as if she'd been in the dark for those last nine months, shielded from the light, but watching the tapes had brought her back. On the inside, she knew that her soul was gasping in relief, finally freed from the black hole she'd let herself slip into.

All the evidence she neededhad been shown to her right there in Gracie's room. Dave loved her. She and Gracie both had always been the most important thing. That silly collection of random footage had given her the sign she needed in order to know that nothing, nothing would have ever compared to how he felt when he was with them.

He could have toured with the Foo Fighters every day for the next five years and Reagan was certain, especially after watching the tapes, that the love he felt for her would never be outweighed by any other endeavor in his life.

The physical distance between them now seemed ridiculous to have agonized over. He had always come back. Always. Always wearing the same smile, that same look he'd worn in the videos, and telling her that he loved her in the same sweet way that made her feel like she was home.

There was and always would be for Reagan in Dave's life, perhaps even on a throne that was elevated above all else. There had to be according to everything that she'd just watched. Without saying it, he'd made it abundantly clear through the home videos where his priorities were. His passion for what he did for a living might have kept him away, but never for long enough to lose the feeling of total and absolute love that he shared with Reagan.

As she hung her head in her hands, she was suddenly desperate for him to come home. She needed to see him, face to face, to apologize for how horribly wrong she'd been.

She wanted to kiss him, hold him, and tell him that none of it mattered. None of what had driven a wedge between them held a candle to the foundation of it all, which was that they were meant to be together.

Reagan couldn't believe how badly she had misjudged the situation. He would always be who he was and he would never not be the talented musician that she knew him to be, but first and foremost, he was the love of her life. He was Gracie's dad.

He'd intertwined his fate with hers from the moment that he'd sat down next to her at the Comet Tavern, asking if she was okay and chuckling at her initial surliness.

She never wanted to give that up. She couldn't.

Reagan pulled her knees to her chest and took several deep breaths. Having an unanticipated wake-up call had shaken her to her core, but it had also made her feel like she could finally be herself again.

She could go back to loving Dave the way he deserved, for as long as they had together.

What do you want to say to yourself, twenty years in the future?

She knew her real answer to that question. She wanted to tell herself that she'd never been luckier than she'd been when she fell in love with him and he'd fallen in love with her back.

As she got up and went to their bedroom, mentally replaying the sound of Dave's voice from the tapes, she thought about the next day and when his flight would arrive back from Cabo. Taylor was apparently dropping him off.

It felt good to finally feel like she couldn't wait for him to come home.

a/n:
I've accepted that you all want to kill me after the last chapter. Totally understandable