FEBRUARY 25th, 2001, LOS ANGELES, CA

           "MOM! MOM!"

Gracie's shouts vibrated off of the walls in synchronization with the pounding of her feet down the stairs. Reagan almost dropped her cellphone right out of her hand, jumping at the sudden noise.

"Is that Gracie?" came Kate's crackling voice through the receiver as Reagan lowered the phone away, turning her focus from the stovetop she was standing over to her daughter.

"What is it, G?" she demanded. Between nearly dropping her phone into the pan of stir fry she'd been monitoring and feeling her heart practically burst from her chest, she was thoroughly curious to know what had gotten Gracie so riled up.

To warrant her shouting, it'd better have been a fire.

"Dad's here," Gracie said, rounding her blue eyes into larger than life spheres. "Again."

"He's having dinner with us."

"Again?!"

The exclamation wasn't made only by Gracie. Reagan could hear the tinny sound of Kate's shock through her Nokia, still lowered to her side.

"Will you go open the door for him?" she asked, ignoring both of their clamors of incredulity. Dave had his own key, the same one he'd owned since they'd bought the place, but they were still performing a smoke and mirrors act for the benefit of Gracie's well-being.

Gracie nodded her head so quickly that it was a surprise it didn't come unhinged from her neck. Once she'd darted out of sight, Reagan went back to working on her stir fry and returned her phone to her ear.

"Can you believe she calls me 'Mom' now? I feel old," she said, hoping to glaze over the confrontation she knew Kate was waiting to launch.

"Reagan," her sister said firmly. "Dave's over for dinner? Again?"

"He's always been welcomed over here. You know that."

"For family dinners?"

"It's healthy for Gracie."

Reagan knew that Kate wasn't stupid. She was a fucking lawyer — it was her job to zero in past the veil of a lie.

"You told me at the wedding that you were taking things slow," Kate accused.

Thinking back to two weeks prior, Reagan recalled the conversation she'd had with Kate as she'd helped her into her wedding dress. It had been an awkward topic of discussion, with it being Kate's day rather than Reagan's to reel in even a shred of attention, but Kate had brought up Dave first as Reagan had buttoned up the back of her long, white gown.

She'd asked how he was and naturally, Reagan had assured her that he was fine. The casual response led to the inevitable though, and within seconds Reagan had confessed to what she and Dave had done in January.

Kate hadn't tried to hide how flabbergasted she was and it wasn't until Reagan had instructed her to shut up and enjoy her wedding day that she'd dropped the matter — for then, at least.

"Is that all you remember from your wedding?" Reagan asked. "It was a really beautiful day. I thought if you were going to remember anything, it would be how Mom didn't rip anyone a new asshole."

"Reagan," Kate said seriously, dropping her voice an octave. Reagan heard the front door open and Gracie's squeal, followed by Dave's cheery laughter. She clenched the spatula she was holding tighter in her hand.

"Don't try to lecture me Kate," she said, matching the authoritative tone that her sister had taken on. "I'm a grown woman. Older than you, too. What I do with Dave is my business."

"I'm just looking out for you," Kate replied, suddenly startled by Reagan's assertiveness.

"I don't want to be advised on this. So please, don't try."

"You know I like Dave. I always have, and I liked you guys together for a long time. I just don't like what the relationship did to you towards the end. What he did to you."

There was shuffling by the front door and Reagan caught snippets of Dave and Gracie talking. He was asking her how playing the bass was going and on cue, Gracie was delivering an earful of an explanation.

"Can we talk about something else?" she said under her breath, snapping the knob of the burner off.

"He's inside, isn't he?"

"Yes."

Kate sighed. Her worry was sincere, even if it was obnoxious, and Reagan knew it. But Reagan was already juggling the situational worries of her own that had sprouted up since she'd semi-gotten back together with Dave. She didn't want to hear about the ones that other people had regarding what was meant to be private. That was exactly why she had made Kate swear not to tell anyone — not their other siblings, nor their parents.

"Costa Rica was nice?" she prodded, bringing up Kate's honeymoon that she'd recently returned from.

"Very," Kate answered, her response vaguely unwilling. "I got a tan."

"E-mail me all the pictures."

Suddenly, Reagan felt a pair of arms slide around her waist. Dave nuzzled his face into her neck, kissing her throat, and the heat that shot through her body felt like flames of a flash fire. She let out a small gasp when he gave her hips a single squeeze.

"I gotta' go Kate," she said, fumbling to keep her phone connected to her ear.

"But wait, you haven't even told me if-," Kate protested.

"Talk to you later, bye."

Reagan mashed her finger into the 'end' button, ending the call abruptly and spinning forcefully around in Dave's arms.

"Gracie!" she hissed. She looked worriedly over his shoulder, waiting for their daughter to pop out from around the corner and witness them pressed together like the couple she thought they weren't, but Dave murmured reassuringly against her skin.

"She's upstairs grabbing her bass."

"We have to be careful."

Reagan laid her hands against his chest and gently pushed him back, but he made sure to kiss her quickly on the lips before a distance could be created between them. Her stomach turned with the desire to make it last longer, but she steeled herself.

"I'm very careful," he said dramatically. "Even if there's no reason to be. You know Gracie would be bouncing off the walls if we told her. She'd be happy."

"And we still need to be even more careful than that," she insisted, burying the twinge of pain that flickered to life in her chest. She touched her palm to Dave's cheek, trying to make him understand through physical touch that it wasn't an intended persecution that she was putting him through with Gracie.

They just needed to protect her. To put her first.

He twisted his face to kiss her hand and stepped back further in just enough time for Gracie to join them in the kitchen, lugging her bass along with her.

"Dad, can I play for you?" she asked, panting slightly and out of breath from her second sprint down the stairs.

"Dinner's ready," Reagan intervened. "You can show him what you've learned after we eat."

Gracie jutted out her lower lip with a pouty frown and backtracked out of the kitchen. Reagan figured that her grudge wouldn't last long. She was too overjoyed that Dave was there to be pissed.

Inserting his hands into his pockets, Dave looked to Reagan and made a face.

"When did I become just 'Dad'?" he asked, echoing her earlier dismay over Gracie's new names for them.

She snorted. "When did I become just 'Mom'?"

It took her two trips to finish setting the table and to serve up dinner. Dave offered to help, but Reagan pushed him towards his seat beside Gracie, where she knew he was most needed. Gracie bounced up and down in her chair as she began to ask him a myriad of questions, mostly centered around his music which she'd begun to further understand that year. She knew exactly who her father was and couldn't get enough of his stories, whether they were centered around the milder tales of touring or what it was like to make a hit record.

When Reagan finally joined them at the table, she offered her commentary here and there and giggled into her hand whenever Dave or Gracie said something particularly silly, but she mostly preferred to watch them. She had missed the sight of them together, having the personal conversations that Dave had been trying to have with their daughter since birth.

There had never been a time when he hadn't been whispering or singing to her, even when she'd been an infant swaddled in blankets, tucked in his arms. Now she was an active participant of their conversations, making him laugh as much as he did for her.

Reagan smiled to herself, taking a sip of the wine she'd poured to hide it. Gracie had taken after her in looks, it was true, but her personality was all Dave. Behind the thick auburn hair and familiar shape of her face, she'd inherited the best of Dave's soul. It was something Reagan was proud of. She liked that behind the carbon copy of herself, Gracie was wholly her father.

"Can I practice for Dad now?" Gracie asked impatiently. She pushed her plate towards Reagan, presenting her half-cleaned plate that still held a cluster of noodles and veggies.

Reagan swirled the wine in her glass. "And leave me to do all the dishes?" she challenged.

"Leave 'em for later," Dave suggested. "Come hang with us."

"Yeah, Mom, hang with us!"

"Okay, okay," Reagan relented, waving them down with one hand and feeling like the biggest pushover to have ever lived. "The dishes can wait."

Together, she and Dave followed Gracie as she skipped into the living room. Reagan sat across from them, tucking her legs beneath her and watching with a smile as Gracie heaved her bass into her lap and began to show Dave what she'd been working on. He assumed his role as a silent, yet diligent teacher, never correcting Gracie but suggesting fixes that were disguised as helpful tips.

It made Reagan guilty to think about, but she was unable to deny that Gracie looked the happiest she'd been in months.

She shifted her weight on top of her legs, adjusting them to the other side. It wasn't fair how damaging divorce could be for children, even when it was the right option for the parents. She assumed that must have been why Richard had never left Kimberly after all those years, but then again, she spoke on behalf of all her siblings when she theorized that none of them would have missed Kimberly much at all.

The evidently bigger problem that Reagan grappled with was the context of divorce being the right thing to do when it came to her and Dave. If it had been right, then she wouldn't have ended up in his arms again in January, murmuring vows of love to him all night. It wouldn't have been so easy to hand her heart over to him again.

Perhaps she'd never had it returned to her in the first place.

No matter what had happened between them, or what laid in the future, she knew for certain that she'd missed this. She'd missed their family of three, and she'd missed seeing Gracie so happy, simply because Dave was there.

The pain of knowing how sorely Gracie had missed him almost made her want to make a snap decision without the prelude of ifs, ands or buts. If it would have healed her daughter, Reagan would have happily married Dave for a second time, just so that Gracie's view of the world would be complete again.

She looked into her lap, twisting her hands together. It wasn't right. As a parent, it might have sounded like the best case scenario for Gracie, but Reagan knew what she'd be sacrificing. Her own mental health would be at stake and if that was shot to hell, then Gracie would have nothing. She'd have lost her idea of a family unit and the familiarity of her mother, who'd always managed to stay strong for her sake.

"Hey, Reags?" Dave called to her lightly. She looked up and smoothed her features, curling her hair behind her ear innocently.

"Yeah?"

"Think it's time for G to get to bed? She's got school tomorrow."

Gracie made a show of sucking her teeth, looking disappointedly at Dave with an air of betrayal.

"She wasn't gonna' say anything if you didn't!" she cried.

Reagan laughed as she stood up, dusting off her jeans. "Oh really? You think I forgot your bed time?"

"I'm gonna' be nine soon," Gracie protested. "I don't need a bed time."

"Uh, yeah you do. As long as you stay the absolute demon that you are in the mornings, you're sticking to a bed time," Reagan replied.

"Can Dad tuck me in?"

Dave immediately took Gracie's hand and helped her off the couch, grabbing the neck of her bass and setting it aside.

"I got it covered," he stage-whispered to Reagan as he walked Gracie out of the living room and up the stairs.

Reagan nodded knowingly, but couldn't ignore the excitement that was blossoming in the pit of her stomach. When Gracie went to bed, that was when Dave got to stay. It was when they were finally permitted to be alone together, truly alone without need for pretending.

It didn't take long for him to get Gracie settled. After twenty minutes, which Reagan spent distractedly loading the sink with dishes she no longer cared about, Dave waltzed back downstairs. He was whistling and the sound of it made her laugh before he even appeared in the kitchen.

"She's in bed," he announced, walking up next to her and leaning against the countertop.

"Is she now?" Reagan asked casually. She flipped on the sink faucet and let the hot water run over the dirtied plates.

"Pretty sure," Dave said. He reached out with one finger, gliding it down Reagan's bare arm slowly. "So, if you want . . . maybe we could get to bed, too?"

The invitation made her skin tingle, but she knew better than that.

"I don't think so," she told him. "Come here."

Drying her hands off on a dish towel, she grabbed him by the arm and led him to the foot of the stairs. Waiting a moment to appreciate the confused look on his face, she craned her neck forward and yelled.

"Gracie Kate! Bed! Now!"

The sound of pattering feet running in the direction of Gracie's bedroom sounded above them, followed by the creak of a bed that had just been jumped into.

"She knows something is up," Dave said, lifting his eyebrows as his eyes remained raised doubtfully towards the ceiling.

"She doesn't. She just can't sleep as long as she thinks you're here. It's wasted time not spent with you to her," Reagan told him gently. "I'm pretty positive she watches from her bedroom window, making sure you're good and gone before she actually closes her eyes."

His skeptical demeanor softened and his thoughts became easily readable on his face. Thinking about what she had told him, he turned to her and sighed.

"Guess that means we're doing it the old way," he said.

"The old way," she quoted him sarcastically. "Tonight's the first night you thought you wouldn't have to walk out the door first before coming back in."

"Right. I'll go loop around the block a few times. Let her see me pull out of the driveway and all that."

She walked him to the front door, allowing him to kiss her once, long and slow, before he proceeded with their usual plan of action. She waited until his taillights disappeared down the street before closing the door, biding her time in the foyer until enough of it had passed. Creeping upstairs quietly, she checked on Gracie and was relieved to see her buried beneath the covers. They rose steadily with every deep breath that she took, assuring Reagan that she'd fallen asleep after doing a few double takes at her window.

Reagan took her phone out of her pocket and keyed a quick text to Dave.

You can come back now, it read.

His response came seconds later.

Good. I'm parked on the curb six houses down and I think I'm creeping the neighbors out.

She laughed, slipping her phone away and dashing down the stairs as quickly, and quietly, as her feet would carry her. When she got to the front door and pulled it open, Dave was whipping into the driveway with reckless abandon.

She met him halfway between the front door and his car, flinging herself into his arms. He lifted her off the ground so that her toes just barely skimmed the pavement and kissed her, pressing her into his chest.

"How did I do?" he whispered into her ear. "Was it an A plus performance?"

"Decent enough that I'm thinking about nominating you for an Academy Award."

He put her down and dipped both hands into her hair, causing Reagan to close her eyes. It felt good, feeling his fingertips massaging circles against her scalp down to the back of her neck.

"Inside?" he asked, bowing his forehead to hers.

"I was thinking we could sit on the couch for a bit. Just relax."

His hands stilled, taken aback by her redirection of his initial plans to get her into the bedroom immediately, but it wasn't long until he gave in with a kiss to the bridge of her nose.

"Okay. The couch it is, then."

They walked silently back into the house holding hands and Reagan turned off several lights as they made their way to the living room, hoping that the addition of a little darkness would keep Gracie upstairs. Her nightmares had subsided awhile back, but there was no sense in chancing it.

Dave flopped down onto the couch and stretched all four of his limbs, groaning quietly in the process. Reagan sat beside him and folded herself into his side, pleased when he threw an arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer.

"Tired?" she prompted, running a hand down his chest. He caught it once it reached his stomach and pressed his to hers, shaping their fingers together.

"Nah," he said. "I just hung out with Taylor today. Threw around some ideas for some new material. Pretty much falls into the category of non-tiring stuff."

"I forgot how easily things come to you."

She was teasing him and he knew it. He ruffled her hair until her bangs were mused into her eyes.

"Smart ass," he muttered.

Reagan laughed as she pried pieces of hair out of her face and mouth.

"Just telling you like it is," she grinned, snuggling back into him and inhaling deeply. She couldn't help it. He smelled so good and it was nice to know that after the visit, his scent would further permeate around the house, filling the gaps where it had once faded after they'd separated.

"You know if we're not going to go upstairs," he hedged, earning an elbow to the ribs from Reagan, "I'd be happy to challenge you to a game of checkers."

It was him teasing her now, but she only rolled her eyes.

"What? Not go-fish?" she asked.

The recall of the memory dawned visibly over Dave. She knew what was replaying in his mind — a night in Olympia almost eleven years earlier. Kurt's apartment. Them both sitting together, playing a game of go-fish with a catch that required them to divulge fun facts about themselves.

"Fuck yeah I want to play go-fish," he grinned. "You got a deck of cards around here?"

"Wasn't the first time we played enough? Also, FYI, you already know everything there is to know about me. We wouldn't be able to play it like we did," she pointed out.

"That was forever ago. We'll pick up where we left off."

"Are we going to make it a tradition? A game of truth, hold the dare, go-fish every eleven years?"

"Sure we will. We'll play it from our graves someday, too."

"I'd much rather you rub my head again."

She closed her eyes and leaned against him, awaiting the feeling of his hand pulling gently through her hair, but he only scoffed at her.

"And what exactly do I get out of that?" he asked.

"Careful David, your rockstar ego is showing." She laid herself fittingly into his lap, taking on a position they'd shared together many times before as she looked up at him. "How about you can ask me anything that's on your mind and you rub my head? Being that you were so eager to play fun fact go-fish and all."

It didn't take much for Dave to give in. Her eyelids bobbed drowsily the second that he touched her head, gently caressing her hairline.

"You're crazy if you think there's not a million things I still want to ask you," he said.

"You've heard it all already. It would just be boring if I repeated myself."

"Not really. Isn't that why some couples stay together for as long as they do? They never get tired of asking each other shit, even if it's something as boring as 'are you enjoying the weather?'"

"So are you asking me if I'm enjoying the weather?"

He chuckled. "Well, are you?"

"It could be cooler out," she pondered playfully.

"I know I'm enjoying the weather," he countered. "I'm also enjoying the view, especially right now."

Reagan opened her eyes fully. Dave was looking at her, smiling as he drew the side of his thumb up and down along her cheekbone.

"That's very enlightening," she whispered.

"Can I ask you something? For real this time?"

"Alright."

He shifted his hand back to her hair and again, her eyes bobbed under the allure of sleep.

"Why didn't you ever move back to Washington after the divorce?" he asked gently.

"Why would I do that? You're here. Gracie needs to see you. It sucks for her enough as it is. I'd never move her a whole state away from you."

"You know I would have found a way to see her a lot when I wasn't gone. And I know you miss home."

She thought about it, imagining the overcast skies and lush forest trees of her childhood. The ache of missing home was something she'd gotten used to since moving to Los Angeles, accepting it as a sort of chronic pain that would linger permanently. It was more than the comfort of her surroundings that she missed, though. She missed Kate, Robbie and the twins. She regretted the years she'd lost watching them all grow up. But all that had become bearable.

"What I miss the most about home," she began softly, "is the way you and I were when we there."

Dave didn't stop running his fingers through his hair, but he did make a face, a series of wrinkles appearing on his forehead.

"We were — are — still that," he said. "I love you as much now as I did then."

"I know. It's just . . . L.A. reminds me of the bad parts. Like us . . . breaking up. Things changed when we came here."

"Nothing changed the way I feel about you."

Reagan reached up to stroke his face, suddenly desperate to soothe him and reverse his impression of what she'd said.

"It came out the wrong way," she reasoned. "I don't want you to think that I'm mad or anything. A lot of good stuff happened for you when we moved. And I still loved you, all the same. I only regret what happened between us after we got here."

Her reassurance seemed to work. The tense line that his mouth had formed relaxed along with the rest of his body.

"Reagan?" he asked.

"Mhm?" She'd gone back to closing her eyes, savoring the feeling of his hands on her in a way that was subtle, pure in every sense of the word.

"I still want to give you everything."

"You already have." She lifted her pointer finger skywards, gesturing to the second floor where Gracie was in her bedroom.

"Besides Gracie," he said. "There are still so many things I said we'd do. Together. I still want to do them. I want to make you happy again."

"Again?" she repeated.

"Yeah, again."

Reagan took the hand he was using to brush through her hair, guiding it to her face where she kissed his knuckles one by one. He watched her, waiting until she'd finished to trace the shape of her lips.

"Truthfully," she said softly, "you never stopped."