A/N Thank you for your feedback.

Falling: To Fall To Pieces

Wearily, Alan closed the door. He stood still, taking one deep breath after another. When would it ever stop to hurt so much? His heart felt as heavy as when Margaret had breathed out and not breathed in again. There were no words to describe the vice that had clamped around his heart on this very day and hadn't lessened since then.

"Dad? Charlie?" Don's voice drifted over from the living room.

He had seen the big SUV parking in front of the house but he had hoped that Don was only here for Charlie. "It's me. I'm back." He shrugged out of his jacket and put down his keys. They jingled against the bowl. It was another leftover from Margaret. She had seen it and loved it. Alan had never liked the bowl. But he couldn't remove it anymore. It would be unfair to remove it after she had passed away.

As he looked up again, his son was watching him from his position near the shelf. Strange enough, the first thing Alan noted was that he didn't carry his gun. He knew it was nearby but not on his belt. The next thing he noticed was the knowing look in his eyes. But he didn't want to deal with this now. "Are you here for Charlie?" he asked, hoping for a positive answer.

"No, I had the day off and thought I'd come over."

A small smile tugged at his lip. "You just don't want to cook or buy your own food."

"Actually," Don said, "I brought something from Ruben's with me." He twisted and pointed behind him. "It's in the fridge. We just need to warm it up."

Hesitating, Alan he regarded his oldest son again. As he met his eyes, he saw the confirmation - Don had remembered. "You could have come with me," he said. It wasn't supposed to sound so accusing but Don jerked nonetheless.

"Dad, it's the day you met Mom. It isn't my time to visit her grave," he answered softly. The sound of his voice reflecting that he hadn't taken Alan's words the wrong way. "Besides, I had to bring something over for us to do."

"Yeah? What is it?" Alan asked, eager for a distraction. Anything had to be better than living in an endless pain that would never heal.

Instead of answering, Don stepped backward and went to the table. Alan followed him. On the table, Don had started a jigsaw. "I didn't know you enjoy doing jigsaws," he said.

"I don't. Not really," Don answered and reclaimed his seat. "But Mom loved them. I thought about what I had learned from her." He paused before he looked up to Alan. "And I remembered that she always admonished me to be more patient."

"She tried to teach you to do a jigsaw because you would need a lot patience for it." Alan remembered the fight to keep Don home even for one evening. He had been always on the way, always busy and always full of plans. Charlie had loved jigsaws but he was easily distracted, and so he and Margaret usually had to finish the puzzle alone that they had wanted to do together as family.

"For me, a jigsaw always took too long until it was finally finished and I couldn't understand the motivation behind painstakingly putting pieces together to assemble something that you could already see," Don explained. Despite his words he had already finished the border and was busy trying to place the next piece.

"What jigsaw are you doing?" Alan asked and received a calculating look. Don grabbed the box but he hesitated slightly. Again, Don studied him and Alan was unpleasantly reminded of the time he had spent as a suspect. It was the same analytical glare. "What's with the FBI look?" he finally asked, exasperated.

Abruptly, Don's glare left him and he looked down, biting his lip. With a deep breath, he handed him the top of the box.

Alan accepted the box and held Don's glance while Don held onto the box. He hadn't seen him this unsure about something he had done for a long time. He recognized the slightly guilty expression and the hope in his eyes to get away with whatever he had done, but this time Alan failed to see a reason for the expression to appear on his son's face.

Finally, Don let go and leaned back. Alan held his gaze a little longer then he looked down and drew a sharp breath as he looked into the eyes of his late wife. "Margaret," he whispered. It was one of the most beautiful portraits and pictures he had. Carefully, he traced her face with his fingers before he glanced down to the jigsaw. His son had combined her beauty, the memory and her passion into one perfect package. He turned away to hide his reaction as he was choked with emotion.

Don's chair grated across the floor as he jumped up. "If it's too early, I can -"

"No!" Alan was surprised over his intensive refusal. "The jigsaw stays!" he ordered. Turning back, he went to the abandoned chair and sat down. "I'm going to do a jigsaw and my sons are going to help me." The smell of recently printed materials brought back good memories about the excitement of starting a new project and helped to control his emotions.

Hovering nearby, ready to grab and remove the jigsaw at a moment's notice, Don pulled over another chair but didn't sit down.

"Did I ever told you the story how this picture was taken?" Alan asked. He took the first piece and squinted at it. He would need his glasses for this but didn't want to leave his seat and risking losing the jigsaw to Don's worry. Fingering the piece, he realized that it was the first time somebody did this jigsaw. Everything felt new and raw.

"At least a hundred times," Don assured him and finally relaxed a bit. He went to the arm chair and grabbed Alan's glasses from the table next to it. "But you can always tell it again."

"Thank you." Putting the glasses on, he recognized the piece and knew it was part of her hair. Margaret had had beautiful hair. Actually everything about her had been beautiful.

As Margaret had died, he had fallen to pieces like this jigsaw. Millions of tiny pieces that once had been his life had been thrown around and he had had trouble to even grab the most basic ones. "As she died, I didn't feel any pain, I was just angry." He snorted. "Can you imagine? She dies and I am angry at her for dying."

Don paused mid-movement with his hand above the pieces spread across the table. "I was only angry at Charlie." He looked down. "Whenever Mom asked about him, it fueled my anger. And after she had died I was left with nothing but anger." He looked up. "But I was never angry at Mom."

"She left me," Alan said and stared down at the piece in his hand. "She had left me behind after promising me to never leave me. And the only thing I had were pieces of our life." He held up a small part of the jigsaw. "Pieces like this one - a memory, a piece of paper, the smell of her clothes, the last scent of her perfume, her hairbrush, her ..." Alan trailed off. There were so many pieces of her around the house, in his memories and in his life. Sometimes he even received letters addressed to her.

"But you put the pieces back together, Dad." Don played with a piece in his hand, turning it around, studying it.

Alan looked up. He recognized the piece in Don's hand even from the distance. It was part of the flowers Margaret had held. Whatever Don was studying, it wasn't the puzzle piece in his hand. Alan dropped his gaze and blinked, trying to remove the blurring from his eyes. "I don't remember putting anything back together. I just remember holding onto the pieces afraid that if I'd let go, I would be lost." He had taken the pieces, held them together and tried to convince himself that this was the new Alan, the widowed Alan. He didn't know when he had started to do the jigsaw and rebuild his life, but it did happen and maybe it was time for another memory to be fixed.

Suddenly, the front door opened. "Dad? Don?" Charlie entered the house and brought fresh air with him. He paused. "What are you doing?"

Don jerked and his focus returned to the present. He put down the piece and looked up. "We're doing a jigsaw, Chuck," he answered knowing that the nickname would annoy his brother. Charlie returned the favor with a smoldering look of his own.

Alan couldn't help himself and smiled. It was like it always had been. A jigsaw, two sons and endless frustration.

Charlie came nearer. "What are you trying to -" He froze as he caught the image on the top of the box. "That's Mom." Emotions clouded his face and vibrated in his voice. He looked around the table before he sat down on the edge of a chair, carefully balancing there without really sitting down and participating. It was as if he wanted to ensure that he could make a break as fast as possible should the need arise.

"It's the anniversary of how I met Margaret. I saw her and I ... " Alan hesitated. There were some things that his sons never needed to know. Some things should forever be just between Margaret and himself. "Anyway, this picture was taken by a guy who was obsessed with your mother."

"According to you," Don interjected with a grin. "Mom had always thought he was just nice and helpful."

"Yes, yes, I know what she thought. But still the way he was always around her," Alan trailed off while he balled a fist.

"You were jealous?" Shocked but grinning, Charlie looked up from the picture and glanced from the fist to Alan's face. "I didn't think -"

"I wasn't jealous," Alan denied. "I was just trying to protect her."

Don laughed out loud. Leaning to his brother, he whispered loud enough for Alan to hear, "he was jealous and Mom found this endearing. That's the reason she framed the photo to always remind him."

Alan drummed with his fingers on the top of the table. "I don't know your sources but they're wrong. We had put up the photo because it was beautiful."

With a shake of his head, Don leaned back and crossed his arms. Again, he regarded him with an intensive stare as if he was trying to decide what to share. "Do you remember the year you forgot the anniversary?" Don asked carefully.

"Of course. I only forget once." Back then he had found it unnecessary to celebrate every and any anniversary but now he regretted the one additional time he could have spent with her.

"I didn't know why Mom was so disappointed that Brian was sick and our sleepover was canceled. I was supposed to be disappointed but as you didn't come home on time ..." Don trailed off and shrugged. "She was so upset I even offered to play some piano for her and on top of the piano-"

"There was this picture," Alan finished for his son as he suddenly realized how Don knew just how much this day had meant to his mother, to Margaret.

Don nodded. "She told me how it came to this picture and what it meant to her. I didn't understand even half of it but she was consoled by it and for me that was enough."

"Mom never told me a story about this picture," Charlie said and put his arms down on the table, leaning forward in an unvoiced question. "Isn't it just one of your wedding photos?"

Alan smiled, both at the memory and the puzzle piece he held up. It was part of Margaret's smile. "Yes, it is. The story is not really special at all." He sighed and glanced over to Charlie, realizing that he owed him a better explanation. "One of her co-workers was an amateur photographer and when we got married the money was tight. He offered to do the wedding photographs, and we accepted."

"And got almost only photos of Mom," Don interposed with a big grin.

"Beautiful photos I may add," Alan said. "But needless to say, I wasn't thrilled with the selection." He remembered the days afterwards. "We were just married and had already our first real argument. But you know, your mom was a special woman," he trailed off, lost in the memories. He traced with his fingers across the parts of the picture they had already assembled. "She put up with me." As he looked up to see their reaction, he found them both engrossed in the puzzle.

"I'm going to heat up the food, and then we can eat." Distracted his sons nodded, both of them reaching out for the same piece.

For weeks, he had dreaded this day. It was worse than her birthday or their wedding anniversary. These days came with enough distractions that he could endure them. But the day of their first meeting would always remain something special. Hearing his sons argue he suddenly knew that he didn't need to dread this day ever again. It was the anniversary of the beginning of something good. Margaret had finished her participation but he would continue.

With her death, his life, his future and he had fallen apart but one by one he had started to rebuild. And like a jigsaw it took patience and some struggle to finish it – to find out where each piece would fit in the new reality.

The result would never be a mirror finish, but with lines and dents, and that was good because it was true and real. After the jigsaw was finished he was going to frame it as a memorial for the hard and real life that still has the beauty of a memory and the beauty of his wife if you looked at the whole and did not focus on the pieces.

The door to the kitchen opened and Alan shook himself out of his thoughts.

"Good thing that we don't have to wait for dinner," Charlie said. The delicious smell had drawn his boys to the kitchen.

"You can thank me, whenever you're ready, Chuck."

"I should thank you? Who does always drink the beer from my fridge?"

As Alan caught Don's glance, he gave him a thankful smile. "Boys," he warned them, "no fighting, please." He patted Don's shoulder on his way back to his jigsaw. "Thank you."

"Dad? You don't have to thank him, it's you who -" Charlie stopped his protest. Understanding dawned on his face. "You didn't thank him for the food."

"No, I didn't." Alan smiled and left it at that, knowing that he could never articulate what exactly this gift had meant to him. Returning to the jigsaw, he knew it was a symbol and a sign. It was enough for another year without Margaret.

END

A/N Thank you for reading.