AN: This is it. I spent a long time toying with the idea for this story. Would anyone be willing to accept a less than perfect Henry McCord? How many men (and women) are out there who have seemingly insurmountable issues to deal? Could the love of the right person right the wrongs of the past? How many people are willing to be that person for someone else? These are all things I thought about, and to a much lesser degree than portrayed in this story, have lived in my own life. I thank everyone who has dutifully read this story, and especially those who took time to review. It was very special to hear from you. Enjoy the last chapter and know that there will be more (and a lot of it is way too angsty).

Chapter 21

During that first weekend in Pittsburgh, Henry and Elizabeth met Patrick on Saturday for lunch and for Mass on Sunday. Henry had come to the conclusion that he had no desire to ever go back to the house again and Patrick accepted it without question. He had his own demons associated with the house, but he just couldn't seem to get to the point that getting rid of it was better than keeping it.

Henry slowly rebuilt a relationship with his father. They weren't very close and mostly their connection was built on Stevie, but it was acceptable to Henry and Patrick was thrilled. As time passed and Alison and Jason were born, Patrick made the trek to Centreville a handful of times a year to celebrate holidays and birthdays.

They fell into a comfortable pattern. Patrick would call on the first Sunday of the month and they'd talk for a few minutes, mostly about the weather or the Steelers. Then each of the kids would take their turn at telling Grandpa the most important things that happened, most notably the events of the previous day, at least when they were young. Henry would listen to him laugh and make appropriate comments and once all three had a turn, Henry would make some parting comments and hang up. For years they did this and he had never thought too much about this ritual they'd developed until the Sunday it didn't happen.

They were just getting settled in bed and Henry sat straight up, wildly swiping the nightstand to grab his phone. "What's going on babe?" Elizabeth asked, pulled from her almost slumber.

"Today's the first Sunday, isn't it?"

"Yeah, May 6th. Why?" Elizabeth asked, pushing herself up on an elbow, watching Henry stare at his phone.

"Dad didn't call."

"Maybe he forgot," she offered.

"He's been doing this for 12 years, and hasn't missed once. What are the chances he forgot?"

"Yeah," Elizabeth agreed. "Do you want to call him?"

"It's late. If I wake him, he'll be irritated," Henry said.

"Then let him be irritated. Tell him I was worried." She squeezed his arm and nodded toward the phone.

Henry called and got no answer.

Five days later, the five of them stood in front of the casket at the cemetery. Patrick McCord suffered a massive heart attack. He'd mentioned to a co-worker on Friday before leaving the mill that he was not feeling well. When Henry got no answer on Sunday evening, he called the police on Monday morning asking them to go by and check on his father. He received the news of his father's death mid morning.

Henry didn't think he had much connection to his dad. He'd spent many years disgusted with him and the next several trying to keep him at arm's length, but now in the wake of his death, he felt grief like he hadn't known since Tommy died. With his father buried, they headed back home with plans to return the following week to clean out the house. The kids were asleep in the back seat and Henry was driving, staring straight ahead into the horizon.

"Do you want me to drive?" Elizabeth asked softly. Henry shook his head slightly. She looped her arm under his and laced their fingers together. "What can I do?"

Henry thought about that. "I don't know that you can do anything, but just be you." She leaned over and rested her head on his arm. She could definitely do that.

It was a quiet week at the McCord home. The kids were all over the place with their emotions. One minute they were teasing each other and laughing, then next one of them would cry and it was like dominoes. Wednesday evening, Elizabeth hit the door at 7pm and was met by Henry, who quickly planted a chaste kiss on his wife's lips. "I'm going for a run," he mumbled gruffly and he was out the door.

Elizabeth found all three kids staring quietly at the TV. "Hey guys. What's up?"

The three sat quietly, but Elizabeth caught Ali elbowing Stevie, who finally spoke. "Mom, what's wrong with Dad?" Elizabeth tilted her head, questioning what her oldest was trying to get at. "It's just that sometimes he's fine and sometimes he doesn't want us to talk about Grandpa at all and sometimes he just looks mad and tonight he yelled at us because we were talking about Grandpa always being there for us." Elizabeth sighed. She had wondered how long it would take for this to happen.

"Give me a minute to change okay and I'll be back down and we can talk about it. And would someone heat me up some leftovers? I'm starving." She made her way up to the bedroom shedding her blazer along the way. Standing in front of the laundry basket, she surveyed the jacket. "Eh, it can go one more time before the dry cleaners," she muttered, hanging it back in the closet. Doing the same with her skirt, she tossed her shirt and hose into the basket and pulled on a t-shirt and pair on flannel pants. She stepped to the sink and washed her makeup off and pulled her hair up. Now that she was comfortable, she had the whole walk downstairs to figure out how to explain their father's behavior to them.

She forked a bite of pasta in her mouth and chewed slowly while three sets of eyes watched her intently. This wasn't going to work. She set the plate down on the coffee table. "Kids, we all process grief a little differently and your dad is working through it. So, if you could give him some space, I'm sure he'll be back to his normal self in a few weeks." She hoped her words were true as much for herself as the kids.

Ali and Jason got up to go finish their homework, but Stevie stayed in her spot. "Whatcha need baby?"

"Dad doesn't ever talk about when he was a kid. Is that because he and Grandpa didn't get along, and that's why he's being so weird now that Grandpa died?" Stevie held her mother's gaze. She wasn't going to back down. Elizabeth took a deep breath.

"That's not my story to tell, but I will tell you that Dad and Grandpa weren't close for a long time and yes, maybe that does have something to do with it, but I don't know and I'm waiting for your father to come to me. Grief is one of those things that you can't rush. You get through it when you get through it. The best we can do is to let the people in our lives know that we love them and are there for them."

Stevie nodded, seemingly accepting of that answer and stood to go upstairs. "Thanks Mom," she murmured, giving her mother a hug and kiss before exiting.

Elizabeth stayed in her spot and finished her pasta and waited for Henry. After an hour, she finally rose and herded the two younger children to their rooms to get ready for bed. After showers and teeth brushing and bedtime stories, the kids were asleep and Henry still wasn't home. Elizabeth was starting to get worried.

She cleaned the kitchen and checked backpacks and made lunches for the next day and still there was no sign of Henry. It was after 11 and she was almost ready to wake Stevie to tell her she was leaving to go look for him when he stumbled in the door. She rushed to him and he fell into her arms. "You've been drinking," she said, pushing him to his feet and herding him to the couch.

"Yeah, I was."

"Where did you go? You weren't driving were you?" She didn't think she heard the car leave, but there was really anywhere she could think of to get whiskey, which his breath indicated was the beverage of the evening.

"No. I ran to the gas station near the highway and drank a little, walked a little, drank a little. You get it right?"

"Yeah, I get it. Did it help?" Henry shrugged.

"I'm torn. Part of me says I didn't care. We got along because of the kids. If it hadn't been for the kids, I don't know that I would have even tried to connect with him at all. Then the other part is devastated because I don't know if he knew how much I loved him. Not once in my life, did I ever tell him that I loved him. How can I be so completely disconnected and so totally enmeshed in these feelings at the same time?"

"He knew babe. I promise. And he loved you too."

Henry looked up at Elizabeth, tears in his eyes. "How do you know?"

She took Henry's hand in her own. "Because I would catch him watching you. He always had the biggest smile on his face. The day you showed up on his doorstep when he was sure he would never see you again, he knew you were open and every time the two of you were around each other, the connection grew. I know you didn't have the ideal father/son relationship, but I think he tried really hard to be there for you these last several years and he was so attached to the kids."

"I think part of it is that I swore that I would always be open with the people I loved and I would make sure they knew how much I loved them, and I didn't do that with Dad," Henry lamented.

"It's just not the way of some relationships. Look at Will and I. I can barely get him in the same room and we can't ever have a normal conversation. If we speak for five minutes without bickering, I consider it a victory." She smiled. "Let's go to bed."

Late Friday morning they pulled up in front of Patrick's home and both Henry and Elizabeth did a double take. The home had been painted, and although the lawn hadn't been mowed that week, everything was neat and tidy. The house was adorable. "It seems that your dad had been busy. This is going to be a big project. We don't have to get it all done this weekend."

"No. I really want to be finished with it," Henry answered, somewhat distracted, still in awe of the house. "I don't ever remember the house looking this nice."

The walked up the sidewalk and unlocked the front door. Inside was arranged the same but there was new carpet and brighter paint on the walls. "It doesn't even look like the house I remember," Elizabeth murmured.

Henry wandered into the kitchen. "Hey babe. Come here." Elizabeth pushed open the swinging door and stuck her head in. There was a stack of boxes piled in the corner and Henry was opening each cabinet to find it empty. "He was packing."

Elizabeth stepped away and made her way down the hall. One bedroom was completely empty and the other had the basics. An unmade bed, dresser, desk in the corner with a stack of mail on top. Both rooms were freshly painted and had new carpet in them. She moved toward the desk and picked up the stack of mail. "Henry. I know what your dad was doing." She met him in the hallway and held up a real estate contract. "The house is supposed to go on the market next week."

Henry dialed the number on the contract and spoke to the real estate agent who agreed to meet with them later in the afternoon. In the meantime, they carried all of the boxes from the bedrooms and emptied Patrick's closet. "He really didn't have much, did he?" Henry remarked looking at the twenty or so boxes in the middle of the living room.

"No, but if he knew he was moving, he may have been getting rid of things so he didn't have to move them too. I wonder if the house was getting to be too much work."

"Maybe," Henry said, "But he never mentioned anything about wanting to move or having trouble keeping up. I don't know." Together, they started going through boxes. The vast majority of it was just run of the mill housewares, so they set it aside to be picked up for donation. As Elizabeth started going through a box from the bedroom boxes though, it held some interesting things. "Henry? Have you ever seen these?"

It was a box of pictures from Patrick and Vivian's early days together. As he leafed through them, tears welled up in his eyes. "I don't remember her ever looking like this. She looks totally different. She looks human," he whispered, unable to make the two images of his mother fit together.

"This is you?" Elizabeth asked, handing him a stack of a dozen pictures. All were taken the same day when Henry was around a year old. He flipped through them, but stopped at the one where his mother was holding him high over her head. He could tell they were both laughing. Suddenly he couldn't get enough air. He dropped the pictures and dashed outside. Elizabeth leaned over and picked the pictures up off of the floor and replaced them in the box and headed outside.

"You never believed your dad did you?" Henry turned to look at his wife. His expression was etched with pain.

"No. He said she loved me, but I didn't think it could be true. There was no way you could ever love someone and hurt them the way she hurt me-and him. I just don't get it." Henry relaxed against Elizabeth and let her comfort him.

"She was sick Henry, not right in her mind. If she had been, she wouldn't have done the awful things she did." Elizabeth held him tighter, scared for what the outcome of all these surfacing memories might be. They clung together for quite a while, lost in their own thoughts.

"Mr. and Mrs. McCord?" The voice ripped them back to the present. "I'm Carter Atwell. I had been working with your father to sell his home. I'm so very sorry to hear of his passing. I assumed that our dealings were done or I would have contacted you. My apologies." The man extended his hand to Henry and then to Elizabeth. "If you want, we can sit down and I can tell you what I discussed with Patrick and we can see if there are things you'd like to do differently."

They showed him in and had a seat at the table. Henry started the conversation. "To be honest, I wasn't aware that my father was planning a move. We only called today because we uncovered the contract when we were going through some paperwork."

Mr. Atwell looked puzzled. "He said he was planning on moving to Virginia to be closer to family. He hated being so far away. Your father had me get in touch with a real estate agent outside of DC. She was looking into smallish 2 bedroom condos for him to buy. You know something with not a lot of upkeep, but with enough room to have the grandkids over." Elizabeth reached her hand under the table and squeezed Henry's.

They discussed the current contract and both Henry and Elizabeth agreed to just keep the same terms, and they signed, promising that the house would be sold as is, with the remaining furniture included as part of the property. That way, they didn't have to try and figure out what to do with it all.

Having loaded the car with a few boxes of personal items and donating the rest, Henry and Elizabeth set out for home Sunday afternoon. They were quiet most of the drive, thinking about what they had seen and what they found out.

"I don't think you need to worry about your dad knowing that you loved him." Henry glanced over at her before returning his eyes to the road.

"Why?" he asked.

"If he was planning a move to be closer, he knew you'd be okay with it or he would've never considered it."

"Well being alright with something isn't exactly the same thing," Henry argued, although the protest was weak.

"You were alright with it because you loved him and he loved you. That's why he wanted to be closer," Elizabeth said. "I think it's really sweet." Henry nodded.

They fell into silence again until Elizabeth suddenly turned to face Henry. "I forgot. I have a confession to make."

"You forgot you have a confession?" Henry glanced over half humored and half curious.

"No, I did something a long time ago and I forgot to tell you and I found something Friday and I forgot to tell you again, so I'm telling you now." Elizabeth ran everything together to get it out in one breath. Now she found herself a little short of breath because of it. Henry kept shifting his eyes between her and the road, trying to speed the process along.

"One time, several years ago, your dad was at the house and we were watching the kids play, and he asked how I found out everything that Vivian did and I told him that you kept a journal and that it helped you work through everything."

"Okay, and?" Henry felt himself start to get impatient, and a little confused as to where she was going with this.

"And I think your dad started his own version of a diary, sort of like yours." She took a deep breath. "I found a journal in the bedside table. I think he started doing what you did. I kept it. I thought you might like to read it sometime, so I saved it."

"Oh. Maybe sometime," Henry said, brushing it off. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Elizabeth give him a concerned look, but she said nothing.

Over the next few weeks, Henry robotically took care of all the loose ends dealing with his father's death. The house was sold, a handful of bills were paid and as far as Henry could tell, he had no debt. After a long discussion with Elizabeth, he took the money from the sale of the house and they put it into a trust for the kids' college expenses. He thought Patrick would be happy with that. Everything seemed to be settled-that is everything except Henry himself. He felt anything but settled.

It was the fourth night in a row that Henry woke shortly after going to sleep and he just couldn't get comfortable. He tossed and turned for about an hour until he heard Elizabeth mumble in her sleep and he knew that he was keeping her from sleeping well. Pulling himself to sit on the edge of the bed, the leather bound journal on the corner of his nightstand caught his eye. Elizabeth had placed his father's journal there just after they came back from the house emptying expedition. He had looked at it twice a day every day for the past three months. Originally the thought of what he might discover if he opened it scared him. Then, he decided that not knowing was better than knowing and not being able to do anything about it. But, tonight was different. Tonight, he was curious. He and his father never had the type of relationship to talk about feelings, and most of the time, he didn't want to know how his father felt, but tonight he was ready. He wrapped his fingers around the book and stood, trudging off toward the living room.

As he read, his heart hurt. His own entries had the common theme of confusion and then anger. What had he done to deserve his mother's treatment of him? Patrick's entries were full of sadness and longing for a life that he once had that dissolved with the death of his second son. With each account of abuse, seemingly more horrific than the last, was the idea that he would endure it so Henry wouldn't have to. Henry finally got a glimpse of why Patrick was the way he was. The majority of his adult life was spent walking an invisible line-trying to keep his wife on an even keel, his son safe, and working to appear like he had a normal life outside the home. He spent his life emotionally exhausted and terrified about what would happen if anyone found out.

It was about an hour later when a sleepy eyed Elizabeth appeared at the foot of the stairs. Henry pulled his eyes from the page. She surveyed him. "You didn't wake me," she said softly.

"No. I wanted to do this alone." The tears that had been building for the last hour finally pushed their way out and rolled down his face.

"You sat with me when I read yours. I'd like to be with you."

"I slept," he said.

"I can sleep," she murmured, making her way to him. Henry shifted to sit sideways on the couch and allowed Elizabeth to curl up against his chest. She pulled a blanket over them, and Henry went back to reading.

Daylight peeked through the windows when Henry finally finished and closed his father's journal. He tightened his grip on Elizabeth and her eyes fluttered open. "How are you doing?"

The corners of his mouth turned up in small, sad smile. "Dad and I were much more alike than I ever wanted to admit. The difference was that he knew love and was desperately trying to hold onto it and I never knew love and had to learn how to."

Elizabeth pushed herself up so she could reach his lips. She kissed him thoroughly and let her head rest on his shoulder, placing tiny kisses on his neck.

"Dad liked you a lot," Henry said moving to kiss the top of her head.

"I liked him too."

"We were both so broken-" Henry started.

"I think everyone is broken in some way," Elizabeth interrupted.

"Maybe, but in our case, your love mended us. You showed me love and compassion when I probably didn't deserve it and wasn't ready to receive it. Because of that, I was strong enough to take that leap for Dad and it healed both of us."

Elizabeth tilted her head back to look at Henry. "I'm glad you had that chance. It was good for all of us. And we've created a legacy of love for our kids."

"That we have." Henry pulled his wife closer and thanked God for the opportunity to be broken and mended.