Jim turned on his side and felt a tear that he hadn't felt in his eye, slide down his face and run down along the side of his nose. That was when it occurred to him that he had been asleep. He opened his eyes and looked around and saw he was in his darkened bedroom. Had it all been a dream? No, he knew it wasn't…

He heard somebody's footsteps out in the hall and he looked to the door, hoping to catch a glimpse of whoever was coming by.

"Mom?"

The figure in the hall stopped and even in the dark, Jim could see his father sticking his head into the room, "Jim, how're you feeling?"

"What happened, Dad?" Jim asked, feeling very confused and nervous right now.

Frank walked in, closed the door behind him, leaving it only slightly ajar and turned on the lights.

"Don't!" Jim cried as he put his hands up over his eyes.

As quick as they came on, the lights went off, "Sorry, son," Frank replied as he went over to the bed, "You gave us all quite a scare at the funeral today."

Jim finally lowered his hands as it hit him, "I missed it?"

"No," Frank assured him as he sat at the foot of the bed, "You…I really don't know what happened…I think you passed out, right before they were going to…"

"Bury him," Jim said, feeling the tears stuck in his throat, muffling half of his words as he spoke.

"We tried calling the doctor to have him come out and look at you to see if you were alright," Frank explained, "But he won't be able to come until tomorrow."

Jim didn't know what to say and he didn't bother trying. He still felt like this was nothing more than a bad dream that he was trying to wake up from. He buried his face in his hands and shook his head from side to side, as if that would put an end to everything he'd been through.

"You slept through dinner," Frank told him, "Are you hungry?"

"No," Jim answered before he broke down and started crying again.

Frank reached over and wrapped an arm around Jim's back and pulled his son over to him and gently rocked him for a minute. "It's alright, son, it'll be alright," Frank told him, "I know it doesn't seem possible now, but one day it won't hurt as much."

"Frank?" they heard Carol's voice echo down the hall a moment before she came to Jim's room and looked in. "Jim, are you alright?"

Jim raised a hand over his face and quietly asked his father to make his mother go away, but Carol refused to leave. Instead she walked over to the bed and reached out and lightly stroked through Jim's hair as she told him, "I'm not running away from you, Jim…not anymore, I'm sorry."

Jim wanted to crawl under the covers and disappear, he wanted to yell at both of his parents to go away, but he couldn't. He had been trying for so long to make them pay attention to him and to notice him, now they were finally around when he needed them, he couldn't send them away now even if he felt like it. He felt his mother's hands wrapped around the back of his head, stroking it lightly, as though she were afraid of hurting him. He also felt his father's arms wrapped protectively around him, stronger than he remembered, and it all only worked to make him cry harder than he had been.

"Jim, what's wrong?" they asked him.

Jim's tongue felt like sandpaper and his throat was so dry he could barely swallow. Still he managed to get out a few words among all of the ones he was thinking. "…It's not fair…" he choked and gasped on a sob before adding, "Plato."

"We know that you miss him, Jim," Carol said.

"Yes, and it's alright that you do miss him," Frank added, "And it's important that you remember him."

Jim buried his face in his father's shoulder and groaned before managing to get out, "But why am I the only one who does? Where are his parents to mourn for him? How could…" he pulled back from his father to look both of his parents dead square in the eye as he asked them, "How…what kind of parent doesn't come home for their own kid's funeral? How could they do that to him? How could they?"

He rested his head on his father's shoulder again and continued to cry for Plato, the poor lost boy who apparently nobody ever wanted.

Jim lulled in and out of sleep again when he felt something touching his nose, like a bug or something. Without opening his eyes he swatted at it but missed, and it touched him again, this time he heard it giggling.

Opening his eyes he saw Judy standing beside the bed, looking better today than she had yesterday.

"Hi, Jim," she said.

"Hi Judy," he replied, feeling oddly calmer now than he had last night, "What're you doing here?"

Judy took in a long, slow breath, a sign that she still didn't fully trust herself not to start crying again either. "I came to see how you were doing."

"Don't know," he replied, "Doctor's going to make a house call on me today and check me out."

"Well how're you feeling?" she asked.

Jim grunted and waved off that question and fell back against the pillows.

"Hey Judy," he thought of something.

"Yes?"

"What happened yesterday? At the funeral, what…what happened?" Jim asked, "I mean, did he look nice?"

Judy awkwardly looked down at the floor for a minute before nodding her head and answering, "He looked just fine…"

"Yeah, did you stay and make sure that they buried him?" Jim asked.

"Yes, Jim," she answered.

"Yeah? Is it…did they put him in a nice place?"

"Oh, very nice," she said, trying to assure him, "It's very beautiful."

"Good," he tiredly responded, "Good…it's the least he deserves for everything he's been put through."

"I got some nice pictures of it, I'll have them developed in a couple of days and then you can see," she told him.

"Poor kid," Jim said as he shook his head, "I feel sorry for him."

"So do I," Judy said as she lightly ran her fingertips over his cheek.

"He needed us so much and I let him down," Jim told her.

"You didn't let him down, Jim," Judy said, "You did what you could for him."

"Yeah, but it wasn't enough," Jim replied, "He still died."

Judy was nothing if not sympathetic, but she tried to be assuring as she told him, "That wasn't your fault, Jim."

"No?" he asked, "Then whose was it? A kid doesn't die for no reason, somebody has to be at fault. It has to be somebody's responsibility Plato died, and if it's not mine, whose is it?"

"Jim, don't beat yourself up over this," Judy pleaded with him, "You're not his father."

"That's what he said," Jim remembered, he laid his head flat against the pillows and looked up at her and was pointing at her as he spoke, "Do you remember? That night at the mansion, he said that I wasn't his father, that he didn't want me to be his father…and very shortly before that he did…remember, Judy?" he asked as he sat up, "He said 'gee if only you could've been my dad', what…what happened? What changed? What did we do wrong?"

Judy couldn't answer.