Haustin shifted, moving from foot to foot and fighting to keep his annoyance in check. He and Miles waited, not so patiently, inside a fancy makeup store, two feet from the doors, so close to freedom. They were the only men to be seen, except for a male employee with pink-tipped hair, and perfume inundated the air, thick and cloying. Add in pounding music and snippets of body glitter comparisons, Haustin figured he may as well be in Hell.

"This place is intense," his son whispered.

"We should have stayed outside."

"But you promised Luna something since you got me the new Xbox controller, so it's kinda your fault."

"Momentary lapse in judgment."

He shared a grim look with Miles and watched Luna, a few aisles over, listening raptly to whatever Yael was telling her. From the hand gestures and pointing, he guessed lipstick to be the hot topic. The throbbing in his temples grew, and he reached automatically into his pocket, dismayed when his fingers failed to brush against the familiar hard plastic of his pill bottle. Damn. He could use a little haziness right now.

"Dad! I need these."

Luna stood before him, face happy and expectant, holding three tubes of lipstick for him to see. Glancing over her head, he spotted Yael and wished he felt one iota of her calmness. Refocusing on Luna, he examined her find.

"You don't need all those."

"But, Dad!"

"You're too young to wear that much lip junk."

"This is lipstick. The other two are glosses, for when I need a little shine."

He wiped a hand down his face, not in the mood for an argument. "Pick one of the glosses and if I buy the lipstick, you have to promise me it's only for practice. I don't want to see it on you in public."

"Fine." Luna's sigh was accompanied by an exaggerated eye roll. "I'll get Glimmer Vixen."

"Vixen?" Haustin choked on the word.

"It's the name of the tint," Yael reassured him, stepping forward to place her hands on Luna's shoulders. "It's fun."

The urge to make it a bigger deal burned hot on his tongue, but he didn't want to ruin what had been a near-perfect day. Sighing, Haustin reached into his wallet and pulled out a twenty. Luna took it and cocked her head, not moving.

"More than twenty?" he asked.

"Well, yeah. This is the good stuff."

"Robbery," he muttered, passing her another twenty. "We'll be outside."

Before turning, he noticed the twitch of Yael's lips.

"It's not funny," he shot over his shoulder as he pulled his son to the safety of the sidewalk.

Leaning against the glass window, he frowned. Was Miles chuckling? He narrowed his eyes and peeked over, met with an amused expression.

"What?"

"Nothing, Dad."

Haustin heard how hard Miles was trying not to laugh and let a grin slip. "Women."

Luna and Yael joined them minutes later, his daughter bouncing with happiness. "Dinner?" Yael suggested.

Haustin frowned. It'd been a long, emotional day. He'd be happy going home and finding a moment of peace, but giving in to the darkness was exactly the sort of thing he was trying to avoid. He had to try harder to let the old Haustin go.

"Let's go to the Hard Rock!" Miles said.

"As in rock music?" Luna scrunched her nose. "Yuck."

"It's right there." Miles pointed.

"Yeah, come on, Luna. Let Dad school you in the coolest music ever made," Haustin teased, unable to deny their infectious mood.

"Again, yuck." But she followed them across the street.

The place was busy, and Springsteen blared from the speakers, singing about his glory days. It bolstered Haustin's mood, chasing away his desire to return home so soon. He sat beside Yael and squeezed her leg under the table.

"Find what you needed in that awful store?"

"Sure did. And Luna got some nail polish to go with her gloss. I hope you don't mind."

Luna smiled proudly, showing him the bottle, and he nearly had a stroke. "Black?"

"It's the popular color right now," Yael said. Under her breath, so only he could hear, she added, "Relax."

"Come on, Dad, it doesn't mean I'm a delinquent because my nails are black. It's stylish."

"Supermodels wear it," Miles tossed in, blushing when all three heads snapped around to look at him. "I saw it on TV."

"See, even Miles knows it's cool." Yael bumped his shoulder with hers.

"How old are you, Yael?"

"Miles, that's not a question you ask people," Haustin warned with an uncomfortable laugh.

"It's fine. I haven't reached an age where it bothers me yet," Yael joked. "I'll be thirty in November."

"Oh my God! You're like, waaaaaay younger than Dad," Luna said with a scandalous tone. "He's forty."

"I'm thirty-six," he grumbled. Often, he felt twice his age, but Yael made him young again. It never lasted long enough, though. Jesus. He took a long gulp of ice water, wishing it was whiskey instead. Stop being such a downer, he lectured himself.

As they waited for their burgers to be served, the conversation lulled, made nearly impossible by the Aerosmith song being played. Anything Haustin came up with, he squashed. The clueless questions would only emphasize his recent absence from his kids' lives, and he didn't want to remind them of it. Not today.

Thank God for Yael. She got the ball rolling again.

"So, Luna, tell me what you do for fun."

His daughter blushed, and curiosity held him in its grasp. When had he ever asked her a similar question?

"I like to write." She focused hard on rolling and unrolling her napkin. "Nothing much, but it helps when my head feels full." Her cheeks turned a deeper red. "Sounds stupid."

"She has lots of diaries," Miles piped in, earning a swat from his sister.

Haustin ignored the urge to scold his son, concentrating on Luna instead. "You are far from stupid. What do you write about?"

She turned her gaze to him, nibbling her lip. Her vulnerability and wariness stole his breath. He'd put it there by being the train wreck he was. Going on impulse, he reached across the table and gripped her fingers. Haustin fixed a smile on his face, hoping to put her at ease.

"I envy anyone's ability to put what is in their head on paper. I'm proud of you."

Miles, Yael, and the bustle of the restaurant disappeared. Nothing existed for a moment but his girl. Luna wiped at her damp eyes in annoyance.

"I write about you." The words were soft. "Memories I have of us, before. And stories, poems, a little bit of everything really."

Failure and pride lodged in his throat, warring with the other to escape, a hot iron he couldn't speak or swallow around. Silence returned to cloak them, not even dissipating when the food arrived. His appetite vanished, and he stared at the toasted bun. Yael reached over, beneath the table, and patted his leg. It was enough to snap him from his stupor.

"What's your favorite memory?" he blurted.

"Second grade. I brought you to my class for career day. I remember all the kids being so jealous because you had a cool job." She dragged a fry idly through the ketchup. "Everyone else's dads worked on Wall Street or in publishing or auto repair. There you were in your bunker pants and helmet, looking like a real live hero. I was the most popular girl in my class after that, especially with the boys."

The memory hit him hard. He remembered it like it was yesterday; the smell of paper and hot lunch in the classroom, the little boy with glasses who followed him around, the way Luna had preened and flaunted him to her friends. The feel of her hand in his as she led him to the front of the room.

Determined to keep the mood comfortable and erase the frown lines on his daughter's face, he chuckled. "Who was the boy who nearly followed me home?"

"Zach Marshall. He wanted to hold my hand at recess the next day because of you."

They stared at each other for a while, unspoken emotions bouncing between them. He needed to arrange a father-daughter day, just the two of them. It was time to start making new memories.

"What about you, Miles?" Yael asked. "What do you like to do?"

"He's a Lego fiend," Luna joked, her voice regaining its strength.

"I'm doing the Death Star right now. It's like four thousand pieces. Over the spring I did the Millennium Falcon."

"Star Wars? Cool." From the corner of his eye, Haustin caught Yael grinning as she said, "Nice to see kids in your generation showing respect to a great movie."

"Not you too," Luna groaned. "I don't get it. The special effects are lame."

"But the story is timeless," Haustin supplied, feeling lighter. "Romance, comedy, a struggle of father and son, the fight to save the universe from evil. What else do you need?"

"Lame," his daughter repeated.

"What do you enjoy about Legos, Miles?" Yael asked before biting into a pickle spear.

He shrugged, "I like building things. When I grow up, I want to work with machines, like the crane that fell."

For the millionth time that day, his kids impressed the hell out of him. He couldn't help feel as though he was getting to know them all over again. And, to be honest, he was.

"Maybe you can visit one of our sites," Yael was saying. "Regardless of what happened with the crane, we're impeccably safe. I'll even have one of the foremen take you to the top, show you the tower cranes in action."

"Will you come, too?"

He felt her shudder beside him and predicted exactly what she'd say. His fear of tall buildings had only lasted a couple weeks. The job made it impossible. Sometimes, though, a secret he'd never admit to anyone, not even Yael, dizziness washed over him when he stood on the sidewalk, staring up at the steel and concrete giants, remembering a gray cloud hurtling towards him.

Yael sipped her iced tea, then said, "No, Miles, sorry. I'm not great with skyscrapers. I work in one but I stay away from the windows and try not to look up when I walk in."

"New York must suck for you then," Luna observed.

"I don't let it. If I was afraid all the time, I'd never leave the house. For me, working in a high rise tests me, forces me to face my fears. I don't let it cripple me."

"That's pretty cool," Miles said, drawing an enthusiastic nod from his sister.

Haustin savored the respect in their eyes as they watched Yael and the knots across his shoulders lessened. Until the unwanted desire for it to be his wife sitting here instead surfaced. If the last ten years had never happened, would his family be this happy if terrorists hadn't flown planes into the Twin Towers? He imagined dozens or hundreds of days like this, with Lindsey and the kids, of dancing with her at their weddings and holding grandbabies. The force of it was like a punch to the gut, and he had to stifle his gasp. What was wrong with him? He needed to get his head straight.

"Does Macy's still do their fireworks over the Hudson?" Yael asked, refocusing his attention. "The Fourth of July is coming up soon."

"Yeah," Miles answered her, vibrating with excitement. "We always go to the West Side Highway to watch. Best place. Mom makes a big deal out of it, picnic basket and everything."

A tradition he started, but Haustin didn't see the point of mentioning it. Last time he went anywhere to watch the fireworks, he'd been living with Lindsey and the kids. The ghost of their lives together would not leave him alone.

"I remember one year," Yael began, "my grandfather took me to the USS Intrepid, to the museum. They sell tickets and let people watch from the deck of the aircraft carrier. It was pretty patriotic. Until he turned it into a history lesson. I was eleven, and so, so bored."

Miles grinned. "Not for me. That'd be awesome."

"Because you're a boy," Luna reminded him.

Haustin almost opened his mouth to suggest they go to see the show this year, the four of them, but he refrained. He didn't want to mess with Lindsey's tradition and holidays with someone besides his wife suddenly made him uneasy.

"Maybe later in the summer, before you guys go back to school, we can take a trip to the Hamptons. I kind of inherited a house there. It's big, close enough to the ocean you can step from the deck onto the sand. And it has a pool." She glanced at him nervously. "That is, if this guy hasn't scared me off by then."

"We're screwed." Luna giggled.

"Hey," he said, feigning a frown. "For the beach, I will be on my best behavior."

Later, after they'd dropped the kids off and arrived at Yael's, he pulled her close.

"Thank you for everything today."

She relaxed into him, returning his embrace and kissing the side of his neck. "Your kids are pretty great."

"They are." He paused. "I'd forgotten. It's terrible to say, but I forgot what they were like. I've hurt them so much."

"Don't." She leaned back and held his face in her hands, zeroing in on him with those big, brown eyes. "If you constantly let yourself dwell on the past, it's going to eat you alive. You can't move forward if you're consumed with what you've done. Concentrate instead on what you're going to do."

God, she was right. "Where'd you learn that?"

"Rehab. Took me three tries to get it right, but it eventually stuck."

"It appears that I've landed my own personal therapist."

"Guess I should charge you double, huh?"

She kissed him, pressing herself against his body. He ran his hands up her sides, loving how she stretched as he did. Sighing into her hair, Haustin banished his lingering thoughts of Lindsey and focused on the amazing woman in his arms.