"I'm worried about you, you know," Jude said quietly, glancing over at me. "I'm really beginning to wonder if you're as together as you appear to be."

I raised my eyebrows. "What do you mean, Jude?" I said, laughing slightly as I did. "Things are fine, they always are." I sat down in one of the brown-leather chairs of his office. Jude sat down on the couch across from me.

"But are they?" he asked, staring me down. "It just seems… all wrong, you know." He shrugged. "Maybe I'm worrying about nothing… am I?"

I sighed slightly. "Jude, don't worry about me… you don't have to. I'm perfectly fine. Besides, you’ve got your hands full. Pro. Kath. The office." I shrugged myself. "You've got enough."

"Aleck, the business, my family, they're fine, it's you I'm worried about… you're… you're withdrawn these last few months… more than you were after the… the accident."

I exhaled in slight annoyance and stood up, crossing the room to glance out the window. Glaring down at the whole of Wall Street, I withdrew a cigarette. "Mind if I smoke in here, Jude?" I asked, pulling out a lighter. He shook his head.

"Have I ever minded before?"

I laughed slightly and then lit the cigarette. "Good point." I stared out the window more feeling quite melancholy. Jude was right, I had been withdrawn these last few months. And I shouldn't have been. Everything was in place, and life went on much as it had these last few years. Sure, things change… Jude and Kath had a son, Proinsias Judah Blackshire. My law firm was growing, and getting better with Hiram finally well enough to go back to work. Some things were worse, after about twenty years, Mary and Beth had split up, which of course added to my wondering if love ever really lasted. Amanda was still around, as was Jane.

Life was much as it always had been.

But Jude was right, something was different.

"No, Jude," I sighed. "I'm fine… really, I am. There are things, of course… But that's all they are, things. Life is what it used to be, what it ought be. Marc's doing good at school, the firm is great, I'm… I'm really all right, my old friend."

Jude raised his eyebrows and walked across the floor to join me. "And what about women… have you been seeing anyone?"

I shook my head slightly. "You know the answer to that. I don't want that, Jude. I don't want to try again. It… I… I still need time. To figure out if I even want that ever again. To figure out why it made me so damn miserable. To figure out if I'm still… you know. Still able to feel those things for anyone. Not Jane, not Amanda, just… anyone."

"You know…" he said quietly. "That it would have killed her to see you suffering like this." He set his hand on my shoulder. "It's been so long, Aleck. You can't grieve her forever. Can't just… keep running from old demons. You've got… a responsibility to her, to face those demons and move on." He tightened his grip on my shoulder. "Come now, my old friend, you know she'd have hated to see you still grieving."

I sighed. "If only it were that easy, Jude, that easy to just… just move on and forget her. I can't fight those demons. If I do, I'd lose just that little bit of her."

"But you wouldn't," he soothed gently.

I took off my spectacles and pinched the bridge of my nose between my fingers, sighing again, in what Jude would call a classic Aleck move. "The first time I grieved for her, I went about all wrong," I told him, leaning against the wall, still glancing halfway out the window. "I tried to forget her, and I tried to forget in the bed of every woman in Manhattan, because I thought… I thought that if I could forget her, just for a second, I could forget the pain that went along with it, just for a second." I lit another cigarette.

"But I was wrong, Jude, I was wrong. I went about it all wrong, and I didn't really grieve for those six years, I just… just became something she'd never have wanted me to be… I let go of something in me, you know… I couldn't… couldn't stand the thought of remembering and hurting more, but the funny thing was, in the end, it just hurt me the most."

Jude gave me a long, studying move. "It's not that simple, Aleck… you did what you needed to in order to get through that time in your life. No one holds what you did against you."

"But it is that simple," I argued, but I didn't know why I was arguing. "It is that black and white. I went about it all wrong. I screwed it up. And now, now I'm doing it right. I'll be better sometime, but not tonight. Not tomorrow, not the day after." I snickered slightly. "All black and white."

"No, it's all shades of gray," Jude told me firmly.
I sighed and shook my head. "You don't get it, Jude. You don't. You won't ever understand what I went through to make me walk away from Jane and Amanda like that. Not the thoughts that went through my head, not that it was the truth that I needed to be alone." I sighed more. "And that’s okay, Jude, that’s really okay. It is. You don't have to understand. Hell, some days, even Ii don't understand. But that's just… Just the way it works I guess. Believe me, Jude… it's better this way."

Jude nodded. "I know I don't understand it, Aleck, I can't. But I also can't believe that seeing you in hell like this is… is the better way. Don't think I haven't been watching. You started withdrawing when Holly came in the picture." He raised his eyebrows at me. "Just because Amanda is with Holly doesn’t mean you have to go through any more hell than you are."

"That's not it, Jude," I told him… and that was the truth. It would never be about Amanda, not ever again.

Jude touched my shoulder again. "Then what is it about, Aleck?"

I turned to look at him. More things than you could ever understand, I wanted to say. More things than I could ever really tell you. Her… and her… and her… ad a countless other things. A countless number of faces. Remorse, regret, pain. All these things…

"I couldn't even begin to tell you," I told him honestly.

He sighed in defeat and glanced at his watch. "I have to go meet Kath and Pro for his check-up at the doctors," he told me, squeezing my shoulder in good-bye. "But do me a favor, old friend?"

I shrugged. "Sure, what?"

"Go to the cemetery. Go see Morgan. Go figure it all out."

I sighed and nodded. "Fine. But you won't ever understand why that won't do it. You can't understand Jude. You never will."