When the morning came, Wade had a barely touched glass of bourbon on his bedside and, more importantly, an arsenal of knowledge.

It didn't help, of course, that he had no idea what to do with his new found information or how best to incorporate it into conversation without seeming like he had very obviously creeped on Violet's social media identity, but he could only imagine that it never hurt to do a little extra homework. After all, if he hadn't been up half the night digitally spying on Violet, how would he know about her affection for Sabrina the Teenage Witch or, say, her affinity for posting videos of cats?

"I've got nothing," he groaned, then swung his legs over the side of the bed and started to dress for the day.

Well, maybe not nothing. From all his searching, he had learned one thing--Violet was not joking around when it came to her involvement in Sam's life.

There was hardly a single picture on her page that didn't feature Sam grinning by her side. She'd gone to every school event, had taken him to every town festival, had taught him how to swim. She'd even taken him to lay flowers Meg's grave on the anniversary of her death.

When he'd seen the picture, his heart swelled with gratitude and sadness and something else he couldn't quite put his finger on. And, after all his studying, he knew one thing was for sure--Violet was absolutely right.

The second he'd had news of his sister's death, he should have rushed back home to be with Sam. He should never have counted on Jimmy to be a father to his son, to care for all the little details that kids understand and feel so acutely. He should have known better.

He breathed deep, letting another swell of gratitude for Violet rise in his chest.

He had to make it up to Sam--the fact that he'd allowed twelve whole months to go by without being the adult he needed in his life. But, even more than that, he had to find a way to thank Violet for everything she'd done for Sam, and, really, for his entire family.

Ready for the day, Wade rolled up his sleeves as he tramped down the steps and found Violet and Sam again at the dining room table. This morning, though, there were no figurines or sewing projects. Instead, there was a huge stack of pancakes in the middle of the table alongside a pitcher of orange juice and a skillet of bacon.

"Wow, you guys made a feast," he said.

Sam smiled at him dolefully. "Yeah, Violet always makes breakfast on Sunday."

Violet gestured to the empty plate on the side of the table farthest from herself. "Help yourself. It's our little Sunday tradition."

"So what's the plan for today? Are you going to paint some more soldiers?"

Sam shook his head. "I have a full battalion."

Wade nodded. "Can you show them to me later?"

He thought he caught Violet glancing at him from the corner of his eye, but he ignored her, intent on Sam's reaction.

The little boy nodded, chewing on a huge bite of pancake. "Sure."

"Great. So, what's Sunday usually like around here?" He finally turned his attention to Violet and she cleared her throat before sweeping a piece of her chestnut hair behind her shoulder.

"Well, um, we make sure homework is done."

"Check," Sam said.

"And rooms are clean."

"Check," Sam said again.

"And then we sort of play it by ear. Did you have any suggestions?"

Wade shook his head. "You are the boss."

Violet blinked at him. "Right, well, um, I was thinking Sam might want to carve a pumpkin today. We need one for the porch."

"Cool," Sam nodded. "Can we get a really big one?" He directed the question to Wade, but Wade turned back to Violet.

"Yes," Violet smiled at the little boy. "You can pick it out yourself."

Apparently, this was all the information Sam needed. He hopped from his seat and ran up the stairs so fast that the thundering of his tiny feet echoed through the whole house.

"What is he doing?" Wade asked.

"Probably going to look at his picture books to see who the easiest person to carve into a pumpkin will be."

"I hope I'm not going to be expected to carve mutton chops onto some poor unsuspecting pumpkin," He grinned at her and she offered him a nervous smile in return. Still, just as quickly, her gaze darted from him to focus on the table, the walls, the floor.

She bit her bottom lip and, God help him, the memory of how her lips felt flooded him again. Except, of course, now he had compounded what he'd known about her. She wasn't just the girl he'd gone to school with, nor was she the nanny that Sam adored. She was the woman who had smiled up at a camera while laying on the beach in a tasteful one piece that still did nothing to hide her generous curves. She was the woman who, for one reason or another, had worn her pretty brown hair in a tousled ponytail while she laughed at something just beyond the camera.

There was a whole other side to this woman that he didn't know. That he wanted to know.

Not that he could ask her anything and give away exactly how much he'd snooped.

Desperately, he searched for some safe topic of conversation, but before he had the chance, she spoke up.

"Look, I've been thinking and I overstepped yesterday. I know you were just trying to, you know, bond with Sam. It probably would have worked with most little boys and he's your nephew, so it's not my place to just--"

"No. You were right. Absolutely right. Don't worry about it."

Violet frowned, and he found himself staring at the corners of her downturned mouth, then lower, to the curved of her burnt orange sweater that dipped a little too low in the front.

Quickly, he glanced away, then got up from the table and began to clear Sam's plate. "Okay, well, this should be a fun day."

And it was. Aside from the strange tension that still lingered in the air between himself and Violet, Sam was practically bouncing with joy all day long. After they'd carved one pumpkin with the symbol of the Free Masons and another in a more traditional, scary pumpkin face, they settled around the TV for some Halloween movies and toasted pumpkin seeds.

As it turned out, Sam was fascinated by the mechanisms of monster movies, and though Violet refused to let him watch anything scarier than Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Wade was buoyed by the chance of getting to know something new about his nephew.

Less promising, however, were his attempts to get to know Violet better. It seemed as though every time he tried to strike up a conversation with her, she found a new reason to leave the room or cut the conversation short. He couldn't understand it. After all, he'd told her that she was right, had tried to apologize for everything he'd done wrong. He'd even gone out of his way to compliment her or notice the things she'd done around the house, but nothing seemed to work.

And, as the week went on, the situation only worsened.

Though he'd spend his days locked in his bedroom, trying his hardest to direct his company from afar, he was all too away that somewhere, on the other side of his door, Violet was wondering around the house, doing chores or running errands, though whenever he left his room she seemed to magically disappear. Then, every night, when Sam was home and they'd all gather around the dinner table, she would alternate between talking with Sam and staring down at her food.

There had to be something he was missing. Some key to the smiling, fun-loving Violet. The goofy Violet. Though, at this point, he'd settle for anything at all. Several nights, he was on the verge of asking her what was going on, but whenever Sam went to bed, she followed him, careful to never be alone with Wade for more than a few moments at a time.

It was true that he was making progress with Sam, but it wasn't enough. This weekend, he was going to have to do something bigger, something to show Violet that he knew what Sam liked and that, more importantly, they could all spend time as the bizarro kind of family they were.

He just had to figure out what.

* * *

Violet leaned against the sink, one white ceramic dish still in her hand, and turned off the spray of the water.

Distantly, she could hear the distinctive shriek of Sam's laughter as Wade made a loud neighing sound and thunked something hard against the floor.

It was hard the believe so many days had already gone by with Wade here, and harder still to think of how normal it had become to have him here. Now, each night at dinner, he'd pepper Sam with questions or remind him to brush his teeth before he went to bed. Instead of her assisting him with his homework, it was Wade who sat at his side and explained his spelling words and helped him to think through math problems. One night, Wade had even recorded a special on the crossing of the Delaware for them all to watch together and as they'd sat around the TV, Sam had snuggled under Wade's arm and fallen asleep.

It seemed like every day offered another little shock to her system, another way Wade had made some effort.

And it scared the bejesus out of her.

It wasn't that Sam didn't need her. She knew that, no matter what, that little boy loved her and trusted her. She didn't mind that Wade was his new toy, and, no matter how hard she tried to convince herself otherwise, she didn't really think Wade could abandon him.

No, it was everything else that was the problem. It was Wade. It was her.

She ran a dishcloth over the outside of the plate in her hand then stacked it gently inside the cupboard before making her way to her bedroom, Wade still on the forefront of her mind.

She knew--of course she knew--that he'd been trying to make an effort with her. He'd poured her wine at dinner and asked her questions about her day, but she couldn't bring herself to answer him with any amount of warmth or interest. It was too dangerous to allow herself, like Sam, to be sucked in by him. Because, after all, she wasn't his family. He didn't have any obligation to her. He didn't have to stay in touch. And, most of all, she wasn't an idiot.

Wade hated this town.

Hated it in all the same ways she loved it so much--the pageants and the gossip and the interest in each other's lives. For her, of course, that had been a source of comfort when her own mother had died and the ladies in town had all stepped in to care for her. For Wade, well, it was a reminder of the way people used to whisper behind his sister's back about her no-good husband or about the way Wade himself flitted from girl to girl. She understood that, and the odds of him wanting Sam to grow up in a place he hated so much...

Well, it simply wasn't likely.

She couldn't kid herself about that. Couldn't pretend that he didn't have a job and a life back in Philadelphia.

When she made it to her bedroom, she opened her laptop and scrolled through her emails quickly, if only to distract herself from the growing sense of dread that cornered her each and every night.

Her days with Sam were numbered.

She had to come to terms with that.

When she'd first taken the job, she'd known as much. Known that this little boy would grow up and not need her eventually, but she'd told herself she could handle it. That, after a lifetime of depending on herself and herself alone, it wouldn't be so hard to go back to only caring for herself. But now?

Well, now she couldn't imagine it. She'd already searched the statistics of every school in Philadelphia and wondered what his new room might look like. If Wade would let him decorate it with a giant American flag on one wall that way he'd always begged Jimmy for.

It was possible, though, wasn't it, that Wade didn't like Philadelphia either. That maybe he had nothing really waiting for him there and he simply enjoyed the convenience of city life? There was a city not so far away, then, that he could move to, and if he'd managed to run his company from afar for this long then maybe...

She swallowed hard, then opened a new tab on her browser and, hating herself, opened her favorite social media site. Not daring to look at the screen, she typed Wade's name into the search bar and clicked on the first result.

Wade's face stared back at her, the corners of his mouth only slightly upturned as he stared into the camera. He was in a suit with a tiny red rosebud pinned to the lapel. At this side stood a pretty, grinning woman with exactly his brown eyes and a mess of wild, blond curls. She might have thought the woman was his girlfriend, but she looked so much like Sam that there was no denying who she was.

A small baby bump was just visible in the photo, and Violet had to force herself to look away from the picture.

Instead, she scrolled down the page, reading his stats with forced casualness. He didn't post much. Mostly, there were photos other people had posted of him--at baseball games, in his office, at ritzy-looking bars. It was the typical life of a successful single man in the big city. Someone who'd made something of themselves.

In her mind's eye, she tried to move him from those swanky bars to the two-stepping bar in town, but even in her head, it wouldn't fit. He just wasn't meant to be there.

With a little surge of jealousy, she noticed the same girl in a few photos--one with raven black hair and wide, crystal blue eyes. She was tall and thin and pretty enough to be a model. In short, rage flared inside Violet just looking at her.

Glancing at her door, she clicked on the girl's picture and followed it to her page. The first picture on the screen was the woman in a long, white dress, a birdcage veil pinned atop her sleek up-do.

"Married. Good," she muttered to herself, but then she wrinkled her nose and said to the room at large, "Not that it matters."

God, I'm losing my mind.

She clicked out the page and closed her computer, then crept down the hall to remind the boys of bedtime.

When she opened the door, however, it was to find Sam lying on his stomach on the carpet, his toy soldier in his hand, and Wade lying across from him, a tiny horse just out of his reach.

Violet closed her eyes, willing herself to hold back the sudden swell of emotion at the sight, but they looked too perfect together, too cute.

Gently, she removed the soldier from Sam's hand, sat it on his shelf, and then lifted him into her arms and onto the bed. As she moved, she let out a little groan, and then turned to find Wade staring up at her from the floor.

"Guess we partied a little too hard," he whispered, straightening up.

"Guess so," She hissed back, but then Sam was stirring, rubbing his eye with one tiny fist. "Will you read to me?" He asked, though he still sounded groggy.

"Go ahead, Violet. I got it." Wade said, then, without asking, he picked up a book from Sam's bedside table and began to read.

A hard knot swelled in Violet's throat, but she nodded all the same and made for the bedroom door. Still, when she clicked it shut behind her, she couldn't help but to cry.