January 4th 2004

"Are you sure you're doing that right?" she asked for the fifth time.

"Yes dear," JC answered back with a mumble.

"It looks like you're doing it wrong."

"I just need to finish unscrew this part so that I could fit this- Ow, shit!"

"Bad word," Ian said, pointing at JC. He had one hand around his mother's neck as she held him up and the other arm was outstretched to his father.

Jess sighed. "I told you that you should have asked Chris to help."

JC scowled, lifting his head and standing straight, the tip of his index finger in his mouth. "I can finish it!"

"What'd you do now?"

"I squeezed my finger somewhere trying to put those two pieces together."

"Why didn't you just read the instructions?"

JC picked up the set of stapled papers and handed them to her. "They're in Spanish or something."

Jess tried to understand what the papers read while Ian just looked down curiously. "These are in French babe."

JC rolled his eyes. "Like there's a difference!"

 "Your daddy's cranky," Jess whispered to Ian playfully, but JC still heard her.

"I am not!"

"And you wanted to go into carpentry? If you can't put a plastic swing set together, then God alone knows why he put you in show business."

"Same reason he didn't want me to be a doctor. And I can put this thing together. I just need to... take apart some things and use all the pieces and make sure it doesn't break."

"I should have just taken you to the park, ain't that right Ian? Your dad is hopeless as it seems."

"Well then you do it!" JC challenged, stepping closer to her and Ian, delighted, let his father take him.

JC balanced holding Ian up with one arm and nodded toward the spot in their backyard where he was trying to put the set together. He looked at Jess.

"You think that's easy? You do it."

"Jace," she groaned. "I'm not saying it's easy. I'm saying you're taking too damn long trying to do it yourself when you could have just asked someone else to help you."

"I am asking you to help me."

"You know I'm no better than you in this stuff. And that's pretty bad."

"Say that I can do the job."

Jess smiled. "Babe, you've been out here for the past three hours. Can't we just spend the rest of the day out by a real swing or a real slide or something?"

"But I'll get it done, I promise. Just a couple more hours."

"You and your pride," Jess sighed, shaking her head. "Mix that with that with your ambition and you'll get a pretty hard headed guy, JC."

"Bud, you want to go out or you wanna stay here and watch your dad build you an awesome swing set? If we stay, then I'll convince mommy to get us ice cream tonight after dinner."

"Hey, you can't bribe our kid!" Jess laughed. "That's not fair. He likes to stay wherever you are anyways."

"Stay with daddy!" Ian shouted, a big smile on his face.

"The toddler has spoken," JC smirked, setting him down on his feet. "Just watch baby."

Jess looked down at Ian and shrugged. "I hope you don't grow up to be as stubborn as your father when you get older."

"I heard that!" JC yelled back at her, picking up a screw driver from the small toolbox he had.

She grinned. "I love you too!"

"Just come over here and try to help please."

"Now he wants us to help," she chuckled to herself, watching as Ian scurried over to where JC was stooping down, peering into the toolbox. "What'd you want us to do Mr. Carpenter?"

JC ignored her comment. "Just hold on to this side of the pole and keep it on the ground so that I can connect the top part to it to the other pole.

Jess told Ian to stand and watch at a little distance away from where they were in case any tools happened to fly out of JC's hands.

"Are you sure this is what you're supposed to do?" she asked, uncertainly.

"Yes."

"You're sure?"

"There are only so many places that this piece can go Jessica."

"I just think that you should put it higher up."

JC looked at her and considered her suggestion. "Here?"

"Lower."

"Right here?"

Jessica giggled. "No, babe, put it right there. Yea, here. Jace, there is-"

-"Okay, so you're gonna take this one and you're going to stick it over here," JC advised his son, handing him a cut out picture with glue on the back. JC pointed to a blank space where nothing was stuck or written, waiting for Ian to place the picture on the page.

He smiled to himself as he watched Ian do what he did every time JC handed him a different photo. He held it in his hands, holding it at the tips and watched it carefully, like he was trying to remember every scenario, recognize every person and recall every moment, trying to absorb every detail that was in each photo.

"Why is mommy's belly so big?" Ian asked innocently, looking up at JC with big, dark blue eyes.

JC smiled, looking down at the picture. "You were in there," he said, looking at the picture he had taken himself, just five years ago. It was one in which he had walked in on Jess taking a nap one afternoon after they had done finished shopping for Ian's nursery and JC had walked in on her. She was flat on her back, eight and a half months pregnant, and JC thought it was just too beautiful a moment not to capture on camera.

Ian stuck the picture carefully, next to the heart shaped cut out one of Jess holding Ian at one month old. Ian titled his head and frowned.

"How did I fit in there?"

"You were smaller at the time. Small enough to fit in her belly."

"How did I get in there?"

JC burst out laughing, shaking his head as he reached for another photo and the pair of scissors. "That is a story not meant to be told today little dude."

"Are we done yet?" Ian asked, reaching excitedly for the blue marker next to his arm.

"Almost," JC murmured, making sure there were no jagged edges along the picture. He took the glue and dropped a few blots at the back before looking at the page and then to Ian.

"We said we were gonna stick this one here, right?"

The five year old nodded.

JC slowly lowered the picture of Jess holding Ian at three and a half years old in her arms, the both of them with big grins on their faces, waving at the camera. The picture was taken under a tree at a park in Florida by JC. JC had also chosen the picture because it was his favorite one of the mother and son before she had passed just under a year later. He loved the genuine smiles on their faces and how Ian had one arm latched around Jess' neck while the other waved at the camera.

"Now we're done," JC said softly, leaning back in his chair to admire the last page. "Go ahead. Write it in."

Ian grinned, looking closely at the lines JC drew in lightly at the very bottom and middle of the page. He pulled off the cover to the marker and wrote slowly and carefully.

Me and my Mommy. I Love You.

Ian closed the marker and looked up his dad, beaming. "I'm done."

"Yea, we are," JC said, high fiving his son and then giving him a quick kiss on the top of his head. "And now, it's all yours."

He held up the scrapbook they'd spent the last two hours putting together and smiled. The first three pages were full of pictures of JC and Jess before they got married, after they got married, and of the three of them on various family outings. The rest of the book was full of random pictures of Jessica at random times whenever JC caught her and he had a camera and then mostly of her and Ian doing silly things together.

There were little captions and small phrases that both Ian and JC wrote under each picture or just in a corner or blank space somewhere.

It was now Ian's permanent source of remembrance of his mother. Whenever he got older and felt like the memories were drifting away, JC wanted him to open that book and be reminded that the three of them were a happy family at some point. Something just got in the way of that... JC knew he'd learn to appreciate those pictures as he got older.

"I get to keep it in my room?"

JC nodded, getting up from the chair. "Mhm. And you can look at it whenever you want to or whenever  you feel like you need to."

Ian closed the book and looked up at his father seriously. JC had already started clearing the table of the glue bottles and paper strips that had been cut off and the various colors of crayons and markers that were spread out.

"Dad?"

"Yea bud?"

"Can we go now?"

"Go where?"

"You said we could go if the Sun was still out by the time we finished the scrapbook."

Dammit. He said that?

JC sighed. "I'm tired now buddy."

"But the Sun is still out!"

JC didn't reply. He just continued to clean up the table in front of him.

Ian looked at him and got off the chair, running into the living room and before JC could even turn around and ask where he was going, Ian ran back in, this time a folded piece of paper in his hand.

"You promised we could go."

"We'll go Saturday."

"You said to Uncle Justin was coming over to help you with a song on Saturday."

How the shit did this kid remember me saying that?

JC cursed himself for continuing to speak about his business plans on the phone when Ian was around.

"Then I'll take you on Sunday," JC sighed.

"No you won't."

"Come help me put this stuff away Ian."

Ian obeyed his father but he didn't let go of the paper, nor did he give up on his question.

"Why won't you take me?"

"It's getting late."

"It's still sunny."

"Don't question me Ian."

"You promised me," the child said in a small voice.

JC sighed, putting down the fistful of markers in his hand and stooping down to be at eye level with his son.

Ian usually didn't question things when JC told him no. He knew that whenever JC said no to him doing or wanting something, it was because he didn't need it, he wouldn't use it, it wasn't relevant to either of them or because he was doing something wrong or JC didn't have time for it at the moment.

This time, however, Ian also knew that his dad always tried keeping promises. And this time, JC was denying his promise. He wasn't trying to be a spoilt five year old who threw tantrums when they didn't get what they want, but he was only trying to understand why JC would change his mind about doing something like this with him.

"Ian," JC started off with a sigh. "We can go another time. Another time when... you're ready..."

"I'm ready today," Ian insisted.

Well, I'm not.

"We can go another time."

"Why wait?"

"Because..." JC didn't dare say that he was scared of going back there in front of his son. He didn't dare mention that he wasn't ready and that that place still brought an immense amount of heartache. A heartache Ian would never understand until God forbid the same thing happened to him as a man in years to come.

"We don't have to stay long," Ian pleaded. "I won't ask for anything else, I promise."

JC smiled softly. "Bud... Don't you just want to stay home and go for a nice swim or do some more art stuff or something?"

Ian shook his head. "I want to talk to my mom. I want her to hear this."

JC studied him for a moment and gave in, dropping his head in a sigh before popping his head back up and putting on a smile. "Okay, fine. Ten minutes. We'll stay for ten minutes and then we come back home and do something fun. Go put on your shoes and meet me in the kitchen."

Ian grinned, immediately turning around and dashing off to find his shoes up in his room.

JC sighed, shaking his head at himself as he stood up for even making the promise in the first place. And now, he had no choice but to go back to the place that he said he would never go back to for a long, long time.