"Abbey-----"

"Hmmm…" Abbey quickly came back to the present to see her husband kneeling at his father's grave and looking up at her expectantly.

"Where were you?"

"New Years Eve 1973."

Jed nodded. That night had been a turning point in their relationship and in his relationship with his father. "Mrs. Landingham was right. My father WAS a prick."

"Yes, he was."

Abbey and Jed both turned at the imperious tone of Emily Bartlet.

"Mother, what are you doing here?" Jed was clearly stunned. Never once had he ever heard his mother refer to her husband in any derogatory way, never mind the term that he'd just used.

"I was told you were out here and one of your kind agents offered to bring me over." She turned to wave at the secret service agent who had his golf cart parked at the edge of the cemetery. " I knew why you were out here."

"You did?"

"You came to talk to your father, to tell him that you're going to be re-elected. You don't owe him anything, Josiah. Not one damn thing."

Jed's eyes were wide. His mother had never talked to him like this. They didn't discuss his father, EVER.

"I didn't come out here because I felt like I owed him. I came out here to rub his nose in it. He never thought I was good enough. He never thought that I was big enough or quick enough or smart enough or strong enough, but you know, I got the last laugh, didn't I? His hatred didn't destroy me, it just made me more determined, and, you know what? Tomorrow I'm going to be elected to a second term as a DEMOCRATIC President of the United States." Jed turned from his mother looking up at the sky. "You hear that, you old bastard!" He shouted up to the heavens. " I'm getting re-elected tomorrow and there isn't damn thing you can do about it. Still think I'm nothing? Still think I'm worthless? Still want to beat the shit out of me?"

Tears stinging her eyes, Abbey moved forward to touch his arm. All these years later and the little boy in Jed was still crying out to his father, still crying out for his love, for his approval. "Jed, he's dead. He doesn't matter anymore."

"Your father never thought you were worthless, Josiah." Emily moved forward to touch her son awkwardly on the shoulder. "He was, at best, a difficult man. He was jealous of you. He was eaten away by that jealousy. In the end it destroyed anything good and decent inside of him."

"Why the hell did you ever marry him, mother?"

"The father that you knew was not always the man he had been. At one time he was a young man with hopes and ambition. That was the man that I met and fell in love with. I wasn't always your mother, Josiah. Once I was a young girl, a young girl who never really fit in with my family. You know what they were like. Such a loud, boisterous, Irish Catholic clan. I was quiet and reserved; I liked to spend my afternoons reading. They never really understood me. And, there were so many of us it was like we were living on top of each other. I was just a girl, only 18 years old, when I went up to Wolfeboro to waitress at my Aunt Brenna's restaurant for the summer and even though I would be working I was thrilled to get away. I wasn't going to college; this was to be my adventure. Your father was one of the "summer people"; he was staying at his maternal grandparent's home on the lake and when he walked into that coffee shop as handsome as could be in his Dartmouth T-shirt and khakis my heart skipped a beat. Your father was everything that I thought I wanted in a husband. He was as different from the emotional, volatile men in my family as night and day. He was calm and confident and he was a gentleman. He was old money and big houses. I didn't realize then that what I took for still waters running deep was, in actuality, still waters covering an ice-cold heart. Your father had spent his life competing with your Uncle Ted and your Uncle Stephen for your grandfather's approval and he always came up lacking. It made him bitter. But I didn't know any of that until after I married him."

"And you couldn't divorce him," Jed stated bitterly.

"No, I couldn't, and I didn't want to. I may not have gotten what I'd expected in my husband, but the other benefits compensated for it. I was a Bartlet, I was a real lady and I tried so hard to fit in. Too hard I guess. You don't know what it was like for me knowing that everyone knew that John married beneath him, knowing that they looked down on me, that they were waiting for me to make a mistake. I suppose I lost a part of myself trying to become a Bartlet."

"So, you sacrificed love for a big house and parties at the governor's mansion."

"I guess I did, and respectability, and, of course, you."

"Me?"

"You and your brother. I'll admit, I was never all that maternal. I'd had to help raise six younger brother's and sisters, I didn't long to play mommy the way that Abbey did." She glanced at her daughter in law remembering Abbey's excitement and wonder over her first pregnancy and each one after. " But I was happy to be fulfilling my duty. I was doing what a good Bartlet wife was supposed to do, giving my husband sons to be proud of."

"Huh," Jed snorted. "Too bad he never was."

"It's pretty hard to be proud of someone that you're jealous of. I may not have been ga ga over having a baby but once you were born I loved you so much. Your father was jealous of that love; he made me feel foolish and common for spending as much time as I did with you so I acquiesced. I turned your care over to Mrs. Hopkins and threw myself into being the perfect headmaster's wife. You aren't the only one who had to live up to impossible standards, Josiah. I was never good enough for your father. He married a poor Irish girl to spite his father and he never let me forget that's all that I was. But I did try to do right by you. I could see how your father felt about you, how upset he was over the attention that you got from your grandfather Josiah, so I tried to keep my distance. The more that I praised you, the angrier your father got with you so I stopped praising you. But, I wasn't a horrible mother. I tucked you in every night that I could."

"Yes, with prayers. You gave me the joy of my faith, mother, and I'll always thank you for that, but I wanted more. I NEEDED more."

"What more could I have done?"

"You could have kissed me good night and told me you loved me. I don't remember one time when you told me that you loved me."

"Of course I loved you." Even now the words were hard for Emily. "You should have known that."

"Why? Why should I have known? You never told me how you felt. You never once spontaneously pulled me into your arms, kissed my head and told me you loved me." Jed's eyes held Abbey's for a long moment. He'd watched Abbey do just that with Nicholas not two hours before. " I was lucky if I got a quick peck on the cheek on Christmas Eve."

"Things were different, Josiah. People weren't all lovey dovey the way that they are now."

"Maybe not, but something is wrong when the first time you hear the words 'I love you' you're 21 years old and it's your girlfriend saying it." He reached out his hand to take Abbey's, felt the support in the strength of her squeeze.

"Okay, maybe I was wrong. I've never been good at showing or expressing my emotions. When I told your father I loved him, he laughed at me as if I was a child. I couldn't bear that happening again."

"I never would have laughed at you, mother." Jed's solemn eyes settled on her. "Never."

Emily felt tears burn in her eyes. Tears for the lost years of her sons childhood, tears for all she had missed in trying to be the perfect Bartlet. "I want you to know that whatever shortcomings you think I have as a mother…I swear to you on the holy Bible that I never knew your father beat you." She reached her hand out to grasp Jed's arm.

The tears that filled Emily's eyes fascinated Jed. Only once in his life had he seen her cry and that was when JFK was assassinated, not when her husband died.

"You never had any idea?"

"I knew he slapped you. I knew he spanked you. But, the other stuff that Abbey said he did to you. I never knew."

Jed saw the guilt clouding her eyes. "Did you suspect?"

Emily was silent for a moment the tears spilling slowly down her cheeks. "God help me, I did. There were so many accidents. Things like that time you crashed the golf cart and broke your ribs. But you never said anything and I guess I just didn't want to know"

"I didn't crash the golf cart, mother. Dad told you I did, but I didn't. He was pissed at me for adding a stroke to his score, deserved I might add, and he hit me across the chest with his golf club."

Emily's eyes widened with disbelief. "No," she moaned… "Oh heaven help me, no…" She sat then on the bench covering her face with her hands.

There were so many other incidents Jed could have told her about, so many other "accidents", but, for the first time, as he looked at her sitting on that bench, he didn't see the formidable stiff- spined mother he had grown up with, he saw a broken up old lady. His mother was an old woman. The past was the past; there was nothing either of them could do to change it and he just couldn't bring himself to hurt her any further. Instead, he sat next to her on the bench placing his arm over her frail shaking shoulders.

"It's okay, mother. It was a long time ago."

"Oh, Josiah. Can you ever forgive me?"

"Forgiving is what I do best," he smiled down at her.

Emily reached a hand out to stroke his jaw. He was so handsome, this son of hers. With his thick bronze hair, his tanned square jaw and his beautiful merry blue eyes he took after her side of the family, as Irish as could be. But there was more to her son than good looks. Josiah was a good man, a good husband, a good father and a good President. Why had she never told him so before? Why had she let him grow up feeling worthless and unloved? She wondered quickly what she could do to make it up to him. She glanced back at John's grave, knew that despite Jed's words to the contrary he was still aching for his father's love and acceptance. "Your father never hated you," her words were choked out.

"What?"

"I said your father never hated you. As I said, he was so jealous of you he couldn't see straight. You were a good looking absolutely brilliant child and you were the apple of your grandfather's eye, something he'd always strived for and never achieved. Your grandfather Josiah doted on your every word. He was planning your campaign for governor when you were three years old."

"Funny. I didn't decide to run until I was 39."

"Didn't matter, he saw it all. Your father was jealous of you because you were better at everything than he was. A better leader, a better scholar, a better husband, a better father and more than anything, a better man, but he didn't hate you, he just wanted to be better than you."

"I don't understand that kind of jealousy. I'd love for my son to be a better man than I am. I want so much for Nicholas and for Aislinn and for all my girls that it hurts inside. Why couldn't he feel the same pride that I feel?"

"Because, as you stated earlier, your father was a prick."

Abbey and Jed stared at the older woman in awe, neither had ever even heard her curse before, let alone use a term like that.

"Hey don't look at me like that. I've seen you both use far worse words on your scrabble boards." She gave them the old Emily Bartlet tsk..tsk look. "And don't think I haven't looked up a few of those words in the dictionary. You two should be ashamed of yourselves."

Abbey looked at Jed with wide eyes remembering quite a few of the terms her mother in law had questioned and they both burst into laughter.

When they had stopped laughing Abbey walked away to give the two time for any private mother/son moments they might want to share. As a mother Abbey had never been able to understand Emily Bartlet's treatment of her son. She could never understand how a mother could withhold love and cuddles and praise. She adored her children, she couldn't imagine never having held them to her breasts to nourish them or never having held them on her lap to rock them to sleep after a bath or kiss a boo-boo when they got hurt. She couldn't imagine not pulling them up into bed with her to snuggle close when they were scared in the night or not tucking them in after prayers with a kiss to the forehead and an "I love you". She couldn't imagine suspecting her husband was hurting her child and never getting that child out of the situation. Listening to Emily's perspective tonight it was clear that John Bartlet had done as much to the psyche of the young woman who had been Emily Flynn Bartlet as he had done to his sons, she was just glad that Jed had had the chance to make peace with his mother in a way that he hadn't with his father.

Abbey made her way along the headstones reading the familiar names. She paused, as she always did, before Alice Bartlet's grave. Alice had died in 1872 in childbirth and was buried with her daughter Sarah who had perished as well. Since the first time she had come here when she was engaged to Jed and pregnant with Elizabeth she had felt an affinity for the young mother and her baby, but for the past eighteen years she had paused there for another reason entirely. She took a deep breath and stepped to the next plot her eyes focusing on the headstone. Peter Michael Bartlet b. August 21,1986 d. August 21, 1986.

It hit her as it always did, with a swift kick to the gut. Tears burned in her eyes as she knelt at her son's grave pulling weeds from the beautiful array of wildflowers she, Jed and the girls had planted around his burial spot just a couple of months after his birth and death. It had taken her that long to gain the strength to be able to do that for him. After all these years it was still so easy to picture her premature son, so tiny, but so perfect as he lay in the palm of Jed's hand. He had never taken a breath, never opened his eyes to see the love in his parent's faces. She wrapped her arms around her belly almost feeling the horrible gut wrenching pain of the contractions she'd had in her premature labor. She could almost feel the warmth of the blood that pooled between her legs and flooded down her thighs. She held herself tightly that way for a few moments as if to comfort herself then reached a tentative finger out to trace her son's name and the teddy bears carved in the marble. As she did so she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned from the grave and looked up. It was Jed; his face was blurry and swimming through her tears.

"He'd be 18 this year Jed." Her voice was shaky with emotion.

"I know." Jed ran his hand in comforting circles on her back.

"He'd be starting college. I wonder where he would have gone?"

"Notre Dame of course." Jed swallowed past the lump in his throat.

"Or maybe Harvard, or Dartmouth. He'd be taller than I am now."

"I should hope so," Jed grinned through his tears. "You're a little pipsqueak."

Abbey smiled back at him and wrapped her arms around her waist again, almost doubling over. "God, it still hurts so bad, Jed. You'd think it wouldn't hurt so bad after 18 years."

"He was our son, Abbey, and we never got the chance to know him." Jed's voice broke with emotion and Abbey turned to him, wrapping her arms around his waist.

"I used to hate the fact that I had no idea of what he might have looked like. But, now we have Nicholas and that makes it a little easier to see the masculine image of us in a child. God, I wish I could have known him." A lone tear slipped down her cheek.

"I wish we could have known what made him happy or sad or what scared him or made him mad. I wish we knew what kind of music he would have liked, what his favorite movies would have been, what kind of books he would have enjoyed, what kind of sports he would have played, what his favorite foods would have been. I wish he could have lived long enough for me to hold him and tell him just once how much I loved him and how sorry I was that I was never going to get the chance to be his mom. Just one hug, Jed. I wish I'd had just one hug."

"You'll get that hug, Abbey." He stroked the back of her hair. " I have to believe that. We'll get a chance to be his parents one day."

Abbey buried her face in Jed's chest. She loved her husband's complete and utter conviction in the afterlife; it had always been such a comfort to her. While she was still held in his arms she felt another hand on her shoulder.

"Abigail, since I'm in a confessing kind of mood here there's something that I need to tell you about the day…well, the day that we lost Peter. Something that I need to apologize for."

"What could you possibly have to confess about that day?" Abbey turned a puzzled look to her mother in law. There wasn't much that she remembered from that horrific day, she'd been in too much pain in the beginning and later, after the delivery, she'd been sedated. She remembered feeling crampy and unwell. She remembered going up to lay down on her mother in laws bed and falling asleep only to awaken with terrible, stabbing pains ripping through her middle. She remembered the abject fear when felt and saw the blood spilling down her legs and the panic on Jed's face when she'd screamed for him and he'd found her doubled up on the floor, the blood pooling beneath her. She remembered Jed yelling to his mother to call 911 and she had, the ambulance had arrived very quickly.

Her time in the hospital was just a foggy blur of agony, of doctors rushing in and out trying to stop her contractions and to literally push their baby back into her womb, of Jed clutching her hand tightly as the waves of pain tore through her body. She remembered watching her husband fight a losing battle with tears as the doctors told them their attempts had been futile, her water had broken and she was going to deliver a baby that was too premature, too underdeveloped to survive and still she'd fought it. Even as Jed urged her to push she caused herself more agony by fighting what her body was trying to do, fighting to keep that little life inside her. And, when it was over, when they'd taken her son's tiny body away she'd cried in Jed's arms for so long that they'd had to sedate her. In all that she remembered she could not think why her mother in law would feel the need to apologize.

"Josiah knows why I need to apologize. He's never really forgiven me for leaving you alone at the hospital."

"I don't understand," Abbey shook her head, still in the dark.

Jed knew exactly what his mother was talking about. He had never been angrier with his mother than he had been that day when he'd asked her to sit with Abbey while the sedative took effect so he could go home and talk to the girls in person. They had seen their mother screaming and crying in pain, had seen all the blood and he knew they had to be terrified. Little Zoey had just turned four years old; she had no idea what was going on. She still thought babies came from a hospital. When he had returned he'd found his wife as alone as he'd left her and his mother re-entering the hospital. She had left her there all alone. It was something he'd never told Abbey, but now he turned to his wife.

"After everything was over and you were all cleaned up and had been given the sedative I went out to tell my parents they we had lost the baby. I asked mother to go in and sit with you until the sedative took effect so I could go home and talk to the girls. I wanted somebody there to hold your hand and comfort you. I guess I should have known better." He flashed his mother a bitter look.

"I never went in to sit with you," Emily admitted. "I left you there all alone and grieving."

"I'm sure it didn't take long for the sedative to take effect. I don't remember much of the rest of that day or night."

"That's not the point!" Jed exploded. "I ASKED her to do that for me, for YOU, and she couldn't be bothered. She couldn't even bring herself to sit with her own daughter in law and tell her she was sorry for her loss."

"I…I couldn't," Emily choked. "I felt like it was my fault."

"How on earth could it have been your fault?" Abbey asked. "It was my body."

"It was my fault because right from the moment you told us that you were pregnant again I started praying for a boy. When you were pregnant with the girls all I ever prayed for was a healthy grandchild. This time I didn't ask for healthy I just asked for a boy, and I got him. Only, he wasn't healthy, he was dead."

"Emily," Abbey reached out a hand to squeeze her mother in laws arm. "It wasn't your fault. God wasn't punishing you for that. For a long time I thought it was my fault, that I hadn't taken care of myself properly. But when I got pregnant with the twins I found out that it wasn't anybody's fault, I simply had an incompetent cervix, which was why Zoey had been premature as well. I had to have couple of stitches put in so I could carry the twins to term."

"Maybe it wasn't my fault, but I felt like it was. I left the hospital to go to confession. I put cleansing my soul above comforting you. I know now that that was wrong, but I wasn't thinking clearly at the time. I went back to the hospital fully intending to sit with you but by then Josiah was back and he was furious with me. He didn't want me near you. I had just lost my grandson, my son had just lost a child, my daughter in law was experiencing a grief so overwhelming she had to be sedated and there was nothing that I could do to help."

Abbey slipped her arm around Emily's waist. "As I said, we now know that it wasn't anybody's fault. Peter just wasn't meant to be." Abbey gazed back down at the headstone. It had taken her a long time to come to terms with that and she wasn't sure if she ever truly had. She felt Jed's arm slide over her shoulders cushioning her between himself and his mother and for the first time in 18 years Peter Michael Bartlet's mother, father and grandmother all grieved for him together the way they should have right from the beginning.

TBC...