SNOW STORY

"OK, Shorty, go out for the long bomb," cried Todd as his little daughter ran as fast as she could while encumbered by a heavy coat and snow boots. When she was several yards away, her father lobbed a gigantic snowball at her, dissolving in peals of laughter when she tried to catch it and it broke and covered her head and face with snow.

Starr was shocked by the cold snow that slipped down the neck of her coat. "No fair, Daddy!" she yelled, laughing. Running back toward him, she picked up a handful of snow and flung it at him, watching as it bounced off his chest and splattered at his feet. She jumped up on him, and they both fell in a deep snowdrift and began to wallow in it, shoving each other's faces into the cold mass and pelting one another with snowballs. People passing by in the park took a moment to watch, smiling along with the laughing duo in the snow. One woman stopped and stared with a stricken look on her face. A snowball that Todd threw at Starr missed her and hit the bystander squarely in the middle of her expensive winter coat.

"Tee!" shouted Starr, getting up and running over to her former stepmother. "Come play with us!" Todd remained sitting in the drift, snow clinging to every part of him and a pained expression on his face. Tea gently brushed at the snowflakes clinging to Starr's precious little face and smiled.

"Hey, Munchkin," she said with a smile. "It looks like you're having some fun in the snow."

"Yep, I'm playing with Daddy." Starr suddenly changed expression and looked very sad. "Tee, Daddy has to go away again. For a really, really long time." Tea looked beyond the little girl to where Todd was slowly climbing to his feet and brushing the snow from his clothes. She was unnerved by his expression, which seemed weary and somber, almost the exact opposite of what he had been a few moments before when playing with Starr.

"I know, Honey," said Tea, squatting down and clutching Starr's shoulders. "And I know you're going to miss him a lot." She felt unwanted tears began to prick at her eyes as she saw the little girl's sad expression. Todd had moved a little closer to them, although he still hung back a short distance away.

"My daddy has to go to jail," said Starr candidly, and Tea drew in her breath sharply, glancing quickly at Todd.

"I….I'm sorry, Starr," said Tea, wiping away a tear from her cheek.

"But Mommy says he isn't a bad man," continued the little girl, glancing with adoration at her father. "He just did some bad stuff and now he has to be punished—kind of like a time out!" Todd was watching his daughter with the hint of a smile on his lips, although his eyes were starting to tear up. Tea swallowed hard and tried to force a smile for Starr's sake. "Mommy and I can visit Daddy at the jail sometimes," continued Starr, obviously rehearsing what her parents had told her in an attempt to ease the pain of separation. "But we can only see him through a window and we have to talk to him on a telephone." The grim image hit Tea like a punch to the stomach and she stood up abruptly. She turned away and struggled to gain control of herself.

"Look, Kiddo, why don't you run over and help those kids making a snowman for a little bit? I want to talk to your daddy alone for a few minutes, OK?" The little girl looked to her father for permission, then scampered away. Todd cleared some of the snow from a slatted park bench and he and Tea sat down side by side, hunched into their coats in an attempt to fend off the biting cold.

"So, you decided to tell Starr where you're going," said Tea, trying to keep her voice neutral.

He shrugged. "I couldn't go and let her think I'd left her just for the hell of it," he said in a choked voice. "I hated doing that to her last fall after…after…"

"Yeah, I know. I was there, remember?" said Tea shortly. "And you're going to let her visit you at Statesville?" asked Tea, wondering why she was letting herself care.

"Blair thinks it's a good idea. I'm not so sure," he said wearily, "but I know I'll die without seeing her once in a while, even if it's through plate glass." He seemed to shrink into his overcoat, closing his eyes and shivering.

Tea turned and looked at him, her eyes hard. "And I'm supposed to buy this, huh? After everything you went through to stay out of prison last summer: the escapes, the fake alters, phony catatonia, now you're suddenly going to let Sam drive you up to the prison day after tomorrow, walk in the door and let them lock you up?

" He looked across the park, staring at his daughter as though trying to memorize the scene. "Maybe I've learned that there are worse things than prison, Tea. It won't be any worse than sitting on a beach alone watching other fathers play with their kids, or eating by myself in a restaurant and seeing couples laughing and talking to each other. At least in prison everyone is in the same boat," he said bitterly. Their eyes met and Tea looked at him appraisingly, searching for everything that Sam and Viki had noticed in him, and that the state psychologist had confirmed existed. "Could he really be that sick?" she wondered. Listening to him confess to his loneliness during his time away from Llanview, she had a hard time remaining impassive. All the old feelings for him were dangerously close to the surface. "Besides, I guess I owe it to you, Delgado," he said with a deep sigh.

"What do you mean by that?" asked Tea warily.

"Look, I know I messed things up pretty bad between us. I don't blame you for hating me because I hate myself more than you ever could. I came back because I wanted to see Starr, but I also hoped to try and make things up to you, Tea. But you've changed. You're hard now…untrusting. And…and I realize I did that to you…made you the way you are now."

Swallowing hard, he continued. "You want to punish me. Maybe you need to see me suffer to feel good about yourself again…I don't know." Tea stared at him intently as she listened closely. "So, I understand why you had me arrested, and…and…I'm ready to do this for you. Like I said, freedom means nothing when you're all alone, so one of us may as well be happy."

As she watched Starr playing happily, Tea suddenly felt crushed by overwhelming sadness. She had avoided thinking what Todd's prison sentence would mean to the little girl. Looking at his profile, she noticed the tears in his eyes and realized it was futile to deny that she still had feelings for this complicated, damaged man. What he said was true: when he had first returned, she had wanted to use her new power to crush him, to make him pay for all the hurt he had caused her. She had expected a dog-eat-dog fight and had been strangely disappointed when he had pleaded guilty to the perjury charge without a whimper, asking only for a couple of days to say goodbye to his daughter and get his affairs in order.

"Viki and Sam came to me the other day," said Tea in a strained voice. "They asked me to go to the judge with a request for therapy instead of prison time."

"I know. I told them you wouldn't go for it."

"And you would? You've always said you'd rather go to prison than see a psychiatrist."

"In prison they just lock you up and humiliate you. I can take that, I have before and I can do it again. But a shrink is bound to pick and poke at me, make me dredge up everything bad that ever happened and use it to explain why I am the way I am. I don't think I can do that," he said in a choked voice.

"So you'll go to prison rather than let anyone try to help you?"

He looked at her curiously. "I don't have a choice, Delgado. You denied the request and told Sam and Viki you wanted me to rot in jail."

"What if I told you that for Starr's sake I might consider it now?" She was watching him carefully. "It would mean time locked up in a mental facility, and you'd have to make a commitment to work on yourself, Todd, to find out what makes you do the things you do and try to break the pattern. Do you think you could do that?"

Looking at Starr beginning to pelt the other children with snowballs, he drew in his breath sharply. "Maybe," he said tentatively, glancing at Tea from the corner of his eye. "Maybe I could do it if I had someone to help me—to be there for me when things get rough."

"Well, Sam and Viki are with you. It looks like they've forgiven you for that fake DID episode, and they're convinced you have some kind of mental illness that caused you to do it."

"What about you, Tea? Is there a chance you could forgive me for what I did to you? Can you give me any hope that we can have a future together?"

She shook her head sadly. "I can't, Todd. Not and keep my own sanity. Get this clear: if I ease up and let you undergo therapy instead of sending you to prison, you're going to have to do it on your own—without me."

"So prison or the loony bin, either way I lose," he said sadly. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He looked defeated.

"Knowing you, talking to a psychiatrist will be ten times harder than prison for you, Todd," said Tea, sniffing loudly. "But I'm offering you some hope. Hope that when you're released, you can have a future without the fear of laying waste to everyone around you." Todd had his head down staring at the ground, so he didn't see Starr sneaking up from the left, a snowball the size of a Halloween pumpkin in her arms. Tea remained mute as the little girl approached on booted tiptoes, raised the mass of snow high over her head and brought it crashing down on her father's neck and head. She and Tea laughed hysterically as Todd's upper body was suddenly covered in several inches of white, freezing powder. Starr screamed in delight as he growled, shaking like a dog and splattering her with chunks of snow from his hair. He chased her a few feet, swung her up in his arms, grabbed a handful of snow from a nearby fence post, and rubbed it vigorously into her face. Tea looked on with a wide grin as Starr clung around his neck and Todd crushed her to his body. He looked up at his ex-wife.

"Do they let kids come to those facilities, Delgado?" he asked, his face suddenly changing expression.

"It depends on what the doctors say, but I imagine that after a while they'd consider it a plus to have the patient's family involved in the therapy. I think it's fair to say that yes, Starr can visit you there." He suddenly threw Starr up in the air and caught her again, delighting in listening to her laughter.

Looking at Tea carefully he asked, "And do assistant DA's ever come to see the lowlifes they've put away in those places?" He held his daughter tightly and trembled a little as he waited for the answer. Tea looked at the two of them and sighed deeply. "It's a lost cause," she thought, not really all that surprised. "I'm never going to be able to get away from him. It's like he owns a piece of my soul."

"Well, I'm sure it's part of her duties to make sure the patient is making progress in his legal obligations," she said lightly. "So a short visit from time to time would definitely be in order."

Todd allowed himself the tiniest of grins, but it was infectious, because Tea was soon grinning back. He reached with one gloved hand behind his neck, grimacing slightly. "Jeez, Shorty, you really did a number on me with that last snowball. I need to warm up, and so do you. What do you say we go have some hot chocolate at the diner?" Starr nodded, her teeth chattering, and Todd started walking down the path toward the car. After a few feet he turned and looked at Tea with the look that always caused a lump in her throat. "You know, they do serve ADA's in the diner," he said evenly. "You want to come?"

"Sure," said Tea, even more resigned to her fate than he was to his. "But you're buying, Manning." He waited until she caught up to him, then Todd, Starr and Tea began following the path that led out of the park and into their future.

THE END

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