After the contentious custody battle, Frank & Mary go on with their lives as usual. But it isn't until an eventful night at Ferg's that Frank starts to wonder if maybe his life might be missing something. Now that his niece has a normal life, maybe...
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Joey had done her best to to hold her head up high as she dragged her broken heart back to her mother's house. All she wanted to do was crawl into bed and forget that that day had ever happened. But, as tempting as her mom's spare bed was, she had a happy wide awake little boy greet her at the door.
She still had no idea why Frank had such a drastic change of heart and, literally, ran away from her. But getting home in time to introduced Sam to Gus before her mother put her foster son to bed was great distraction and kept the ache in her chest from making her fall apart.
Raising Sam was so much constant around the clock work, and that was just the basic looking after him stuff. It didn't even taking into account all of the time that Joey spent worrying about his well being and stressing over whether or not she was a good parent. The pressure that she put on herself was a full time job in it of itself.
But the three year old was proving to be the brightest part of even her darkest days. As terrible as she felt about losing Frank, she knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she was blessed to have Sam in her life. He was the sweetest little boy in the whole world.
She quietly took Sam into her the mother's spare room to find him some pyjamas to change into and hoped that her mother didn't notice that she was home so early. That was a conversation that she didn't feel like having at the moment.
Joey held him in her arms and savoured moments like this when she was confident she would be able to make him happy. Little did he know, she had a wonderful surprise for him.
Sam hugged her back and lit up when he noticed a new strange dog follow her through the house and into the bedroom. Her mother was right, Sam completely lost his mind when he found out that they were going to keep the golden retriever.
Unfortunately, Joey was pretty sure that Sam's excitement had blown her cover. His happy squeals were sure to signal her early return. It didn't take long before Joey heard her mother's footsteps coming down the hall.
But what had really blew Joey's mind, was when he unexpectedly clapped his little hands and happily squealed, "Thank you, Mommy!"
As it turned out, Sam had a surprise for her too.
To say that his words had shocked Joey would have been an understatement. She could have sworn that time had stood still as her brain tried to process what had just happened. But for as frozen as Joey was, in that moment, she could feel her heart fill with more love than she thought it was capable of holding.
By this point, Sam had still been unsure as to what to call her. In all fairness, Joey had no idea either. In the three months since she had been caring for him, she had been willfully ignoring the topic and hoped that it would work itself out.
She told herself that in time, as their relationship grew, Sam would figure out for himself what he wanted to call her. Besides, until that night, Joey had been on the fence and was unsure if she even wanted to embrace the official title and actually become a full fledged mother in the first place.
