Only when he moved in into this house, he got to know a room he had never seen before.

A secret room, as he had called it in the beginning. It had really disturbed him because he hadn't even guessed that there was another room. But, as a matter of fact, there was one. Through a door hard to recognize as such that was located in the on the left side of the hall, right before the entrance to the study, one was able to enter the living room.

It was no special room, but a nice, cozy little one with man-sized windows and a door leading to a terrace. In one corner another sitting area was placed, but compared to the one in the kitchen this one was, of cause, made to snuggle into and to sleep on.

The cushions were so pillowy that Jen had always somehow sunk into them when she had been sitting on the couch. It had been a very sweet picture, and now he wished he had ever taken a photo of this picture.

Across the sitting area was the television set. They had not spent much time there, but even they had needed some private place to relax that wasn't the bedroom; sitting there together and watching a movie had been there time without talking, without doing anything but relaxing and feeling that the other was just there.

It was a place he really had been at only with Jen. He had never been in this room alone. Maybe it had been "their" room, the one they were only allowed to enter together, and maybe this was the reason he still was standing in the doorframe without any movement.

In this moment, he remembered what he was holding in his hand - the DVD from the album. He wanted to watch it and that was only possible in the living room. It cost him quite an effort to take the first step onto the Bordeaux red carpet, just in time reminding himself that he had to take off his shoes. The he walked into the room, slowly, hesitantly, and stopped in front of the television set to put the disk into the player. Automatically he then went to the couch, only to stop dead in tracks when he realized what he was doing. There were many things he would do, things they had done together he would have to do, even with her gone, but one thing wasn't on this list: Sitting on the couch.

He must have gone insane he guessed, avoiding furniture because some ritual, some habit was connected to it. But he simply couldn't forget. He and Jen had been building their life around their time consuming job, and they had managed to actually have some private life. And part of it had been to actually have some rituals, something that would make it possible to have a more or less normal relationship.

With the remote control, he finally sat down on the floor, and with his back against the coffee table, he faced the television he now turned on. The he started the DVD.

It didn't took him long to realize that this definitely wasn't a video of their last cookout, but impressions from their "Sunday Escapes", as they had called their walks they had gone for every Sunday they had found the time to. The time to go out and just walk around in the nearby park, to flee from their everyday life.

Obviously she had always taken a camera with her – and shot him playing with the children, or sometimes dogs, running around with them, chasing them and being chased by them, laughing and frolicking around with them during a game of football or baseball. It had often felt like they were just a normal couple, like all the other parents. Jenny sitting on one of the benches together with the mothers of the children, and him playing with the kids, like some of the fathers who had been in the park with their families.

Just for a few hours, they had been a small family, too. None of these children had been theirs, but with diving into a completely different world, they had been parents on a Sunday's walk with their child.

Slowly shutting of the player and the television, he remained sitting on the floor, on the woolen carpet that was so soft between his fingers when he used his hands to support himself. After a terrible long time he lifted his hands to his face to rub it.

No, he wasn't going to cry for missed chances.

"Always admired your way with children. Ever thought of having any of your own?"

"That an offer, Jen?"

Why, by all means, hadn't he asked her again?