Holding on to what I'm feeling

 "Can you explain it to me again?" Gage's wife Nora wanted to know about his brother Carson.

"Oh, it would take too long," Gage squinted as if it she didn't really want to know. They were in their bedroom. The kids were already asleep and hopefully, Carson was too, in the basement. "Look, he is a good brother. We -" He pressed his lips tight. "Lets just bring it up on what he's had to go through with my mother Clare. He took care of her when no one else would. And," he sighed. "He always wanted to do the right thing. He falls in love hard and then he can fall out of love too. But this thing with Brit. Well, he's helped her raise her kid and their kid and well, there is Katherine."

"Katherine?" Nora looked at him as if she needed to start making a list for Christmas. Gage got out of one shirt just to get into a tank. Nora was already ready for bed in her cozy pajamas. She fluffed a pillow and got comfortable. Gage got in and they cozied together.

"Yeah, he-" Gage sighed. "Don't bring it up, OK." Gage wasn't sure where his daughter was, other than being with her mother. He told her how Carson was seeing someone before he met Brit. Back then the young woman told him he wasn't the father of the baby, but later he found he was. 

"OK." Nora nodded. 

"I mean, really, I'm not any better -" Gage thought of all those times, and the talks he had with his brother about Alec. "I guess it is hard to move on when you've been together a good seven years or so."

"Yeah, he has a little boy," Nora remembered.

"And Theo." Gage nodded, even if he wasn't Carson's son he had raised him as his own. Gage thought they would all get together, even if that meant Brit being here too, and have a little Christmas even if Gage didn't want to see Carson's ex. "I hope, he'll just take his time. Think this out and-"

Of course, Nora mentioned Henry and Josie who were family too. She thought Alfie and Zoey should come because they were like family too. 

Gage really didn't want to think about it. The hours were long at the post office. It was getting cold. Flurries were about, but nothing was sticking. Just when he didn't think he had a cold, the post-nasal drip started, but his wife was a pharmacist and she was on it. 

Yet this thing with Carson, Gage wasn't sure he could do anything about it, but offer his brother a place to live. After all, it was Carson who found him all those years ago in Foster Care when his mother kept saying Gage was dead.