Troy looked at each other. One scratched his head, one burped, one stood straighter, uncertain but willing to give the questions a shot.

“No, don’t try to answer. You don’t know the answers. Don’t waste our time guessing. Here’s another question you can’t answer: What does a father do? What kind of job is that? In all your infinite incarnations, is there one single good dad or partner in there?”

“Hey now, hey.” The Troy who had tried to leave was stumbling forward, the sober Troys unsuccessfully trying to restrain him, shaking their heads and muttering discouragements. “No, hey, I’m going to respond. I’m not just going to listen to this. I did come back. I’m living in Night Vale again.”

A few of the other Troys nodded, although they said nothing.

“I was going to come see you guys, come see Josh, but I just hadn’t gotten around to it. There were some other jobs to do first. People needed my help. But I was coming. I would have been right there.”

“No one needs your help,” said Jackie, sneering at her father, a man who expressed multitudes but contained nothing. “It’s you that needs the act of helping. You do it for yourself and not for anyone else, or you would have left this town when your ‘help’ knocked it off the map. Instead you nudged a smatter of you back to Night Vale, like crumbs at birds. That’s not a return. That’s a toe in the water. That’s a minimum of effort. You help and help, but you’re lazy. You’re goddamn lazy.”

The more drunk Troys glanced at each other, nervous. One of the sober Troys stepped forward.

“I didn’t feel I had earned that yet,” Troy said, looking only at Diane, who he seemed less intimidated by. “I didn’t feel I was ready to see you. I was really young, you know, and that’s a terrible excuse, but it’s what I was. And now I’m older. I can be many things. I’ve learned I don’t have to run. If you would have me. All of me.” He gestured to all of him around him. “I would happily be part of your lives again.”

“This is not an invitation to be part of our lives,” said Diane. “This is a demand that you return home.”

“Asshole,” said Jackie.

The Troys, en masse, turned to Josh. “Josh, this is a strange way to first meet, and you don’t have to let me be your father. I need to earn that, but I’d like to earn it. I will be there. I will do my best, much better than before, to be a man you can trust as a father. Or whatever relationship we can build. I owe you that.”