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�Having kids,� Kate said, a longing in her eyes that Tony found adorable.
�Yeah,� Tony admitted. He frowned. �I don�t think I could handle it,� he added. He wasn�t cut out to be a daddy. Sure, his nieces and nephews were fun to hang out with and he wasn�t completely opposed to babysitting should his sister�s call upon him, and they certainly made family get-together�s more bearable because, honestly, he was a kid at heart, but Tony knew he wouldn�t be able to be a full-time parent. He liked not having responsibilities beyond his job to tie him down.
Kate, however, would be the kind of person who worked full time, raised a baseball team of children, and still had time to do inane things like join the PTA and make costumes for school plays. Tony was sure of that.
One night, about a month after planting the tree Tony watched the girls climbing his Kate-tree and having the time of their lives. He smiled for the first time since before Kate was killed. He had gone out to talk to the girls and they had profusely apologized to him, calling him Mr. DiNozzo, saying that they hadn�t meant to make him angry and could he please not tell their mother about this? Tony had laughed it off, though. �I don�t mind, girls,� he�d said. �Just be careful.�
The girls were beautiful, both with light blonde hair that obviously came from their father as Donna was a natural red-head and, if the people who arrived in droves at Christmas were any indication, so was most of her family. Their innocence was refreshing, and he was amazed with their willingness to befriend him�their mother�s willingness to let it happen without thoroughly interrogating him first�without any questions asked. They didn�t know his past, didn�t know the number of people he had killed and seen die, didn�t know that he knew more ways than he could count to murder someone without leaving obvious traces. His job, his career� his past life had taught him so many things that he just didn�t want to know anymore.
His new life, however, was easier, and safer. He had friends�not close friends like he had had at NCIS, but still good friends, good people�and he had his house�undecorated as it was�and he had his job as a detective at the local precinct. He ran in the early evenings, always pushing himself a little harder than he really should have been. He had dated, some, but never anything that went beyond a first or second date. Sometimes he was sure that he had stayed in his pseudo relationships with women back in DC only because it gave him good material to bug Kate and McGee. He didn�t joke with the people he worked with and hadn�t fired his gun since leaving DC except for on the shooting range when he needed to requalify. He called his family more than he had in the ten years prior to joining NCIS and had managed to convince his older sister, Isabella, to let her kids, Joseph and Maria, nine and eight, come visit him for a few weeks during their summer break. He was pretty sure his mother had something to do with it�Isabella had never really trusted him to be around her kids without �adult supervision��but he didn�t really care. He missed his niece and his nephew and hadn�t been able to bring himself to visit them because they lived in Virginia Beach, relatively quick drive East on the I-264 from Norfolk.