Dawson has, as per usual, taken to the dock, where he stares out at the water. Joey approaches and just stands next to him, silently. "Not one of my finer moments, huh?" Dawson mutters. Joey tilts her head and tells him that right after her Poor Dead Mother died, she found a grocery list said Poor Dead Mother had made, covered with hearts and little doodles, and she just lost it. She cried for hours. And so she understands Dawson's reaction, she says. If she'd heard her mother on an answering machine, Joey says, she would have "run away screaming." Dawson tells her, shortly, that he can't do that; Gale is a wreck, and someone has to keep things together. Joey informs Dawson that he's a wreck, too. "I'll make you a deal. You take care of your mom, I'll take care of you," she offers -- a tad perkily, considering the situation. Dawson just looks at her. He reflects that he had no idea how hard it is to lose a parent. It's like he's been transported to "some alternate universe" and he's "walking around outside [his] body all day long." Joey nods, and promises that it will get better. "That's good," Dawson responds. "Any advice on how I should deal with the fact that my father's death is almost entirely my fault?" Joey looks flabbergasted, and asks Dawson what, exactly, he means. Dawson sputters that if he hadn't come back and "laid all this" on the Flash, then "none of this would have happened." Joey points out that the Flash died in a car accident, and there's nothing Dawson could have done to stop that. Other than, say, buying out the Quik-E Mart's entire supply of ice cream before he left town. "That's not entirely true, Jo," Dawson begins. First, he says, if he hadn't dropped by the house that morning, his mother wouldn't have made him breakfast and they wouldn't have run out of milk and his father wouldn't have had to run out for more in the middle of the night. Joey tells Dawson that he's talking crazy talk, but he's still yapping, telling her that, "for all [he] knows," the Flash was driving around all pissed, having an argument with Dawson in his head, causing him to take his eyes off the road. Little does he know that the Flash was actually just using an ice cream cone as a microphone, to tragic effect. "Don't do this to yourself," Joey says weakly. "Do you know what he said to me the last time I saw him?" Dawson asks her. "He said I was making a huge mistake and that he was disappointed in me." Joey points out that the Flash also told Dawson that he loved him very much. Dawson nods, and says that he'll never doubt that the Flash loved him. "But do you have any idea how much it sucks to know that my father was disappointed in me the day he died? And he was right. I was acting crazy, like a spoiled brat. And if I'd listened to him, he would have been driving me to the airport, instead of to his death," he says, tossing Joey an anguished look, and stomps off toward the house.