Olivia usually enjoyed the cab ride into Manhattan, watching the city evolve from a line on the horizon along 495-West into 'Gotham,' then into the usual ordered chaos of cars and buses and people packing the streets. Tonight she barely saw it, hardly noticed the spectacular light show behind the skyscrapers as the sun both set and broke through rain clouds.

She'd spent most of the ride talking Walter down.

"It's not that I don't appreciate Alicia's efforts, she's a fine assistant and a sweet girl but she is NOT you and she is NOT my son…" he was wound up, just shy of agitated, the only person Olivia knew who could yell in a whisper.

"Peter will be back soon. I don't know what kept him away this afternoon but he did text me, Walter, specifically asked me to tell you he's okay. Just… hang in there a few more hours. Please?"

It was getting dark and she could picture him standing in the lab, watching the light fade in the windows, his stress amping up at the fear of a night without either of them close at hand.

She hadn't noticed it in the first days after Henrietta disappeared, but when she surfaced from her own pain enough to see the world again Olivia was stunned by how badly it had wounded Walter, too; losing their girl.

"I understand why you agreed to go to New York."

Olivia heard him, and she wasn't sure if it was her words or her tone that did it, but Walter had calmed down noticeably in a few seconds. He sounded resigned.

"I know Phillip needs your help, but Olivia I think the three of us need each other far more than he needs you. You should both come home. You must both come home, so we can fight them together. Isn't that how we do our best work?"

"Absolutely. It'll only be a week. I promise. I'll be back in a week."

Olivia started to say goodbye but he was gone. She stared at the phone in her hands, and pressed the home key until bing-bong tone of the voice assist sounded.

"Call Peter," she said.


Peter almost missed the call, barely answered in time.

"Where are you?"

He smiled at the question popping out of her mouth before he could even say hello, at the tight note in Olivia's voice.

"I'm standing with my back against a palm tree, watching people ice skate," he said. "Flew out to SoCal this afternoon. I'm taking an accidental stroll past a fun-park full of people who are both gliding on frozen water and baking in eighty-degree temperatures. It's odd, but… somehow it doesn't begin to start to measure up to our concept of odd…"

"I just got done telling Walter you'll be home in no time."

"You misled him, then." Peter said.

"Why did you fly to…."

"You haven't asked me about Cambridge," He jumped back in. "About what I found."

"You were going to investigate a morgue," Olivia said, matter-of-fact. "The place we heard the Observers had taken the children who'd died in their custody, to see if our daughter is there. I would assume if you'd found her, you'd come to tell me in person. But you haven't. So I'm confident you didn't find her and all is … as well as it can be."

"They had them tucked away in drawers," Peter said. "Boys on one side, girls on the other. Little brown haired babies near the doorway, rows of them. Then the towheads, the redheads… and the one little blonde girl in a drawer all her own…"

He pictured her slumping, fingertips on her forehead as she listened.

"The caretaker at the morgue asked me why I was sobbing if it wasn't my daughter," Peter said. "I tried to explain; I was picturing some other dad leaning over Henrietta in some other morgue and crying, wondering who might be looking down at his little girl and hurting for her... for them both."

"Why are you in California?" she asked, and his frown hardened.

"I got a tip that they might have taken the children they kidnapped from the East Coast to the West. She could be right here, Olivia. She could be blocks away."

"She could be anywhere, Peter. She could be in any time. They know who we are, what we're capable of. If she's alive…."

He felt the full weight of her words, the realization that she was right: The Observers could have Henrietta hidden away in 1042 for all they knew. He felt like a fool. He felt more helpless than ever.

"Peter," Olivia's voice in his ear again, trembling. "Come home."

"Home to what?" he asked, and he flinched when he heard her gasp.

"Don't you dare," she gritted the words out. "Don't you dare say that to me. I told you I'm only in New York to help them get on their feet, to help Phillip get the new office coordinated…."

"You'll be there forever," Peter said. "By the next time we talk, he'll have convinced you to stay for as long as he needs you. Which is forever."

There was a brutal kind of confirmation of his fears in the way that she didn't argue.

"'Night, Olivia," he said. "I'll call you tomorrow."

It was the second time a Bishop boy had hung up on her in five minutes.