People constantly surprised Lottie. She used to think that people were just good and evil, but over the years she learned that people weren't that simple. They were complicated, broken and flawed people but a lot of them tried to do better, to be better. Whilst some didn't. Such as her mother, Lottie never thought that her mother would abandon her and Rusty to take off with her boyfriend. That wasn't what mother's did, they were supposed to take of their children, always be there for them. Lottie knew maybe there was a reason their mother did what she did and that she didn't understand or see the bigger picture. All Lottie knew was that when she became a mother, she would never let her children be without her. No matter how hard things may be. Whilst Rusty thought their mother was the next best thing from sliced bread, Lottie's opinion was quite the opposite. To her, Sharon Beck was the villain, as it was always the villain that left. The hero was the one who stayed. Another person who surprised Lottie was Captain Raydor, she had said that she would sort out another place for her and Rusty to stay. Lottie half expected it to be another foster home. She hadn't been expecting Captain Raydor to bring her and Rusty back to her own home to stay with her.

"Don't think I'm gonna be all, like, thankful for you taking us in. We are not charity cases..." Rusty stated as from the couch as Captain Raydor went about pouring herself a glass of wine. Lottie idly stood between the living room and the kitchen, taking in the apartment. It was actually quite nice. Real nice, a lot nicer than any place they had ever stayed before. Which made Lottie just feel even more uncomfortable as all of this seemed a bit too good to be true. So Lottie was just waiting for the other shoe to drop as a cop didn't just decide to take in two street kids. Lottie and Rusty weren't the sweet and precious street kids that you saw in the movies, they were a pickpocket and a hustler. Kids with real problems.

"Oh, trust me. You're not the first adolescents to grace my home with your presence. Having raised two teenagers of my own, I have tremendous capacity for ingratitude. It's so funny, just when you get good at being a mother, you're fired." Captain Raydor began as she made way over to the couch.

"Or you quit." Lottie grimly noted as she awkwardly touched her right ear, desperately wanting to turn her hearing aid off or take it out as she referred to her mother, as who else would you describe a parent running off from their parental responsibilities?

"So, what are we supposed to call each other, anyway?" Rusty questioned.

"Oh. I think you should call me Captain Raydor."

"Okay and you can call me Mr. Beck." Rusty retorted.

"You are the child in this relationship."

"No, I am the witness. If you are the police officer, then I am the witness." Rusty responded and Lottie sighed as she allowed herself to sit into an armchair. She could see that Rusty and Captain Raydor was just going to go back and forth with this conversation and it wasn't going to end anytime soon as Rusty loved a good argument as much as the next person. Confrontation was something that Lottie didn't like, she shirked away from it often playing the deaf card to get out it but Rusty on the other hand? Had no problem rising to the occasion if he needed to.

"There are not a lot of people around here who call me by my first name." Captain Raydor explained.

"Oh, well, maybe that's why you live alone with two spare bedrooms." Rusty couldn't help but point out and Lottie wished she was in close enough proximity to kick her brother's good leg. Just because he didn't like the situation, it didn't mean he had to be rude to the woman who had brought them back to her home to stay with her instead of dumping them into some kind of care home. Captain Raydor didn't have to do this but she did and Lottie knew it wouldn't kill Rusty to show a tiny bit of gratitude despite his feelings on cop and general adult figures.

"I live alone because my children are grown. The spare bedroom is for when they visit. But you may call me Sharon. How's that?" Sharon asked and Lottie felt her stomach drop to the floor moments after Captain Raydor revealed what her first name was. That was the last name that Lottie would have guessed as being the Captain's name. Sharon wouldn't have even crossed Lottie's mind for obvious reasons and who she commonly associated that name with.

"Sharon?" Lottie hoarsely questioned.

"Mm-hmm."

"What, is that like your bad idea of a joke or something? Why do you say that? Sharon is our mother's name!" Rusty stated getting himself all worked up whilst Lottie just remained where she sat as right now she couldn't move. Lottie feared that if she got up then she would be sick all over Captain Raydor's apartment and that was the last thing she wanted. This was a coincidence, a pretty rotten one that made Lottie and Rusty feel uncomfortable. Lottie didn't like thinking about her mother at the best of times as it made her think of the zoo and thinking of the zoo caused the vomiting.

"Oh…" Sharon slowly began, noticing the reaction.

"God, you haven't been looking for her at all, have you?" Rusty demanded and Lottie could see that the expression on Sharon's face said it all. Lottie wasn't sure whether she was relieved that the police hadn't kept their promise about looking for their mother to keep themselves in Rusty's good graces. The way Lottie thought about it and she had thought about it a lot, was that there was no point in looking for their mother if she didn't come back as she would probably take off again. If their mother came back and wanted to be a mom again then she would have to come of her own free will.

"Rusty, I just got this job yesterday. Give me a chance to catch up. I am making a good-faith effort. I am–" Sharon began in an reassuring manner.

"–Where's your bathroom?"

"It's right down there." Sharon replied as she looked over to the hallway and getting up to his feet Rusty hobbled over to his crutches and made his way over in the direction of the bathroom. "Rusty. If it is possible to find your mother, I will do it. I promise you."

"Sure you will, captain. Sure you will…" Rusty scoffed as he continued to hobble away and after a moments the sound of a door opening and shutting the door could be heard. Lottie turned her attention over to Sharon, who suddenly seemed tired and a bit worn out and Lottie couldn't help but smile as Rusty tended to do that people.

"I'm sorry…" Lottie began and Sharon looked up at her in surprise. "About Rusty, I know he is a bit rough around the edges and being incredibly rude but he is a good kid. I swear it's just things keep getting complicated and we don't depend on adults anymore. Everything was fine until all of this happened…"

"What do you think about all of this Lottie?" Sharon asked and Lottie was surprised as no one had ever taken the time to ask her how she felt about any of this. She was the spare part that tagged along with Rusty. Lottie was nothing. She was invisible and that was how she liked it.

"Does it ever matter what I think? Rusty is the witness here."

"Of course it matters what you think Lottie, just because Rusty is a material witness in a murder case it doesn't mean that you don't matter either. All of this happened to you as well." Sharon stated and Lottie took a deep breath and waited for a few moments before she spoke.

"What I think is that you didn't have to do all of this, taking Rusty in is one thing but me as well is something else. I'm not the important witness, I have nothing to do with any of this, I am just Rusty's goofy sister who doesn't like to talk much. You could have easily just been stuck me with another set of foster parents…" Lottie wearily said as she fiddled with the ends of her hair.

"After everything that you and Rusty have been through Lottie, I would never dream of separating you from each other. Rusty needs you and you need him, that much is obvious, I think even more so because of Rusty's involvement in the Philip Stroh case. Besides Rusty has made it perfectly clear that he will not co-operate with us if the two of you were separated. The two of you come as a package deal."

Lottie sat cross legged at Sharon's dining room table quietly reading a book as currently it seemed like she was the only one up, which didn't surprise her considering it was pretty early in the morning. Sharon had yet to come out of her room and Rusty was still sleeping away on the couch, refusing to sleep in the spare room that had been offered to him. Rusty was being extremely pigheaded about the situation, making a point about not taking the spare room and how he wasn't going to let the cops try and dissuade him from having them look for their mom by giving him a bed to sleep in. Lottie couldn't blame her brother as he clearly missed their mom and he was just trying to look out for the two of them and keep them both safe. The last few months had been hard on Rusty, much more than Lottie knew she would ever understand and she didn't know how to help him. Rusty always said she had the brains out of the two of them but the way Lottie saw it she wasn't smart enough as if she was she would have found some way to save them both and prevent them from the life that they had been exposed to. Rusty had been forced to do something that no one his age should ever do, instead of hanging out at home playing computer games or studying, he had been selling his body on the street in order to take care of them both. It wasn't fair and yet not once did Lottie ever hear Rusty complain about any of it, in Lottie's eyes her brother was her hero. He had did what he thought was necessary to provide for them both, whereas Lottie hadn't been able to do that, all Lottie was, happened to be a smart mouth kid who liked to keep her head stuck in the depths of a book and was good at swiping wallets. Turning another page in her book, Lottie let out a sigh as for once in her short life she really wasn't in the mood to be reading as she had a lot more weighing on her mind right now. Shutting her book, Lottie got the surprise of her life when she looked up and saw Captain Raydor or Sharon as the captain told them to call her, sat down at the table.

"Geez! Make some noise why don't you!" Lottie spluttered before realizing how stupid she sound, her a partially deaf person had just told someone to make some noise. Especially when Sharon was sitting on Lottie's right side, the side in which she had no hearing. With a small sigh to herself, Lottie picked up her purple translucent hearing aid and turned it on before putting it back on her ear. Lottie only had one hearing aid because she had unilateral hearing loss or single-sided deafness as most people knew it as. Lottie had a profound hearing loss, she had no functional hearing ability in her right ear without her hearing aid in and even with the hearing aid, she still couldn't hear like a normal person. Her hearing aid that sat behind her ear picked up sound from her poorer ear and transmitted it to her good ear. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say that…I don't tend to put my hearing aid as soon as I wake up and I didn't see you so I got a bit startled."

"That's okay Lottie, I must say you're up early…" Sharon began in a warm manner and Lottie watched as the elder woman headed towards the kitchen and started shuffling around, pressing buttons and opening cupboards. Lottie assumed that Captain Raydor was going about her morning routine and making herself a cup of coffee. Lottie wasn't sure how to react, normally one of her foster parents would have yelled at her for not having the hearing aid in and not make small talk.

"Umm… I've always been an early riser unlike my brother who you have to literally drag out of bed as Rusty likes his sleep." Lottie replied as she glanced over the direction of the couch and although she couldn't see her brother, Lottie knew he was there because she could hear him muttering the odd words and wouldn't be moving from that spot for a while. Rusty liked sleeping and never got up early like Lottie did unless he had to and even then he didn't like it and was prone to being a bit grumpy if he was woken up before he would have liked. A lot of the time Rusty slept during the day because he had been working the night before so Lottie just left him to sleep.

"Did you sleep well?"

"I did, very well actually but it's always been easy for me to fall asleep given the whole deaf thing. I can sleep through anything..." Lottie honestly replied with a weak smile as she couldn't remember the last time she had slept so well. She was pretty sure that she had fallen asleep the moment her head had hit the pillow. It had been such a long time since Lottie had slept in a nice soft bed, in a room by herself and practically sleep without one eye open because they were crashing on the streets or in abandoned buildings with other people who would think twice about robbing you blind in your sleep. It had been nice to have several hours of a nice deep and uninterrupted nights sleep on a bed that wasn't an old dingy mattress that was practically all springs of tarpin layed on the ground. When Lottie had woken up this morning it had taken her a moment to remember where she was as she had found herself in unfamiliar environment until it finally kicked in that Sharon had brought her and Rusty home with her. Lottie had to remind herself that she shouldn't get her hopes up as this wasn't going to last, eventually her and Rusty would be handed a crappy deal which was life's way of smacking them down when they had gotten themselves too comfortable. Plus there was no way that Sharon would want to keep two misfits like her and Rusty, Lottie would be surprised if this gig lasted more than a week before Sharon's patience wore thin with her and Rusty. Lottie was going to have to savor this until it ended as she knew her and Rusty would no doubt end up back on the streets, whatever foster home they were placed in they would end up leaving and being back where they had come from.

"Lottie, what's wrong?" Sharon asked. Although Sharon was practically a stranger, Lottie had this feeling that she could trust the woman as Sharon didn't have to help them. She didn't have to take in both Rusty and Lottie and yet she did both as well promise to find her mother. Lottie knew that both Rusty and Lottie had good reason to be weary of Sharon Raydor, she would probably be another disappointment like most of the adults in her life. But there was something about her that told Lottie that Sharon wasn't like the other adults. That she could be trusted but despite this, Lottie would keep the woman at an arms length until she could be sure the woman could be trusted.

"I've never had one you know…" Lottie wearily began as she looked around the apartment, she didn't mean to sound so wax lyrical about it but it was such a nice and clean apartment. There was no broken or used furniture, everything seemed to have a place and was nicely decorated. Most importantly there was a front door with two locks which would probably prevents people from coming in and stealing all of Sharon's belongings. Lottie had never stayed anywhere so nice before, when they were still living with their mom, Lottie and Rusty would be living in run down apartments which weren't the nicest of places. Scarcely furnished and badly decorated, when they got kicked out they moved around motels and so on. They never had money for nice things as their mother was generally spending what little money they had on getting strung out. Looking around Sharon's apartment it was like it was this huge What If? For Lottie, this could have been the life that she could have had if things had turned out different.

"Had what?" Sharon questioned and Lottie shook her head and forced herself to swallow a huge lump in her throat.

"Nothing… Forget I said anything." Lottie awkwardly replied, looking down at her book and praying that Sharon wouldn't force the subject as already Lottie felt like she had said way too much. Lottie had the urge to run back to the spare room that she had slept in, shut the door and hide in the corner of the room. But Lottie knew she couldn't do that as she was a guest in Sharon's home, which made her feel obligated to stay in her seat despite how uncomfortable she was currently feeling.

"How long have you been deaf in your right ear? If you don't mind me asking…" Sharon asked in a delicate manner as she returned to the dining room table with a cup of coffee in her head, no doubt trying to be sensitive about the whole deaf thing. Lottie appreciated that Sharon was talking to her in a normal tone of voice, no talking louder in an effort to make sure that Lottie could hear her.

"No it's fine. I've been deaf in my right ear since I was six so a little over ten years. I can't exactly remember who it happened, I seem to have repressed the whole incident from my memory which is a good thing according to Rusty. Apparently one of my mom's boyfriend's was drunk and in a blind fury and smacking my mom around, according to Rusty one moment I was standing next to her, then the next moment I had been sent flying across the room and smack into the wall. Single sided deafness can be caused by physical trauma and well I've been deaf ever since that incident…"

"Lottie…" Sharon wearily began, no doubt shocked about the abuse that she was hearing but Lottie just smiled as she was used to it.

"I would say I have worst injuries but I don't know if you can compare breaking your clavicle and wrist to becoming deaf in one ear. But you know, you adapt and know I have an excuse if I not listening when someone speaks to me." Lottie replied in a jokey manner as she found the best way to deal with her hearing impairment was humor even though she didn't have much of a sense of humor to begin with. She was less sensitive to the whole deaf thing than Rusty was.

"It must be hard." Sharon noted.

"At times. I find it hard to watch movies and I have to have subtitles on, I can't locate the direction of sound or it's distance but I cope and it's not like I have complete hearing loss. If anything it's harder for Rusty then it is me…" Lottie noted as she looked over her shoulder to the couch where her brother was still soundly sleeping.

"Why's that?"

"My brother has always thought that it was his job to take care of me, even though Rusty is barely fifteen older than me he takes being a big brother seriously. We never had much growing up with my mom because of all her problems and so we had to scrimp and save for me to get my first hearing aid. It took about two years for that and I was self conscious about wearing the hearing aid and I still am, hence the pink hair. What my brother did out in Griffith Park wasn't out of choice, he wouldn't have done what he did unless he had no other choice. Not long after my mom took off my old hearing aid got ruined and I needed a new one. Rusty did those things to buy me a new hearing aid, I used to tell him that it was fine, I had a couple of years without the hearing aid and I could do it again, that it was more important for us to eat. But Rusty was adamant that he was getting me a new hearing aid, that he was going to take care of me. I used to always ask him, if he was so busy taking care of me who would take care of him. Even though it's been ten years sometimes Rusty will forget that I'm partially deaf and he'll be speaking to me from a distance but I can't hear. He'll get mad because he thinks I'm purposely ignoring him but then I'll tell him I can't hear and it comes back to him and then he gets mad that he forget. I'll tell him that's fine but Rusty will just get worked up about. Rusty has always tried not to make my hearing problems a big issue but that time he did. I remember when he gave my the hearing aid, I cried because I knew what he had done to get it. Instead of buying what we really needed he got me my hearing aid…" Lottie wearily said as she fingered her hearing aid.

"It's beyond obvious that Rusty cares a lot about you." Sharon murmured with a small smile.

"He's a good boy, I know he's difficult and stubborn but Rusty feels like he has to be the one to take care of us. He's been through so much and even then he still won't let me take care of him…"

"What are you reading?" Sharon questioned before taking a sip of her coffee.

"Anna Karenina."

"Impressive. I've never got a chance to get around to reading it myself but it's a very ambitious book for someone your age to be reading Lottie. Do you like to read?" Sharon stated with a warm smile and Lottie could see what the woman was trying to do, clearly Sharon was trying to make her feel a little more at ease by talking about something a little more neutral.

"Yeah… I spend a lot of time in libraries as reading is a good escape from everything so I read whatever I can. I usually get into most of my accidents because I've got my head stuck in a book, reading seems to make me more klutzy. Rusty got me this for our birthday, he kept apologizing because of the condition of the book." Lottie began as she closed the book and showed Sharon the well worn cover. "I actually like books in this condition, it shows that they've been read and possibly enjoyed after all books are meant to be enjoyed. I'm still trying to get into Anna Karenina, it goes a bit over my head at times but I'm getting there. No matter how long it takes I'm going to finish this."

"Well I hope that when you do finish then you'll be so kind as to lend your copy to me so that I can attempt to have a read." Sharon said in a warm manner and despite her best efforts not to smile, Lottie couldn't help it. She rather liked the sound of that.