Thursday afternoon had arrived. Zack was at the metal table, putting the final touches on his family tree, when Rodolfo came into the Condo.

"Dolf!" Zack looked up. "Where've you been? Alvin and I waited for you after school, but you never showed up."

"I took the scenic route," Rodolfo replied shortly.

"Okay, then," Zack continued, trying to push his concern for his 'cousin's' strange behavior aside and just change the subject. "Are you ready for tomorrow? We present our family trees tom…"

"I'm not doing it."

"What? You have to!"

"And say what?" Rodolfo challenged, growing increasingly angry. "There's nothing good to say."

"What are you talking about? Think about all those stories Mom and Dad told us about Uncle Roger and Aunt Mimi."

"Yeah, well what if that's all they are? Stories?" Rodolfo snapped before storming into his and Zack's bedroom and slamming the door.

"Dolf!" Zack got up to go in after him, but the bedroom door had been locked from the inside. "Dolf, come on! Stop being so crazy, and tell me what's up!" Zack groaned when Rodolfo didn't reply and went back to his project defeated. However, he could no longer concentrate on it, and just sat there until Mark and Emily had returned home from work.


At dinner time, Rodolfo still hadn't come out of his room. When Mark tried to open the door, he found it was still locked.

"Rodolfo, enough. This is ridiculous," Mark called through the door. "You can't stay in there forever, and Aunt Emily and I can't help with whatever's bothering you if you won't come out and talk with us."

"There's nothing to say!" Rodolfo shouted back. "Now leave me alone." Mark groaned at the boy's stubbornness.

"Mark, let me," Emily came over, a leather case in her hand. Mark recognized it as her lock-pick set, which had been a gift from Sergeant Kurtz a long time ago. Mark stepped aside and allowed Emily to do her thing, contemplating how her ability to pick locks had sprung from her brother's wish that she'd be able to get out of any bad situation, back when her life had been in danger from the Rat Fangs, a street gang that had been finally arrested years ago, long before the boys and Lucia had been born.

Finally, Emily had managed to unlock the door, enabling her and Mark to enter the bedroom, where Rodolfo was sprawled out on his bed, his back facing them.

"Rodolfo, your dinner's on the table," Mark invited. "It's meatloaf. You like meatloaf, don't you?"

"I'm not hungry," Rodolfo spoke bluntly. Emily decided to try another tactic.

"Zack said you seemed upset about your family tree project for tomorrow," she reminded. "If you need help with it, we're right here to help. Believe me, I know how you must feel. I lost my parents when I was a little girl, myself. Whatever you want to know about yours, you can ask us." Finally, Rodolfo turned over to face them, looking very upset and angry.

"And how do I know you won't just feed me another lie?" he snapped. "You've already fed me enough lies about them."

"What are you talking about?" Mark's brow furrowed in genuine confusion. "We've never lied about them to you."

"You said they were both good people! You said they'd have been the best parents I could have had."

"And they were!" Emily insisted. "Rodolfo, what has gotten into…?"

"I'm tired of lies! If my mom and dad were such great people, then tell me this. How'd they go about getting AIDS?" That was definitely not a response Mark and Emily were expecting. They both stood frozen, looking shocked.

"How… how'd you…" Mark stammered.

"I saw the shoebox, Uncle Mark!" Rodolfo shouted. "I saw that shoebox when Zack and I were looking around for pictures. I saw what was inside it. Two HIV tests, one with Dad's name on it, the other with Mom's. And I saw that broken needle. I thought it was one of Aunt Emily's insulin needles, but it wasn't, was it?"

"Rodolfo," Emily spoke softly. "I know how shocking this must be, but you haven't heard the whole story."

"Oh, yeah. Sure," Rodolfo scoffed. "What are you gonna tell me, Aunt Emily? That some guy ran up to them on the street and forced them on drugs? That they were held down while someone stuck them with a needle? Is that what you're going to tell me?"

"No. It's not," Mark replied.

"So my parents were drug addicts, weren't they? And that's how they got AIDS, and how they died. Isn't that right?"

"It's true," Emily admitted sorrowfully.

"And how long did you two intend to keep this from me?!"

"We were going to tell you when you were old enough."

"So you decided to lie to me about them until then?" Rodolfo glared. "What else have you told me that's a lie? You lied about what sort of people they were…."

"We never lied about that," Mark insisted.

"Yeah, right. How am I supposed to trust people who lied to me for thirteen years?" With that, Rodolfo pushed past Mark and Emily and dashed into the bathroom.

"Rodolfo!" Mark scolded trying the door handle to find that had been locked too. "Emily, get your lock picks."

"Mark, leave him be," Emily instructed. "It'll only get worse if we try to force him to talk with us."

"Well, we can't let him go through life with such a negative opinion about his parents."

"I know. But we have to let him calm down first. Rodolfo inherited Roger's temper. You know as well as I do that Davis men need stewing time. So, let him stew. He'll talk when he's ready." Emily gently took Mark's hand. "Come on. Dinner's getting cold." Reluctantly, Mark allowed Emily to lead him back to the kitchenette.


Hours later, Emily was washing up the dinner dishes while Mark was up putting Lucia to bed and Penny was going over one of her medical textbooks. During her task, Emily let out a heavy sigh. Penny looked up from her textbook in sympathetic concern.

"Mom, you and Dad did the right thing," she assured. "Rodolfo will figure out that you only kept this from him out of love. Remember, you kept the circumstances of my birth from me for a long time, but you had good reason for that. I mean, I get how hard it is to tell someone about that sort of thing. I still get angry sometimes when I think about who my biological father is, and what he did to you, Uncle Zachary, Grandma Natalie, Grandpa Zeke, and my biological mother. But the difference is that my biological father never regretted what he did, and never tried to turn his life around. Believe me, Rodolfo will understand that eventually."

"Thanks, Penny," Emily smiled softly. "We really do have messed up families, don't we?"

"That's probably why I took such a liking to you when I was a baby," Penny smiled. "We were just meant to be mother and daughter."

At that moment, Zack hurried into the room, looking very worried.

"Mom, it's Rodolfo!" Zack cried.

"Is he still in the bathroom?"

"No, that's just it! He's gone!"

"What do you mean?" Emily's tone quickly shifted to a troubled one.

"I took one of your lock picks because I really had to go," Zack explained. "But when I opened the door, Rodolfo wasn't in there. And the bathroom window is wide open." In an instant, Emily was in the bathroom, looking down to the street below. How long ago had Rodolfo ran off?

"Penny, Zack! Get your father!" Emily ordered franticly. As the siblings hurried upstairs, Emily continued to grip the windowsill as the cars rushed by below, completely unaware that there was an angry and confused thirteen year-old boy alone somewhere in the city. "Rodolfo, what have you done?"