In the days that followed Leigh's outburst, I felt my surety that had all been a huge mistake eroded. Mostly because of my long ago dreams about Emily… At the time I'd merely ascribed them to a grief I had never been certain I was entitled to. But years later, while Mulder was gone, I had another series of dreams, ones equally vivid and horrific.

And when we'd unearthed Mulder, and I saw the scars on his face, it had nearly been impossible to deny that my dreams had meant something that time.

Days after his miraculous recovery, I left him long enough to visit my mother. I suppose I'd hoped that she would comfort me by telling me that sizable coincidences happened all the time, and I'd been so worried for him that dreaming of the way he was hurt was inevitable. Maybe she'd even tell me that we dreamed every night and of course I'd had other dreams that didn't match up to what had been done to him, and since they hadn't, they didn't feel significant enough to remember.

But that turned out to be more wishful thinking on my part because she's listen carefully before telling me the most of the women in her family had had something preternatural about them, something outside the confines of medical science, so was hardly surprising to her that I'd had prescient dreams myself.

At the time I'd been irritated by her declaration and had distanced myself from her for a couple of days, telling myself that it was due to Mulder needing me, and then had mostly forgotten about it. That was probably inevitable considering how much would be thrown at me over the next year. And by the time life lifted itself out of chaos, the conversation longer seemed remotely important.

But what if she had been right? When William was as small as Autumn, I'd seen him effect objects in a way that was scientifically impossible. If that had been in him (I still don't know what stopped it, I'm just glad it didn't recur, and that the shot that Spender had mistakenly given Joey hadn't hurt him) was it possible that the ability to dream of situations I was far removed from was in me?

And if it was possible that my dreams after Emily's death had been portends what did that mean for me now? Really, that's what kept me up at night.


In the end it took three days of walking on mental eggshells before Leigh returned. I had known that she would. Because if it had been me, I would have. Even if the odds were slim of getting the answers needed, I could understand needing to take that chance. I wouldn't have threatened a slimebag's manhood to get information about Joey's birth if I wasn't the sort of person who took that sort of chance too.

We were having breakfast, after the boys had left for the bus, when there was the unmistakable sound of a car stopping in our driveway. Before I could move Mulder put his coffee down and stood up so he could look out the window by the front door. He walked over to me and squeezed my shoulder. "I'll talk to her."

Looking up at him, I wanted to tell him that he didn't need to protect me like that. "Thank you."

I didn't need rescuing, but maybe Leigh did, from my inability to be calm about the whole crazy situation. I found myself grateful that it had been Daniel visiting the next morning, because days later I was still keyed up, so imagine how I would have reacted then.

Mulder just nodded, and only as he went to get the door did I realize he was aware that I'd hear everything said in the next room. I took that as an invitation to join them if I thought I could. Or should.

The door squeaked a little as he opened it. "Leigh, Aaron." I started a little, half surprised she'd brought her husband. I heard them come in, then Mulder said, "I guess the kids will have a sub today."

"It seemed for the best," Aaron said.

That was true. It was nice to see Aaron treat his own wife with the sort of compassion Mulder showed me.

Aaron spoke again. "We talked to Judith at length about that night." It hadn't escaped my notice that Judith had driven Leigh's car home, then Aaron had brought her back later that evening.

"We assumed you would," Mulder acknowledged calmly.

"So I'm sure you aren't surprised that what she relayed to us did little to put Leigh's concerns to rest."

"No, not at all."

"So…" Aaron paused, to gather his courage, I thought. "There really were unanswered questions surrounding your daughter's death?"

I waited for Mulder to correct him, to explain that Emily had been my child, not his.

"There were irregularities around her death, yes. We weren't allowed to bury her," Mulder told them.

Sitting there just out of sight, I wondered for the first time how Mulder had felt about Emily's death. At the time I'd been beyond grateful that he'd at first let me lean on him and then hadn't been one of the many people who had been alarmed by my need to throw myself into work in order to cope with my grief. But had he been grieving too, for her sake and not just for my pain? When I'd first found out that she was inexplicably mine, I'd immediately imagined a life with my daughter, raising her, and Mulder had been a part of those daydreams. Sometimes he'd been the fun uncle type who was pleased to see her when the nanny brought her to visit me at lunch, and sometimes he proposed and we raised Emily together, but no matter what I imagined him being some part of her life. Had he had that sort of thought too?

"I… I know I was sickly as a little child," Leigh spoke up for the first time, braver than me. "I saw doctors all the time. I hated being poked and prodded and told I was so good."

Any sickly child would have that sort of memory, I silently argued. I was sure I could get that sort of memory recall from Christian, Kevin Kryder, Richie Lupone, or a dozen other ill children I'd helped or treated through both the X-Files and my medical practice. What she'd said was hardly an argument that she was Emily.

"Look," Aaron said abruptly. "I know this all seems fantasy-based, but I'm not asking you to believe anything right now. I'm just asking you and your wife to keep an open mind about the possibility that this isn't just a massive misunderstanding. To agree that there are enough similarities-"

"To what?" Mulder asked, using the same mild tone that he had infuriated me with the night we'd spoken to Judith.

Aaron swallowed hard. "To justify further investigation."

"By what means?" Mulder asked evenly.

I expected Aaron to say a DNA test, but Leigh spoke again instead. "I just want my records looked at. A lawyer told me that I might need help compelling someone to give me access. Another interested party demanding answers to might help."

"Someone claiming to be a parent?"

"Someone looking for answers about what happened to their child," she replied back.

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, Mulder and I had been at odds because I needed answers that he hadn't. At the time I wondered how he could possibly be content with not knowing. But now I wondered if I had been a hypocrite then. Because I had been willing to let those questions about Emily go unasked. Now it was quite clear that we all picked and chose what sort of unknown we could live with.

I got to my feet, not quickly, and walked out into the living room. Leigh look surprised to see me, and Aaron relieved. Actually, when I looked closer, I realized that Leigh looked frightened, of me. Was she expecting me to begin to rant and rave like a crazy woman? Did I look like I was going to?

Mulder held out an arm, indicating that he would like me to sit next to him. As soon as I did, he pulled me close. I leaned on him, grateful for that. Maybe it was psychological, but it did feel like he was lending me his strength.

I didn't smile when I studied them. "Okay."

The look Aaron gave me was uncertain. "Okay?" I don't think he realized even then I could hear everything they had said.

"If Mulder and I can help you gain access to the adoption records, we will. I'm not sure how much we'll be able to bolster the argument for allowing you to see them, but okay."

Leigh looked astonished. And it sort of broke my heart. Had she come here fully expecting me to deny the favor? Had she been so sure that I would turn her away? Was she only there at all because Aaron insisted that she needed some sort of closure, even if that closure was me slamming a door in her face?

Aaron bound to his feet, reminding me of a puppy. "Thank you! This really means a lot to us." He turned to look at his young wife. "Doesn't it, Leigh?" he asked, prompting her like he might have one of his school children to say thank you to another teacher.

Leigh still looked dazed. "Oh yes, it means a lot."

Conversation fizzled to an end then, and we made vague promises to help in whatever way we could. As the door closed behind them, I found myself wondering which would be more painful: finding out that she was Emily, or finding out that she wasn't. Right then, I couldn't tell.


I thought I'd been keeping things together fairly well the rest of the day, at least until William took Mulder aside after dinner and asked "Dad, is Mom all right?" in what he probably thought was a whisper.

I wasn't the only one who heard them, because Joey looked up from his math homework and gave me a quick look. One glance from me, and he returned his eyes to his paper immediately, making me wonder what my expression looked like. Not pleasant, apparently.

Mulder put his hand on William's shoulder, and said "she's gotten some news that makes her unhappy, buddy. It has nothing to do with you, or your brother or sister, and it's not really something you need to worry about. But please try to be patient, okay?"

William looked relieved, and that made me feel bad. What had he thought I been upset about, considering that he and Joey had been so well behaved lately? "Okay" he said earnestly. "I will."

This, more than anything made me wish that we got answers as soon as possible. It was becoming even more obvious to me that I wasn't holding up under the strain nearly as well as I wished I was, and I wasn't really sure what I could do about that.

It had been quite a while since I had gone to therapy sessions, and I tended to think of it as what you did when things were really wrong (like when you thought you were dying), but I began to wonder if maybe I should look to see if there was somebody well-recommended in town.

Until something more happened with Leigh's search for answers, I promised myself that I would do the best I could to put the situation out of my mind because it had to be unhealthy to let it eat at me the way I had been the past few days.


We may have all wished for quick answers, but they were not to be. Leigh showed up at my house several days later, looking tearful. For a change, her upset wasn't because of anything Mulder or I had said or done, which left me the mental space to feel sympathetic.

Fortunately, the kids were playing outside, so I just ushered her in before they saw her and begin to ask questions. I'd been doing a better job keeping handle on my own emotions, but I'm sure that seeing a woman in that state would make them uncomfortable just then, being a reminder of my own emotional fragility of late.

"What's wrong?" I asked Leigh, going to the stove to retrieve the kettle I'd been heating for tea. I brought two teacups and two teabags to the table, fixing tea with milk and sugar for both of us without bothering to ask if she wanted any or how she did if she did.

Leigh held it in both hands like a small child, and seemed to be more comforted by the warmth of the cup than the contents. She did take a sip though before looking up at me. "They keep telling me that they can't show me my records."

I nodded, not surprised. "So you will need Mulder and me to put some pressure on them," I suggested.

"That was Aaron's idea, you know, not mine," she said, her tone begging to be believed.

"Okay," I said. It didn't actually surprise me that her husband had come up with the idea. She was more of a wreck than I was, so elaborate planning probably wasn't in her wheel house at the moment.

"But what if it's not," she asked, confusing me for a moment. "If you and your husband go there and ask questions, and they just… They just don't answer you either?"

I wanted to mention DNA tests, but held my tongue. Mulder and I had said that we wouldn't be the ones to bring it up. So I wasn't going to do it then without consulting him first. "We'll figure something out," I promised her, not really comfortable with how vague that sounded even to my own ears.

Leigh rubbed her eyes. "You shouldn't have to." She picked her cup up again. "I shouldn't have involved you in the first place. This whole freak out of mine, that's me. You shouldn't have to deal with the fact that I'm neurotic."

I sighed, and she cast me a worried look. Maybe she thought that she had really exasperated me then. "You're young, so maybe that means that you are still looking for ways to prove that you're an adult that can handle things all by herself. But it doesn't always work that way, Leigh. Sometimes, you have to lean on other people. This doesn't change, no matter how old you get.

"Aaron may not understand exactly what you're going through now," I told her patiently. "But I know what it is to need answers that are difficult to find on your own, the ones you need to ask for help for. There's no shame in that."

Maybe I expected her to nod and feel better, but I didn't expect for her to ask what she did immediately. "What sort of answers have you needed to look for?" she asked, a mild note of challenge in her tone.

Looking out the window at my two snowsuit clad children throwing snowballs at each other, I hesitated for a moment. It wasn't something that I brought up very often, not with strangers, but if there was any chance that Leigh was actually Emily… Then it was something she was going to need to know eventually. And if not, maybe I just needed to tell somebody. I could take my own advice about lessening burdened by asking other people to share it, there.

"I don't suppose Joey has told your husband or his classmates very much about his early childhood?" I asked.

She looked confused, which was a sure sign that Joey didn't talk about it much to anyone outside the family either. "No. Not that I'm aware of."

"While I don't really want to go into all the details now, Joey didn't always live with us."

"He didn't?" she asked, throwing me a startled look.

"No. Before William was born, Mulder and I did IVF. That's how we got Autumn too." She looked little alarmed, and I wondered why. Even if she was Emily, Jacoby was proof that my fertility problems weren't genetic. And though I might have been in a sharing mood, discussing my history of cancer wasn't something I was willing to put on the table. So, I went on. "William was almost six when we discovered that someone had managed to give one of our embryos to someone else. And that embryo became Joey."

"That's horrible!" Leigh exclaimed. I could tell that she was envisioning a lab mix up, and that was okay. I wasn't going to explain the consortium to her, not then. "But you got him back somehow?"

"We did," I said, wondering how much detail I should give about that. I decided to err on the side of vagueness. "Joey's other parents suffered a tragedy in their family. Long story short, it was discovered that Joey was our biological child, and we were able to get custody of him."

She had been listening attentively, but I think she got confused along the way about what did this had to do with my statement about needing answers, because all she said then was "oh."

Trying to drag the topic back on track, I went on to explain, "When we first learned about this, I was so hurt, even after things worked out in a way that allowed us to bring him home. I just couldn't understand how this could have happened, or get past it. How could some other couple have ended up with my baby? Joey should have been William's twin in reality, not just what people are allowed to think for convenience's sake. Someone's actions robbed me of almost six years of my son's life. Maybe I should have been happy just to have him, but I couldn't just let it be. So I went looking for answers. It wasn't easy, but I felt I had to do it."

This had Leigh nodding, as if she could completely emphasize with that feeling. "Aaron keeps telling me that I should be happy that my life turned out better than people might have predicted when I was younger. That I should be content with my lot now. But he doesn't understand what it's like not to know important things about yourself. He's never had that problem himself."

Until that second, that I only wanted to help her get her answers because it was the Christian thing to do. You're supposed to help your fellow man whenever you can, even if it's a burden to yourself. But then? To hear her say that? I wanted those answers for her too.

"You're going to know, someday." I reached across the table and put my hand on hers. She looked a little bit surprised by this, but didn't flinch away. "We'll help you. It's important, even if Aaron doesn't understand that right now."

And that's about when she began to cry. Not in huge heartbroken whoops, but silent tears, the kind that make your shoulders shake a little. I didn't take my hand away, but I didn't know what else to do to make her feel better. Maybe she did feel better. Because she didn't look sad. She looked relieved.

"Thank you," she told me once she pulled herself together again.

Before we went to bed that night, Mulder and I had a plan about how we would speak to the adoption agency that placed Leigh with her parents.