Houston, Texas

Hearing the sound, Katherine didn't quite register what it was or where she was until Florencia, her family's housekeeper, appeared at her bedside.

"Miss Wentworth, your father requests you join him downstairs."

Jetlagged, still on Swiss time after arriving home only a few hours earlier, she didn't like getting up, but she did it anyway and made her way down to the foyer where she found her father standing by the telephone table.

"Daddy? You wanted to see me?"

Nodding, her father held up a memo pad, the side with the messages facing him.

"Do you know a Cliff Barnes?"

Not exactly shocked, knowing she'd given Cliff every reason to wonder who she was and why she'd come to visit him, she was caught a little off-guard by the question coming from her father. She hadn't really prepared herself to be the one to reveal her mother's secrets, she'd hoped her mother would be the one to do that, but she didn't believe she had yet.

"I do."

"Would you care to explain who he is and why he's left several messages for you while we've been gone? Ones that read as quite insistent."

Knowing now that her mother hadn't revealed anything, she hesitated.

"May I?" Extending her hand, she requested to read the messages before she answered anything.

Shaking his hand, her father was stern as he spoke again. "You may read the messages when I say you can. First, I'd like you to answer my question. Who is Cliff Barnes?"

Put on the spot, she'd never been so pleased to see her mother out of the corner of her eye as she was just then. Her father's raised voice had obviously carried upstairs.

"It's your news to tell."

Addressing her mother, her father didn't seem to appreciate that she still hadn't answered her question, raising his voice again to ask, "what is?"

Silent, it was obvious from her mother's pale face and shaking body that she wasn't in a good state, and she expected that any minute now she'd start to cry.

"Daddy, why don't you take mama into the living room, I'll make some tea."

Likely very lost, her father spoke with the same sternness he'd used before, "Katherine."

Shaking her head, she reiterated her position, "it's not for me to explain."

Dallas, Texas

Knocking on the open door, Bobby announced himself as he entered.

"Bobby, you got my messages", looking up at him, Cliff stood and shook his hand.

"I did, although they didn't exactly explain why you were calling. So, why the secrecy?"

He and Cliff had made peace with their familial losses and the relationship they shared because of that, and generally, he thought they were on good terms; they weren't friends but they weren't enemies, but it still made him nervous to read the messages Cliff had left with Teresa over the last few days.

He'd taken a couple of days to respond, he'd needed to recover from New Year before he did anything else, but he was there now, in Cliff's office, ready to hear what it was he had to say.

"I have a story to tell you."

"What sort of story?"

"An unbelievable one."

Chuckling, he said what he honestly felt, "you've got me interested now."

Walking over to the bar, Cliff offered him a drink.

Unsure what to make of Cliff's offer, or his facial expression, he asked, "am I going to need it?"

"That depends."

Even less sure of what to make of the situation now, he shrugged and accepted, "I'll have the drink."

Preparing two drinks, Cliff spoke, letting him know the reason why he'd asked him to make contact.

"So, remember when I called to ask you about that girl who came to see me?"

Remembering the conversation well, he felt surprisingly relieved at the fact that Cliff didn't seem to be upset nor did there sound to be any blame being laid on him for whatever the situation had developed into.

"The reporter."

Handing him a glass, Cliff shook his head and corrected him with a surprising answer, "I believe she's my sister, or, half-sister."

Taken aback by the comment, he repeated the information back as a question, "sister?"

Nodding, Cliff then launched into a story that came as a genuine surprise as Pam had rarely, if ever, mentioned her mother and he'd never really considered Pam to have a family beyond Cliff, Digger and Maggie.

Listening, he was silent, taking it all in. Cliff's mother, Rebecca, had left 22 years earlier, leaving Digger, Cliff and Pam behind, making no contact, leading Digger to believe she'd died. If Cliff had the details correct, Rebecca was a wealthy woman now, one who had a daughter who was looking for answers about the past.

It was a sad state of affairs; Rebecca's daughter had little information but a lot of motivation, whereas Rebecca had all the information and apparently no motivation to make contact. According to Cliff, he'd not heard a thing from his mother since she'd walked out the door two decades earlier. He told him he'd figured out what was going on was because he'd reconsidered what they'd discussed on the phone, that perhaps his mother was alive, that the girl who'd come to see him had no reason to ask after Pam and be so defensive of his mother unless she had a personal stake in the situation.

Believing it possible, having suggested that very thing himself, an experience of his own popped into his mind as something worth mentioning.

"Hold on a moment, this woman, your mother, what does she look like?"

"I don't know what she'd look like now; it's been a long time. I have no interest in meeting her again either after she abandoned my family and never looked back."

Understanding where Cliff was coming from, his answer didn't particularly help establish whether the memory he had was connected.

"I think I met her once, at the cemetery."

Scoffing, Cliff made his feelings clear. "Funny, she's seen her son-in-law but not her son."

Shrugging, he didn't disagree, but he didn't think it was calculated either. "It was a coincidence, I arrived and she was already there."

"That figures, in and out without a hello or goodbye."

"I never gave it a second thought after that day."

Changing the subject, Cliff commented on something that hadn't occurred to him, but when mentioned, he did have an interest in.

"I'm surprised Katherine didn't come looking for you."

"Perhaps she did, I did leave town for a while, or perhaps she was just looking for family, I'm not family."

Pam had been his wife and Katherine was Pam's sister, he'd like to meet her someday for Pam's sake, but he thought it best to let her and Cliff form a relationship before he introduced himself and complicated things. He had nothing in his own life to relate the situation to, only Jack arriving in Dallas by surprise one day, but he imagined that it might be a little strange if he bypassed Jack and started to make relationships with Jason and Jamie on his own, without an introduction. Considering that, he'd wait for Cliff and Katherine to meet again and then see about where he might fit in.

"Maybe."

Changing the subject himself, he asked, "so, what now?"

"Well, if she calls me back I'll arrange to see Katherine again soon. To be honest with you though, I think it might be far too complicated to try and build a familial relationship with her without also including our mother."

Explaining how he saw things developing, Cliff's concern threw a spanner in the works. He understood why Cliff felt the way he did, but he'd like for things to stay positive long enough for him to find a few answers of his own, on Pam's behalf. If Cliff met Katherine once and decided that it was too difficult to continue to keep her in his life, he might ask that he also stay away, Pam's husband or not.

"You really don't want to hear what your mother has to say?"

"No, I don't. I haven't been difficult to find. If she wanted to talk, she would have called or visited. She hasn't made any effort and I won't be either. Katherine on the other hand, she did make contact and I think that deserves another meeting."

Sympathising, he couldn't argue with how Cliff felt.

"I can respect that."

"I wish Pam were here to meet her."

Sighing, he couldn't disagree with Cliff on that either. It was sad how things had worked out, Pam had missed finding out that her mother and sister were living just an hour's flight from Dallas, and they'd missed the opportunity to meet her too. He wondered what she would have thought of the whole situation, how things might have been different. Pam had him and Cliff on her side, remembering her every day, but it wasn't the same.

To be continued…