Chapter 5

Lee leapt from the sofa, running to the back door. Flying into the backyard, he again shouted her name.

"Amanda doesn't live here anymore, Lee."

He turned to the familiar voice.

"T.P.?"

"Hello, Lee. I'll bet you're surprised to see me here."

"Actually, it's good to see a familiar face. Listen, I need your help. Something's happened to Amanda and the boys."

"Yes, you do need my help, but you may not like what I have to give. Come on, let's get out of here before the owners come back and we have to explain why we're in their backyard." T.P. took him by the arm and gently but swiftly led him around the corner and back to his car.

"Why don't we go for a drive?"

Lee wanted desperately to continue searching for his family, but felt compelled to listen to his friend.

"Yeah, sure T.P."

Folding himself awkwardly into the passenger seat of the low sports car, T.P. buckled his seat belt as Lee took one last look at the house he shared with his family.

"T.P., someone is setting me up and I don't even know for what. They've....erased everything. Every bit of evidence of my life for the last ten years. Any proof that I'm married, that we have the boys, that..." he stopped, deflated by the extent of what had been taken from him. "My whole life."

The analytical edge quickly returned to his voice. "I have to get to the agency, find out who's behind this, find Amanda. They must be holding her somewhere, they had to have had this all planned out, because they moved very quickly. They had to move us, so we must have been drugged, or forced..." His hands tightened on the wheel at the thought of his wife and children being harmed.

Through all of it, T.P. smiled placidly. Finally he found an entry into the conversation. "Lee, my boy, don't waste your time looking for the 'bad guys' in this case, because you won't find them."

"Don't say that, T.P., I have to find them."

"I didn't say you couldn't find them, and believe me I have full faith in your investigative skills, I said you wouldn't find them. There's a difference."

Lee ran a nervous hand through his hair. Had everyone lost their mind except for him?

"T.P., you're not making any sense."

"Well, let me try to clarify things for you a little." God, sometimes he rambles worse than Amanda, thought Lee.

"Yes, please do."

"You won't find any antagonists because there are none. Amanda isn't missing, and neither are the boys."

"Then where are they?" asked Lee, exasperated.

"They're home, I would suppose."

"But you saw..."

"That is the home that Mrs. King lived in several years ago. They moved out of there in 1985."

"What?"

"You've entered a fascinating sort of parallel universe, Lee my friend. I seem to have been assigned to be your guide, as it were, to show you all of the changes that you have affected. More accurately, the changes you and Amanda have affected."

"T.P., have you been drinking?"

"Lee, you saw the evidence for yourself. In this world you met Amanda, the same way you remember. Except that in this world, she did deliver that package, and you never had any reason to meet her again. You never even knew her name."

Lee pulled the car over to the side of the road, staring wide-eyed at his old friend.

Encouraged, T.P. continued.

"You, my boy, are still a bachelor, living the high life I presume."

Lee stared into space, unable to absorb all of this.

"But, I...how?"

"I don't know, Lee, I truly don't. But consider yourself lucky, most people can only imagine getting a glimpse of their life, as it *could* have been. Enjoy it, maybe you'll learn something."

With that, T.P. opened the door, and scooted out, leaning back into the open window. "Good luck, Lee. I have a feeling I'll be around if you need me, but I'm not sure exactly how these things function."

And with that he was gone.

Lee blinked hard, shaking his head. Had he really seen what he thought he had? Was T.P. serious? How could that be?

This was all too surreal.

They must have gotten to T.P. too. Brainwashing? Drugs?

Or maybe *he* was the one on drugs.

That could be it. He could be experiencing some sort of drug-induced hallucination. He was probably sitting in a dark interrogation room with a needle shoved into his arm.

But if that was the case, why couldn't he wake up?

The Agency. He'd go there and everything would make sense.

It couldn't get any worse, could it?