"Wait, hold on," Jamie said as he sat in the library with Joni. "Back up a minute. Are you saying you use the distance to find the velocity?"

"I'll show you again," Joni said, moving closer to write on his paper. "You have the distance the object traveled. and you have the height of the building... here. See?"

"Uh huh."

"So, you just do this." Joni wrote down the equation. "Plug in the numbers and you'll get the velocity."

"That's it?" Jamie said.

"That's it." Joni smiled. "Easy, right?"

"Yeah, now it is."

"I told you." Joni looked up. "JR."

JR approached the table. "Tell me you've seen Tad today." JR said.

"No," Jamie said. "He was gone when I got up this morning. He probably went to work early."

"Think again. Liza's running around pitching a fit."

"He didn't show up?"

"You should hear her. Tad's going to lose his job, Liza's going to fir him"

"No way!" Jamie said. He thought. "Maybe my mom knows where he is. We could go down to Tempo right now." Jamie looked over at Joni. "Do you want to come along?"

Joni shook her head. "I'll wait here for Laurie," she said. "You two go ahead."

"Alright, let's go," Jamie said as he and JR left the library.



Brooke walked downstairs, rubbing a towel over her wet hair. She didn't have time to blow-dry it, she was already running late. As she passed the sofa, she did a double take.

"Tad?" she said, walking over to the sofa and nudging him with her knee.

Tad stirred, easing open his eyes. He slowly sat. "You're up," he said with a yawn, stretching his back.

"You slept down here all night?"

"I couldn't just leave you alone," Tad said as Brooke sat down beside him. "I was worried about you."

"But Jamie..."

"Jamie's a big boy, Brooke," Tad interrupted her. "He's more than capable of staying in a house by himself."

"He had to wonder..."

"Don't worry about Jamie or what's going through his mind," he paused. "He cares about you... and I think he would be glad to know that I do too." Tad laughed. "I don't spend the night on just anyone's sofa, you know."

"He's been hurt before," she said. "First with me and Edmund, then with..."

"Adam," Tad said. "Brooke, you're beating yourself up over..."

"All the mistakes I made in my life?"

"I'll admit to you that the affair with Adam Chandler was a mistake."

"And Edmund?" Brooke said. "I kept him from his wife, Tad."

"You loved him..."

"And he loved her. I destroyed his life. I destroyed his family's life... her family's life..."

"But you tried to make it right in the end." Tad paused. "Besides... David Hayward is much more to blame for destroying anyone's life than you'll ever be."

"When I didn't say anything to Edmund... it was just like I had drugged Maria myself."

"You tried to save her."

"It should have been me who was stuck in that seat... It should have been me who David found on that beach."

"Stop," Tad said.

"I was worried about Laura," she continued. ""I had to come back... If we had just kept the flight we were supposed to take..."

"You were worried about Laura," Tad said. "You did what any good mother would have done. There was no way of knowing that the plane would go down. You know that what happened is not your fault. So don't try to work it out that way."

"It's just..." Brooke took a deep breath. "It's just that I think back to everything that happened... and I'm afraid that it'll all happen again."

"What are the odds of that?" Tad asked. Brooke pursed her lips silently. Tad reached over and took her hand. "It's not going to happen again, Brooke," he said. "You can do this. You have to get on that plane." He paused. "I'll come with you. I'll take the seat right next to you, I'll hold your hand the whole way to New York and the whole way back." Brooke looked over at him. "Everything will be fine." Tad leaned over and kissed her forehead. "It will."