"Dad!" Emily exclaimed on the other end of the phone. Her bright, melodic voice was a stark contrast to the drab gray walls of the hotel conference room he was currently in.

"Hey, Em. How ya doing? How was the spelling whatsit?"

"The spelling bee, you mean?" she laughed.

"Where's this sass comin' from, eh? You won't even be a teenager for another four years."

"My teacher did say I was advanced for my age."

"Well, of course you're brilliant. You take after your father."

"Or my mother."

"Speaking of your mother, can I talk to her?"

"Sure." After a moment, though, Emily came back on the line, her voice a bit hesitant. "Actually, Dad, Mom can't talk right now. She's busy."

He couldn't see her face, but he'd bet the lives of all the eggheads in this room with him right then that it was a lie. "Okay, love," he replied, conceding defeat. "Just let her know I'd like to talk to her, yeah?" Hoping that Zoe was listening in, he added, "don't want to leave things like we did."

"Okay. I will."

...

Cal sighed when he finally got off the phone with his daughter, already starting to feel the distance from her. Missing her was a hollow ache, an emptiness he carried with him whenever he was away. Such was simply the way of parenthood, he supposed.

The ache when he thought of his wife didn't run as deep, but it was more painful at this particular moment. Sharper, full of knives. They'd had another stupid bloody fight that morning – this time over finances. Since he'd left the Pentagon, he'd gotten regular, well-paying freelance work but hadn't found a permanent position yet. Though they were doing fine on the whole, Zoe kept badgering him to find a stable job, even if it meant forgoing the science he'd spent twenty years building.

It felt like a betrayal to hear her suggest that, whereas she felt betrayed by his refusal to even consider it. They were at an impasse, but they'd been there before. As always, he would simply find a way to fix it.

Throughout his life, Cal had generally had very little success with well-travelled paths. In nearly every scenario, he'd found that there was an alternative option, something a bit more tolerable, hiding between two bad choices. To find it, all you needed to do was see the world for all that it was, all cracks and shadows and dishonesty.

It was why he had agreed to fly to bumfuck wherever, USA, where he was now attending the Bumfuck annual criminology conference. He had scored a speech in the largest room on the last day. Rather than celebrate that place of honor, though, he found it discouraging. People tended to want to listen to him speak, to hear about his science in theory, but few truly believed in it. He often felt like a sideshow act, a circus freak asked to perform for the masses.

Every day, though, more people were taking him seriously. Several universities had begun to teach the science. And anyone who had truly tested his theories had found them to be sound, most notably the US Department of Defence, with whom he was in talks to develop a training manual. But it wasn't enough. Not yet. He needed the tide to turn in his favour at a far faster rate than it had been. He needed respect on a grand scale.

At least if he was going to save his family, anyway. If he was going to show Zoe that his pursuit of credibility was as much for them as it was for himself. That he wasn't just chasing windmills. And if that meant convincing people at these insufferable conferences, one stuffy academic at a time, he'd do it.

Although his speech wasn't until Sunday, Cal showed up and checked in Friday afternoon like a good boy. He may have been horrific at it, but events like these were great for networking. After refusing the nametag he was offered upon signing in, he wandered over to the board with the schedule for the weekend. He recognised many of the names on the list, having run into them at these things over the years. One in particular stood out, though:

Vocal stress analysis in criminal profiling: a lecture by Gillian Foster, PhD

In truth, Cal hadn't thought much of Doctor Foster since he'd last seen her at the Pentagon earlier that year. He had liked the woman, thought she was probably a decent therapist (not an easy thing for him to admit), but he hadn't necessarily trusted her. When no report came out saying he'd been deemed a whackjob security risk, though, he'd allowed himself to forget about the matter entirely, including Foster herself.

But seeing her name again was making him remember. "I'm here to help you, Doctor Lightman, not judge you or rubberstamp anyone's attempts to discredit you, or your science – which, by the way, happens to be of great interest to me."

He'd thought she was just saying what he wanted to hear, buttering him up so he'd reveal the unsoundness of his mind. But if she was an expert in analysing vocal stress, it made sense she'd be interested in his work. He might have even attended the talk without her name attached.

Let's see what you've got, eh, Foster?

She took the stage at ten sharp, appearing poised and professional. She even remembered to smile at the audience after stepping up to the lectern, making perfect eye contact as she introduced herself. Then she began. "How," Foster asked, "do we know what a person is capable of? How can we assess someone's state of mind? Can we hear it in their voice? Like many areas of life, the full truth is complicated, but I argue that the answer to that last question is simple: yes, yes you can. Let me explain."

As he watched her talk, he couldn't help but be begrudgingly impressed. She was a great speaker; her voice was soft but commanded authority. And, more impressively, she clearly knew her stuff backwards and forwards – he might've even learned a thing or two before she was finished.

At the end, she took questions from the audience. After a few inane ones, Cal raised his hand. "Yes…" Foster said, and he caught the very moment she recognized him. She smiled just slightly. "Oh, Doctor Lightman. It's good to see you again." True, he thought.

"You too, Doc, to be sure," he called.

Her smile grew. "For anyone who may not know, Doctor Cal Lightman here is an expert in lie detection. It's a new science he developed that's been showing incredibly promising results at the DoD, CIA, MI-5, and many prestigious educational institutions throughout the world. What can I do for you today, Doctor Lightman?"

Again, she sounded more or less sincere. "Well, correct me if I'm wrong, Doctor Foster, but I'm under the impression you've read my book."

"I have, yes." True again.

"With that in mind, I was just wonderin' what, if any, connection you see between the reading of micro expressions and vocal stress analysis."

"I'm glad you asked," she replied, and he marvelled once more at the apparent genuineness in her face, at the way her whole body shifted as her mind made the proper connections. "On the whole, it's an extremely under-researched area, but the potential for such a connection, and a close one, seems quite high. It's very possible that the two could even serve to legitimise and provide further support for each other. If a person's vocal stress indicators reveal emotions that correspond to a reading of micro expressions, then the validity of both methods increases."

"Very interesting," he called back. "Thank you, Doctor Foster."

This time, her smile was indulgent, knowing. Very interesting indeed.

After her lecture, Foster was surrounded by a gaggle of people wanting to introduce themselves and exchange information. Bloody networking, he thought. She handled the attention with aplomb, though, shaking hands like she was born to do it, laughing politely at the right moments. Always quietly confident but not overbearing about it (like Cal knew he was).

He waited just beyond the huddle, watching as the crowd slowly dissipated. While doing so, he observed Foster closely. Not just her behavior or facial expressions but Foster the person. He had to admit she was a beautiful woman, uncommonly so. Almost angelic with her kind eyes and bright, easy smiles. It was a face he'd found himself being more honest with than he'd originally planned several months ago. He nearly found himself walking closer to hear what she was saying as she spoke excitedly to one woman, her hands gesturing animatedly. But he held his place. It was then that he noted her wedding ring, reminding him that there must be a Mr. Foster as well.

When she'd finally sent her last admirer on his way, Cal continued to stare. Not seeing him, she sighed in apparent relief, rocking her head from side to side to stretch her neck. And there was his cue.

"That was some speech," he called to her conversationally.

He saw the surprise in her eyes when she glanced up, but she recovered quickly. "Not sure if I should take that as a compliment or an insult, Doctor Lightman."

"Oh, a compliment to be sure, love."

He stood still as she assessed his face, allowing her to evaluate his motives as she saw fit. "Well, thank you, then," she replied after a moment.

Clearly expecting him to leave, she turned her back to him, gathering her notes and packing them into a messenger bag sitting on the stool next to her. After a few seconds of him still standing there, she faced him again, eyebrows raised in expectation.

"You know," he started, not quite sure what direction to take, "I think you and I could have a lot to talk about."

She assessed his face again – not scientifically, not yet, but with a shrewd gaze nonetheless. After a moment, her head tilted just slightly in agreement. "Perhaps we might."

"Would you have dinner with me tonight? With the husband, o'course, if he's here."

"He stayed in DC, but yes, I'd like that. And will your wife – Zoe, if I remember correctly – be joining us?"

"She's at home with the kid."

"Yes, Emily. How is she doing?"

"She's nine and brilliant and terrifying."

Foster smiled but allowed the small talk to end there. "Six-thirty," she announced definitively. "In the hotel restaurant."

"I'll be there."

As Foster sat on her stool, leaning toward him as she explained the nuances of pitch during anger, he realized he hadn't spent an evening quite so pleasantly in a while. "So, you see," Foster continued, nearing the end of her little speech, "that's how I know for a fact that you were being unnecessarily rude to Doctor Feist."

"Please," Cal scoffed, though it took everything in him to withhold the smile fighting at his lips. "He knows his theory's Swiss cheese. I didn't do anything but say what everyone – him included – is already thinkin'."

"So you admit you called it Swiss cheese."

"What's your thoughts on Swiss cheese anyway, Foster? For or against? I personally can't stand it, but…"

"Ugh," she exclaimed in pleasure, and he smirked into his glass at how relaxed she'd become since starting her third drink, "I had the best burger with Swiss a few months ago. I'm still thinking about it."

"Is it that one at George's diner?"

Her eyes went big, and she gestured toward him in affirmation. "Yes, that's it. You've had it?"

"No, wouldn't touch the stuff. It's Emily's favorite, though. Whoever said kids only eat dinosaur nuggets 'til age 12 was a lyin' sack o'shit, I'll tell ya that much."

Foster smiled at that, laughing lightly. "More dinosaur nuggets for you, then, right?"

"Beats Swiss cheese."

"Don't think you can use Swiss cheese of all things to distract me from the fact that you invalidated Doctor Feist's research to his face just so you could steal his martini."

Cal slapped the bar in mock outrage. "I did no such thing."

He had. Only he'd pretended to piss him off so he could steal his drink. In reality, he'd done it to make the bloody nuisance disappear. He could tell Feist had wanted to sit and bend Foster's ear a while. He seemed genuinely interested in her research. And those long, shapely legs of hers.

And if he was right about that second assumption, he was pretty sure Feist was barking up the wrong tree. Doctor Foster seemed mighty in love with this Alec bloke. Plus, he simply couldn't picture infidelity on her. It just wasn't her look.

Regardless, Feist could take a pass at her in his own time. Tonight was Cal's chance to make things in his life go right for a change, and he wasn't about to let that bastard with the half-baked profiling research ruin it for him.

"I have to beg him and his committee for funding two months from now, Dr. Lightman. That's only eight weeks. Sixty-four days. One-thousand-five-hundred and thirty-six hours. Five million–"

"I think I get the picture."

"That's not a lot of time."

"I heard something about five million, so…"

"Are you always this irritating?"

"Only since I came out of the womb, Foster."

She sighed then, long and slow. A white flag raised if he'd ever seen one. Then she immediately downed the rest of her drink in one long swallow. He watched this all in silence, mesmerised by the way she tilted her head back and by the rise and fall of her throat as the whiskey burned down it. The sight, the mystery of her shifting mood, made him want to poke at her like a child did a bug found under a rock. He wanted to dissect her, take her apart, see what made her tick.

Eventually, she found the will to reply. "If you're going to insist on being a thorn in my side, you might as well call me Gillian while you're doing it."

Refusing to stand on formalities. Interesting, and not what he expected. "For what it's worth, Gillian, if Feist lets one arsehole keep him from investing in your research, he's stupider than I told him he was."

She closed her eyes and tried to muster up the courage to be angry with him. But another thing that was confounding him about her was, for all her bluster, she seemed to actually like him when he was being a dickhead. A bit, anyway.

But he could work with 'a bit.'

In the end, she simply ignored his comment, though she didn't try to hide her smile. "I think I'm gonna call it a night."

"But things were just gettin' good! I was about to start insulting Feist's mother. I know you wanna hear that."

One half of her mouth remained upturned, but she stood from her stool, stretching and grabbing for her purse. The look she shot him then was warm with a hint of something biting, something that would draw blood if he pressed on it too hard. "I'll see you on Sunday."

"Goodnight, Gillian."

"Goodnight, Cal."

She started to walk away, but something in him needed to needle her one last time. "Oh, and Gillian?" She turned around, glancing at him in expectation. "I prefer 'Doctor Lightman.' Has a more fear-inducing quality to it, don't ya think?"

Instead of laughing or rolling her eyes, Gillian tilted her head and evaluated him for a moment. "Do you want to be feared?" she asked with apparently sincere curiosity. "Or simply respected?"

"Night, Foster," he replied in a rushed voice, turning away from her right quick and focusing back on his drink, mumbling something about not paying her to therapize him. The laugh she let out rang in his ears long after she'd gone up to her room.

On Sunday afternoon, Cal paced nervously around the backstage of the hotel's largest ballroom, going over the changes he'd made to his lecture. It was a big gamble, what he was planning to do. But if he was right, if it went well, then he might just have found a way forward. A way out of this push and pull. A way to bring him and Zoe back on the same page for once.

He smiled to himself when Foster approached him, feeling his plan fall into place. At their dinner two nights ago, he'd told her that the person who'd been meant to introduce him had dropped out at the last second. Could she please, he'd asked, the picture of sincerity, fill in for him?

As he'd suspected, she was surprised by the request but acquiesced with little pushback. It had been a while since he'd dealt with someone as trusting as her, as genuine. It was a change of pace he could see himself getting used to.

"Thanks for doin' this, Foster."

She smiled. "I told you. Gillian."

"Thanks Gillian, then."

"You're welcome. Although, I had an interesting discussion with your friend Doctor Ronsen yesterday."

Busted. Best not give that knowledge away too soon, though. "Oh, yeah? How's Paul doin'? How are Julie and the boys?"

"Great, as far as I can tell. What's really interesting, though? He told me he never said he couldn't introduce you. You told him yesterday morning that the conference had forced you to have me do it."

"You know," he excused, shrugging, "who doesn't want their ex-shrink to validate them in front of all their peers, eh?"

"You were never my client, Doctor Lightman. Not really."

"I told you," he laughed, repeating her words back at her. "Cal."

"You told me the opposite, actually," she answered, which had them both chuckling this time. She was a good-humored sort, wasn't she just? But had a real serious streak in 'er as well. Cal liked contradictions, interesting dichotomies.

He opened his mouth to reply, but a stagehand approached them before he could, informing them it was time for him to go on.

Foster – Gillian – started to head to the stage but turned back toward him. "Cal," she broached, the name still sounding foreign on her tongue, "there's nothing you're not telling me? No ulterior motive for asking me to introduce your lecture today?"

"Now why would you think that, love?" he asked.

"That," she replied, her lovely eyes sharpening in victory, "was a deflecting question."

Cal couldn't keep it up anymore, barking out a guilty laugh. "Guess you'll find out soon enough. Go on, then."

She did as he bid, glaring at him in suspicion until she had to face forward. He watched her, though, as she walked out on the stage with nothing but complete poise and grace. It was almost annoying how she could do that. But potentially extremely useful as well.

When Cal's cue came, he entered the stage, shaking Foster's hand like they'd talked about. He took the mic and thanked the audience for their applause before turning in the direction Gillian had subtly gone, catching her just before she disappeared from sight. "Doctor Foster," he addressed into the mic, "if you wouldn't mind, I could use your help with some things up here."

He heard the tell-tale click of her heels stop suddenly, and he gestured quite dramatically in her direction.

"If you all have a look at Doctor Foster's face here, you'll note an expression of someone cursing another's existence. See, I didn't tell 'er I had intended to ask for her assistance today, so she might be a bit cross about it. But in truth Doctor Foster can provide us all some extremely helpful insight into how to determine if someone's tellin' the truth, which is why you're all here today—besides a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see my own good looks in person, of course."

As the audience laughed, he took a moment to look more closely at Foster. She had taken a few steps closer to him, but her arms were crossed disapprovingly, head tilted in irritation (he really wasn't far off with his 'cursing his existence' observation). "This better be good, Lightman," she hissed quietly.

And yes, she was cross with him. But there was something very lively in her eyes, a challenge of sorts on her face. He smiled slightly, leaning away from the microphone so only she could hear him. "Oh, I think there's a mighty high chance of that, darlin'. Let's put on a show, shall we?"

"We've gotta write the book on it, Foster," he announced when they'd retreated to the hotel bar after his little ambush. There was a pleading sound in his voice that he didn't like, but the words were out, and he couldn't take them back. "A journal article, at least."

She sat straight back in her chair with her head down, staring at the two fingers of whiskey he'd bought her like they might hold all the secrets to the universe. When they'd left the stage, she'd glared at him somethin' fierce and demanded he buy her a drink but hadn't laid into him further. In fact, she hadn't said much of anything. "On what exactly?" she finally asked after appearing to ponder his statement for several long seconds.

"Our research. Yours and mine. Let's get 'em together, marry 'em once and for all."

"I already had a wedding. Not sure I need another."

She was a mighty good deflector. Maybe a bit of honesty could sway her. He leaned over the table closer to her and let his voice drop to a more intimate register. "And I bet it was a lovely spring do, too, and you wore the wedding gown you'd dreamed of since you were a little girl – not the one that best hid the baby bump becoming increasingly pronounced every fuckin' day."

He'd finally shocked her enough to have her look up from her drink and into his face. He noted a hint of pain crossing her features for the briefest moment (filing it away for future analysis), but just as quickly her mouth broke out into a scandalized smile. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

"Zoe was about two months along when we tied the knot. After a one-month engagement, give or take a few days."

Gillian laughed. "A shotgun wedding, then? Is that what it takes to get Cal Lightman to the altar?"

"Likely would've ended up there anyway. Em just rushed things along a bit."

Her smile turned soft once again when she picked up on the tenderness in his voice – the love for his family. "And how can our second wedding compare to our first ones? Mine a lavish affair at a beautiful Connecticut estate and yours a union to celebrate your baby girl?"

A union to celebrate your baby girl. The characterization took him off guard. That was exactly what it was, but few saw it that way, even those he'd begged understanding from at the time – Zoe's mother at the top of the list. But Foster understood. It had been like that at the Pentagon earlier that year too. She had some innate ability to see the good hiding beneath his most ignoble actions, the good that he generally tried to conceal. There was something disconcerting about being seen through like that. But there was something about it he liked as well.

He was also surprised to find her picking the wedding metaphor back up, assuming it flirted with danger – flirted with flirting – too closely for her delicate sensibilities. But, just maybe, Foster liked a bit of danger on the side. He could work with that, would relish it in fact.

"Ah, I'm so glad you asked, love. See, this wedding wouldn't be a union between lovers – this isn't Utah, after all – but between two great minds."

She was pleased by that analogy, she was. "So, you're proposing an intellectual marriage."

He tilted his own glass to her in acknowledgement. "See, I knew you'd get it. It's that big brain o'yours."

"In that case, I suppose 'I do.'"

"A toast, then, to seal the deal."

Gillian gamely raised her glass to his. "To the happy couple, the face scientist and the vocal expert."

He completed the toast and grinned at her. "Aye aye."

As they continued to chat over glasses of wine, Cal became increasingly pleased with himself. Once again, it seemed he'd managed to do it, to forge a new and unexpected path. Typically, he found those avenues in dark places, in dimly lit alleyways and underground poker games. But he supposed he was due for the very opposite, for the kind of life saver who smiled at every baby she passed, who'd never even gotten a bloody parking ticket.

He'd forgotten that sometimes, when seeing the world for what it really was, all cracks and shadows and dishonesty, the good could reveal itself as well. Like plant life starting to grow again at the site of an atomic bomb, like displaced animals returning to newly restored forests.

It was a balance, he figured, the good and the bad. Now all he had to do was try like hell to keep the scales tipped in his favor.