Disclaimer: don't own, don't sue. Thank you.

A/N: THANK YOU all you reviewers! Keep it up I love hearing from you guys. Feel free to leave suggestions too. Ceil and Tiff…I UPDATED!

Joan didn't really know why she had gotten on the train. She didn't know why she had called Luke either.

She was confused, she had been since graduation. She been preparing for college graduation her entire life, and as much as she loved finally achieving a goal, she couldn't help but feel like she'd thrown herself into a world of independence and roommates and dorms that she'd never be able to stay in. She had adjusted and made friends, but now she had been catapulted out of that world and had landed in a completely different place, one she had been in before. Arcadia. Although she could never remember too many things from her high school years in college, now she could almost hear farmiliar voices telling the story of her memories as she flailed further and further into her past.

"I'm not going to loose you, for any reason. Do you understand?" Her father had told her as she shook, terrified and soaking wet, on the night she'd nearly been abducted.

She flinched. It hurt to much to remember her father's voice. She tried to stop thinking and just stared out the train window instead, waiting to see the red and green lights of the New Jersey Penn station that would confirm her arrival.

But her mind had never really listened to the rest of her anyway.

"What's changed since then? Huh? Joan, what's changed?" Kevin asked her, back when he was still stuck in the pit of anger and self pity he'd been pushed into by the accident.

That stupid piano song on her teacher's record that Joan had listened to with Adam in tenth grade played off in her head. How she remembered every note, she didn't know.

"Look around you. I talk to angels." Adam had told her the first time she visited his shed.

"There are no easy answers in here." Grace had said at her Bat Mitzvah as Joan sat in the crowd of people watching her, suddenly understanding too many things at once.

Joan closed her eyes as tears rolled down her cheeks.

"The thing about Joan is... no matter how many idiot projects she does or how much she drives you crazy, she actually sticks around." Judith had said on the tape that Adam had let Joan watch a month after Judith died.

"You know, I've structured my whole life to be risk-free, never allowing for a situation where I might fail." Luke told her as he opened his eyes to his own lifestyle.

"You just have to understand. Whatever it is... if we don't go through it together... I don't want to lose you." Her mother had said through resistant cries, desperate to understand.

But then she thought of the variable in her life that had tainted everything with unwelcome maturity. She thought of all the stupid things it had made her do and the way she was glad she did most of them. She thought of her first summer in Arcadia when it'd given her her first real test of faith.

"Learn to see in the dark."

She didn't move as the train jostled under her, the lights shining through her window and onto her face red, then green, then red again.

The exact moment that Grace hit the wall and sunk to the ground of her New York City apartment, Adam stuck a "OPEN ON SUNDAYS IN NEW JERSEY! COME TO K-MART!" sticker onto the stores main entrance, shoved his hands in his red polyester work vest and wondered what the hell he was doing.

He pulled the door open and walked back inside. He adjusted his head set, the way he'd been taught, and greeted a pimply faced teenager at the register across from his. He stood behind the register and paused, thinking, hoping to find an answer speeding through his mind.

Grace didn't move from her spot on the floor, even after the door slammed and she was left alone. She wasn't thinking about anything really. She'd gone numb after the last year, but not numb enough. She closed her eyes and wished to wake up from the nightmare she knew she was in.

Joan glanced at the paper in her hand, reading the messy handwriting scribbled on it, before she pulled the heavy glass door open and walked in.

Her eyes froze on a man standing at a register, dark hair, exactly the same as she remembered him.

"Adam?" She asked, disbelieving, after a quick look around.

Adam's head snapped up from the register and he suddenly felt lightheaded. "Jane?"

"Adam!" She ran towards him, smiling and wrapped her arms around his neck. He returned her embrace gratefully, laughing.

"What are you doing here?" He asked after pulling away, still smiling, still completely in shock.

He looked her over as she spoke. Her hair was different, it was a little shorter and cut in angles and layers that framed her face.

"Oh, well, after graduation I went home to finally see everyone again and when I stopped by your house your dad said you had moved here and told me where you worked and everything."

Adam looked down, slightly shameful. "Yeah…Well, here's…where I work."

Joan frowned. "What happened to art?"

"Oh, I'm still doing that stuff." He told her quickly, looking back up to glance at her. "I sold some stuff but not a lot, really. Not enough to really make enough money."

"Oh."

"Yeah." Adam paused. "Are you moving here?"

Joan thought for a second. "You know, I don't know. I have to move somewhere, but I was thinking New York City." Her eyes lit up. "What do you think?"

Adam's expression changed to grave. "Grace lives in New York."

"I know."

"You know?"

"Yeah", She told him absently "I wanna get in touch with her, I haven't seen her in…Oh, man, I don't even know…"

"Five years."

Joan stopped at the seriousness in Adam's voice. She cleared her throat and said quietly, "Yeah. Yeah, I know."

Adam and Joan both wondered if silence could actually ring.

"You went back to your parents house?"

Joan stared at him, her brown eyes intense enough to burn a hole in something. Adam frowned. She looked sad.

"Yeah." She said, nodding slowly. Then she looked down at her hands resting on the end on the counter, furrowing her eyebrows for a millisecond before erasing all expression from her face. "Only for a couple days, and then, um, I came here."

"Jane, it's great seeing you and everything but…why are you here?"

She inhaled deeply, appearing to be picking her next words carefully.

"I called Luke and, well, he was pissed", she said with a halfhearted laugh "And, I guess…some of the things he said made me think. I miss you guys. I wanted to see you."

Adam scanned a few items for an old looking man, who was fumbling with his wallet for his credit card. Adam didn't look up as he spoke.

"So, you're going to see Grace next?"

"Yeah." She paused for what seemed like forever. "Would you come with me?"

Adam looked up at her suddenly, unsure of what she had just asked.

"I…sorry-what?"

"Come with me? To New York?" She repeated.

Adam took the old mans credit card and swiped it through the computer.

"Jane…I don't…I can't just leave."

"Why not?" She nearly whined. Adam handed the card back and began bagging the items.

"I don't have a lot of money."

"Neither do I." She laughed.

"I don't have anywhere to stay in New York."

"We'll go to Grace's, she'll help us out."

"I have a job." he reasoned.

"Adam." She said seriously, causing him to freeze and look up at her. She then added bluntly, "You work at K-Mart."

He gave her a look of annoyance before handing the old man his plastic bag and purchased items.

"Look, Jane, you go, okay? Have fun, tell me how Grace is, and maybe I'll come up another time."

Joan's face fell. "Okay. I'll…" She looked around aimlessly before heading for the door. "…See you around then."

And just like that, Joan Girardi had made up for all of the missing five years.