Apparently, my threats worked, and Cora's gonna work on some stuff. Yay! I'm now finished French for the rest of my life, unless I want to speak it somewhere else. English is tomorrow morning, and then I'm free for the rest of the week! An update from Cora would make everything just that much more awesome that it already is!

Disclaimer, etc. are in chapter one, are they not?

Later that afternoon, Charlie found himself babysitting. It wasn't technically babysitting, since he wasn't getting paid and he wasn't alone with the kid, but it felt like it nonetheless. Don was at the office, and Terry was upstairs in the guest room taking a nap to recover from a lack of sleep the night before. The two agents had gone with Jacquie, as they had come to call her, to pick up homework for that school week, and then had separated to do their own things, leaving Charlie alone to watch over the girl.

Charlie grabbed a box of cookies out of the pantry and a small individual sized bottle of milk out of the fridge before rejoining the girl in his living room. She was sitting at the table, working away at something he didn't dare try and sneak a look at while he sat on his butt watching TV as he flipped aimlessly through channels.

A rather comfortable silence―only interrupted by the television and Jacquie's scribblings―filled the house, creating a pleasant atmosphere. It was unfortunately interrupted by the ringing of Charlie's phone. He answered it, shooting an apologetic glance at the young girl. "Eppes residence."

"Hey, it's me," Don said. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah, everything's fine Don," Charlie said, noting the way Jacquie seemed to perk up a tad when he mentioned his brother's name.

"I'm almost done here, so I'll be home soon. Want me to pick up something?" Don asked.

"Order the entire menu at a Chinese place, and I'll reimburse you for half later," Charlie said.

"I'll get some dessert type thing too, since I owe Terry for everything she did today," Don said. "I'll explain it all later."

"You better," Charlie warned.

Don's response was to laugh and hang up his phone.

Charlie clicked the phone off and set it down on the couch beside himself. "You like Chinese food?" Charlie asked the girl, turning around so he could see her response. Once she had nodded, he turned back around to the TV. "Okay, good."

A comfortable silence filled the room for a few moments as Charlie became absorbed in an old episode of Cheers. His rather comatose-like state was interrupted when Jacquie sat down on the other end of the couch, looking at him curiously before turning her attention to the television set. Charlie, however, kept his gaze on the thirteen-year-old. He could easily see the similarities between the girl and Don, and it was incredible how alike they looked for two unrelated people. She had the same straight brown hair, same dark brown eyes, same serious expression.

"Charlie?" Terry's voice startled him out of his reverie. He looked up and found her brown eyes looking oddly at him from where she stood behind the couch. "Can I talk to you in the kitchen?"

Charlie followed his brother's partner into the kitchen and sat down across from her at the island. "Something you want to talk about?" he asked.

Terry got up and took two bottles of water out of the fridge. "It's about Jacqueline," she began, handing Charlie his water before reclaiming her spot.

"What about her?"

"She's not your typical thirteen-year-old," Terry continued. "You and she are quite alike, actually."

"Oh?" Charlie perked up, suddenly extremely interested. "How so?"

"She's in twelfth grade," Terry said shortly. "After meeting with the school's principal today, we deduced that she's not a math whiz, but an English one instead."

"English prodigy?" Charlie looked slightly skeptical.

"Well, she's fairly advanced in most subjects, but she seems to know absolutely everything there is to know about the English language," Terry explained, twisting the cap off of her water bottle. "She's surpassed everyone, including the teacher. Apparently, our little Jacquie read War and Peace in two days, and then proceeded to write a two thousand word essay on it. Universities are already grappling over who gets her at the end of the year. And now..."

"Now her mother is dead," Charlie finished. "What do you want me to do, Terry? What do you think I can accomplish?"

"Don and I just want you to talk to her, see if you can get through to her," Terry said. "She's said minimal stuff to us, but we think that she might connect with you better."

"What do you want me to talk to her about?" Charlie asked. "Should I just walk in and say 'Hi, you're a mini-me!'? I don't think she'd take that well, in her current state of mind."

"Just go back out there and sit with her," Terry advised. "I'm going to get started on dinner. It's the least I can do since you and Mr. Eppes are letting me stay here."

"Sure, Terry," Charlie got up and headed back to the living room, grabbing another unopened bottle of water as he left the kitchen.

Jacqueline was still sitting on the couch watching Cheers when Charlie re-entered the living room, and he sat down on the couch beside her. "Water?" he offered the bottle to her.

"Thanks," Jacquie said quietly as she shook the bottle and uncapped it.

Charlie watched her carefully, trying to note any similarities to himself in her. "So, uh, Jacqueline...how are you liking school?" he asked, trying to start a conversation.

"It's not my favorite place," she said. "I'm younger than everybody else."

"So was I," Charlie said, taking a sip from his water. "I graduated high school at the same time as Don."

"You did?"

"Mhm. I started high school when I was nine and Don was fourteen. That put a serious strain on our relationship as brothers."

"What do you excel at?" Jacquie asked.

"Math," Charlie said. "I'm horrible at English and most other things, but math is my escape."

Jacquie looked down at the bottle of water in her hands for a moment, and then shyly glanced back up at Charlie. "Do you...do you think you could help me with my math homework?"

Charlie beamed at the young girl. "Of course! Show me what the problem is, and I'll see if I can deal with it."

From where she hid behind the kitchen door, Terry sighed happily as she watched Jacquie lead Charlie to where her homework sat at the table. She closed the door fully and turned back to the lump of pizza dough that was half-kneaded on the counter. Don had been completely right when he'd said that Charlie could get through to her. Now if they could find out what happened to Jacquie's mom and set everything straight...