A week later, Goren and Riley had just settled down in the squad room to eat lunch when Goren's desk phone rang. Groaning through the one bite of his lunch he'd managed to take before this disruption, he reluctantly lowered his sandwich away from his mouth and put it down, then reached for the phone.

"Yeah, Goren," he mumbled into the phone, tucking it between his ear and his shoulder and picking up his sandwich again.

"Did you put her up to this?" a female voice barked.

He knew that voice, he realized after taking a few seconds to mentally strip away the fury it held. It was . . .

He dropped the sandwich, then scrambled to pick it up again before it fell apart all over his blotter. "Uh . . . Alex? Is that you?"

"You know damn well it's me, and don't you dare try to not answer my question!"

The sandwich was deposited firmly in the corner of his desk as he focused his attention on the phone and the raised voice coming through it. "I don't . . . what question? What are you talking about?"

"Oh, that's rich," Alex sneered. "Of course you don't know; I'm sure your mother just took it upon herself to try to make me feel sorry for you. Maybe she's just that bored in the hospital, huh?"

"My mother?" he echoed, surprise making his voice louder than normal. "What does my mother have to do with anything?"

Across from him, Riley's head had jerked up a few seconds ago at the mention of Alex, and now his look of interest sharpened at the mention of Bobby's mother. Bobby gave him a death glare and threw a handy pen at his partner's head.

"That's what I'm asking you!" Alex snapped. "Why am I getting mail from your mother where she talks about you? First your partner, and now your mother? Jesus, Bobby, if you have something to say, you can say it yourself or not at all."

"Wait, wait, wait," he said, making a 'stop' gesture with his hand, as if she could see it. "First of all, I didn't ask Riley to say anything to you. He did that on his own, and I nearly killed him when he told me about it. Second of all, what would my mother possibly be sending you? Are you sure it's not mail from you to her that got bounced back for insufficient postage or something?"

Alex snorted. "Somehow, I doubt that anything that starts, 'My Dear Alex,' is something I wrote. It's from your mom, Bobby. So now why don't you tell me why she's sending me anything at all, let alone this . . . note thing."

"'Note thing'? Back up for a second," he said, trying not to let her hear the panic he was feeling. "What, exactly, did she send you?"

"Oh, because I'm sure you don't already know," she scoffed.

"Alex, please. Just . . . just humor me, ok?"

"Fine." She sighed. "If you want to pretend you don't know what I'm talking about, go right ahead. She sent me a letter. Would you like me to read it so you can pretend you haven't heard about it before, either?"

"I . . ."

"My Dear Alex," she went on, reading in a mockingly sweet voice, without giving him time to finish his response. "I know we've met before, but only briefly, so I apologize for this sudden communication. I wouldn't have been so forward in most circumstances, but I feel that something needs to be done about the situation you and my son are in. Bobby refuses to admit it, but I can tell that he's very unhappy, and I suspect that that's because he no longer has you in his life. He seems to believe that you hate him, and I hope he's wrong, because no matter what you feel for him, he still loves -"

"Stop." The sharpness of his command startled even him, but he just couldn't stand the humiliation anymore. "Stop reading, please. I didn't tell her to send you that, Alex. I swear."

There was a long second of silence before she asked quietly, "You didn't?"

"No." Riley was still watching him, but for once, Bobby didn't care. He had bigger concerns at the moment. "I told her that we . . . uh, what happened between me and you . . . I told her it wasn't her business."

"Well," Alex said tartly, "it looks like you didn't do a very good job convincing her of that, huh?"

Bobby sighed. "I guess not. I'm sorry, Eames. I'll, uh . . . I'll talk to her. It won't happen again."

"Hmm." There was thoughtful silence for a moment on her end of the line. "She's wrong, you know."

"Wrong? About what?"

"Or you're wrong, I guess. It depends where she got the idea."

Bobby slumped over his desk and propped his head up with one hand. "What 'idea'? I'm not following."

Alex muttered something to herself, then sighed and said in a normal voice, "I don't hate you. So whichever of you came up with that idea . . . you were wrong."

Well, that hadn't been something he expected to hear out of her mouth. All he could manage in response was a hesitant, "Oh."

"Your mom's letter says that that's what you think, Bobby," she said softly. "Is she right?"

"I . . . don't really know what to think. It's been, uh . . . a long time."

"A long time," she echoed almost wistfully. "Yeah, it has."

She hadn't hung up on him yet. That was a vast improvement from the last time they'd spoken. Deciding to take a chance, Bobby cleared his throat nervously and said, "So, uh . . . uh, how have you been, Alex?"

"Mmm." He could hear her chair squeak as she leaned back in it and adjusted her weight before replying, "I'm getting by. Webster still thinks I'm too skinny. Deakins bitches about the Chief of Ds. Work's not too bad, in general."

Not only hadn't she hung up on him, but she had also actually answered his question - something she'd avoided last time. He wondered exactly what it was that his mother had written, to bring about such a change in her attitude. "What about things other than work? Your friends? A . . . uh, boyfriend?"

Alex drew in a breath and held it, amazed that he'd asked the forbidden question. "I . . . my friends are good. Janet's pregnant again and still craving the weirdest foods you can think of," she said when she had regained control of herself. "No big changes." She hesitated, then added quickly, "No boyfriend."

"Oh. That's . . . nice. About Janet, I mean." He started to clear his throat again, but broke it off to bat away a paper clip that Riley had just chucked at him. "Stop it," he growled at his partner.

"Stop what?" Alex asked, sounding confused. "I didn't say anything."

"Not you." He glared hard at Riley. "My partner. He has . . . self-control issues."

"You mean the partner that thought it was a good idea to call and lecture me? That partner?"

He made a mental note to rescind the pardon he'd given Riley. "Yes, that one."

"Let me talk to him."

"I beg your pardon?" he asked, unable to believe she'd said what he thought he'd heard.

"Give him the phone, Bobby. It's not that difficult."

With a shrug, both mental and physical, he acquiesced and held the phone out to his partner. No skin off his back if she wanted to chew out Riley. "She wants to talk to you."

Riley blinked. "Me?"

"You." He shoved the phone toward him again, then sat back to listen as Riley took it.

"Hello?" Riley paused to listen. "Um, yeah," he said slowly a second later. "I guess so. But I - oh." He stopped again, eyes widening slightly. "He's . . ." A longer pause this time, and a smirk appeared on his face. "Hell no. I told you about my sister, remember? He's not even close." He glanced up at Bobby, still looking smug, and said into the phone "Does that mean you're -" He stopped, swallowing. "Ok, ok. Sorry I asked." He listened again for a few seconds, then smiled. "Ok. You should call him more often, you know that?"

Her voice could be heard all the way across to Bobby's desk when she responded to that, and Riley winced and pulled the phone away from his ear, holding it out to Bobby. "Here, take it. She's all yours."

Bobby accepted the phone. "What did you say to him?"

"Not much," she said airily. "I asked him if he was happy now that I called you. Look, Bobby, I have to go. We've got a witness to talk to, and I think Webster's going to take off without me if I don't get moving. I, uh . . . you take care of yourself, ok? And say hi to your mom for me."

Once again, she'd disconnected the call before he even had a chance to say goodbye, he thought with a sigh as he put down the phone on his end. But he didn't think she'd done it because she was angry or uncomfortable this time. It had just sounded like a matter of expedience.

"What'd she have to say to you?" Riley asked, breaking into Bobby's thoughts.

"She . . ." He thought about what to tell his partner. "My mother wrote to her, and she thought I'd asked her to. She was a little annoyed."

Riley snickered. "I could hear her yelling at you from over here. I take it you got her calmed down?"

Bobby just shook his head in answer to that. "With her, I'm never sure. I think I convinced her I didn't have anything to do with it."

"Well, good," Riley said with a grin. "Give it a few more weeks, and you guys'll be thick as thieves again. You better invite me to the wedding."

Forcing himself not to react to that, Bobby shrugged. "It's been a long time for Alex and me, John. I'm not going to assume anything."

"Hey, that's fine." Riley returned his eyes to his computer screen, then seemed to think of something else. "Because you know," he tacked on, glancing back up at Bobby and smirking, "I can make more than enough assumptions for both of us."