2005
Days passed, and late one night, Charlie went up to his mother's wedding picture.

"Why did you lie?" Charlie demanded with tears in his eyes. "How could you have done this?"

After some pacing, he continued.

"What was he like?" Charlie asked her, referring to his biological father. "Where did you meet him? What were his hobbies? Did he like math? Why and where did you decide that he was worth risking your marriage?"

Meanwhile, Don, at his apartment, could not help but wonder if one of his father's friends was Charlie's biological father. The agent remembered Alan getting on the outs with a couple of his friends over the years.

"One of them could be Charlie's biological father" he mused. A few minutes later, Don got called and had to go to work.

At midnight the next day, Charlie knocked on Don's door.

"Charlie?" Don was suprised to see that his brother finally left the house.

The mathematician said., "I want you to help me find my biological father"

1998

David followed her to the car.

"Margaret! Come on! He's got a right to know!" he said with frustration. "What if he founds out through someone else?"

"That'll never happen!" she told him in denial and got into the car. Upset, she drove aimlessly. When Charlie came home, he was surprised to find an empty house.

2005

Charlie's facing the issue surprised Don "What?"

"You're an F.B.I agent" Charlie reminded him.

"Yeah but..."

"You probably have some suspects in mind." the mathematician gave his brother an expectant look.

"Well..."

"Tell me!" Charlie glared at Don.

"Remember Hank and Brian?" Don began reluctantly. He knew that if their positions had been reversed, he'd want answers as well.

"Kinda why?"

"We used to hang out with their kids, but then we lost contact because they fought with dad or something."

"Wasnt' Brian an engineer?" Charlie asked.

"I think so" Don remembered then asked. "Didn't he have curly hair?"

Both brothers looked at each other with wide eyes.

1998

Again, Margaret looked for that drawing in vain. Again, it had plagued her nightmares, but this time Alan had been the one that Charlie had asked. Later on in the dream, she overheard Don accusing Alan of having had an affair when he was young.

"Why else would you have hidden it?" Don had demanded of his father in her dream.

"Where is that damn drawing?" she muttered to herself.

2005

"Was he good at drawing?" Charlie asked.

"I dont' remember." Don told him after thinking for a moment.

"We need to find him!" Charlie said. The man seemed like the best lead they had.

" We gotta to think this through, buddy" Don tried to calm him. "We can't just find this guy,go to his house, and then ask him to take a DNA test without at least some more evidence."

"We need to go through the albums in the attic" Charlie said after some thinking. "Let's go!"

"It would be a start" Don shrugged with a sigh. The F.B.I agent in him wanted to ask his father.

After some more nagging from Charlie, Don agreed to go to the house with him, and look through the attic. It was as dusty as he remembered it.

"You take care of the ones in those boxes, and I'll do these" the mathematician ordered with a frantic energy.

After two hours, they had no clues. Frustrated, Charlie threw an album across the room, causing a loud bang.

"You're gonna wake dad!" Don admonished him.

1998

Don came, as a surprise , to Los Angeles for his mother's birthday.

"Donnie!" she gave him a very affectionate hug. Margaret could not help but notice the dark circles around Don's eyes, as well as the signs of weight loss.

"This is for you mom!" Don gave her a gift wrapped box.

"Don! You shouldn't have! Coming to L.A was present enough!" She protested.

2005

Don put a hand on his brother's shoulder, as he had an idea.

"We need to find some sort of old address book." the agent advised gently.

"I already looked through dad's room." Charlie told him. "I didn't see any old address books"

"How about in the basement and garage?" Don wasn't surprised that Charlie would go through his father's things.

"I went through them with a fine tooth comb, a while after I found the drawing" Charlie sighed. Part of him wished that he had never found it.

"What if..." Don began,but didn't know if he wanted to finish.

"What?" Charlie gave him a wide eyed look.

"Nothing."

"Tell me!"

"You biological father could have been married to one of mom's friends" Don suggested gently. He wanted to keep his promise to help Charlie. The agent figured that that would be a very likly way for his mother, a married woman with children, to have met Charlie's biological father.

"I don't remember mom falling out with any of her friends." the mathematician with a puzzled look

"Just because dad found out, doesn't mean that the friend did." Don said. He didn't remember his mother getting into fights with any of her friends either.

"But Dad would have made sure we didn't hang out with that friend and her husband" Charlie commented after some thought.

"We don't know for sure when dad found out" Don told him.

"Dad mentioned thathe and mom had a rough patch when I went to Princeton with her. Could he have found out then?"

"Well..." Don shook his head. "I sometimes overhead dad fight with mom, when he thought I wasn't home,but no affair was mentioned."

"What about the fights you didn't overhear?" Charlie countered.

1998

As David spent Chirstmas day with his children , Margaret and Alan, while happy to be with Charlie, were sad that Don had yet to call, especially since the couple hadn't heard from him in weeks.While they had gotten used to not getting to spend the holidays with their eldest, the couple at least expected a call.

"Something could've happened to him for all we know!" Margaret exclaimed at one point. Charlie had gotten her CDs of some of her favorite Beatles albums, which she had previously had on tape or record. Alan's gift was a beautiful pair of black pearl earrings from Miki Moto. With Don missing, she felt uncomplete.

"Don knows how to take care of himself" Alan said in a soothing voice to comfort her, though he too could not help but worry.

Little did they know that Don, with his partner,was in an old car, staking out a diner in a small town in Idaho.

2005

"Dad said that he forgave mom a long time ago." Don recalled. "He must have found out when we were kids. Besides we can't be sure if he knows who mom had the affair with." The agent knew that with the scant amount of information they had, lots of possibilities had to be considered.

"Wouldn't he have asked her?" Charlie pointed out. "If my wife...had che-che...I would have" He couldn't get the word out.

"Maybe he decided after a while, for both their sakes, to drop the subject?" Don shrugged.

"Why did mom keep the drawing?" Charlie wondered.

"You know that the garage is a black hole!" Don told him. "Mom must've hidden it, but then it got moved around over the years, so it got lost."

"I remember Mom sometimes puttering in the garage" Charlie told his brother after some thinking.

"She was probaby afraid someone would find it accidentally" Don nodded.

"Is she had only told me the truth..." Charlie began bitterly, then his anger started to show. "I should have found out from her!"

1998

"I need to call my folks as soon as we catch this guy" Don commented to Coop.

It took another several days of stakeouts to finally capture the fugitive they were looking for.

Finally, Alan and Margaret got a call from Don.

"It's so good to hear your voice!" Margaret exclaimed. "Where were you?"

"the midwest" Don said vaguely.

"You should've called!" Alan said when Margaret passed the phone to him.

"Great to hear from you too dad"

"How's work?" Alan asked.

"Good"

"Charlie wants to talk to you." Alan gave Charlie the phone.

"How's it going buddy?"

"Great! you?"

"Good."

After some more small talk, Charlie gave the phone to Alan.

2005

Angerily,Charlie threw another album against the wall. Don sighed.

"Your biological father drew the picture for mom when they first met!" the agent said when he let his thoughts percolate for a bit.

"What makes you say that?"

"He must have noticed mom sitting there and thought that she'd like a drawing of me."

"It's that same scenario you told me but with mom!"

"Yeah!" Don said. "What mother doesn't want adrawing of her kid?"

"Good point!"

"And, he didn't have a regular nine to five job!" Don added after some thinking.

"How can you be sure?"

" Mom mentioned that I was in the morning class at kindergarten; that would leave her the early afternoon to take me to the park."

"They could have met on a Saturday"

"Mom always prefered to go to the park on weekdays." Don remembered. "To avoid the crowds"

1999

In Seattle, Terry Lake, with her partner, Thomas, was on a stakeout at an area, near where David attended the art exhibit of a friend of his.

"I got the wedding invitation" Tom told her. "I had to put on my shades to read the thing!"

"The color was Brian's idea" she rolled her eyes. The color her fiancee had chosen had been a bit too bright for her tastes.

2005

"Maybe he had his own business?" Don wondered

"Didn't Fran's husband own a bookstore?" Charlie asked. Fran had been a good friend of the boys' mother.

"The bookstore is like five minutes from the house" Don added. "And he still has it."

"Let's talk to him!" Charlie demanded. "We can go there when it opens, and you can ask him some questions

"Whoa! Let's think this through, buddy." Don put on his soothing-big-brother voice. "You want me to justgo up to a guy I hardly know and ask him if he had an affair with mom during the mid-seventies?"

"Isn't that what you're trained to do?" Charlie retorted with an annoyed scrowl. "Ask hard questions?"

"But not involving my own mother!"

1999

Brian, an arts reporter for a major Seatle newspaper, was at said exhibit. After doing his work, he managed to get a few minutes with David.

"So, when can we expect another David Lev exhibit?" he asked the artist at one point.

"A year or so" David said vaguely.

The show was an astounding sucess, and afterwards, David went to celebrate with his friend.

During some of the stakeout, Terry, for some reason,mused about what Don was up to. She had heard that he was in fugitive recovery. A part of her worried because she knew what it could do to people; Chasing fugitives couldbecome a way to escape oneself.

Brian was asleep by the time Terry returned to their apartment and got into bed.

Around two in the morning, back in Los Angeles,Margaret urged "Charlie, it's late and you need to be up early tomorrow!"

"I'll go to bed in a few minutes, mom" the mathematician told her, as he intensly scribbled in the dining room table.

"You told me that at midnight!" she scolded him, and turned off the light in the dining room.

"Mom!" he protested.

TBC