"It's that detective Emily's mentioned the other week, isn't it? Good luck with that one, when you tell our daughter", Zoë looked at him knowingly. Emily had made no secret of her distaste for the crooked cop. Zoë sympathized with their daughter. You just didn't go out on a date with a crooked cop who broke into your house.

Cal shook his head and opened his mouth, carefully pondering his response.

"Never mind, you tell me when you're ready. I'm just glad, it isn't Gillian." Zoë sighed as she hugged Cal. His body stiffened ever so slightly and she froze. It was almost imperceptible. He couldn't control it. She couldn't control herself and slapped him hard across the face. He gave her a startled look but clearly was at a loss for words in this situation. He didn't have to ask what she'd done that for.

"You're a fucking bastard, Cal Lightman. Get out of my house." Zoë hissed and turned her back on him. Why did he have to do this to her? What kind of sick and perverted form of pleasure did he get out of hurting her like that? And here she'd thought he'd finally grown up.

"Zoë", Cal tried even though he knew it was futile to reason with her when it came to Gillian Foster. But he had to try. His feelings for Gillian were not going to go away and, more importantly, he was no longer willing to ignore them. He couldn't flee from this fight because his relationship with Gillian was very real and not going anywhere and they'd be having this argument for the rest of their lives.

"Leave me alone, Cal. Get out of my sight." She brushed him off when he came up behind her and touched her shoulder. "What the fuck is wrong with you, Cal?" She turned around sharply, eyes blazing, "Is it all a joke to you? Do you just enjoy seeing me suffer? I thought you were done getting back at me for leaving you."

"Trust me, this is not a joke. It's not retaliation for your divorce, either. It just…happened." He tried to explain but could tell from the look on his ex-wife's face that he wasn't really reaching her. She was working herself up into one of her rages and suddenly Cal became aware that they were still in the kitchen. That was a very bad place to have this conversation – strategically. It wouldn't be the first time she'd be throwing dishes at him in her temper. "Look, I'm sorry you're hurting. That's exactly the reason why I didn't want to tell you whom I was seeing. It's not like I want to hurt you."

"Well, you should've thought about that before you brought her into our lives", Zoë spat the personal pronoun with so much contempt and disgust, Cal was inclined to take a step back instinctively. She was doing a piss poor job of hiding her true feelings. Maybe she didn't even care anymore. He'd left her. She had nothing to lose anymore. She no longer had to keep up appearances and pretend to like her because she was his friend.

"Well technically I didn't bring her into our lives. The psych eval was an order from above…" Cal reminded her.

"Don't start with fucking semantics with me, Lightman. You brought her into our home. Foster's said this and Foster's done that. You didn't have to invite her to start your company with you. There are dozens other experts in the field. Why'd it have to be her?"

Cal groaned. They've been over this. They'd had this discussion ad nauseam in their marriage. "Because she gets it. When people were sneering at me and calling it pop science she really got it. She believed in me. And she's bloody brilliant with voice analysis."

Zoë turned her head sharply. There it was… that old accusation that she didn't really believe in him or his work. The argument wasn't even worth the effort anymore. Of course she believed in him but she wasn't blinded by his science. He wasn't infallible and neither was his science. She wasn't blinded by his tricks like Foster was. She knew the real Cal Lightman. The manipulator.

"And that was reason enough to choose her over me?" She looked at him in disbelief. She was his wife. The mother of his child. In the beginning she'd told herself it would pass. He'd been smitten with this Doctor Foster but he would grow tired of mentoring her like he'd done with all his other protégés. He only liked them as long as he could mold them, once they started to form their own opinions and went against him, he'd discard them and call them ingrates. Only it didn't happen. She'd waited and waited. But instead of growing tired of her, he'd talked that darn doctor into running off to start their own company. He'd begun to thrive on the challenges Gillian threw at him.

"I didn't choose her over you!" Cal defended himself, "You know how tired I'd gotten of that place. And you'd been in my ear for years to quit anyway. 'I hate it when you leave, Cal, I never know if I will get you back in one piece', 'Think of Emily, Cal, she can't grow up without a father'…", he reminded her, "It made sense to grab the opportunity with her. She was worth the risk."

"Risking our marriage? Your family?" Zoë challenged him.

"Why do you always have to mix the private with the professional? Foster was business, she'd had nothing to do with our marriage falling apart!"

Zoë gasped inaudibly. He really believed that. How could he still not see? It brought tears to her eyes. Had she really meant that little to him? He still could not understand how much Foster's presence in his life had threatened her position?

"What?" Cal looked at her confused. He had trouble reading her face and felt like he was losing ground. She was crying and that meant that he had hurt her in ways that made it impossible for her to keep her emotions in check. She hated crying in front of him. She hated being vulnerable to him. "I never cheated on you, Zoë. I've never slept with Gill, nor any other woman while we were married. And trust me there were chances on my missions abroad but I love you. "

"You didn't have to sleep with Gillian to cheat on me." She said barely above a whisper.

"I beg your pardon", Cal wasn't sure he'd understood her correctly. She'd spoken so quietly, maybe he'd missed the important parts that would lend some sense to her words.

"You heard me all right." She said louder and then silence fell over the room. He was waiting for her to explain, to elaborate, but she wasn't willing to do the work for him. If he still couldn't understand then what was the use of making him comprehend? Gillian had won. Cal had finally admitted his feelings for the other woman and left her for her. Her shoulders slumped in defeat.

Cal sighed, "You need to stop keeping score, love."

"Why not? She stole my husband after all!" Zoë shot back.

Cal shook his head, "You make it sound like she snatched me away from right under your nose. We're not married anymore, Zoë. You need to let go."

"She stole you, all right, look me in the eye and tell me you had no feelings for her when the two of you met!" She challenged him. "I mean really think about it. Did you or did you not fancy her when we were still married? And I want to the truth, Cal."

He opened his mouth to respond but quickly closed it again. The lie would have come so easily. It's always done in the past. Did he love Gillian from the moment he had met her? Looking back, he knew it was the case. Even if he hadn't been willing to acknowledge it until recently.

"Your silence is also an answer." Zoë pointed out, knowing very well he was keeping quiet on purpose and not really because he was still mulling things over.

"I didn't sleep with her, though. I'm not even sure I knew back then that I was falling for her." Cal defended himself. "I wasn't cheating on you. If I had feelings for her, I never acted on them… Until last night, nothing has happened between Foster and me."

"But I knew, Cal. I could feel you slipping away from me. Every day. More and more. And there was nothing I could do about it." Zoë explained. "That hurt more than if you'd just slept with her. You had feelings for her and I just couldn't compete with them."

"I'm sorry." Cal mumbled. He felt like shit.

"But I was stupid enough to take up the fight. I wasn't going to give up my husband so easily. So I fought and I fought", Zoë said as tears sprang back into her eyes, "and I lost and I lost. You were so smitten with her, Cal. It was like anything I said went in one ear and out the other. But everything Gillian said was brilliant and smart and worth remembering."

"Oh!" Cal sat down as realization hit him.

"You don't have to sleep with someone to cheat on your wife, Cal. I was your wife and I felt like the other woman. People saw the two of you working together and assumed you were married. Do you have any idea how denigrating that felt, when I waited for you at the office and one of your clients commented they'd be at each others throat if they'd have to be with their wives around the clock because they worked with them? I pretended I was another client, because it would have been too embarrassing to introduce myself as your wife."

Cal opened his mouth but didn't really know what to say. I'm sorry just didn't cut it anymore in this case.

"You hurt me, Cal. You couldn't have hurt me more, if you had had an affair with Gillian during our marriage. That may have been easier to handle, if it just had been sex or sexual attraction. We could've worked that out. But your betrayal went deeper. You loved her, Cal, you fucking loved her. I could see it in your eyes when you talked about her, the way you talked about her. If she hadn't been married you probably would've gone after her."

Cal opened his mouth in protest but Zoë shut him down quickly, "I don't care what you say. You loved her back then and the only thing that stopped you was Emily. At least that's something. So excuse me if I don't celebrate the occasion that she finally got what she always wanted. Forgive me for not breaking out into joyous rapture when you tell me – on fuckin' Christmas no less – that you're screwing the woman you've been secretly pining for over the past ten years."

"God, Zoë, I have no idea what to say. I didn't know", Cal struggled to form a coherent sentence.

"No. You didn't. How could you? You were always more concerned with Gillian's feelings to notice mine."

"Hey now, that's not fair. I care about you feelings", Cal objected, "And I cared back when we were married, you just made it so damn hard for me. You wouldn't let me take care of you. You never wanted to be weak in front of me. Always the strong one. And when I pointed out your doubts and how you really felt you accused me of reading you and invading your privacy. I couldn't really do anything right."

"Well, of course, I didn't want you to see me like that!" Zoë shouted, "What chances did I have against Gillian if you saw me as weak and dependent on you? You'd begun to substitute me with Gillian! I wanted to show you I could succeed without you. If you didn't need me anymore, I sure as hell didn't want to need you anymore either."

"It wasn't like you needed me before!" Cal complained, "You were like that even before I met Gillian. You've never really opened up to me."

"Oh, like you have?" Zoë retorted indignantly. "Pot meet kettle."

"Well, maybe I would have, if I'd felt my wife actually gave a shit!" He countered.

"Oh no, you don't get to put that one on me." Zoë put her hands on her hips. "You're emotionally withdrawn, Cal, and you know it. Maybe it's because of what happened to you with your mother, it's understandable you have trust issues after that, but don't make this out about me. It's all you!"

"Oh that's a low blow, bringing my mother into this!" Cal roared angrily. "You leave her out of this fight as she's got nothing to do with us."

"Has she, Cal? Communication is a two-way street. You can't expect people to give without a little something in return. Why should I open up to you, if you kept everything locked inside?"

"It's not the same!" Cal defended himself, "The things I saw…I didn't want to talk about my day, can't you understand that? And if I wanted to talk about you, I was prying for information. If I wanted to talk about us, I was reading you. No matter what I tried, I always did the wrong thing." The frustrations oozed out of Cal. "Maybe, just maybe, if you'd actually talked to me, I wouldn't have had to revert to reading your eyebrows." Cal sneered referring to one of Zoë's standard lines.

"Really, Cal?" She shook her head, "That's rich, coming from you. You're the one always struggling to verbalize your thoughts."

"Maybe, but I don't need to express myself in order to listen." Cal shrugged his shoulders. "I wanted to listen to you but you never gave me a chance. You just assumed I was out of reach. You didn't even try. It felt like a game. You waiting while I decoded what was bothering you based on your micro-expressions. I felt like in the fuckin' cube half the time!"

They looked at each other as silence fell over the room. They'd reached a stalemate and they both knew if they kept this conversation going they'd only start airing out their old dirty laundry. So much for a happy holiday.

Cal sighed, "I'll go get Em."

Zoë nodded, blinking back more tears. "Thank you." Every minute in his presence felt like torture. She couldn't wait until he'd left her house and she could break down for real. This was it. She'd really lost him this time. There'd be no more flirting, no more get back togethers, no more secret trysts, no more fake holidays. He'd moved on and she knew he'd want to make a life for him and Gillian as a family of their own. She no longer fit into his plans anymore.

Cal turned around with his hand on the door handle looking at his ex-wife a final time. "You've got to know that this was never about hurting your feelings, Zoë. I'm sorry but I can't help my feelings."

"Don't, just don't, Cal." She shook her head, wiping the tears from her cheeks. She didn't want to hear it. How he was sorry. How Gillian made him happy. How his feelings for her were too strong to deny them any longer. What about her feelings?

"No, I have to, love. Don't you think it would've been easier to ignore my feelings for Gillian than hurting you, risking my friendship and business? But I can't do that anymore and I know it's a lot to ask for but my feelings for Gillian won't go away so the sooner you can come to terms with that, the better it will be for you."

She just nodded quietly. Glum. Not yet ready for that step. "Just go, Cal, please." She implored him. She didn't know how much longer she could put up her strong façade.

"Ok. I'll drop Emily off Saturday before school starts."

She nodded again.

"I've thought about taking her skiing over the break, just so you know."

She rolled her eyes, "I won't be calling the cops for taking our daughter out of state without my consent. That would be a petty thing to do. We do share custody you know."

He cocked his eyebrows and pressed his lips together, "Just saying. Don't want you to worry."

"Things have changed, Cal. People have cell phones, I know how to reach you guys even if you're in Vermont."

"OK. Do you…" He nodded at her and then indicated the direction of the living room with his chin.

"Would you mind?"

"Nah, take your time. I'll have her call you later in the evening, ok?"

"Thanks."

"Bye, love."

With that Cal slipped through the door in search of his daughter. He found her sitting on the couch between her grandparents, looking at some of her grandma's photographs. The gym bag between her feet told him she'd overheard their fight and figured it would end with Cal storming out in a huff, dragging Emily after him. Wouldn't be the first time. Wouldn't be the last time, either. His ex-wife just had a way of getting under his skin, when she wanted to. For all the times she'd accused him of being a manipulator; he could list another occasion where she'd played him like a drum herself. Cal smiled apologetically at his parents-in-law and asked Emily whether she was ok. She looked at him strangely but didn't say a word. Emily hugged her grandparents and wished them a merry Christmas again and a safe journey back to Chicago. Cal followed suit and picked up the gym bag. Emily rose from the couch and walked past him without saying a word. Cal sighed. This was going to be a long drive home.