Bright, almost blinding light. Slurred voices of people she couldn't recognize. Then nothing. Nothing, nothing, and nothing until the dreams came.

"Hey. Wait, what are you doing here?"

"Meg?" Veronica asked.

"I want to thank you for what you did. For my baby, for Duncan. But look, you shouldn't be here yet," Meg replied.

"What is this?" Veronica looked down around only to see... nothing.

"You have to go back." Meg pointed in the direction that Veronica had her back to. Veronica turned in that direction to see. When she turned back around, Meg was gone. She turned back around again to the direction Meg had pointed. Lilly was there.

"Hey Veronica!"

Veronica only stared at her, confused.

"What? You think I wouldn't visit you while you're here? You have seriously done well for yourself, girl! Now get back down there with your crazy self! And tell Logan I said hey!" She playfully slapped Veronica on the hide. Veronica smiled at her and walked away.

She heard an annoyingly insistent beeping and slowly blinked open her eyes. She immediately noticed the hospital bed that she lay in and felt nauseous. She was almost too tired to move. She felt a hand moving the hair away from her face. He must have noticed that she had woken up, because she felt his hand tremble.

"Ronnie?" She managed to slowly turn her head over to face him. His big beautiful eyes stared at her as if in amazement. His lips were slightly parted.

She realized that he was holding her hand. She had no clue what was going on, but she knew she didn't feel good. But Logan looked so worried she mustered a weak smile to assure him. Her dad walked in holding two cups of coffee and nearly dropped both of them when he saw that she was awake and hurried over to Veronica's very uncomfortable bed.

"Honey?" He bent down to see her as he sat down. He reached across her bed to hand Logan his coffee, but as Logan took it, the hot liquid spilled all over Veronica's arm.

Logan jumped up. "I'll go get something to clean that up." He exited the room in search of a cloth.

"How are you feeling?" Keith asked. He was still furious with her, but seeing his little girl in a hospital bed after he had found her on the bedroom floor, unconscious made it pretty hard for him to keep up the cold shoulder act with her. He just wanted his baby girl back.

"I know what happened."

"That's good, because the doctors around here sure aren't telling me if they do."

"About Larette. I know what happened."

At that point, he was surprised that she could get straight to business with all that had happened to her. "I don't think you should be worrying about that right now. You need to rest."

"Dad, is the baby okay?"

"Yes-"

She cut him off. "Did I wake up?"

"Yeah, but-"

And she cut in off yet again. "Then please do what I need you to do so that I can rest."

He huffed in and out a big breath. She knew she had him. "Okay, what do you know?"

"To begin with, Larette's was having an affair with another man before her husband died. I need you to find out why. I have a theory about the rest of it but I need to why she cheated to confirm my suspicion."

"Okay, I'll see what I can dig up."

Logan came back in with a couple paper towels. He went straight over to clean up the mess and wipe all the remaining brown liquid from Veronica's arm. Keith leaned down and kissed his daughter's forehead before getting up to leave. "I'll be back in a little while."

Logan sat back down. "So, are you going to marry me when they let you out of here?"

Her still somewhat glazed eyes opened wide in shock. "What? Are you proposing to me?"

He squeezed her hand and leaned over to kiss her despite her terrible breath. "Maybe. I know it's not the right time or place, but at this point I just figured I better go ahead and ask before one of these brushes with death of yours brush a little too closely and I never get the chance to at all."

Her mouth gaped somewhat and she honestly didn't know what to say. Of course she would marry him, that wasn't much of a question. She attributed it to the whole epic speech. Like it or not they loved each other and were stuck together until one of them flopped over and died. The way things had been going lately, she couldn't blame Logan for thinking it would be her to flop first. But still, it's not like that was the wonderfully planned out romantic, down-on-one-knee proposal that every little girl dreams about either.

"What? No getting down on one knee, professing your undying love to me in an elaborate speech, and producing a ring with a baseball-sized diamond?" Veronica teased dramatically, before finally looking at him, seriously. "Yes, of course I'll marry you. Just promise me you won't ever kiss me again before I brush my teeth." They both chuckled at the last part and Logan handed her a breath mint before totally disregarding his promise and kissing her anyway for the next several minutes until the doctor came in and interrupted them.

After a few moments of going through her chart, he finally concluded, "Miss Mars, sometimes some women's bodies just don't handle pregnancy as well as others. It's nothing too serious, but I want you on bed rest for at least a week to let your body recover and you'll need to take it easy for the rest of your pregnancy. If you get another fever, however, come straight back in. High fevers like the one you had could endanger the fetus."

"But they're both okay, right?" Logan asked the doctor, obviously concerned.

Veronica laid back in her pillow. She wasn't happy at all. Bed rest for an entire week? Great. That's just my idea of fun. So how does a girl track down a murderer, an adulteress, and the biological father of Larette's little girl when she's not even allowed to walk further than bathroom and back? Well, the miracles of modern computer technology…and then there's Mac. But that would require me to actually explain all of this to my friends…which I'll have to do sooner or later anyways.

Two Days Later

"Man, V, I still can't believe your gonna be a mom."

"Well believe it, uncle Wally."

"Okay, he is so not calling me that."

"Hey, I think I found something." Mac finally stopped messing with Veronica's laptop from the foot of her bed. "The little girl's name is Cora. She was born February 12, 1994 to a Larette and Allen Davis. But Allen Davis died June 19, 1993."

The pieces were adding up just as Veronica expected them too. "So, either she had to conceive right before he died, or the baby wasn't his."