A/N: I was awake for almost 21 hours straight yesterday, and thirteen of those hours were spent at work. Insanity!

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It was only when she was in the wind that Lisa wished she cut her hair shorter. Since coming back from Syria, she'd just let it grow, and now it was down to her mid-back. The cold winds coming off of the Hudson River kept pummelling her and whipping at her face with her own hair, so she was more than excited when a cab pulled up. Jumping inside, she opened the little book in her lap and flipped a few pages.

'10 Terrace in Troy.'

The cabbie nodded before pressing the clear button on his meter. They drove down poorly maintained streets before merging onto the 787 and speeding past the little mill houses on the other bank of the Hudson. Lisa stared at the Pepsi Dome and the odd federal buildings, remembering back to the first time she'd seen them with Jackson. He hated the skyline and made her close the curtains, but now she was able to stare at it as much as she wished. For the size of the town, it seemed to have far too much infrastructure. Highways spun big cloverleaves above them, and they even climbed over where, many times, there was no under. It was a mess of a place, poorly planned, she decided, and began to wonder if Jackson's hate of Albany had nothing to do with his childhood but rather with his obsessive-compulsive tendencies.

They exited the expressway and got onto the 378, crossing over the river in plain view of the Polytechnic Institute. Once they disappeared between buildings again, Lisa found herself lost and paid more attention to the back of the seat in front of her than the houses and woods going by on both sides. They passed a pond and a cemetery before the driver took two sharp left turns. The driver stayed on Pawling and they passed three cross-streets on the left before turning onto Terrace. He stopped immediately after turning onto the street and she looked up at him.

'10 Terrace,' he said, gesturing to the white two-storey house on their left.

'Thank you,' Lisa said, handing the man a pile of bills. 'Just give me back a five.'

She slipped out of the taxi, and after rearranging her money and smoothing out her coat, Lisa looked up at the boxy white house. Taking in the bareness of the trees in the yard, the general disregard for anything vaguely resembling landscaping, and breathing in the cold air to calm herself, she slowly walked up the fragmented driveway, her feet mashing in the fall's discarded, wet leaves. At the bottom of the stairs, she put her hand on the peeling rail and stared at the closed door. Before she was able to take another step up, however, the door opened and a red-haired woman stepped out onto the porch, her arms crossed as she looked down at Lisa. The door slammed shut.

'Jackson's not with you.'

Lisa wasn't sure if it was a comment or a question, so she didn't answer. 'I need some information from you.'

'For what purpose?' asked the woman, tipping up her chin.

Without taking her eyes off the woman, Lisa grabbed around in her purse for Jackson's book. Finding it, she held it by the top edge and nervously flipped through it until she found the page that had first piqued her interest at home. Taking a couple of steps up, she held the book in front of the woman's face. 'You're Melissa Bayley, right?'

Melissa stared at her for a moment before reaching out and taking the book by the lower edge. 'What are you wanting, Mrs Rippner?'

'Jackson has you listed as his family,' Lisa said, crossing her arms against the wind.

'We've known each other for a long time,' Melissa replied, tight-lipped. 'I doubt this visit is just to ask about the information in Jackson's little black book.'

They stood a couple of feet from each other, Lisa expecting for Melissa to invite her in, but Melissa didn't move an inch. 'I was wondering if you know anything about his psychological background.'

After looking down at the book for a moment, she closed it before turning around, pushing open the door and stepping in. 'Come in.'

Awkwardly, Lisa finished climbing the stairs and stepped in behind Melissa. She closed the door and was about to step forward when Melissa spoke again.

'Leave your shoes and coat at the door.'

Lisa stopped, pushing off her slippers and bending to the side to pick them up and place them in a shoe cubby on the wall. She put them beside a pair of dirty boys' Vans that looked about twice the size of Jonathan's shoes before walking over and hanging her coat from a hook on the end of the cubby. Pulling down the left side of her sweater, which had been disturbed when she took her coat off, she followed after Melissa and found her in the den handing a cup of tea to a young boy wrapped in a blanket on the couch. She was talking to him, but when Lisa entered, she stopped, looked at Lisa and then back at the boy.

'If you need anything, just call me. I'll be in the kitchen with Mrs Rippner.'

The boy turned around, looking at Lisa in the doorway before looking back at the TV. Melissa walked across the room and Lisa followed her into the kitchen, stepping past her so that Melissa could close the door into the room. Melissa gestured to the table.

'Please sit down,' she said before walking to the stove, pulling a teapot from the burner as Lisa walked to the table. 'I'd offer you some tea, but I see it wasn't just your coat making you look... bulky.'

Leaning against the heel of her hand, Lisa gave a dirty look to Melissa before looking back out the window. In the glass, she could see Melissa filling teacups and giving her covert looks, but neither allowed the other to make eye contact with her reflection. After a minute or so, Melissa stepped out from behind the counter and walked over, setting a cup of hot water in front of Lisa that had a saucer with sliced lemons on top. Melissa sat down across from her, immediately picking up her own cup and taking a long sip.

'Are you due soon?' Melissa asked, pointing to Lisa's stomach with her pinky.

Lisa pressed her hand against her stomach with a smile. 'Don't I wish. We're only at sixteen weeks.'

Melissa raised her eyebrows, coughing a bit in her tea. 'Oh no, twins?'

As she squeezed the lemon into her hot water, Lisa nodded then took a sip before speaking. 'A boy and a girl.'

Melissa nodded, turning her attention back to her tea. They both grew quiet, the background noises of Melissa's son's TV shows mingling with the slow tapping of a leaky faucet in the kitchen. Lisa rubbed the rim of her teacup before picking it up and taking a sip, looking through the steam at the other woman, who seemed preoccupied with her thoughts.

'Are you asking about Jacks' mental history because of the kids?'

'No, we already know how Jonathan is—' Lisa answered, pausing before finishing the thought and changing topics. 'Jackson's had some... worrying behaviour lately.'

Leaning against the table, Melissa pressed the upper joint of her thumb to her lips. 'I'm going to ask you something, and I don't want you to get upset about it. This worrying behaviour, did it start about three, four weeks ago?'

Lisa looked up darkly from her teacup but didn't answer Melissa. The woman reclined in her chair, tipping her head forward to level eyes with Lisa.

'You know about Anaïs then.'

'He said something about her a couple of nights ago after he cracked his head on the night stand,' Lisa replied as she tapped at the wood of the table. 'I don't know who she is though except that he said she worked for his old boss.'

'Anaïs basically was the boss,' Melissa said to her, her eyes wide. 'She ran everything, scheduled all appointments, and I never saw the patron without her by his side, but he didn't come to her funeral.'

'Were you at the funeral?'

'My son has mono,' she said, shaking her head. 'I've been at home with him all month.'

Lisa licked her lips before biting at her tongue softly, her eyes focused on the windowsill. 'Jackson told me that there was a gun that was used to kill her, a Mak—'

'Makarov,' Melissa finished. 'It's the personal arm the patron carries, and I'm sure that's just eating at Jackson.'

She knitted her brows. 'He told me he didn't know of anyone who used that kind of gun.'

'Then he's lying to you,' said Melissa smoothly before finishing her tea. 'Trust me though, I bet he doesn't even realise he's lying.'

'What do you mean?'

Melissa looked like she was choosing her words very carefully. 'I... I had access to Jackson's medical files because I was assigned to watch him. A few years ago, the kids and I moved from across town and I was going through a bunch of boxes in my office and happened to find the files.'

She got silent again for about half a minute, closing her eyes in thought.

'I don't know how much Jackson told you about the day his parents died,' Melissa said, laying her palms on the table. 'Because he was so young, a lot of the information from the case didn't make it into the papers, but it did make it into his medical file at Rockland, the children's home he was sent to in Orangeburg. When the investigators found him, he had no recollection of anything that happened and didn't even recognise pictures of his parents when they were presented to him. He didn't even recognise himself in pictures until he was given a mirror to look at. Oh, and according to the police report, they had to bring in an interpreter because he couldn't remember how to speak English.'

By this point, Lisa's hands were folded in her lap as she stared openly at Melissa. 'Why would he forget how to speak English?'

'Because it's not his first language,' she replied in a patronising tone, raising an eyebrow. 'Haven't you ever noticed that sometimes he speaks with an accent, or muddles up his grammar, or forgets the words for things? His parents sent him to Francophone boarding school when he was really young and he didn't learn English until he was I think seven or eight. When he was sent to public school, everyone thought he was mentally retarded because he didn't understand questions posed to him, then they thought he was an idiot savant because he had such good maths grades. His parents never answered calls from his teachers, so they just placed him in special ed until someone noticed he took all his maths notes in French.'

'I had no idea,' she murmured. 'All of this was in his medical records?'

'His first psychiatrist did a case report,' Melissa said with a shrug before continuing. 'Anyway, he'd been living alone in the house for a few days, apparently didn't change his routine or anything, even used the kitchen where his parents' bodies were. He'd even bundled himself up in his parka so that he could turn off the heat to slow down decomposition, and they know it was him because he kept stepping in the blood and leaving little tracks from room to room. But like I said, he didn't remember any of it. It was like there was a gap for three days where he was in a walking coma. His only memories of that day are the ones planted in his head by Dr Greene.'

'So are you saying he didn't kill his parents?'

Melissa laughed so suddenly and loudly that Lisa jumped back a bit.

'Oh God no, God no, he definitely killed his parents. In fact, Michael was found over there,' she said, pointing behind her to the side door, then turning to point at the sink. 'And if you move the rug by the sink there, you can actually still see Alice's blood.'

Lisa's throat constricted. 'This is the house?'

'Yeah, but if you took him to five houses in this area, he'd think he lived in every single one of them,' Melissa said flippantly, standing up to walk over and pour herself some more tea. 'We've gone off topic, haven't we?'

Again, the mingling of the television and the dripping faucet. Lisa didn't want to move in her chair, terrified that the angry spirits of her in-laws would decide to sic her right then.

'Anaïs, that's right,' Melissa said after taking a sip of her tea. She walked back to the table, sitting down with her elbow propped on the tabletop. 'I'd say that Jackson's panicked because he knows who killed her, but he won't tell anyone. Realise that this is all second hand, but after the funeral, he supposedly had a panic attack and was taken to the ER by Lyna. You know Lyna, yeah?'

'Yeah,' said Lisa distastefully.

'Well, on the way there, he said that Anaïs called him the night before she died.'

'When he was in Zürich?'

'No,' Melissa said, shaking her head vehemently. 'Anaïs died when he was still in New York. He knew when he left the City that he was going to Geneva once he got off that plane.'

'When?' Lisa asked, leaning forward so that her stomach was touching the table. 'When did she call him?'

'Well, she was found on the 20th of September, but had been missing for a few days, so probably about the 16th or 17th.'

'The seventeenth,' muttered Lisa. 'That's the day our nanny quit.'

'Your nanny?' Melissa said with a laugh. 'How typical of Jackson Rippner to have a nan—'

'I asked for one,' Lisa interrupted. 'After I got pregnant, I thought it would be easier to have an extra set of hands to help with the kids because Jackson's out of town so much. A young girl, nineteen or twenty, going to NYU and working part-time as an LPN. She worked for us for two months, but right before Jackson left for Zürich this last time, she quit. Something Jackson said upset her, she said, but didn't really elaborate.'

'Too much information,' Melissa said, holding up a hand. 'We need to speak to this girl. Do you know where she lives?'

'Yeah, a couple of streets over. Why?'

'She might have heard what Anaïs was saying to Jackson that got him so upset as to cause this relapse,' Melissa said, taking both of their cups and throwing them in the sink quite unceremoniously. 'What train are your tickets for?'

'The two o'clock.'

'Well, we can change them. If we take the ten o'clock, that'll give me enough time to find someone to take the kids for a few days,' she said, already scanning a list of numbers by the phone.

As Melissa scrambled around, Lisa reached across the table for the black book, only to notice a calling card float from it and land on the floor. She closed the book and put it in her purse before squatting down and taking the card between her fingers. It was a very simple piece of paper, lightly embossed with dark raised writing in the centre. There was just a person's name in stronger font with a light line under giving the person's position, she assumed. She looked up at the back of Melissa's head as the other woman bargained with another mother about keeping her daughter for the next couple of days.

Turning it over in her fingers, she looked very closely at it. 'Eleni Petalas... conseilleuse de direction du directeur de la Société mondiale.'

'What did you just say?' asked Melissa, hanging up the phone after a successful call.

'Eleni Petalas,' she said looking up at Melissa, whose eyes implored her to continue. 'Conseilleuse de direction du directeur de la Société mondiale.'

Melissa froze before taking several long strides to Lisa and plucking the card from her hands. She stared at it, turning it over in her hands. 'Where was this?'

'In his address book,' Lisa said, beginning to reach into her purse, but Melissa stopped her, grabbing her wrist.

'I need to talk to Jackson right now,' Melissa said, shaking Lisa's arm up and down. 'I need to know where he got this.'