Four days later, a Sunday, Anna and Robin were enjoying the afternoon in each other's company. Anna mentally noted how long it had been since they had acted like mother and daughter, marvelled at the fact that they could now spend time together just chatting and laughing, doing something so trivial as window shopping. Anna had made Robin blush by dragging her into a lingerie shop, and Robin had made Anna blush by pointing out a black slip very much like one she remembered seeing carelessly cast to the floor of Anna's bedroom (along with a man's white dress shirt) the morning after a particularly significant Valentine's Day. "I'm not much for slips and stockings anymore," Anna confessed, laughing. "Dress pants and sensible shoes. No fancy gowns or get-ups for me."

Robin then pointed to an obscene baby-doll nightie in a complicated tartan. "I wonder if this is the clan Lavery tartan? Should you buy it and ask Uncle Duke?"

Anna frowned. "I wouldn't be caught dead in something as repulsive as that."

Robin laughed, put her arm through Anna's, and led her out of the store. "Mom, I think it's time for tea and a serious conversation."

Twenty minutes later, at a corner table in a cafe they'd discovered years before and which had quickly become a favourite, Anna was pouring tea for the two of them from an exquisite porcelain pot. Steam rose from their delicate cups; Anna leaned over, closed her eyes, and breathed in the fragrance. She opened her eyes again. "I'm in heaven."

Robin snorted. "All it takes is tea?"

Anna smiled. "And the company of my beloved daughter."

Robin pulled in her chin and smirked. "You might not think so warmly of me once I start asking you what I want to."

The corners of Anna's mouth fell. "Oh dear. This sounds serious."

Robin propped her elbows on the table knowing it would slightly irk her mother. "So, what's going on with you and Duke? Patrick and I have noticed that we barely see you together. I thought you two were trying to work things out?"

Anna sighed. "Circumstances seem to be conspiring against us. Every time we try to meet for dinner or drinks or coffee or anything something comes up. He's very busy organizing the opening of this new club."

Robin squinted. "And how does that make you feel?"

Anna cocked her head to the side and raised an eyebrow. "I didn't think you were that kind of doctor." Robin raised her eyebrows in response and waited for an answer. Anna sighed. "Honestly? Irritated. Abandoned. Neglected." She paused, thought, and decided to be honest. "And also strangely relieved. It's not easy resurrecting a relationship. We're still quite awkward with each other, too polite, too careful. We tiptoe around each other."

Robin nodded her head. "I understand that. Patrick and I felt the same way when I first came home. But the feeling went away pretty quickly. What's the obstacle between you and Duke? What's keeping you from feeling more comfortable together?"

Anna wasn't sure what to answer. She only knew that Duke and she had been slightly more natural in each other's company before Robert had woken from his coma and before the final confrontation with Faison. Of course she couldn't say anything about this to her daughter.

But then Robin asked, "Is it Dad? Is he the problem?"

Anna looked up, considered what to answer, and nervously bit her lip—an obvious "tell" that Robin had seen many times before.

"It is Dad. What's he done now?" she asked, half-smiling.

Across town, Robert was waiting alone at his own corner table, this one in an almost-abandoned sports bar not far from the waterfront and warehouse districts. He'd arranged to meet the missing woman's partner there—Carolyn Thompson's partner. He needed to use her name as often as possible, to remind himself the exercise wasn't academic, but also to remind himself that this woman was not Anna. He had to think about her as someone different, someone distinct, someone similar to but not his own wife. He had to stay focused and unbiased. He suspected it wouldn't be easy.

A man in his mid-fifties stepped into the bar and stopped, hesitated, looked around nervously. This was the guy. Robert lifted his hand to wave. The man noticed him, still hesitated, but then slowly walked up to the table.

"Agent Scorpio?" he asked.

"Yes," Robert replied. "Thank you for meeting me, Mr. Corbett. I appreciate that this is difficult for you."

"Stephen, please. I have to admit I was surprised when you contacted me. I didn't think anyone was still looking into Carolyn's disappearance. It's been sixteen years."

Robert motioned for the man to sit down. "And please, call me Robert. Would you like a drink?" The man shook his head. "Are you sure? To take the edge off?"

The man shook his head again. "I can't touch the stuff anymore. To be honest, I relied on it a bit too much after Carolyn disappeared. I had to learn to live with the edge, I'm afraid. I'll be fine."

Robert nodded in acknowledgement. "Stephen, I just want to review some of the basic points of the case with you again, partly to get things straight in my head, partly in the hope that we might uncover some new detail that might help us redirect our investigation. I'm working as a consultant for police commissioner Devane, who's been directed by the DA to reopen cases previously tagged as high priority but, for various reasons, suspended."

Stephen smiled, his eyes flat. "In other words abandoned. Look, I don't blame the police. There were no leads. There was no evidence. She just went out one day and never came back. How do you make sense of that? I understand why the police concluded she'd left on her own. There was nothing to suggest otherwise. But there was nothing to suggest she did, either. And I know she didn't."

Robert waited a moment before replying. "Maybe we can come up with something new if we revisit the events of the day one more time. Maybe with distance . . ."

Stephen shook his head. "What distance? I still have nightmares about that day, still think about it obsessively. Robert, I can offer to go over what happened when Carolyn disappeared but I can't offer you any kind of detachment or objectivity."

Robert folded his hands. "Fair enough. Then what do you remember about the morning of February 20?"

Stephen looked down at the table. "Carolyn got up at 6:00 a.m., as usual, and got ready to go to work. She taught high school math and science. I remember that she had an early meeting so she was out the door by 7:00. I didn't hear from her again until just after lunch."

All of this information was in the file. Robert continued. "What did you do that morning?"

Stephen looked up. "I was at work. I got into the office at 8:00, as usual, was at my desk until 12:00, as usual. I bought my lunch at a food truck outside my building, as usual, and was working again at 1:00. I left the office at 5:00. The detectives working the case all those years ago checked out my story; my colleagues corroborated it. Nothing eventful happened all day."

"When Carolyn called you after lunch," Robert asked, "what did you talk about?"

Stephen's expression became pained. "She told me she hadn't been feeling well. I asked her if I could pick something up for her on the way home. She said no. That was the last time I spoke to her."

"When did you begin to suspect that something was wrong?"

Stephen clenched his fists on the table. "She often didn't get home until after I did—she would stay to finish marking or class prep. I wasn't alarmed when she wasn't home at 6:00, 6:30. But after that I was sure something was wrong. She would've phoned to tell me she'd be late. But she didn't. By 9:00 I was calling all of our neighbours and friends, trying to find her. She didn't have a cell phone, so I couldn't try to contact her that way. At 11:00 I phoned the police but was told I'd need to wait to report her missing."

Robert thought again about the file. "According to the lead detective, Carolyn was overheard talking on the phone during her afternoon break—at 3:00. Phone records indicate that the call came from a pay phone on the docks. Just to confirm, she wasn't talking to you?"

Stephen shook his head. "No. I was still at work. And I have no idea who she could have been speaking to."

"Her colleague said that Carolyn seemed happy and excited. And according to that colleague, when he entered, she lowered her voice, like she didn't want him to overhear something."

Stephen shook his head again. "I don't know what that might have been about." But Robert noticed that something in his movement and expression seemed off. Stephen knew more than he was telling.

Robert decided to try to distract him. "Did you bring those photographs I asked for?"

Anna poured herself another cup of tea before attempting to answer her daughter's question. "Robert isn't a problem, Robin. And he hasn't done anything to create trouble between Duke and me. We've done that ourselves. We're not the same people we were when we were first together. We've agreed to try again, but we both knew it would be hard."

Robin looked her mother in the eye. "But Dad's here now as well, and you two were also together, and more recently than you and Duke. You remarried Dad after Duke died, or was supposed to have died, and before Faison kidnapped you. As I remember it, you were both happier than I'd ever seen you before. And then when Dad was sick, I know you reconnected again. That is, until he was a complete jerk and left for treatment in Switzerland without you."

Anna smiled sadly. "He did that for good reason, and you know it. He was too proud to accept my help."

"Whatever." Robin rolled her eyes. "You're being too generous to him as usual. I'm just saying that it's completely understandable if you're feeling conflicted right now. You did tell me at Christmas that you love both Dad and Duke. If you're trying to decide between the two of them, you need to do what you said you would in just this kind of situation: you need to ask yourself who you want to build a life with."

"Build a life with?" Anna asked, incredulous. "I said that, faced with a choice between the two of them thirty years ago, I would have asked myself that question. But our conversation was completely hypothetical: I was never faced with that choice in the past. And now, let's be frank, the three of us are far too long-in-the-tooth to be 'building a life' with anyone."

Robin looked at Anna sadly. "Good grief, Mom, you aren't dead yet. You can't think like that. Why not talk about building a life? Why not ask yourself who you want to spend the rest of your life with? When you think about the prospect of being with Dad, or with Duke, which gets you most excited? Which makes your pulse race? Which makes your hands sweat?" Robin laughed. "Because, you know, you could have either of them. The choice is yours. That hypothetical situation you described at Christmas is, in fact, reality."

Anna became even more uncomfortable. "Robin, I told you that your father would never put me in the position of having to choose between him and Duke. And anyway, I doubt Robert has any serious interest in revisiting a relationship with me."

Robin smiled crookedly and cocked her head to one side. "Oh Mom, it's painfully obvious that Dad's pining for you. He has been for years. The difference now, I think, is that he's actually realized it."

Anna didn't know what to say, and so Robin continued.

"By the way, what happened on New Year's Eve? Because it was pretty obvious at our brunch that you and Dad spent the evening together. Did you have fun? It seemed like you did."

After a beat Anna smiled at her daughter, looked down at her tea cup and swirled the leaves at the bottom. "Yeah," she admitted. "We did. We really did."