Margo Shephard's house

LA Four of Five

Via the Weather Vane

Sunday 8:00 a.m.

Kate's eyes opened to a ceiling fan spinning slowly above her head in a room so quiet she could hear the motor whirring.

"Going in circles," she thought to herself. "That's appropriate. And whatever happens today, it has to end."

She turned to look into the crib next to her, smiling. David was awake, his blue eyes alert, and even though it was weeks too early for him to be making eye contact she swore she noticed his gaze move toward her at least a little, his head turning a touch.

"Good morning, baby," she said, "Don't get too used to this world, okay? I'm not sure if we're staying. It's peaceful, though, isn't it?"

Margo had insisted on the crib even though Kate thought a bassinette might work fine for now.

"It'll give us something to do, putting it together," she'd said as they popped open the box and the two thousand pieces inside slid onto the living room floor. "Who knows, maybe the whole conversation will go better because we have this to focus on."

Kate watched her contentedly sorting and counting the nuts and bolts, peering at the instructions, pushing the rails to one side and the legs to another and she smiled, thinking Christian may have been Jack's father but Jack was Margo's kid.

Once they were organized Margo shot her a nod.

"So, tell me how it is we're here building a crib?"

"You want the truth?" Kate asked, looking a little pained for her, "Even if it makes you wonder again if I'm crazy?"

"Absolutely. Just take it a step at a time."

It had taken hours despite the fact that Kate skipped huge swaths of detail, sometimes out of compassion and others in fear of overloading her. They talked until the crib was built, through dinner, past when they'd realized they should have built the crib upstairs and they hauled it up there somehow. They didn't actually get to the end until it was very late, and they both were very ready for sleep themselves.

Now Kate was walking down to the dining room, carrying David in his bjorn out of habit and ease. She expected, for some reason, that Margo would be somehow distant and chilly this morning after having eight hours to contemplate everything she'd heard the night before but she looked up from the dining room table with a smile.

"Did you sleep?" Margo asked.

"Eventually. You?"

"A bit," Margo said, continuing to sort the paperwork in front of her, a cup of coffee sitting just above the stacks. "Scrambled, or poached?"

"What?" Kate asked.

"Your eggs," Margo got up and Kate started to stop her but she insisted. "You take care of him. I'm perfectly happy to have someone to cook for."

"Thank you," Kate said. "Scrambled."

There was a pause while Margo cooked and hummed and Kate poured herself coffee from a carafe on the hutch and wandered around the huge dining room, the empty living room. She pictured Margo pacing the six thousand square feet of the house on her on her own the past few months and prayed she'd never take that walk herself. She looked down at David, and reached to kiss the top of his head.

"So are we going with the plan?" Margo asked from the other room.

"Yes, I think you had a good idea," Kate said, "We'll drive to Hurley's parents' house or at least where I think it should be. It doesn't give me much hope that the phone number I had for them was wrong here. Who knows where they really live?"

"Well, we'll go look with our own eyes and at least you'll know. I was thinking a few minutes ago," she was back with breakfast now, setting down a plate for Kate and then rifling through her paperwork again. "There's another mystery you might be able to solve for me."

"Of course," Kate dug in, "Whatever I can do."

"It took us weeks to get my husband's death certificate," Margo said, pulling a legal sized envelope out of the pile, pausing. "And when it arrived I was in no shape to think about legal matters," she pulled a document of about fifteen pages out, started flipping through it.

"When I was finally ready we read his will and to my amazement," she ran a finger down the page she'd been looking for. "He left a very sentimental gift and a good deal of money to someone I've never heard of in my life. I don't begrudge her them, but I would like to know who the hell she is."

"Claire!" Kate dropped her fork, stood, shaking her head. "Oh my God, I never told him. There was so much going on and she was missing and I was so focused on getting them all away and our own worries at home, I never had five minutes to think straight. God, I half forgot he didn't even know…."

"It's okay," Margo didn't get up, but gestured her toward the table, urging her to sit. "You're still exhausted, everything's out of proportion for you. Whatever it was about this person that you forgot to tell him, it couldn't have been as enormous a thing as you're feeling it is right now."

Kate sat.

"Actually, it kind of is," she said, "I'm sorry, I'm afraid this is going to be hard on you."

"Well," Margo set down the envelope, "I didn't think a name in my husband's will that I'd never heard before was going to be happy news, exactly."

"Claire was on the plane. And she's…."

The phone rang and Kate jumped and Margo laughed out loud at the timing. They both looked at the phone on the hutch as it rang a second and a third time and then Margo was up.

"I'd better take this," she said, "I can never let a phone ring, it's just a bad habit of mine….. hello?"

She walked toward the kitchen as she talked, bringing her empty coffee cup to the sink and Kate almost wanted to put her head on the table at the various things she was thinking, wondering how she was going to finish the explanation when the call was over.

"I'm not sure what you're talking about," she heard Margo say, "but I don't know you, and I don't hold telephone conversations with people I don't know so if you're really trying to sell me something you can forget…"

There was a pause and then her voice again, more impatient now.

"Listen, Mister Jarrah, I told you,"

Kate was out of her seat so fast she never even felt herself running to the kitchen, and she got there as Margo gasped out loud, leaned against the counter and handed her the phone.

"It's someone named Sayid," she said. "He says Jack's alive. He says they're in Nauru. Do you know where that is?"

"Yes," Kate took the phone, turning almost in a circle in astonished relief, "I sure do. Sayid? Is it really you?"

The Island

Hurley's Bungalow

It was the first morning since the end of the war that Hurley was planning on doing exactly nothing. The recruits were rebuilding the barracks under Bernard and Miles' guidance. Max Tegmark was headed to work with Richard and Walt, ready to train them on the full potential of the Weather Vane. Ben, Annie and Desmond were surveying the hatches, deciding which ones would be rebuilt and which ones razed.

They were all on it, and for once, happily, there was nothing for him to do.

He'd gotten barely a dozen pages deeper into The Return of the King when there was an urgent knocking at his door.

"No, no no!" He shouted. "It's my day off."

More banging.

"All right," he pulled his feet off the coffee table and went to open it. "What?"

Richard and Walt were standing there and the worried looks on their faces made him forget his annoyance.

"I'm afraid," Richard said, "We still have a saboteur on the island."

It took them twenty minutes to get to the Weather Vane, and when they walked through the damaged door and down the iffy steps they found Max inside staring at it sorrowfully. The building itself had sustained a lot of damage in the war but Richard had managed to save the infrastructure. Now big chunks of it were clearly fried, the smell of electrical fire in the air and tiny wisps of smoke still leaking from some of the machines.

"They torched it, somehow," Max said, somewhat numbly, "Sent a power surge through it. The guidance system, the databases that monitor the other locations, the sending mechanisms: They're all badly damaged."

"Kate," Walt said, looking at Hurley. "What if she wants to come back?"

"Kate will be fine," Hurley said, "I hope."

Then his head dropped.

"Sawyer. Oh no, what the hell…. we can't get to him."

"Who would do this?" Richard stopped in mid-thought, then shook his head with an unhappy grimace. "There are two people who wanted this thing shut down: Ben and Eloise."

"Don't go there," Hurley said, "There's no way they'd do this to us or to them."

"Then who?" Richard asked. "We know the recruit pool is clean now, we know everyone on the island, who else would do it except the two people who were most insistent it be shut down?"

"Ahhh," Hurley looked up at the ceiling, the light dawning. "That's it. Their Ben, their Eloise, they did this."

"They figured out how to use their Weather Vane," Max said, "At least in a rudimentary way. And they've locked us out."

"How fast can you fix it?" Hurley asked and Max laughed grimly, looked up.

"I'm a physicist, not an engineer Hurley. And don't you see what I'm seeing? It'll take weeks, months if we're lucky. Building it the first time took us ten years."

"We don't have years," Hurley said. "I promised him we'd get him back here in a month. That's what we've got, a month."

"I'll make a list," Max got up, searching for something to write on. "Things I'll need- parts, tools, computers."

"I'll get Frank, have him fire up the plane," Hurley started to the door and Richard followed. "I hope it has enough fuel left in it for him to fly it somewhere he can get more fuel. Walt, stay here and help Max with his list, okay?"

"Don't beat yourself up, Hurley," Richard said as they went. "You didn't know this would happen."

"I should have thought of it. Richard, no matter how mad you are, you should never lock up a friend away behind a door so strong you may not be able to open it again. What if Max can't fix it?"

"He will," Richard said, "He has to, so he will."

LA. Four of Five

Margo's House

Margo hadn't even waited for Kate to hang up; Kate found her upstairs in her room packing. There were two chairs at the far end of the room near a bay window and Kate went to one of them, sat wiping her eyes.

"What did he say?"

"Come sit," Kate nodded to the other chair, waited until she did to start.

"They went through a terrible time getting where they are," she said, paused.

"Sayid said they only made it to something close to civilization four days ago. Before that, they washed up on this little island that didn't have much of anything, not even a real hospital. It was bad, several of them were hurt and they're still recovering."

"How did they make it to where they are, then?" Margo shook her head. "With no one there they know, no one to help them?"

"Our friend Hurley," Kate said, "He has the kind of money that can move mountains if you need them moved. He got them to Nauru, to a private hospital. They didn't call you until now because they didn't know if he'd make it. Sayid said any way they discussed it, it seemed cruel to call with such bad and iffy news out of the blue."

"What happened?" Margo's voice was barely a whisper.

"The night they got away their lifeboats were attacked, and he and our friend Desmond nearly drowned pulling some of our other friends out of the water. Desmond wasn't as bad off, and they got Jack breathing again but he's never woken up since. He's been on a respirator since they got to Nauru, but now he's off it and more stable… so they figured it was time to tell you so."

She could see Margo wanted to cry but she wasn't going to give in to it.

"Why don't you call and buy us plane tickets, and I'll keep packing?"

"No," Kate reached over and took her hand. "I'm going to go get them, but I'm not taking a plane. I thought I could just come over here and forget about the people they fought so hard to escape, but that was never going to work," she said. "I have to go force a truce with them, so we can live the rest of our lives without looking over our shoulders. Then I'll get them home and I swear, life will get better."

"How in the world do you think you're going to convince the kind of people who did what they did to call a truce?"

"It hit me while I was on the phone with Sayid," Kate said. "I know the magic words: I know exactly what to say and who to say it to, and then they'll never bother us again. I promise."

She saw Margo looking around the room, and she realized she was picturing her leaving in a few minutes, being alone again. It made her almost tear up, too.

"You don't have to wait alone," Kate handed her a piece of paper with a phone number and address on it.

"Hurley's parents. They are here in town. He called them from Nauru, and they're waiting very anxiously for him to get home, they're climbing their walls, too. You have to call them, go meet them. They're great! Hurley's mom is a hoot and his dad is a good guy. You might as well get to know them. You'll be seeing a lot of them from now on."

Margo took the paper, nodded, but she still looked scared.

"If you go and never come back, I just don't know. That would be so awful."

"Not going to happen," Kate said. "I wouldn't be taking David with me if I weren't one hundred percent sure that I've got this."

"Call when you get there? Let me know what's going on?"

"Absolutely. And I promise - we'll be home soon."