"So you're telling me that in the last month, all of your actions have been examined by the police department?"

She felt like she was getting attacked by this principal. Her grandfather agreed to taking care of these things. She should not be interrogated about where she was the night of her parents' murder. It was like they blamed her.

Oh wait.

Her Uncle Joe standing behind her seemed like he was trying to not hit the man in front of them. She was fine, to some extent, but it was irritating. Didn't this guy have anything better to do? Why couldn't he just send her on her merry way?

She hated civilians.

"As I stated, I went to find my biological family and stayed with them for a while." Lizzie bit. "I value my education. I know I have missed a month but I am going to make up all of the work I have missed. I am going to graduate with the rest of my class."

"Really? You are in seven classes. That's a month's worth of homework from each class. And you're just going to do all of it in a week?"

"I happen to know that the teachers in this building are extremely flexible. And all of them adore me. I also happen to have a mother that's a prosecutor. You could be considered negligent. She could sue. You don't really want to have to deal with that, do you?"

Joe smirked. Little Erin was a badass.

"So it turns out that my daughter did stick around in New York longer than I had thought. She was bouncing around with the runaway uncle and the uncle on crutches. I personally thought that Danny would be a little more forceful in getting her to come back, but he seems okay with the idea of her leaving, apparently."

"And how did finding this out make you feel?"

"My daughter sent her uncle back with a photo collage with a sticky note on top of it. The sticky note read: 'my dear mother, this is not goodbye. Spent this time to heal, and we will all be together again, eventually.' I read it so many times I memorized it. I spent an hour just studying her handwriting. She has ridiculously good penmanship. And she does this thing where she kind of swirls her S's. I don't know how to describe it, but it's something completely unique to her."

"Do you think Lizzie thinks she is straining your already strained relationship by doing this?"

"I don't know. She has a mind all her own. I don't understand it all that well. I think in her mind she thinks she is doing the right thing, and maybe she is."

"Maybe?"

"Or maybe this will do more damage than it does good. I mean, I don't really know, seeing as it hasn't been forty eight hours yet. She spent all of last night driving to her home place of the Windy City. Well, technically New York is her home place, seeing as she was born here." Erin chuckled satirically. Irony at its finest.

"What was so urgent that it had your daughter planted here rather than getting a head start on her way back to Chicago?"

"My brother Danny's partner went missing. Lizzie cares about her a lot, so she helped Joe dissect the apartment to make sure it wasn't another abduction."

"And what did they find?"

"They think she left by her own choice which I suppose is better than the alternative."

"What is her significance to your family?"

"In addition to being Danny's partner, she also dated Joe for a while. That ended rather badly for reasons I was never made aware of. She is a member of our family to some of us, and others just consider her Detective Curatola."

"And what is she to you?"

"She is a family member, I guess. Her and Linda are the two closest things I will ever have to sisters." That brought another thought to mind: did Erin have any other secret family members she didn't know about? She wouldn't really be surprised at this point.

Lizzie nodded to her uncle as the two of them walked out of the principal's office. Lizzie was going to talk to all of her teachers and see if they could work something out. Joe was going to go do whatever he wanted. Lizzie was a bit more concerned about herself at that current moment.

It took less than a minute for Lizzie to be noticed and questioned. "Elizabeth Johnson... is that you?" Lizzie turned around to see her redheaded best friend Addie coming towards her from down the hall. She squinted, as if to make sure her eyes weren't deceiving her. "I thought... your parents... I'm sorry."

"Thanks. A lot has happened since then. It turns out that I am adopted."

Addie smiled. "You just figured this out now? You look nothing like your parents... I just never wanted to sound rude by asking. We kind of have been best friends for the last twelve years."

Lizzie's heart warmed, just standing there and looking at her best friend. She had missed her so much. She felt bad. Addie must have freaked. She must have called hundreds and hundreds of times to just get her voicemail. "There was never a doubt in my mind. But I met them." Lizzie couldn't help the smile that formed on her face. "I met my biological family, and they are the nicest and most dedicated people on the planet! I am just like them. Except... none of them sing or act, but..."

"Is that where you have been? Hunting down your bio family?" Addie questioned, furrowing her brows in concern.

"Yeah. I went to them for help. They helped me, I guess..."

"So are you here to stay... or...?"

"I came back because I wanted to get my diploma at the same time and same place as you. I don't know if it's too late for us... I really hope its not. Is it? I'm sorry I didn't call you while I was in New York." Lizzie felt nervous all of the sudden.

Addie sighed, playing with the straps on her backpack. "We thought you were dead. We thought we were going to wake up one day and see your picture on the news next to the headline 'dead body found'. No one knew where you went after your parents were found murdered. Were you there?"

Lizzie nodded. She could still hear the gunshots in the back of her brain. Watching her father close his eyes, her mother's hand go limp...

"Oh god, Lizzie..." Addie felt the need to give me a hug for some sort of physical comfort. I flinched in her touch, for old habits die hard. She pulled away. "Sorry." she mumbled.

"So... in other news..." Lizzie paused. "How's Mr. Murray and the crew?"

"Peooopppllleee, people who need people..." She sang, on key, but in a rather miserable and not enthusiastic way. She didn't even seem in character, just really sick that she was stuck singing the songs.

"Come on Catherine! At least try and pretend you're enjoying it..." Her director, Mr. Murray, seemed to be saying. He looked agitated, if anything. Like if he could have someone else, anyone else, sing it, he would. At some point he turned around and saw her sitting there, a bit amused by the two of them bickering. She immediately stopped smiling.

"Who are you?" He asked, clearly having had a bad day, and not enough coffee.

"I'm, uh, Mary Russell, I, uh..." She started, clearly nervous he was going to somehow recognize her. "I just wanted to see you guys rehearse. I absolutely love Broadway shows and Funny Girl is my favorite." She started, feeling her confidence go back up. She stood up and started walking towards the stage.

"I seem to notice that you aren't very into what you're doing. I think you need a bit more... theatricality. You need to strut that stage and be Fanny Brice. Be Fanny Brice and not be some high school girl that looks miserable playing Fanny Brice. You are standing up there, showing future generations what made Barbra Streisand famous. You need to be a New Yorker that is trying to make her way up there. Getting into the Zigfield Follies even though she has nothing going for her. She doesn't think she will ever find someone to love. Let me try."

And that is how Lizzie found herself standing up on her stage, right where she was supposed to be, singing her song, People.

Well you know what they say, people who need people are the luckiest people in the world.

She closed her eyes, and she felt like she was back in high school, not some undercover dead girl that was actually apart of one of the most powerful families in the New York Police Department. She felt alive. The only difference was that instead of pretending to visualize her Nick Arnstein, she was imagining her mother and uncles and sister and cousins and grandpa.

Because no matter what she did, the thought of them would not leave her mind.

"Hating Catherine Whitfield with a burning passion. Do you know how much he misses you?" Addie's face lit up. "He's going to be ecstatic once he sees you!"

Lizzie felt like she should say no, she wasn't going to talk to her mentor and second father about her dream job. It seemed like it didn't matter after all that had happened.

Then again, it was her that had said she wanted to go back to normal. Her definition of normal was singing on that stage and pouring her heart out. That was her life. No matter how much she would try to tell herself that she should be a police officer or prosecutor in New York City, this was her life.

"Alright. Let's go."

Joe didn't know where he was going. That was the complete and honest truth. He didn't have a particular destination in mind as he walked down the suburban Chicago streets watching the traffic fly by on the street next to him. He didn't know if he would find a little home with a white picket fence where two adults were raising the child he hadn't known existed.

He had some hope in his heart that somehow Jackie would just appear in front of him. She would explain to him everything, why she hadn't told him about their son in the first place.

Maybe things weren't that easy for him. When had things ever been easy for him?

Two lovesick teenagers were walking hand in hand across the street in front of him. He watched the way they looked at each other, and how the girl looked up at her guy with such admiration and hope. She had hope for a future with him. A future with a house and nice jobs and babies and family dinners and...

No pain.

He pulled out his phone, making the decision to call Jackie one more time before calling it quits. Or, trying to call it quits. He could spend his spare time binge watching Grey's Anatomy. That sounded like the only good option at that point.

"Hi, you've reached Jackie-" he rolled his eyes. He had hoped that God would give him one damn thing-

"Joe." She responded. She sounded drained, like she hadn't slept in forever.

"Jack?" He straightened up at the sound of her voice. "Where are you? Are you okay? Are you in danger?"

"I'm fine Joe, I'm just-"

"This child is in the foster care system." Joe heard in the background. His superb hearing cut in and tried to pick up what this person was saying.

Jackie was having a conversation with someone else. "Can I get an address or what? I'm the biological mother. I need her file."

"Well, you signed away your rights-" the lady squeaked in a monotone legalistic voice.

"I'm aware of that." Jackie snapped. "But I had a very specific case that dictated that-"

"Catherine Reagan put her finger on it. I can see that. You don't get special treatment here. You are not in New York. You're in Chicago."

"What if I get a call from the Commissioner? Then what? Or his prosecutor daughter?"

The lady seemed baffled. "Ma'am, I'm just trying to do my job. Those are the rules in our jurisdiction whether you like it or not."

"Jackie, tell them... uh..." Joe needed to do something. He needed to do something so that this bitch would give him his child, their child back. "What do we need to get her?" He asked desperately.

"Joe... we need to talk about this."

"It's our kid, Jack. We need to make sure she's okay."

"Joe... I'm so sorry."

"Let's get our girl back."

"Do my eyes deceive me or is that a Leezl Johnson I see in front of me?"

Lizzie could not help the smile that again found its way onto her face as she found herself hugging the man that had become her second father.

Third father?

Does the rapist one count?

Ugh, bad choice of words.

"Glad to see you're still in one piece." He commented, scanning her over. "We were all really concerned about you. I had a feeling you'd come back to us when you were ready."

She nodded. "Thanks Murray."

"So... are you here to reclaim your role as Fanny Brice?"

Lizzie furrowed her brow. "The show is in three weeks! You never even gave me the role!"

He smirked. "Yes I did. It's not my fault you took some time off. Catherine was just your understudy. The role is yours... if you think you can handle it."

Then it was her time to smirk. "Of course I can handle it. No one is gonna rain on my parade."

Yes, she did belt the last note.

And she did a hell of a job with it.