A/N: Sorry for the lack of updates. I'm working on this story slowly to make sure I'm satisfied with what I post. Hopefully you're enjoying this story; please let me know what you think. Feedback helps greatly.

Little recap: The body of Helena Moscovitch was found near the Potomac river. Booth knew her from his high school years and is now going to interrogate the woman's husband. Meanwhile, Bones is still on the run under the alias Mary Curtis, who is crossing the United States to visit her long lost mother, with her daughter Colleen, 7 months, and her uncle Robert (her mother's brother). Angela is going nuts trying to figure out what those codes mean and Hodgins is worried about her health (both mental and physical).

Thanks to Google Translate for its help with the Latvian language! ;)

Getting Niklavs Moscovitch to Washington turned out to be more challenging than Booth had expected. The family's fortune was modest and Helena's husband had made it clear that they didn't have the money to travel such long distance. Booth assured the man the Bureau would cover his expenses. It was then agreed Niklavs and his twin would be meeting him the following Wednesday.

He'd tried to imagine how Helena's husband would have looked like. In his mind, he saw a medium-sized man with a square jaw and blue eyes. From what he could remember, Helena had been pretty and Booth had figured she would have married a man of similar beauty, which is why it surprised him to find a tall and skinny man sitting across from him. His brown hair fell to his shoulders and his beard was unshaven.

The sadness reflecting in the Latvian man's eyes echoed his own sadness. He understood the man's pain more than he ever thought he would. Booth rejoiced in the knowledge that, once it was all over, his girlfriend would come back. Niklavs Moscovitch would not have that chance.

"Where are my children?" Niklavs asked as Booth took a seat across the table.

His English was heavily accented.

"Dr. Sweets is meeting with them," Booth replied as he pushed a Styrofoam cup towards the man. "Here's some water, if you'd like. Tell me how you and your wife met."

"She moved to Baltimore with her parents after high school. We both worked in a bookstore. She was 18 and I was 22. She was really beautiful, but she wanted nothing to do with me. She only wanted to be friends. Three years later, she finally agreed to go on a date with me. We were in a relationship for three years before she left me."

"Why did she leave?"

Niklavs took a gulp of water.

"Our relationship was difficult. We were always arguing and yelling at each other. I was jealous and she didn't like it. So she left."

"But she came back?"

Niklavs nodded.

"A year later, she decided to give me another chance. We married two years later and she immediately got pregnant with the twins. After they were born, there were times when we didn't get along. We argued on how to raise our children. Sometimes there was some yelling and I admit I might have pushed her a few times out of anger. But that doesn't mean I've killed her."

"I never said that you did."

"No, but I know how cops think," Niklavs replied. "Men aren't allowed to make mistakes. You think that just because I've shoved her in the past, I could have killed her out of passion."

"I never thought that. Your alibi for the day of your wife's disappearance checked out. You have nothing to be scared of."

"When Agatha and Janis started school, things were much better between Helena and me. They have been like that ever since."

"Why would your wife have run away if you were so happy together?"

Niklavs fell silent and lowered his gaze to the table.

"You weren't happy?" Booth asked, after a few seconds of silence.

The Latvian man shrugged.

"The twins were having trouble at school. My wife didn't want them to take the school bus anymore because of the torments they were dealing with on the way to school. My wife begged me to drive them to school every morning; she would pick them up at 4:00 pm and drive them home. It was easier for her and the twins, but it made me late for work every day. My boss was irritated and was threatening to fire me. I didn't want to be the one to tell him his son was terrorizing my twins."

"What happened on the day Helena disappeared? Did you notice anything unusual?"

"Helena left the house at the same time and went to work. I drove the kids to school. But then, around 4:30 pm, I got a call from my children's school asking me who was picking up my kids. I told the lady on the phone my wife was and that she should have been there by now. I was worried and I called my wife's school. They told me she had left immediately after the bell had rung. This I found odd since she always stayed a little later in the evening so she could pick the twins up at 4:00 pm. So I drove down to the high school. The twins were waiting for me on the steps outside. They asked where their mother was and I told them I didn't know."

Niklavs sighed.

"I already answered all of these questions when my wife disappeared. Do I really need to go through this again?"

The pleading in the man's eyes almost changed Booth's mind. In a gesture of the hand, he told Niklavs to continue.

"The police searched for a few days after I reported her missing. They checked the neighborhoods where she could have been, searched in rivers and surroundings lakes for her car but found nothing."

Booth cleared his throat. He hadn't told Niklavs about the discovery he had made earlier.

"When your wife's body was examined, it was determined that she died shortly over two months ago."

Niklavs gulped.

"She was alive all this time?" the man asked, his voice strangled.

Booth nodded.

"Do you have any idea why your wife could have abandoned you and your twins? Did she have any enemies or problems? Had she been complaining about someone just before she disappeared?"

The Latvian man shook his head.

"Thank you for your time, Mr. Moscovitch. That will be all for now."

Booth got to his feet.

"I'm very sorry about Helena. We went to the same high school. She was a very nice woman."

"Thank you, Agent Booth."

He'd been able to walk out of the interrogation room when a voice behind him stopped him.

"Please don't tell my kids," Niklavs pleaded. "They don't need to know their mother abandoned them."

Booth swallowed the lump that formed his throat.

"We don't need a psychiatrist," Janis grumbled, his eyes fixed on the linked fingers resting on his knees.

"Nobody said you needed one," Sweets replied, patiently.

"So why are we sitting in your office?" the teenage boy asked.

"I just thought you would be more comfortable here than in a small interrogation room."

The boy said nothing more.

Sweets examined the two children sitting across from him on the blue couch. They would both tall and lanky. Their rusty-coloured hair betrayed their maternal genes, but their chocolate brown eyes resembled those of their father. Sitting closely together on the couch, they were both staring at their hands.

"I would like to know what happened the day your mother disappeared."

Agatha slowly looked up from her hands and glanced sideways at her brother. Janis didn't move a muscle.

"Is there anything you would like to tell me, Agatha?" Sweets asked in his soft voice.

The young girl resettled her gaze on her hands.

"We won't speak, Dr. Sweets," Janis replied. "We've already told the police what we know. You're wasting your time on us. We don't know what happened to our mother."

His head snapped up and his eyes settled on Sweets. His gaze bore into him, making the psychologist slightly uncomfortable. There was something hard and indescribable in the teenager's brown orbs.

"Our mother abandoned us and it got her killed. She deserved what happened to her."

Sweets was stunned by the boy's harsh words.

"You think your mother deserved to die?"

Before her brother could answer, Agatha spoke.

"No, she didn't deserve to die."

She heard her brother scoff beside her.

"Viņa nav pelnījuši mirt, Janis." She didn't deserve to die, Janis.

Then, turning back to Sweets, she went on.

"My mother was very nice, Dr. Sweets. Everyone loved her. We know you're looking for enemies, but she didn't have any."

"Sometimes, parents have private lives that their children don't know about. I don't expect you to know everything about your mother's life. What I want to know is what happened the day she disappeared."

"She made us breakfast and then left for work," Janis replied with the same steeliness. "She was supposed to pick us up at school but she didn't. And now, she's dead. That's all there is to know."

Agatha opened her mouth to speak but one look at her brother made her close it.

"That's all there is to know, Agatha."

Sweets bit the inside of his mouth as he observed the peculiar behavior of the teenage boy.

"The husband doesn't know much," Booth informed Sweets as the two men walked towards Booth's office. "He said everything seemed normal that morning. He definitely didn't expect his wife to take off on him."

Sweets nodded.

"The twins know something," he replied as they walked in the office.

Sweets closed the door behind him.

"The older brother has an extremely dominant behavior towards his sister. He's probably the older twin, feels like he needs to protect her. Whatever she had to say, Janis didn't want her to tell us."

"So, what are we going to do? We can't keep them here. They're heading back home as we speak. They didn't want to indulge on the FBI's money."

"That's pretty generous of them," Sweets replied.

"I'll keep looking through the files. Maybe something will pop out."

Booth took a seat at his computer. He had expected Sweets to leave his office. Instead, the psychologist was still standing across from him, looking at him expectantly.

"What?" Booth asked, irritated.

"I was just wondering how you were doing. It can't be easy to work on this case."

"I'm fine, Sweets."

"After all, two kids were abandoned by their mother and a man by his wife."

"I'm fine, Sweets," Booth replied through gritted teeth.

"Have you finally cleaned your house?"

Booth's head snapped in his direction but he said nothing.

"Maybe it's time you tidy up a little. The last time I was there, Christine's toys were still scattered across the house. They're not coming back any time soon. It would help with the grieving process if-"

"I haven't got around to it," Booth replied, anger once again rising inside him.

Sweets stared at him which only resulted in irritating him more.

"Don't you have work to do in your office?" Booth asked as he swivelled back to his computer screen.

Seconds later, he heard the door to his office open and close.

It was harder than he had expected it to be. After Sweets's departure, his friend's words had echoed through his mind. Many times over the last couple of weeks he had thought of putting the toys and other baby material away. Many times, he had ignored the chore, promising himself he would do it the following day. Yet tonight, he knew it had to be done. Looking at those colorful toys wouldn't bring his daughter back.

With each toy he put in the box, a tiny piece of his heart broke off. As he went through each room, gathering things here and there, he thought of them for the hundredth time today. He tried to picture his daughter's eyes and features and to recall her laughter. He thought back to her first weeks in the house. The new parents had marvelled at the calmness and quietness of their daughter. She slept part of the night and only cried when she needed feeding or changing. The rest of her time was spent smiling at her parents and giggling at their attention.

On that thought, he climbed up the stairs and walked to Christine's bedroom. There were still the baby monitors which had provided the parents 24-hour surveillance on their daughter. Reaching up, he un-taped each one from the wall and chucked them in the box.

In the master bedroom, he paused near his bed. The alarm clock glowed 6:43. Reaching over, he unplugged it from the wall. Since the alarm had broken several weeks earlier, he would throw it out. Bones had wanted to keep it, stating that she naturally woke up at 5:30 am and that she would pull him from his sleep when it was time for him to get ready. He'd laughed it off back then, but now that his girlfriend was gone, he would need an actual alarm that worked.

He circled each room, checking if he had missed anything. The rooms were tidy and silence engulfed him. The box felt heavy in his arms. He stuffed it in the attic and went back down to the kitchen to throw out the alarm clock. Grabbing the garbage bag, he pulled it out of the garbage can, tied a knot at the top and dragged it out to the curb, glad the garbage truck would be picking it up the following morning.

Satisfied, he walked back in and turned on the TV to erase the loneliness he felt whenever he was in his home.