/ / / Snooping \ \ \

Doris sat in the living room of the home she'd shared with John and saw the changes. The paint and the furniture were nothing important, she'd known that life would continue on without her but the changes to the house were more than she had been expecting. Joe had told her that Mary was on the mainland and had taken up a fairly nomadic lifestyle. He had said that Steve was in the Navy, like his grandfather, and that he'd come back after John's death. She knew he hadn't married and he didn't have any children but Joe hadn't said much about Steve's relationship with Danny.

Steve had told her she wasn't allowed to stay with him and she'd taken the taxi but like her plane she turned it around when she was sure that they had left for work. Steve really did need to work on his security system if he was so worried about protecting his new family.

Doris had checked out some of the house before she'd made breakfast but she had been sure that Steve would let her move in and she'd have more chances to look into her son's life now. Doris could understand why Steve had said she could not stay but she could never understand how he could throw her over for people who were not family in the same way she was. She was his mother, she hadn't been able to see him in twenty years and, even now that he could spend time with her, he was choosing someone else. She hadn't expected to come back to him having a little family even if it was someone else's family.

Joe had told her that he suspected there was something going on between Danny and Steve when Wo Fat captured her son in Korea. He told Doris that they were dating but he had failed to mention that they were living together, that Danny had a daughter and a chip on his shoulder. Doris looked at the painting again, she remembered the picnic, it was the day before she knew what she had to do. Wo Fat was getting too close and he could not discover that the woman he'd known as Jane Shelburne and Doris McGarrett were the same person. That was the last time she had been able to pretend that Jane Shelburne didn't exist. Not that she had any chance of that anymore. Joe had brought Steve to her too soon; they should have waited until they were sure of Wo Fat before they revealed her true identity. None of that mattered anymore, the cat was out of the bag and she would have to wait and see what the fallout was going to be.

Doris could hear the ocean through the door she'd left open to the backyard and the beach beyond. Steve had purchased new furniture out there, or John had after she 'died' but John had never been a very good shopper. She would check out the backyard later, she had looked through the kitchen earlier. There was a never ending supply of health food mixed in between children's foods and the occasional snack. Leftover homemade pizza in the fridge and a freezer full of meals that could be reheated; the freezer of a cop, she remembered it well. She had always had the freezer half full of meals John could reheat when he came home in the middle of the night. Even with that they still had a fridge filled with fruit and vegetables, so they made sure to eat at home regularly or they were just wasting food. Her Steve had never been wasteful though so they must make an effort to balance their lives.

She went and checked her old room, a different colour now and reorganised. It was obvious that two people lived in the room but Steve seemed to have lost that habit of making his bed every morning, the sheets thrown back and the sleep pants both were wearing when they'd come downstairs thrown over the end of the bed together. She could see that the bedside tables on both sides had locks to hold their guns. She left the room and wandered through the rest of the house. The blue bathroom that made it look like there were three people living here all the time, at least she assumed that her son didn't need mermaid bubbles.

Steve's old room had been turned into a guest room but she recognised her old bed frame. She sat down near the pillows and ran her fingers along the turned dark wood. There would be a gash in the wood behind the top of the mattress from Mary jumping on the bed and falling when she was playing swords with Steve. She moved the mattress to see if it was still there and ran her finger along the time rounded edge. Other than this bed there was nothing in here she recognised except the painting above the bed, obviously done by Danny as well; since it was painted by the same hand. The painting was of a mountain, trees bending against the wind, snow flying off the branches and being caught in the same wind. It was a lovely painting but such a contrast to the balmy Hawaii weather.

Mary's room was the last bedroom and she hesitated at the door remembering it as it was. Joe told her that Mary was on the mainland and that she'd been home much until after John died. Now she didn't even have a home to come back to, it had been changed and made into Steve's house. She was looking forward to seeing Mary, knowing what was going on with her and finding out how she felt about Danny. She pushed the door open and was suddenly standing in a little girl's paradise. The walls were purple and the room was full of Danny's daughter. Doris went into the room and saw the decorations on the bed, hand-painted from the look of it all and probably the work of Danny as well. It was a great children's room but it seemed more than a girl needed when she would only be spending four days in a fortnight in the house. Doris had done a little digging and found out more information about Danny. His ex-wife, Rachel, had remarried a developer working on the island and Danny had followed her out. According to the person she'd contacted Rachel's husband's company had won a contract in Nevada and they were trying to move out there. If Danny had left New Jersey and his family to follow his daughter, if he had created for her an entire room for only a few nights and if she was leaving Hawaii then he would be leaving as well. Steve had lost enough people and she didn't think that Danny was committed to her son and would just break his heart when Danny left Steve to follow his daughter back to the mainland.

Doris knew her son was at least a little gay before she had disappeared. Steve never had been able to hide anything, it was a surprise he'd done so well hiding things when he was a SEAL. He couldn't hide his affection for his partner now and that was a bad thing. Danny wasn't committed to Hawaii, the people she had spoken to said he disliked the island. Kamekona had been incredibly forthcoming when she had gone down to see him. A few plates of shrimp and Kamekona had been completely willing to tell her about Danny, who disliked Hawaii and had spent the time he'd been on the island complaining and missing New Jersey. From what Kamekona had said Steve and Danny had been fighting since they'd met but he seemed to be sure that they were a good couple. Doris was not convinced.

Doris wanted the best for Steve but she really didn't believe that Danny was the best thing for her son. When he'd come to Japan with Steve he had been argumentative and so judgemental. He had never had to make a decision like the one she had made. Doris loved her family, she had cared about John from the first time they'd met when she'd been on the tail end of the mission that ended with the murder of Wo Fat's father. She had come to the island for a break at the end of the mission and had met John, not long out of the academy and so handsome in his uniform. She had been pulled over for driving too fast and had tried to flirt her way out of it. In the end she had got a ticket and a date. By the end of the month when she was supposed to be heading back to headquarters for her next assignment she contacted her handler and quit instead. They had been hesitant to let her go but she had agreed to keep an eye on a few sensitive matters while she settled into a new life. By the end of the year they were married and Doris was trying to get settled into a new career. They'd been happy, they'd fought but she understood his job, that desire to make the world a better place and unlike so many of the other policeman's wives she had been able to accept the things that made the other women angry. She had made it through almost twenty years completely sure that she had left her old life behind but then a man, who worked for the same agency that she had, had come to the island and told her that the boy who'd lost his father had become a man that she needed to fear. Joe had been a part of the agency once, a liaison for the Navy and he helped her where he could but in the end there were no other options but to protect the people she loved in the best way she knew how. It had broken her heart to leave them and every day from that one she had thought of every one of them. She had to protect them from her mistakes but Steve had run after his own mistakes and she wasn't going to stop him from making his own choices. He was his father's son and enough like Doris that she knew that he would follow his beliefs to the end of the world and beyond. She had been proud when Joe told her he'd joined the Navy. She knew it would bring him grief and pain and his own demons but it was his choice and she had ensured that he would be able to make those choices without Wo Fat getting in the way.

Doris closed Grace's door and hoped that she would be able to make her son see the truth of loving someone who wasn't as committed to you as they were to others. He had lost enough in his life and Doris knew that enough of that was her fault and she didn't want any more for him. She moved through the rest of the house, the corner that had been given to Danny and his painting, the kitchen that was just enough of what she had planned years ago but so obviously someone else's hand had changed it, everything that had been familiar was changed and she felt more keenly than she had since she'd come back that the family she had been protecting wasn't waiting for her. She had left Steve in an incredibly negative way that morning and she wanted to fix it. She had stayed to get to know her son again and she was determined to do it.

Doris called the taxi company again and then called a hotel. It wouldn't do for long but it would do for now. She sent a message to Steve letting him know where she would be staying and locked the house behind her. She hadn't found the answers she wanted in the house and while she believed that Steve was allowing Danny's dislike of her to cloud his behaviour she knew the best plan would be to approach him head on. She couldn't stay here to get to know him but she could go and see him and attempt to make things from this morning a little better.

Before she left she rolled the carpet in the back room and pried the floorboard up. She wasn't sure if it would still be there after the work Steve and Danny had done on her house but it was. She pulled the safe out and tucked it into one of her bags before putting the room back together again. There was a honk outside and Doris grabbed her things leaving the house locked behind her.

/ / / / /

This is hopefully enough to get them to the point they were in by the end of the episode when Doris and Steve were saying things were good between them.