Hello all!

Let's find out more about this case, shall we?

Although they didn't really talk about it, Gillian and Cal mutually and easily recognised that they couldn't afford to think about themselves. They weren't going to trouble themselves with who was going to sleep where, they were going to pay attention not to slip into the domestic familiarity of having meals together they had so easily developed and they were going to focus on work. In the grand scheme of things of five families dealing with their missing children, the fact that being in such a place together made them wish they could be there on holiday rather than on a case or that they couldn't curl up on the couch next to each really didn't seem like much of a problem.

True to their professional commitment, after their little moment out on the terrace they put all of the personal considerations aside and quickly tuned back on the case. They helped Emily set up, making sure to let her know she was doing a great job every now and then, and when Cal and Gillian were satisfied with the arrangement and were ready to rewatch the interview from that afternoon the young girl announced she was going to get dinner underway.

The adults looked at each other, one of those looks that said a million things in absolute silence. They hadn't had much time to discuss that really, but they were on the same page. Emily was doing a good job but she was also trying too hard to prove that she was. They both thought she had to relax but they also knew that telling her so wasn't going to accomplish much. Cal felt a good strategy was to let her tire herself out and get past that first day, hoping the adrenaline of the new experience would dissipate during the night and she would face the new day with a calmer attitude; from her perspective, Gillian knew it was useless to tell Emily not to worry about everything and that she didn't need to behave as if she was their maid, at least on that first day. Without any consultation, they both thought that they were going to let her have that evening of frantic behavior but that they were no longer going to enable her come morning.

Still, the meat and vegetable concoction she put on the table was strangely delicious, and after dinner they felt energized and ready to dive back in, while Emily took care of the dishes. With some time gone by, less fatigue and a full belly, it was easier to tackle the images of the grieving parents, but there was still something they were failing to grasp. With the dishes done, Emily took charge of the improvised dashboard and followed their instructions on the video as they watched, rewatched, paused and discussed.

After nearly two hours, fatigue and a touch of frustration started to settle in. The parents were certainly worried, as expected, but something in the way they talked about their missing daughter didn't add up. Gillian had asked several questions about the child's early years, trying to establish what a normal emotional reaction would look like and seeing predictable sorrow and nostalgia for times that were gone, but Cal couldn't shake off the idea that their expressions about more recent memories seemed to tell a different story.

The truth was, neither of them was finding that case an easy one to approach. It wasn't the first time they worked on missing children, but never so many at once and with so little to work with. Cal knew it was always tough on Gillian when kids were involved, and she was well aware that as a father the matter was always a sensitive one for him too, especially with Emily around as the thought he could lose his little girl was basically living rent free in the back of his head..

"Well, don't know about you love but I need a break," Cal huffed after a while, standing up from the couch and heading for the night area of the cabin while patting his stomach. "And I think dinner has about just gone through the pipes already."

"Ew Dad!" Emily squirmed at his subtle insinuation as Gillian rolled her eyes.

"What?" He quipped, faking innocence as he approached the girl and squeezed her shoulder. "Take it as a compliment to the chef, Em."

With Emily still mumbling that he should be watching his manners, oblivious to the fact that Gillian was already well versed in that particular kind of humor, Cal smirked and left for the bathroom. Left alone with the older woman, Emily felt the urge to apologize to Gillian for her father's crass behavior but Foster waved it off as she approached the table. Gillian and Cal had occupied the couch facing the projector, while Emily had been stationed at the table to operate the equipment and take notes. She had been mostly silent, watching them work not wanting to disturb the process, and only then Gillian realized how long they had been going at it, paying little attention to her. Emily looked tired, but then again they were all a bit worse for wear after the long day, and Gillian smiled bitterly when she saw the girl taking advantage of the break to clear some items from the table. She really couldn't stop, even though she was running on fumes at that point of the day she was still in 'keep busy and look useful' mode, which was admirable but also a little hard for Gillian to see.

"So Emily," she asked then, approaching the table and knowing starting up a conversation would have at least caused the girl to stop doing whatever she was doing. "What do you think?"

"Uh?"

Gillian smiled, bemused by the surprise on the girl's face. Then she glanced back at the screen with the frozen image and looked back at her, encouraging.

"About the case so far, this interview," she clarified, then shrugged absently. "You're not here to cook and clean up, you know."

For reasons Gillian didn't quite understand, Emily blushed and looked down at her hands holding two empty glasses she was about to wash up in the sink. Gillian tilted her head to her side and smiled knowingly at the girl when she looked back at her, then took the items from her hands and took care of it instead.

"C'mon Emily," Foster insisted then. "You know what we do, you've seen how it works many times. And you're a smart girl, I'm sure you have some ideas."

"I may have picked up something here and there but I really couldn't tell. You guys are the experts."

"Yes, but we can always use a different perspective." Emily frowned, intrigued but not sure about where the woman was going. Gillian smiled at that reaction, more of a grin Cal would have been proud of really, then put her hands on Emily's shoulder and guided her to the couch. "You see, we always look for lies and deception because we expect to find them and when we don't see what we are looking for we struggle to understand."

"Dad says everybody lies."

"Well, he's not wrong, especially in our line of work. But sometimes it's a limit to think like that, like now." Gillian pointed at the screen, "The Sheriff didn't find any evidence that the families might be involved but we still have to consider the possibility. We are expecting to see something like that and we are not. we don't understand what we see because we don't know what we are looking for yet."

"So you're just assuming the parents did something wrong? That's depressing." Gillian had to admit she wasn't wrong, but then again they had seen things like that happen too many times to feel like they had too bleak of a view of the world. "But in this case I think you might be right."

"Really?" The surprise in Gillian's voice was genuine, and so was her puzzled frown. "How come?"

"I don't know, it's just-" Emily shrugged and sighed, looking away as if she was ashamed to have an opinion on the matter. "I have the feeling these parents don't expect their daughter to come back."

"How-why would you say that?"

In the blink of an eye, Gillian had gone from trying to make Emily feel part of the team and included in the investigation to being on high alert. When she had asked what she thought of the case she mostly wanted Emily to stop acting like their maid, but that was a very precise and poignant observation worth exploring.

"The girl's bedroom," Emily replied with another shrug, but this time her voice sounded more confident.

"We didn't go to her room."

"I did. I asked permission, of course," she urged to clarify. "When you finished the interview and the sheriff was talking with you and the mother, I asked if I could go take some pictures of the bedroom and the father said I could."

"And what about the room then?"

Emily seemed to think about it for a second, eventually accepting she wasn't in trouble and that Gillian's interest was definitely peaked by her actions. Then she went to the laptop on the table and plugged in the SD card taken from the camera, and used the keyboard to bring up on the big screen images of the girl's bedroom. Feeling a little out of loop and somewhat ashamed, Gillian looked at the images of the room seeing nothing peculiar. It was a fairly big room, especially for a five year old, with the bed covered by stuffed animals and lots of pink toys and accessories all over the place. There were also big cardboard boxes, a horse hanger with some laundry left to dry and, folded in the corner, a compact exercise bike.

"I don't understand," Gillian had to admit, shaking her head absently. "What about it?"

"The boxes, the laundry," Emily said, and Gillian could almost swear the girl was trying not to show her up at that point. "This girl has been missing for what, two weeks? And her parents are already using the room to store stuff and move in other things. I don't know I-" She sighed, once again looking away as if she thought what she was about to say was going to sound really silly. "I know it's not the same, but whenever I come back to Mom's or Dad's my room is always ready for me. A while back Mom's boyfriend wanted to move his painting stuff in my room but she said no, and I know Dad cleans up my room every time I come home. He changes the bed with fresh linen and he even hoovers under the bed, I know because I always leave some shoes or something under it and it's always gone. I know-" Gillian was mesmerized, and sad that Cal was missing all of that. "I think if I'd go missing my parents would keep my room ready for me, no matter how long I'm gone for."

Despite the sudden somber atmosphere brought upon by Emily's last words, Gillian couldn't help but smile. She didn't know about Zoe but she knew of Cal's routine for Emily's return, and overall the fact that the young woman could display that level of sensibility and reasoning while facing such a tough situation spoke volumes about her ability to connect and empathize with others. Careful, looking at Emily and seeing that she was a bundle of nerves worried she may have spoken out of place, Gillian went over to her and put her hands on the girl's shoulders.

"I think you might be onto something here, Emily," she said then. "Can you show me those pictures again?"

Emily complied immediately, a renewed energy and confidence running through her. She knew Gillian had lied to her in the past and would again if it came down to protecting her or hiding the crazy things her dad did, but she was too much of a good person to be patronizing and play along just to make her feel good about something like that. Gillian was being honest, her observation was worth looking into and she felt utterly overjoyed that she was able to contribute.

She pulled up the images again, going through them one at the time and was pointing out to Gillian what looked weird to her when Cal came back into the living room.

"What did I miss?" He smirked as he saw the two of them confabulating shoulder to shoulder.

"Nothing much," Foster mumbled absently, giving Emily a little complicit smirk. "Emily might have just broken the case wide open."

"Aye aye!" Cal chuckled, but he quickly became serious as he looked at the women and realized Gillian was not joking. "Alright, what is it?"

Encouraged by Gillian's smile, and even more by her previous reaction, Emily took a deep breath and re-ashed her theory for Cal. Throughout her explanation he kept a steady face, almost unreadable even for Gillian, but his eyes were sparking with interest and that deep focus of his, following Emily as she looked at her notes, showed him the pictures and blushed ever so slightly when she came to the point of revealing again his cleaning habits. By the time she was finished, Cal had to physically fight the urge to run over to her and squeeze her as tight as he could, pushed by a mix of pride, love and just a touch of guilt. Instead, he nodded slowly and looked at the pictures on the screen, coming closer as he studied them, thoughtful and attentive.

"What made you want to go check the bedroom in the first place?" He asked then, still looking at the images.

"I don't know exactly, I just thought maybe there could be something useful. Things she likes, or some clues that she might have run away." Gillian and Cal looked at each other, knowing Emily was holding back some of her real reasons but deciding not to push. "You know, in case there was some trouble at home or something."

Cal felt something tugging at him as he watched his daughter look away, no longer shy about sharing her ideas but rather affected by her own words and thoughts. He looked at Gillian, who looked back immediately with a soft expression that screamed so much affection he nearly couldn't take it, then he nodded at her and went over to Emily. For a brief second he was afraid she might pull back, perhaps because she didn't want him to read her or simply because she didn't want him to treat her like a little girl in front of Gillian. But she didn't and he gently wrapped his arms around her shoulder and guided her to the couch, where they sat next to each other and she immediately snuggled up on him for comfort.

"Talk to me Em," he said then, trying to sound as cheerful as possible. "This is new for all of us, and we all need to adjust as we go along. But the last thing I want is to have you think I'm not paying attention to you."

He heard her sigh as she buried her face and relaxed a little, knowing that was a preamble to her explanation. Cal looked over at Gillian, who had walked away to give them some space and rolled his eyes at that, but then focused back on Emily as she pulled back to look up at him.

"I saw you guys at work before, watched you going through tapes and recordings but I never really saw you doing it. Not like this." Never ceasing to hold her, Cal looked up at Gillian knowing she was no longer pretending that conversation was none of her business. "Gillian said you had to rule out the possibilities the parents have something to do with this. I watched you and Gillian interviewing them…It went on for such a long time and when it was over all I could think about was that little missing girl," Cal felt his daughter's arms tighten around him and instinctively kissed her forehead, her voice muffled with her mouth sunk in his chest. "I just want to see her room to try and get to know her."

Part of him wasn't surprised. In the past Emily had already shown that heightened sensibility towards others, especially people in need. She had a knack for it, understanding when people needed help but weren't comfortable asking; he didn't entirely like the fact that she had that attention for strangers, and even less that she was so frequently exposed to that kind of situation. However, another part of him was astonished that she could feel that way about someone she hadn't even met yet, that she had felt a certain way about it and acted on it somehow. Not to mention, he was stunned that the product of that odd mix was a very reasonable element for them to move the case along.

After a while, Cal gently pulled her away from him and held her chin with his hand, making sure she was looking at him and that the worst was past her.

"You know we don't like to promise we would solve a case, and I can't promise we will find these children," he spoke softly, and Gillian heard a touch of a pain in his voice as he had to admit out loud they were fallible. "But I can promise you we will do everything we can, right?" Emily nodded, color coming back to her face. "And with we I mean you too, love. That was one hell of an epiphany you had, we will look into that first thing tomorrow, ok?"

Emily nodded, a large smile coming up to her face before she launched forward into another hug to her father. While enjoying that, and the fact that the crisis had been averted, his eyes wandered around the room and found Gillian absently whipping her eyes with her hand, and he would have given anything in the world to be able to tell her to come over and join in the hug. Instead, when Emily pulled away he said it was probably time to call it a day and that she should go to sleep. He was softly stern when she said that she was going to tidy up first and told her not to worry about it, and Gillian followed with the same tone to tell her they would take care of it.

The fatigue and stress of the day seemed to have finally caught up with Emily, because the girl didn't oppose much resistance and accepted the directions given. She kissed her father good night and gave him a tight hug, then walked over to Gillian and hugged her too, whispering a soft 'thank you' before leaving the room. Once she was gone, Cal stood up and went to close the door of the corridor behind Emily, then leaned on it with his hands in his pockets and looked at Gillian.

"Hell of a day." He mumbled, and Gllian nodded knowingly.

She didn't know what else to do or say, not with the realization that they were finally alone again sinking in. It had been weeks since she had felt that way around Cal, during those awkward and awful days of silent confrontation and avoidance following the fight that had ignited the spark. Gillian knew what she wanted to do, go to him and let him hold her; she knew what she wanted to say, that he had an amazing daughter and that she was sorry she hadn't fought harder against the idea of taking Emily with them-

"Now love, no need to do that," Cal smirked softly, evidently catching the last wagon of her train of thoughts. "We both agreed to this."

"I could have tried to be less…accommodating about it," she sighed then glanced over at the images still on the screen. "Especially with a case like this."

Cal didn't reply but followed her gaze, then walked up to the laptop on the table and switched it off. They'd all had enough of that for one day, that was beyond question, besides if he wanted to have at last a chance to get some sleep he needed to put some distance between his mind and the case. They didn't say much while they tidied up, clearing the table of loose cutlery and kitchenware, notes and equipment, and once they were done Cal glanced at the couch that was to become his bed and sighed.

"I'm sorry about that," Gillian moaned softly, but he shrugged.

"Not the end of the world," he wiggled his eyebrows at her. "Looks comfy enough, don't worry about me."

"Well, I might have something that will help you sleep better."

"Aye aye?" He quizzed, intrigued in all the wrong ways by her tone and sudden mischievous grin. Then he watched her going for her own bag and looking for something inside it, emerging with a very familiar bottle. "That could lead to trouble, love." He whispered then, but they both knew he was being playful more than anything else.

"I think we can have a drink," Gillian explained while pouring two glasses, "without making a mess."

Cal wasn't entirely sure what kind of mess she was talking about but he had the strong idea it would be the good kind of mess, then smiled softly and took the glass from her hand. He then brought it to his lips but she shook her head no and instead motioned him to follow him, then went to the main door and opened it, stepping on the front porch. Thinking back at their short conversation out back Cal felt a little wary about the invitation, but he also realized those kinds of moments were probably all they were going to get so might as well enjoy them. When he reached her outside, Gillian was sitting on a rocking chair and looking at the darkness around them, relaxed and lost in the silence surrounding the cabin. Cal watched her for a while, thinking even with her very city-style attire she looked like she belonged there, completely at ease, then stood next to her and presented her his glass for a quick toast.

Gillian returned the gesture and they took the first sip in silence, enjoying what had been an end of day ritual for them long before their relationship. Cal was glad she had thought about it, that little moment was a much welcomed familiar element in a situation that presented novelty and unpredictability everywhere they looked. That easily led to thinking about similar moments they had shared over the past weeks, hanging around the office late in the evening when everybody had gone home, enjoying the thrill of private intimacy in a place that was all about uncovering the truth even though they could have gone to either's home for that. Sometimes they let lust take over, but mostly they would just share the couch, chatting about the day and sometimes taking the more difficult path of opening up about things they had gone through before becoming an item.

It would have been easy, so easy, to do the same at that moment. Emily was in her room, possibly already asleep, with closed doors and a reasonable distance between them. It wouldn't have been a big deal, all they had to do was to keep it quiet, perhaps sneak in the darkest corner of the porch and kiss, just kiss, for a little while. Cal had been thinking about that, absently eyeing the corner at his left, when he heard a long and loud sigh coming from Gillian. He looked down at her, her face clearly visible since she was sitting by the open door with the light from the inside projecting on her, and caught her looking at the very same corner with a dreamy expression.

"We're hopeless," he chuckled then, and Gillian immediately realized what he meant.

"Could be worse," she objected then.

"How?!" He moaned.

"What if he had to sleep in the same room?" Cal groaned, immediately feeling how frustrating that would have been, but then chuckled softly.

"Tell you the truth love, I'm surprised Emily didn't 'accidentally' book us a room to share."

Gillian stifled a laugh of her own and shook her head, thinking he wasn't probably all that wrong. Then she thought about Emily, about how the girl had thrown herself at that whole thing with an incredible balance of wild enthusiasm and extreme care and attention and bit at her bottom lip.

"That thing she saw about the bedroom, the way she processed it," Gillian said then. "She's really good at this."

"Yeah," Cal huffed, gulping down the rest of his drink with a grimace. "I'm not sure I want her to be, not at this kind of stuff."

"We're here for her, she knows that Cal." She reassured him, but she didn't look at him and therefore missed how fondly he smiled at her saying 'we'. "Maybe tomorrow you can take her with you to the Sheriff, go through the families' records and movements before the children's disappearance. I will go back to the Greys and probe a bit more about this bedroom idea."

"Sounds like a plan," Cal mumbled, then dared to gently place his hand on her shoulder. They froze for a second at the contact, powerful in its simplicity even with the layer of clothing separating their skins, then Gillian looked up at him. "Thanks love."

She nodded at him but didn't move, not for a while, not when she realized that the following act would have been wishing each other goodnight and go their separate ways, ending the moment. Eventually, Cal was the one who pulled back, knowing the longer they stayed out there the higher the risk to do something they shouldn't. Gillian nodded and stood up, then they both went inside and Cal washed up the glasses while she carefully put the bottle back in her bag. He grinned at that, thinking it was somewhat silly and endearing, then mouthed a soft 'goodnight' at her before she disappeared in the hallway. Standing by the table, Cal waited for her to close the door of her room then went to once again seal the one separating the day and night area of the cabin, stupidly wondering about the many meanings and uses of doors for the first time in his life.