October 4, 1997

Carly Ashton lay wide awake as her husband slept, seemingly soundly, beside her. It was still more than a little weird to call a man she barely knew her husband. Even if the plan had been her idea, she had never really believed that Ned would ever go for it. At first, he hadn't, not when Jason asked him, or even when she scheduled her own ELQ Lunch meeting to plead her case. A little more than twelve hours after the lunch debacle he had shown up at the room Jason was paying for in the Port Charles Hotel and told her he had reconsidered. He had never explained what had changed his mind, and she had carefully not asked. He hadn't stayed long but he had returned the next day with the engagement ring of her dreams and whisked her away on the ELQ Jet.

September 25, 1997

Caroline Benson gazed out at the clouds as the ELQ Jet soared amongst them. She had never flown on a private plane before and the ELQ Jet was larger, and much more tasteful, than the double wide she had grown up in. Her emotions oscillated between excitement and fear. "You still haven't told me where we are going," she said.

Ned Ashton glanced up from the laptop computer he had been silently engrossed in the first hour of the flight. "I thought you would want your mother at our wedding. Jason mentioned she wasn't well and I figured perhaps it would be easier for us to go to her."

Jason was one of the few people that knew about the stroke her adoptive mother had in April. She had gotten the call about Virginia less than forty-eight hours after her biological mother had discovered she was having an affair with her stepfather. Except Bobbie hadn't realized that her own daughter was the one who had stolen her husband. Only Bobbie's big brother, Luke, Carly herself, and, just recently, Jason knew that truth. That left Carly to wonder exactly how much of that truth Jason had shared with his cousin Ned.

"She is doing much better now. It has been almost six months since her stroke," Carly said.

"I'm glad to hear that," Ned said.

Surprisingly Ned's words sounded genuine, or at least much more genuine than Carly felt in the moment. "Is that what happened to Lila? Is that why she is in a wheelchair?" she asked.

"No, she broke her hip seven years ago. She had a bad reaction to anesthesia, something called malignant hyperthermia, a few years before that and decided that having the hip surgically repaired was just too risky," Ned explained.

"Jason never really explained that."

"Jason was in high school when both things happened. He was living in Boston with his parents then."

"I thought you and Jason grew up together?"

"In many ways Jason's father might as well have been another son. Grandmother and Grandfather raised him after his parents died in that hotel fire in Bel-Air in 1961. He went off to college before I was born. Then he stayed in Boston where he and his wife started a law firm. They came back to Port Charles to visit at least one weekend a month. I was six when Jason was born. Uncle Alan became his godfather and then they visited even more frequently. Jason even lived with Alan and Monica his first two years at PCU."

"So, you were close?"

"Sure, we're cousins, although Jason and AJ were a lot closer. I'm sure Grandmother remembers the connection Jason and AJ had when she sees my little brother, Dylan, and Alan and Monica's youngest son, Kirk, in action."

Carly wasn't sure how to reconcile Ned's stories of the person Jason had been before. She couldn't imagine the man she loved voluntarily spending time with a stiff like AJ Quartermaine."

"How much does your mother know about your time in Port Charles?" Ned asked.

Carly swallowed hard. Nothing would be the honest answer. When she had come back to Florida after her mother had her stroke, she hadn't volunteered a thing about where she had been. Her mother had known better than to ask.

"I'm not trying to interrogate you. I just wanted to prepare myself for the visit."

"My mother doesn't know about the baby. Thanks to this retroverted uterus I won't actually start to show until I'm about to deliver in December."

"Does that mean you want to wait to announce the pregnancy to your mom until after we marry?"

Carly decided not to volunteer that she was still working on wrapping her head around the idea of marrying Ned. It had been her wacky plan after all, Ned was just going along with it. "I think that might be best," she finally managed to say.

"That is fine. She is your mother, so I'll entrust that decision to you," Ned said.

When she remembered the conversation, one word stood out-entrust. Did Ned actually trust her? Why would he? Why should he? Did he mistakenly believe that Jason had trusted her? Was it possible that Jason actually had trusted her? As she wrestled with those questions and clung to the hope that perhaps Jason actually had trusted her, perhaps he even still did, Carly finally drifted off to sleep.

XXXXXXXX

Sixteen-year-old JR Chandler awoke in his jeep with a splitting headache and the overwhelming urge to hurl. As he opened the door, he lost his balance and fell into a heap in some parking lot. He tried to regain his bearings but instead he found himself puking all over the parking lot.

JR wasn't sure exactly where he was, and the events of the past evening were more than a little fuzzy. He remembered going to some club Alison Barrington had selected. Her boyfriend had an in with the bartender, so the drinks had been flowing freely. She had introduced him to one of her friends, a bubble headed blonde who's name he couldn't recall. He also couldn't recall exactly what had happened, but he was almost certain they had sex. As he wiped the vomit off his face JR reflected on sleeping with a girl who's name he couldn't remember and accepted he had finally become his father. That disturbed him, a little.

As he struggled to stand, he felt a vibration in the pocket of his jeans. He reached in to retrieve his phone, lost his balance, fell against his jeep, uttered a few of his favorite curses, and finally managed to depress the talk button on his phone. "Hello," he mumbled.

"Good grief, JR, it's about time! Everyone has been trying to track you down since yesterday afternoon, where have you been?" his sister, Hayley Chandler-Santos asked.

JR was quite sure he didn't believe Hayley's words. His father might have fought for custody, but he had done that to punish his ex-wife not because he had interest in actually raising his son. "I doubt dad even cares where I am, especially now with Liza's new baby on the way. He might finally find his suitable heir."

"Liza's plane had some kind of problem landing. She was rushed to the hospital, but it doesn't look good. The doctors are saying she might lose the baby," Hayley said.

JR felt a twinge of guilt. He hadn't exactly been happy to hear that his father's latest wife was expecting a child. He had heard Skye hadn't exactly been thrilled to hear of his conception either. Hayley was eight years older than he was, but she hadn't discovered that Adam Chandler was her father until the Thanksgiving he had been seven. He remembered how she had crashed their Thanksgiving Feast and called their father out.

Hayley's voice pulled JR away from his thoughts. "Have you been drinking, JR?" she asked.

For some reason JR couldn't lie to her. "I went out with some friends," he said.

"Where are you? I'll come get you and we'll go to the hospital together."

"I went to visit a friend from summer camp. I'm in Port Charles."

"In NY? Do you remember my high school boyfriend Brian Bodine? He is in Port Charles working on some development project with ELQ Enterprises. I could see if he could arrange to get you to the airport for the first flight out. I think dad really needs us here especially if the baby doesn't survive. You must remember how upset he was after Anna Claire's death."

"That was because Gloria went crazy and tried to kill him," JR said.

"She had postpartum psychosis, JR, it wasn't intentional. Give me the address of your friend and I'll give it to Brian. I'll call him in a little bit he still gets up and goes for those four am runs he used to do in high school."

"Actually, I just slept in my jeep. I'm not sure of the address of the club."

"JR!" Hayley said.

JR noted that she didn't say anything more. At least he hadn't been driving around drunk like Hayley's mother, Arlene Vaughn, had always done. "Would you have rather that I drove drunk?"

"You know that wasn't what I was suggesting. I'll give Brian your cell number and maybe you can identify a landmark or something. Call me and let me know when your plane comes in. I'm going back to the hospital in another few hours, but I'll have Mateo pick you up and bring you to the hospital."

"Yeah, ok, whatever," JR said.

"JR?"

"Yeah…"

"I love you, little brother," Hayley said.

JR smiled a little in spite of his situation. "I love you too, Sis, bye!" he offered before he ended the call. But as he finally climbed back into his jeep he wondered if Hayley was the only person who did love him. He had wanted to believe his mother loved him but so many choices she had made over the years called all of that into question.

XXXXXXXX

Chloe Morgan attempted to resettle herself in the guest room of her sister's townhouse. Earlier, Amy's screams had pulled her from sleep and adrenaline had fueled her sprint down the hall to her sister's master suite ready to defend her against the intruder. Except there hadn't been an intruder, or at least not an animate one. Eventually Amy had awoken, assured her it was only a nightmare and sent her back to her own bed. Yet, as she pulled the covers back up, Chloe felt anything but reassured. Before she had only suspected that something had happened during Amy's time in LA. Now she was certain.

Some people might argue that if Amy had wanted her to know she would have told her. To an extent, if it was anyone else, Chloe might have even agreed. But Amy was her sister and she couldn't just look the other way while she spontaneously imploded. That left her to figure out her sister's secret. She suspected Ned knew what had happened but she didn't see him betraying Amy's confidence. She doubted that Amy had shared with anyone else in Port Charles so that brought her right back to square one. Except perhaps it didn't.

Chloe could think of only one other person who Amy might have shared with…their great Aunt Lila. Lila Morgan Quartermaine was known for her diplomacy and tact, but she was also known for her compassion. If she could help her great aunt understand how concerned she was about her sister she suspected she would at least drop her a hint or two even if she couldn't share the whole truth. Suddenly tea in the rose garden with Lila had moved way up on Chloe's priority list.

As she readjusted her pillows Chloe realized how self-serving her last thought sounded. She didn't mean it to be. She had always adored her grandfather's older sister. His brother had died before she and Amy were born so all of their childhood it had just been the two of them and it was obvious that they were close. Their father taken over the Morgan Foundry right before Amy was born in 1973 so their grandfather had been free to devote his time to his art and to travel with his wife. She and Amy had joined their grandparents on many of those trips, especially the ones to visit the Quartermaines in upstate New York.

Chloe had many happy memories of those trips from the wonder of Great Aunt Lila's rose garden to the freedom of exploring her closet. In many ways that exploration had launched her interest in fashion and even decades later she had never found a pastel set, or fabric color wheel that could rival the colors of Aunt Lila's rose garden in full bloom. She smiled at the memories and reached over to turn out the light more reassured than she had felt in months.

**On canon GH I don't think that Chloe (nor her unnamed sister who I opted to name Amy Elizabeth) was as closely related to Lila as I have made her here but this all works better if there is more of a connection.**