Peter was glad to be home, even if that meant packing up his belongings to move temporarily into Leanne's apartment. It was worth it to have his father home again.

He took his father with him once he resumed his rounds. It was delivery day and he didn't wait to be asked, he just started moving the crates for Mrs. Chen. He didn't see the look of pride in his father's eyes as he did so.

"It is good you are home. We have missed you." She told Peter, and then greeted his father politely.

"Oh, that's right. You moved into the neighborhood after he had left. Mrs. Chen, this is my father, Kwai Chang Caine."

Caine bowed slightly in greeting.

"Mrs. Chen… Have you seen the Ancient?" Peter asked. Master Khan had said he'd come looking for him and Leanne but he hadn't seen him since then. Despite his reservations about Lo Si and his secret-keeping, he was worried.

"Not since before you left." She said. "I wish he would hurry up and come back. My husband needs his medicine."

"I am also an apothecary." Caine said, "I would be pleased to help."

Peter smiled and put his hand on his father's shoulder. "I'm going to leave you to it." He said and then impulsively kissed the aging Chinese woman on the cheek. "I'll see you tomorrow, Mrs. Chen."

Peter finished his rounds, taking a little longer than usual. Everyone had questions about his trip, and they were also glad to hear that Caine was back. Not half as glad as Peter was though. He was looking forward to working with him. They had accomplished amazing things together in the past, and Peter could only imagine what they could accomplish together when they were finally on the same page.

He entered the Kwoon a little before four pm, in time to teach his favorite class. The ten to fourteen-year-olds. It felt good. They had only been gone a few weeks but he had missed his life in Chinatown and he couldn't imagine leaving it again. Other than the trip they planned to make to China for their honeymoon of course.

Spectators weren't unusual during classes. People often wanted to see what went on before signing themselves or their children up for classes. Peter ignored them as long as they weren't disruptive, preferring to spend his time teaching rather than drumming up business. By the end of the hour-and-a-half session, parents were arriving to pick up their children and the conversations with them filled up the next half an hour or was it more? Peter lost track of the time. Once they were all out the door he took a deep, satisfied breath and turned around, expecting to find Leanne behind him.

"Hello, Peter." Laura Navarro said quietly. "It was like watching your father teach…"

Peter stiffened and clenched his jaws. "If Julian wants lessons I'll teach him for free. Since he's an adult there is No need for you to be here." He turned to walk toward the offices in the back.

"Peter wait." She said and hurried to get in front of him. "I- I came to talk to you. Can we do that? Can we talk?"

Peter shrugged dismissively. "There's nothing to talk about. You abandoned me and my father and faked your death so you'd never have to deal with those pesky custody issues or child support. That just about says it all don't you think? Your husband might want answers though. So if you really want to talk I suggest you go talk to him. I have nothing more to say to you."

"Then let me talk." She said.

"You can talk all you want, just not to me."

"Peter-"

"I told you, I have nothing more to say. I'd like you to leave. I don't know where Dad is at the moment. But hey, you're in Chinatown, go ask for Caine. They'll tell you where they saw him last." He stepped around her and continued toward Leanne's office.

Laura grabbed at his arm, and he shrugged away from her as if her touch burned him.

"Peter please."

Leanne hadn't heard what was being said but she heard Peter's tone and stepped out of her office to find out what was going on. "Is everything alright?" She asked.

"Just a pesky ghost problem." He said and kissed her hair lightly. "I'm gonna go upstairs and get some work done." Peter moved on toward the stairs to the second floor.

Laura started to follow him but Leanne stepped in her way. "Let him go." She said. "I don't know what you want from him but if it's not to plumb the depths of his sarcasm and derision I'd walk away if I were you."

Laura tried again to get past her only to be blocked once again by her son's fiance. "You must be Leanne," Laura said and sized the girl up. Yulong Yeoh's granddaughter. The one that he had orchestrated all of this for, or that's what he said anyway. She had her doubts.

"I am." She said.

"When is the wedding?" Laura asked.

"You don't need to know that. You denied you were his mother and now you show up here out of the blue wanting to make nice. You're after something and it's not Peter's undying affection."

"Is that what he is giving you? Undying affection." She asked, emphasizing undying.

"We love each other and I don't plan on abandoning him, so I suppose the answer is yes." She didn't miss the tone.

"I didn't plan to leave either when his father and I were first married."

"You did eventually," Leanne said. "You planned it to exacting detail. Was your illness even real? " She looked the woman over, "There is one thing though, one thing that will tell people exactly who and what you are."

"And what is that, Dear," Laura said with more than a hint of sarcasm on the last word.

" Who was it they interred in your place? Whose body did you steal? Do you ever wonder how many loved ones are out there wondering what happened to the corpse you used to escape your marriage? Tell me… did they die for your deception." Leanne couldn't imagine a single answer that wouldn't prove the sort of monster Laura Caine/Navarro was. There was no way she was ever going to let her get her hooks into Peter. She would just hurt him again.

"Why don't you ask your grandfather about that, He's the one with the answers," Laura said softly. "Tell Peter I'll be back." She turned on her heel and walked out of the Kwoon.

Leanne was taken aback by Laura's words. What the hell did that woman have to do with her grandfather? She took two steps toward the door and then stopped. She didn't know how long she stood there before running to the door and locking it.

Peter didn't look up when Leanne joined him upstairs. He knew it was her. He knew the way she walked, the way she breathed, and the scent of the shampoo that she used.

He hammered the long nails into the boards, finishing up the framework for a section of the wall. Leanne didn't say anything. She simply stepped forward to help him lift the framework. She held it in place while he screwed it into the existing wall's framework.

Peter began to unclench.

(0)(0)(0)(0)(0)(0)(0)(0)(0)(0)(0)(0)(0)(0)(0)(0)

Caine reached to open the door to Peter and Leanne's Kwoon and was surprised to find the door locked.

"She locked it to keep me out," Laura said. "Peter is… bitter."

Caine looked at her, "Peter is hurt." He said. He was too, but that wasn't something he was willing to share just yet. "And angry."

"He won't talk to me." She said. "Will you?"

He gave a slight bow. "There is a cafe where we can have tea,"

She nodded, "That sounds nice." She let him lead the way. Caine was the one she had come to see, but once she had arrived in Bayview the temptation to see her son was overwhelming. The private investigator reports had kept her abreast of his life, but it wasn't the same as the prospect of actually being in his presence.

"Is there a temple nearby?" She asked after they had walked a block in silence. Long ago the silence would have been companionable. They would have walked holding hands and exchanged affectionate glances. She didn't think Kwai Chang Caine had looked at her once since they had begun to walk.

"No. Not any longer." He said. The temple he had raised Peter in was 50 miles away and in ruins.

"Then it's just you and Peter." She remembered that he had always dreamed that their son would follow the family tradition.

"No, there are two others. Master Khan and Lo Si, you would remember him as Ping Hai," Caine said. When they reached the cafe he opened the door for her and waited for her to enter before joining her.

The waitress smiled and directed them to a table that had a little more privacy. She was accustomed to Caine bringing people there to discuss why they needed his help. It pleased her to see that he was doing so again so soon after returning. It never would have occurred to her that this was something of a more personal nature. She went in back to prepare a pot of tea.

"What is it you wished to speak about?" Caine asked. He had imagined their meeting a thousand times since seeing the photograph of her in Paris. Not once had he imagined it would be like this.

"I imagine you have questions." She said and cleared her throat nervously.

"You have remarried." He said quietly. "I like your son Julian. Peter likes him very much." He had so many questions. Things he wanted to demand to know. Things he felt he had the right to know. He feared that if he asked them the anger and resentment … and pain… would come to the surface and shatter his self-control.

"When he started speaking to me again, Julian told me that he likes Peter a great deal as well. My daughter, Amelie, is in her old brand of denial. I imagine she will eventually wish to meet him."

"And your husband? What does he think?" He asked, unable to keep his tone as neutral as he would have liked. He was her husband. There was no divorce, she was clearly not dead. But he was not going to discredit a relationship that had lasted longer than theirs had.

"He is understandably angry." She said, "He's afraid that this will become… messy."

Caine was grateful to the waitress for bringing the tea at that moment. "Xie Xie." He said and smiled at the girl. Girl… she was Peter's age. A woman grown, yet he thought of her as a girl. A sign of his own age perhaps.

He poured the jasmine tea into the two cups. "Messy." He said.

"Because I am still legally married to you."

"Ah." He said and nodded. "That is why you are here. Laura Caine is dead. " He shrugged. "I have no intention of making your life difficult." He found that it wasn't for his own sake or hers. It was for Peter. If things became messy as she had put it, then Peter would never make peace with the situation or his mother.

"Then if I were to file for divorce you wouldn't contest it?" She asked.

"I would not make things … messy." He said. "But as you are legally dead it will not be me that creates the mess. Would it not be easier to simply return to Spain and leave the past in the past?"

"I don't think Javier would like that very much. Too much potential for complications. He doesn't like complications." She sipped at her tea, feeling even more on tenterhooks than she had with Peter.

Caine nodded. "Then we will file for divorce, Perhaps they will not ask about your supposed death."

"You haven't asked about that yet." She said. She watched Caine's jaw twitch, and how he paid more attention to his tea than to her at that moment. "Kwai Chang… It wasn't because I didn't love you or Peter. I did. Very much. " Part of her still did. Part of her loved Javier.

"Not enough to stay," Caine said. "You chose deception over honesty. I would not have forced you to stay if you had told me you wished to leave. " His tone was tight and controlled. "I want to know why… and I do not at the same time."

"I am sorry I hurt you." She said sincerely. She didn't know how much to say. Did she tell him that Yeoh had saved her life on the condition that she leave? Did she tell him that their son was being manipulated from the shadows to marry that harpy? Was warning him worth dying over? She did not doubt that Yulong Yeoh would undo whatever magic it was that he had done, and he had no reason to believe that he wouldn't find a way to force the marriage anyway. She told herself it was better that Peter believe that he was making this choice of his own volition than to know the truth.

Caine shrugged. "I am more angry," There, he had admitted it, "that you hurt Peter. He revered you. He loved you even though he had no memories of you. Carried your picture with him until he gave it to Julian. And now he knows that you willingly abandoned him, that you did not love him enough to stay or take him with you." He shook his head and refilled their tea cups.

"I wanted to tell him how sorry I am. But right now he won't hear it." She said. "How did he wind up in an orphanage and then foster care?" Blaisdell had told her a version of the story. She wanted to hear Caine's.

Caine sighed and told her the story starting when Master Dao, later known as Tan, had begun to corrupt the students, to Ping Hai telling each of them that the other was dead. "The orphanage is the only thing he speaks of with fear in his voice." It wasn't like his fear of heights. That was just a phobia. Everyone had one somewhere. The orphanage carried a fear born of trauma that Peter wouldn't talk about.

"What a horrible thing to do to the two of you." Laura said "I know you probably feel that I have no room to talk, and I probably don't, but that was horrible. What did it actually accomplish other than loneliness and fear."

"I believe that he needed to learn from Blaisdell, as well as from me, to become the man he needs to be. Our son is destined for great things." Perhaps not things the rest of the world would think of as great, but the rest of the world buried its head in the sand and wished the things they didn't understand away. It was not a fit judge of greatness. "The universe prepares us for what is to come. Adversity can sometimes set us on the road to prosperity and peace."

"Sometimes it makes us do foolish things. There was a man," She said, maybe she could tell him without telling him who it was. "He was Chinese. I met him in the hospital when I was getting my treatments. It was one of those rare times that you weren't there holding my hand. I guess I thought he was sent by you because he was always there when you couldn't be… and he was powerful. The kind of power you only see in those movies we used to watch."

Caine's brow furrowed. "Powerful how?"

"I could feel it rippling off of him and somehow I didn't have the side effects of the treatments I normally had. He told me he could take the cancer away, but only for a price. I had to leave and not look back. He talked about a great debt owed by your bloodline and that I was in the way. I could either be cured and go on to prosper elsewhere or I could die an agonizing death. I should have told you about him but I was afraid that he'd leave me to die."

"What was this man's name?" Caine asked. He didn't blame her for choosing to live. He didn't like that she hadn't found a way to warn him about this powerful man with designs on his family, but death can be frightening and the threat of it can sometimes crumble the will of even the strongest people.

She shook her head. "I can't tell you that." She said honestly. "I can't. He can undo what he has done for me. He can bring the cancer out of remission. He has proven it."

Caine tensed a moment then let it go. "And will he not think that your being here is against what he commanded?"

"I don't know." She said. "But I don't want to lose my husband or my children. That must sound horrible after what I did to you and Peter."

He sighed and considered his words carefully. Eventually, he simply shrugged. "Things are as they are. If you find a lawyer I will go with you." He got to his feet.

"How will I find you?" She asked.

He smiled a little, even if it didn't reach his eyes. "Come to Chinatown, ask for Caine." He gave a slight bow to the proprietor of the cafe, who never let him pay for anything, and left. He was torn as to where he wanted to go. On one hand, he wanted very much to find comfort in Mary-Margaret's arms. She had made it plain that he was still welcome. On the other hand, he was worried about his son. He did not get the impression that his meeting with his mother was a pleasant one.

So he went back to the kwoon assuming that Peter would be working out his frustrations by building the apartment. Hammering nails was sometimes very therapeutic. The door was still locked and he briefly considered going home and waiting but then reconsidered. This was not the time to distance himself from his son. He put his hand against the lock and he could feel it click into the unlocked position. He entered the kwoon and relocked the door behind him.

He could hear the sounds of laughter from the second floor and smiled. That was a good sign. He climbed the stairs and stood at the top for a moment, just watching his son and the love of his life simply working side by side. It was beautiful.

He stepped forward making his presence known.

"Hey, Pop," Peter said. "I ahm… had a visitor today."

Caine nodded. "So I was told. She wants a divorce."

"That's rich considering she's supposedly married to someone else," Peter said rolling his eyes.

"Now that you're both here," Leanne said, "There is something I need to speak with you about, something that Laura said."

"That sounds ominous," Peter said.

"It may be," Leanne said and went to find a place to sit away from all the construction equipment and debris. "I didn't want to say anything until I could talk to you both."

Peter followed her and sat beside her, taking her hand in his. "What did she say to you?" He asked, a little anger bubbling up despite himself.

Caine sat across from them, with his legs crossed.

"When you came up here I ran interference. She kept trying to get past me and it pissed me off. So I guess you could say I mouthed off. I asked her who took her place in the grave. She told me to ask my grandfather because he was the one with the answers. "

Caine frowned and told them about his meeting with Laura and what she had said about a powerful man claiming a debt owed by their bloodline.

"This is not good," Peter said. "Not good at all." He could sense the conflict in Leanne, the loyalty divided between him and her grandfather. He brought her hand to his lips. "It's gonna be alright. This changes nothing between us. I promise."

"I know." She said "But it changes everything between me and my grandfather."