Maria lay sprawled across Michael’s back. He was spread across the bed in abandon, with one wrist still handcuffed to the headboard. Listening to Metallica in the background, Maria realized that they left it on when they came upstairs. She had been listening to it while she was painting, and the player was set to continuously play.

“Michael?”

“Hmm?”

“So what time are we going to go tonight?”

Michael shrugged. “I was thinking close to midnight. I do my best work in the dark.”

Maria laughed and ran her hand down his back and under the sheet. “I don’t know. You seem very…capable...in the daylight as well.”

Michael laughed and rattled his hand. “You going to undo that?”

“Nope. You look good in metal and chains.”

Michael just shrugged and reached over, passing his hand over the cuffs until the sound of the metal falling away allowed him to finally roll over and grab her. Laughing, Maria bit his chin lightly. Suddenly serious, she searched his eyes, and for a moment neither moved.

The banging on her door downstairs wasn’t a welcome interruption, and Michael could feel her heart beating at a loud gallop in her chest, echoing into his. He quickly placed a restraining finger across her lips to keep her from making a sound. Maria quickly bit it.

“I think the Metallica music will give them a clue someone's home.” Michael just swore and grabbed his jeans.

“You stay there. Out of sight.” Michael rushed down the stairs as the person at the door was losing patience.

“Dammit, Ria. Open the frickin’ door! I can hear your music.” Michael paused, recognizing the voice from the answering machine tape. The ex-boyfriend. Michael smiled slightly, almost nastily, but pulled it back as he opened the door in a huff.

“What the hell do you want?”

The man was tall, not quite as tall as Michael, but close. He was dressed in jeans and a tight t-shirt, but the watch on his wrist suggested money. His dark hair was longish and fringed, brushing against his collar, and his face had a trimmed beard. He looked more than a little angry. Isabel would’ve called him hot and sexy, but Michael only saw desperate and angry.

“Who the hell are you? What are you doing in Maria’s studio?” The man tried to look in past Michael, but Michael's large body was blocking his view. “Where the hell is she? I didn’t see her car in her parking slot.”

“She’s not here. Gone. Colorado a few days working on a special commission. A mural. Something about wanting to get away from a lame ass ex-boyfriend who couldn’t take no for an answer.” Michael said softly watching the red run up the other man’s neck.

“Colorado? Not New York City? Every time she’s upset she runs to her ‘good’ friend Billy in New York to cry on his shoulder. Bastard. He’ll just fucking love this. Finally, his chance to move in with his slow hick drawls mimicking Elvis Presley with his pseudo lyrics. So fucking sensitive.”

“I don’t know no Billy, so I can’t say.” Michael said socially, somewhat intrigued at the man’s tirade.

“Band camp Billy. Frickin’ band camp! Who send their kids to that crap? Four frickin’ states worth of pimply-faced adolescents playing Truth or Dare and Spin the Bottle. Oh, he understands her. Understands her art, and her music. Oh, he thinks she's so talented, and the asshole puts cream in the damn spaghetti sauce…”

“It thickens it.” Michael said politely, biting back a smile. Wasn’t too bad in tomato soup either. He listened to the rant for a little longer, before he finally got bored by the man’s nasal upper-class voice whining and whining. No wonder she dropped his ass.

Suddenly Dan e seemed to become aware of the larger man standing in front of him in nothing but a pair of unbuttoned jeans, and some interesting marks on his shoulder and chest. Bite marks, a few bruises, and some definite hickeys. Maria always left her mark; she loved to…

“Who the hell are you?”

“A friend who’s borrowing her place for another night. And who the hell are you?”

“ Dan e.” His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You said she's gone to Colorado?”

“Yeah. Dan e, huh? And that would make you who?”

Dan e ignored his question. “Never heard of you. I dated Maria for a year, even asked her marry me. We’re having problems right now, but she loves me.”

Yeah, repeat that often enough he might actually make himself believe it. “Loves you? Then why didn’t she marry you?”

Dan e’s face flooded with color, and he seemed trying to figure out how to get past the larger man to search the studio. “Maria has commitment issues from childhood. Something to do with her deadbeat dad. He took a powder when she was young, and so she can’t…” Dan e looked at Michael. “Why the hell am I telling you this shit? I don’t even remember her mentioning you.”

“Yeah, well...you wouldn’t because I just met her. Actually, I know her quite intimately. You just missed her by a good hour. She’s off to paint.”

“Intimately? And you are...?”

“Her currently lover. Your replacement.” Michael couldn’t believe that he could take some pleasure from taunting another individual, but something about the man set his teeth on edge. Maria might have commitment issues, but he couldn’t see her letting someone she loved go, not unless she had to. Even with her memory shrouded and cloaked, all she thought about was finding her mother and getting home to her. Even though she couldn’t remember Amy DeLuca, Maria knew she loved her.

“What are you? A musician? Artist? Model?”

Michael looked amused. “Writer.”

“Fuck! I knew it. Something creative. It’s always something creative.”

The man looked like he was going to throw a punch, so Michael maliciously kept taunting some more. “Say, you wouldn’t know where the spare key to the handcuffs are, would you?”

“Son-of-a- bitch!” The man went to throw a punch at Michael, but Michael calmly shut the door. He could hear the fist hit and then a nice loud round of cussing. Potty mouth. Michael looked back at the door when he heard the kick.

“Hey, you dent the door, I’ll dent you!” Michael went to the kitchen, grabbed two bottles of water and stopped to turn off the music.

Maria was lying on the bed with her hands folded on the mattress, resting on them while on her stomach. She was still nude.

“He was very angry.”

“Totally pissed.”

Maria took the water. “Did you have to be so mean to him?”

Michael lay down next to her, stretching out. He was on his back looking at her where she laid on her stomach. “Do you love him?”

Maria didn’t even hesitate. “No.”

“Then he needed to get a clue and get on with his life. I gave him a reason to do that.” Michael saw her sad face. “What? What’s wrong?”

Maria just shrugged. “Maybe he was right. Maybe it was me, and I’m…I don’t know…damaged, not good for anyone.”

It was a possibility. God knew he carried nothing but scars from childhood, but sometimes they were what also protected, made a person cautious and unwilling to just jump into things without looking. She could’ve let that jerk convince her that she was damaged and telling him no for the wrong reasons, and may have even convinced her to marry him. But not Maria. Her father leaving made her cautious and untrusting. She needed more. She needed to feel something. He saw her art. Her painting. She felt things deeply.

“How do you know that you didn’t love him?”

Maria just moved her hand up his chest, her fingertips drawing swirls on his skin. “I couldn’t feel him. I don’t remember my mother, but I know what it feels to be loved by her. I couldn’t feel that from him. He didn’t spark anything.” Maria smiled and kissed him softly. “Plus...if he owned even a ounce of my soul, could I’ve let you in this close, this fast?”

“Necessity can create a situation.”

“It can. But not for people like you and me. Not for us. I’ve wasted so much of my life. I won't waste any more of it second guessing myself. I don’t need my memories to know this about myself. I will not yield to a domineering man who sees me only as a prize.”

Michael looked at her clear passionate green eyes. She was alive. Passionate. A touch of anger and darkness lived inside. A bitterness, like the darkest of chocolates. She used that to keep her going, to keep her motivated and alive. Nothing had ever calmed her inner demons. Walking in fire. They walked in the broken dust of decimated cities, among the wretched and despairing. But they walked, not giving way to death. This is where they stood.

“So we break in.”

Maria sat up, and straddled him leaning down to kiss him. “We break in. Time to find the battle.”

~~~

“C’mon Amy, let’s get you out of here.” Jim escorted Amy from the Roswell PD. They had spent the entire day going over physical evidence, anything that could open up clues to why Maria came back to Roswell after all those years.

“She never asked me about Roswell even once. I honestly thought she had put it away and forgotten Roswell ever existed.” Amy looked out the window as Jim drove her back to the hotel. Amy had taken over Maria’s room, and refused to let anyone remove her daughter’s belongings. The establishment was easy to placate with the offer of a longer stay.

“Do you know where Jon DeLuca is?”

Amy just shrugged. “Last I heard he was living with some woman in Texas. He never contacted us, and I didn’t try to get child support from him. I just wanted him gone from my life, and Maria’s. I know she wished he’d come back, but after awhile as she got older she just looked on his leaving as something men just did.”

Jim looked at Amy sharply. “Amy, what aren’t you telling me? What is worrying you about Maria?”

“It wasn’t easy, Jim. All those years I was looking for someone to replace Jon, someone who’d make me feel not so deserted, and I didn’t always take care. I exposed Maria to some not so nice men. No one abused her, but a few times…it was close. I walked in on one of my boyfriends trying to rape her once. I hit him with a baseball bat. She was very upset for good reason, and I sent her to Roger, a psychologist that specializes in children. She stayed in therapy with him for years. After that she was much more cynical and grown up in her views, and it took me years to notice she was raising me like I was the child, and she was the parent.”

“I’m sorry, Amy.” Jim didn’t know what to say. The horror Amy must have felt from being the cause of her own child’s pain. The feeling of being a terri ble parent because her life bled over into Maria’s.

“So was I. That’s when I grew up. Around Maria’s Junior year in high school I decided it was time to stop looking for that Knight in Shining Armor, and become a stronger woman. Maria told me I already was, but that I let my own insecurities cloud how I saw myself. I had to believe her, because God help me, I wanted to. So I marched into the bank and I demanded a loan, and I walked away as the owner of my very own art gallery.” Amy laughed. “I kept almost chickening out, but Maria was there waiting for me. She dressed me, coached me on what to say, and she sat outside on the car waiting for me to come out. I did give up once.”

“Once? I thought you got the loan?”

“I did. But the place was so professional looking, and the managers so stand-offish that I chickened out. I walked outside downhearted and there was Maria. She stood up tall, strong, and proud. She slowly gave me a smile, and dammit Jim, that smile was so full of pride! Like she knew that I’d wouldn’t fail.”

Jim didn’t say anything, but he felt it. Felt a hint of moisture behind his eyes. The Kit Shickers. He told Kyle he missed his youth. Missed performing, the fun and excitement. Kyle encouraged him to try, to just do it. And his son sat in the audience, afraid to see his dad fail, but he stayed in spite of that. Jim was worried, but as he looked up across the smoky bar of the Cow Patty, and made eye contact with his son, Kyle’s glance didn’t waver, didn’t back down. He was sitting there full of pride. Proud of him for trying to reach for a dream. So he opened his mouth and he began to sing, and later he saw his son clapping with others and the pride in his eyes. It made all the years of work to get there, to become a hero in his son’s eyes, worth it. That one moment meant everything.

“So what did you do?”

“I turned my lily white ass right around, marched into that bank, nabbed a loan officer, and told him what he was going to do for me, because I swear to you, Jim, I’d rather face the Gates of Hell then disappoint my daughter.”

Jim smiled. Ditto. He had wasted so much of Kyle’s youth. So much time. But one thing in his life was his saving grace. His son. The man he was, and the man he became. It was the small silent moments in life that became the defining ones. Our children make us better than we are.

“I walked out of that bank an hour later, and held up the ownership papers to "Golgotha," my first art gallery. It deserved the new home we built for it years later, all chrome, glass and stone. It was my walk to Calvary. And Maria was the rock I built my life on.” Amy lost control of a deep sob. “Oh god, Jim. She’s out there...lost!”

“I know. We’ll find her. I promise.”

~~~

“We need to check the wes tern ridge again. I double-checked the water tables. It has to be leaching from there somewhere.”

“There were reports from across the Res that animals are dying in large quantity. A family had to take their child to the Indian Clinic for observation.”

“Toxic syndrome?”

“Burns. Severe. Inside. They finally transferred the child to the larger center in Albuquerque.” Eddie sat his hip on the side of the table that Alex was working with his computer.

“Couldn’t Grandfather do anything?”

Eddie shook his head no. “He said this is a poison of man; that it is killing the Mother Earth, and even she can’t heal so much unbalance.”

Alex shut his eyes. He was running out of time. Only six more days left on his leave of absence. He was nowhere. No proof and not even a physical place to locate the contamination. All he had was the hope that Maria DeLuca would remain alive, and wake up one day with her memory.

River Dog came into the room and rested his hand on Alex ’s shoulder. “Rest, Alex . You and Eddie can’t keep working non-stop. This land has seen the blood of our ancestors for centuries. It will see more.”

“I can’t. Eddie was right to call. It’s been going on too long. Every year more and more babies are born handicapped. When the Silent Spring touches our children, then we are on a long walk to death, Grandfather.”

“Death has been the shadow we’ve walked in, son. Times change, but our life does not. When the Earth was first born, the Walking Woman reached into the bowels of the Earth, and she pulled from the despair of the people, the Coyote. He that walks alone, with his head searching the skies. And because his heart fills quickly and completely, he mates only once in a lifetime. All he knows is home, for always his terri tory remains his own. He was given to the People to protect, to laugh at the shadow of death, and he will not yield to anyone. For he is a Visitor here to his adopted home, and he will pull the people back to the Stronghold, and here he will make his stand with us, to the death.”

River Dog looked at his two grandsons, one white with his blood under the skin, and the other dark with his blood red on the surface. They were the same. One daughter who married a white man, and the other who stayed and married within the tribe, but their blood ran strong and hot between them like siblings separated at birth. One in need, soon found the other at his heels nipping. “If you find the Coyote and his mate, they will lead you to the Stronghold. They will show you the way.”

Alex stood and looked at his cousin. They both shook their heads. The words made sense, but the meaning was unclear. “How do we find…”

“The mate. She knows. All lost causes have a champion, one who will fight at the cost of life.” He looked at his grandsons. “Come to sweat. There is much to see in the smoke if you keep clear eyes, and look with your heart and not just your head.”

~~~

Isabel looked around her apartment. Bored. She was bored. Picking up the phone she dialed Michael’s number. The answering machine picked up. For once, she left no message. He wouldn’t call back.

Searching her bookcase, she found her collection of West Roswell High yearbooks. Flipping through, first she noticed there were never any pictures of Michael. He didn’t come to picture day, ever. No one was buying his picture, so he didn’t see the point.

Alex Whitman. He looked so young. So innocent. His smile was wide and sweet. There were pictures of him on the Quad with members of his band, and in the senior yearbook pictures of him with Janey. Damn. She looked skanky, decked out in black leather, short shirt, and her hair was twisted in strange knots and streaked with mauve, offsetting her rich brunette color. Isabel had to admit most men would find her attractive, and on stage…possibly sexy.

Alex and Janey making out in the Quad. Isabel never noticed that picture before. Alex and his girlfriend were sucking major face, and Alex ’s hand was high up her leg under her short skirt.

Damn.

Isabel closed the yearbook. Five years. Alex said they had stayed together for five years. Isabel didn’t even have shoes that old. Nothing. She had nothing she ever valued beyond a small period of time. Just Max and Michael.

Michael. It always came back to him.

In high school, after the dreams, she couldn’t even stand to see him or speak to him, or anything else. She never saw him so happy as he was in that one dream, and inside she knew that it could never be. Not for either of them. It hurt. She couldn’t give him that one thing that could make him happy. Make him belong.

Then years later when they discovered the truth, that they were really twins, she threw up. Those original dreams sickened her, but not as much as realizing what a big mistake they could’ve made. Even so, the feeling of possession wouldn’t go away. The feeling that Michael belonged to her. He was hers. Her first. He was hers in a past life, and he would be hers again when this world ended. They were connected by a bond that was strong, unbreakable. Twins.

She had to tell herself that. She had to believe. Isabel looked at her hands and noticed they were clenched. When did she lose him exactly? Was it the moment Mom and Dad took her and Max away? Or was it later, in the night crying her eyes out because she couldn’t feel him? He was too far away.

Or was it because she stopped trying? One day she woke up happy. Loved. In a home with a mom who adored her, and she wanted to stay. That was the day she forgot him.

Months later, looking down at the cloud of dirt, created as two boys scuffled about, Michael sat up with a trickle of blood down the side of his mouth, his hair wild and untamed, and his eyes older than any nine year old child's should’ve been.

Their eyes met. His sparked in recognition. But hers did not. She stepped back from the dirty child, not wanting to soil her spotless clothes. And as he walked away, she had a flash. Not a memory, but a premonition that he would always be walking away from her. Her mind searched for him, and then she felt it. Him.

That must have been the moment she lost him. The moment she denied and didn’t recognize her twin, he turned his back and walked away. Just one more betrayal. Ashamed, she stood there holding Max’s hand, and looking down, she saw what he must have seen. Them standing together. Joined. Him not good enough and on the outside. Forgotten.

Nothing could change it. Nothing. She shared her sandwich with him because he had no lunch and no money. She once bought him shoe laces. Every gesture of kindness meant to be a gesture of contrition, of begged forgiveness. Every such gesture was taken by him as pity and charity.

Isabel couldn’t even remember when she became just Max’s sister. And Michael thought of her only in connection with Max. It hurt. Every day, she lost him again and again in small ways. And when she finally found out about Hank beating him, she cried. She tried to touch him, but he shrugged it off, not wanting her hands on him. She wouldn’t have hurt him, but for some reason she did. Her touch pained him.

It was the guilt. The accusations in his eyes. She should’ve known. If her bond to him was so strong, if they were connected beyond space and time, then why? Why didn’t she know he was being abused? Searching her twin bond she found the door closed. In the dark of night, she used her alien skills to reach him in dreams, to walk in and talk to him, but she couldn’t touch him. Even in the world of dreams, he was untouchable.

Michael didn’t believe in dreams, only in nightmares. And when he dreamed of kissing her, he woke up screaming. That hurt worse. He was only accepting that she could be pregnant, because he was the only one of them that really expected the freaky and unusual from being what they were. She and Max just lived in denial. Once it was apparent she was not, Michael just shrugged and went on, as if he couldn’t care less one way or another, but their relationship was shattered.

He left the first time to escape Hank, and he never told Isabel why he came back for that last year. The second time was when he left for college. No amount of begging or reasoning with him could make him stay, and like that day in the playground so long ago, she watched him walk away.

Michael never really came home. He settled in Roswell, but the boy they knew in the orphanage, the one that was found with them was gone. In his place was a cynical stranger who only gave in to their pleas when the begging became too much. Every day she and Max tried to find a way to bring him home, because every day, he was further and further away.

Michael scared them.

He found it so easy to live in isolation. To not care. And it was without a backward look, he walked out of their lives for four years. Isabel couldn’t quell the rising nausea she felt at how close they came to never seeing him again.

A twin. She looked in the mirror, and she saw him. How could that be? They were twins under the skin, but they still looked the same.

Closing her eyes, she sat with her hands moving slowly over her face, as if she were touching Michael. Reaching for him, knocking and asking to be let inside, she suddenly opened her eyes in fright.

He wasn’t there.

~~~

“Sir, can I help you?” The security guard asked as Michael approached the main desk of the office building where Maria’s private investigating offices were housed.

“Actually, yes. It seems that I’ve gotten turned around. Somehow after I pulled off the interstate, I must have headed the wrong way. Can you tell me the way back to Interstate 10?”

“Boy, you did get lost! Go back out the way you came. Circle around the drive and at the main road, take a right. You’ll need to stay on it for at least a good three miles and that road will eventually cross under the Interstate. The signs should be posted about a quarter of a mile before you get there.”

Michael smiled and leaned in. “How’s the game? I was hoping to make my hotel on the highway long before this and settle down tonight to watch, but that was before the detour.”

“Well, it’s only ten. They’re late tonight, so you might still make it.”

“How are the Sox doing?”

“They suck.”

Michael laughed. “Thank God! My life is set, and the universe still continues. I was afraid you were going to say they were pulling it out.”

“Nope. They suck and continue to do so.”

Michael slapped the counter, his hand resting there for a minute or two until he saw the security screens blip. Smiling he waved goodbye and headed for the door.

“Thanks for the help. Have a good night.”

The man smiled at Michael. “You too!” Michael wasn’t even to the door when he heard the man’s voice raise in dismay. “Oh, don’t even think it! No! Aw, no. Dammit! Security, this is the downtown Dupree Plaza Three, I’ve got security glitching. My screens are moving in and out, on and off. No way. Nope. They’re gone. Yeah, I told the main office that circuitry was fried from the heat. Yeah, send a copy for maintenance. How long? Dammit. Six hours? Okay, at least tell me how the game ends.”

Michael came out of the building smiling. Maria was beside the bike parked under a tree. “Well?”

“All set. Security monitoring will be out until maybe four in the morning if not longer.”

“So when you want to go in? Still wait for midnight?”

“Nah. There’s a sports bar and grill just around the corner. Let's get some food, and leave the bike there. We'll come back and enter from the back. What floor?”

Maria read the address. “Suite 6032. I think that’s sixth floor.”

Michael parked the bike and led Maria into the restaurant. Great. The game was still on. The hostess showed them to a table immediately and left them with a small bucket of unshelled peanuts.

“Can I get you something from the bar?” The waitress smiled charmingly at Michael. Maria watched, amused, leaning into him and placing her hand high on his leg, and in not such a discreet place.

“I’ll have a Margarita straight up, with a tequila chaser.”

“She’ll have a club soda with a twist of lime, and I’ll have a large Coke, cherry if you have it. Can we have menus?”

“Hey, I’m old enough to drink.”

“Sorry, honey, it’s not good for the baby. You heard what the doctor said, no drinking in the first trimester.” Maria’s eyes narrowed and she took her hand off his leg after pinching him hard. The waitress shared an understanding look with Michael and left them menus as she went off to get their drinks.

“What the heck was that about?”

Michael looked at her. “No drinking on the job. Clear head, open eyes, and alert. You’re my lookout, so no tequila. Add in the fact that a few days ago we were going strong without a snap of latex, and maybe we should be cautious until we know.”

“No problem, but I noticed a calendar in my bathroom. My last cycle was circled. So if it’s of any comfort to you, we were knocking boots during an infertile time for me. Now just a few days more, and my egg would have been dressing it up in a tight skirt, whistling for attention from your little soldiers on a three-day furlough.”

“Comfort. I like to know what my soldiers are doing at all times.” Michael suddenly didn’t feel so cheerful. He hadn’t had a beer in almost a week. Not since he found her. Suddenly he never wanted anything more, that and Maria’s egg all exhausted from trying to hold back the troops. It was official. The heat had sapped his brain.

Looking down, Michael finally noticed Maria’s shoes. Heels? She was going to do crime in four inch heels? Loon.

“What are those?”

Maria followed his pointing finger and looked at her Casadei Velvet Flower straps and moved her foot happily, loving the nice flower. “Gosh, don’t know, Pa…shoes?”

“Maria, did it occur to you that checking out a place after hours requires something less…tall and fashionable?”

“You want me to wear ugly shoes? Like fugly Scully shoes? Flat and…loafers?”

“I want you to wear something you can run in if the need presents itself.”

“These are perfect. And I can run in them. And…” Maria ignored the waitress, who placed their order on the table, and seeing them totally engaged in each other, left after depositing ketchup. Maria moved in close, so her mouth and his were almost touching. “Later I’ll wear them in bed for you.”

Michael licked his lips. “Okay, so the shoes aren’t such a bad choice. Hey, where is our serving girl? Tabasco?” Maria reached into her bag and pulled out a full bottle and passed it to him. Michael looked down at the bottle and then at her. “You brought me Tabasco?”

“Uh huh.”

“I really love your shoes.”

~~~

Michael had a hard time popping the lock. Maria kept running into his back. As far as he could tell she was excited and bouncing on her feet. Every once in a while she gave a barely restrained chuckle, trying to smother her giddy laughter. When they finally entered, she held her flashlight high and shone it around the offices.

“Gosh, I feel so Scullyish to your Mulder.”

“Shhh! Just shut the door!”

They moved down the corridor searching the doors until they found Lydia Tyler’s. Michael quickly unlocked it. The office was nice. Open and inviting. Michael immediately searched for a filing cabinet, but couldn’t find one. Opening up the desk drawers he couldn’t find any files with 'DeLuca' on them. Maria looked through the stack of files on the desk. Nothing.

“Dammit. Where is it?”

Maria sat on the arm of the chair. “I’m a closed case. They’re probably processing my final bill or already filed me away in their company's filing system.”

Michael thought about it for a moment. “The secretarial pool. We passed through it.”

Closing the door behind them, they quickly backtracked to a group of desks in cubicles. Some were junior investigators, but a majority were the individual secretaries for the partners. It took some searching, but they finally found Maria’s file in a bin on a desk marked for accounting. Taking it, Michael pulled Maria behind him to find the Xeroxing area.

“We’re going to make copies?”

“What? You want to take the file?” Michael asked as he turned on the machine.

“Hmm, wonder if they’ll remember to bill me if the files goes missing,” Maria wondered, and looked over to see Michael making a face. “Joking! Okay? Just make the copies.”

Finally, Maria had to do the copying. Michael always said that modern machines hated him, and after six or seven aborted tries, Maria had to agree with him. Keeping the light shining on the machine, he tried to read a few of the papers as they came through.

Maria had hired the firm almost three months ago, around the time she broke up with Dan e the Dud. Most of the papers were the daily diary of work done on the case, and time spent for billing purposes. Phone calls were logged, and transcripted copies of the conversations were added to the file.

“Maybe we should break into my psychologist's office. Roger. I bet he has an entire file on Maria DeLuca, nutcase.”

“I don’t think so,” Michael said softly.

“Why not? You said that I started seeing him again, that Dan e said I had problems with commitment and intimacy. Maybe he can give insight into my psychosis, and why I would choose to blank out my entire life.”

“Maria, you don’t have intimacy problems. Trust me. As far as commitment? Well, so what? Half the human race has problems with that. I really don’t see you as really that troubled over being in a long term relationship. You have a lifelong one with your mother. Your cousin thinks of you as a sister. A boy from prepubescent band camp is still one of your best friends in the entire world, and all your friends seek you out to make sure you’re okay. Does that sound like a woman that can’t commit?”

“But Dan e said…”

“ Dan e is a jerk. He struck me as a guy who was too full of himself, one that likes to control and dominate. He couldn’t believe that you didn’t love him enough to marry him, and he did the only thing his ego would allow. He played mind games. Made it your fault. Made you question yourself, enough that you went back to the psychologist.”

“But this Dr. Roger…damn why am I imagining him in sweater vests and asking to play in my damn neighborhood? Anyway, maybe he knows me enough to understand what made me go to an investigator. Made me seek out his help, and tell me why I wanted to go to a place I have no active memories of.”

Maria pushed the last of the file through, and took the originals and tried to return them into some semblance of order from before. “I think that’s it. Anything?”

“Yeah. You hired them on a missing person’s case.”

“Me? Was I looking for me? Maybe my memory has been gone for a while, and…”

“No. You hired them to locate a Jon DeLuca.”

“Jon DeLuca.” Maria frowned as that white wall rushed up to enclose her. Comfort. Rest. Don’t go there. Run. Run...

“Your father.”

~~~

Michael worried about her as they left the offices, careful to lock and close everything behind them after slipping her file back into the basket where they found it. She was quiet, not even bitching about walking down the flight of stairs. She had hated the trip up in her inappropriate shoes, and Michael knew something else about Maria DeLuca. She hated physical exercise outside of sex, which was purely recreational.

Dan e. Michael was regretting not taking the opportunity to beat the crap out of the man. He took her abandonment issues involving her father, and turned them around on her. Told her that she couldn’t commit just because of her past, and that she was damaged. He was right. She was damaged, but more now than before. Now she was carrying horrors in her mind too terri fying to remember.

Michael remembered the flash. It was what made her faint in the motel room. The death of the man. It had to have been Jon DeLuca. She had seen her father die. Or maybe she killed him. Michael pushed that thought aside. If she killed him then why was she in danger, hunted? More than likely she witnessed his death, and it short circuited her brain.

They quietly walked through the back lobby, away from the front security desk. Maria was quiet, but her hand remained on his back, holding on. It was her startled stumbling in step that pulled him from his forward flight to the back doors they had entered through.

“Maria.” She didn’t speak. She was just staring. “What is it?”

Maria pointed to a glass case with plaques and name plates for the different businesses in the building. Alongside it was a nice pictographical display of the breaking ground of the Dupree Plaza Complex of six large buildings, built some forty some years ago. The display included a photograph of the original owner and backer of the project. Charles Dupree.

Michael stopped dead in his tracks next to Maria. It was his own face staring at him from the faded photograph. Identical. And next to the man, holding onto his arm, was a woman who was hauntingly familiar. Isabel.