Conversations over 48 hours

oOo

Once she might have been pretty if not beautiful, high cheekbones under dark steel blue eyes. But time and care had worn her down, stripped the glow of youth from her skin, left her dark hair streaked with shades of gray. Lines radiated out from the edges of her eyes, lines marred the line of her mouth, lines marked her face like whorls on a fingerprint. Her face sagged with age although she had she had a hint of hardness about her—had she not been a suspect in over half a dozen serial murders—she could have been someone's grandmother.

Booth sat across from her studying the reaction to each photo. One after the other after the other, he silently laid out the photos. One victim, a moment of silence, then another. And another. He didn't quite need the entire length of the table, but the ruined lives had already took up far too much space there.

One was abhorrent enough. Eight? Nine? Ten? Eleven? And the question no one wanted to ask but really wanted answered: were there more?

The thin line of her mouth did not move. He could see the small, almost imperceptible movements of her eyes as she saw each victim, saw the remains, saw the youthful faces frozen in time. Her hands were curled on the table, blue rivulets of veins coursing along the back of each, her nails reflected on the table.

Her hands reminded him of claws.

oOo

"Thanks, Seeley."

Booth held onto the coffee for a second longer then he probably needed to, but the last time he'd seen Hayes Flynn had been in a hospital room and the man had had tubes running in and out of him while a machine kept the rhythm of his heartbeat. Flynn had almost died in a hail of bullets he'd taken for him. The memory of the helplessness in the man a day or two after he'd had surgery only lingered now.

Booth set his own coffee down then lowered himself to the chair. The summer heat of the last few days had been washed away with a morning shower and the air had a decided freshness to it.

"I'm back Monday. They finally cleared me," Flynn said, the coffee forgotten. He looked around the park surrounding the outdoor cafe. "This about Pelant?"

Booth had been in and out of the hospital to visit and now, weeks later, Flynn had some color back. The hair at his temples continued its steady march to white with strands of gray still holding on. His hands, shaky in the hospital had a firm, steadiness about them.

And Flynn had a clear focus that Booth understood all too well.

"I just wanted to know if there was something you ran across in your investigation that might help me locate him." Booth's finger nudged the coffee cup. "I've been looking for this guy and he's still hiding in the shadows."

The pretense of coffee with a friend, had given way to realiyt: a cold, hard need.

"I was hoping you had something on that bastard." Flynn's head dipped down and then he shook it. "He'd trip himself up being so clever. I was hoping you were going to tell me you had him in your sights."

Booth's hand encircled the coffee cup and he felt the thread of frustration pull tighter. He glanced around out of habit—cameras tied into the Internet only fed the beast's store of information and he wanted nothing more than to starve Pelant. That's why he had picked this place.

Flynn heaved a sigh and Booth caught his eyes. At least he wasn't alone in the frustration.

"I spent so much of the investigation sure you were hiding Brennan," he stopped and Booth just waved off what he thought was coming next. "Everything pointed to her being the murderer."

"Bones understood, Flynn. Really."

Flynn bite his bottom lip and shook his head, then cast his gaze toward the park across the way. Children were on the house atop the large slide and a boy in a bright orange shirt was climbing up the side of the structure using the handholds for purchase. A little girl stood on the ladder directing traffic down the slide.

"I didn't understand. Not really." He picked up the coffee and took a sip. "There wasn't anything concrete on this guy being a killer and then your partner pulled that body out of thin air and everything started adding up against Pelant."

"I became a believer."

A cry of laughter wafted to them from the park and they both glanced toward the children.

"I wish I had something to help, Seeley, I really wish I did." He heaved another sigh. "Damn it. I wish you killed that bastard."

Booth nodded.

There was little more to say. They both sat quietly, sipping their coffees, and watching the children at play.

oOo

"All these women have similar injuries." Booth began the slow, dispassionate explanation that laid his foundation. "All of them seem to be tied to the killer."

"But this one," his finger lingered on the last photo, "this woman was found in the burned wreckage of the truck you and your husband co-owned. She was in a box in the back of the cab. Hands tied behind her back. The injuries she sustained are similar to the injuries of the other victims."

Sweets might say his ability to read people came from being at the receiving end of his father's drunken rages, but even if that were the case, he'd honed his skills through years of interviews such as these. His gut told him this was the right way to approach her.

"Tell me why you weren't in the truck with your husband that day."

The earpiece buzzed in his ear with Agent Stefani's renewed protest against this tack. But his gut told him this woman, this Ruth Richter nee Dee who had turned her life around to become a prep cook at a restaurant off 360 in Roanoke wanted to come clean.

Bones' voice merged with Sweets' who both argued in different ways that he knew what he was doing.

"You let people think you were dead all these years." Booth maintained the neutral tone, the nonjudgmental mask. He had no doubt murderers deserved the fiery depths of hell, but that wasn't his call here. "You wanted to get away from your husband. From the murders." He let that sink in. "Tell me what happened."

Wait time. Pregnant pause. Whatever you called it, the idea was simple: create a vacuum the suspect wants to fill. Needs to fill.

Stefani continued her protest in his earpiece and he finally pulled it from his ear and pocketed it.

A profiler at Quantico had once said that the best thing you could do in the interview room was to listen. For several moments he listened to the silence. And watched.

The lips pursed, then relaxed, the fine lines around her mouth betrayed she'd probably once been a smoker. Her eyes scanned the images up and down the table resting on none of them in particular. Fingers played along the table, the irregular tap-tap-tap of her nails against the steel tabletop betraying the woman's discomfort.

And all he had to do was wait.

oOo

"What are you doing here?"

Having Bones act as the de facto liaison between the Jeffersonian and the FBI had never precluded Cam or any of the others from emailing or calling him with information on a case. The invisible line between the lab and the FBI was clear to them. Only rarely did any of them show up at the Hoover unannounced and usually the visit had an agenda attached to it: Hodgins wanted more field time; Cam wanted some personal advice. Angela showed up in hallways of the Hoover only when she felt protective of Brennan; the evidence was always her excuse for showing up.

Instinct told him this time was no different.

Part of the afternoon had been spent coordinating with Agent Levine about a cargo theft case and Booth had just alighted from the elevator when he saw her. Over her shoulder was a black bag bearing the Jeffersonian logo and he hoped against hope that she needed to be somewhere else.

"Your techs wanted to go over some things with me in case Pelant contacts us or we get a lead on him."

Her business might have been with the computer technicians upstairs, but she fell into step with him as he headed toward his office.

At least she halted at his desk as he rounded it, trying to put it between them.

"You know how long and how hard Brennan had to work to come to the realization that she wanted to get married."

How could he respond to that? He had known all-too-well how long it had taken. He'd waited a hell of a long time for Bones to understand her own heart when it had come to loving him. But he didn't like Angela's presence here and he sure as hell hated the reminder of what he had already lost in the last few weeks.

"Right now she's hurting."

Angela's words only reminded him of the truth that looked mournfully into his eyes every day. He said nothing and willed Angela to leave.

But Angela wasn't one to let go so easily. "So that's how it is?" She shifted. "Brennan loves you and that's it? Nothing?" She shifted again. "You give her the silent treatment, too?"

He took a breath and put his hand in his pocket to find his poker chip. The ridges should be worn smooth by now, he thought as his thumb felt the familiar texture. "I've got work to do." Booth grabbed at a file with one hand as he pulled his other from his pocket, the poker chip nestled between thumb and palm. "I'm sure you've got work to do as well."

It was the tone he used that brooked no nonsense, no dissent. It was a gift from his father: the stern voice that when coupled with a hard look that with him had often meant an open fist, a kick, a harsher word. But he had more control than his father despite the terrible secret that burned inside him and his silence wasn't the punishing kind of his father, but the only option open to him.

"What happened to the good guy I used to know?" she rasped. He focused on a stray strand of hair just off her right eye, the desire to give into the shame pulling at him, and a sniper's control was the only thing saving him. "You don't deserve Brennan."

Dark eyes met his and he felt the anguish of those words. And the truth of them. Angela finally blinked first in the standoff, turned and left.

But her words remained.

oOo

What were a few more minutes? He kept his expression neutral, avoided looking toward the window behind which stood Brennan, Sweets, Caroline and Stefani focused on the woman across from him. The murders had taken years to solve and what were a few more minutes to get the whole story?

Her nose looked like it had been broken once or twice, the bridge jagged. Her eyes pulsed back and forth between the photos. Her fingernail, ragged and ridged, tapped on the one photo, the young woman she and her husband had "witnessed" being abducted.

And he waited.

Once or twice she seemed ready to start, but each time she stopped.

Finally, he laid it out for her.

"These women were killed and their bodies were dumped about 100 miles from where they were last seen." That information had been in the papers, highlighted often as the murders became two, then three, then four and so on. He gauged the woman's reaction. She could have been someone's mother watching her child cross the street for the thousandth time. He then outlined some of the things that had been done to the young women, things that Bones had found again and again on the skeletal remains, things that had never quite hit the papers.

He held back something, something only the killer would know. But he had said enough.

That changed the look in the woman's eyes. Interest? Fear? He kept his eyes on hers and waited.

Not all serial killers talked. No. Certainly some wanted recognition for their work, wanted someone to become aware of their artistry. Others had to be pried open and the contents dumped out and sorted like the contents of a junk drawer. Others played mind games wanting to twist investigators through a labyrinth of deceit and half-truths in order to maintain their mystery.

And Ruth? She seemed unsurprised when the police had come for her, seemed almost disinterested in what was happening now. Pupils dilate in interest, but he couldn't quite tell if hers had. But her eyes hadn't left the photos of those women, their images forever young, forever hopeful despite the truth of their short lives.

"Just tell me what you know." He pointed at the one woman that had put the Richters on record. "Start with her." A summery smile graced the photo. The other photo held something that looked less human, soulless almost. Exposed bones and torn flesh, a piece of fabric frozen in time like a flag marking a position.

"What do you want me to say?" A gnarled finger rubbed a spot on her nose. "She's dead." She picked up the photo of the young woman that had been a college student looking to save some money and get back home. Ruth's head bobbled on her neck as if she had no strength to hold it steady. "You do some horrible things in the name of love."

"You stay with someone out of habit," she mused. "It's easy."

"Until it isn't anymore."

oOo

"Men have sex to feel connected while women need to feel connected to have sex."

"What?"

They'd met in the conference room to review a few details of the case, Sweets insistent that he had some ideas on how to approach Ruth Richter, Booth more insistent that they needed lunch before the marshals brought her in. Booth thought he had won the battle when Sweets fired the opening salvo.

Booth's kung pao chicken hung in the air between his chopsticks, a grain of rice taking a nosedive toward the carton. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"I'm just giving you some psychological insights," Sweets countered as he reached for an egg roll. "Given the circumstances."

The circumstances were clear-cut as far as the case was concerned: almost two days of Internet searches through dozens of databases had finally located Ruth Richter. It was another day before they could bring her in. And he felt certain that they could close this case and he could focus on other, more pressing matters.

"Thank you, Confucius," Booth muttered. He pinched another piece of chicken between his chopsticks. "I just need help understanding why a woman kills for her husband or if maybe she was calling the shots. Unless you're saying she did this to have sex with him."

"Things happen," Sweets offered. "It's unlikely that Ruth Richter was the driver in the abductions. It was more than likely a combination of complicated, comorbid psychopathologies that were the driving force behind Gary Richter's need to acquire then kill these women. Ruth Richter was more than likely caught up in the paraphilic behaviors of the lust murders."

"Lust murders?"

Sweets speared a piece of chicken. "It's called erotophonophilia. Unless Gary Richter's motivation was more about power and control over his victims. The box indicates that possibility."

"I just thought it was interesting that you asked Dr. Brennan to be in the interview with you and she declined."

The sudden change in topic practically caused Booth mental whiplash. He tried to steer away from it. "She's not in every interview, Sweets. Let's just focus. . . ."

"I meant that the sex truisms are an analogy for Dr. Brennan and yourself." Sweets wasn't looking directly at him, his attention taken with the noodles and chicken on his plate as if the conversation were only a distraction from his food. "You invite her in because you want that connection that was somewhat lost on the Mull case and definitely lost. . . ."

"We're not missing a connection," Booth protested, although he knew a lie when he heard one. "Just concentrate on Richter."

"And the connection you share on cases was lost on this case." Sweets kept driving home his point. "You seemed to spend more time with Agent Stefani on this one; Dr. Brennan spent more time in the lab. And that's not even factoring in what's happened since you broke off. . . ."

"Can we just focus on this case?"

Sweets looked up. "I think it's relevant." He put down his chopsticks and picked up his cup. "You were trying to make a connection and Dr. Brennan needed a connection with you in order to go into the interrogation with you. You're out of sync."

He knew better, but he waded in anyway. "Just stay out of our bedroom, Sweets. Let's just focus on the case." He stabbed at his chicken.

"So you two are having problems connecting sexually as well?"

His nonchalant look wasn't working. Sweets sat across from him eating and drinking and baring the truth and all Booth could do would be to tell him to shut up and mind his own business, but it was out there. The truth of how far things had gone was out there.

His phone rumbled against the table and he silently thanked God for the rescue. He checked the text. "Ruth Richter is here." He stood, his appetite long gone. With a few clicks he sent the message on to Bones and Stefani. "I've got work to do."

"You can't run from this, Booth." Sweets was like a shark homing in on it prey. "Ever since you and Dr. Brennan called off the engagement, you've both been. . . ."

But he never did hear the end of what Sweets was saying because in less than a half dozen strides he had escaped the room and the shrink's observations.

oOo

"You'll feel better if you tell us the whole story." The woman's face softened only slightly. "Don't you think the families of these women deserve the whole story?"

Her eyes shifted between the photos and his face and her head began that slow nod which he saw as a good sign.

And he waited.

oOo

"Hey, I made you your favorite pancakes."

Christine was already feeding herself from the plate he had prepared for her—tiny girl pancakes infused with a daddy's love and a handful or two of blueberries. The other pancakes were just beginning to brown on the bottom and he was poised with the spatula, ready to flip them over as she rounded the corner.

He was living a carbon copy of the day before and the day before, a kind of "Groundhog Day", but not really. At least in the movie, Bill Murray had a shot at changing the outcome of each day. Despite his best efforts to smooth out the wrinkles, each day only seemed to deepen the creases into something far more permanent.

Bones had that trim, professional air in her green blouse and navy jacket, but her eyes and her whole demeanor told another story. Eyes shaded and wary. Hesitant.

And the newest wrinkle: "I'm not really hungry."

She was fussing with Christine's bag, checking it, then making the long walk to the refrigerator for the snacks she had prepared the night before. The long walk. Deliberately around the island, taking the path that would put her nowhere near him.

He flipped the cakes and tried to keep the morning routine.

"I finished off that almond soy milk in the pancakes," he said as he studied the pancake edges. "I put it on the list."

He got a muffled, "Thanks." A glance up. Averted eyes. Focus on Christine and a passing look toward him.

"Why don't you just sit down and we can have breakfast like a family."

"I don't have an appetite, Booth."

A pause from her to see if her words registered. Or just because there was nothing else to say.

Then another rerun of previous mornings: "You don't need to drive us into the Jeffersonian today."

Booth sighed. The bubbles on top of the pancake had all made their last stand and he slid the spatula under the first cake and flipped it. Brennan continued to fuss about Christine's bag.

He flipped the last cake and looked up. Bones was reading something. "That couch in Christine's room can't be that comfortable for sleeping, Bones."

There, he addressed one of the elephants among the herd in the room.

She snapped off a soft "it's fine" before angling behind him. He heard the cabinet door and the other sounds muffled and soft, oh, so soft—as if she didn't want to disturb the silence. Bones emerged around him, retracing the detour to the other side of the island, coffee mug in hand.

"C'mon," he said as he plated one pancake, then topped it with the other. He wanted to push a button to just restart the day differently. "Healthy, hearty whole wheat pancakes with blueberries." He slid the plate toward her. "You like these. You're probably hungrier than you think."

Christine had stopped eating and was watching them, her sippy cup forgotten between her hands.

"I don't want breakfast, Booth."

Sad eyes. Desperately sad met his.

"You should eat something, Bones." He glanced at Christine looking for an ally. "Mommy didn't eat much last night." But a look back at his partner told him he hadn't won her over. "You're always telling me that breakfast is one of the most important meals of the day."

Brennan wiped a smear of blueberry from Christine's cheek and bent to kiss her daughter's head. "You should eat them, Booth."

A glance smothered in worn sadness.

He turned off the burner, pulled the plate toward him as Bones rounded the corner and disappeared toward the front hallway.

A knob of butter, a generous helping of syrup. A glance toward the hallway. A glance toward Christine who had begun to stuff another bit of pancake in her mouth.

He pushed away the pancakes, his own hunger gone.

Christine gave him her own mournful look over breakfast. And he sighed again. "Mommy's not hungry." He stood there and watched the butter melt along with his hope of a different ending.

oOo

"That's another one for the book of crazies," Caroline Julian was saying as he entered the observation area, the subdued light and fresher air a decided relief from the interview room. "Love made me do it." Caroline clobbered the idea with sarcasm. "I love the idea of locking her away."

The room was filled with the usual suspects: Bones, Caroline, Sweets, but Stefani had done a disappearing act.

"Sweets' girlfriend here was whisked away by your boss, Hacker," Caroline informed him. "Which is fine with me. She's oilier than the Exxon Valdez spill."

He saw the look on Bones' face that warned of a misunderstanding, but it was Sweets who quickly spelled it out for her.

"It means that Miss Julian here doesn't trust Agent Stefani."

"That's an understatement," Miss Julian huffed.

"You have enough now?" Booth asked, one eye on Bones who seemed distant despite being only six feet away.

The sound from Caroline was almost a growl. "She knowingly helped that sick boyfriend of hers trick those poor women into their truck and then tied them up and did things to them I'll have nightmares thinking about then killed them and dumped their bodies. . . ." She shook her head and pursed her lips, the very thought of what Ruth Richter had described far too sick and cruel for him to want to re-live.

"She's not even shown a hint of remorse," Sweets added. "Her desperation to maintain the connection with her husband caused her to accept his mission to kill those women as her own."

"Love shouldn't twist a person around like a pretzel," Caroline said. "Turned this one into a killer."

Sweets was about to launch into a slurry of psychological insights, but Caroline held up her hand like a stop sign.

"Save it for the trial. Whatever –osis or –philia that woman has, she helped kill those women and she's going away for a good, long time."

"And we have the physical evidence," Booth added.

"Thanks to the good doctor here," Caroline said, turning toward Brennan. "Without your help, cherie, that woman in there would still be leaving work at six and watching 'Swamp People' at seven."

The smile she gave Bones had little effect. Bones continued to hug herself, her expression flat.

"Sweets? Why don't you finish up with her and I'll take Bones out for a late lunch."

He figured he had a shot in front of Sweets and Caroline, and while he wasn't particularly hungry, he wanted to erase some of the tension from that morning.

But all it did was to ramp it up.

"I need to get back to the lab."

He watched her go, a flurry of offers from Sweets and even Caroline ending just as the door closed behind her.

oOo

"We're confident in this Ruth Richter being one of the killers?"

His mind must have been elsewhere because he hadn't heard Hacker's approach at his door. A second too late and the "we're" made him want to wince.

Andrew Hacker had said little about his impromptu removal of Agent Stefani—an email had simply suggested that he make a preliminary report on his interview with Richter "when he had a chance", but his boss hadn't even waited for him to catch his breath.

"She confessed to helping her husband lure the women and then they both had sex with the women, often when she had been drugged and tied up." Booth tried to keep the images from cropping up in his own mind's eye. "The husband then strangled the wome, mutilated them and dumped their bodies." He pulled out the Jeffersonian file. "Her description matches everything that Bones found on the remains."

Some days he thought an oral report better than a written one, a verbal cleansing of the horror and the tragedy left behind by some madman. But somehow he didn't think that Hacker was there for that.

"Good. You and the Jeffersonian are equally adept at tying up the loose ends of a 20-year-old case and presenting the prosecutor with a pretty package. Good."

Maybe he was thinking like Bones, but he didn't think of murder in any form as being a pretty package. Ever.

"Is there anything else you need, Boss?"

Hacker had plenty of other for discussion: the Berringer investigation, the problems in the ship cargo case, an overview of the Selznek-Myers evidence, but instinct told him none of those were even on his list.

"I just thought to tell you that it was a kindness for you to keep Agent Stefani apprised of developments in the investigation after it was clear she'd been wrong."

Wrong? thought Booth. The administrator in Hacker was couching the betrayal of her oath as euphemistically as possible. Again, Booth tried to decipher the real message behind Hacker's compliment, when his boss him tossed another curve.

"Agent Stefani has informed me that there is considerable tension between you and Temperance."

Almost three months of a need to deflect comments about the growing distance between them made him expert at keeping his expression neutral, then breaking into a facade of ease that belied the truth.

"Bones had her work for Agent Stefani and I chose to use other people in the field on the Mull murder." Booth shrugged off Hacker's comment. "I don't think Bones enjoyed working with Agent Stefani."

Yeah, he was throwing Stefani under the bus, but he didn't have the energy or the confidence in his abilities to simply tell Hacker they were fine.

Hacker took a bit too long to process that, but it seemed to satisfy him.

"Good. I don't want to mess with our 98% solve ratio," he said finally.

Booth corrected him. "It's 97%, boss."

To that, Hacker smiled and shook his head, the diplomat in him weaving into his administrative role. "That's why you're one of the best," he said, turning toward the door. "It would be a shame, a real shame, to lose the working relationship between you and the Jeffersonian and that 97% solve ratio."

oOo

Late afternoon folded into early evening and he dreaded going home to what would only be an icebox welcome. Then chilly and more chilly as the night wore on. He'd lived that kind of life under his father's roof, the surface tension masking the larger unspoken truths beneath and whatever promises he'd made to himself to never be like his old man seemed to be drowning in a sea of misery.

So he kept telling himself he'd go home in a few minutes, then the hour hand advanced and he'd make another mental note. And another.

He shot an email to Agent Cass and leaned back, the time on the corner of his screen reminding him he was closing in on Christine's dinner time. The internal debate continued—stay or go—but he felt no desire to try to thaw conditions at home. Even Christine, he mused, must be feeling the chill.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement and swiveled to find Agent Stefani framed in his doorway, a cardboard box in her hands.

For a moment neither spoke.

"I'm sure you'll be pleased to know that I've been transferred to the Washington field office," she said finally. "The other Washington."

"Seattle's wet," Booth offered. "But it's warmer than Anchorage."

Stefani's head bobbed. "I think Hacker might have preferred the cold." She wasn't giving ground, though. "But anyway, it doesn't matter now. Left coast here I come with an umbrella in hand." She indicated the box. "And this."

He felt the awkwardness in the room as he tried to think of something to say beyond a good luck and a goodbye.

"You didn't have to leave my name on the report," Stefani offered after a silence. She seemed uneasy. "I think it was the only reason why I'm still in the Bureau."

"You reopened the case, tied in another victim." Booth shrugged. "When they teach this at Quantico your name will be forever connected with solving the case."

Another awkward silence. Another pregnant pause.

He geared up for a goodbye. "Well, then. . . ."

"Her death changed my life."

He'd seen a variety of Stefanis at his office door, and now he saw something else: a little girl in pain.

"Who?"

"My cousin." The Wicked Witch was melting in front of him. "Keith Keeley was one of several boys who raped my cousin. Laura."

"I'm sorry."

"She was. . . . She killed herself."

The woman was coming apart as her story spilled out in disjointed bits.

"It broke my parents' marriage, my aunt and uncle gave up. My uncle drank himself to death." Her voice broke and the clear blue eyes that had seen everything so clearly became clouded with pain. "And you do things for family, even when you know that that thing isn't enough." She sniffed. "Or it isn't right."

"You just want to heal the hurt, but sometimes all you do is bandage the hurt and the wound just festers."

The tears flowed freely as she slid into the room and set the box down so she could wipe at them.

"I thought I should tell you the whole story," she offered through sobs.

He offered his handkerchief, but she waved him off.

"Sometimes you feel you have to do something, anything to make the hurt go away," she said. "But sometimes you're just stuck in the insanity of that damned rut andyou just can't get out."

oOo

Here's the thing, he thought, as he rounded the familiar corner, Paradise Lost, the sign both beckoning him and labeling his situation in all its neon glory, not going home was probably a relief for Bones.

It certainly was a relief and a burden for him.

Open the door and walk into a kind of heaven and a kind of hell. Beery smells hung in the air but at this late hour few patrons remained. The TV continued to pump out images despite the muted broadcast. Slide into a seat at the bar and feel the cool of the wood and the heat of guilt. Order a whiskey from the bartender who helped keep you from sliding completely into the bottle like your father. Contemplate your faith as you wonder how it seems to be slipping away.

And begin your confession of the sin that has singed your soul but saved five innocent lives while damning two other lives to pain.

"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. . . ."

oOo

Author's note: This was always the ending. I know that people have called for me to "fix" B&B's pain, but the goal was always to consider the three months in which the effects of the aborted engagement manifest themselves. I hope it fulfills that at least.