Requiem (34) That's why my feelings always come in twos. That's why I'm like a man who tears up a letter and then regrets it, gathering the pieces and pasting them together with enormous effort - sometimes for the rest of his life… There were flowers in her house. And not just the standard gift shop bouquet. Gorgeous, in fact downright spectacular, expensive flowers were now in her house. That doesn't just happen. Not, at least, without knowing why. Twelve long-stemmed, pale pink roses had arrived behind a knock at the door this morning, triggering a smile she rarely displayed to the general public before noon. Mac, of course. It was her first thought, although he'd never been one to go to this much trouble or invest in a gesture so extravagant and, to his solidly-pragmatic mind, so frivolously romantic. He'd always been a 'flowers die' kind of man. Flowers die so I bought you a blender, a coffee-maker, a toaster oven. Know that my love will last as long as the warranty on a household appliance, longer if you send in the card. Which made these roses momentous and, if she were to be honest with herself, not a little frightening. What did they mean? What was he saying? Were they just a token of remembrance to forgive his quick trip out of town or was it something more? She barely had time to process a motive when this glorious arrangement of velvet-pink blossoms in their oh-my-gosh-that's-a-cut-crystal-vase tilted to reveal the deliveryman's face and he asked the question that brought her crashing somewhat painfully back to earth. Miss Maximilliana Jones? No, I'm her mother, she's my daughter, that's my little baby girl who's barely out of high school and those are some pretty damn decadent roses, what the hell do you think you're doing here? None of that came out of her mouth, though not for lack of her inner-lioness's fierce attempt to weigh in. Instead she just shook her head and called up the stairs for Maxie - up the stairs past a slack-jawed, saucer-eyed Georgie who couldn't have unholstered her cell-phone any faster if her life depended on it. Maxie just got a huge bouquet of flowers…What do you mean "and"? She doesn't even have a boyfriend, Dillon…Okay, you know what? That's not the point…Yeah, well I bet you Scorcese sends flowers, and Tarentino, and Kubrick…Then you have something in common, don't you? Because Kubrick's widow is getting just as many flowers from him these days as I'm getting from you… As inopportune and modestly mortifying as Georgie's tirade had been to overhear, it provided sufficient cause to engage the deliveryman in conversation. One look at this mother's apologetic wince, her wilting smile, the disheartened slump of her shoulders, and he'd been more than happy to provide an answer to any question she asked if only to mitigate the embarrassment. Such as why he'd come in a plain black van, didn't the flower shop have its own truck? Oh, he worked for a messenger service. But wasn't it unusual for a messenger service to be delivering flowers? Not if they come from the airport, I see. So they were flown in, these roses? You met the plane yourself? Just to pick up this arrangement? That sounds very costly. It is? It was? No, no, I agree, she's a very special girl. Who's giving her mother a very special headache. Yet of all she'd been unprepared for (and this still included, on some level, having a daughter old enough to arouse the affections of a man who didn't automatically and for just this reason deserve to go to jail), Felicia found herself most taken aback by Maxie's decidedly ambivalent response. She seemed genuinely pained by the presence of these flowers and, to her mother's sharply discerning eye, just as convinced as Felicia herself it would have been better had they never arrived. No smile appeared when she came to the door, no flush of bashful pride or delight in this romantic attention - just that instinctive, indecisive pause prior to taking the pen, prior to signing the receipt, when it became clear to anyone who knew her well that she was struggling to find a way to send them back. Twelve exquisite pale pink burdens, that's what she took off his hands. That's what she brought into the living room. That's what she set on the table. Twelve thorny recognitions of some undefined dilemma - that's what she took a solid step apart from as she wrestled with what to do next. "There's a card," Felicia offered softly, a hard gaze launching over Maxie's head to send a petulant Georgie trudging right back up the stairs. "To the left there, in the center." "I see it." A reluctant hand reached for the envelope inserted among the stems; two cautious fingers plucking it out; a thumb committed to breaking its seal. "What does it say?" she asked lightly, deliberately, thinking there might be a clue to her daughter's hesitation hidden somewhere in the text. "Nothing," replied Maxie, passing the missive to her mother with an obvious sense of relief. Felicia lifted the card to the light and saw he'd only signed his name - Maximillian. No thank you, no inscription, no clever quote. Curiouser and curiouser. "Maxie, has something happened? Is there something I should know?" "No," her daughter imparted, a little too quickly, as she bent to inhale the scent of the closest unfurling rose. "No, nothing's happened or no, there's nothing I need to know about? Because Maxie, in my experience men only send flowers out of the blue like this when they feel compelled to. He's telling you something here. Do you know what it is?" Felicia scrutinized her daughter's face and was troubled by the lack of reaction. "You don't have to give me the reason, I'm just…well, I want to make sure…Maxie, is this an apology? Did he say something horrible to you? Did he hurt you in any way?" Those diffident features creased on the charge and Maxie shook her head in denial. "Not at all. He's been a perfect gentleman. In fact, you couldn't have found a more honorable man for me to be around if you'd picked him out yourself," she expressed on the crest of a defeated smile. Aha. "You like him, don't you? You like him a lot." "Doesn't matter. He's got…he's got his own life, his own world, and I'm not really a part of it. We're friends, that's all." "Oh, I wouldn't be too sure about that," Felicia disputed wryly, her heart twisting to an agonized knot at the abrupt lift of those hopeless eyes and their hunger for encouragement. "Friends don't send friends roses, not as a general rule anyway. Oh Maxie," she exclaimed, her worry rising right along with the hand she sent to rest on her daughter's shoulder. "Be careful, okay? You don't have to rush into anything. Take it slow. Really get to know him, and give him a chance to get to know you. If the feelings are true they'll last just as long as you need them to. And if they're not? A good friendship can be the best thing that ever happened to you. Look at me and Bobbie. Kevin and Mac. Lucy and Luke." She cursed the urgency she heard riding beneath those words and their underlying sting of desperation. She was doing this wrong, it was coming out wrong. Funny how it all plays out so much wiser in your head. "Maxie, I guess what I'm suggesting is that you leave your options open. Take the time to figure out what it is you really want from him and what he wants from you. Of course I have to say that, I'm your Mom. But it's sincerely what I hope you'll do." Her daughter's head bobbed indifferently, her attention straying back to those flowers, and Felicia knew she'd lost the moment but hoped some of what she'd said had gotten through. Love could be such a deafening thing…if this was love, if it was true. And who knew? It might not be. Though she had to admit those twelve well-traveled, magnificently arranged, long-stemmed pale pink roses were making one hell of an argument. An argument she'd be sorely-pressed to logically disprove. Lucky for Maximillian Cassadine her father was out of town. Or was it really, when you boiled it down to the base, more of an incredibly smart move? Florida met him at the airport with an oppressive rasp of humid heat, a furnace blast of hot, wet air sweating off a distant, exasperated sea. The sheer suffocating weight of its saturated atmosphere had nearly knocked him right back through the door of Gainesville's baggage claim, coaxing a host of second thoughts about the key in his hand, the map in his pocket and the long ten yards of hard pavement stretching out between the exit and what he'd been assured was his last shot at a shuttle. The blazer vanished in a heartbeat, slung over an arm until the sleeve beneath grew slick with perspiration, then thrown across the seat of his rental car where it remained overnight. Morning brought him a harsh white light intruding through the curtains, besieging eyes already wide and dry; shot red by half a dozen fitful hours spent sleeping aside the thump-thump-thump of the motel's cantankerous air conditioner. Better out of bed than in it, you'd think, and he did for awhile - for as long as it took him to discover the complimentary coffee was rancid, the electrical outlets were hit-and-miss and the shower, while it spiked a brisk, invigorating spray, was only making promises it couldn't keep. By the time he reached the sedan he'd left to bake in this sullen southern sun he knew he'd need another. Gonna break by nightfall, Commissioner. Just you wait and see. One more day and that sky'll crack as wide and weepy as a juvie fessin' up to his first offense. Trust me, I got a nose for these things. Banyon was a codger, a thirty-year man - twenty with a shield he'd shine right up and produce if you needed proof of it. Mac didn't. He could read that face like a resume - those blunt brown eyes stripped long ago of any easy sympathy; the callous crease of a brow weathered by one too many cases, one too many chases to bring a suspect down; the suspicious mouth and its toothy grin; shrewd as a grifter, sharp as sin - the job had gnawed its way all the way in. Move past his face to his place in the coffee shop, sunk into the birds-eye booth at the back with a clear sightline to every entrance, every potential route of escape, and there was no mistaking his profession, the investment of years, the detective he'd made. If any cop could give him a line on Zander's troubled past, Mac was betting this was him. Unfortunately it seemed there wasn't much to tell. The Lewis family hadn't hit the radar until the incident in Sneads, until the death of the older brother, and only then in the form of a courtesy call from the Jackson County sheriff's office to inform Banyon's captain of the facts. The sheriff requested the younger son's jacket - the paperwork on any crime, arrest or dust-up he'd been in - but at that point there'd been nothing to send. A week later the kid was cleared and the body'd been released. Upon the family's return to Gainesville a patrol car was assigned to cruise the house, a few traffic cops to work the funeral, but it wasn't until the boy bolted that the department got any further involved. The parents called to report their son hadn't come home the night before…which meant what it always meant; it was already too late. They wrote up the standard MPR, issued an alert, canvassed the buses, the trains, the airport but, hey, of his own volition? With that head start? Just spinnin' the wheels there, chokin' on smoke. Banyon heard the family'd gone on to hire a private detective, though he didn't think they'd gotten very far with that. The mother fell into a deep depression; the EMP's were called out twice on the premise of an accidental overdose. The father, this hoity-toity surgeon from Shands, had his hands full trying to keep a lid on it all. Which wasn't going to work - it never did. And sure enough she bumped right up to a razor blade in the bath. Incoherent when she came to. Just snapped, it happens like that. One son dead, the other in the wind, and who could blame her? Lewis had her committed to The Gables where she'd been ever since. Gave it a couple of years before he filed for divorce. Dead now, you say? And the younger son, too? Well, don't that just beat your faith in humanity a pulpy black-and-blue? It's a nasty world we live in, Commissioner. Won't pony up an ounce of mercy, even when it's due. He sat through Banyon's short stack of pancakes and a war story or two, but left with little more than he already knew. Back behind the wheel again he let his instincts guide him and headed north to the neighborhood. He drove past the schools, the shops, the park, winding his way to a suburban enclave of meandering lanes with explorer's names - Magellan Terrace, Ponce De Leon Place, Marco Polo Circle - until he came to what had once been the Lewis family home. He stopped before the trim two-story colonial with its lacquered black shutters and forest green awnings, its rolling lawn, its manicured drive, and tried to get a feel for what life had been like on the heels of the death of that eldest child. The Cain-and-Abel echo of its horror; the atmosphere of accusation; the anger, the desolation; the bitter, incomprehensible pain. Why these things were important to acknowledge was still largely a mystery to him. As were, in several frustrating ways, the reasons for this trip. He could pin it all to his guilt, he guessed. That was an easy mark. This stark, castigational blame he aimed solely at himself for giving Zander the choice, for taking him in, for setting him on a path that had led so swiftly to madness and destruction. And Maxie, too. Maxie who would never have known this grief, been exposed to this danger, placed her bright young life on the line had Zander not, in a final fit of panicked desperation, been trying to reach out - to stretch through his daughter to get to him. Hindsight brought all those harsh realities bubbling to the surface, burning off the solace of his justifications, incinerating each and every rationalization he'd sought for over a year to impose. If only he'd caught on to Lansing's plan before everything began to unravel. If only he'd moved faster when he saw Zander being led to the interrogation room. If only he hadn't allowed Georgie to waylay him with her ridiculous request for some anonymous date she could take to the high school dance. If only…if only… "It's the hurricane, Commissioner. Half the island's lines are down and the other half are under water." "I don't care if that pissant piece of rock is sinking into the sea. Get me through to Azure Key!" It was all falling apart, he could feel it; smell it like the acrid tang of a brush fire smoldering on the breeze. Bridges were burning, the sting was scorching south; any leverage they had was flaming fast to a thin column of smoke. Too many faces had gone from confusion to a smug, self-satisfied disdain. Nikolas, Elizabeth, Lucky…he'd put money on the table their cornered ADA had spent the last six hours baring his soul to anyone who would listen. The frame of Cassadine for Cody McCall's murder was plainly common knowledge now. And there was no need to ask who, in Ric's carefully-calculated play to come clean, he'd promoted to the driver's seat. Zander would take the hit for this. Zander would take the fall. As if he'd been the mastermind behind it all and not, as Mac knew but couldn't prove, merely the man whose signature Lansing had so cravenly lusted after; the irritating, inseminating impediment Port Charles' corrupt assistant district attorney had gone to all this trouble to remove. He'd tried to make contact an hour ago but the kid wasn't picking up the phone. There was no way to gauge how much Zander was aware of when he walked into the interrogation room. Mac could only hope he sensed something was off; detected just enough of a shift in the wind to trigger that suspicious nature of his. Just keep quiet, just keep cool - for chrissake, Zander, no stupid moves. Listen to that voice inside you. Recognize what we both know to be true. An unmasked Ric Lansing is a Ric Lansing with nothing left to lose. The bulletin from Azure Key had been an eleventh-hour godsend, and had given Mac a weapon he planned to use. If he could crack McCall's murder finally, cleanly, he'd rip the reins out of Lansing's hands; stripping him of every ounce of his authority, of all his occupational advantage. Any coercive power he had to manipulate Zander Smith would vanish with the news they'd nailed the true culprit. With no case pending, no homicide to clear, the ADA's involvement would end right here. What was he going to do then? Level a retroactive charge of extortion? An accusation impossible to sustain without testifying to his own collusion and reckless abuse of office - the manufactured evidence, the buried leads, the hijack of every facet of the police investigation - all for the small, sad, twisted prize of obtaining legal rights to another man's child. He could kiss that career of his good-bye. And Mac was fairly certain, even at the cost of his wife's peace of mind, the power-hungry brother of the town's leading gangster would prefer to let those sleeping dogs lie. In fact, it amused Mac to discover Ric's brother would be the one to resolve this mess. Sonny, Jax and Samantha McCall had tracked that elusive pirate's treasure all the way down to Azure Key, and in the process attracted the attention of the scum who'd murdered Samantha's father - Cody's partner-in-crime and a stone-cold junkyard dog of a killer named Ben Rogers. Initial reports from the island's constabulary indicated Rogers had died, but not before he confessed to the crime in front of two eyewitnesses, Sonny and Sam. While he'd rather have Rogers alive to extradite for trial, those witness statements were more than enough to clear Cassadine of the charge and put this case to bed…at the same time negating any threat Ric Lansing sought to hold over Zander's head. Mac rushed through the paperwork and stuffed it into a file, then made a beeline for the interrogation room; relieved to see Zander still on his feet - no cuffs on his wrists, no rights being read, just a hard look of deliberation on his face as he poured over the documents he held and absorbed whatever Lansing was saying. He tapped on the window and the conversation stopped; the ADA backing away to edge through the door. "Commissioner?" "They found the body of a fence named Ben Rogers. Two witnesses can testify that, before he died, he confessed to killing Cody McCall." Lansing's eyes skirted to the file in Mac's hand, his complacence collapsing as the firm ground he imagined he'd been standing on slipped out from underfoot. "Is this information reliable?" "The case against Nikolas is closed," Mac pronounced in no uncertain terms, keen in his appreciation of the way that statement cracked this lawyer's resolve like the cruel crunch of an uppercut. Come back from that, you bastard. Ric struggled to maintain his composure, to act as if this were nothing more than a productive piece of news, and nodded as he stepped apart to re-enter the interrogation room - or what in this instant, with this truth, Mac felt justified in referring to as Backpedal Central. Whatever scheme he'd been hatching in there had now been rendered moot. Once Zander heard Cassadine had been cleared he'd know the game was over. Any evidence they'd managed to gather against Port Charles' unethical ADA would have to stand on its own, and was up to Mac to find a way to use. Sure, they'd kick a little sand, posture, throw out an insult or two - but Zander still had the rights to his child and Ric nothing he could actually prove without incriminating himself. In fact, Mac thought it was a good sign when Elizabeth arrived to enter that room. It was long past time everyone dismounted from those high custodial horses and worked out an agreement based on the best interests of the child - not the mother, not the father, and definitely not the pathologically-conspiring father-wannabe. The optimistic spin he'd gifted to what was going on behind that door left him completely unprepared for Zander's angry burst through its frame, his furious charge down the hallway, his fierce, flat kick to the stairwell door that nearly knocked it off its hinge. Mac shot a quick glance at Lansing and one look at the crowing gloat of that grin put every encouraging illusion he'd had to a swift, painful death. He found the kid on the concrete turn between the second and third floors, pacing the break between the flights of stairs like a wolf in a cage. Some part of him had been waiting. Some rogue, rational part of him had tapped the sense to stay. "Zander." "You could have told me! You could have walked through the door and told me!" "Told you what?" he'd inquired, halting short of the landing, mystified by the accusation. "That you'd caught the guy! That you'd closed the case! I never would have signed my rights away if I'd known this thing was over. Instead I had to hear about it after the fact from that sonovabitch Lansing." "You what? Wait. How did that…? Zander, start from the beginning. Tell me what happened in there." Zander pivoted sideways and launched a foot against the closest wall in harsh frustration; the kick booming a reverberation that thundered through the well. He snarled once, then again even louder as he sought to bleed off his rage. "He…okay, so Lansing…okay," he stammered, grappling for the calm he'd need to relay this information; the rendering of which would only serve to exacerbate his pain. "He brings me the case file, McCall's case file, and tells me to read it. And I can see he's doctored it up. Instead of framing Nikolas, he's turned all the evidence around to implicate me. He says he's going to have me arrested if I don't sign over my rights. All I can think is how I'm going to stall him, how I'm going to put this off until I can find a way to run it past you. And there you are at the window…and I'm figuring, great, the cavalry's arrived. Only when Ric comes back in he tells me you've decided to make McCall's case your top priority and he'll hand that file over unless I snap to and pick up a pen." "Then you should have let him do it! You should have called his bluff!" Mac retorted, his own anger on the rise; infuriated to discover Lansing had used him to extort his own operative. "You should have trusted me, Zander. I could have blown that case apart." "Who are you kidding?" the kid snapped back, his indignant eyes ablaze. "I'm not the only one out on a limb here. Do you think I don't know that? You couldn't shut down the case against me without coming clean on the sting, without exposing our deal. The DA's office would have you for breakfast. An off-the-books operation designed to bring down one of their own? They'd paint you as some cowboy cop, some out-of-control vigilante, especially if you didn't have the evidence to back up your claims. I can go down for a day or a week or six months if I have to, as long as I know you've got my back. But I've got nothing Mac, not a hope in hell, if you're sitting in the cell beside me." Zander turned abruptly to stride to the furthest corner of the platform, one hand pressing to the whitewashed brick as he shook his head on a sigh. "Just tell me it won't hold up. Just tell me that signature doesn't count. If it was made under duress…? During the course of an investigation…?" "I can't tell you that, Zander." Though, lord, he wished he could. While he wanted to believe he could dodge any bullet the DA's office fired, it might have played out exactly the way Zander maintained. Which left him beholden to this kid…this man…who, without an apparent second thought, had stepped into the fray. "The signature stands until we bring Lansing down. Once we can prove what he's been up to every agreement he ever made will come under scrutiny. Everything will get a second look. But first we've got to nail him. Are you in?" Zander's shoulders slumped. "I don't know how I can help you now. As an asset, I'm pretty well spent." "You're not spent until I say you're spent," Mac growled gruffly, shifting gears and adapting tactics to come up with an alternate approach. "The PCPD got a tip about a shipment arriving at the docks tonight. Word on the street is Morales is testing Corinthos, seeing if his head's still in the game or if Alcazar took his focus along with his wife. One of my CI's has it on good authority Faith plans to send some muscle in to crash that party. You're still working for Faith, right?" "I can be," Zander allowed with an inquisitive cock of his brow. "Good. Morgan had her committed to Ferncliff, which I'm betting she'll use as her alibi. Go over and see what you can find out. Then meet me in the downstairs parking lot at five…no, you'd better make it six o'clock. We're going to wire you up. Do you have a problem with that?" "No. But I thought you didn't need me to bring down the mob. I thought you didn't want me for that." "I don't. Capelli and Beck are leading the charge for the PCPD. At least that's what they say they'll be doing. I wouldn't mind having my own man in there to verify that for me." The dark cloud hanging over Zander's head seemed to dissipate slightly, his back straightening as he took hold of the assignment with whatever confidence he had left - and Mac found himself hoping, with a ferocity he'd never felt before when it came to this kid, that he'd come through this night, and all the rest, in one working piece… Damn. He roused from the memory to realize he'd overshot the exit. By fifteen miles, at least. He changed lanes and took the next ramp off, then reconfirmed through the rental car's GPS the exact location of The Gables. Requiem (35) And there are other memories, still looking for something to bite, like fierce, unsatisfied teeth. They gnaw us to the last bone, devouring the long silence of all that lies behind us. He trailed the nurse across the grass and up the modest grade of a sandy path to the lonely figure in the pale yellow dress stationed at the top of the cliff. "Mercy? Mercy, you have a visitor. This nice man has come all the way down from New York State to see you." "Well, it's about time." The woman pulled back from the easel, angling her brush to the line of the horizon in an effort to judge the proportion of her seascape, then set the tool to her palette and the palette to the folding table at her side. "I don't know why I bother," she reflected, returning her gaze to the water as she picked up a cloth to wipe her hands. "It took a year just to get permission to stand here. The doctors thought it less than wise to set a suicidal mind at the edge of a precipice. But I didn't succeed, I told them. I could leap right off this rocky ledge and break into a thousand little pieces, I'd still be alive and you know it. I've never had much success with death. Isn't that right, Patricia?" "There's a black thought," the nurse advised. "More a dark observation, I would think. So, Patty-girl, when you toddle down the hill to report it to my keepers make sure to call it what it is. They're sticklers for that kind of thing." When she turned around to emphasize the point with a mildly admonishing glower, Mac's heart skipped a beat at the ease with which he found her son residing in that face. The resemblance he'd never sighted in the father was all too present here, clear in the canted structure of the cheekbones, the hawk-like aspect of the eyes, the thick, liquid heft of her chestnut hair that seemed so willful, so stubbornly obtuse, as if it had a life of its own. And when her brow cocked in curiosity of his reaction, as he had seen Zander's do so many times before, it was all he could manage just to keep himself from taking one giant step back, from blinking hard, from shaking his head to knock the mirrored image from his mind. "His name is Mr. Scorpio," informed the nurse, discerning the moment ripe enough to make the introduction. "He knew your Alexander and has come to pay his respects. Perhaps you could take him to the terrace for a lemonade? He looks rather hot." "That he does," Mercy mused, her inquisitive expression mellowing with the soft hint of a smile. She glided forward and gestured for his arm, forcing him to offer it formally to escort her from the bluff. He looked to the nurse for assurance, but she had already skirted around them and begun to pack up the art materials. "Miserable weather we're having," his new companion declared, drawing his attention away from the woman he'd imagined would be acting as their chaperone. "The mug of it is almost unbearable. But then you're riding hard to winter up north, aren't you? I miss the fall. Was it lovely? Did the leaves blush? Did they scald with shame? Did they pirouette as they fell?" "I don't…I'm not sure," Mac replied, uncomfortable now and sweating in this jacket; a finger crooking to loosen the hitch of the collar at his throat. They'd told him she was fine in a social situation, followed the forms to a tee; that the edge of her illness had been sufficiently blunted by the cocktail of medications they'd prescribed. As long as he stuck to the surface of things and didn't probe too deeply there was no reason to believe the visit wouldn't be a pleasant one, and possibly just what she needs. Oh, and one small piece of advice. If she comes up with an irrational assertion? It's best just to let the statement slide. But they'd given him no guidelines for that. Did a pirouetting leaf qualify? "You wouldn't be, would you?" she conceded, guiding him around and down to the path he'd just ascended. "As a man, I mean. None of my brothers ever noticed the turn of the leaves, the first frost on the short green grass, the snap of the air come October. Too busy with their gutters and their tires and the annual removal of window screens. I was raised among the Irish, sir, and the Irish mind heaves to. Takes a good pint or six to get them in the mood to appreciate the changing of the seasons." The gruff, good-natured tone she lent to that last remark helped to put him more at ease and he found himself nodding, found himself willing to at least take a stab at conversation. "There's a lot of work to do, that's true." "You look to me like a fellow whose hands have recently been blistered by a rake. Am I right?" "You are," he admitted, reflexively running a thumb over the calloused patch of skin on his middle finger, presuming she'd seen it when she'd taken his arm. "We have an elm," he offered by way of explanation; unsure a swift second afterward why he felt the need for one. "I would have guessed an oak, a strapping figure like you. There must be women in your life?" "Three. Today, anyway." It surprised him to hear that answer coming out; the switch of gears, this need to keep up. "Coming and going, are they? How astute of you to notice!" she exclaimed, steering him past the dangling branch of an overgrown bush. "I had three men myself. They were never what you might call alert to my arrivals and departures. Of course, it didn't help that most of that was going on inside my head." She caught the troubled twist in his features and gave his wrist a reassuring squeeze. "Institutional humor," she relayed through a jaded grin. "We find it where we can. So you knew my Alexander, did you? In what capacity, if I may ask?" A tough question. Tougher than it should have been. His sober eye traveled down the ambling slope of the trail they were on, half-hoping to locate a kinder answer somewhere in the distance. "Well, Mrs. Lewis…" "Mercy," she encouraged. "Mercy," he acquiesced. "I should probably tell you I'm in law enforcement. I'm the police commissioner of Port Charles." "And he was your lost cause," she imparted, lifting an equally sober gaze to the aggrieved expression on his face. "One of them, in any event." "One of them, yes." He disliked that truth, yet there it was. "Oh, Commissioner, you're kind to fret but there's no need, I assure you. You're not telling me anything I don't already know. Alexander was everyone's lost cause. Save mine, I suppose." She tucked her arm a little tighter through his and cast a wistful glance across the landscape, in the direction of the sanitarium that had housed her these last six years. "He'd always been an 'if only' child. If only he would do this, if only he would stop that, if only he would just…just…just…," she chorused deliberately, savoring the exasperation of the word. "You could fill in the blank with whatever it was you felt would make your life easier. But my Alexander, my dark defiance, my ever-restless tempest of a son, wasn't born to make things easy. He was born to make them hard and bold and blindingly bright. He was born to bring you meaning." If it helped her to believe that, Mac had no intention of disputing the claim. All he'd found down Zander's road was an unimaginable amount of pain. "I'm sorry for your loss." "So you think he's dead, do you? Did you see the body? With your very own eyes?" "Well, no, I didn't see…I wasn't on-site…I…Mrs. Lewis…" "Mercy," she intoned patiently, bemused by his disconcertion. "You'll forgive me my reservations, Mr. Scorpio. I'm sure it would make things so much simpler if I took you at your word. But you must remember I'm his mother and I think you'll agree this gives me the right, above all others who thought they knew him and the few who thought they loved him, to retain a measure of doubt. It would be just like my Alex to find himself tangled up in some all-but-invisible knot. And if you're waiting for him to call for help? Stop. He'll never do it. He'll be silent as a church mouse on that score - not through pride or ego, mind you, but because he's just so resolutely convinced no one would come. You know what this means, don't you? It means we must keep watch for him at all times." Guilt crept up on him, cornered him; smashed an acrimonious fist against the wall of his conscience as he absorbed that assessment and marked the firm certainty lying behind it. How many times had they tried to tell her this last surviving son was dead? On how many different days, using how many different means? And she was still resisting, still insisting they were wrong; still content to settle in for a long, futile wait. If it hadn't been for him, the choices he'd made, the battle he'd enlisted her son to help him win, she might never have had to face this news; to grab hold of her denial and dig her heels in. Not that he blamed her. Could any parent living so far away from their child accept a second-hand report of its death? He knew he couldn't, he wouldn't, no matter what anyone said. And for that very reason he found himself incapable of argument here. How could he harass this mother's faith? As she so openly maintained, she had a right to it. More right than she knew, in fact. Hadn't the town, the papers and his own police department declared Zander dead in the hotel fire? And hadn't he risen like some fractiously forsaken phoenix from that pile of ash? As important as it was for everyone around him to accept the truth of Zander's death and put the kid to rest, especially Maxie - and in the bitter hour of any of his many morosely sleepless nights, himself - he couldn't find it in his heart to rob this woman of whatever conviction she managed to sustain. He told himself it was her fragile acquaintance with sanity that held him back, ignoring the sly, suggestive voice inside him that continued to insinuate it might, way down deep, prove to be something else. Something a lot like respect. Once they reached the level lawn of grass she withdrew her arm from his sleeve. "You must be horribly uncomfortable. Would you like to take your jacket off? The terrace is just around the corner. You're twenty-five yards from a chair and a drink and, if the fickle whimsy of a forlorn fate sees fit to smile down upon you, the answers to all those questions you actually came here to ask." He shot her an unsettled glance and she laughed. "Oh, Commissioner," she scolded kindly. "I would have thought you'd figured it out by now. We're not mad because we see less, but because we see more." "Mac," he stated abruptly, finally surrendering his name. "Mac then, yes," she accepted through the swing of a reckless smile. "Mac. Absolutely. Mac." He could so completely understand why Lewis had married her in that moment, and how she must have always been just this bewitchingly difficult to contain - her mind a dozen miles ahead, her wit forever ready to greet you when you finally arrived. (And he couldn't think of very many people who wouldn't be showing up late to that party.) How unlikely it would have been for anyone - husband, son, friend - to detect the instant this intellect caught, stalled to a twist and tumbled, slipping helplessly off its rail. You would want to believe it was a tease; that whatever she said, however she looked, whenever she did a thing you couldn't quite comprehend, it was all a clever part of a grander game. With eyes this knowing and a manner this wise, you could convince yourself she was sane for the rest of your natural life. And Mac wasn't so sure, had he been in Cameron's shoes, that wasn't the route he'd take. She'd be a hard woman to walk away from, this Mercy McClain. And all but impossible to lose. They circled the main building to arrive at a flagstone deck strewn with tables and chairs, most of them empty due to the humid swelter of the air. Mercy gestured to a shaded corner and left in search of refreshments, giving Mac the chance to remove his blazer and dive into a seat before anyone noticed the sticky stain of sweat running down his back. He was rolling up his shirt sleeves when she returned with the offer of a towel, which he sheepishly accepted to wipe his brow and swipe the perspiration from his neck. "They're putting together a tray," she imparted sympathetically. "If we're lucky we may get some melon - or the weather will break and give us rain. I'd take you inside, I would, but there are an awful lot of ears in there and I'm not sure what you've come to say or are willing to share with the world. If you'd rather…?" "No, this is fine. I'm fine. Much better now, thank you." And true to her word a tray appeared at precisely that moment carrying two glasses of lemonade and a serving plate stacked with assorted slices of freshly-cut fruit. The orderly seemed to linger as he arranged the dishes on the table, leading Mac to believe she'd been right about the listening too. How much of that interest was professional? How much merely the prurient concern of a man with nothing else to do? "Ah, Leonard," she chided atop the censorious click of her tongue. "What on earth made you think to bring the napkins? Does the heat actually outweigh your desire to make a second trip? What if he says something important? Why, you'll miss it. Then what will you do? Not so much consideration next time. The Gables grapevine depends on you!" He lifted his glass of lemonade to hide the quirk of his smile as he watched her wave the orderly off with a disappointed flick of her hand. "Don't you wish people were just a little bit harder to read? I mean, he doesn't even try," she lamented, plucking up a section of cantaloupe and popping it into her mouth. "Honestly? Easier is better in my line of work." "Oh, I'll bet you could crack him like a walnut. He'd be no challenge at all." "One crime down, a hundred to go," he responded with half a shrug. "There's always another challenge waiting in the wings." "Which brings us back to Alexander, who is nothing if not a challenge to most." She pressed the edge of her napkin to her lips and relaxed into the corner of her chair, her expression growing serious. "What can I tell you? Or have you come to say something to me? Why are we here, Mac?" The directness of the question brought him up short, as did the fix of her sudden, attentive stare. He stalled for time behind another sip of lemonade, attempting to sort through his scrambling thoughts, to come up with an equally straightforward response, but found himself absent a tactic; lost of anything to say that wasn't honest and sincere. All she'd left him to tap was the truth. "I didn't expect this," he confessed, setting his glass to the table. "I wasn't even sure we'd be capable of having a conversation. What the nurse told you was true. My primary reason for coming to The Gables was to pay my respects. It was something I was doing for Zander…Alexander. I owe him that." "And now?" "And now I don't know," he disclosed, chuffing an uncertain breath. "This is supposed to be a pleasant visit. I'm not supposed to press." "I could tell you to let me worry about that but you wouldn't, would you? Which leaves us at an impasse." Her eyes narrowed as she pondered the dilemma, her lower lip pinched beneath a meditating tooth. "There's no way around it, really. You take the chance and I try my best. Whatever happens…happens. I don't like to think of myself as hopeless, but perhaps that's all the big bad world has left you to do." She'd spun the offer to a test. Was he brave enough? Did he trust her enough? Could he look past the setting, this institutional environment - the doctors, the nurses, the diagnosis - all the information he'd been told and the assumptions he'd walked in with to see her as something more than broken; something more than a tragic little accident no one had been able to fix; something beyond an irreparable, irrational, impractical truth her own family had discarded, thrown up their hands and surrendered in a wit's end fit of resignation? Could he look across this table, across this history, across this boundary of societal perception and see her as a person, as a flesh-and-blood human being - as something more, anything more, than a certified lost cause? And the answer to that question was yes. Yes he could. Of course he could. It was no less than he'd done for her son. "I'm not going to lie to you. I have a lot more questions than answers when it comes to…Alexander. And I'm not…I don't like questions," he divulged, scouting out some object in the distant vicinity he could focus his agitation on. Where to begin? What to ask? It was probably safer to keep things simple. "For instance, I don't understand why it took his father so long to reconnect with him once he hit Port Charles. Cameron signed on as a staff psychiatrist at the hospital in November, but it wasn't until mid-January that he saw his son for the first time - and only then because I forced the meeting." "Forced it how?" Mercy inquired in a solemn, contemplative tone. "Zander came in on a D-and-D, a drunk and disorderly," he clarified, casting a quick glance across the table to assess her reaction to this. She nodded, no worse for the news, and Mac continued on. "I gave him a choice. See a shrink or go to jail. He chose the shrink and Cameron just happened to be at the top of the call sheet. I didn't know. No one knew they were related until he walked out of the interrogation room and told me to lock Zander up; just write him off, the kid couldn't be helped. At that point? The history was hard to miss." "I'll bet it was," she sighed, her grim gaze dropping to the napkin she fingered in her lap. "I find it helps to think of them as a pair of mountain goats. They're fine just so long as they stick to their own jagged peaks, but the minute one crosses the vale and climbs up onto the other's rock? Those horns lock and the battle begins. His father knew this. It's why he stayed away. I'm sure he thought he could pick his moment; that he could somehow manage to orchestrate a less contentious reunion. But he hadn't succeeded, had he? Not in, what was it, three long months? It could easily have gone on forever. My husband was the kind of man who, when given a preference, invariably chose to pan eternity for his single instant of gold. He liked his perfections. We all fell short." Anger flickered through her features, then fled to leave them flat. "So you called him Zander, did you?" "It's how he introduced himself. As Zander Smith. It's the reason no one made the connection." "Smith? Really? Smith?" she remarked through the curl of a caustic smile. "Oh, how Cameron must have hated that. To discover his son had thrown off his name…and for something so patently generic. Alexander's father never did well with rejection," she explained. "Which is ironic when you consider how proficient he'd become in it's dispense." Her eyes lifted, blinking bleakly, then closed in consternation. "He was a brilliant man. A brilliant man. Within five minutes of meeting you he could pinpoint your every pain. And he was willing…no, more than willing, eager to fix it for you. That's what made him an exceptional doctor, this compelling need to put things right. But what stood as a shining attribute in a hospital setting came less than welcome through the front door of your home. No teenage boy wants a father who knows exactly what his problem is. Nor wife and lover, for that matter. I married a man who required a great deal of patience and forbearance. And that was fine," she sustained, "until I gave birth to another who required the same." "What I don't understand," Mac asserted, throwing caution to the wind, "is why he continued to abandon Zander over and over again. The kid needed help. A blind man could see it. If he was as perceptive as you say, why didn't he step in? He was a shrink, for chrissake. He had the file in his hands. It didn't take a genius to figure out his son was in trouble; that he was one wound shy of tripping into full-blown self-destruct. But instead of dealing with his own family he's off treating Alexis Davis for a non-existent case of MPD, bearding her impersonation of a butler, moving in with her, going to bat for her, protecting the interests of her child, her child, while his own child's life was coming apart at the seams. Listen, I'm a father myself. I have two daughters, two, and they're a handful, let me tell you. We're more often on the outs than on the in. But if you think I'd stand by and watch either one of them pick up a gun and enlist with the mob…I just, I'm sorry, that's nothing any decent parent could do. There's no excuse. None. That kid was crushed, crushed, when his wife left him for Cassadine…" "Enough!" Mercy interrupted, cutting off his screed with a single cold command. "We had an agreement, Cameron. You're not to mention that name." Mac pulled back, retreating in alarm at the sudden change in her demeanor. She was glaring at him now, her posture stiff, her serene expression creasing in affront. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Lewis. I didn't mean…" "You're the one with the obsession, Ronnie. If they only knew. If they only knew they'd have committed you years ago. But you beat them to it, didn't you? Couldn't have me standing in your way." Ronnie? Cameron? Whoever it was, it certainly wasn't him. He scanned the courtyard looking for someone to signal but there was no one in sight. He debated leaving the table for help, unsure how she'd react, whether it might drive her to a physical response he had no desire to address. "Mrs. Lewis…Mercy, I didn't mean to upset you," he soothed, staking himself to as non-threatening a posture as was possible under the circumstances. "Is there anything I can do? Anyone I can get?" "Only the son I sent you after," she spat through the snap of a refractive scowl. "You promised me Alexander, Ronnie. Did you forget? Did you misplace him again? Why am I not surprised? Oh, don't look so shocked. We both know which son you're hunting, which boy you'll track until the moon turns blue and that demon's trail comes to an end." Her glare shifted abruptly, sticking to a spot above his shoulder and she raised her hand in an ambivalent wave. "Malcolm," she hailed. "Come see who's finally managed to find his way home." Mac spun around in his seat, relieved to sight a man in a business suit loping across the deck in the direction of their table. He seized this opportune entrance, using it as a ready excuse to push his chair back and stand. The stranger acknowledged him briefly, barely offering a greeting, his attention fixed solely on the woman still sitting at his side. "Mercy," he accorded, squeezing her shoulder as he bent to deposit a kiss on her cheek. "How are we doing today? You've got a visitor, I see." "Now Mal, you know Ronnie never comes to visit. He only comes to explain." Her brother's arm lifted behind her back, a finger crooking impatiently, and two orderlies emerged from the institute's doors. "I'm running in a river of sweat here, Merce. Do you think we could take this inside?" "I don't know why you wore a suit," she retorted, consenting to be drawn from the chair. "Have you come to meet with the doctors?" "Just you, my love. Just you." He passed her into the care of the attendants with a comforting peck to her brow. "Could you rustle up some lemonade? The largest glass they have? And then I want to see your room. Do you think that's something we could do?" "Of course, of course," she replied in the fatigued tone of an indulgent sister. "Ah, Merce, you're a lifesaver. I knew I could count on you." Her brother watched as the orderlies escorted their patient back into the building, silent until her yellow dress disappeared behind its doors. "Mr. Scorpio, I presume?" "Yes, I…" "Malcolm McClain," he stated, forgoing the offer of a hand and all but defying Mac to make one. "If you'll wait in the parking lot you can follow me back to my office. I've got a tight schedule today, but I'll work to fit you in." "That's not necess…" "Of course it is," McClain refuted tersely. "And it's there or nowhere, I'm afraid." He waited through Mac's assessment of the offer, then acknowledged its implied acceptance with a nod. "Ten minutes," he directed, stepping apart. "Oh, and for future reference? The next time you decide to ambush a member of my family, I'd appreciate a call." Requiem (36) In the world there are millions of men, and each man, With a few exceptions, believes himself to be at the center, A small number of his more or less necessary planets careering Around him in an orderly manner, some morning stars singing together, More distant galaxies shining like dust in any stray sunbeam Of his attention. Since this is true not of one man or of two But of ever so many, it is hard to imagine what life must be like. "Jack will have to take the Masterson meeting. Tell him to pull the counter-proposal and present it to them in broad stroke. Hit the high points and address whatever questions they may have. We're not crunching numbers today. Stick to an overview and schedule a time next week when we can sit down and hammer out a formal response." The secretary slipped around him to follow McClain through the door, her pencil flying across the page of her dog-earred steno pad. "I've got the Chapel Crest depo at five. Is the conference room ready?" "Yes." "Good." He pulled an envelope from his pocket and tossed it on his desk. "Call Maggie and tell her I'll meet her at the school. It's two cars, I know, but there's nothing I can do." The suit jacket fell from his shoulders to his wrists in a single, efficient motion, and was passed into her waiting hand. She turned to hang it up, narrowly missing a head-on collision with Mac who immediately stepped to the side, clearly the odd-man out in this well-established routine. "Piano recital," McClain disclosed, gesturing to a chair. "It's the last chance I'll have to hear her before she leaves for Julliard. I understand you have a daughter, so you know what this means. Can we offer you something to drink?" "I'm fine, thank you," Mac maintained, sinking to the seat he'd been assigned. He lifted a grateful glance to the woman he'd spoken with on the phone only to find her blinking back at him pointedly, as if he'd breached some sort of protocol by intruding in this way. He imagined he had. "I won't take up much of your time." She arched a critical brow, then shifted her eye to her employer. He nodded and she left the room. "Sissy feels somewhat responsible for your presence here today. She thought she was being helpful and, frankly, so did I. Your concern seemed to center around the final destination of Alexander's belongings. I gather that's changed?" Mac had run through several variations of this conversation on the road back to Gainesville, knowing he'd be asked to explain. What was he doing in Florida, at The Gables, for all intents and purposes interrogating poor, mad Mercy McClain? Why hadn't he called the brother, set up an appointment, taken a more politic path through this thing? He could see how his actions might be interpreted in an adversarial light, as a certified sneak attack, but the truth was he'd simply let his instincts guide him, throwing whatever diplomacy might attach directly to the passenger seat. A cop would understand that; it was standard practice when hunting down a lead. But a lawyer? A lawyer would fix on the subversive savor of the deed. "Nothing's changed," Mac sustained. "In fact, it's all stayed pretty much the same. Zander left us with a lot of questions. Questions that, over time, I was willing to let slide. A year passes and out of the blue a man shows up to collect his possessions and pay off his debts. I have to ask myself why. Who is this guy? Where is this family? What took so long for them to get their collective asses in gear? I'm sorry, I realize that sounds harsh but I knew the kid well enough to recognize he could have used all this attention a hell of a lot sooner." "Then, as the head collective ass in that equation, can I ask why you didn't just come to me?" McClain inquired patiently, his reaction virtually unreadable beneath that serene, professional façade. "Or Mr. Cassadine, for that matter. Have either one of us given you the impression we wouldn't welcome your questions and work to provide you with the answers you need? What made you think you'd be better off grilling a mental patient?" Mac inwardly winced at the depiction and supposed this made them two-for-two. "I had no ulterior motive in visiting your sister. I went to The Gables for one reason only, and that was to pay my respects. Did we have a conversation? Yes," he submitted, mirroring the man's intractable stare. "It was hard not to. She practically insisted. I don't think she'd have been satisfied with anything less." The lawyer sat back in his chair, assessing Mac through an elliptical eye as he came to terms with the magnitude of the problem he presented. "We're a private family, Commissioner Scorpio. A family that has suffered more than its share of misfortune and grief; whose surviving members still suffer at a depth that defies description. You can't imagine what the loss has cost us. What it continues to cost us. You'll forgive us for being cautious. I think we've earned the right." "I'm not saying you haven't," Mac proclaimed, disquieted by the implication he'd come barreling down to Florida just to pounce on their pain. "My family has suffered too. Zander was a big part of our lives in the months before he died. I understand the loss. What I don't understand is why no one came to intervene on his behalf, or bothered to show up for his funeral. For either funeral, to be exact. Maybe you'd like to explain that?" "You're assuming we knew where they were." McClain's gaze drifted down to the blotter on his desk, one hand stretching to idly caress the envelope he'd tossed to its surface. "I don't know that I owe you an explanation and under normal circumstances I'd resent the demand, but I can't ignore the fact that you're here. Something prompted you to take a plane all the way down to Gainesville; some need, some conflict, some issue that stands unresolved in regard to Alexander. And honestly, Commissioner? That's far more than anyone else has seen fit to do. As hard as it's been for you to comprehend our absence in Port Charles, it's been equally mystifying to us why no one called to ask us to come. Who took care of the funeral arrangements? The disposal of the bodies? The disposition of the estates? Those were our jobs, our rights. By the time your Sergeant Poole got around to making his notification both father and son had been buried. Where lack of satisfaction is concerned? I can assure you it runs both ways." "So you're saying you weren't aware they were living in Port Charles?" "Not until your sergeant called, no," McClain affirmed, relenting to the reality that they both might have a little clarifying to do. "Alexander ran away in ninety-eight. We never saw him again. Mercy had her breakdown shortly thereafter. Dr. Lewis, in what I can only assume was some misguided attempt to get through to her, resigned his post as a vascular surgeon and obtained a degree in psychiatry. Unable to cure her through convention means, his methods became slightly more…unorthodox." His expression stiffened on the word, a frown betraying his discontent. "He tried to explain it to me once, how divorcing my sister was a step forward. Less for her than him, I think. And then he left. Mercy will tell you she sent him off to retrieve Alexander. Some things you simply permit her to believe. He didn't keep in touch. Next we heard he'd died…in a fire, yes? The account we received proved to be more than a little confusing." Mac could see how it might. He'd had a hard enough time charting that chronology from his painful berth in a hospital bed. The initial reports of Zander's death. His father's mad dash back into the building, his grim climb up the smoky steps; the sudden theft of his will to live. His choice to take the brunt of that burning beam in place of Lucky Spencer; saving one son to honor another. To honor Zander, who wasn't actually dead. And McClain had a point. Who would have called him then? Who would have known there was a family to inform? Mac liked to think he'd have done the homework; made a few inquiries, tracked down a clue; located at least one family member or designated dependent - someone who would have wanted to know Cameron Lewis' life had come to an end. But hindsight was like that; twenty-twenty in its polish of a perfect past. The truth was he'd been incapacitated, and his department had decided it had better things to do. "He thought his son was dead. I don't know if that helps, but he did." "Just another grand gesture," the lawyer denounced, dismissing the excuse with a flick of his wrist. "The man was full of them." "At least he was trying," Mac disputed. "In the end he was trying. I don't know if you're aware of this but Zander was holed up in the basement of that hotel with a bullet in his leg. Cameron was the one who came to take it out and worked to negotiate his surrender. Then the fire started and it all went to hell." "Was that Alexander's doing? You understand this is what we're being told. He set the fire to cover up a murder he'd committed." And it was Mac's turn to grimace. While he understood the necessity of the question and his obligation to answer it, he had absolutely no desire to go over this ground again. As police commissioner of Port Charles he was stuck with the official version of events - and that was just a dismal trek through madness and destruction. There'd be no way to soften the blow. He seized a rankled breath and chuffed it out in consternation. "According to the arson report the fire originated in the utility room. They determined it was deliberately set by someone attempting to torch the body of a hotel electrician. Zander had been hiding out in that room. Several people encountered him there prior to the fire starting - all of whom could, and did, testify to his state of desperation. They assume the electrician stumbled across him and a struggle ensued. The guy died and Zander set the fire to cover up the crime." "All supposition," McClain disclaimed with a litigious glint in his eye. "Where's the proof? Do you have any evidence to back up these assertions?" Lord God Almighty, it was just going to go from bad to worse. "The D.A. felt his subsequent behavior indicated a cognizance of guilt. When the body was misidentified and they declared Zander dead he didn't come forward…" "Why would he?" McClain countered tersely. "He was on the run from the police. It's certainly not his fault you misidentified the body." "…and instead chose to impersonate me in a hospital bed. He apparently needed access to the records room to switch charts with the electrician. So yes, they concluded he purposely misled the coroner's investigation. Once he'd accomplished that he fled to the dead man's apartment and laid low for a couple of days. No sign of breaking and entering. Turns out he had the keys." Mac watched the dark light dawn to deconstruct McClain's countenance, dismantling its conviction piece by piece with this assortment of tragic facts - wishing all the while there were some way around it; some other, more honorable road to take beyond the one he'd been given. "I just…I don't believe it," McClain retorted on an aggravated grunt. "Sure, he was a tough kid, a troubled kid, but after what happened with his brother? I can't see him walking down that road again." His gaze lifted suddenly, narrowing as it met Mac's eye. "You shared none of this with Mercy, I hope?" "No." The lawyer nodded, turning away on the reassurance, shifting his attention to the window and the bank of clouds gathering at its edge to trudge sluggishly across the sky. "You must have mentioned Cameron, though. He's one of her triggers." "We were talking about Cameron, yes. But she didn't seem to have a problem until I brought up the Cassadines." Mac would have given just about anything for a full-frontal view of that face; for a shot at reading the man's reaction in detail. Unfortunately this pensive profile wasn't offering up any revelations. "She said she'd made a deal with her husband. He was never supposed to mention the name." "Similar to the deal she'd made with him to bring Alexander back, no doubt. My sister has a lively interior life. We've been working for years to coax it out." If he thought he was going to get off that easy… "But how would she even recognize the name? Is there some history here I don't know about?" "What you don't know, Commissioner," McClain attested through a weary scowl, "is the length of time it's taken to convince her Cameron and Alexander are no longer alive. Not to believe it herself, mind you, simply to have her acknowledge the fact that they've been legally declared dead - to understand it's what the world believes; what everyone else has accepted. We've been at this…well, forever it seems. Week after week, month after month, just trying to get her to confront the truth. Among the many incentives we used was this arrangement with Mr. Cassadine. We told her he was going to Port Charles to recover their belongings, to bring back what they'd left behind. Naturally she's come to associate the name with the quest; a quest she finds ridiculously inappropriate and thoroughly counter-productive. I can only assume it's come to represent everything she's attempting to ignore and is symbolic, in some sad little way, of the reality she fears to face." It was a tidy theory, delivered on just the right note of vexation. Nothing you couldn't swallow if your sympathies were so inclined. And Mac might have accepted this response at face value, allowing the guilt he felt and owned to shove whatever inconsistencies remained right back under the bed, were it not for the soft, staccatoed chime of the alarm going off in his head. "Which leads me to another question." McClain stole a quick glance at his watch and turned back to his guest with chagrin. "It will have to be the last, I'm afraid." "For today," Mac consented, marking the subtle frost that crept across the lawyer's face as he digested the equivocation. "Cassadine. What made you choose him to be your representative? You've implied there was no pre-existing history, so I'm assuming he wasn't an old family friend." "An old family friend? No. The truth is he just showed up at the door with questions about Alexander. He'd evidently suffered a loss of his own and come looking for answers, not unlike you. His next stop was Port Charles, a town he knew I had an interest in. He made an offer. I took him up on it. If he's behaved badly or is proving himself a nuisance, please let me know. I can put an end to the arrangement immediately." Mac shook his head, negating the proposal. "That's not necessary. Outside of a minor skirmish with the prince he's managed to keep it all low-profile. The only reason I ask is because I've dealt with the Cassadine family before and it struck me as odd to find one of them operating on your behalf. With what I know, and as coincidences go? This one's pretty compelling." "Can't help you there," McClain pronounced. "I'm completely unfamiliar with the family. If he's working some hidden agenda I have no knowledge of it and, frankly, I'd be hard-pressed to care. Apart from running this practice and keeping up with my own family's affairs, I have Mercy to contend with. You see, Commissioner Scorpio, as of a year ago last spring I'm all she's got. The buck stops here. I have neither the time nor the energy - nor the resources at my disposal - to go gallivanting off on some grief-bent pilgrimage for enlightenment. I envy you both, I truly do, but somebody has to hold down the fort and that's exactly what I'm committed to do. Now if you'll excuse me," he concluded, levering himself up from the chair, "my schedule is just this tight and I have a number of deposition questions to review." Mac rose to his feet and took the hand the lawyer proffered, matching his grip with the equal strength of an adversary squaring off; content for the moment to shelve the battle yet nowhere near ready to relinquish the war. "If I have anymore questions…?" "You've got my number," McClain advised. "And I should inform you that, as of today, my sister's visiting list has been restricted. It's never been an issue before," he imparted on a shallow shrug. "No one's ever come to see her. But I suppose we're all destined to learn from our mistakes." "Sucks, doesn't it?" Mac averred through the commiserating twist of a smile. "That it does, Commissioner. That it most certainly does." McClain remained standing until the paneled door closed, then gifted his guest a few additional minutes to clear the outer office and go. Once he'd permitted the man enough time to travel down the hall through reception, he stabbed a button on the intercom and called his secretary forth. She needed only a glance to determine the information he was after. "Suncoast Flight 49, departing at five-fifty-five." "We can only hope he'll head straight to the airport. God bless the extended security check." McClain fell back to his leather chair in a soundly dejected funk, chasing after a sense of relief he knew he wasn't about to find. "Get me Maximillian Cassadine." "The Chapel Crest investors are waiting." "I know, I know. Mr. Cassadine, Sissy, if you don't mind?" As he waited for his secretary to put through the call his eye strayed to his desk and the slender white envelope he'd thrown to its surface; the one he'd brought back from The Gables. He flipped the sleeve over with a listless finger and drew the contents from its fold. So young there, just look at him. So brash. So bold. He could see why Mercy had selected it, kept it, displayed it on her nightstand in its filigreed frame of silver and gold. It hurt to take it from her, almost as much as it must have hurt to let it go. But what choice did they have? As photographs went it was small and old, yet just enough of a resemblance remained to make the connection. "Mr. Cassadine on line two." He lifted the receiver from its cradle just as the weather broke. The sky rumbled, the lightening flashed, and sheets of angry rain began to blast against the glass behind him, underscoring the words he spoke. "Peter, I'm telling you right now this man is going to be a problem." Poetic Attributions (the introductory lines): Chapter 34 - from A Flock of Sheep near the Airport, by the poet Yehuda Amichai Chapter 35 - from There Is No Clear Light, by the poet Pablo Neruda Chapter 36 - from Angel and Stone, by the poet Howard Nemerov