Robert Holmes sat at the kitchen table trying to keep his hands from trembling. He was looking into a glass of wine, pretending not to see his wife, Joanna, place her packed belongings by the door. Joanna Holmes was trying to do the same thing but failing miserably. With a trembling hand she placed the last suitcase on the ground by the others and turned toward her husband. The stranger that she was just unable to get to know again after all this time had passed.

"Robert...." she started to say and then stopped to clear her throat. "I'm sorry Robert. It just isn't going to work.....I can't....." she trailed off into silence. Her husband looked up to meet her eyes. In his eyes there was confusion, a mixture of love and bitterness.

"I don't know what to say Joanna," he said with a snort of derision. "Me, a bloody ambassador. I have addressed the diplomats of hundreds of nations and I don't know what to say to my own wife." His eyes dropped to the wine again. Joanna turned away to look out the window.

"I think we have already said everything there is to say Robert. It is just too hard.we have become too different." "And what about Shirley," he said softly, not looking up. She then whirled back toward him with tortured eyes.

"God Robert I don't know." She said frowning. It was torture for her to leave her daughter again even though the first time it was done unintentionally. Shirley was a young woman now and Joanna just didn't know how to deal with the lost time anymore.

"She is going to be home soon. What are we going to tell her," he asked. His eyes lifted to his wife's searching her's for some hint as to why she was going to leave them. It only seemed to make Joanna angry.

"Dammit Robert I don't know all right. I wish someone could tell me what to feel, but I just don't know." Joanna turned away from him again. Before Robert could answer the back door burst open and a smiling Shirley Holmes burst through the door. Her head turned and the smile left the instant her eyes fell on Joanna's suitcases. She looked up from them in shock; her head turning first to her dad and then to her mother. The teenager's brilliant blue eyes welled with tears, but before any of them could fall she bolted for the hidden stairway and escaped up the stairs into her laboratory. Joanna watched helplessly as she left. Her hand lifted in her daughter's direction and she took a step as if to follow, but the loud honk of a cab's horn stilled her. With one last glance toward the direction her daughter had gone, Joanna lifted her two suitcases and walked out the door. Robert watched her leave; she didn't turn back to him. When the front door slammed he lifted his glass in a toast.

"To the time we were lovers," he said to the empty kitchen, took a sip and then placed the glass back down on the table.

Outside the cabby helped Joanna put her bags in the trunk of the cab and then she turned and stared at the window to her daughter's room. The blinds prevented her from seeing her daughter staring back. She then turned, got in the cab, and shut the door. The cab driver finished loading the bags, walked around to the driver side door, got in, and then pulled the cab away from the curb. Taking Joanna Holmes away into the evening sun.

Shirley just watched until the cab's taillights were no longer visible. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. "I don't know if I should love you or hate you," she said softly. She then turned away from the window and cried. The junior detective eventually cried herself to sleep, holding a picture of a much younger Joanna Holmes with a smiling, light brown haired, blue eyed little girl in her arms.

THE END