Episodes

"Lorna wants to take Lori Ann away from me?" Frankie struggled over the words as if each were a block with sharp corners that didn't quite fit the contours of her mouth.

"She has this ridiculous notion that....

"See what happens when we skip the rib joint for something more swanky," Lila lectured Grant the morning after their less than successful double-date dinner out. "You nearly drown drooling over Amanda's humping your leg — "

"I didn't...

"I'll take care of Donna," Carl swore to Felicia over the phone. And then, after a pause, almost solicitously, he asked, "What did she say to you?"

"She never....

Felicia looked at her daughter oddly. "Lori Ann already has a father. Two of them, as a matter of fact. Dean and Cass."

"One of whom hasn't seen her since....

Frankie wasn't precisely sure what she expected the 4^th of July at Bay City's maximum-security prison to be like. All she knew was she wasn't prepared for how simultaneously normal and bizarre it turned out to be.

On the one hand, there was the green lawn, the families with picnic baskets, the flags, the balloons, the music. On the other hand....

"I thought we were past all of this," Grant thundered, his outrage rising to new levels, or, at the very least, decibels.

"Past what?" Marley disappeared....

"So it really doesn't bother you?" Amanda followed Jamie around as he set up a series of folding beach chairs adjacent the Cory pool in preparation for their 4^th of July celebration.

"I married twin sisters. It would be a bit....

"We don't know anything about where Allie and Gregory might be," Sarah repeated to Jamie, though a little less emphatic now that he'd explained to her and Steven just what sort of legal and medical trouble the two might be facing.

"What about you?"....

"How long?" Charlie asked Frankie the moment her mother stepped through the front door.

Frankie hesitated, unsure....

"What are you doing here, sweetie?" Despite having come over expressly to speak with Felicia, the moment Lorna caught sight of Lori Ann sitting on the floor in the middle of ....

This time around, Lorna made sure to call and double-check for herself exactly what time Cass' allocution — and Lucas' release — were scheduled for.

She arrived a half-hour late deliberately....

"It's a committee!" Gregory exclaimed, not sure whether to be touched or horrified when Allie lead the entire group into his hospital room and calmly explained that not just Sarah and Steven, but GQ and Jen, too, would be helping....

"I am really getting sick of you people," Chase Hamilton looked over Cass' head to also address....

"No," Carl told Rachel.

"Why not?" She shot back. "You wanted revenge so badly you were willing to break your word to me. Now I'm giving you permission, I am asking you....

Cass admitted to Felicia, "I thought you'd be furious with me. Lucas is sitting in jail right now because of something I did."

"Lucas is sitting in jail because....

Felicia didn't call Cass as promised until the next morning, and, once she did, her tone was surprisingly....

"So exactly how long are you and the boys planning to be partying in Cooperstown?" Lorna perched on the lid of Jamie's suitcase as it sat atop the bed, ostensibly helping him to close it, then somehow forgetting to move from the comfortable spot between his arms....

"You said you would do anything you had to," Frankie reminded Cass, "To make sure you'd never lose me again."

"I know what I said." He snarled, "And I don't appreciate....

"You're not helping," Jamie told Lorna mock-sternly as he struggled to fit his key into the guesthouse lock.

"Really....

"The girls were on their best behavior, " Felicia reported to Frankie and Cass as soon as they arrived home. "Charlie must have watched ....

"Is it cool for you to have girls in your room," Lorna joked as Jamie unlocked the door to his balcony. "Or will you get in trouble with your Mommy?"

"I'll risk it." He pulled her inside with a quick glance down the three-story, seemingly smooth wall. "How the hell did you get up here?"

Cass sent Felicia on ahead to the church so she could help Frankie get everything ready for Lori Ann's christening, promising to catch up as soon as he crossed all the T's and dotted the I's of Lucas' paperwork.

By the time he arrived ....

"Don't. Please, Dad, don't," Lorna begged Lucas. But whether he couldn't hear her plea over the general din of the courtroom, or had simply chosen to ignore it, either way, Lucas ....

With the tornado that was Jamie's jubilant family finally gone, that left only Felicia and Lorna still holding vigil inside the police station's waiting area.

"It's been hours," Felicia lamented. "We know ....

Mike Bauer was long out the door, but Cass and Frankie's argument continued, sotto voice, so as not to wake up either Charlie or Lori Ann.

"Jamie doesn't deserve your loyalty," Cass insisted. "The first thing he did after...

"I suppose I should get used to this," Jamie sounded like he was trying to convince himself along with Alice as they sat across the table in the prison's visiting area. "Something happening...

Without a word, barely looking at each other, really, Lorna and Lucas walked out of the courthouse and into the park across the street. They both instinctively...

Felicia picked up her phone. The voice on the other end sighed and said, "I'm afraid I could really use a drink, right now."

She promised Spencer...

Cass shifted his gaze slowly from the laptop to Frankie and asked, "Are you accusing me of something, Mary Frances?"

"No," she said quickly. Too quickly....

Lucas asked Jamie, "Are you going to tell the police about my involvement with Cecile's death?"

"You said it yourself, I don't have any proof. Carl would never...

"Not now, Lorna," Carl hissed upon spying her visage over the black and white security monitor.

On any other occasion, he'd be delighted to have his former protegee drop by for a visit to Carl Hutchins' secluded home away from home. It had been much too long. He believed....

"What got Matt running out of here in such a hurry?"

Donna looked up from where she was sitting on her bed to encounter ....

"I realize this is a most inopportune time," Carl began, prompting a mirthless laugh from Rachel.

"That's one way of putting it."

"But I'm afraid it's simply essential ....

"Happy birthday, sweetheart!" Her father's voice over the phone brought Lorna up short, forcing her to face just how far she'd veered off course in the past 24 hours, from driving back to Bay City alone, to ....

Mike Bauer assessed Jamie, currently sitting across from him in a hotel-room chair, with a practiced eye. He waited for an explanation.

When none proved forthcoming, Mike decided to lead his witness a bit by prompting, "Have you suddenly realized yourself to be guilty?"

"Here," Jamie all but flung in Kevin's face the document agreeing to Kirkland's moving in with Marley in exchange for Grant dropping his custody suit. "I'd recommend ...."

Marley wondered if she were dead.

Because all the alleged symptoms were there....

Sleep when the baby sleeps.

It's what the parenting books told Frankie. It's what other moms told Frankie. It's what Cass told Frankie.

What no one told her....

"What do you think?" Grant proudly showed Kirkland around his new room, complete with loft bed, state-of-the-art home entertainment center, extreme sports silhouettes stenciled in black on the walls and a retro-style vending machine packed with enough soda and snacks to feed a small army ....

The idea of her son being thought capable of murder was so ridiculous to Rachel that she was tempted to laugh, literally laugh; that's how absurd, how preposterous it sounded to her.

But one glimpse of Jamie's face when he was brought in for his bail hearing was enough to....

"She wasn't even acting like herself," Matt told Marley as they walked through the Love house, checking whether the contractors had made it livable enough for her and ....

Grant glanced at the name that flashed through his cell phone's caller ID and blinked in surprise. "Burrell must be making good time."

He readied his eardrums for yet more threats from....

Chase Hamilton may not have actually licked his lips in anticipation at Detective Chiang's news. But that was about the only thing he didn't do, between the leaping...

"Well, good," Kevin shook hands first with Allie and Gregory, then with Rick and Mindy. "I'm very, very glad this looks...

Donna looked from Marley to Matt to the third figure hovering in the background and, summoning as much dignity as possible ....

Deciding that Amanda might feel less threatened if....

"Fanny?" Lucas took one look at Felicia's ashen face as she stumbled through the door, and broke out into a cold sweat. "Where have you been?" He looked down at her shoes. The rounded toes of Felicia's $1000 violet Gucci boots were both stained with....

"So is this how it's going to be from now on?" Jamie mused. "You're just going to glare and give me the cold shoulder every time you see me?"

Lorna studied the ceiling with such incredible concentration one would have thought the meaning of life was inscribed upon it.

"And now....

"What the hell do you want?" Matt shot at a wary Jamie from the doorway of Donna's house.

"Hello to you, too,"....

"I can't believe our luck," Grant told Spencer over breakfast at the Harbor Club. "Jamie's ex-wife getting murdered right before the judge is set to make her decision about Kirkland. If that doesn't say — "

Carl looked Rachel in the eye and, voice steely, informed her, "I did not ....

"Don't those reporters have anything better to do than to camp out in front of my house like vultures?"....

"The police are here to see you, Donna," Marley told her mother, looking as confused as Donna felt, in light of the startling request.

"Me?" Donna peered....

Marley sat rigidly on her chair in the waiting area of the Bay City Police Station, eyes nervously darting around the bullpen in anticipation of....

Grant's first instinct upon finding Cecile's strangled body....

"Here to welcome me to the neighborhood?"....

"Dude, she could have been our sister,"....

"Congratulations." Jamie looked around Alice's new office at Bay City Hospital. "I guess this means you've decided....

Something is definitely not right...

"I am so sorry, Alice." Jamie realized that a language hadn't yet been invented that would convey precisely how very sorry he was. "You are the last person I would....

"Luke," he repeated. Then admitted, "Nobody has called me Luke for a very long time."

"Jamie told me everything," Marley informed Cecile coolly. She pulled out her...."

Jamie lifted his hand to reveal a small vial. He placed it on his desk with a firm thud....

"Ready to concede?"...."

"You've been a bad boy ....

""You want me to drug Frankie?" Jamie asked ...."

Judge Ellen Landregan was starting to get a headache, not to mention some nasty eyestrain, from watching ....

"You..." Felicia looked from Cass to Frankie, overwhelmed. "You two would be willing to adopt Lori Ann..."

"That was cool," Cory told Rachel, Carl and the others as they returned home from their medically themed Thanksgiving.

"I'm glad you enjoyed it,"....

"I brought you some turkey," Lorna offered Lucas a foil container. "Want me to pop it in the microwave?"

Her father's face suggested....

Bay City Thanksgiving 1991....

Bay City Thanksgiving 2009....

"What's all this?"....

Looking back, there had been faint warning bells going off in Lorna's head as soon as Jamie lifted her up and ....

"Aren't you two cute," Cecile cooed at Frankie and Cass. "The Bonnie and Clyde of suburbia. As if either of you could so much as issue a convincing death threat, much less....

"What the hell is this?" Jamie slapped away the sheet of paper Kevin was attempting to hand him.

Kevin didn't budge....

Alice watched with mix of satisfaction and relief as Jamie finished his cup of coffee and placed it next to the empty plate on her table. It had been a bittersweet reunion....

Carl told Rachel, "I went to see Jenna's child at the hospital, earlier."

"Did you?"....

Cecile," Frankie said.

"Of course," Cass replied with a sigh. Because even though Tony the Tuna may have threatened him, Christy Carson may have poisoned him, and Rex Allingham once actually took over Cass' life for a period of months, the only person who ....

Carl took a long moment to compose himself. And then an even longer moment to accept that he was doing so.

Finally, every muscle in his body stretched to the breaking point...

Donna asked Rachel, "Are you going to let Carl come after me?"

"Carl made it very clear that he isn't .....

Rachel said, "I don't see how making Donna's life miserable will ultimately do anybody any earthly good." "It will keep me entertained,".....

Cass' body remained in the doorway to his home. His soul, however .....

The noise didn't all die down immediately. First one machine slowly ground to a halt, then another let out a regretful last wheeze. The doctor with the defibrillator shuffled back. A nurse moved aside .....

Dean may not have known the meaning of OR emergency medical terms like "vent setting pressure," "erythromycin" and "endo-tracheal," but "no heartbeat" .....

"You're Jenna's mother," Matt repeated, theoretically comprehending the meaning of every word in the sentence, yet unable to make them fit together. "I don't understand."

Dean told Jenna, "You aren't being fair."

He leaned over his wife's hospital bed and.....

Walking swiftly, so as to get as far away from Cass' house as possible and avoid the risk of being overheard, Frankie hissed into her cell-phone .....

After an hour of waiting and still getting no answer about Jenna's condition, Felicia looked ready to explode. She'd given up .....

It wasn't until after he'd caught up to them that Dean Frame even realized he'd flagged down Carl and Rachel's car.

Dean was breathing heavily ....

"Frankie?" Cass still clutched Lila's wrist. Charlie was standing just a few feet away, wiping the tears off her face with both hands. But Cass only had eyes for a single person. "Frankie?" .....

It wasn't until the next morning, when the three of them were sitting on a plane bound for Chicago, jetting off to prove Lucas' true identity, that Rachel thought to ask him....

"Lucas?" Rachel's identification turned into a question by the last syllable. 

Next to her, Carl had a different guess.  He snarled .... 

The entire time that she was bullying Steven into getting her Carl's e-mail, the entire time that she was sifting through it note by note, searching for clues to his intentions, Rachel had never stopped to consider...

"Did you get rid of them?" Matt asked Donna as soon as she returned to the bedroom after shooing Cass and Lila out the door.  

"Well .....

Kirkland had spent twenty minutes cooling his heels in Jamie's office while simultaneously stoking the fire of his righteous indignation. He'd come intending ....

"You've got a visitor," Allie followed Kirkland through the institutionally white doors of the Bay City University Computer Lab. As expected, Steven was on site....

"Kirkland...."

Prior to his return, Grant had hired a small army of private detectives to prepare dossiers on everyone he expected to deal with in Bay City. He'd also ....

Amanda hesitated for only a moment. And then she informed Mr. Kevin Fowler, Esquire, that James Frame wasn't currently available. But, she added.....

Jamie smiled. And took a broad step to the side. The better to let Donna see exactly who was heading down the dimly lit street and towards her front porch.

Bay City, Illinois, Easter 2009

The man in the doorway had been presumed dead for exactly a decade.