"Remind me what's so important about this necklace anyway?"

Louise punctuated her words with a grunt as she shifted an overly heavy box of books out of her way. It was a boiling hot day (as most summer days were in Florida) and stuck in the attic was not a great place to be, in her opinion. However, their mother had immediately on hearing that Renee was going to go up there accosted her and ordered her to help. She'd also 'suggested' that they tidy up - just since they happened to be up there anyway.

Louise had attempted to complain this was child labour until her mother had sweetly reminded her that she was always a child in her mother's eyes but not the law's.

Renee tried to hold back a sneeze as she brushed some dust off the top of the box she was about to open. "Grandma just told me she wanted me to have it, that's all."

"And remind me why lover boy's not helping instead of me?"

"Because he's fixing shelves for Mom."

This was merely a convenient excuse. Justin had never done any DIY in his life, had always had interior designers for such things, but the job kept him out of her way. There had been a very stony plane ride in which he had attempted to talk to her - first she had plugged her headphones in and watched the movie, and then she had pretended to be asleep. By the time he'd been able to attempt talking to her it was too late and Faith Anderson had pulled up to the sidewalk, hugged them both and started loading their bags into the car.

Louise blew a strand of hair away from her face, which was sticky with sweat. The rest of her was equally sticky with sweat and the entire attic smelled horribly musty. Renee wasn't looking much better, but her dark hair disguised it more than her sister's lighter shade of caramel blonde did. The two were of similar height and build but Renee had always taken more after their mother, with whom she shared the same heart shaped face and big round eyes. Louise's jaw was a more feminine version of her father's square cut one, and the only things that gave her any resemblance to Renee were the high cheekbones and the button nose that nobody in the family could account for.

"Umm… I don't mean to be nosy…"

"But you're gonna be anyway…"

"Naturally," Louise said through a smirk before her expression dropped to a more thoughtful gaze. "Are you and the pop star having a fight?"

"What makes you say that?" Renee did an impressive job of keeping her voice at a neutral tone as she rummaged through a box of boxes, hoping that one of them would yield a stash of jewellery. Perhaps she ought to consider a few of those scripts she was getting; she was a better actress than she thought.

Her sister's lips didn't stay still as she mulled this one over - if they weren't being sucked into her mouth they were being pursed or bitten. A fairly comic series of expressions made their way across her face as she tried to voice her thoughts.

"It just… I don't know. You're looking at each other funny."

Renee laughed - of course, Louise didn't have to know she was laughing because it was true. "This is the extent of your evidence, huh? Lou, it's a good thing you gave up that whole forensic science idea."

"Shut up, munchkin!" She laughed good-naturedly. "Seriously though… you just seem kinda off, that's all - he's kinda quiet and you're not doing that whole sickening googly eyes thing like usual."

"It's nothing. He's just kind of stressed about his stuff and I'm just kind of stressed about mine."

As always, the art of the entirely factual yet still misleading statement was something she had mastered; she'd got pretty good at it while insisting to the press that she was not dating Trace Ayala. It had been tremendously awkward at the time, given that she had in fact been fending off the amorous attentions of his best friend. Justin, displaying some wonderfully screwed up logic, had argued that this was in fact the perfect cover for the two of them going out because it gave her an excuse to hang out at his house a lot. Her response to that had been to tell him that he clearly had some faulty wiring in his head.

Compared to the Justin she was now having to put up with, he was the epitome of reason and sense.

Louise cocked her head to the right, peering at the back her little sister had turned to her as if it would give something away. Presently she shrugged to herself and turned back to the jewellery box she had managed to locate, trying to untangle the mass of chains, earrings and brooches in an effort to actually see what was in there.

"Yeah. Because song writing's so hard, right?"

"Hey." Renee responded by pretending to aim an empty box at Louise's head. "Let's see you write an album that sells 7 million copies worldwide and then you can step to me with that shit."

"Your album only sold four million."

Her face curved in a wide smile. There was nothing like a little bickering with Louise to make her feel at home. "I was talking about Justin, dumb ass."

"Yes, well… prancing round with your flesh hanging out for Rolling Stone will get the little girls' panties in a twist, I guess. Power of hormones will sell anything these days."

Louise shrieked as Renee went ahead and threw the box at her that time.

"And what is it you do all day, huh Ms Accountant? Like it's that hard adding up numbers, they teach you that in first frickin' grade…"

***

"Uhh… I think I'm done, Mrs Anderson." Justin poked his head into the utility room where Renee's mother was pulling a mass of laundry out of the dryer.

"Since when am I Mrs Anderson to you, Justin?" She laughed, though not unkindly. "In fact, since when I am Mrs Anderson these days?"

Justin was impressed she could poke fun at her divorce - he'd always got the impression it was still kind of a sore subject with his own girlfriend's mother. He didn't like to ask Renee about it, but he wondered if maybe the divorce here hadn't been so caught up in accusations of adultery. Since they hadn't discussed it, he wasn't to know as this world's Justin did that Nathan Anderson was only an issue to his ex-wife when it came to the two of them actually being in a room together or arguing about where the girls would spend holidays. It had been so bad the previous Christmas that Louise had threatened to spend it with her boyfriend's family instead.

"Did you change your name back?" He asked before wondering if that was appropriate - pretty much in the wrong order.

"No." Faith didn't appear to think anything of it, shrugging instead. "I thought about it, but to be honest I don't think I mind enough. More hassle and paperwork than it's worth - besides, I tend to think of it more as my children's name these days than Nathan's."

"What's in a name, huh?"

"Exactly," she said, smiling at him without picking up on the undercurrent beneath his words. He of all people knew that even the exact same name didn't denote the exact same person, so what was keeping an ex's surname? "Would you mind folding some of this stuff up for me, honey?"

"Sure."

Justin automatically picked up some pillowcases and started folding. He wasn't anywhere near as neat or as deft as his companion; he tended to have somebody else do his laundry, be it the hotel or his cleaner. It wasn't that he was too lazy to do it; he certainly did his own when he went home to Shelby Forest. He just never seemed to have much time and it was easier.

Idly he wondered if the Justin of this world was the same. He wondered if his girlfriend ended up doing his laundry as much as she did in his world. He wondered if Faith and his own mother hung out occasionally the way they did in his world, and he wondered if Louise and Trace had to play tag-along the way they so often did for him and the blonde version of Renee. They were all little things that he was quickly realising three weeks was not going to show him, or be enough time for him to think of everything he wanted to ask.

Staying, however, seemed unthinkable right now. Renee could barely bring herself to look at him, let alone talk to him.

"So what are you kids up to while you're here?" Faith tried to make conversation as she realised he'd become quiet. He'd always liked Faith - she reminded him of Renee in demeanour as well as looks. They weren't best friends the way the tabloids always made out, but they got along.

"Umm… I don't know," he replied distractedly. "Hadn't thought about it."

"If I were you," she said shrewdly, "I'd fit in some fun time before both of you go back on promotion again. You both seem a little tense, you ought to go out and take your minds off things. You're too young for frown lines."

Guiltily, Justin remembered one of Renee's little barbs from the previous evening. She had told him that if he ruined her anniversary there was a possibility she would disembowel him. When he had later received a voicemail from Rachel letting him know that she'd booked flights and a suite at the Palms in Vegas, he had realised that they'd been planning to make a big deal of it. Apparently they had been ready and waiting to go and let their hair down, but he'd thrown a spanner in the works.

He'd also been surprised to realise Rachel had become his PA. He didn't understand what had happened to Trace - he'd had plenty of text messages from him, so clearly they hadn't fallen out.

"Oh sorry, that's the phone. Keep folding and I'll be right back." Faith winked at him before departing the room, leaving him to his heavy thoughts.

Or at least he thought that was what was happening until he saw the familiar black mist gathering in the spot she had previously occupied. It was funny how blasé he now was to it. Objectively speaking it was a pretty creepy sight, it looked horrendously malevolent and like it wouldn't be out of place in a horror film. It didn't perturb him in the slightest any more, though he did wonder why it was black. Claire seemed to be working for the big guys, and he'd always assumed that would come with a shade of white, silver or gold. Black definitely smacked of something more infernal.

"Hey," Claire said once she was finally solid and all present.

"Hey," he replied shortly.

"Oh, grouchy. I'm guessing she's not talking to you?"

"Did you have to tell her?"

"Hey, don't blame me for this Timberlake." She jabbed an index finger in his direction with narrowed eyes. Technically it wasn't a lie - working out how to disillusion her had been the other Renee's little coup. "You're the one who lied to her."

"I know, I know." Justin let out a large sigh as he separated his pile out and put some in front of Claire. "Help me out here?"

"Nuh-uh," she said sweetly. "It'd look weird if you'd done enough work for two people when she gets back."

He grumbled and muttered a little, but he let it go fairly quickly if only because he didn't have time to waste arguing with her. He considered her excuse a total cop out, but he had to let her win that one. If she'd still been incorporeal he would have understood, but she had no excuse now she could actually touch things.

"Anyway, to what do I owe this pleasure?"

"Did you have to sound so sarcastic?"

"Claire…"

"Alright, alright." The ghost threw her hands up, relenting. "Just checking in. Found the necklace yet?"

"Renee's in the attic looking."

"You managed to have any kind of conversation with her about this yet?"

He shook his head. "Not unless you count her threatening to castrate me."

Claire winced in sympathy - she didn't have to be a guy herself to know that threatening a man's privates was a low blow. "Well, she's pissed… and kind of hurt, I think. You kind of threw her for a loop here, you can't expect her to deal without at least a bit of anger first."

"Yeah but we need to talk this out," Justin responded as in his flustered state he dropped the bed sheet he had already spent far too much time attempting to fold. "I'm here for a reason, and I don't think it's for her to not talk to me ever again."

She didn't respond to him, but she was already making a mental note to go give Renee a talking to. He was right, although not in the way he was thinking. It wasn't going to do either of them any good to avoid addressing whatever issue it was that had brought him here - for one thing, that was just begging for him to do something stupid yet again in his search for answers.

For another, Claire had a sneaking suspicion that maybe Renee had a little something of her own to address with this little visit. Clearly there was something unresolved with this man, or his little visit wouldn't be rattling her so much. Maybe she would have been able to avoid it ever becoming an issue if she'd never seen him again, maybe not, but the fact was it was unavoidable now and running from it wasn't going to do her any more good than it would him.

She'd really been hoping this would be a quick job where she just had to swap the idiot back into his own world and be done with it. However, the more Claire watched this unfold, the stronger that feeling in the pit of her stomach became. The feeling that maybe Justin wasn't the idiot she'd had him pegged for, the feeling that maybe this was just as meant to be as Renee's trip had been. How the story was meant to end she really wasn't sure, but the more she talked to the four of them the more she started suspecting that it needed to play out to its own conclusion.

That, of course, would necessitate her stepping back, not popping up so much and more or less leaving them to it. It would mean her entrusting them all with their own fates and letting them be their own guides.

She really hated doing that.