Without a Trace

"Now, I'll tell you exactly what the point is. I love you, Trace, with all my heart, and I want nothing more than to spend my life with you. It doesn't matter where. The house in Chicago is special, I know, and there are laboratories in the Midwest. What I have to know is that you'd be content. I won't start the rest of my life by holding you down."

He understood the guilt. He and Gillian were as different as black and white, but he, too, had had a father who had made plans, who hadn't understood and hadn't forgiven.

He never understood that I needed to breathe, needed to look for my own life. He only understood that I was going away, rejecting him and his plans for me. I loved him." Her voice caught on the first sob. "But I could never explain myself to him. And I never will.

Charlie had never been one for ceremony. Just do the job, have a drink and get on with the next one.

Trace felt tears of frustration bum his eyes, but didn't back down. "No, it's not good enough, because I don't want to walk through your doors. I want something else, I want something more, but you're so wrapped up in your own hopeless dream you can't see that I hate it. And that the more you push me to follow your dream instead of my own, the closer I come to hating you."

Temper was the only weapon Frank had, and he used it.