Harris squints at the picture of the dark-haired boy with cheeks marked by acne.

The shape of his eyes, the distance between them, the cheekbones—there is a passing resemblance to Olive Appleby. The police must have matched the facial structure already, or they wouldn't show the photo to Agatha. But scrubbed, handsome, glam Oliver and this scruffy guy? It seems like an impossible transformation.

"This man's real name is Robert Ward," Lonita says. "He comes from a peculiar family."

"How peculiar?" Harris asks.

"Rich, eccentric, dead-set on being left alone."

A stifled chuckle—or maybe it's a hiccup—escapes Agatha. "I've met people like that."

"I doubt it. The Wards were extreme." Lonita shakes her head. "When Robert was nine or ten, they moved to a yacht. Sailed year-round, mostly through the parts of the world where they'd stay under the radar."

"It must have been lonely for a child," Agatha says. "Not to mention risky."

Harris squirms in the police station's firm chair. If this guy is Oliver, he's interested in info that'll get him arrested, rather than a sob story about his tough childhood on a luxurious yacht.

"When he was seventeen, the yacht sank in the Caribbean," Lonita continues, and Harris suppresses a pang of guilt.

"Robert's parents, along with most of the crew, drowned. Young Robert somehow made it to shore," he partner adds, like on a cue.

"That's suspicious, isn't it?" Harris swivels his head between the two cops.

Lonita shrugs Harris' eagerness for the arrest-leaning tidbits. "The sea buried many mysteries. What applies to us, is that Robert was a minor, so he had to wait to take over his parent's estate. He moved to Milwaukee, something that made his case worker remember him. Why not New York or San Francisco?

"Other than that oddness, he lived like an ordinary rich kid. Enrolled into a private school. Amazed teachers with his abilities. Could have gone to a college of his choosing with his money and grades. Instead, he did exactly what his parents did. He sailed into the sunset as soon as the formalities were over upon reaching the age of majority."

So far the yarn looks rather hopeless to Harris, but... "And the fingerprints? Why were they on file?"

"A lab in his school was set on fire, resulting in serious damage to the building. No classes for two months."

Agatha's hand convulses under Harris' hand. Her fingers are icy-cold. He threads his through, trying to warm them up. "And?"

"He made an impression on the investigating officer, but the charges had to be dropped. Not enough evidence."

Agatha squeezes his hand in a vise-like grip. It's amazing how much strength hides in her delicate frame. "And... Oliver?"

"Adopted by a childless British family from somewhere in Eastern Europe. As it often happens, they had two more children right afterward," Lonita says.

Harris frowns, waiting for a connection to come up.

"When he was a teen, he found out, and that created a rift. It only grew wider thanks to his penchant for 'get rich quick' schemes, involving the family's money. By the time he was twenty, he was estranged from everyone he knew. Then, he found a sap who'd go into sourcing coffee with him..."

And the rest is history, people would usually say at this point... only, it's not so simple.

Lonita pulls up another photograph—this one is a mugshot from a place whose name Harris doesn't recognize. He also doesn't recognize the guy in the picture. He is blond, slim, and blue-eyed. Handsome, if you like insolent smirks. "That's Oliver Appleby, six years ago."

"This isn't Oliver. At least not our Oliver," Harris states the obvious. They could be cousins maybe, even brothers. But they are not the same man, even accounting for the passage of years since the mugshot.

Lonita holds up a finger. "This Oliver got badly messed up somewhere in Columbia. Beaten within an inch of his life, then abandoned for dead. Picked up by a charitable couple. Apparently, they liked him so much, they paid for a restorative cosmetic surgery in Brazil, since his face was a pulp. Hence, the change in appearance."

"Bullshit!" Harris explodes. "Just bullshit! Did nobody question it?"

Joe shrugs. "The embassy in Cartagena re-issued the documents and sent him on his merry way. You can't blame them, because why would anyone want to impersonate a loser?"

"Agatha, did he tell you any of it? Shared childhood memories? Cursed his family for not supporting him?" This outburst earns Harris a stern grimace from Lonita. He's not here to ask questions. Literally, the only reason for him to be here is to support his girlfriend.

"Sorry," he mutters. "I got carried away. I'll keep quiet."

Agatha studies the two photographs. "Oliver—my Oliver—mentioned a family in England, but said I wouldn't want to meet them. I didn't press further."

"They couldn't tell us much," Joe admits. "Except expressing surprise that Oliver 'righted' himself. When we followed up, they rather expected someone snuffed him off in some far-away place. It's always been a British thing."

Harris rubs his skull, squeezes his eyes to suppress the first vestiges of headache. Another dead end.

"After the incident in Cartagena, all of 'Appleby's' business ventures succeed and his worth grows geometric progression." Joe takes Oliver's name in air quotes, not satisfied with pitching his voice to emphasize that he doesn't think they were talking about the same man any longer.

Agatha re-threads her fingers through his. "So... so this Robert had stolen Appleby's identity to introduce himself formally after meeting me in the hospital. But why? Why me?"

"We hoped you could shed light on this, Agatha," Lonita says. "Could you think of any reason, any connection between the Ward family and yours?"

"I wish I knew this before. I could have asked my uncles. Maybe they would know." She shakes her head, biting her lips. "I never suspected... wondered. Oliver I knew was wealthy, and I'm not a prospect for a gold-digger. Or, at least, I wasn't until the last week, when my uncles signed the paperwork acknowledging me as capable—"

Which directly resulted from her engagement to Oliver Appleby—something not lost on the cops, because they both lean forward, absorbing the details.

Also, it places him, Harris, in a shaky position of a broke guy allegedly in love with a surprise heiress. If he stays with Agatha, people will question his motives wherever they go. Fans' gossip will spread like wildfire. If he could unzip his heart and show it to everyone, he would. But he can't, can he?

His guts tighten so much, trying to get over all this, he misses Lonita's high-level questions about Leung's corporate structure and Agatha's new executive privileges. What position she's preparing to assume. If the power-of-attorney over her has been formally dissolved.

Basically, If she's rich and important in the eyes of the law.

Agatha's answers tick off every box. Agatha Leung, the formerly 'we-don't-talk-about-her' family member, is back to the corporate bosom.

And it went down with a surprising ease—Harris isn't the only one who finds this suspect.

"Be careful, Agatha." Lonita says. She gives Harris a meaningful look. "You as well. We have enough to make Appleby a person of interest in your case, but all the evidence is circumstantial. I think he's growing impatient, and impatient people make mistakes. It could be a mistake that lets us trap him. Or it could be a disaster. So, be very careful."

Harris stifles a sigh for Agatha's sake. He puts his hands on the back of her chair. 'I'll defend her with my life,' is too melodramatic, despite being exactly how he feels at that moment. "We will be careful."

"Thank you," Agatha says listlessly before standing up. Her eyes are dead.

She's still blank when they exit the police station.

"Let's walk a little?" Harris immediately knows it's precisely the wrong thing to do. The Lake Michigan's expanse is bright and the wind off the water is bracing. Maybe it'll ruffle Agatha's hair and bring some color back into her cheeks, but it's wrong.

What they need is a cozy place to forget the grayness of the police station. Somewhere where she can lean on his shoulder, and he could whisper in her ear that it too shall pass. That they will be okay. That he loves her so much it hurts.

"Yes, let's walk." She takes his hand and they walk past his truck toward the shoreline.

His stomach issues forth a growl so loud, the downtown traffic can't cover it up. Rude, yes. But also fortunate. He slaps his forehead. "Breakfast!"

One twirl of his neck—and he spots the perfect nook. It's on the second floor, on the corner, with a floor-to-ceiling window. Roundish-tables occupy the cafe and fluidly shaped plastic chairs. Every surface is a patchwork of neon sticky notes upon which the patrons write whatever they would. A cozy place away from the wind.

They climb the staircase toward the growing smell of baking pastry, vanilla and, yes, the cinnamon, but Harris doesn't even wrinkle his nose. He won't let any negative thoughts intrude into this. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. And this breakfast feels like the most important of his life, because every minute with Agatha is like that.

The cafe's half-full, but Agatha finds a table by the window, in the corner. The wall behind her back is shaggy with post-its. Harris leaves her to read the cute scribbles and goes to the counter.

The barista's gaze rests on Agatha, as recognition flickers in her eyes.

"Ah, hi there?" He smiles ingratiatingly, refusing the impulse to snap his fingers in front of the barista's face. Privacy on the side, yes?

Behind his back, an excited voice already chirps, "Could we do a selfie? Please?"

He twists his head. Yup, the teen girls are circling Agatha. Shouldn't they be in school? Nope. Not on Sunday.

Ablaze, blah-blah-blah, Ablaze... wafts to him, but on the upside, the barista finally springs to life, though her glance swivels to Agatha all the time. How their order is correct is a minor miracle.

"Thank you," Harris says.

After fumbling with their phones, the girls retreat to their table. Their heads loll together by the time Harris sets his platter with a funnel cake and all the fixings before Agatha.

He sucks on his teeth and sits down. It's just kids. It could be worse. It will be much worse.

"I hope it's for sharing," Agatha says, distracting him. Everything is. He brandishes two forks at her. "You bet!"

He isn't quite done with his foolish-happy-in-love grinning, when the barista calls out, 'Harris! Agatha!' for their coffee. Names are so much more personal than an order number, but for once Harris wishes it was just the numbers. Everything about their date will make its rounds on the internet. Everything... he squares his shoulders.

"I'll get it." He hands the forks to Agatha and strides to the counter.

Agatha is staring down the two-layer weave of the deep fried dough when he returns with coffee.

So, he sets the cups down, sits, picks a fork and spears a lightly cooked strawberry with it. "Open up!"

His heart thumps as Agatha delicately bites the cake, then sucks the syrup off the fork.

Without looking away from her, he breaks off the crunchy corner and brings it to his own smiling mouth. And... it hits him.

Her brow lifts. "Cinnamon? That bad, eh?"

"Yeah... I wanted to challenge myself. It's not terrible. Lots of vanilla and..." And something else. Cardamom? He can do cardamom. Let's pretend it's cardamom.

He takes a sip of his coffee to cleanse his palate. Some things, he can change his mind on. The others—

"Oh, honey, you're horrible at pretending. Go get something else. You're hungry!"

He picks a strawberry and dips it in cream; looks at her from between the lowered eyelids; lets the gravelly note dominate his whisper. "Very hungry."

She blushes to the roots of her hair. "Harris!"

Zero outrage, plenty of glee, just like he likes it. He picks up a magenta sticky notes pad, one of dozens spilled on the tables. "Let's make it official, shall we?"

She slides her chair over, breathing in his ear to see what he's going to write.

AGATHA + H

He starts in big bold letters with a black marker, but graphic design is hard. He'll run out of space on the note by the second 'R'.

Agatha deftly slips a blue sticky note over to solve the problem.

AGATHA + HARRIS

Now it looks kind of empty for two sticky notes. He draws a crooked heart around it.

"Harris Sarkisian! Gimme that, before you hurt yourself!" She swipes the marker from him and adds a small heart instead of a dot over 'I' and tilts her head to the side to survey the results. It's the cutest damn thing he's ever seen. But it's not enough for Agatha. She fills the edges with a border of hearts.

"Beautiful," he says once she pins their note on the wall behind them, next to an open letter to some no-good Kelsey and a sticky so similar to theirs, smile tugs on the corners of his lips.

Innocence is what they need right now, a huge portion of it.

Agatha giggles. "This is so high-school, Harris, oh my gosh! Well, not like my high school—"

Exactly.

"Not like mine either."

He puckers his lips. Harris and Agatha, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g. Kissing. Kissing away the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach that this is too perfect for Oliver not to show up and spoil it.