After his wife and his lover left, off on what Joe thought was a pointless errand that was just Lauren's excuse to get away from him, Joe turned to Rachel and Al and said, "I don't know what I'm doing here."

"What do you mean?" Rachel asked. "Here, right now?"

"No. I mean, what am I doing wrong with Lauren? I used to be able to understand her and be understood." He turned to Al and said, "I don't want to hear your thoughts on the matter."

Al threw up his hands and said, "I didn't say anything. How about I call Detective Pak, and the two of you can have a chat, since you're so close."

"That's a great idea, Al, you do that."

Al shook his head and walked away, and Joe led Rachel out on the balcony. Rachel closed the balcony door behind them, and Joe leaned over the railing and looked out into the backyard. Rachel stood beside him, back to the yard, arms crossed. 

They didn't speak for some time. Finally, Joe said, "How are you not sick of his face right now?"

"Who, Al?"

"Yes, Al. Why are you not angrier at him? He betrayed you as much as Lauren betrayed me."

She shrugged. "I have bigger things to worry about right now. If you can't stand the sight of him, though, maybe we should all go. Maybe we can stay with his mom in Coquitlam."

"You wouldn't want to stay and send him off to his mom's?"

She turned to him and said, "I need him here with me, for Emma's sake and for Logan's. We can't split up because then we won't be able to adopt them. More importantly, Joe, I love him."

"And you're willing to overlook the fact that he slept with my wife?"

"I slept with you, and he forgave me, so I can do the same for him."

He gasped. "You confessed to everything? Weren't we on this same balcony over a year ago confirming our story, where we didn't tell them everything?"

She sighed and rolled her eyes. "Jesus, Joe, the game's up. What's the point of withholding anything now? I slept with you, he slept with her, and you're also sleeping with someone else, so you really have no right to your indignation."

"Knowing that won't make it go away. God, Rachel, you can do so much better than him, that's what makes me angry. More importantly, Lauren can do so much better than him, and that makes me even angrier. What does she want with him when she has me?"

She chuckled and shook her head. "You're so full of yourself. What do you think makes you so special?"

He blinked in surprise. "Sorry?"

"I mean, yeah, okay, you're good looking, and tall, and riding that beast of yours made me pop in ways I couldn't replicate with Al, and don't you dare tell him I ever said that. But I'm attracted to Al, too, as hard as it is for you to believe, and he also satisfies me sexually, and both of you rate about the same in my books, and that rating is high."

Joe harrumphed. "You had me when I was injured and at my lowest. If I was in full health I would have scored higher, I know it."

She threw up her hands in frustration. "Why is it always a competition with you? Why do you always have to compare yourself to him?"

"I can't help it. Suddenly my wife is sleeping with another man and I have to understand how that happened."

"Well, how did Joanie happen? Did you expect to fall for her when you met up again?"

He shrugged. "To be honest, I think it started all the way back when I first met her, walking down the aisle as Lauren's maid of honour."

She nodded sadly, as if she'd expected him to say that. "Have you ever thought that maybe you two shouldn't have gotten married?"

"What?!" he squawked.

"I mean, obviously you've had a wonderful marriage, two beautiful children and two successful businesses. You're great partners. But maybe you should have waited to marry until you had a little more experience dating other people. You two were each other's only lovers since you were teenagers, and it's only natural for you to look at other people and wonder what might have been. Now we're in this situation, where we're all guilty of cheating, and we all have to decide if we can carry on in our respective marriages. I don't know about you, but I can, because for me, there's more to love than just sex."

"I remember you saying something similar, also on this balcony, when you were justifying sleeping with my wife." He pushed himself off the railing and paced back and forth in frustration. "Jesus, now Lauren's had sex with both of you?! What the fuck am I supposed to do with this information?"

"I don't know, Joe. That's up to you, I guess."

He grabbed and pulled at his hair, hoping the pain in his scalp would take his mind off the pain in his heart. "If we'd never reunited with you and Al, this never would have happened."

She crossed her arms and said, "No, I suppose it wouldn't. Keep in mind, though, that Lauren was the instigator in both situations, so if she didn't start something with us, she might have with someone else, and isn't it better that it was with us? Good friends who would never hurt her and who want her to stay married to you?"

"And the fact that being with her would hurt me never crossed your minds?" he asked indignantly. "That being with her would make me not want to stay married to her?"

She deflated a little and leaned back against the balcony rail. "No one ever meant to hurt you."

"That's what everyone says when they cheat."

"Oh, fuck off, Joe," she said, suddenly angry. "You're seeing Joanie with Lauren's blessing, but don't you think it hurts her every time you walk out the door to go to Joanie?" She sighed in frustration and shook her head. "You know what? We keep going around and around on this. We either find a way through it or we cease being friends, but I don't think your life will ever go back to the way it was before you reunited with us if we do. Joanie has made that impossible now, because she's not us. She's all you. We go away, and she's still there, and do you think Lauren will let you keep seeing her if I'm gone?"

Joe looked at her for a long time, mouth opening and closing but unable to speak for the enormity of what she was suggesting.

Before he could think of something to say, a knock on the balcony door drew both their attentions. Al was waving at them from the living room. Rachel beckoned him out. She was done with their conversation, apparently.

Al opened the door and said, "Pak wants the number for McTeague."

Rachel brightened. "Does that mean they have the money?"

"I think they're almost ready, but they want to establish their own contact with her to ensure a safe exchange."

Rachel opened her phone and texted Pak the number. "Did they say anything about the fire?"

"The investigator will email us a report when they're finished, and we can use that to start the claim."

"Did you tell them about Lauren and Joanie's little adventure?"

"I thought it best to leave that out. I don't know if Joanie will get in trouble if they find out she's sleuthing off duty, especially if she has her gun with her."

"Good point."

Al looked from her to Joe. "So?" he asked. "Do you want us gone?"

Joe looked Al in the eye. To Al's credit, he didn't look away. "Do what you want to me," he went on. "But don't take it out on Lauren."

"Don't you dare say her name, you--"

"Joe!" Rachel squeezed his arm. She leaned in and whispered, "Not here. The kids are in the living room."

Joe took a deep breath to calm down. It took a minute, with Al and Rachel both looking like they would spring into action depending on what he did.

"Stay for now," he told them. "Once we get Logan back, though, it's going to get a little tight in here."

"We can go then," Rachel said. "We can call Al's mom or, God forbid, my mom."

"We'll see. Look, I think I'm going to go to Johnny's now; I have a feeling I should be back here later, depending on what happens with the cops, or what Lauren and Joanie find."

Al nodded and stepped aside so he could enter the living room. "Naomi," he said to his daughter, who was sitting next to Emma on the couch. "Auntie Rachel and Al are going to stay here with you guys. I'm going to Zio Johnny's for a while."

"Okay, Dad," Naomi said without looking away from the TV.

He couldn't leave the house fast enough, barely slipping his shoes on before he was out the door. No jacket needed, it was another hot day. He drove to his brother's house and knocked on the door. Johnny was surprised to see him so early. "Hey, boy," he said. "I wasn't expecting you until later."

"Are you busy?" he asked. "I think I might need to be at home later."

Johnny's eyebrows furrowed. "What's going on?"

"I need a drink first, and then I'll tell you everything."

They made their way down to the basement of Johnny's house, Joe greeting Val with a kiss on the cheek, and Callie with a scratch on the head, as he went through the house. Vic and Tilly were both at the beach on the last day of the long weekend. Joe sat in one of the enormous leather recliners with the massage settings all over the body, even on the legs and feet, that he loved so much. Johnny handed him a beer from the bar fridge and sat in the other one. He waited wordlessly for Joe to begin.

He never thought he would tell anyone in his family the whole story. Certainly not his parents, because he wouldn't be able to look his mother in the eye again, and he might even give his dad a new health scare with the news. To Johnny's credit, though, he listened and nodded along, only asking clarifying questions from time to time.

Finally, after Joe made his mouth dry from talking longer than he'd ever talked in a single sitting, he took a swig and watched Johnny's face.

"Jesus," Johnny said. He looked stunned. "This is quite the situation you're in."

"Yeah."

He shook his head and chuckled. "I can't believe it. Rachel. You lucky dog."

Joe felt a flare of pride at his older brother's admiration, but he shook it off. "That's your big takeaway from all that?"

"And this Joanie, she was Lauren's maid of honour? That tall redhead?"

"Yes. She took our statement about the pipe theft, and we reconnected."

"I think I remember her from the wedding. Quite striking. We made a good pairing on the dance floor. And you've been seeing her on the Sundays you cancelled with me? And Lauren's okay with it, because she's been seeing Rachel?"

He seemed to have a hard time taking this in. "Yes," Joe said.

"Jesus. Lauren and Rachel." Joe could see Johnny playing a dirty film of the two of them behind his eyes. The poor boy was attracted to both of them, and the two of them together was probably his biggest fantasy. "I didn't know either of them swung that way."

"Neither did I until we all reunited a few years ago. Apparently when they were thirteen they experimented a little, but I don't think they were ready to start anything yet. It took another thirty years for that to happen."

"And now you say Lauren's slept with Rachel's husband, and Rachel's okay with it?"

Joe shrugged. "You don't know Rachel and Lauren. They loooooove each other." He drew out the word for effect. "I guess that means they're comfortable sharing."

"All this time I thought you were all perfectly average, boring people, and you're actually a bunch of swingers."

"No we're not, and don't even joke about it. I'd put a stop to this right now if I could."

"Oh, come on, are you serious?" Johnny asked, incredulous.

"Well, I'd definitely stop Al's clock if I could."

"Hey, you don't want to go to prison, boy, we have a business to run here. That reminds me, we should go over the week."

Joe let himself fall into the familiar rhythms of planning the week's assignments with his brother, and after they made the phone calls they needed to make to the foremen at all their sites, they crept back to what they were discussing before.

"Before we left Harrison Hot Springs," Joe said, "Lauren and I discussed seeing a marriage counsellor."

"Before Logan was kidnapped, you mean."

"Yes, and the police are doing everything they can to secure his release. They have something the kidnappers want. We ourselves can do very little for Logan."

"Still, you don't seem very worried about him."

Joe sighed in frustration. "I don't know, I'm dealing with everything at once, so it's hard to worry about one thing more than another. My marriage could be ending, and my friends' foster son is in the hands of a woman who may or may not be his aunt but will kill him if her crew doesn't get the money, but in their hands he's safer than he would be in the hands of their rivals, who see him as a witness to the murder of his father and his father's partner and a threat to be eliminated. All this in addition to the fact that I'm now sharing a house with two people who've slept with my wife. The only one of them I'm not worried about is Emma, because who wouldn't love Emma?"

Johnny nodded sagely as he listened to this rambling narrative. When Joe was finished, he said, "There's no way you're ending your marriage, my friend. Mom and Dad wouldn't have it. There is no divorce in the eyes of the church, and they align with the church in all things."

Joe threw up his hands and said, "It might not be up to me."

"You're telling me Lauren's going to leave you? Where is she going to go? Do you think Al and Rachel are going to take her? This country hasn't legalized plural marriage as far as I know."

Joe felt sick to his stomach. "Jesus, Johnny, where do you get ideas like that? I think I'd be the one leaving, if anything. Lauren should stay with the kids."

Johnny's face fell. "Oh, no, don't tell me you're thinking about moving in with... her."

"You mean Joanie? No. She's made it clear she doesn't want me living with her."

Johnny burst out laughing. "I like this woman."

"And anyway, she lives all the way out in Coquitlam."

"You make it sound like the moon. You have a car, don't you?"

"Jesus, the car," Joe breathed. "Nope. It can't work. Neither of us can move out. I can't drive the Versa, it's too small, and whoever has the kids needs the Highlander to get around."

Johnny put his hand on Joe's arm and said, "Look, don't make any decisions right now. You're in crisis mode at the moment. You have Logan to worry about, and that should be your priority. Once that's taken care of, you and Lauren go to counselling. You've been married more than twenty years; you can't just end your marriage without giving a go at saving it."

Joe sighed and nodded, fighting to keep his composure. He hadn't cried in front of his big brother since he was a kid. "Yeah," he croaked.

Thanks for reading this far! If you liked what you just read, hit "Vote" and leave a comment. To see what Joe was talking about with Rachel about the last time they were in the balcony, click on "Continue reading."