Justiciar had a new client. "Westminster Law Group is a firm of barristers and solicitors operating in New Westminster," Ralph Rose, Lauren's partner, informed her. By this time Justiciar had grown, and Lauren had been given the chance to invest and become a full partner in the firm. She'd discussed it with Joe, and they'd both agreed it was a good investment to make, so she'd bought a share and joined Ralph and Gary Somers as the third partner, and she now had her own office and could help make decisions about the clientele they accepted. "They perform work in family law and in wills and estates. They'd like us to perform investigative work for their divorce clients."

She knew what Ralph meant. Adultery made up the bulk of Lauren's work. "Sounds right up our alley," she said.

"They'd like an initial meeting with one of us to discuss our services. How's your calendar? I'm afraid the date and time they're asking for doesn't work for me, and you know Gary's on vacation."

Lauren checked her phone and saw it did indeed work for her; her calendar happened to be clear for that time. "If you can send Sanderson to replace me on surveillance on Dobrev, I'll be able to make it."

"Will do," Ralph said, making a note to himself. "You'll be able to make it to New Westminster in that time?"

"Oh, so it is in New Westminster," she said. "Sometimes the name of a firm is just a name. Yeah, no problem. I grew up there, did I ever tell you?"

"I don't think you did."

"Yeah. It was actually Queensborough, across the bridge, but it's still part of New West."

"How was it growing up there?"

"Good. Very good." To explain everything she'd experienced would take way too much time, and she had another surveillance job to run to. "Send me the calendar invite? I have to run."

"No worries."

Later, as she was sitting in her car with her camera in her lap, the ding of the phone drew her attention away for a second, and she saw the invite from Ralph. It noted the date and time of the meeting, and the address of the firm, which looked downtown, if she remembered her geography correctly. It also noted the name of the partner she would be meeting at the firm.

Sunil Singh Parhar.

Why did that name sound familiar?

Her gasp startled her almost as much as the realization that she knew this name, and the possibility that this Sunil Singh Parhar was the same person as the skinny kid she knew growing up made her tingle with excitement, and almost threw her off her game when her target suddenly emerged from a house at which he did not live, and kissed a woman who was not his wife. She was only just able to snap a few pictures in time before the man climbed into his car. She'd already taken pictures of the car, the plate number, and the house with its address, but she'd nearly missed the money shot. She quietly castigated herself for being unprofessional, and at the same time felt that sweetly painful tug of nostalgia.

It could have been a different person, she knew, and she prepared herself for disappointment, but when she met him, his eyes lit up, and there was that grin she remembered. "Holy shit!" he said. "Lauren! It's really you!"

She couldn't help herself. She threw herself into his arms right there in front of his colleagues, and they were both wiping tears from their eyes when they unlocked.

He directed her to his office to escape curious eyes. When she sat down she examined this gorgeous man in front of her and wondered what had happened to that skinny boy. He had a beard, now, and a turban, and an expensive suit. His smile was goofy, though, thrilled with this sudden reunion.

"When I saw I would be meeting a Lauren Hasegawa, partner, Justiciar Security and Investigative Services, I thought to myself, that couldn't be the same Lauren I knew when I was a kid. But here you are, and you don't look a day older!"

"Oh, stop, you big charmer," she said. "Look at you! Did you become a lawyer by way of being a male model?"

He chuckled and blushed. "Nah. Straight to UBC after Khalsa School, then law school after that. Then articling, then associate, then partner. And you! You're a private investigator!"

"Yup. I almost went the cop route, but it would have killed my dad, the whole agents of the government and all that."

"Oh, yeah, I remember your history lesson the day I met you."

She burst out laughing. "You still remember that? I was so nervous meeting you all, so worried I'd say something weird, and then I went and said all that."

"So, a P.I.," he said, wistfully, leaning back in his chair. "Doing stakeouts?"

She nodded. "Just came from one."

"Remember the one we did on the Trybeks?"

Just like that, all these years later, they were talking as if no time at all had passed. "All the time," she said. "I still remember when you took off your shirt to put over the window--"

"So we didn't cut our hands on the glass!" he said. "Pretty smart, yeah?"

"Good thing you were a kid when you did that. If you did that now I might need a cold shower."

He burst out laughing. "Sorry, Lauren, I don't think my wife would approve."

"You're married?"

"Yup. Her name is Tej. We have two kids, Harpreet and Ajit."

"Oh, my God! Sunny! Wait, do you go by Sunny, or Sunil?"

"For you, it'll always be Sunny."

"Well, I'm so happy for you! I'd love to see pictures!"

He pulled out his phone and showed her. Tej was a brown goddess, a perfect match to this Indian prince, and his son and daughter were perfect mixes of both of them.

"How about you?" he asked. "Married?"

"Are you ready for this?" she asked. "I married Joe."

"Joe?!" he squawked. "You and Joe. Joe DiTomaso."

"Yup."

"Is he still a big boy?"

"Bigger. We also have two kids. Naomi and Tosh." She pulled out her own phone and showed him.

"Jesus," Sunny said when she was done. "This is incredible! Not only have I reunited with one of my best friends from childhood, I've indirectly connected with a second! Three out of five members of the Lawrence Street Detective Club, right here!"

"Huh. Yeah. Haven't thought of that name in a while."

"Ever wonder what happened to the other two? Rachel and Al?"

"Sometimes. I never heard from them after Eighty-one. God, do you know how many things we missed experiencing together? The AIDS epidemic. Expo Eighty-six! The grunge bands of the Nineties... the whole panic and then anticlimax of Y2K. Nine-eleven. And, well, the Iraq War is still going."

"We missed each other's weddings," Sunny said sadly.

"Yeah. I wanted Rachel to be my maid of honour."

"I'm not surprised. You two were very close."

"She's probably the reason I'm a P.I. now, starting the LSDC. She got my juices flowing for that kind of work."

Sunny examined her over steepled fingers, shaking his head every now and then, still in disbelief that they were sitting across from each other. "My family went to Expo. I took Tej there when we were going out."

"We went too! My dad loved the Japan pavilion. Can you imagine if we ran into each other there?"

"Ha! Millions of people over eight months? Unlikely. Did you sit in your house on Y2K and wait for your lights to go out?"

"Yes!" she said, laughing in delight. "Joe and I were freaked. I was pregnant with Naomi at the time, and we were like... how are we going to raise a baby in the Dark Ages? But then nothing happened!"

"Crazy. Where were you when Nine-eleven happened?"

"Getting up with Naomi. It was all over the news. I thought it was a movie at first!"

"Yeah. Such a shock. It hit hard for me; I got a lot of pointed questions after that, not only from people mistaking me for a Muslim, but people who well remembered the Air India bombing back in the Eighties."

"Oh, shit, you're kidding!" Lauren breathed.

"Yeah, those were dark days."

Suddenly they had nothing more to talk about.

"Well," Lauren said, suddenly feeling very sad, "I guess we have business to discuss."

"You know, I almost forgot about that. It just doesn't feel real, this day."

After that it was all work. Sunny discussed the files on which the firm needed surveillance, proof of adultery, tracking down hidden assets. Lauren detailed how the firm would be billed and how often they would get reports.

Before they left, though, they typed each other's numbers into their phones. "We need to get together on a weekend," Lauren said. "Joe's going to freak when I tell him about you! He'll definitely want to see you, and we can introduce the kids to each other! And I'd love to meet Tej! I even love the name! What does she do?"

"She's a real estate agent for the area around here and Queensborough."

"Oh! So, do you ever get back to the old neighbourhood?"

"Well, the gurdwara's there."

"Oh, of course."

"And we're not that far away. But I don't think I've been back to Lawrence Street since we moved away, about the same time you did, if I remember. I still can't believe you held on to Joe! I remember you two were a thing before I left."

"I guess real love lasts," she said, smiling.

Joe was thrilled, of course, and they planned on a get together that very weekend.

Then Joe's dad got sick. Joe told her the details of the ordeal later.

Mr. DiTomaso had been driving his wife back from a trip to the grocery store when he suddenly began driving erratically, veering out of his lane, nearly hitting oncoming cars. Joe's mom had to help him steer the car home. When he was at home he still felt dizzy and disoriented, and began vomiting uncontrollably. When Joe's mom tried to convince him to go to the hospital, he waved her off and lay down on the couch to sleep. His sleep turned into a convulsive thrashing that drove her to call Joe and beg him to help. He went on his own, and had to carry his dad, who was still a big man at the time, to his van and drive him to Burnaby Hospital.

Mr. DiTomaso had to be physically restrained to stop him from attempting to remove his IV. He had an incredibly high fever and, it was discovered later, his sodium levels were very low, which explained his incessant chewing and incoherent babbling. He had to be put in a medically induced coma to stop the swelling in his brain. Doctors initially thought he had some kind of meningitis, and he was quarantined from the rest of the emergency room. A spinal tap determined this was not the case, but it took days to determine that it was in fact viral encephalitis.

He spent months in and out of consciousness. Lauren wouldn't bring the children to the hospital because she didn't want them to see their Nonno like that. If he died, she didn't want that image of him in a hospital bed, with tubes and wires in and around him, to be their last of him. Joe thought seeing his grandchildren would help his dad bounce back. From what Lauren could see, Mr. DiTomaso wasn't really seeing anything, not in the beginning, anyway, and if he did see them, it was only after intense focus, held only for a short time, and anything he was able to say to them was slurry and confused. His waking was brief, so it would have been a real possibility that if she did bring her children, all they'd be doing was watching him sleep.

Once he was stable he was moved to hospice care, where he made life a living hell for the nurses. Never one to just sit back and let anyone take care of him, he kept begging to go home, kept reassuring everyone that he was fine, even if he could barely walk and had to undergo physiotherapy for atrophying all that time he was in a hospital bed. Joe had to visit his father and practically read him the riot act, especially once he heard a rumour that his father tried to bribe the nurses to drive him home. This must have been especially hard for Joe, who practically worshipped his father, and for that Lauren felt sorry for him.

So, it was months before Lauren and Joe finally had some free time to enact a proper reunion with Sunny and meet his wife and children. Months that felt like a blur of work, childcare, hospital visits, and holding Mrs. DiTomaso's hand, clenching her jaw as she did so because she still resented her for all of her attempts to control their lives. She did it, though, to be the dutiful daughter-in-law, to stay in Joe's good books, because if this whole situation taught her anything, it was that family was all you had when you were at your worst, and she would do anything she could to hold on to her family, even if it meant doing things that should have made her scream in indignation.

She also learned that delayed gratification was a very rewarding thing when she saw Joe's reaction laying eyes upon the friend of his youth.

It was almost comical, the way Joe and Sunny sized each other up, like two dogs circling each other, eager to play but needing to sniff each other's behinds first to make sure they were copacetic. Even more hilarious was the handshake Joe offered, to be waved aside by Sunny with an attempted hug, to be followed by an awkwardly negotiated side-hug back pat thing at which Lauren and Tej laughed before they hugged without any reservation. The kids, for their part, got along immediately and played in Lauren and Joe's backyard while they sat and watched them while having drinks.

"Sunny told me so much about you two," Tej said.

"Really?!" Lauren said, inordinately pleased.

"Yeah, and the other two friends of yours, and that club you had. It sounded like you all had a great time back in Queensborough."

"We did, but... did he tell you about that one incident?"

"The one you got the commendation for, yes! I can't believe my husband helped stop a bad man when he was a kid. And was it you, who..." She made a chopping gesture with her hand.

Lauren wasn't sure what she meant. "You mean did I use my dad's sword to hold him off? Yeah."

Tej blinked in confusion, then suddenly she seemed to get it and said, "You're right, I probably shouldn't bring up any unpleasant details in front of the kids."

She didn't know what about that was unpleasant, except maybe for Mr. Trybek, but she nodded as if she knew what Tej was talking about.

The first reunion! Thanks for reading this far! If you like what you just read, please hit the "Vote" button and leave a comment. To get back to what Lauren's up to in the present day, click "Continue reading."