'All right, Tom, you can do this. You're an officer of the Palm Beach police force for god's sake. What's to be nervous about?' Tom repeated the mantra to himself as he twisted his old house key in the front door. Ten years since he lived in this house, yet it still had the same old lock. Tom Ryan opened the door to his mother's house and walked in. The windows were closed and the air had a musty scent. He wiped his finger through an inch of dust on the hall table. As his mother's health had declined, so did her housekeeping. His father hadn't cared about the dust. He viewed the house as a place to sleep between visits to the hospital and restaurant. Tom sighed and picked up a picture from over the fireplace. It was a picture of him and his mother when he was only about five years old. He felt a burning in the back of his eyes as he looked around the rest of the room. His mom would never be able to walk through this house again because his mom was no longer walking on this earth. He wiped his hand across his eyes as he heard someone enter behind him. He looked up startled. His beautiful ex-wife and partner Cassandra St. John had just entered, her eyes reflecting her knowledge of his mother's death. "Cassy? What are you doing here?" "Here as in this house? Or here as in Boston?" she asked wryly. Stepping closer to him she pulled him into a compassionate hug. "How are you and your dad holding up?" "We're doing...okay, I guess. I mean it's not as if we didn't have time to prepare for it. But still..." Tom rested his cheek on the comfort of her shoulder. He pulled away, "So why are you here?" "I thought that you might need a friend to help you sort through your mom's things." "Yeah, Dad...well he didn't think he could face coming into the house with all of her stuff here." Tom started down the hall towards his parents' bedroom. He was beginning to understand the feeling. He sighed. Everything was just like he remembered it. "How did you find out about...mom?" "I heard about it from the Captain. Damn it, Tom, why didn't you tell me yourself?" she asked, a little hurt. They were partners, heck they had even been married. She shouldn't have had to question her captain on her partner's whereabouts. Tom turned away to face the closet, "I...didn't think that you cared." He rushed on, "Its' not as if you two were bosom buddies while we were married. Hell, you two hated each other." He opened the door and started to remove his mother's dresses. "Just because I didn't like your mother, didn't mean that I didn't care," she replied softly. She sighed and took the dresses from his hand. "What do you plan on doing with these?" "Dad said something about donating the stuff to the battered women's shelter on Warner Ave.," Tom replied. "All right, I'll go and get some plastic bags for all of this. I'll be right back." She headed for the kitchen, leaving him alone to sort through his mom's momentos. When she came back, he was sitting next to a box with its items half sorted. He had a puzzled look upon his face, as if he was trying to remember something from a long time ago. He was concentrating on an object in his hand. "What is it?" she asked, coming back into the room and kneeling by his side. Tom held up an object that had been resting in his palm. It was a gold chain tangled through his fingers. In the cradle of his palm he held a jade pendant. Cassy reached for it and felt something rough on the back. She flipped the pendant over to reveal six Chinese characters. She looked at Tom, "Didn't you take some Chinese in college?" She handed the jade piece back to him, "What's it say?" "I'm trying to remember here. With Chinese it's like if you don't use it, you lose it. And since the only thing I use it for is to impress the girls when I take them to a Chinese restaurant, I lost part of it." He squinted at the characters some more, "This character here means I and the third one means you. I don't recognize the others." "Do you know anybody who could maybe translate it?" "Yeah, Mrs. Wang. She lives around the corner. I used to play with her son Jimmy all of the time. Let me call her." Tom got up and reached across the bed for the bedside extension. Cassy listened with half an ear to her partner's conversation. "Ni hao Wang Tai. Shi wo, Tom Ryan." Then he switched to English, "Yeah, I guess I am still mispronouncing the tone marks...Thank you, I'll pass them on to my dad. Mrs. Wang? The real reason I called was.... well as I was sorting through my mom's things, I came across a jade pendant with Chinese characters, and I was wondering if you would translate them for me. He's back? Yeah, send him over. Take care. Zai jian." Tom hung up the phone. Cassy turned to him, "Well?" "Jimmy's visiting. She's going to send him over." Tom looked at his watch, "...eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen,..." "What are you doing?" she asked curiously. Tom just kept counting. Upon hitting one hundred and forty a voice yelled from outside, "Yo, Tom! Stop... the watch! I'm...here." Tom grinned and went to open the door, "Getting a bit slow aren't we? Coach would be so disappointed." "Cut me...some slack here," Jimmy Wang was still panting from his run. He caught his breath as they went into the kitchen. Tom opened the fridge and tossed his friend a can of Pepsi. "So what is it that I just ran to see?" Tom took the pendant out of his pocket. Jimmy reached for it. Flipping it over he read, "Wo ai ni. Caine Da Men" "What does it mean?" Cassy asked coming into the kitchen. "Who are you?" Jimmy asked. "My partner, Cassy St. John. Cassy, this is Jimmy Wang, couldn't have made any touchdowns without him." "Nice to meet you, Cassy...." Jimmy blinked hard as if he had just realized something he turned to Tom. "The same...?" Tom nodded and changed the subject, "What does it mean?" "Huh? Oh yeah, the pendant." Jimmy looked at it again, and pointed to the characters on the right hand side. Running his finger down each character he translated, "This line basically says I love you." He ran his finger down the coloumn of characters on the left. This here is a name. Caine Da Men." Tom looked startled, "You're telling me some guy named Caine Da Men gave my mom this pendant?" "No, I'm saying a guy named Da Men Caine loved and gave her this pendant."