Scully paused at the top of the stairs. Mulder sat on the desk chair facing the window, elbows on knees, the sun haloing him from behind. He looked up, surprised.

"What are you doing?" she said, coming closer.

"Thinking." He straightened.

"About?"

"Those two." He nodded absently toward the empty bed, a dusty blanket spread over the rumpled layers underneath.  "Just trying to put all the pieces together, make sense of it."  A pause. "Make sense of them."

Scully curled her fingers around the smooth curve of the chair back. "It did seem that he... loved her. For as odd as it sounds to be making that statement about Alex Krycek."

"Looked that way to me, too.  For as strange as it sounds." He stood, stared absently a moment at the window's brightness and then turned to face her. "You find anything in those albums?"

She shook her head and sighed. "Every picture in them was taken here. There's nothing at all from the time they spent in Pasadena."

"The past completely wiped away. And for more than just one woman: for an entire family." He bit his lip.

"What, Mulder?"

"Nothing. Just thinking... about how things can change so quickly, things you'd never anticipate. You wake up one morning and your sister's gone. Or you sit down to dinner with someone and halfway through--" 

His mouth closed and nodded toward the bed. "The way I figure it, this was it for them, Scully. Krycek would have been too wary to let things get out of hand in D.C. where Smoky might catch them.  It would have been too easy for Smoky to use her against him. And they were here for less than a day.  One day." After a moment he shrugged and looked toward the far end of the room. "Don't mind me."

He took her hand when she offered it and let her lead him toward the stairs.

"We have made one bit of progress," she said. "Nathan says he has some old letters at home, ones Shirley sent him when they were living in California. He's going to let us look at them. There's bound to be some kind of information there, at least her return address on the envelopes--something that will give us a place to start."

They came to the top of the stairs and paused.  After a moment he nodded. 

"Nathan down there?" he said.

"In the living room, yes."

He squeezed her hand carefully, then let it go and started down the stairs.