Scully trails behind and is the only one downstairs when the phone rings. When she answers it, a woman's voice says, "Dana. She needs your help." The voice sounds exactly like Dana's dead sister Melissa. "She needs you, Dana. Go to her." Scully tells him she received a phonecall from this house about 20 minutes ago but he tells her he's been on the scene 30 minutes and no one's called out, especially since the phone is off the hook. He allows her to view the crime scene where a woman lies dead in the tub with her wrists slit. Scully tells her mother the news she's recently had; that as a result of her abduction, she is unable to conceive a child. Her mother hugs her and tells her how sorry she is. Dana says it's okay but that she never realized how much she wanted to have a child until the possibility was taken from her. Scully finds a picture of the Sim's daughter, Emily. Returning to Bill's house, she finds some old photo albums and compares the photo to one of Melissa at the same age. Despite the picture of Melissa being over 20 years old, the two girls look identical. Scully does an online search and discovers that Emily Sim was adopted. She searches for an injection site and finds one on the right heel where it would be overlooked in the normal course of the autopsy. She feels the woman was anesthetized so her suicide could be staged. She wants a murder investigation opened. She tells her mother what it means is that Emily is Melissa's daughter. Even with the pictures in front of her, Mrs. Scully says it's not possible. Margaret thinks this pursuit of Dana's is her way of dealing with Melissa's death. She says it happened to her when she lost her husband. Another flashback to Christmas when the girls are young teens. Sneaking down to the tree to peek at their gifts, Dana and Melissa are caught by their mother. She lets them each open a small box from her and each finds the gold cross that Scully still wears. Dr. Calderon says that Emily was brought to his attention by the father and that Mrs. Sim didn't want Emily in the trials. The payments were a gesture of good will to keep Emily as a subject but, despite this incentive, Mrs. Sim had filed the paperwork to remove Emily from the program though Mr. Sim later withdrew it. Emily is led by Scully to a waiting van where she will be in the custody of child protective services. Holding the child's hand and helping her into the carseat, Scully talks to her gently. Emily sees Dana's gold cross and reaches out to touch it. Taking it off, Scully places the necklace around Emily's neck. Bill tells Scully there's something he has to show her. It's a photograph of Melissa from 1994 and her trip to the west coast. It shows a decidedly un-pregnant Melissa proving to Bill that she couldn't be Emily's mother. The social worker says Scully seems very committed to her job and that it would have to become secondary to the care of the child. She's not sure Scully is really prepared to make that sacrifice. Scully claims to have given it a lot of thought and, in fact, had already begun questioning her priorities when she was diagnosed with cancer. Using a sample of Dana's DNA, they ran the RFLP analysis and checked it against Emily's profile. A shocked Dana announces to her family, "According to this, *I* am Emily's mother." To Be Continued...

Christmas Carol The episode begins with Scully and her mother arriving at the home of her older brother Bill and his wife, Tara. They live on the naval base in San Diego in a house with the exact same layout as the house Scully grew up in. Mrs. Scully looks melancholy and tells Dana she's just thinking about her dad and Melissa and how much she misses them. As everyone heads upstairs with the suitcases, Scully trails behind and is the only one downstairs when the phone rings. When she answers it, a woman's voice says, "Dana. She needs your help." The voice sounds exactly like Dana's dead sister Melissa. "She needs you, Dana. Go to her." As Scully, a bit freaked-out, asks who is calling, the person hangs up. Scully immediately dials the San Diego FBI office and requests a trace on the incoming call. Heading to the address, she finds police cars and a paramedic vehicle outside. Walking up the stairs inside the house, she sees a small table with the phone off the hook. She tries to enter the bathroom crime scene but is stopped by the detective in charge, Detective Kresge. Scully tells him she received a phonecall from this house about 20 minutes ago but he tells her he's been on the scene 30 minutes and no one's called out, especially since the phone is off the hook. He allows her to view the crime scene where a woman lies dead in the tub with her wrists slit. The woman, Roberta Sim, has been dead three hours so couldn't have placed the call. Scully walks outside, confused, and runs into her brother Bill who drove with her to the house. He tells her the police outside have been joking about how she got a call from a dead woman. "I thought it was a dead woman. Just not the one in there," Scully says. She tells Bill the voice on the phone sounded just like their sister, Melissa. Still on the scene, Scully walks through the house and sees Mr. Sim holding his young daughter. The detective tells her the phone company has confirmed the incoming call to her brother's house but they also say the phone at the Sim house has been off the hook for three hours with no outgoing calls. He feels that, weird phonecall aside, the death is a straightforward suicide. Back at Bill's house, the family is sitting down to dinner with the lighted Christmas tree in the background. Scully excuses herself from the table and phones Mulder's apartment. When he answers, she changes her mind and hangs up without saying a word. Back at the table, Bill's wife goes on and on about the joys of being pregnant and having a child and how she can't wait to have more. She says the birth will bring new meaning to her life, commenting that life before now seems somehow less. Mrs. Scully catches Dana's less than enthusiastic response and later, in the kitchen, questions her about it. Dana says she's happy for Bill and Tara. Then she tells her mother the news she's recently had; that as a result of her abduction, she is unable to conceive a child. Her mother hugs her and tells her how sorry she is. Dana says it's okay but that she never realized how much she wanted to have a child until the possibility was taken from her. Sleeping that night in the future nursery that is a replica of her old bedroom, Scully dreams of herself as a child. In the dream/memory, Bill Jr. is trying to find her pet rabbit and torments her about it. Sneaking downstairs into the basement, the young Dana opens a hidden box to reveal a very dead, maggot-covered bunny. Slamming the lid shut, Dana looks up toward the stairs and sees a young girl looking back at her. The girl looks like the young Sim girl. Snapping out of her dream to the sound of her cell phone ringing, Scully gets up and digs it out of her suitcase. The voice on the other end is Melissa. "She needs your help. Go to her." Dana says, "Who is this? Why are you doing this?" But the caller has hung up. Despite the early hour of the call (2:30 a.m.) Scully returns to the Sim residence and knocks on the door. Surprisingly, when Mr. Sim answers the door, he is fully clothed and apparently has been up all along. There are men in suits visible in a room behind him. After apologizing for the early hour, Scully explains the phonecall she received but he claims no one has called from the house so it must be a screw-up. He wants her to leave and stop upsetting him with what he refers to as nonsense. As Scully drives away, we see the young Sim girl watching her from the second floor window. With no cooperation from Mr. Sim, Scully heads to the police station and asks to see everything on the Roberta Sim case. Kresge says there is no case since it was a simple suicide. Scully asks him to allow her access to whatever he has in the spirit of the season. He complies and Scully finds a toxicological report stating that a drug called Doritriptin had been found in Mrs. Sim's system. Kresge says it's a migraine medicine which, if taken in high enough doses, acts as an anesthetic. He figures she took the drug to anesthetize herself before getting in the tub and slitting her wrists. They found empty sample packets on the bathroom floor and unused tablets in her purse. Scully finds a picture of the Sim's daughter, Emily, in her mother's purse. She asks to borrow it. Returning to Bill's house, she finds some old photo albums and compares the photo to one of Melissa at the same age. The resemblance is uncanny. Despite the picture of Melissa being over 20 years old, the two girls look identical. Scully does an online search and discovers that Emily Sim was adopted. She phones Danny, the helpful FBI contact that she and Mulder use, and asks him if he can get her the complete case file on Melissa; crime scene info, autopsy report, and PCR results. She wants him to forward all the information to the San Diego office ASAP. A dream sequence follows where we see a young Dana being led up to the front of a church during a funeral. There is an open casket and fresh blood and water drips down onto the sterile tiles of the church floor. As she reaches the casket and looks inside, Dana sees it is filled with water and floating chrysanthemums and beneath the surface is the dead Sim woman. Looking down through the blood-tinged water, she sees the woman's eyes suddenly fly open. The young Dana startles backward and looks up at the man whose hand she holds. It's Mr. Sim and he says, "Dana?" Scully starts awake to find Bill waking her where she fell asleep at the dining room table in front of her laptop computer. She tells Bill that she has some unfinished business and will rent a car then catch up with the rest of the family later for lunch. Returning to the precinct, she tells Kresge that there's the possibility that Mrs. Sim was murdered. She thinks it might have been the husband. The detective says Sim has an ironclad alibi since he was at the doctor's office with Emily all morning. Scully tells him she's reviewed the reports and noted that there were no hesitation wounds on Roberta's wrists. In addition, the husband called the police to the scene but how could he if the phone was off the hook when he got there unless he had the presence of mind to leave it off the hook when he was thereby returning the crime scene to its original state. Unlikely. Scully believes further investigation is warranted and wants to do the autopsy herself. In the stomach contents she finds no medicine tablets despite the empty packets found at the scene. Scully doesn't think there was enough time for complete absorption so would have expected the remnants to be found in Roberta's stomach. In the absence of pills, she searches for an injection site and finds one on the right heel where it would be overlooked in the normal course of the autopsy. She feels the woman was anesthetized so her suicide could be staged. She wants a murder investigation opened. Mr. Sim is none too happy when he returns home to find the place being searched and he knows it's Scully's doing. They find a syringe in the trash which he explains by telling them Emily has a rare form of anemia which requires daily injections. Scully tells the tech to analyze the blood and run PCR analysis on the DNA to find out whose blood it is. As she looks out the window, she spots a car with two men in suits apparently watching the house. When they see Scully, they drive away immediately. When Scully returns to the base, it's very late and she has obviously missed her lunch date with the family. The case file she requested from Danny is waiting for her on the dining room table. Comparing Melissa's PCR profile to Emily's DNA recovered from the syringe, she finds a direct match which gives 60% confidence regarding maternity. Margaret Scully, awakened by Dana's late return, finds her daughter and asks if she's okay. Dana tells her to sit down and proceeds to explain what she's found. She tells her mother what it means is that Emily is Melissa's daughter. Even with the pictures in front of her, Mrs. Scully says it's not possible. Scully says Melissa was traveling up and down the west coast in 1994 and could have gotten pregnant and given up the child for adoption without them ever knowing. But Margaret thinks this pursuit of Dana's is her way of dealing with Melissa's death. She says it happened to her when she lost her husband and besides, she simply can't believe Emily is her granddaughter. Another flashback to Christmas when the girls are young teens. Sneaking down to the tree to peek at their gifts, Dana and Melissa are caught by their mother. She lets them each open a small box from her and each finds the gold cross that Scully still wears. (This is inconsistent with what Mrs. Scully told Mulder in "Ascension". She said it had been a gift for Dana's birthday but since this is a dream sequence, that could explain the discrepancy.) The young Dana looks down at her new necklace as her mother places a hand on her shoulder. When she looks up, her mother is the present day version of Dana herself, smiling down at the teenage Dana. A knock at her bedroom door wakes her as Tara comes in to tell her that Kresge is there to see her. He tells her that Mr. Sim has recently had large bank deposits; three $30,000 deposits in the last 18 months, one of which was only one day ago. The checks were all made out to Roberta Sim, making the last deposit post mortem. The checks came from a pharmaceutical company, Transgen, so Kresge and Scully pay a visit to a Dr. Calderon at the facility. Calderon acts surprised to hear of Mrs. Sim's death. He tells them that Emily was part of a clinical trial in the development of gene therapy for blood disorders. Emily has a rare autoimmune hemolytic anemia and is a very sick child, he says. The family was being compensated for their participation in the study. Dr. Calderon says that Emily was brought to his attention by the father and that Mrs. Sim didn't want Emily in the trials. The payments were a gesture of good will to keep Emily as a subject but, despite this incentive, Mrs. Sim had filed the paperwork to remove Emily from the program though Mr. Sim later withdrew it. When Scully inquires, he says the Doritriptin wasn't for Emily but was prescribed for Mr. Sim when he complained of migraine headaches. This is enough for them to arrest Sim. As her father is being arrested, Emily is led by Scully to a waiting van where she will be in the custody of child protective services. Holding the child's hand and helping her into the carseat, Scully talks to her gently. Emily sees Dana's gold cross and reaches out to touch it. Taking it off, Scully places the necklace around Emily's neck, telling her she'll see her soon. Already, Scully seems to be forming an attachment to the young girl. Later, at a Christmas party, Dana looks pensively out the window seemingly oblivious to the festivities going on around her. Bill asks her to help him in the kitchen as an excuse to talk. He knows whatever's bothering her is about Emily. "Do you really think Melissa had a baby? She called you from beyond the grave to tell you that?" He says it sounds like something her partner would subscribe to. Bill thinks it's not about Emily but rather some emptiness inside herself that she's trying to fill. On the verge of some potentially harsh words, they're interrupted by a phonecall for Dana. The caller is Kresge and he says he's got a little present for her. Mr. Sim has confessed to the murder in a signed statement despite the witnesses that corroborated his alibi. Scully heads to the county jail where Sim is being held and, as she passes the security gate, sees a car exit. It's the same car that was keeping surveillance on the Sim residence when they had the place searched. The guards inside the jail tell her that the men spent about 10-15 minutes with Sim, saying they were his lawyers. When they check Sim's cell, he is hanging from his bunk, dead. Returning to Bill's house, Scully sighs as she takes in the picture of the lighted tree, blazing fire, and nativity scene. She tells Bill that Emily's adoptive father is dead in a faked suicide just like the mother. He's shocked and wonders aloud if it has something to do with the child. Bill tells Scully there's something he has to show her. It's a photograph of Melissa from 1994 and her trip to the west coast. It shows a decidedly un-pregnant Melissa proving to Bill that she couldn't be Emily's mother. Scully says it doesn't prove anything since Melissa didn't have to get pregnant to be Emily's mother. Her explanations sound like rationalizations to Bill. He says she's creating this whole scenario to fulfill a dream. He thinks this is Dana's way to have a child, by making Emily Melissa's daughter. "You're only going to end up hurting yourself." Their painful conversation is interrupted by the doorbell. Seeming to bear out Bill's fears, the arrival is a social worker from the county about the adoption forms Dana filled out. She tells Dana that she believes they'll recommend against adoption. Scully is devastated and asks for an explanation. The reasons are numerous. She's single, never been married or in a long-term relationship, and has a high stress time-intensive occupation which is very dangerous. The social worker says Scully seems very committed to her job and that it would have to become secondary to the care of the child. She's not sure Scully is really prepared to make that sacrifice. Scully claims to have given it a lot of thought and, in fact, had already begun questioning her priorities when she was diagnosed with cancer. She says she's avoided strong attachments in the past, possibly fearing death, but she doesn't feel that way anymore. The social worker tells her due to Emily's incurable condition, she is a special needs child, requiring constant medical and emotional care. Scully says she feels like she's ready to accept the responsibility and is told they'll review her final application and make their recommendations. A tearful Dana sits on the couch and another dream sequence ensues. A hand falls on her shoulder and she turns to see Melissa. The timeframe seems to be just prior to Scully starting at Quantico. She was unable to sleep so is sitting up by the Christmas tree near the glow of the fire. The sisters talk about Dana's concerns about the FBI, her father's disapproval, and the uncertainty of whether she's making the right choice. Melissa says to follow her heart and it will take her where she's supposed to go. Dana teases Melissa, saying she sounds like a greeting card. Melissa says the path she takes isn't the most important thing. The people she meets along the way are what counts. Scully wakes up on the couch with a too chipper Tara announcing Merry Christmas. As the family begins to open presents, the doorbell rings and it's an FBI courier with a delivery for Scully. Signing for the pouch, she opens it to find an official folder containing the complete report on Emily's DNA and the maternity tests. The report states that Melissa's and Emily's DNA were tested using RFLP analysis and the results definitively prove that Melissa is not Emily's mother. But the similarities were so significant, it prompted them to check another sample they already had on hand. Using a sample of Dana's DNA, they ran the RFLP analysis and checked it against Emily's profile. A shocked Dana announces to her family, "According to this, *I* am Emily's mother." To Be Continued...