transition to third artboard - floating windows

I am very new to this, so please forgive my lack of knowledge.

I have a project where i am creating a virtual aid for project managers on my team.  On the first artboard, i have a list of topics.  Second (level) artboard links from each of those specific topics to details on that topic.  third artboard links out of the second, to other information, forms, definitions, etc.  I want the second artboard to hover over the main first artboard when it is activated.  I got that to work with an overlay transition.  When the third artboard comes up, i was think that would replace the second artboard in this overlay location.  that also worked fine.  Where i am having trouble is backing out of this.  I have two transitions at the top.  for one of them, i want to go back to just showing artboard 1 with no overlay, i got that.  But for the other one, i want to close the third artboard and return to the second artboard in it's overlay position.  I have not been able to get that to work.  Is there a way to do this.  Is there a better "experience" i should be designing here?