Disclaimer: I don't own Moonlight. I wish I did. This is just for my enjoyment and I'm not making any money off of this.
She still remembers the last time she saw her son. He was moving to join his bride in the car that would take them to a hotel for the start of their honeymoon. She touched his arm gently, wanting one last embrace before he left. Seeing the look on her face Mick had given her the grin that had been melting female hearts since he was two years old. Gently, he gave her a long hug, kissed the top of her head and said, "I'll call you tomorrow and let you know what our plans are. I love you Mom."
Forcing a smile on her face she had kissed his cheek and sent him to be with his wife. Once the car was out of site she felt the tears come to her eyes and she tried to force down the feelings of unease that had been her constant companion since he had announced his engagement to Coraline. She couldn't pinpoint just what caused these feelings. Logically, she knew she shouldn't feel this way. Since Coraline had entered his life Mick had shown more life and energy than he had since he had returned from Italy and the war. She should be happy.
Instead she worried. Something was wrong about Coraline and the whole situation. Maybe it was the fact that Coraline had insisted on a small wedding. The only ones present had been Coraline, Coraline's friend Cynthia, her son, her husband and herself. And there was no reception, just cocktails at a local restaurant after the wedding Mass.
There was the fact that Coraline always seemed to be somewhat distanced from everything, like she was from another world and merely deigning to grace these mere mortals with her presence. And her eyes instead of being windows to the soul just seemed to be a door locking everyone out. And every once in awhile she would see a look in Coraline's eyes that made her shudder. It was almost as if Coraline wanted to devour Mick in a single bite.
She went home that night and spent the next day waiting for the phone call from her son. When he never called she tried to shrug it off. It was his first full day with his new, young and very attractive wife; thoughts about calling his mother had to be the last thing on his mind. When he hadn't called by dinner time the second day she attempted calling his room at the hotel while ignoring the ribbing from her husband, but with no answer. The third day even her husband began to be concerned. They called Mick's friends but no one had heard from the newlyweds. They tried calling the only people Coraline had ever mentioned in front of them – Cynthia and a man by the name of Charles Fitzgerald. Neither of them even answered their repeated calls.
By the fourth day she appealed to some of Mick's friends on the police force to look into the situation. She knew they thought she was being overly concerned but she didn't care. She would gladly look silly over her fears if only she could know that her son was all right. When they showed up late that evening and she saw the look on their faces she felt her legs give out from under her. When they told her that when they opened the room where Mick and Coraline had been staying and found a bloody wedding dress and massive amounts of blood caked on the sheets she became too numb to even cry even as she saw her husband break down in tears for the first time in their marriage.
She cried later though. She cried every morning as the realization that her son was gone hit her anew. She cried when after a year she and her husband packed up Mick's belongings and put them in storage. She cried when her husband's heart gave out on what would have been Mick's fifth wedding anniversary and she was left alone.
Slowly the tears began to come less and less frequently. The ache never went away and her son was never far from her thoughts. Sometimes when she was out walking, especially at night, she would swear she felt someone watching her. Turning she would swear she could see a familiar head of dark hair half hidden in the shadows. But when she would rush to where she saw the figure, all that was there would be empty space. Eventually she forced herself to just stop looking.
She knew that she should be more concerned for her safety. She was, after all, a woman living alone in Los Angeles. But she never did. Nothing dangerous every seemed to touch her. A string of robberies had occurred a few streets over. The robberies had begun to move towards her home when all of a sudden they just stopped. The perpetrators were never identified or arrested but somehow the robberies stopped.
Police found a would be mugger badly beaten on a side street that was on the route she walked to and from church the day after she had walked home following a late night Mass. No matter what happened, it always seemed like bad things gave her a wide berth. She didn't understand it but she was grateful nonetheless.
For over three decades she lived alone. She wasn't unhappy but there was always a part of her that was wondering what life would have been like had Mick never met Coraline, what life would have been like had her son lived. And even more than that she wondered what had actually happened that night in the hotel. She wondered if her son had suffered, if he had been scared, in pain and dying and she hadn't been there to protect him. These thoughts were always ones that could start the tears flowing again.
It was during one of these times that she tried to distract herself by reading the paper and she read about the safe return of a little girl named Beth Turner. She had read about the girl's abduction a few days earlier and her heart and ached at what she knew the mother had to be going through. As she skimmed the article for details and she felt her heart lurch when she read that the child had been found by a private investigator hired by the girl's mother. A private investigator named Mick St. John.
She felt her heart lurch and she frantically flipped through the pages to see the rest of the story. Buried in the middle of the section was a picture of the man who had found Beth Turner. The picture was fuzzy, as if the subject was moving very quickly or the photographer was not overly proficient at his job. The man also had his hand in front of his face, most likely in annoyance at having his picture taken. But she knew those hands and that stance. It was her son.
She shot to her feet, her mind already planning her next steps when she felt her heart lurch again. Only this time it was accompanied by pain in her left arm and intense dizziness. She tried to reach out for the kitchen table to steady herself, but her body wouldn't respond to her commands. She felt herself falling and a jolt of pain as she hit the floor. Weakly she tried to move, to get up, to get help but it was all she could do to try and remain conscious as the pain in her arm and the rest of her body steadily increased. As she slowly faded into the darkness she felt a cool hand stroking her hair and a familiar voice begging her to hang on.
When she woke up in the hospital she had tubes running out of every possible body part and pain to accompany them despite the feeling of grogginess that had to come from some sort of painkiller. Slowly the memory of what had happened and what she had discovered re-asserted itself in her fog filled mind. When a nurse came in she learned that a dark haired gentleman had been the one who found her, called an ambulance and then accompanied her to the hospital. Once he had learned she was no longer in danger he had apparently slipped away without any of the nurses noticing when he left.
Upon hearing the description of her savior she knew in her heart that it was Mick. It didn't matter than the description was of a man 30 years younger than Mick should be, she knew it was him. And she knew she needed to find him.
When she was released from the hospital a week later she immediately went to the library and had someone help her find the address for Mick St. John, Private Investigator. With a hope she had long thought dead causing her heart to beat rapidly, she approached the office only to find that it was empty. The business name was still on the door but everything inside appeared to have been cleaned out.
She spent weeks trying to discover where this Mick St. John had gone. She talked to neighbors and tried to find former clients. She contacted Beth Turner's mother and even tried calling the owner of the building the office was located in, one Josef Kostan. She wasn't able to find out any information that could help her.
Finally she forced herself to give up. She was too old to face this continual disappointment. Then one night she awoke feeling disoriented. She was certain she could sense someone in the room with her. But when she turned on the light there was no one there. All she had was the feeling of a set of cold lips pressed against her hair and the sound of a whispered, "I love you Mom" ringing in her ears.