What Love Is: Part 7
By Morganperidot
1
"We should take a break," John said.
They had been searching Llanfair for clues to Bree's disappearance for hours, and hadn't found anything that would lead them to Tess or where she might have taken the girl. It was hard to get anywhere, when there was so much of Jessica around the house. As different as Jessica might be from Tess, as far as investigating and forensics went, a lot about them was too much the same to differentiate.
"We have to find Bree," Natalie said, looking around the girl's room again.
"We will," John said. "But we've already looked in here three times."
"Then we'll look a fourth time and a fifth time and a fiftieth time if we have to," Natalie said. "We have to find her."
John understood what was going on here perhaps better than Natalie herself did. She clearly felt guilty for the re-emergence of Tess after Jessica's shocks about the one-night stand with Brody and Liam's supposed paternity, and in turn she blamed herself for whatever Tess did. If Bree was hurt, he knew Natalie would never forgive herself. John didn't think Tess would harm Bree, especially since Jessica and Bess were somewhere inside her to stop something like that from happening, but it was possible that Tess would be careless enough to allow something to happen by accident. John understood that the longer Bree was gone the more likely it was that she would be in danger. It was all very clear to him, but he also knew that doing things they had already done just to do something wasn't going to get them any closer to finding Bree.
John shut the door to the hallway and walked over to Natalie. She was so focused on finding something that she literally jumped when he touched her arm. "John, please, I have to…"
He turned her toward him. "What you have to do right now is listen to me," John said.
"We're wasting time," Natalie said. "We can't stop looking. We can't…" John stopped her lips with his, kissing her firmly and pulling her against him. She didn't respond at first, but after a second or two Natalie relaxed and met his passion with her own. When they finally parted, she looked in his eyes and said, "That wasn't very professional, Lieutenant McBain."
"I'm sorry," John said softly.
"You are?" Natalie said.
"No, not at all," John said. "If none of the rest of this was going on I would show you just how not sorry I am."
Natalie sighed. "I can't let my sister's daughter be in danger," she said. "Even if her mother couldn't care less about me right now."
"I get that," John said. "But we need to take a step back from this for a minute or two and let our thoughts settle a bit. Let's go see Liam."
"OK," Natalie said. "Just a short break though." John walked out of Bree's room and into the nearby nursery where Liam was napping. John walked over to him and stood looking down at the sleeping boy. My son, he thought, and it felt right even though he knew it still might not be. "You can pick him up," Natalie said from where she stood beside him.
"I don't want to wake him," John said.
"He'll want to know you were here," Natalie said.
John looked at her and saw her seriousness. "Do you really think he's my son?" he asked.
"Yes, I absolutely do," she said.
"How can you when a couple days ago you were certain he was Brody's?" John said.
"Because I've always seen how you are with him and how much he is like you," Natalie said. "I tried to ignore those things or write them off as just wishful thinking, but that test saying you are the father just proves that what I sensed all along is true."
"I wish I could believe that," John said, looking back at Liam.
"You will when you're ready," Natalie said.
John was silent. He didn't know what he was going to do if the second test of Brody's DNA came up as a match. It was as though they had dug an even deeper hole that they might not be able to climb out of. He would have been able to deal with Liam being Brody's son based on the first test; he had reached a point where he could accept that. But now with two more tests, including one where his own name was there in black and white as a match, he was worried that everything they were rebuilding would collapse if it turned out Liam wasn't his son. And if that happened, that could well be the end of things between them once and for all.
"John?" Natalie said.
"I was just thinking," John said. "He's so incredible."
"Yes, he is," Natalie. "He's a blessing."
Liam's eyes opened, and John reached down to scoop the boy up in his arms. Liam gurgled as John held him close and grabbed the sleeve of John's black shirt with his little hand. Warmth flooded John's heart as he held Liam. But that moment of joy was shattered when he looked over Natalie's shoulder and saw Tess appear in the hallway briefly before disappearing from sight.
"Take him," John said, pushing Liam at a surprised Natalie as gently as he could before taking off after Tess.
2
Natalie was shocked for a moment that John would just shove Liam at her and take off, but when she heard his quick steps in the hallway and on the stairs she knew this wasn't about getting away from a baby he thought might not be his. This had to be about Tess. She set Liam down and made sure that he was settled properly before she took off after John. She found him and Tess in the Llanfair foyer, Tess yelling at him to let her go while John recited the Miranda rights and cuffed her hands behind her back.
"Where is she?" Natalie yelled as she came down the stairs, not caring whether she was stepping on John's investigator toes. "Where is Bree?"
"How would I know?" Tess said.
"We know you took her," Natalie said, walking over to Tess and getting right in her face. "Where is she?" Tess said nothing, and Natalie grabbed her by the gaudy, low-cut dress she wore. "Tell me where she is!" she yelled.
"Back off," John said, pulling Natalie off of Tess. Natalie glared at him.
"It wasn't enough that you slept with Jessica's boyfriend and had his kid?" Tess said. "You had lose Bree too?"
"You have her!" Natalie shouted. "Where is she?"
"You can't pin this one on me," Tess said.
"Then why are you here?" John said.
Natalie looked at John in shock. "You aren't believing this are you?" she said.
"You should know he would believe anything," Tess said. "After all, you fed him lies by the bushel, just like you fed them to me. And he ate them up like candy."
Natalie opened her mouth to say something when it clicked in her mind that Tess had said "fed them to me" – when it had been Jessica who had been the recipient of those lies, not her alter.
"Jessica?" she said.
Natalie's sister looked at John. "Are you going to take these handcuffs off me?" she asked.
"Not until I'm sure of who you are," John said.
"You want to know who I am?" she said. "I'm exactly who Natalie made me, just like you are: a couple of used and abused saps she took advantage of."
Natalie saw John reach for the key to the cuffs. "She isn't Jessica," Natalie said. "She couldn't be. I know Jessica, and she wouldn't…"
"You know me?" her sister said. "Oh really, now, Natty, just how well do you know me? What did you think I was going to do when I found out that you had gotten stinking, white trash drunk with my boyfriend while I was mentally disabled, and then striped naked and rolled around in bed with him until you conceived his child? Are you such a sleazy whore that you couldn't even use birth control?" Out of the corner of her eye Natalie saw John's troubled face before he looked away. "But no one was supposed to know though, right? You were supposed to be allowed to play your trampy games with Brody and then live an untainted life with another man, pretending he was the father of your bastard child…"
"Liam…"
"So you don't know where Bree is?" John asked, cutting Natalie off. He had the key out and was releasing Jessica from the cuffs. Natalie didn't entirely understand what her sister was doing, but she knew that she was Jessica: furious, hateful Jessica, not Tess, because Tess couldn't care less about what Natalie had done with Brody. Natalie looked at John, but he didn't meet her gaze. He hadn't looked at her since Jessica's tirade began.
Jessica rubbed her newly freed wrists. "My guess is that Natalie hid her away somewhere so she could get you to help her 'find' my daughter," she said. "And blaming the alter her betrayals brought out is only the icing on the cake."
Natalie saw John look at her then, and she was stunned to see that he might actually be considering such insanity possible. She looked back at Jessica. "You know I would never…"
"I don't know you at all, and I don't want to know you," Jessica said. "I wish you had never come to Llanview."
"You don't mean that…"
"Why did you come to Llanfair?" John asked. "And why did you take off when I came after you?"
"Because I saw you there with that child of hers, the pretend family that she created with Brody's child," Jessica said. "I just had to get out of here; I couldn't bear to think that she would get what she wanted after all."
"That doesn't answer why you were here," Natalie said. Her guts were aching like Jessica had stuck a dagger in them and twisted it – and John had just watched her do so.
"I came here because of this," Jessica said, and she pulled a folded piece of white paper out of her pocket. "But you probably know about this already."
John took the paper from her and unfolded it. "Meet me at Llanfair," he read. He looked at Jessica. "Is this from Brody?" he asked.
"No," Jessica said. "It's from Nash."
3
John looked at the four words on the unsigned note, and then looked back at Jessica to try to determine if she was completely off her rocker. "Why would you think this is from Nash?" he asked.
"It's his handwriting," Jessica said. She looked at Natalie. "I still remember it all these years later," she added.
"Nash is dead," Natalie said, and John knew she had stepped right on the land mine with that one.
"Yes, he is," Jessica snarled. "I was there when you and Jared killed him."
"It was…"
"Don't you dare defend yourself about that," Jessica said.
"So what is this?" John asked, holding up the note to try to get things back on track.
"Why don't you ask her?" Jessica said. "She's the forensics expert."
"Why in the world would I…"
"Enough of this," John said. "This isn't about Nash or Natalie. This is about Bree." He looked at Jessica. "I'm going to take this down to the station to be analyzed," he said. "If you hear anything else from the person who sent this, let me know." He glanced at Natalie. "Are you coming down to the station?" he asked.
"I don't want her involved in this," Jessica said, "and if you were smart…"
"Stop it already," Natalie said. "I get that you are angry at me for a number of reasons, and you have every right to be. But that doesn't give you free range to mess with my life in return."
"No, of course not," Jessica said. "You should just get away with it all because you never meant to hurt anyone."
"I didn't," Natalie said. "Not you, and not John."
John's irritation with both of them was reaching the boiling point. "If the two of you want to stand here and argue about nothing go ahead," he said. "I'm going to get to the bottom of this and find Bree."
He yanked open the front door and was shocked to find himself standing face-to-face with a living and breathing man who seemed to be Nash Brennan, his right hand holding on to his daughter's left.
"Oh my God," Jessica said before fainting and collapsing in a heap on the floor. Bree ran over to her mother, but John saw that Natalie just stood there staring at the man in the doorway.
"How is this possible?" Natalie asked.
John looked back at the other man who didn't speak, just waited a beat and then smiled.
