"What did you just say?"
Nicole had to have him repeat his revelation. She was certain she must not have heard him correctly. It was simply her mind playing tricks on her. A case of her hearing only what she wanted to hear. Her heart was racing in her chest as she braced herself for a major letdown.
"It's true, Nicole. Our children are alive, and well, and with me."
She wanted to believe it. She'd played out hundreds of scenarios in her mind before which kept hope for her babies alive, everything from simple hospital mix-ups to conspirators determined to steal them away from her. She'd even considered that Sami Brady convinced somebody at the hospital to tell her that her little boy was dead as revenge for Sydney. Of course she'd laughed-off nearly all of them. After all, she'd been warned that she would never be able to have a baby so she resigned herself to the fact that it just wasn't in her cards. But then there was the DiMeras. Above all, it was the scenarios involving Stefano which Nicole had allowed herself to consider most often. He was very possessive of his children and grandchildren and he certainly hated her or any other woman EJ involved himself with. Women to Stefano were breeders of DiMera spawn, that was it. He certainly had the motive and resources to pull something like that off.
So did EJ, but even though he did play a few roles in some of her imaginings, she'd never considered him to be a real possibility. Although she knew she would never be his number one gal, she liked to believe that he at least cared enough to not want to destroy her. She never thought him to be the heartless bastard that everyone had accused him of being. At least he hadn't been to her. But there was that incident with Sami...
He'd kidnapped Sydney, immediately after details of the baby switch had been revealed. It was his revenge on her for trying to keep her away from him in the first place. He toyed with her for months, with the help of his accomplice Anna DiMera, sending phony ransom notes, and planting false evidence suggesting that her little girl might be dead, while he relished in every minute of her misery. He'd done all of those things to the woman he supposedly loved more than anyone? Who was she kidding to dismiss him as a suspect so easily? If he could do that to Sami then he could certainly do it to her, and he absolutely had motive, at least for their little boy. She had tried to keep him away from their son. Suddenly, she felt the rage boiling up inside.
She lunged at him, sending him from his feet to flat on his back in two seconds. She was on top of him, Her legs straddling his body at the waist, pounding fists into his chest as she screamed at him, "You BASTARD!"
Petrie was immediately behind her, trying to tame her flailing arms. "Please Miss-"
An elbow caught him in the gut, sending the elderly gentleman stumbling backwards, just barely saving himself from a fall on his behind.
EJ lay there defenselessly, allowing her to get it out of her system. After all, whatever he was getting he surely deserved it in some shape or form, even if he hadn't been the one directly responsible for stealing the children away. She was angry, hurt, confused as he imagined she would be, as any mother should be. Being her punching bag only hurt a little in comparison to what she must be feeling.
Tears streamed from her eyes as her fists kept pounding away, and she alternated between such phrases as, "You bastard," "I hate you," and, "How could you do this to me?"
All he dared to offer in response at this time was, "Please, just let me explain," and he repeated some variation of that over and again until she finally grew tired of beating him and allowed her still tightly-cleanched fists to rest on his stomach. She was only crying now and seemed to be at least making an attempt to regain her composure.
He slowly and carefully attempted to raise the upper half of his body from the floor. This movement prompted her to remove herself from him but she remained there on the floor, immediately beside him, resting on her knees. He pulled himself up to a sitting position so that he was facing her, ready to provide to her all the details she needed to know. He instinctively wanted to reach out to her, wipe the tears from her eyes, hold her, hold her hand, something, but he knew he shouldn't dare. He was afraid any such gesture would only reignite her anger. He was sure some of things he was about to tell her would cause her frustrations to resurface as well and it would all only further delay what this was all about. He decided to change tactics. He pulled a cell phone from his pocket and his fingers went to work retrieving his desired information. Upon his success, he turned the screen of his phone to her.
"Would you like to see a picture of your daughter?"
Nicole's hands shook violently as she reached out and grabbed the phone. Upon analyzing the photo of the little blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl, two possibilities immediately came to mind. Either this was indeed her little girl or EJ took great meaures to find a believeable doppelganger. If only the little girl, who would be eight years old, was wearing scrunchies in her hair, jelly bracelets, and neon clothing, she'd be a twin of herself in her childhood photos.
"I'm sure I don't need to remind you of details. She's eight years old now. She's incredibly bright and articulate, well advanced over the other girls in her school."
Nicole couldn't take her eyes off her. She was the most beautiful little girl she had ever seen but there was something about the photo that chilled her to the bone. The girl looked sad...haunted, even though she was smiling.
EJ was still speaking through her entire thought process. "She's an amazing singer. She's been training to be an opera singer since she was four."
"What is her name," Nicole found herself unconsciously asking.
"Antonietta. Named by my father, evidentally. They originally named her Mia but it was changed after my brother Tony passed away."
"Where is my son," she asked, almost emotionlessly as she passed his phone back to him. She still wasn't sure what to make of everything. She wasn't sure what to make of anything anymore and even if he was telling her the god's honest truth, where would it go from there? Her daughter was already eight years old, her son four. They were old enough to decide whether or not to accept her as their mother. It raised a whole new line of questions she'd never pondered before.
"This is Alexander," EJ said as he handed the phone back to her, attempting to surpress a smile upon seeing the picture of the happy, dark brown haired, brown eyed little boy, apparently mid-laughter, in the photograph. "I think you may realize the pattern here. He was named for my sister Alexandra."
Nicole again studied the new photo carefully. Unlike the little girl, he indeed appeared to be content at the very least. Also unlike his sister, he looked nothing like her but there was no question he was EJ's. He was an exact replica of his father.
"Alexander is a character, I must warn you. He's vivacious, energetic, and relentlessly inquisitive. I imagine he gets that from you, you being a reporter and all."
"What about Antonietta? Is she happy?" It had struck her as very telling that EJ hadn't used any such adjective to describe their daughter.
He hesitated to respond, carefully wording his response. "Antonietta is very skeptical. I guess you could also say that she is very much like you in that way. She has been hesitant to get close to me, not that I can blame her. We've only been acquainted for the past two years and she's not quite sure what to make of me. I mean, she didn't know me her whole life, until she was six, and then all of a sudden, here I am, some strange person she's being told is her father, only he has no memory of her, or anyone else for that matter."
"You don't remember anyone? Not her...or me?" Nicole wasn't necessarily sure why it mattered. She was really beginning to like NuEJ.
"Well, that's not entirely true," he began to clarify. "I've remembered a lot of things over the past two years, but I quickly realized that whatever I remembered I needed to keep secret, even from the children."
"Did you remember who you are?"
"Yes, I suppose that was the first tihing to come back. Then I remembered my family, Stefano and Kristen. I remembered 'dying', I remembered Samantha, and Johnny, and Sydney, but I couldn't tell a soul. It's an incredibly long story of how I came to discover the children are yours, ours rather. It's really the srangest thing because I've remembered so much, but I-"
His voice trailed off, hesitating to reveal this most uncomfortable piece of information.
"But what," Nicole pleaded, although she was sure she already knew the answer.
He frowned as he offered his explanation, apologetically. "I just don't remember anything about us. Dating, our marriages, the children, nothing. I don't remember you."
