Agent Delgado handed Seri to Natalie and left for the evening as Adrian and Natalie entered the luxury apartment they were staying at. The moment the door shut, Adrian's inner panic began to pour out.
"What am I doing? What am I doing?! What am I doing?!" he said. "Natalie! Why didn't you stop me?"
"You were insistent!" said Natalie. "It was national security, you said."
"Yeah, but I didn't mean for you to listen to me! I...I can't do this! I'm going to have to get on a plane by myself, I'm going to a foreign land... without you...I'm going to have a psychological break...I know it! It's happened before!... HOW DARE HE!" Adrian yelled.
"What? ...Who? How dare who... what?" said Natalie, confused.
"Dr. Bell! This is happening because he quit. As long as he was there, everything stayed at bay. We just thought I was better. No, it was all just hiding, hiding for this moment... and building! to come on gangbusters and knock me out while I'm down...It's Neven Bell's fault!" he said clinching his fists.
Natalie didn't know whether to pity him or to laugh, so she decided to push personal feelings aside and be what she had always been for him - an anchor.
She set Seri down in a baby swing and then walked over to him and grasped both of his arms with her hands. Next, she pulled him in for a tight hug. When she released him, he started to continue the hysterical rant but she placed her hand over his mouth and held up one finger.
Walking to her laptop, she turned on the computer, opened a desk drawer and pulled out a transfer cable and hooked the computer up to his cell phone.
This was the kind of situation she had been preparing for for some time now, and she had just the remedy, she believed, to help Adrian simmer down.
Adrian watched as files loaded to the phone.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"You'll find out." she answered.
When the files had downloaded she unplugged the phone and picked it up.
"I want you to think back 15 years." she said. "Think back to some of the darkest times you faced, when your fear and anxiety were overtaking you."
"I don't want to." he said.
"I know. You don't have to go too deep. But, I want you to think back to some of those times when you felt the most unstable. You would go into your room at night with nothing but these fears talking in your head. What was the one thing that brought you comfort and stability?" she asked.
Adrian thought and then looked up at Natalie with sad eyes. "Trudy. My...my Trudy pillow." he said. "Trudy is dead. I have you now."
She touched his arm and handed him the phone. "Consider this your Natalie pillow." she said.
"My Natalie Pillow?" he asked, confused. "It's a phone."
"Yes, it's a phone that now contains recordings of my voice. I have recorded about 80 hours worth of stories, segments of books and just small talk for you to listen to when you get in situations where the anxiety just gets to be too much. You can listen to those to take your mind off of whatever you are going through. I was hoping that it would perhaps help calm your nerves a bit. Maybe start listening on your plane trip. When you've gone through them, I can make some more."
He just stood there silently thinking about the enormity of the gift she just handed him. It wasn't the recordings themselves, which were precious. But, it was the love that she had shown towards him in making them.
"I don't deserve you." he said quietly.
"What does deserving someone have to do with anything?" she asked. "You were made for me, and I was made for you. That's what matters."
"Yeah. God pretty much knew what He was doing, didn't he?" Adrian said smiling.
"He sure did." she responded with a hug and a kiss.
Meanwhile, televisions throughout the state were broadcasting the nightly news which reported on the pretrial murder hearing of Josie Jones. The news chose to take the angle of reporting on a little of Josie's background, how she was out on her own at 14 and how she was a petty criminal prior to this occurrence. The press had captured Captain Charles Keith as he was leaving the courthouse and he made a statement to the effect that regardless how the pretrial went that day, Josie Jones was a murderer and that he anticipated the jury would come to that conclusion as well. Harrison Powell was shown leaving the courthouse and merely stated that he felt confident about their chances before a jury.
As the story played, a man in his late 30s sat in a leather chair drinking from a glass of beer and watched the anchorwoman explain the situation. When the story was over, he picked up his remote, laid down the beer and turned off the TV.
"Josie Jones." was all he said.
Laying down the remote, he went over to a closet and pulled out a shoe box from the top shelf. Rifling through the box, he came upon a letter. He pulled the letter out of the envelope and carefully unfolded it. It was yellowed by time. Reading through the letter, he then neatly folded it and placed it back in the envelope - placing the envelope and box carefully back in the closet. He stood silently and thought for a moment. Next, he pulled out a notebook from a bookshelf. Opening the notebook, there were pictures of himself as a younger man with a young blonde woman. Later, there were photographs of him with the same woman and a little boy. Across from it, there was a newspaper article where the headline read San Diego woman and 5 year old son killed in hit and run accident. He stopped and touched the photo of himself with the woman and the little boy and a tear fell from his eye. Shutting the book, he placed it back into the bookshelf, turned towards the coffee table and picked up his keys and jacket before quietly heading out the door.
