~#~ (Chapter 25)

One very good meal and half a bottle of fine wine later the two men returned to the hotel. Jeff went to the car to retrieve the paperwork while John waited for him in the lobby. The pair then climbed the stairs, entered Jeff's room and sat down, John on the sofa which sat under the window and Jeff on the comfy desk chair which he placed near to John.

John held his hand out for the envelope, only to be met with an "Oh, no you don't," from Jeff. "I know what's in here, you don't. A lot of it won't make sense out of context so give me a minute to sort it out." He removed the papers from the envelope and rifled through them until he found the copy of Jacob's birth certificate. Being careful not to read it he pulled it from the pile and held it out to John who tentatively tugged it from his grasp. Jeff then went back to shuffling the papers around to give John a moment to read through and absorb the information on the certificate.

A short gasp told Jeff that John had found what he was looking for although from the non-descript noise he couldn't tell whether the discovery was good or bad. He tried to meet John's eyes but the young man continued to scan the page for another couple of minutes before he looked up.

A sad smile briefly crossed Johns face. "Do you remember what Kathy said? The very first thing she said when she introduced us to Jacob?" he asked.

Jeff thought back for a moment. "This is Jacob, our resident little angel."

John nodded. "She didn't know how right she was," he murmured and smiled the same sad smile again before handing the piece of paper back to Jeff. "He's not a Tracy, Dad…not at the moment but he is and always will be, Rosie's little angel."

Jeff had a confused frown on his face as he took the certificate back. He didn't entirely understand what John was trying to say until he looked over the paperwork himself. When he got down to the section labelled 'Full name of child' he finally understood. "Jacob Angel Sampson," he read out loud. "That's…well, I think that's quite appropriate." He smiled at John and suddenly realised that he'd never shown him Kathy's photo. He fished it out of his wallet and handed it John with a grin. "That's a pair of sleeping angels if ever I saw one."

John studied the picture for a moment and flushed red at Jeff's comment. "I thought you didn't have your camera until this afternoon," he commented. "This was taken yesterday so where did it come from?"

"Kathy," Jeff replied. "She went in to check on you and couldn't resist. It seems like you and Jacob have made quite an impression on everyone in there."

John shook his head. "Well Jacob I can understand but I'm not too sure what they think of me. I've gone in, disrupted their routines and then hassled them into letting me take him down to the garden when I found out that he hadn't been outside since the paramedics first brought him in here."

"John, believe me, everyone...and I mean everyone, will see that as a good thing, not a bad one," Jeff replied, leaning over and resting a hand on John's shoulder. "The fact that you are willing to fight for what's right for your son, so soon after finding out about him, will only help to endear you to them. You just keep on being yourself, John and doing what you feel's right and you won't go far wrong in anyone's eyes."

John lowered his head and handed the photo back to Jeff without meeting his father's eyes. Jeff fiddled around putting the picture back in his wallet to give John a chance to change the subject away from himself.

The moment the wallet was back in Jeff's pocket, John raised his head and pointed at the envelope."Is it safe to assume that most of that is about Rosie's apartment?" he asked. "Is there a time limit involved for when it has to be cleared? I guess that's down to me to put her affairs in…" John stopped and shook his head. "Oh, I…I'll rephrase that…I suppose it's up to me to close down her apartment, her accounts…tie up loose ends, that sort of thing."

"I thought you might have worked out that was coming," Jeff admitted, sadly. "Although because of Jacob it's actually slightly easier than it might have been. There's paperwork to be dealt with in regards to you taking full parental responsibility for Jacob, once that's done and signed then it is apparently relatively simple for you to take control of Rosie's entire estate. I have to say though, that Alex and Joel will both need to be involved before we even contemplate starting down those lines." Alex was Jeff's long-time accountant and had been taking care of Jeff's finances since his moon-walking days. Joel, Tracy Industries' chief lawyer, had been around even longer and had drawn up Jeff's original contract with NASA and also his pre-nuptial agreement before his marriage to Lucille. Both men had become trusted friends over the years and worked closely with one another overseeing both the financial and legal obligations of the entire family.

"I want to do Jacob's paperwork as soon as possible," John replied softly. "I'd feel happier knowing that everything's official and that there's nothing anyone could say or do that would take him from me."

Jeff nodded and patted his knee. "I'll give Joel a call and get him up to speed; he can then fill Alex in on everything." Jeff paused, looked at his watch and took off the fourteen hours to give him the current time in New York. "I'll give it another couple of hours and then I'll ring. Chances are that he'll be on a plane within a couple of hours of me calling so there's no point dragging him out of bed too early."

John rolled his eyes and groaned. 'Uncle Jo' was going to have a field day when he heard the news. He had been ribbing Scott for years about when he was finally going to produce an heir to the Tracy empire. Scott had always fought off the light-heartedly jibes by saying he'd already helped raise four Tracy boys and had no intentions of doing so again. No-one had ever questioned Scott as to whether that meant ever or just not anytime in the foreseeable future but now John began to wonder.

"Father?" he asked worriedly and then waited for Jeff to look back at him before he continued. "Scott will be alright with all this, won't he? With Jacob…and me…I mean, Uncle Jo's always wound him up about being the one to carry on the family line and all that nonsense."

Jeff sighed and then stood up and moved to the side of the sofa where he could look out of the window. He was quiet for a while before turning and sitting back down. "I think," he said quietly. "I think he'll be fine, maybe even better than fine. Jacob's arrival may come as some sort of relief because Scott has always known that even though there was no malice in Jo's teasing there was always a grain of truth behind it. It's a ridiculously outdated idea that assumes that a family line will continue through each firstborn son but it's still an ideal that a lot of people hold true to."

John frowned. "So you're saying that Scott might feel the pressure's been taken off him because an…an heir's already been born?"

Jeff nodded. "Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. I would have never put any pressure on Scott, or any of you for that matter, to get married just for the sole purpose of continuing the family line. There's no way that would be a healthy basis for a happy marriage and I would never condone it. Scott has his reasons for not wanting to start a family, not least of those being that he is, in his own words, rubbish at combining his job and his women. Bear in mind that you aren't even on the planet for over half of every year I would have though that would have been more your problem than his but apparently I have things backwards."

"I…" John looked down and addressed his knees. "The past year was the only time that I'd been out of contact with Rosie since college. She understood that I'd be out of touch for months at a time during my NASA training and then afterwards during off-world missions. When I left NASA I explained that I had moved to a privately funded firm which ran and maintained satellite-based monitoring equipment. It was the nearest explanation to the truth that I was able to give. The relationship worked like that for years, I…I just don't understand why Rosie ran when she got pregnant. If she had spoken to me we could have changed things, made everything more formal…or official…or whatever..."

Jeff pressed a finger gently against John's chin and lifted his head so he could look him directly in his tear-filled eyes. "You would have married her?" he asked only to be met with a brief nod.

"Damn right I would," John's reply came out with a slight crack in his voice. "I would have married her and then if you would have let me I'd have moved her and the baby onto the island and none of this would have happened."

On the word 'this' John flung his arm out in a gesture that encompassed the whole room. His voice broke and the last word came out as not much more than a squeak as the tears fell from his eyes. Jeff grabbed John's swinging arm on its way back to his lap and used it to pull his son to his feet and into a tight embrace. John tried to fight him for a brief moment but soon realised that Jeff had got hold of him in such a way that he could barely move. All the fight went out of him and he sobbed against his father's shoulder.

Jeff kept a tight hold on John for several minutes. He didn't know that the forerunner to this particular breakdown had played out in front of Jayne a couple of days previously, all he knew was that he'd completely failed in his efforts to keep his son calm. Like Jayne had done before him, Jeff understood that the emotions were better off vented rather than being bottled up inside. For the first time John was allowing himself to grieve for the future, a future that could no longer happen, a future including Mr & Mrs John Tracy, their beautiful son Jacob and his numerous, equally beautiful siblings.