Chapter 36
Noah shook his head as he approached Luis, telling his boss without words that he and Quinlan had found nothing out of the ordinary along the edges of the park.
"Marty," Luis acknowledged Noah's more experienced counterpart.
"You know how popular those walking trails are," Quinlan responded. "There are footprints all over the place."
"What are you thinking, Noah?" Luis met Noah's silver blue eyes, waiting for the younger man to add his opinion to the mix.
"I'm thinking," Noah paused to expel a sigh, "I'm thinking Jake just got a little spooked is all. You know how protective he is of Ali."
Noah left it unsaid, the history that made Jake and pretty much everyone else that loved Ali that way, but Luis read it loud and clear nevertheless. They were all, to varying degrees, guilty of it, with he himself being, perhaps, one of the worst offenders. Still, that knowledge did nothing to thwart the small twinge Luis felt in his gut telling him maybe Jake had a right to be spooked. He drew in a deep breath, though, and reasoned with himself that he needed more than a gut feeling to go on here; he needed evidence, and right now, he just didn't have it. He nodded and thanked Noah for his time. "Get out of here, Noah. You've more than paid your dues this week. Say hi to Katie and Kendall for me."
"Will do," Noah nodded. He glanced at Quinlan and set off for the parking lot and the police cruiser he and his colleague had left there when they'd responded to Luis's call.
"Kid's probably right, Boss," Quinlan made an attempt to allay Luis's unspoken anxiety about the situation. "Tell the little princess she's got nothing to worry about; we're all looking out for her."
Luis took in Quinlan's statement with some small measure of relief and much gratitude and told the other man so. "Thanks, Quinlan." A smile coming to his lips as he noticed Noah waiting impatiently by the locked cruiser, he continued, "Don't keep the kid waiting. He's got a fiancée to get home to."
Quinlan grinned back at Luis and shook his head. "To be that young and in love again," he remarked.
"I don't know about the young part, but I'm still just as in love with my wife as the day I met her," Luis revealed with a twinkle in his dark eyes.
"Really?" Quinlan kidded. "You could have fooled me that day with all the ranting and raving you did." He chuckled. "I'll never forget your first encounter with the lovely Miss Crane."
Luis's smile stretched into a grin. "Neither will I. Beat it, Marty."
"Will do, Boss."
Luis watched Quinlan jog over to join his young (sometimes) partner then returned his gaze to the line of trees at the edge of the park. His brown eyes searched their mysterious shadowy depths for clues, and finding none, met back up with Hank, standing a few feet away, the remainder of the team's equipment at his feet.
"They find anything?" Hank questioned as Luis approached, shouldered a couple of the heavier bags, and led the way to the parking lot and the lone vehicle remaining, Luis and Sheridan's SUV.
"Nothing overly suspicious," Luis answered him as he worked with Hank to load the equipment in the back. "Noah thinks Jake just got spooked."
"He's probably right," Hank agreed, cinching his seat belt across his hips after climbing into the SUV opposite Luis. "You know how the little buddy is about Ali."
"Noah said that too," Luis responded, putting the SUV into reverse and backing it up.
"But you think there's something more to it," Hank correctly surmised as Luis signaled and turned onto the highway that would take them to their families and the ice cream joint across town where the rest of the team were celebrating (courtesy of Theresa and a surprisingly charitable Becs) their latest win.
"I didn't say that," Luis hedged, his eyes focused solely on the road.
"C'mon, Man. You didn't have to," Hank told him. "I know you and those gut instincts of yours. They're telling you something's fishy, aren't they?"
"They're telling me to be careful," Luis reluctantly admitted. "To keep the ones I love close and not take any chances."
Hank whistled beneath his breath. "You gonna put a detail on Sheridan and the kids?"
"I'm not going to go that far yet."
"Good," Hank smiled somewhat. "Because you know how much she likes those."
Luis let himself relax enough to smile at Hank's all-too-true statement. "I do."
"If your gut's telling you to be careful, I trust it," Hank turned to glance outside the window at the scenery they were passing then looked back at Luis, an uncharacteristically serious expression on his face. "It's never been wrong before."
"No," Luis said more to himself than Hank. "It hasn't."
"Beth?"
Beth nearly toppled her glass of water when Ethan lightly touched her on the arm, pulling her attention away from the unlikely pair that had just entered the Lobster Shack.
Ethan righted the glass for her, using his napkin to mop up the small mess she'd made, and smiled at her apologetically. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."
"Darling," Ivy leveled Beth with a suspicious blue-green stare, and a smile that set Beth even further on edge. "You were a million miles away."
"Mother's right," Ethan agreed, gently teasing, "What's gotten in to you?"
"Nothing, nothing, I…" Beth's eyes were helplessly drawn back to the couple (no,that couldn't be right) that the young hostess had just seated a couple of tables down from them, and she unconsciously shook her head in disbelief, causing Ivy to glance over her shoulder and see for herself what had transfixed her daughter-in-law so.
"It would seem that the young Dr. Russell is every bit as opportunistic as her mother," Ivy remarked upon spying Whitney with (Abby's) Dr. Taylor. She raised a brow as she sipped at her sparkling wine, the slight smile on her lips morphing into a Cheshire grin with the new nugget of knowledge. "They make a striking couple, don't they?"
"Mother," Ethan chastised with a frown. "I'm sure it's a completely innocent dinner between friends."
"Ethan's right," Beth jumped in, finally rediscovering her voice. "Whitney and Nick work together. They're friends. That's all. Anyway, it's none of our business."
"Absolutely none of our business," Ethan echoed her. "Hear that, Mother?"
"None of our business," Ivy simpered in agreement, taking another sip of her wine and regarding Beth curiously. "Still, one can't help but wonder with his pregnant lover moving into another man's home. And that strange little scene back at the Book Café," Ivy mused.
"Abby was behaving a little…odd," Ethan allowed.
"Odder than usual, you mean, Darling?" Ivy smiled at the waiter when he set her food in front of her, unfolding her napkin over her lap.
Fueled by an unexpected compulsion to defend Abby, Beth spoke up. "You said it yourself, Ivy. She's pregnant. Her emotions are all over the place."
"And with Dr. Taylor accepting the job in Colorado," Ethan let the thought hang heavily in the air.
"Without telling her," Beth added, meeting Ethan's steady blue gaze.
"I think it's understandable that anyone in her situation might behave similarly," Ethan finished, his thoughts bringing him full circle. Capturing Beth's hand in his own, he squeezed it in emphasis. "I don't know what I'd do if I found out you or Mother either one were being so deliberately untruthful to me. There's really no excuse for such secrets in a family, and that's what Abby and Dr. Taylor became the moment an innocent child entered the picture."
Beth thought of Antonio and Abby and the paper bag she'd unceremoniously stuffed behind her checkbook and swallowed past a thick tongue that wouldn't allow her to speak, offer Ethan false reassurances. She settled for squeezing the hand in her own and offering him a wan smile, hoping he would understand when she found the courage to make her admissions to him, not here, not now with the audience they had, but soon. Soon, she vowed to herself silently as she leaned into the kiss he pressed against her forehead and soaked up the quiet acceptance he'd always offered her. "You're right," Beth finally managed, her response whisper soft. "You're absolutely right," she repeated, her gaze drifting over to Ivy and finding the other woman wearing a mirror of what she supposed her own expression looked like, thinly veiled guilt. Beth knew the moment Ivy recognized her guilt for what it was, and she felt dread coil up inside her belly as her mother-in-law seemed to consider her anew, taking her precious time before she voiced her own thoughts on the matter.
"Of course he's right, Darling. Secrets have no place in a family."
"I'm glad you both feel the same way," Ethan decreed, nodding at the waiter in acknowledgment when he arrived with his and Beth's food. "Things have a way of working out as they should, with or without us, so I say we quit worrying over things we have no control over. This evening is supposed to be a celebration. The meeting went even better than expected. We should have a brand-new deal by tomorrow morning. How about a little toast?"
Ivy lifted her glass of wine up in salute, waiting for Beth to do the same.
Beth did, lifting her own untouched glass of wine up to clink against Ivy's and Ethan's glasses.
"To a job well done," Ivy praised her son.
"To a job well done," Beth reaffirmed, sharing a smile with her husband. She brought her wine glass to her lips but didn't drink, a fact that didn't, she was disappointed to discover, escape Ivy's notice.
"Beth, Darling. Is there something you need to tell us?"
Beth's smile melted away at her mother-in-law's next words, and she sought out Ethan's blue eyes, clouded over with confusion. This wasn't at all how she'd hoped to tell him, but Ivy was forcing her hand. Beth opened her mouth to say something, blurt out the truth threatening at the tip of her tongue, but divine intervention prevented her from doing so, and it arrived in the unlikeliest of forms—that of a sandy-haired toddler.
"Would you relax?" Gwen sighed as she seated herself across from her best friend. "I'm sure you're worrying yourself about nothing."
"Gwen's probably right, Sheridan," Theresa joined the two women, easily picking up the thread of the conversation and running with it after sharing a knowing look with Gwen (that day that her memory never left far behind felt so close today, so real, so now, and just as frightening as it had been all those years ago). "Ali's right over there, safe and sound, and none of us are going to let anything happen to her."
"They'll have to go through Jake first." Placing his hands upon Sheridan's shoulders, Chad leaned down to press a reassuring kiss against her temple before easing himself into the chair beside her.
"And there's a long line after that," Gwen reminded her with serious brown eyes.
"A very long line," Theresa agreed softly, giving her sister-in-law her biggest, brightest, most encouraging smile.
Directly in front of Sheridan, Ali and Jake sat, Cristian close by, quietly enjoying their ice cream while the rest of the team laughed and chattered around them. It didn't escape Sheridan's attention that Jake's hand held fast to Ali's, unconcerned, for once, with who might see. The faint remnants of fear in Jake's brown eyes were too adult of an emotion to be held in such a young body, and Sheridan forced herself to smile reassuringly at Jake when she caught his watchful gaze. She looked to Gwen, Theresa, glanced over at Chad, and straightened in her seat, pushed back at the uncertainty tugging maliciously at her insides, and acknowledged that Gwen did, in fact, have a point. "I know she's safe, here with us, I just…"
Gwen covered Sheridan's unsteady hand with her own, looked deep into her shining eyes, and softly let her off the hook. "I know." Reclaiming her hand, she nodded at the colored sprinkles floating in the melting pool of Sheridan's vanilla ice cream. "Now," she chastised with a slight smirk. "Look at you, letting perfectly good ice cream go to waste."
"Yeah, Auntie," Chad teased gently. "I've never known you to pass up dessert."
"I guess I'm not very hungry," Sheridan sheepishly admitted, not resisting when Chad made a move to claim her ice cream as his own with her comment, offering Theresa a spoon.
"Sheridan," Gwen scolded.
Sheridan gave Gwen an apologetic look and pushed her chair back, delving inside her purse to find her cell phone. "If you'll excuse me, I'm going to call Pilar and Martin, check up on Hope."
Theresa lowered the spoon from her mouth, resting it on the napkin to her right, and watched Sheridan go, step outside into the lengthening evening shadows, away from the growing chaos created by several small celebratory children currently cresting a sugar high. Her brown eyes were welling with concern as she looked at Gwen and her fiancé in turn. "Guess she's more rattled than she first let on."
"Can you really blame her?" Gwen commented, pushing her own chair back and leaving their company to check up on her own children, in the face of Sheridan's own (warranted, she figured, if Luis's own immediate action had anything to do with it) worry.
"No," Theresa admitted, softly, miserably, for she shared some of Sheridan's unrelenting unease. "Can you?" she looked up to Chad, grabbing on to the comforting hand he offered and holding it tightly.
"The past's the past, T-girl," Chad soothed, rubbing his thumb over her lifeline and squeezing her hand emphatically. "Ain't nothing happened yet for you or Auntie or Gwen to worry so much over, and we ain't gonna let it. You hear me?"
Theresa nodded, her brown hair falling in waves about her face as she slid her other hand across the table, folded it within Chad's, and repeated after him. "The past's the past." She closed her eyes and willed herself to forget something she'd come to suspect a long time ago.
Like it or not, their pasts set them on the winding paths to their future; only their presents were (briefly) their own.
"Mi hija, Hope is fine," Pilar reiterated. "She is with Martin and Joshua and Paloma in the living room. They are looking at old picture books, and Martin and Paloma are doing all of the voices." Paloma appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, and Pilar mouthed Sheridan to her youngest daughter before responding to something Sheridan had said on the phone. "I promise, mi hija, I will call if something comes up. Do not worry so. We'll see you and Luis and the children later."
Paloma watched as her mother hung the phone up with a sigh and moved deeper into the kitchen without a word, until she blurted out a thought she had long held inside, for fear of dredging up her mother's own feelings on a situation so similar yet so different to the situation with the brother she barely remembered from her childhood, Antonio. "It must have been so scary, losing a child like Luis and Sheridan thought they had lost Ali." As she spoke, she withdrew a package of cookies (kept in the house solely for her nieces' and nephews' visits—and her father's occasional sweet tooth) from the cupboard, along with a small plate, and piled the cookies high on it, skillfully ignoring her mother's solemn dark eyes and raised brow. When Paloma had gathered enough courage to face her mother, she found her waiting expectantly.
"It was," Pilar told her. "It is."
The pained admission was so soft, full of such open vulnerability that Paloma felt the need to wrap her mother up in her comforting arms. All she managed was a gentle squeeze of her mother's work callused hand. "Oh, Mama. I shouldn't have said anything. I didn't mean to upset you." Paloma's dark eyes were drawn to the lone candle still flickering in the window sill, and she was hit anew with the power of a mother's unrelenting love for her child, in this case, her mother's love for her own long-lost brother. "I don't know how you do it, keep hoping. I really don't."
"You never give up on your children, mi hija," Pilar looked deep into her daughter's searching eyes. "Never. Someday, when you have babies of your own, you will understand that."
"Yeah, sure," Paloma said, feeling the age-old loneliness she kept at bay, hid from her friends and family, pricking at her skin, sinking its claws into her and holding on even as she fought to shake it, turned to shield her mother from its ugliness. "Someday."
"Paloma," Pilar reached out in concern.
"It's nothing, Mama," Paloma painted a bright smile on her face before she turned back to face her mother. "Really." When her mother didn't look convinced, she relented enough to admit, "Someday just feels so far off right now."
Lifting a hand to Paloma's face, Pilar combed her dark hair back behind her ear and murmured, "You never know, mi hija. Someday might be closer than you think."
"Now you sound like Theresa," Paloma groaned, all but sagging into her mother's affectionate touch.
Pilar's lips quirked at her daughter's comment, and she admitted, "Maybe so." She lowered her hand from Paloma's face and turned, opening the refrigerator and withdrawing the milk. Silently, she filled the glasses Paloma presented to her, and even snatched a cookie for herself. "Your sister's always been right about one thing."
"Yeah?" Paloma questioned, balancing the tray of cookies in one hand and a glass of milk in the other as she followed her mother out of the kitchen. "What is that?"
"There's nothing wrong with having a little hope."
Hope was something Abby was in short supply of at the moment, hope of finding Lissy before darkness fell in Harmony, that is. Sheridan had sounded so distracted on the phone when she'd tried gauging her knowledge of the little girl's whereabouts without alerting her to the fact that the child was, indeed, missing, that Abby had quickly given up the ruse, saying her goodbyes and disconnecting the phone. Now, as she wandered along the little town's paved sidewalks, she grew increasingly lost in thought.
Tony—Antonio, was here, in Harmony.
Abby didn't know why she was so surprised, not truly. She'd always known, deep down, that he would return someday to the town he grew up in. A part of her would even go so far as to admit how much of a role that knowledge had played in influencing her decision to settle in the small New England hamlet when she'd left New York and the ghosts of its memories behind. The more she thought about it, the more it made sense.
Nothing, no one, stood in his way anymore.
Tony was free to reclaim the family he'd yearned for so, and the apparent secrecy of what should have been a triumphant act, his homecoming, mystified Abby.
The old man was long dead, his evil deeds providing endless fuel for Hell's eternal fire. His threats, his manipulations were empty of their power now, had been for years. Still, Tony hid himself, protected himself.
Why? Surely not from her.
Abby rest a hand upon the life safely guarded within her womb, overwhelmed with the feelings aroused by such a thought. Like New York, she'd left the bleakness behind, the reality forever altered by Vincent and the loss of her baby at his destructive hands. Tony had arrived too late to save her daughter, but he'd saved her, and even in her unbearable despair, that had counted for something. She'd clung to it desperately, until she'd woken up, and he'd been gone. In some small way, Tony had led her back to her alienated brother, paved her path first to Luis and Sheridan, then Kay and her brave little boys, the family that had welcomed her as one of their own, and finally to Nick, this baby she carried.
No. Tony had nothing to fear, at least not from her.
That's what Abby willed herself to believe when she rounded a corner and collided, head-on, with her past, and felt the world as she had come to know it start to crumble beneath her unsteady feet. Staring back at her were a pair of chocolate brown eyes—Tony's eyes.
A startled shriek tore Katie's eyes from Nick's unreadable gray gaze, and she hurried across the Lobster Shack, to the scene of commotion, only to find Kendall staring up at Ivy Crane with eyes rounded with tearful fear. "Mrs. Crane, I am so sorry," Katie rushed to apologize, finally noticing the growing wet patch on Ivy's fine clothes. "I took my eyes off him for one second."
Ivy dabbed at the dampness with her napkin, waving off the waiter that hovered nearby in an attempt to assist her, not answering Katie right away or accepting her apology. When Beth left her seat to reassure Kendall, she finally looked up, granted the girl and her son a reprieve when she noticed the fat, frightened tears rolling down the child's cheeks. "Don't be silly, Darling. At least it's not red wine."
"Still," Katie persisted. "I'll pay to have it cleaned. It's my fault. If I had been watching him like I should…"
"Katie, it's okay," Ethan stepped in, urging his mother with his eyes to echo his reassurances. "Really. It was an accident."
Ivy regained her composure and smiled at the young mother. "Ethan's right. It was an accident." She searched her memory for the little boy's name, finally grasping onto the right one as she reached out a reassuring hand to the child Beth now held in her arms. "Right, Kendall?" Kendall turned his teary face away from her, pressing it against Beth's shoulder, but not before Ivy was struck with the strangest feeling, a fleeting sense of familiarity.
"I'm still sorry," Katie continued to apologize. "He knows better. I know better. I should call Noah and tell him I'll pick up some takeout instead," she said, resting a consoling hand upon her son's small back as he soaked Beth's shirt with his tears. "I'm sure he's just as tired as this little man."
Beth combed the little boy's soft, sandy hair back from his fevered face and met Katie's green eyes. "Have you had a long day, Kendall?" she murmured into the child's ear, breathing in the scent of baby shampoo that made her heart clench in the most painful, delicious sort of way. "I think I have some Kleenex in my purse," she told Katie.
Katie turned her attention from them, but before she had a chance to look inside Beth's purse for the tissues, Ethan had helpfully decided to assist in the search and had already stumbled across a rather surprising discovery, judging by the befuddled expression on his handsome face.
"Find them?" Beth asked softly, speaking to him with her eyes, willing him to give her the chance to explain, later, when they didn't have an audience.
"I'll take him, Beth," Katie offered, holding out her arms to receive her son as Beth went to Ethan, quickly retrieved her purse and the Kleenex from her husband.
"Hey, hey, Kiddo," Noah slid an arm around Katie's waist, cradled the back of Kendall's blond head with his big hand. "What's with the waterworks?"
Katie leaned into the comfort of Noah's unexpected embrace and pressed her lips against her son's forehead as Ivy Crane watched them with a disconcerting amount of intrigue in her blue-green eyes. "Noah, I didn't realize you were here."
"I'm not surprised," Noah quipped as he took Kendall from Katie's arms and tucked him close. "I just got here. Anyone care to explain what's going on?" he asked, taking in Ivy's avid stare, Ethan and Beth's apparent wordless conversation, and the general atmosphere of unease surrounding them. "Anyone?"
Katie dragged in a deep breath and said, "I'm not sure where to start."
"That was weird," Whitney murmured softly as Nick held the door to the Lobster Shack open for her, and she stepped out into the warm, evening air.
"It was," Nick agreed, falling into step beside her as they reached the sidewalk and left the little outburst of chaos inside the Lobster Shack behind. "Are you sure you really want to leave? We can go back. I know I promised you dinner." He released a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding when Whitney declined his offer with a definitive shake of her head.
Whitney glanced at the man beside her out of the corner of her dark eyes. It was obvious, to her at least, that Nick had seized the opportunity afforded to him by Katie's distraction and removed himself from the questions he knew were forthcoming and the censure in her green eyes. He'd been uncomfortable, being discovered in her presence by his and Abby's mutual friend, however innocent the situation, and Whitney didn't wish to further complicate the situation so she told him so, letting him off the hook. "It's okay. I've already told you. You don't owe me anything."
Nick didn't agree. "You've been there, these last couple of weeks, been a friend to me when I've needed one, let me spill my guts and not once judged me. A nice, quiet, uncomplicated dinner between friends is the least I owe you."
Whitney smiled at him. "Uncomplicated? Everything about you is complicated."
Nick conceded her point and clarified himself. "It's my turn to return the favor, let you pour your heart out for once. You already know all my secrets. What about yours?"
"I don't have any secrets," Whitney told him. "Everybody in this town knows my sordid history."
"Sordid?" Nick questioned, a dark brow arching in disbelieving interest. "Really?"
"I guess you wouldn't know," Whitney realized.
"Wouldn't know what?" Nick pressed.
"Before Theresa loved Chad, I…"
"Loved Theresa?" Nick teased, making Whitney blush.
It took Whitney a moment to regroup herself, and she blurted out her shameful secret. "I loved Chad. Or at least I thought I did. I had no idea he was my brother, that Julian Crane and my mother had...," she struggled to finish the thought aloud. Weakly, she defended herself, waiting for the familiar horror to fill Nick's gray eyes. "I didn't know." She looked at him wonderingly when it didn't come, and all she saw was his compassion.
"You didn't know. You couldn't have," Nick said simply. "How was I to know that Jenny, who I had taken care of for years, fallen in love with, was really Sheridan? Ali's mother? Luis's wife? I couldn't have known, not without all the facts. You didn't have all the facts, Whitney. That's no reason to punish yourself."
"Is that what you think I'm doing?" Whitney asked. "Punishing myself?"
"Yes," Nick answered her honestly. "You're a beautiful woman, a woman that deserves a full life, love."
"I have love," Whitney insisted. "I have my friends. It's taken a while, but I have my family back too."
Nick slowed to a stop, taking her by the hand. "That's not what I mean, and you know it."
"What do you mean then?" Whitney pretended not to understand, didn't want to, if she were being completely truthful with herself.
"You know exactly what I mean," Nick said, raising a hand to tuck a wayward curl behind her ear.
The caring gesture coupled with the intense gray hue of Nick's eyes made Whitney shiver. "No. I can't. How can I trust myself again when I didn't even know, didn't even realize…"
"You can't," Nick told her with a gentle smile. "Love's a leap of faith. That's why they call it falling. Let yourself fall in love again, Whitney."
"What about you?" Whitney challenged.
"It's too late for that," Nick's gray eyes took on a pained sheen when he realized he couldn't make the admission to Whitney. She was the wrong person, the wrong woman. "We both know why."
"You've already fallen."
"Flat on my ass." It was as much as Nick would allow himself to give her.
It was still more than enough.
"That's it, Hope. Come to Mommy," Sheridan encouraged, snuggling her daughter close when she waved her chubby little arms out for her.
Luis took Hope's diaper bag from his mother, nodded at his father. "Thanks, Mama. Papa."
"Luis, Mi hijo," Pilar questioned softly, once Sheridan had moved away from them, just out of ear shot, "did you find him? Did you find the man?"
Luis sighed, glanced back over his shoulder where his wife and children were gathered with his sister and Joshua, before answering her. "We're not even completely sure there was a man. All we found were footprints, dozens of them. That trail is pretty popular. If Jake was right, and there really was a man watching him and Ali, it could have been anybody."
Martin rest a supporting hand upon his wife's shoulder at her quiet cry of dismay. "You keep an eye on them, Lad."
"You don't have to tell me that, Papa," Luis said. "I will," he promised, accepting the hug his mother offered him and the hand his father held out. "We better get going. It's been a long day, and Hope's up way past her bedtime as it is."
Everyone was buckled in, and all was quiet on the way home, Cristian and Hope dozing in their booster seat and car seat respectively, when Ali set Sheridan's nerves even further on edge with a soft revelation. "He was staring at me like he knew me."
Sheridan's blue eyes sought out Luis's startled gaze, and she took comfort in the hand he rest upon her knee.
"What do you mean, AliCat?" Luis asked, casting his young daughter a glance in the SUV's rear view mirror.
Ali shrugged, continuing to stare outside the window to her right at the glowing lights of Harmony at night as they traveled the path home. "I don't know, Daddy. It just felt like he knew me."
Luis watched the shadows and lights play across her pretty face, her short, wispy blond curls pale and glowing in contrast, and he repeated his question from earlier, at the park. "Describe him to me, Ali. What did he look like?"
Ali sighed. "I already told you, Daddy. He was there; then he wasn't. I don't really remember much besides that."
"Try, Sweetheart," Sheridan quietly urged.
Ali knotted her fingers together, her brows pulled tight in thought.
Luis decided to help her. "What color was his hair?"
"It was dark," Ali answered. "Almost as dark as yours, Daddy."
"Good. That's good," Luis responded. "What else? Was he wearing an uniform, anything else that made him stand out to you?" Luis watched Ali's blue eyes grow round with excitement; he could tell she had remembered something, and he could barely quell his own desire to further pressure her for answers. Still, his patience had its limits, and he couldn't resist asking, "What is it, Ali? Did you remember something else?"
"I did," Ali announced triumphantly.
Sheridan twisted in her seat against the constraints of her safety belt, searched her young daughter's mirroring blue gaze as Luis turned the SUV down their street. "What else did you remember, Ali? What was the man wearing?" Her heart beat skipped a beat in anticipation of her daughter's answer.
"Answer your mother, Ali," Luis said, killing the SUV's engine once they'd reached their driveway and joining his wife in facing their daughter. "What was the man wearing?"
Ali qualified Sheridan's trepidation with a simple, condemning statement, and Sheridan's heart started pounding in her ears as she remembered all the little clues that should have set off red flags and hadn't, until now.
"A jacket, Daddy. He was wearing a leather jacket."
They'd parted ways with his mother at the Lobster Shack, and Ethan had had little if anything to say in the short ride from the restaurant to the Book Café. He'd remained silent while Julie helped Beth close up for the night, and it wasn't until the door was locked behind Julie, leaving them finally, blessedly, alone that he ventured to speak. His simple question twisted Beth's heart with guilt, and her eyes fluttered shut as she felt him creep closer, hover behind her, so close but not touching.
"Why didn't you tell me you were pregnant?"
Beth took a deep breath and answered him, with the truth this time. "I didn't know. I still don't. Ethan," she breathed his name out on a sigh as she turned around to face him, look into his confused, hurt blue eyes, "I haven't taken the test." She watched some of the hurt visibly leach out of him and braved stepping closer to him, reaching out for his hand.
"So," Ethan expelled a quick breath. "You're not pregnant."
It was a statement, but it sounded more like a question to Beth's ears, and she smiled a little at the disappointment she glimpsed in his expression before he schooled it into what amounted to a blank page. "I didn't say that," she told him, placing a hand against his chest and smoothing out the wrinkles of his rumpled shirt. His day had been just as long as hers, she could tell by the tired crinkles at the corners of his eyes, and she decided, for both their sakes, not to beat around the bush any longer. "Weren't you listening?" she teased lightly. "I haven't taken the test. Yet," she added, waiting for him to catch up to her.
"You've been waiting for me," Ethan realized with a slow-blooming smile.
"I've been waiting for you," Beth returned his smile with a hopeful one of her own. "I didn't want this to be a big deal."
"Only it is," Ethan interrupted her.
"It is," Beth agreed. "I wanted you to be there, either way, whether we get a plus sign or not." She looked away from him then, over to the counter and her purse, with the unopened test still inside.
"How late are you?" Ethan questioned as he took her by the hand, tugged her with him, toward the inevitable.
Beth bit her lip when they reached the counter, and Ethan's free hand reached inside her purse, closed around the ordinary looking little bag that was going to change their lives together, in one form or another. "Late enough," she answered, her feet stubbornly refusing to budge and her heart hammering erratically inside her chest. "What if I'm not pregnant?" she finally voiced her unspoken fears as Ethan withdrew the small box from the bag and furrowed his brow as he started to read the instructions on the back.
"We keep trying," Ethan absently answered her.
"Ethan," she tugged on his hand, brought his gaze back to hers, stared into his dear blue eyes. "What if I am?"
"Then that's a little easier, or harder, depending on how you look at it," Ethan told her with a twinkling smile.
Beth waited (im)patiently for him to continue.
"We become parents."
The first thing Abby registered when she opened her eyes was that it was dark, much darker than it had been only moments (hours?) ago. The second and third things she noticed were the strong arms that held her close and the achingly familiar scents she'd carried with her in her memory for more than ten years, of his cologne, of the butter-soft leather jacket that was as much a part of him as the stubble that dangerously darkened his jaw. The fourth thing that came to Abby's attention was that they were sitting on the ground, backed up against a brick wall and hidden in the safety of the shadows, and her ass was starting to go numb. She moaned at the pin-prickle sensation of reawakening nerve endings as she stretched and shifted within the circle of Tony's arms, then she caught him off-guard with a long-deserved, long-planned punch to his muscle-tautened gut.
Antonio caught her small fist in his own, cast sparkling chocolate eyes down into her own, and stifled a smile at the expected reaction, no matter how warranted.
"If you don't let me go right now, I'll," Abby's threat stalled between gritted teeth when she realized she didn't know what she'd do now that she'd taken out some (a tiny bit) of her decade-old frustrations on him through her fists.
"You'll do what?" Antonio murmured, sliding his free hand down her back to the tiny hollow he'd claimed and memorized an eternity ago, and he teased her, his voice gruff with memory and long-buried affection as she glared up at him, rising up on her knees. "Pummel me to death? I'm bigger and stronger than you. I think I can take you. In fact," his eyes glowed at her in the darkness. "I know I can."
Abby's nerves hummed at the unwitting sensual undertones to his threat, and her damned (unfulfilled) pregnancy hormones swelled insistently, heating her blood, drugging her senses until all her anger, her disappointment in his abandonment of her, just fell away, and she relaxed her fist, wormed her fingers between his, held on tightly to his hand as she brought her face closer to his, looked into those eyes that had saved (broken) her so many years ago. She felt herself freefalling into their depths and unwilling to stop the maddening descent into their shared past as he used her own hand to pull her ever closer. "What took you so damned long, Antonio?" she finally asked, breathed out against his full, parted mouth. "What took you so damned long to come home?" she whispered the question against his lips as he fisted her tawny hair in his free hand, cradled her skull.
Antonio kissed her then, a greedy, passionate feast of lips, teeth, and tongues, before the reality of passed years gentled it into a soft pressing of tender, swollen lips against lips, and he pulled her into a tight, desperate embrace.
Abby allowed the hug, breathed deeply of him until she felt her lungs fill back to capacity, her heart calm. She twined her fingers with his fingers and pressed her forehead against the juncture of his neck and strong shoulder, wetting the supple skin with the tears of her regret, their shared regrets, while Antonio lifted a shaking hand to her hair to comfort her.
She sobbed against him, and Antonio felt his heart twist in two when her grief further pushed the gently rounded swell of her belly against him. What was it he had told Lissy? All roads lead home? He just hadn't expected them to lead him to her, like this. He lay a hand against the baby that had just started to visibly strain against her flesh and feathered a soothing kiss against her forehead. "I hope this one's father's more deserving," he murmured softly.
Abby shifted in his arms, stared into his dark eyes, cupped a tender hand around his unsteadily working jaw, and smiled sadly as she thought about Nick, his gray eyes, and the slow to crumble walls he kept trying to fortify around his bruised, vulnerable heart. "That's debatable."
Her laugh was a painful sound, and Antonio was quick to realize real hurt lay down that road so he wisely chose not to travel down it. Instead, he combed his fingers through her tangled tawny hair, drank in the welcome sight of her, and he marveled at how much and how little she had changed. "Worse than me?"
Abby lay her head back against his shoulder, slid her arms around him beneath his jacket, and held on, whispered her answer into the soft material of his black tee-shirt. "I don't know if I'd go that far. He's still here. For now, anyway."
"Abby," Antonio protested. "I…"
"Don't," Abby cut him off, lifted her head. "I'm glad to see you. You can't know just how much. But that doesn't mean I'm not still angry at you, I'm not still hurt. You left me, Tony, in that hospital all alone. I woke up and you were gone and I had nothing. I woke up and you were gone and she was dead, Tony. She was dead," she pounded a punishing fist against his back before clutching, clawing at the cotton stretched across his skin, in an effort to stifle the building sob she felt threatening again.
The stalwart effort was futile. Her hazel eyes glittered with the light of a thousand unshed tears, and Antonio didn't think before he spoke, he merely acted in an effort to comfort her, free her of the sadness he knew she'd carried for well over a decade. The words were out before he could recapture him, the truth he'd worked for the better part of ten years to disprove. "You're wrong, Abby. She wasn't."
Abby quit breathing then.
Antonio felt her go completely still in his embrace, and he feared he'd made her heart go still inside her chest, much as his had when he'd first made the discovery, when he'd first realized the old man had played them and played them good. He felt her nails bite into his skin through the thin fabric of his shirt, but he ignored the pain because he knew his next words were going to turn her world upside down, even more than it had been when he'd fallen in love with her in the first place.
"Tony, you better be careful what you say to me, because I can't promise you I won't…"
Antonio cut her off, curled his hands around her shoulders, forced her to look him in the eyes so that she might recognize the truth he was telling her. "You're wrong," he repeated, his voice low and strained to the breaking point.
"Tony, don't," Abby pleaded with him.
"Our daughter didn't die, Abby. She lived."
Wow!
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I hope you enjoyed this chapter.
And don't worry, Tom. Pieces is still (slowly) coming along. I think I'm just having a hard time facing just how few chapters are left.
That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
Feedback would be lovely on this chapter, as well.
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Thanks so much for reading!