A/N: This takes place in August/September 2007-after Asa's death and before Todd learns the truth about Tommy/Sam being his son.
John walked off the elevator at BE and nodded at the secretary before making it to Natalie's open office door. "Hey," he said after watching her deep into looking over paperwork.
She looked at him for a long moment before stopping what she was doing and folding her hands onto her desk. "John, if you are here to grill me for letting Miles stay in the Carriage House you can just turn and walk back out. I've had a rough week, as you know, and am not really up to hearing it."
"No, it's not that. I wanted to tell you I was sorry to hear about Asa, and see how you were doing."
"Oh, thanks," she said, letting her guard down. Things had been so contentious with them lately she hadn't expected him to actually offer sympathies. "I'm doing ok though-I guess the hardest part was listening to Kevin, Joey, and Jess after the funeral. They were telling all these memories they had of him. And I wasn't given the chance to have a tenth of those memories."
John paused, realizing how much his dilemma and Natalie's childhood were the same. Here he was trying to decide whether it was right to keep a child from it's real family when Natalie had gone through just that.
Closing the door for privacy he came over and sat down in a chair without another word. He knew he had to be careful in his wording-careful not to let anything slip that he was talking about Todd's missing son.
"What if it had been the other way around? What if you were really Roxy's and Clint and Viki had raised you? Would you still have wanted to know the truth?"
Natalie stared hard at John-trying to figure out what he wasn't saying. He knew her childhood-had listened to her tell stories of what she had or didn't have. And yet-here he was-asking her if it would have made a difference if the Buchanan's had raised her while she was truly a Balsom.
"What if's don't matter in this case John. It's not about who the better parent is. What matters is that I was an innocent newborn baby who was denied decent memories of my childhood. Not because Viki and Clint made the heartbreaking decision to give me up for adoption, but because someone else out there decided to be God and take me away from them.
"There's obviously another reason you came here today, John. I can read you pretty well and you want me to give you an answer. In some way, agree to whatever it is that is keeping you up at night without knowing all the facts. Do what's right John-don't play God with someone's life-especially if it's a child. Now you can see yourself out," she said as she got up and walked past him with paperwork in hand.
