After spending several minutes angrily throwing one gray, wave-smoothed stone after another into the tumultuous ocean, Ethan had successfully cooled off from his argument with Gwen. Returning to his wife and daughter, he placed a comforting hand on Gwen's shoulder. Gwen, however, jerked her shoulder out of Ethan's grasp and clutched little Jane tighter. "Don't", she commanded, her voice laced with ice.
Chilled by his wife's reaction, Ethan, defeated, headed back to the car, missing the resurgence of anguish in his wife's features. Gwen stared out into the vast Atlantic waters, desperately trying to gather her strength and prevent the welling tears in her eyes from spilling down her fair cheeks. She would not cry again. She wouldn't. She had to be strong, she reminded herself, for Nathan and Jane.
Taking several deep breaths, Gwen stood, balancing Jane on her hip, and retraced her earlier steps to the car. Ethan was sitting in the driver's seat, watching her with an almost guilty expression on his face. Gwen avoided his gaze, watching only the baby as strapped her in her car seat. Then, in an act that she felt was somewhat juvenile, but was really too upset to care, Gwen sat in the seat next to Jane's, and fastened her seatbelt as a sign to her chagrined husband that it was time for him to start driving.
The car ride back to the mansion was spent in complete silence. Stroking her sleeping stepdaughter's soft brown hair, Gwen couldn't help but wonder what Nathan was doing at that moment. Was he being loved and cared for the way that she and Ethan were caring for little Jane? Or was be being neglected and unloved in some God-awful orphanage somewhere? The not knowing was slowly but surely killing Gwen.
Wiping the forming tears from her hazel eyes for not the first time that day, Gwen could feel Ethan's eyes watching her from the rearview mirror. Still furious at her husband for not believing her, she steadfastly refused to meet his gaze, instead concentrating intently on Jane's angelic little face. After a few moments, Gwen heard Ethan audibly sigh, and soon felt his eyes move off of her and back to the road in front of him.
"Gwen," Ethan said, entering the room he shared with his wife. "Please talk to me, okay? I can't stand it when you're angry at me."
Gwen turned her head to face her husband, squinting up at him in the bright light from beneath her covers. When they'd finally returned to the mansion earlier that day, Gwen had taken Jane straight up to her nursery and stayed there all afternoon and evening. Once she'd put Jane to bed around seven-thirty, Gwen had sat there for another hour watching the sleeping child before returning to her own room and trying to get some sleep herself. For the past hour and a half, however, her efforts had proved futile.
Ethan sat down next to her on the bed, his added weight so close to her own making her feel slightly off-balance. Reaching over and smoothing her hair, Ethan spoke once more. "Look, Gwen, I know how much you miss Sarah and Nathan. I miss them too, really, I do, but… Gwen, they're gone. And making a bargain with Alistair – with Satan himself – isn't going to bring them back."
Finally willing herself to speak to her husband for the first time in hours, Gwen protested, "But… "
"Gwen!" Ethan exclaimed, agitation creeping ever-so-steadily into his voice, "Okay, let's say you make this deal with the devil, with Alistair. You divorce me in order to get Nathan back. What happens then? You think he'll just give you Nathan? Because he won't. He'll just want one more thing from you, and then another, and another, and another, and before you know it, you'll be trapped in his web. You'll be just as lost as Theresa is."
As if to prove his point, the air was pierced by Theresa's shrill cry of ecstasy from the room down the hall. Gwen made a small noise of disgust as Ethan slowly closed his eyes and lowered his head. Then, snapping his head up, he stared directly into his wife's eyes.
Returning his gaze, Gwen was shocked at the truth that she found in her husband's eyes – he really and truly believed that Nathan was gone. Not only that, but nothing that Gwen ever said, ever showed him – with the exception of cold, hard DNA proof – would ever change his mind on the subject. This startled Gwen – somewhere, deep inside of her, she'd still held the hope that she might be able to change Ethan's mind. If her own husband – the father of her child – didn't believe her, then who would?
Making a conscious and calculated decision, Gwen averted Ethan's gaze, staring down at her perfectly manicured fingernails. "You're right," she whispered. "I just… I miss Sarah and Nathan so much, Ethan. I miss them so much, and I just… I just wanted to believe so bad…"
Enveloping the blonde into his arms, Ethan stroked Gwen's hair, whispering softly in her ear. "Shh… shh… it's all right, Gwen… it's all right. I know. I know."
Resting her head on her husband's strong shoulder while fighting back the tears that seemed to have become commonplace in her life, Gwen guiltily thought, But you don't, Ethan. You don't know at all.
Exactly a week later to the minute, Gwen Winthrop found herself lying in her bed once more, watching an old Buffy the Vampire Slayer re-run. At first, she had only watched the show as a guilty pleasure, privately mourning the young heroine's tragic existence and constant supply of angst in her life. Now, years later, Gwen only wished that her life could be half as normal as Buffy's.
A few hours earlier, Gwen had put her beloved little girl, Jane, the biological daughter of her husband and her enemy, to bed after reading her a story and singing her a lullaby. Meanwhile, her husband, Ethan, was currently downstairs, doing something for work. Gwen doubted this story, however – for the past week, a palpable strain had been placed on their relationship, and Gwen knew that it had to do with Nathan. Despite her deep love for her son, and her desperate need to find him and bring him home, Gwen felt guilty for having lied to her husband. And Gwen suspected that Ethan knew, deep down, that she had been lying, too. She also believed that he felt guilty for not being able to believe her about Nathan. Add in the fact that Theresa, now Alistair's mistress, was constantly lurking in the shadows, plotting to steal Ethan and Jane away from her, and Gwen would have gladly switched places with the vampire slayer.
Gwen was suddenly jolted from her thoughts by a high, gasping noise coming from down the hall. Muting her TV, she listened intently, as if to make sure that her ears hadn't deceived her. Then it came again – the same high, gasping noise followed by a low, grunting one. It was Alistair and Theresa, enjoying their nightly romp. Delighted, Gwen un-muted the TV and slowly crept out of bed and into the hallway.
Every night at ten o'clock sharp, Gwen had discovered, Alistair and Theresa had sex in the room down the hall from her own. So, from ten until ten-thirty every night, Alistair was otherwise occupied, leaving Gwen free to search Alistair's office.
Once down by Alistair's office, Gwen was dismayed, but not surprised, to find the door locked. Making her way over to his home secretary's desk, she quietly opened and closed each drawer, hoping that the key to the door might be present. She found the object of her search in the second-to-last drawer, and silently thanked God that Alistair hired his secretaries for their beauty, and not their brains.
Letting herself into Alistair's office, Gwen hastily flipped the light switch and hurried over to his computer. Once it had booted up, Gwen began trying different passwords, hoping for access to the files on his computer. Her first two tries – "Fancy" and "Theresa" – were wrong, and Gwen began to chew her thumbnail, anxiously watching the clock in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen – she only had twenty minutes left, and she was getting nowhere fast.
"Come on, Gwen – think!" she whispered to herself, racking her brain for something, anything that Alistair might have used as his password. She placed her head in her hands, as if the change in position might encourage her brain to think of something. So caught up in her mental search, Gwen didn't even hear the door open.
"What are you doing in here?" a male voice asked. Gwen jumped, and looked up, afraid that she'd find the fearsome Alistair Crane glowering at her, and was relieved to find Fox's friendly yet suspicious face staring at her.
Breathing a deep sigh of relief, Gwen countered, "I could ask you the same thing, Fox."
"I'm here to talk to my grandfather about work," Fox replied with a somewhat defensive air. "He apparently isn't here. Now, would you like to explain to me why you're here, trying to break into my grandfather's computer?"
Sighing, Gwen launched into a condensed but adequate explanation of her situation with Alistair and Nathan. Once finished, she asked, "So, do you think that I'm crazy, too?"
Fox scoffed at this idea. "And why would I think that?"
Incredulous, Gwen responded, "Well, Ethan thinks…"
"Ethan is an idiot," Fox cut in. "I suppose he just forgot about how Alistair had Chad kidnapped at birth and made my father and Eve believe that he was dead?"
"Well, Nathan was just so premature…" Gwen said defensively.
"And Chad was a crack baby. Miracles happen, Gwen, especially when you're Alistair Crane. And I have no trouble believing that he kidnapped your son. So, how can I help?"
Remembering the task at hand, Gwen sighed for what felt like the umpteenth time that night. "You don't know Alistair's password, by any chance, do you?"
"Yeah. It's aabhhb," he said, pronouncing each letter separately. On Gwen's disbelieving look, he added, "Go on, type it in. We don't have all night."
Gwen did so, and was amazed to find that the password worked. "You're a genius!" she cried. "How did you know?"
"I have my ways," he replied slyly, joining her behind the desk.
"Well, however you knew, you're absolutely brilliant." Then, to no one in particular, she mused, "I wonder what it means."
"It's Fancy's birthday," Fox nonchalantly replied. "In letters."
Gwen looked up at the younger man dubiously. "In letters?"
"Yeah," Fox said. "In letters. 'A' is the first letter of the alphabet, 'B' the second, and 'H' the eighth. Put it all together and you get 11/28/82 – Fancy's birthday. Now, what is it that you're looking for?"
Still digesting the ingeniousness of Alistair's password, she said, "I was going to look up all of Alistair's orphanage contacts, and seeing if any of them had a boy matching Nathan's description living there."
Scooting the keyboard towards himself, Fox typed in a couple of commands, and, like magic, a list appeared on the screen. "There," he stated.
Gwen nearly fell over. "You… I don't know what you are. You are amazing. I could kiss you right now." Then, spotting the miniscule scroll bar on the right-hand side of the computer screen, she gasped. "Look at all of these contacts, Fox! There must be at least a thousand here!"
"Three thousand, two hundred, forty-one, to be exact," he said, noting the number at the bottom of the screen. He rummaged through one of Alistair's drawers and came out with a blank CD. Sticking it into the CD-ROM drive, he burned the list onto the CD. "I can send this list to a friend of mine. He's a good guy – you can trust him. He can cross-reference all of the children living at each of the orphanages with Nathan's description and come up with a list of our most-likely candidates."
Gwen jumped up and threw her arms around Fox, embracing her brother-in-law. "Oh, God, thank you so much Fox! How can I ever repay you?"
"You could allow me to breathe, for starters," Fox gasped. Embarrassed, Gwen released the blonde from her grasp. "Now, go," Fox commanded. "It's nearly ten-thirty – Alistair will be coming back soon. I'll take care of everything else."
Gwen nodded, and quickly embraced her savior once more. "Thank you so much," she repeated. "I just can't say that enough. I owe you so much," she said.
"Don't mention it. Now go!"
Gwen quickly exited Alistair's office and soared up the stairs with her newfound wings of hope. Before returning to her room, however, she decided to make a quick stop.
Entering the nursery, Gwen was happy to find Jane sleeping soundly. She smiled as she stroked the baby's soft brown hair. "Guess what, Jane?" she whispered. "I think I've gotten closer to finding Nathan, thanks to your uncle Fox. He's such a wonderful guy, just like your daddy. Neither of them will ever let anything happen to you, or your brother, and neither will I.
"So sleep well, my beautiful little girl," Gwen said, tenderly stroking the side of the little girl's angelic face. "Your big brother's going to be sharing this room with you before you know it."