7
Jax Is Really Alive
Chapter 48 Recap JC (Juice) helps Opie and Jax try to retrace Miles' route using traffic cams and any available camera footage.
Ryland lifts the security lockdown. Jax picks up Tara at Ryland's secret bunker and on the way back into Charming, they find Nero, dead and nailed to the Welcome to Charming sign.
Chapter 49 Visiting Mrs. Hale
Author's Note: In Tara's Story, David Hale is a high school sophomore and laid back surfer who sells some weed on the side and dreams of opening a surf shop in Hawaii. The story ended without explaining why he changed. This chapter reveals what happened to Hale that changed him from surfer to cop through Tara's POV.
Jax's call to Hale brought to life Hale's worst nightmare—a bloody, vicious crime scene where everyone could see it. He shut the road down in both directions and had to divert traffic to side streets. The diversion had to be long enough with some curve or turns to it to keep people from parking their cars and using binoculars to see why the road was closed. Tarps were also put up to preserve and protect the crime scene. Social media went crazy with speculation. No matter how wild the guesses, no one guessed correctly that a body had been nailed to the Charming sign.
Hale was tackling the biggest crime scene of his career and he'd spent all night making sure everything was done perfectly. He wanted to give himself the best chance possible of solving the crime.
Jax, Hale, Tara, Opie and Louise had met early the next morning to discuss what Nero's torture death meant for their search for Thomas. They didn't have a solution to that, but they were sure that Aranora had given Nero's location up, but why? More alien mysteries.
JC joined them later that morning. Today, they poured over camera footage, this time trying to get a lead on who nailed Nero to the Welcome to Charming sign. They were hoping that solving the person who left Nero could bring them closer to who took Thomas.
Jax would never forget the horrifying sight of Nero cut up and nailed to the Charming sign, but he was on horror overload. He'd seen so much carnage lately, it was all beginning to feel like a movie set.
He'd really liked Nero and he hadn't begun to feel his death yet. He was on emotional overload too. He had been a really decent guy. He would never forget that Nero tried to save him and keep him from killing Gemma. It wasn't about saving Gemma's life; it was about saving his soul.
He would honor Nero by making sure that his son was provided for and he and Tara would visit him, maybe try to take him on little trips to Disneyland, the zoo and stuff like that. Places had to be handicap accessible now. They could even hire nurses to help. He would tell Lucius about his father, maybe write it down for him and put in some pictures of Nero. He wanted to do that for Nero and his son.
He had asked Nero to tell his sons who Jax Teller really was—a criminal, a killer and a bad man. That was still him in the past. He was a better man now because he'd gotten a second chance at life.
He wanted Lucius to see that Nero had made mistakes and changed. That was a more powerful story than someone who had always been good. Just as he hoped that his sons would be proud of the man be was becoming, he wanted Lucius to be proud of his father and how he'd overcome the mistakes of his youth.
Tara and Hale left after they'd eaten sandwiches for lunch to go visit Mrs. Hale. As Hale drove them, Tara remembered every detail of that time. There had been a magical summer with Jax falling deeper and deeper in love with each other. Hale had pool parties with a BBQ every Friday at his house during that summer and she'd spent many days as Mrs. Hale's assistant helping her get ready to open her decorating business. Tara would have worked for her for free, but Mrs. Hale insisted on paying her.
That beautiful golden summer ended with one phone call at 4 am. Mr. Hale called her and asked her to come to St. Thomas. Mrs. Hale and David had been in a car accident.
She'd pulled on jeans and a T-shirt and brushed her teeth before jumping on her bike and pedaling through the deserted streets to the hospital. David, as she remembered to call him in front of his parents was a little banged up. Mrs. Hale was in surgery with life threatening injuries.
Those next few days were an endless hell of hospital visits. Only family members were allowed in the ICU. Judge Hale looked at a nurse who was trying to make her leave Mrs. Hale's room and told her that she was family. Tara's eyes filled with tears at the memory.
Mrs. Hale had become a mother to her. Even when she and Hale "broke up", it didn't change their bond. She'd watched her mother die from cancer and she felt in her gut that Mrs. Hale wasn't going to make it either. She wanted to be wrong. There was even one point three days after the accident where it seemed like she had turned the corner and was going to make it. The next day, she took another turn and died.
The bond she had with Mr. Hale continued throughout her life. He'd helped her get into college and med school. She visited him in Charming and he'd visited her at school and in Chicago. He liked to talk about Mrs. Hale with her telling her stories of their lives together. She loved hearing the stories and dreamed of having that kind of marriage one day.
He never remarried. When she was younger, she thought this was romantic, but older Tara knew that Mrs. Hale would want him to find love with someone else.
Hale had been the most outwardly changed by his mother's death. They had been hit by a drunk driver who had just passed through a sobriety checkpoint. The cop that had let him through the point knowing the guy, a buddy of his from softball, was too drunk to drive. The officer said the guy only had a couple of streets to go before he'd be home, so he thought it was going to be OK.
Mr. Hale used his political influence as a judge to get the driver locked up, but a short stretch in jail didn't bring his wife back or fix the broken hearts of his family. Jacob didn't seem as torn up by his mother's death. He'd been living in Florida for the past couple of years, so he wasn't as close to his mother. He did move back to California a year later and began his career as a developer.
David lost himself. He hated the cop that didn't do his job. The cop didn't even lose his job. Thanks to a strong law enforcement lobby, getting rid of a bad cop was a difficult, expensive and often impossible task despite misconduct.
He wanted to keep what happened to his mom from happening to anyone else again. That's when he changed from the laid back surfer to a rules obsessed future cop. He was on a crusade, not just against drunk drivers but against cops who were too lazy or corrupt to do their jobs.
Tara was glad that Hale's second chance at life had helped him gain some perspective. He needed to live for something other than work and he was beginning a promising romance with Louise.
She and Hale sat on the bench in Charming's oldest cemetery. Mrs. Hale had been cremated and her ashes stored in the family vault. They always came together to the bench on her birthday. Mrs. Hale's death also changed Hale's feelings for her. He'd had a little crush on her, but after his mother's death, he saw her as a sister.
"I think about your mother more than I do about my own," Tara said softly.
Hale smiled.
"She loved you like a daughter."
"I was so lucky to have her in my life."
"I always told you that you made my family better," he said.
"What do you think she would say about all this alien craziness?"
"She'd love it. She was always an out of the box thinker. I don't think she would like how extreme I'd become after her death. She would want me to have a more balanced life."
"I'd screwed up my life so much the last month or so of my life; I'm almost glad she wasn't alive to see it."
"If she'd been alive, maybe you wouldn't have messed up," Hale suggested.
"I'd love to believe that."
They sat in silence each lost in thoughts of Mrs. Hale. Tara brushed her tears away. Thinking of the past and mourning Mrs. Hale helped Tara find more strength inside of herself. She had to come up with some kind of idea to get Thomas back, but her mind was blank.
During the short drive back to Hale's, Tara and Hale were quiet continuing to think of Mrs. Hale.
"My mother would have made the best grandmother," Hale said as he pulled into his garage.
"Gemma was the grandmother from hell. She was going to take the boys away from me. She told me she could tell them I died or I moved."
"My mother always felt sorry for Jax because he had Gemma for a mother."
"I'm worried about Gemma being back," Tara confessed. "I'm afraid Jax is going to be weak and let her back into our lives."
"Don't let him do that," Hale said. "You have the power now. Your mother, the Queen, will take your side."
"That's right. I'm not powerless, friendless Tara now."
They returned to the conference room in the underground alien headquarters. JC was gone, but Opie, Jax and Louise were still there.
"Any news?" Tara asked.
"No progress," Jax said.
"Tell them," Louise said.
"JC, Opie and I are going to go to Chibs party for the new clubhouse tomorrow night. He's inviting the whole town."
"It's going to go horribly wrong," Louise said.
"When it does, we'll be there to help," Jax said.
"That's not a bad idea," Hale said. "If it . . ."
"When," Louise corrected.
"OK," Hale said smiling. "When it goes wrong, it will be helpful to have you there to save the situation."
"Why do you even want to go?" Tara asked.
"We want to see what it feels like to be on the outside," Opie said unexpectedly.
Tara was afraid. What if Jax looked at SAMCRO and wanted back in the MC? With Gemma alive, maybe they were destined to repeat history.
Next Up: Chibs' party to celebrate SAMCRO's newly rebuilt clubhouse will go horribly wrong with a kidnapping, a bloodbath and a new old familiar face.
Only four, five or six chapters left!