Chapter 2
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"Reid?"
Striding down the tastefully done hallways of Hughes, McCauley and Broadbent, David Rossi whipped around at Aaron's voice to see Spencer Reid sitting in a gold and tan chair just outside the very door he and Aaron had been looking for. "What the hell are you doing here, Reid?" he growled without meaning to.
Reid raised a slightly worried eyebrow at his colleague's short-temper and turned to his boss instead. "I...uh... Well, truthfully, I don't know. I received a call yesterday asking me if I could come here to discuss a family matter. I thought maybe it had something to do with my father, but I haven't really got anything to base that on. Anyway, the secretary down the hall told me to wait here."
Hotch sat down next to him. "Did anyone come with you? Did you think to arrange for representation?"
Reid blinked. "Do I need representation?"
"Well, that's the point, Reid - you don't know," Hotch explained. "It can be a good idea to - "
"Reid," Dave interrupted, "what time is your appointment?"
"Ten," Reid replied.
"And it's for here?" Dave asked, nodding to the nameplate on the door reading 'Conference Room 3'.
"Yes," Reid said. "I'm a little confused - do you two know what's going on?"
Dave looked to Aaron, at a loss to explain this new development. Hotch appeared just as puzzled.
"Reid, your birthday is in October, isn't it?" Hotch asked.
"Uh...yeah, the ninth."
"And it was in 1981?"
"Yes."
"But it couldn't be the same thing," Dave put in. "How would irregularities at a hospital in Long Island affect him? He wasn't born there." He turned to Reid, "You weren't, were you, Kid?"
Reid shook his head. "No. Vegas. At least, that's what it states on my birth certificate."
"Then it can't be related," Rossi said.
"Related to what?" Reid wanted to know, irritation with the increasing mysteriousness of his whole morning beginning to grow.
Hotch was about to explain when the door to the conference room opened and a blonde, very professionally dressed middle-aged woman stepped through to greet them. She turned to Reid first, "Doctor Spencer Reid?"
Reid raised a hand and gave his usual shy wave. The woman then turned and looked questioningly between the two older men. "Mr. Rossi?"
Dave stepped forward; there was no smile on his face, but he managed to shake her hand politely enough. "This is Aaron Hotchner," he said, gesturing towards his friend. "He's here as my representative."
"I'm pleased to meet all of you. I'm Karen Hughes. I spoke to both of you yesterday. Well, now that everyone is here, shall we proceed?"
"Everyone?" Dave asked, a touch surprised. He'd naturally assumed that any 'irregularities' at a hospital would have had to at least gone on long enough for several families to be affected.
"Yes, the other party concerned is already inside," Ms. Hughes informed them.
"If I may, Ms. Hughes, before we go in, could you perhaps explain how this matter involves both of my agents?" Hotchner asked.
Ms. Hughes stopped and turned around. "I'm sorry, both of your...? You and Mr. Rossi know Doctor Reid?"
"Yes. I'm their Unit Chief at the Behavioural Analysis Unit at Quantico."
"Good heavens, I certainly didn't see that coming! I was aware of where Mr. Rossi worked, but since we obtained Doctor Reid's address from his father - "
"So it does involve him. I should have known," Reid snapped, pushing past the other three into the conference room. Rossi and Hotch, following quickly on his heels, noticed he showed no sign of recognizing the thick-shouldered man sitting with a series of files in front of him, but the dark-haired man near the window stopped him cold.
"Hello, Dad."
-x-
The confrontation which followed, filled with accusations, demands for answers, and futile pleas for calm, was only kept from ending with one or more parties storming off thanks to Aaron Hotchner pulling both of his subordinates aside, each at different times, and reminding them they would get no answers if they didn't at least listen.
Finally, everyone was seated at the table. Reid was closest to the door and no one was quite sure if the man wasn't still going to bolt, but for the moment he appeared to have got himself under enough control to remain. Coffee and Danishes were brought in, but no one reached for them and after a very uncomfortable eternity, William Reid looked at his son. "Spencer..."
Reid was quiet, but he refused to meet his father's gaze.
"Spencer," William Reid began again, "You have every right to be angry with me. I know I haven't returned any of the letters you've written me since the Riley Jenkins case - "
"Please tell me this little stage production isn't payback for the accusation I made at that time," Reid said coolly.
"No, no, Spencer...this isn't...how could you think that?"
"Why is Rossi here, then? Is it because he was with me then? What story did you use to drag him here?"
"Spencer, please let me tell my story," William Reid pleaded. "Everything will make sense in the end."
Reid said nothing, but the bleakness around his eyes got through even to Rossi, who was caught up in his own pain and confusion. Still, the young man gave a small nod for his father to go on.
"As I was saying," William Reid continued, "Spencer, you have every right to be angry with me, and I wish more than anything that the story I have to tell wasn't going to hurt you more, but I can't. What I have to say is likely going to cause you the most pain out of anyone here, but it can't be helped. I wish I could have at least told you separately, but it involves..." The elder Reid sighed, "Well, hopefully you will be able to understand once I'm done."
Reid senior turned to face the table at large. "It's a very long story, so it would be for the best if everyone could listen to the whole thing before they start asking questions." They watched as he took a deep breath, his eyes squeezing shut for a moment as if he were in pain, and then he began. "I suppose I should begin with Christopher."
"Christopher?" Reid asked and Rossi felt himself sympathizing at the lost tone in his younger colleague's voice. People always seemed to know when their lives were about to be changed forever; you could almost see their shields coming up before you'd even opened your mouth, and yet both you and they knew those shields would never be strong enough to keep the storm outside, because at that exact same moment, you could also sense them breaking.
"Your mother and I had a child before you were born," William Reid told his son. "His name was Christopher. But there were complications. He died after only three days and... and the doctors told us your mother would never be able to have another child."
Dave watched as his young friend wrapped his arms around his chest. For a few moments, the desperation, the absolute overwhelming need for this not to be going where every person at that table knew it was, was painfully visible on the man's stricken face. But then it was replaced with a cold, inward stare and a rigid jaw as Spencer Reid's determined inner walls came up.
"Spencer, there's no easy way to tell you this, but you were adopted."
Reid chuckled bitterly. "No easy way to tell me this? So obviously the next best solution was to jump right to doing it in a lawyer's office in front of my co-workers and two complete strangers?" Aaron put a comforting hand on Reid's arm, but the younger agent shook it off. "No! Just...just don't. I'm sorry, Hotch, I know it's not your fault, but just don't touch me right now, all right?"
Hotch nodded in understanding. Meanwhile, Reid looked longingly at the door, but still managed to address his father with some composure. "Is this the real explanation for why you left? Now that I know, am I supposed to feel all better? Should I forgive you and say, 'It's all right. I understand. After all, it's not as though I'm your real child.' Is that the scenario you were hoping for?"
William Reid looked down, staring briefly at the dark wood of the conference room table. The spring sun shone cheerfully through the window, creating an atmosphere utterly at odds with the dramatic scene playing out inside. After some moments, the elder Reid went on as if his son hadn't spoken. "Two years after Christopher's death, a young woman came to work as a clerk at my law firm. Her name - or at least the one she gave us - was Janine Rutherford. One day, roughly eight months after she started, I caught her crying in the supply closet after hours. She was distraught, even panicked, so I offered to drive her home.
"I know what that must sound like - even at the time I was aware that I was possibly placing myself in what could later be construed as a compromising position - but I swear nothing happened between us. What did happen was that she confessed to me that she was in trouble.
"You have to understand - thirty-three years ago unwed mothers didn't have it like they do today. Perhaps they didn't get locked up in Catholic girls' homes like they had twenty years earlier, but bearing an illegitimate child still carried a significant stigma, especially in the professional world. Janine would have lost her job - even with the laws protecting her, a conservative old boys' firm like the one I worked for at the time would have found some reason for letting her go - and single women with children had a very hard time even later on, after the children were born, in developing any kind of professional career.
"So the solution to both of our problems seemed obvious: she didn't want the child and Diana and I did. We had already talked of adoption, but Diana was hesitant. I didn't know it at the time, but she was beginning to suspect her mood swings might be more than simple depression over Christopher, and she worried that that might keep any adoption agency from letting us have a child.
"Therefore, private adoption looked like the best answer for all of us. Legally, it simplified things. With Janine appointing us as guardians and choosing us specifically to be the adoptive parents spared us some of the intensive investigations most parents in that situation go through. There were some problems when Janine refused to tell us who the father of the child was, but back then that wasn't as much of an obstacle as it is now.
"As the months went on, the three of us grew very friendly with one another. Janine was intelligent and well-spoken and had a degree in English Literature. She and Diana developed an almost sisterly relationship. I had arranged for Janine to have some time off work once she started showing, but if any of our friends had learned what was going on, her giving us the baby would have seemed quite natural by then."
Something in William Reid's demeanour changed then. "You have to believe something - there was nothing at the time to suggest that this was anything other than a completely over-board adoption. Yes, it was private, but to our minds it wasn't any different from a teenage girl letting an older, married sister raise an unexpected child. People had been doing similar things for time out of mind. And Janine was pregnant. She let both Diana and I put our hands on her abdomen numerous times in order to feel the baby kick. We had no reason to suspect..."
William Reid took a deep breath and when he started speaking once more, he had changed tack. "The trouble started when Janine was eight months along. She simply took off. Diana and I were frantic, and not just for the baby, though he or she was our primary concern. We searched everywhere for Janine; I even hired a detective who occasionally did some work for the firm, but there was nothing.
"Then, three weeks or so after the baby had been due, she was back. She showed up on our doorstep one night with a baby in her arms. There were no explanations, no excuses. She told us the baby was ours, but there was a condition now. We had to give her $50,000."
A hushed voice came from the other end of the table. "You bought me?"
William Reid nodded. "She wouldn't tell us what was going on. When she first took off, I'd assumed she had simply changed her mind and wanted to keep her child. Then when I saw her at the door, my first thought was that she realized she couldn't manage with a baby and had decided to let us adopt the baby after all. But then she asked for the money. Alarm bells went off, but I still had no reason to think that it wasn't anything other than a bit of last minute extortion."
"So you paid the money?" Hotch asked.
"We felt used, and worried that Janine might come back for more, always holding the signing of the actual papers over our heads to keep bleeding us dry, but Diana already had Spencer in her arms and I knew she was never going to give him up. And I felt the same way." William Reid faced his son and what he said next was directly to - and for - him alone: "I know you probably can't bring yourself to believe that, Spencer, but it's true. Right from that first second, you were my son. I've made so many mistakes - stupid, terrible, grievous mistakes - but to me, you were never, ever anything other than my child."
The younger Reid finally deigned to glance at this father. Rossi could see that for a moment he had softened - not forgiveness per se, let alone affection, but at least there was a momentarily lessening of resentment and rage. However, Reid was apparently not quite ready to talk.
His father accepted this and continued with his story. "I arranged for the money the next morning. It took quite some doing, but I managed it. Later that day, Janine left Spencer with us and, contrary to my expectations, we never saw her again. The adoption papers went through without a hitch, and trust me, I checked a hundred times for any loop-hole that might have allowed her to come back and threaten us with taking away our son. And so, that was that.
"At least, for awhile.
"Spencer was about eight when the letter came. It was from a nurse out in Phoenix. She said her patient had asked her to give me a message, but had only been able to tell her my work address. All her patient had told her to tell me was this: 'Tell him the boy wasn't mine.' "
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Author's note: Thanks to everyone who read the last chapter, especially those who took the time to respond in some way. I can't believe I got so many follows for such a short little intro!
