Nathan Tobias Massey VIII

Heather was a very intuitive child, so while Nicole was playing with her that afternoon she saw her foster mother seemed more happy than usual.

"Why are you so happy?"

"Because I love playing with you," Nicole said. At least that was part of the truth.

Heather smiled. That was the first time anyone ever said that to her.

Antonio came through the door and Heather ran to him and grabbed his hand. "We're playing High Ho! Cherry-O. Come play with us."

xxxxx

After dinner Nicole put in a children's movie and the three of them sat on the couch to watch it. But not long after it started Heather fell asleep on Nicole's lap. Antonio and Nicole talked through the rest of the movie.

"I can't believe she will be ours soon," Antonio said stroking Heather's hair.

"It's surreal, isn't it? If someone had told me two years ago that I would be married to you and we would be adopting a child I would have said they were crazy."

"Life is funny that way."

"Did you ever think we would end up like this?"

"On our first date I knew…well, I thought to myself this woman is not the marrying kind. I never saw this coming until after we moved in together."

"You must have been pretty sure you would be able to talk me into having kids to propose."

"I knew you would come around."

xxxxx

"Where is Nathan?" Jess asked her mom who was holding her hand through another contraction.

She had been in labor for six hours and was ready to deliver.

"Jess, we are going to have to have you start pushing soon," her doctor said.

"I'm not doing this without my husband."

"It's not up to me. Your son is ready to come out."

"We will be right here with you," her aunt said.

"…Okay."

xxxxx

Nathan got off the elevator to the Labor And Delivery floor.

"How is she?" he asked his mother-in-law.

"Not pregnant anymore. Where were you, Nathan?"

"I had my stethoscope and some other metal instruments in my lab coat. It took forever to get through the medal detector. Then the flight left an hour late…Where is Jess?"

"In there. The baby is being examined and they will bring him down soon."

xxxxx

Nathan hugged his wife. "I'm so sorry I wasn't here with you. You have every right to be mad."

"I'm not mad."

"But you wanted me here so much."

"That's because when I had Joe I was alone. This time my mom and Aunt Jennifer were here with me. I'm just glad you're here now." She hugged him again.

"How does he look?"

"Just like Joe, except his eyes are brown and he's as bald as a cantaloupe. He has a few hairs though, they're blond."

"I don't know where he could have gotten that from."

"Go figure. I'm just relieved he is healthy."

xxxxx

One of Jess's uncles who was home with Joe brought the twelve-month-old to the hospital to meet his brother. The family gathered around the bed to hear what the baby Jess was holding would be called. The only person who wasn't there was Nathan's father. His mom told everyone he was sick. Only Jess and Nathan knew that wasn't true.

"All right. Tell us the name," Sabrina said. They all knew what the name would be though.

"Everyone," Jess said, "This is Nathan Tobias Massey. But we're going to call him Toby."

"So you don't get confused," Sylvia said.

"We thought about just calling him by his middle name, but we thought Toby was cuter."

"She thought that was cuter," Nathan said. "I have no intension of calling him that after he reaches two or three years old."

The family laughed.

"May I?" Nathan's uncle said holding out his arms. Jess gave him the baby. "Hello, Nathan. Do you know that you are the eighth man in this family to have that name?"

xxxxx

The next morning, over the phone, Nicole and Jess filled each other in on what was going on with them.

"That's wonderful, Nicole," Jess said. "How long before she is legally yours?"

"About six months."

"Have you told her?"

"Not yet. We think we better wait until it's finalized. So how is everything with you?"

"I had the baby; seven pounds, nine ounces. He's healthy and strong and I'm bringing him home in an hour."

"Congratulations. What is his name?"

"Toby."

"Toby?"

"Nathan Tobias is his full name. We're calling him Toby."

"How is Joe? Do you think he will be jealous of the new baby?"

"I think he's too young to be jealous. In about two months he will probably forget there ever was a time when Toby wasn't with us."

"When are you coming home?"

"In a week or two."

xxxxx

Jess went back to Maryland the week after Toby was born. When he was five weeks old she went back to work.

"Good morning," Kemyss said to Jess. "How was your leave?"

"I've had better."

"Are you and Nathan still having trouble?"

"How the hell did you know about that?…Excuse me."

"It's okay. People talk. That's just the way it is around here."

"Yeah. Anyway, I'm ready to be working again."

"You came to the right place. Missing guy. Devin will fill you in."

xxxxx

"He left the office on Tuesday at five and his wife said he never made it home," Devin told Nicole and Jess about thirty-nine-year-old Jeffrey Anthony. "The police found his car at the airport. C.S.I. found no prints in the car other than his own. We'd never know it was a kidnapping if it weren't for the prints on the steering wheel. It was like his hands were on ten and two and no where else on the whole wheel."

"So someone wiped their prints off the wheel and had Jeffrey Anthony put his hands on it to make it look like he left his car there," Jess said. "Because we would know right away it was a kidnapping if there were no prints on the wheel at all."

"We know anyway. You can't drive with your hands solely in those places and no where else unless you're just going straight. His wife Cynthia Anthony is waiting for you in room one."

"Did I tell you Joe is walking now?" Jess asked as they were going to talk to the wife.

"Only five hundred times," Nicole joked. "Antonio's been teaching Heather to read."

"Really?"

"She knows the letters and the sounds. We think she'll be reading words soon."

Nicole and Jess had become those ladies who could think or talk about nothing other than their kids. Anytime they had any kind of free time on their hands they spent it bragging about their children.

xxxxx

"He left the same time he did every morning," Cynthia said.

"Did he seem out of character at all during the days leading up to his disappearance?" Nicole asked.

"No."

"It says here that you called his office at five-twenty-five. That's a little early to be worried," Jess said. "When does he normally come home, five-thirty?"

"Five fifteen. I just knew something was wrong. Gut instinct or woman's intuition."

"It takes your husband fifteen minutes to get from his firm to your house," Nicole repeated basically what she said for clarity.

"Yes."

"Thank you." Nicole and Jess left the room.

"Okay," Jess said, "that interview wasn't even half over. Why did we leave?"

"Because we know she's lying. It takes at least thirty to forty minutes to get from where Jeffery works to his home…You can send the lady in interrogation one home," Nicole told another agent. "We'll stop by his office and talk to his colleagues and then we'll go to his house and finish with his wife."

"And on the way from the firm to his house we'll time it."

"That's what I'm thinking."

xxxxx

Nicole and Jess were talking to one of the men Jeffery worked closest with.

"I don't know who would want to hurt him," he said.

"How was his marriage?" Nicole asked.

"Cynthia and Jeff were doing great…" He cleared his throat. It seemed like a nervous habit.

"Is there something you're not telling us?"

"…If I tell you and you tell his wife and then it just turns out he was on a break-"

"If you don't tell us and he turns up dead it will be your fault," Nicole said.

"He was having an affair. Some girl named Julie. I don't know her last name…Do you have to tell Cynthia about this?"

"We'll see," Jess said.

xxxxxx

Cynthia opened the door to Nicole and Jess.

"Thirty-nine minutes," Nicole said. "And that's just how long it took us to get to this street. I stopped timing when it was safe to say you lied to us."

"You want to tell us why?"

"I think he was having an affair."

"So you killed him?"

"Of course not! I think she lived around her and I think he stopped by her place before he came here. Sometimes he would leave work early."

"So he was already around this area when five came and it took him fifteen minutes to get here," Jess finished what Cynthia was trying to say. "What did he tell you when it took more than forty?"

Cynthia opened the door wider to let them it. "He would often offer to do the grocery shopping for me."

"And those were always the days he took longer to get home," Nicole said. "Why didn't you just tell us that?"

"Because I couldn't even admit it to myself until just now. One day I called him at work and they told me he left at four. The week before they said the same thing."

"Do you have any idea who this woman he may be having an affair with is?"

"No."

xxxxx

Nicole called Devin from Cynthia's driveway. "There is a woman living in this area named Julie. What can you come up with?"

"Just a second," he told her. "….Julie Everett, Julia Marks, and Julie Springer."

"How many of those live about fifteen minutes from Cynthia Anthony?"

"Julie Springer should be just about that distance."

"What can you tell about her?"

"Not married, works at a nearby grocers, she's twenty-one."

"That's just who I was looking for. Thanks."

xxxxx

When they stopped by Julie Springer's home she wasn't there. Her boss told them she had been out sick for three days.

Nicole and Jess went back to the office to get a warrant to search her home.

"Julie Springer is only wanted for questioning," Kemyss said to an agent who gave information to the press. "She's not a suspect. For all we know Jeffery's wife killed her too."

"In Jess's vision she saw Jeffery Anthony tied in a chair and there was an ocean behind him," Nicole said. "She thinks he is still alive."

"Where is Jess?"

"I think on the phone with our nanny for the fifth time today."

"Find her and go back to Julie's home. Here's the warrant to search it."

xxxxx

"Ms. Springer," Nicole said. When they got to her home she was walking up the walkway. "Where is Jeffery Anthony?"

"I don't know. I was supposed to meet him at a restaurant yesterday, but he never showed up."

"You mind if we look around?" Nicole showed her the warrant.

"It doesn't look like I have a choice."

"That's the spirit."

xxxxx

Jess and Nicole were looking around Julie Springer's bedroom.

"Looks like they've been together a long time—at least two years," Jess said.

"How do you figure?" Nicole asked from the closet.

"This picture of them together. It was taken at Lee Sanford's book signing. I remember it because I was living around the library where this was and it was hell getting down the street to my apartment."

"They've been together for at least two years, the wife just found out about a couple of weeks ago, and now he's gone. Sounds like Cynthia had something to do with it."

"Or she told Julie he's married and they're working this together."

xxxxx

Devin read all the hits on her vision he came up with to Jess. "…And Ocean Park. That was the last of them. Did anyone of those sound useful?"

"No. I don't even know if it was an ocean. It could have been a lake."

"Hold that thought," he said when his phone rang. "Agent Ricardo…Okay. Thank you."

"What?"

"You were right. It was a lake and the Homicide Division just fished Jeffery's body out of one."

xxxxx

"What do you think, was it the wife or girlfriend?" Nicole asked Jess.

"It's hard to tell. The wife lied to us, but she had an explanation for it. The girlfriend was missing for three days, but she didn't seem like she had something to hide."

"It's so weird how we never know how these things end. When we find them dead Homicide takes over and we don't see how it turns out. Doesn't that bug you?"

"Not really. When we find them dead I prefer not to be reminded of the ones we lost."

"It bothers me. But I guess it's just part of the job. See you."

"Bye."

After her collegues left Jess was alone in her office.

"Jess!" she heard some guy calling for her.

She got up from her desk and began walking the halls. She thought it was someone who needed her help. She never expected it to be who it was. She gasped when she saw him—Colin.

"Jess, I am so sorry. I'm sorry. I just got back twenty minutes ago and my boss told me you called last year. I got here as soon as I could. How is the baby? Was it a boy or a girl?"

"Colin, relax. There was no baby. It was all a mistake."

"Oh." He put his hand on his chest. "I'm so relieved…So how have you been?"

"Good. I got married. What about you?"

"It's good to be home. Who's the lucky guy?"

"Nathan. Remember I told you about him once?"

"Yeah."

She tried not to look nervous and she was happy they weren't in her office, so he didn't see the pictures of the Joe. "I was right in the middle of something, so-"

"I'll let you get back to what you were doing…Congratulations on your marriage. I'm glad you're doing well."

"I'm glad you're doing well too."

xxxxx

Nicole was straigtening up Heather's room when she heard her doorbell ringing like crazy.

"You can't get that?" Nicole said passing Antonio. He was sitting in the family room downstairs reading to Heather.

"We're right in the middle of this thing," he replied.

Nicole opened the door.

"I thought you were Ethan, the way you rang that bell," she said to Jess. "What's wrong with you?"

"Colin came by the office."

"Heather, can you go up to your room?" Antonio said.

"Okay. Bye, Jess."

"Bye, Heather."

"Okay," Nicole said, "tell us what happened."

"He got back two hours ago and his boss told him I called last year."

"Did you tell him about the baby?" Antonio asked.

"I told him I was wrong. He doesn't know there is a baby. I planned that conversation a million times in my head, but I felt totally unprepared."

"I can't believe he believed you," Nicole said. "You're bad enough at lying as it is, but when you're nervous it's terrible."

"Fortunately for me he was freaking out too. His discernment was off."

"I don't get it," Antonio said. "He bought the story. Now he's out of your life for good. What's the problem?"

"The problem is she is feeling guilty," Nicole said. "Am I right?"

"Yeah."

"Antonio, can you go finish reading that story to Heather?"

"Sure."

"Sit down," Nicole said, giving them some time for Antonio to leave the room. "Jess, it's not too late for you to tell him the truth."

"And then I'd have to tell him he might not be the dad and then I'd have to get the paternity test."

"Only on Colin. If he's not the father that's it. You wouldn't feel obligated to tell that other guy, would you?"

"No. But…I don't want to know if Colin is not the father."

"Then just forget about it."

"I don't want to do that either."

"Which is worse?"

"The first one."

"Then you have to forget it, Jess."

"Yeah."

"Do you ever talk to Nathan about this?"

"No. And as far as he knows Colin is the only man who could be the father, so don't say anything to him about the other guy."

"When do I ever have conversations with Nathan? Do you think he would be upset if Colin was in Joe's life?"

"No. He's not like that. He loves Joe. He would want what's best for him. But even if Colin was the father I don't know if I think it's best he be in Joe's life."

"Why?"

"You know, I just think it would be weird for him. He'd probably end up living out of suitcases, being shipped back and forth from our house to Colin's every weekend. I want my children to have a traditional upbringing. That's why I got married…Did I just say that?"

"And you wonder why you two are having trouble."

"Please don't give me the I-told-you-so speech."

"I won't. You want my advice? Go home. Work out things with your husband, raise your children, and forget about Colin."

"That's what I am going to do."