Notes:

Hope you don't mind, Ken_H, but I'm using words from your review of Chapter 4, the previous chapter, as this chapter's opener: "Henry has a spellbound audience after revealing that Abe is his son, not the other way around and Mike Hanson says what everyone feels "Man, this is gonna be good.". What's going to be just as good, if not better, is each of their reactions to Henry's true age and especially Jo's reaction - And then there's the issue of the guidelines for Henry?"

vvvv

"Henry - first, tell me ... what exactly happened to you after Johnson shot you?" Mike leaned forward in his chair towards the ME, a look of weary anticipation on his face. The exact chain of events concerning that night had turned over and over in his mind for days, robbing him of both sleep and sustenance. For a while he'd feared it had also robbed him of rational thought. But now, after Henry's startling confession of being the father of his elderly roommate, he finally was able to see silhouettes in the haze regarding that and several other questionable incidents surrounding their most mysterious ME.

Henry seemed a bit caught off guard at first, but sighed and lowered his eyes with a smile. He looked back up at Mike and replied, "I bled out, died, and vanished. It happens after any of my deaths."

"Then how did you wind up at Presbyterian Hospital with a less serious leg wound?" Mike asked.

Henry slowly rolled his eyes over to meet Abe's, then slowly back to Mike. "After a death, my body vanishes and I find myself alive again, completely unharmed, in the nearest, large body of water - naked." He studied each of them as that revelation seeped into their psyches and contorted their features in various ways.

"Naked. Hmmm." Frank clamped his lips together and drummed his fingers on the table. He opened his mouth to say something, but Jo cut him off.

"The East River?" she half-squeaked, half-whispered, her brow pinched. He nodded once.

"So you ... but ... how ... ," Mike shifted forward in his seat again, "how did you get from the river, naked, and to the hospital fully clothed with a different gunshot wound?"

Henry explained about the decades-long plan that he and his son followed after he'd suffered a death. "If I can get to a phone and contact Abe, he brings me clothes and a towel and picks me up." He sighed and lowered his eyes. "If I can't reach him, then ... "

Frank sat back with his arms crossed. "You're arrested and charged with Public Nudity." he said matter-of-factly.

Henry, momentarily thrown off by his statement that most likely meant that the Commissioner harbored even more knowledge about him and his life of secrecy, smiled and nodded once. In anticipation of anyone else's next question, he quickly added, "I have no idea how or why this happens to me, though; only that it all began after having been shot and killed in 1814 - my first death." He looked at Jo, raised his hand and patted his fingers over a spot on his chest. "The, uh, scar ... over my heart. This is the only scar that my body has ever retained. Even scars that I'd acquired in the years prior to my transformation, are no longer visible on my body." He looked down at his hand, still on his chest. "Just this one. "

Jo's mouth worked but no words came forth. Finally, her worried eyes darting between Frank and Mike, then, settling on Abe, she asked, "How old were you then, Henry?"

He suddenly felt guilty for not having had confessed all this to her first - in private. He didn't dare meet Abe's piercing stare even though his silent 'I-told-you-so' echoed loudly and clearly in his mind. "Five months away from my 35th birthday, Jo." He swallowed and continued past their collective, stunned silence. "For a little over two hundred years, my physical appearance has never changed."

His earlier brashness dissolved, he was now plagued with foreboding and doubt. At the moment, only Jo, only her opinion, mattered. But, what damage had he done to their friendship, to their professional relationship, by having withheld the truth about his immortality from her for so long? He now sneaked a nervous glance in Abe's direction, who returned it with a look of sympathic support. A smile of thanks tugged at the corners of his mouth. He then looked into Jo's eyes and saw only her. Guilt overwhelmed him as he viewed the increasing mix of uncertainty and realization wash across her face.

"Please forgive me, Jo, for not having told you sooner than this. You deserved to be told. I see that now."

While a million why's and what's raced through her mind, she could only look at him. But she wanted to yell out, to cry, to shake some answers out of him that made sense, not ones that didn't! She'd known that he had secrets buried under layers of lies and half-truths, but this? A claim of unnaturally long life after having been - killed ? - in the 1800's ? She closed her eyes and shook her head, as if disbelief would rein the conversation back into the realm of normal reality. She finally opened her eyes and stared at him for several moments before speaking. Even though still undecided as to what to say next, she heard her own voice asking him why he had not trusted anyone else besides Abe?

Frank exchanged a look with Mike, the both of them beginning to feel like fifth wheels in a private conversation between would-be lovers. But they had both come into the conversation already knowing separate parts that made up Henry Morgan's mysterious existence. And, since he had invited them in, so to speak, they were there for the duration. Both men held their tongues, though, and waited for Henry's response.

"There have been times when ... my secret of immortality was revealed, and ... it resulted in dire consequences for me." His voice was quiet, hesitant, evident of unpleasant memories dredging themselves up. He rose from his chair and stood behind it, tightly gripping the back of it in order to support himself instead of using his cane.

"Charged with heresy and hanged. Burned at the stake. Tarred and feathered, and run out of town on a rail. That was a good day!" he scoffed as he raised a finger and both eyebrows. "Dissected like a frog. Every ounce of blood in my body drained out of me." He furrowed his brow and stared in their direction, but really at his mind's list of numerous past betrayals and unfair punishments. "All in the name of medical science to find out what makes me tick." His chest heaved up and down as his breathing quickened; his large, brown eyes narrowed and darkened as he recalled the harrowing times.

Abe watched his father uncomfortably, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, wanting him to finally confide in others about his condition, but, at the same time, ready to shield him from any subsequent hurt and pain for doing so. His knees suddenly let him know that he'd stood longer than he should have, and he perched himself onto one of their newly-acquired stools for the kitchen island. He groaned a bit at the flood of relief as his weight left his knees. When his father shot a concerned look at him, he smiled and waved a hand gently at him. "I'm fine, Pops. Just these old knees." He groaned again as he planted himself more squarely onto the stool, smiled and said, "Continue."

Both Mike and Frank smiled inwardly at Abe's callling Henry "Pops", for that's how they addressed their own fathers. But they were now into the meat of Henry's story, and nowhere, did it seem, was there an appropriate time for smiles.

"What about your other family?" Frank asked. Abigail was uppermost in his mind.

"If you're referring to my parents, my father died in 1812, and my mother six months later. My sister and two brothers all died in the late 1800's. By 1900, I was completely alone. Neither my siblings nor their descendants knew about my transformation. So there was no attending funerals or weddings or christenings ths later. My sister and two brothers all died in the late 1800's. By 1900, I was completely alone. Neither my siblings nor their descendants knew about my transformation. So there was no attending funerals or weddings or christenings because old Uncle Henry," he said, pointing to himself, "was supposed to have been either white-haired and withered with age or dead many years past." He laughed mirthlessly and continued, his voice growing quieter. "I was relegated to the shadows to watch them be born and expend their lives. Never to have had the pleasure of really knowing them."

"Sounds ... so lonely." Jo said, her expression pained. "I'm so sorry, Henry."

"But you were married at one time, right, Doctor?" Frank pressed. However mismatched their union may have appeared to be back in the 1970's when he'd visited their home to question him in the graverobbing case, he, at least, had seemed happy.

Henry paused and rubbed his fingers over his forehead, then raised his eyes to meet his. "Yes, Commissioner, I was married. Happily, for many years."

"Abigail was her name, right?" Frank asked.

Henry tilted his head a bit, and squinted at him.

"I was a detective in 1977, when I had occasion to question you first at your job, then at your home, during a graverobbing case."

The memory flooded back to him and brought a slight smile to his lips. "That was you?" he chuckled as he retook his seat.

Frank smiled broadly and nodded. "She was a lovely woman, even in - " he stopped himself, not sure if he'd overstepped a boundary.

"Yes, she was lovely, Commissioner." Henry agreed with a smile, before replying to Frank's earlier question. "The apparent, visible difference in our ages became too much for her to handle - the whisperings, the innuendos, the shunnings - and she left a few years later. I searched for her for years without success." He looked apologetically at Jo and Mike, who had recently worked diligently alongside him in what they'd only known was a hunt for Abe's mother, a woman named Sylvia Blake.

"She lived under an alias: Sylvia Blake." He braced himself for Jo's and Mike's reactions.

Jo's hand flew to cover her mouth, her eyes widened with surprise as that puzzle piece fell into place. Mike just frowned and whistled. Their gazes slowly turned from Henry to rest on Abe, who frowned over a weak smile.

"A-Abe's mother was your ... oh, my God, Henry, we didn't know. When we found her bones, oh ... " She rose abruptly, her hand over her mouth, and stumbled towards the stairs where she stopped and gripped the railing with one hand, her mouth still covered with the other. Henry quickly rose and limped over to her without his cane. He stood closely behind her but dared not touch her.

"Jo, the whole thing - my life - all of it ... it's ... complicated." He stammered, spreading his hands helplessly.

She whirled around to face him with fire in her eyes. "You bet it's complicated!" She scoffed and reminded him of how much time and effort both she and Mike and Lucas and Reece had put into helping find Abe's mother. "All the time seeing how concerned we were for him, and for you. Traveling back and forth across the five boroughs tracking down clues, making sure her remains were properly attended to. All the while you withheld that one, little piece of pertinent information from us, from me! That she was also your wife!"

"Jo. Please try to understand. I just couldn't tell you or anyone else at that time."

"I don't understand, Henry. I don't. We're not just your colleagues, we're your friends, at least we've tried to be. Didn't that mean anything to you?" She implored.

"I can see that you are upset because you feel that your overtures of friendship seem not to have been fully reciprocated by me, but, I can assure you - I do care deeply for you."

She shook her head, her bouffant curls bouncing over her shoulders. "It's not that, Henry ... well, yes, it is that, but ..." She sighed in frustration and locked her gaze with his. "You didn't have to suffer alone." She watched him as he hung his head. "I would have been there for you ... and Abe. You could have trusted me." She stepped closer to him, placing her hands on his chest. "What made you feel that you couldn't have? I mean, I get it that you've been betrayed and tortured before, probably by people who never really knew or cared for you, but ... this is me."

"Because of what my first wife, Nora, did to me, when I shared my secret with her. Someone who professed to love me till death do us part!"

"Your ... first wife." She repeated while intently staring at him as if trying to insert this new fact into its proper slot in her memory banks.

"She didn't believe me. When I tried to kill myself in front of her to prove I would die but return to her unscathed, she stopped me by telling me that she did believe me. She'd lied, though. The next day she had me carted off to an insane asylum where they tortured me for months to 'rid me of my madness' they said."

He scowled darkly at the remembrance of her betrayal. "She only visited me a few times. Wouldn't even look at me as I begged her to help get me released. I had to hang myself in order to escape." He blurted out. "In my opinion, there was a 50/50 chance that you really could be trusted with my secret. Don't you see? I loved both of my wives, but only one was worthy of my trust. No matter how many times Abe has urged me to tell you, I, I, I just couldn't. I ... I didn't want to lose you, Jo. If it meant having you in my life only as a friend or colleague, I was willing to settle for that. But I couldn't chance losing you." He shook his head, his eyes wide with both fear and regret, his voice deep, husky, full of emotion. "Ever since I first met you, Jo, I haven't been able to get you out of my mind."

She cupped his face in her hands, then snaked her arms around his neck, and hugged him closely. Surprised, but pleased, he hesitated a few seconds, then wrapped his arms around her waist. They both closed their eyes and took refuge in each other's arms. She caressed the hairs at the nape of his neck, while he gently rubbed his hands up and down her back.

Neither was aware when Abe placed a finger to his lips and motioned for Mike and Frank to stealthily follow him up the stairs that led to the rooftop terrace. Once there, the three of them breathed in the cool air, and relaxed a bit as they broke into nervous but quiet laughter. They seated themselves at the table; Mike and Frank finally able to digest the fantastical information Henry had shared with them, while Abe closely studied them both.

"What happens now?" Abe finally spoke, directing his question to both men, mainly to Frank. "My father's a good man. He didn't ask for this to be his life." he added, deadly serious.

Mike automatically looked at Frank and waited for him to respond first.

Frank inhaled and exhaled loudly as he eyed Abe. "You're right. Your father is a good man." He couldn't help but feel odd saying that to the perceived, older man about his younger-looking father. "And I can understand your concerns regarding any upset to his life here in New York." He paused, then smiled. "As far as I'm concerned, Dr. Morgan will be able to enjoy continued employment in the OCME and he's welcome to keep aiding the NYPD in crime investigations - with certain restrictions - as long as I am Commissioner." He glanced over at Mike.

"That's great!" Mike nodded and grinned. "We like the Doc. And now that we know why he's so - "

"Weird?" Abe ventured.

"Well, now that we know more about him - Jo and I - we can understand him better." he further explained. He realized, also, that he owed the good doctor an apology as soon as Jo unhooked herself from him, for having jokingly gifted him those goggles and speedos after what was then thought to be another episode of nude sleepwalking. He now guiltily recalled how well Henry had taken the good-natured ribbing; even allowing the gift exchange moment to be captured by several of the unis' smartphone cameras. Knowing now that the man had actually died and come back to life in the murky East River was still mind boggling. 'Poor guy. If we'd only known.'

Frank addressed Abe's earlier question by repeating it. "What happens now? "

vvvv

Henry and Jo finally pulled away from each other a bit, causing him to wince as he attempted to put his full weight on both legs. Jo quickly turned and moved to his side, instructing him to lean on her. She walked slowly towards the couch in the sitting area, as he limped along with his arm draped over her shoulders. Once they reached the couch, she helped ease him down onto it. As he leaned back and caught his breath, she scrambled quickly into the kitchen to retrieve his cane.

"Here you go." she announced with a broad smile as she leaned it against the couch next to him.

"Thank you, Jo." He watched her as she curled up on the couch next to him. "For everything."

"Wonder where those guys disappeared to?" she asked, suddenly aware of their absence.

Henry pointed a finger upward. "Most likely on the rooftop terrace discussing me and my fate." He leaned closer to her, gently brushing the backs of his fingers along her jawline. "But your opinion is the only one that matters to me, Jo." He looked deeply into her lovely, brown eyes. Each time her eyelids fluttered, so did his heart. It was a strangely warm, delicious feeling, having her movements control him this way. She parted her lips and he felt drawn to them, wanting desperately to cover them with his own, to fall fully under her control. "I love you, Jo Martinez." he said throatily. There. It was finally out there. She could do with his heart what she would, but, God help him, he loved this woman. For the first time in more than 30 years, he had fallen in love.

She scooted closer to him, her eyes flickering between his dark hazel eyes and his sensuous lips. She leaned closer until their faces were only inches apart. "And I love you, Henry Morgan." She placed her hand on his cheek and slowly moved her fingers up and to the back of his neck. He breathlessly anticipated a soft, slow kiss, that gradually deepened, but she forcefully pulled him towards her and crushed her eager lips against his. He gladly let himself be taken over by her and enjoyed every moment of this frantic kiss that bordered on desperation. They were both so hungry for each other's touch; so thirsty for each other. They finally broke away from each other, panting and taking in needed oxygen, smiling at each other. The sound of someone clearing their throat caught their attention.

"Uh, Dad?" Abe stammered, embarrassed to have caught them in an amorous moment.

They looked at him, then, at each other, and chuckled softly, as they both recalled the last time they'd been interrupted by him. The night that she had decided not to go to Paris with billionaire Isaac Monroe, and had come to the shop to try to tell Henry that she'd rather go with with him, instead. They'd stood and stared into each other's eyes for several moments, neither having had the courage to voice anything romantic or even touch each other. She'd been working up the nerve to tell him of her desires about Paris, when Abe had interrupted them with what had later led them to his mother's, Henry's wife's, remains.

"Yes, Abraham?" Henry asked, fully aware that the reason behind his son's latest interruption was, most likely, also equally important.

Frank appeared behind Abe, his hands clasped behind his back, as he stared intently at Henry. "Doctor? We have a few more things to discuss."