Chapter 11: Three Friendships

Will couldn't remember a time before he had worried about falsified DNA tests. That made sense; his mother had done her best to hide the results of his own blood tests in his babyhood, and the result had been a long and bitter custody battle between his parents. Now that he worked in the hospital, and was emotionally invested in the health and happiness of so many patients, he was always concerned about the anguish a corrupt or incompetent lab technician could cause.

There was no doubt in his mind that the girl he had met in the warehouse was his sister. She looked too much like their mother for any other possibility to be an option. Still, he breathed a sigh of relief when he assessed the selection of techs who were working in the lab when he entered. They were all experienced and talented. The newest hire, who in Will's not-so-humble opinion was a complete idiot, was nowhere to be found; neither was June, the blonde woman Will disliked because she was always flirting with Nick (who even if he was unaware of Chelsea's condition, should have known better).

Luckily, the lab was having one of its rare slow days, and no one objected to rushing Will's project or letting him watch the proceedings.

"Perfect match," Fran Jones told him. "This is to establish paternity?" Will nodded tightly. "He's the father."

Fran tried to make small talk as she filled out the requisite paperwork, but Will wasn't able to respond with more than "yeah" and "guess so" and "thanks." His head felt fuzzy, and he desperately wanted a few minutes alone to clear it.

By the time he'd shut himself into an exam room, tears were streaming down his face for the second time that day. He irritably reached for a paper towel from the roll above the sink and swiped at his eyes and nose. He'd never liked crying. He hadn't cried for years—not over his father's prison sentence, not over his mother's decision to abandon him, not over the subsequent disappearance of the twins. Today, though, he had to make a herculean effort to stop himself.

Will's thoughts wandered back to Allie. She'd been knocked unconscious, spirited thousands of miles from the only home she'd ever known, and deposited amongst a cluster of strangers, but she hadn't cried. His thirteen-year-old sister was tougher than he was.

"She was probably in shock," he reminded himself aloud. He compulsively checked to see that he had turned his phone on after leaving the lab. He had.

He was trying to decide whether to call his father with the good news or present it in person when the exam room door banged open and Joy Wesley shut herself inside with him.

She threw her weight against the door as if to hold it closed against some approaching force, and she didn't even notice Will's presence for a long second.

"Dr. Horton!" she exclaimed, looking slightly abashed.

Will couldn't help but smirk a little. "Who are we hiding from?"

"Dr. Karlin," Joy admitted. "It's a long story." Her breath caught as she looked Will full in the face for the first time. In the mirror on the wall, Will could see that while his eyes were dry, they were still red-rimmed. "Um, are you all right?"

"Fine. Thank you."

Joy's eyes dropped to the lab report Will had set on the examining table. "Is it a problem with one of your patients?"

Will ran through his options quickly. He could rebuff Joy's attempts at kindness and tell her that the subject wasn't open for discussion, but that would put even more of a strain on their already tenuous working relationship. He could lie, but that would require more mental energy than he was willing to expend. Or he could tell the truth, and start the inevitable gossip on its trek through Salem.

Joy would find out anyway, he rationalized.

"Not a patient. My sister."

Joy cocked her head. "Your sister who got… kidnapped when she was a baby?" It was no surprise that Joy knew the story even though they'd never discussed it. Everyone knew that story.

"We found her and I had some tests run to confirm—" his voice cracked and he let his gaze fall to the floor.

Joy took the lab report and read it quickly and with confidence. "So you got the result you wanted."

"Yeah."

"Congratulations."

"Thanks."

"Should I leave now?"

Even under the circumstances, Will felt a rush of amusement at seeing Dr. Joy Wesley looking so awkward and so far out of her element. "I don't know. Am I scarier than Dr. Karlin?" he teased.

Joy groaned. "I accidentally said something I shouldn't have about his wife. I'm hoping if I avoid him long enough he'll forget to refuse to let me assist on his good cases."

"I don't think that's going to be a problem."

"Dr. Karlin is temperamental. Even for a neurosurgeon."

"That's true, but he also wants the best of the best assisting him, and we all know that's you."

"Since when do you think I'm the best of anything?"

"I've never denied your talent in the operating room," said Will quietly. "I only wanted you to work on your bedside manner."

Joy stared at him, wide-eyed and speechless. If Will hadn't known better, he would have thought that the world-renowned young prodigy had never before heard her skills praised. He smiled to see how young she suddenly looked.

Joy snapped to attention at Will's smile. "I'm sorry. I can't believe we're talking about this when you've just found your sister."

Will shook his head. "No. Thank you. It helps to talk about something normal, something I know how to think about."

"Oh."

"But now that you mention it, when you were thirteen, what was the best present someone could have bought you?"

"A chemistry set," said Joy promptly.

"You always wanted to be a doctor?"

"Always."

"What's something any girl that age would want? I'm sixteen years older than she is. It's not like we have anything in common. I need to start buying my way into her heart right away."

Joy laughed, which was annoying, because Will wasn't sure that he was kidding. "My sister was a teenager when I was born, too. I didn't decide whether I loved her based on what kinds of presents she sent me from wherever she was singing that season."

"But she did send you presents?"

Joy laughed again. "Your sister's in a new place. Get her a teddy bear to keep her company tonight."

"Mr. Fuzzy! Of course."

Joy backed slowly toward the door. "I don't know if I want to know about Mr. Fuzzy."

"My mom had a teddy bear called Mr. Fuzzy. She kept him all her life." The words tumbled out of Will in a rush, and he forgot that he and Joy had ever had a disagreement. "She gave me my own Mr. Fuzzy when I was little—he had two different colored eyes. I know she got two more for the twins, but I don't know whether she took them when she left…" He trailed off when he noticed how oddly Joy was looking at him. "Tell me exactly what you're thinking, right now." Joy hesitated. "I'm a resident, you're an intern. You have to tell me."

"I was just thinking that I can't decide whether it's weirder to see you babbling about teddy bears or to see you crying like you were when I came in."

"I wasn't crying," said Will reflexively. He never admitted to crying. He'd cried himself sick every night the summer his mother's throat was cut by Theo's crazy uncle-slash-cousin, but every morning when his father tried to talk to him, he'd ignored the overtures. The pattern had resumed when his father had broken off his engagement to his mother a few summers later: Will cried, Lucas queried, Will denied everything.

After that, until today, he just hadn't cried.

"All right," he told Joy. "Maybe I was crying."

Claire impatiently gestured for Ciara to hurry up. Philip only summoned her to his office after school for very important events. She barely saw Philip during the week. Once in a great while he would come home for dinner, and he usually managed to come to her swim meets and Tyler's baseball games, but he worked more hours in a day than some people worked in a month. Titan Industries was very important to Philip, and Claire never felt more like she was really growing up than when she was invited to meet him there. As far as she knew, Ciara had never even been in Philip's private office, but the voicemail Philip had left her earlier that day had made it clear that she was to bring Ciara to their meeting.

Ciara was wearing the highest pair of heels her mother had yet permitted her to buy, and she struggled to keep up with Claire. "Ow!" she shrieked as she tottered unsteadily and nearly lost her balance. "I broke my leg."

"I don't care," Claire told her, after surreptitiously ascertaining that Ciara's leg definitely wasn't broken. "We're going to be late."

"What does Uncle Philip want, anyway?" Ciara asked for the thousandth time.

"If you weren't wearing those shoes, we'd know already."

"I like these shoes. They're dramatic."

Privately, Claire thought that Ciara was more than dramatic enough without bright purple stilettos. And privately, she was a little annoyed when the first thing Philip said to either of them was "Nice shoes, Ciara."

"Thanks, Uncle Philip," Ciara beamed.

Philip sat with Claire and Ciara on the couch in his office. If Philip had sat beside Claire on one of the couches in their home, she would have cuddled against him like she had for as long as she could remember. But they were at Titan, and that meant that she was going to behave as a professional—as if she might be the head of Titan herself one day.

"I've called the two of you here because I need to ask a favor of you."

Claire sat up even straighter. "Anything. We'll do anything."

"Maybe *you* will," said Ciara.

Claire kicked Ciara's foot. A purple stiletto was sent flying across the room.

"We'll do anything," Ciara agreed.

"You both know that you have a cousin named Allie. She's my brother Lucas' daughter."

Claire and Ciara nodded in unison. They had often wondered what their mysterious missing cousins might be like, especially since Lucas had returned to Salem.

"From now on, Allie is going to be living with her father here in Salem." Philip held up his hand to stave off the inevitable torrent of questions, and with effort Claire choked it back. Her mother would learn everything in no time flat, and her mother would share. "I don't know for sure whether she'll be going to school with you, but if she is, I want the two of you to look out for her. She's a year younger than you, Ciara, and two years behind Claire-bear, so you won't see each other much. But if I hear that she's sitting alone in the cafeteria and the two of you are off giggling with your friends—"

"You don't have to tell us to do that," Claire objected, feeling genuinely stung. She was popular, but she couldn't help that. She lived in a mansion; her family was rich. Everyone in town admired Belle Black Brady and all of their children wanted to befriend her daughter. It wasn't Claire's fault. She didn't go in for the mind games and the teasing, and she certainly wasn't going to watch her own cousin be subjected to it.

"I know that," said Philip, but he didn't sound like he did. "She's had a hard time—and that is not an invitation for the two of you to go nosing around for details—so she might need a little extra help. I want you to be aware of that and give her the benefit of the doubt. And if anything out of the ordinary happens, I want you to let me know. Understood?"

"Understood," said Ciara.

"Understood," said Claire, managing not to cross her fingers in protest.

Then Philip's phone rang and his no-nonsense-no-fun receptionist rather unceremoniously ushered Claire and Ciara out.

"We have to go talk to your mom," Ciara told Claire. "She'll know the most and tell the most."

Claire nodded happily. In her irritation over Philip's lecture, she had almost forgotten to be excited that they were getting a new cousin.

Abby hadn't been sitting alone in Will's kitchen (close enough to provide some small security for Allie, far enough away to give Uncle Lucas some privacy) for five minutes when there was a rap at the back door. She glanced up, and felt much of her pent-up frustration vanish when she saw that the visitor was Chelsea.

They greeted each other with a long, laughing hug. It had been two years since they'd last been together, but Abby knew instantly that Chelsea was concealing something—and that she wouldn't be able to conceal it for much longer.

"Chelsea," she whispered in awe, grabbing her friend's hands. "You didn't tell me that you were pregnant again."

"I'm not," Chelsea protested unconvincingly. Despite Chelsea's rebellious teenage years, she'd never been much of a liar. At least, she'd never been an effective liar to Abby.

Abby let go of Chelsea's hands and reached for her abdomen instead. Chelsea flinched away. "You know I'm ticklish."

"Is that what you crazy kids are calling it nowadays? 'Ticklish?'"

Almost unwillingly, Chelsea stood still and allowed Abby's hands to trace what they would. "I can't hide it any more, can I?" Chelsea asked weakly when Abby gave the unborn baby a friendly pat through Chelsea's oversized sweater.

"Most people wouldn't grab you around the stomach to check," Abby said as she sank back into her chair.

"One of these days my grandmother is going to. The only reason she hasn't yet is because Mom is keeping her back with a whip and a chair."

"Why is it a secret?" Abby asked, and then tried to bite back the question. Three times Chelsea had announced her pregnancy to her family and friends. Three times, she and Nick had had to tell those same people that Chelsea had suffered a miscarriage. "I'm sorry. If you want it to be a secret, that's your business."

"It's not like that." Chelsea glanced around uneasily. "Who else is here?"

"Lucas and Allie. They're in the living room." Abby was so focused on Chelsea's unexpected pregnancy that she didn't notice Chelsea's complete non-reaction to Allie's name. Instead, Abby watched as Chelsea crept to the swinging door that led to the rest of the house and peeked through it. Having assured herself that she was safe from prying ears, she sat close to Abby and lowered her voice to a whisper.

"Abby, we've been best friends since we were fifteen years old. So when I tell you that something has to be a secret, it has to be a secret."

"Of course," said Abby, annoyed with herself for burning with curiosity as well as concern.

"No one knows the whole story. The only ones who know for sure that I'm pregnant are Mom and Will and now you."

"And Nick," Abby prompted.

Chelsea's eyes brightened and she shook her head. "Nick can't know. Not now."

"I know you guys are having problems, but he loves you and you know how much he wants this—it's his baby, isn't it?"

Chelsea scowled. "Yes, it's Nick's baby! I would never—there's no one else!"

"Then why are you lying to him?"

"I'm not lying. I'm just not saying anything."

It was Abby's turn to scowl. Chelsea had always pulled stunts like this, beginning when she and Nick had first gotten together over a decade before. She had hoped Chelsea had outgrown them. But then, who was she to judge? Chelsea and Nick had been married for five years. Abby had never dated someone for even two years, and had certainly never been close to marriage.

"Don't look at me like that," Chelsea whispered.

"Look at you like what?"

"Like you're disappointed that I'm going to hurt Nick again."

"Nick is my friend. And my cousin. But he's your husband, and I know you would never—you would never not share this with him without a really good reason."

"I wouldn't. I'm glad someone thinks that." Chelsea took a deep breath. "You remember that when Nick first came to Salem, he worked in the lab at the hospital. Before he went to Salem U."

"Sure." That had been Abby's last full summer in Salem.

"He was fired for, well, for unethical behavior or however they put it." Abby nodded. She remembered the circumstances. "That really bothered him. Someone like Nick takes those things so seriously, he fixates on them, turns them over and over in his mind."

"But he moved on. He married you, and I thought he loved it at Salem U."

"He does. But when he started getting published, started getting grants and recognition, nothing made him happier than when the hospital gave him access to the lab again. It was for some project when there was a fire at his facility at the school. And they never took that access back—he still has full privileges. And a few months ago the hospital started having problems with the lab again."

"Nick has nothing to do with it."

"No. But we both think that June Emerson does. And June Emerson has a raging crush on Nick. So we staged a breakup so she'd think she had a chance, get closer to him."

"And then you found out that you were pregnant."

"Right. And if Nick knew, he wouldn't be able to stand not being with me. He'd call the whole thing off, and he's getting closer. You and I both know he doesn't need to redeem himself, or prove anything, but he feels like he does. Besides, if that woman really is destroying evidence or fixing results, well, we should try to protect the people she's hurting. Shouldn't we?"

"Oh, Chelsea." Abby hugged her friend again. "There are so many ways this can go wrong."

"They won't," said Chelsea firmly. Her eyes were clear, bright, and dry again. "Now that I've said the whole thing out loud, I'm sure this is the right thing to do. I'm so glad you're here! I have other friends but, well, Morgan would have told Max. And Max would have gone right to Nick. The only reason Will doesn't is because I have him caught in the doctor-patient confidentiality thing. He hates that I'm doing this. He thinks I'm afraid to go through losing another baby with Nick and that's why I'm not telling him, but… well, just because Will went to medical school doesn't mean he knows everything. Right?"

"Right," Abby confirmed, because she could see that Chelsea didn't need anyone else to tell her that Will probably had a point. Over the years, Abby had called Will a baby, a bully, and a camera-nerd, but she had never called him stupid.

"Oh. Don't be mad at Philip for chloroforming you."

Abby blinked at the abrupt change of subject. Obviously, the topic of Chelsea's secret pregnancy was closed for the moment. "Why shouldn't I be mad, and how do you even know about that?"

"That's kind of why I came over. Philip told me you were here and asked me to keep you from making a federal case about it. But when you noticed…" Chelsea glanced at her concealed midsection, "I just felt like I had to tell you."

"I'm sorry, Chels. But if someone breaks into my parents' house, knocks me unconscious, and drags me across the Atlantic ocean without my permission, I'm probably going to be angry."

"I'm not saying don't be angry. Philip can always use more people screaming at him and telling him he's a jerk. Just don't go public with what happened. You know Allie belongs with Lucas, not with that DiMera monster who as good as killed Sami. We can't have any technicalities getting in the way of that."

"There wouldn't be any technicalities if he'd just waited for me to bring Allie here by her own choice, and mine."

"His people didn't know who you were, or what your angle was."

"I know. I know that. But the last time I saw Philip Kiriakis was years ago, and he was stealing a child against her will then, too."

"You know that Claire still thinks of him as another parent, with Belle and Shawn's blessing. He said he was calling her right after he called me to talk to her about taking care of Allie."

"After everything they went through to keep him away from Claire. I still have trouble believing that they all play happy family now."

"Oh, I was pissed when they got back to Salem and all of a sudden Philip was their BFF, after everything you and I and Nick did trying to get them away from him. But it's been a long time. This works for them. If you stay here for a while this time, you'll see. How long are you staying?"

"At least until Allie settles in and feels comfortable here with Lucas and Will. But I'm not exactly prepared to be here long. Philip's hired thugs didn't exactly give me a chance to pack."

"Then we should go shopping!" said Chelsea brightly.

"I don't want to leave Allie."

"We'll go to Salem Place's website and have them deliver. It'll be fun."

Abby smiled. Shopping with Chelsea was something she hadn't done in a long time, and it *would* be fun.

As they passed by the living room en route to commandeering Will's computer, They saw Allie jump to her feet in a swirl of blonde hair.

"What did you say?" Allie asked Lucas furiously.

TBC