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She was looking at the picture.
“They’re the same build,” Braden said. “But the face...it’s puffier.”
“He could’ve lost some weight,” Johnny pointed out.
“It could be him,” Mallory said.
“And just as easily not,” Braden responded. Then he turned to Tabitha. “I’ve seen Matt with Jason. They’re great together.”
When he saw her lips tremble, Johnny butted in. “No one’s said that Mark’s abusing Jackson or that he’d physically hurt him...” He added that more for Tabitha’s benefit. To his way of thinking, and from what he’d read, someone who was desperate enough to commit a crime like kidnapping and then start a new life with fake identities—unless there was some tremendous provocation like saving the child from horrific trauma—was not a stable person. And unstable people acted unpredictably when provoked or when the security of the world they’d created was threatened.
“Mark was wonderful with children. He worked as a nuclear medicine technician at the children’s hospital in Mission Viejo,” Tabitha said, her voice sounding strong and sure. And Johnny’s overboard he-man protective instinct tucked in its tail and retreated.
Where it had come from, and why, was a distinct question, but one he’d ponder another time.
Maybe.
Probably best just to let the unwarranted he-man emotions fade into the ether from which they’d come. And never call on them again.
* * *
“I trusted Mark enough to take my son to visit his dying mother.” Tabitha looked at both the Harrises now as she spoke. Emotions pushed at her again, but she was in control. Her feelings didn’t matter in the greater scheme of things.
She had a life to save. And knew exactly how to school herself to get the hard work done. It was what she did many, many days when she went to work. Someone had to do the difficult jobs that ultimately kept sick children alive, that nurtured them back to health, and then that same someone had to be able to say goodbye to those children with no expectation of seeing them again.
Of all children, Jackson wasn’t one she’d ever have thought she might never see again, but the duty was the same. You faced the difficult jobs necessary to save a life. And you kept your emotions under lock and key.
“You said the other day that Matt’s wife died of liver disease a year ago,” she began, her list in mind as she built her case. A case she’d spent much of the night running over and over in her mind. “Mark’s mother died of liver
disease a year ago.”
Braden threw up a hand. “But...” Mallory grabbed his arm, pulling it back down, stopping his words.
With a calm she definitely didn’t feel, and missing the touch of Johnny’s hand on her knee, Tabitha systematically listed the other similarities she’d found between Matt and Mark, Jason and Jackson. Then she talked about her months of searching. Of Johnny’s part in her quest to find her son. She told the divorced couple how her whole world had turned on its axis the night she’d seen that egg-hunt photo on Pinterest. How that picture had affected her differently right from the beginning. How she’d looked at that little boy and known she’d looked into those eyes before. Hundreds of times, as she’d bent over that small body on the changing table, in his crib, in his stroller and cared for her son.
Then she moved on. “Mark is a nice guy, a great conversationalist. He’s fun to be with,” she said, watching Braden carefully, knowing now that Mallory wasn’t the only one she’d have to convince to help her. Or, at least, not to inadvertently help the man posing as Matt get away with Jackson. “He’s also a bit of a loner in his personal life. I didn’t discover, until he’d chosen me to become his personal life, that he’s hugely codependent. He picks one person whose constant presence in his life makes him feel safe, and that allows him to be sociable, friendly, helpful to everyone around him. I later found out that he picked me when he first learned his mother was sick.”
The Harrises were listening to her. It was all she could ask for at this point. Encouraged, the intense need to reconnect with Jackson pushing at her, she continued. “When he and I first went out, it was with a group of people. We were celebrating the completion of a doctor’s residency and ended up sitting together. I think now it was by his design. Then, at the staff Christmas party a few weeks later, it was the same thing. Mark knew I was alone for the holiday and invited me to celebrate with him and his family—which turned out to be only his mother, but I didn’t know that at the time—and I declined. I’d spent the last several holidays volunteering at a children’s home and was doing it that year, too. But he stopped by that night with some home-baked cookies and a little present for me. It wasn’t much—just a package of my favorite candy bars, but the fact that he’d remembered the kind I liked and that he’d made the effort... It was so sweet.”
She felt Johnny stir beside her and thought about the fact that she was telling the Harrises more than she’d ever told him about her relationship with Jackson’s father. But she couldn’t get sidetracked. “We started going out after that, to various hospital functions and when groups of us would get together. Our...dates were always at his instigation. It was fun and easy,” she said, suddenly needing Johnny to hear this, too. To understand how she’d gotten involved with a kidnapper to begin with.
He’d never asked, and their partnership hadn’t required confessions.
“No expectations. Just friends who didn’t have partners and enjoyed being together.” She considered the next part of the story...had a vision of a four-year-old girl who’d spent her entire life in the hospital, a patient Tabitha had cared for since the little girl’s birth...she glanced down. She was prevented by law from revealing much of what had taken place. She took a breath, and then continued with what she could say. “Mark and I were involved with a case, involving the same long-term care patient. And we were both present when the patient died.”
So many of the staff had been there that day that they’d filled the room and spilled out into the hallway. Doctors, too. Sweet little Carrie had touched so many lives, changed so many lives, with her ever-present grin and resilient nature.
“That night, a lot of the people we hung out with went home to their loved ones, their families. Mark knew I’d...” She shook her head. Couldn’t say out loud that Carrie had been like a daughter to her—in spite of all the rules and regulations that prevented health professionals from crossing emotional boundaries. “He took me out to dinner. Because we’d both worked on the case, we could talk about it, which was what I really needed. He ordered a bottle of wine and one thing led to another...”
They’d had sex that night on the couch in her apartment. It had been a physical expression of intense emotion—a way to expel that emotion, to lose herself in feeling something other than despair—more than it was any kind of sexual attraction. And they’d used a condom.
Johnny pulled at the wet edges of the napkin under his glass of soda. Tabitha wondered how she’d ever believed those fingers should be entwined with hers. She and Johnny...they were friends. Wonderful friends.
It was when friends became more that the trouble started. She couldn’t afford to lose Johnny.
She looked around the table. No one drank. And no one said a word.
“That was the only night we ever slept together.” She hadn’t meant to say those words. She’d thought them. But they weren’t pertinent to the current situation.
