Her Lost and Found Baby

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Mallory looked at Tabitha, and Tabitha felt as though actual words passed between them. Mallory didn’t have children of her own—that was in her bio—but she radiated a sense of nurturing. An understanding of motherhood.

  Either that, or the months of incredible stress were taking their toll on Tabitha.

  “Any time I gave him peas,” Tabitha said, “he’d purse his lips and spit air, like this.” Pursing her own lips, she made the little spitting noises. She couldn’t look at Johnny, but was completely aware of the weight of his knee against hers. “Maybe you know a child who does that?”

  “It’s a common oral response in toddlers.”

  Tabitha conceded the point.

  “My son has blue eyes.” And blond hair, just like the boy in the copied picture she had in her purse.

  “That’s why you asked me about the Easter egg photo,” Mallory said next, not acknowledging that Jason’s eyes were blue.

  Before Tabitha could say anything else, she was stopped by Braden’s words. “You know who it is, Mal? You seriously think you have an abducted child in your daycare?”

  The moment had come. Mallory was either going to open the door or slam it in their faces. Johnny’s hand settled on Tabitha’s knee under the table.

  “I seriously have no idea.” Mallory’s words caused a whoosh of...disappointment.

  No! She couldn’t fail, Tabitha told herself. Wouldn’t fail. Jackson’s entire future rested on this.

  “But you see the likeness, don’t you?” Tabitha asked, her heart crying out for her son.

  Meeting her eyes, Mallory grimaced. “Maybe.” She tilted her head to the side. “But...I’m not sure.”

  “You think there’s really a chance, Mal?” Braden asked, and the look he gave his ex-wife, the genuine respect and knowing that seemed to be there, made Tabitha envy them. Which was completely ridiculous, considering they were divorced.

  “I think there’s a chance.”

  Tabitha heard the words. She felt Johnny’s hand squeeze her knee. And she got teary all over again.

  Chapter Seven

  “You know which child she’s talking about.” Braden’s gaze was focused intently on his ex-wife.

  She nodded.

  “Because of the resemblance?” He nodded toward the age-progressed photo still on the table. Three glasses of tea and one soda, all on pub napkins, sat untouched.

  Mallory took a moment to respond but eventually nodded again.

  Johnny watched the interplay between them, forcing his mind to review the situation in spite of an odd desire to put an arm around Tabitha and take on her emotional burden. Mallory’s reaction came close to convincing him that Jason was Jackson. And yet... Braden and Mallory exchanged a long glance, and then Braden asked, “Do I know him?”

  Clearly the man’s buy-in meant something to the daycare owner. Equally evident to Johnny was that the child’s identity had some connection to Braden.

  Because Mark was a tenant in his building, Johnny surmised. He wished, for Tabitha’s sake, they could get on with formulating a plan that would end with her son back in her arms.

  Or...Jason happy with his rightful father.

  Pictures of white male two-year-olds with blond hair could resemble each other. Particularly when one was an age progression, not an actual photo. “It’s Jason, Bray.” Mallory’s words seemed to stick in her throat.

  “What?” Braden’s strong blue gaze studied first Tabitha, then the photo in the page protector sitting next to the binder on the table, and then Johnny, before returning to Mallory. “Matt’s Jason? You think Matt Jamison kidnapped his own son? No.” He shook his head, then looked to Johnny, as though, man to man, he’d understand.

  They had a last name now. Jamison.

  “I know the guy,” Braden continued, fully focused on Johnny. “I train with him twice a week. I’m telling you that you’ve got the wrong man. There’s no way he’d kidnap a dog or cat, let alone a child. He’s as upright as they come.”

  “That’s not atypical behavior for someone with something to hide. You work harder to convince the people around you, and sometimes yourself, that you’re a good guy.” As an attorney who oversaw a slew of other attorneys in the various companies his father bought and sold, Johnny had to be able to read and deal with all kinds of people. He’d studied human behavior. He’d also done a lot of profile reading in the months he’d been traveling with Tabitha. “In this case, in a lot of ways he is a good guy, and the truth is always more compelling than even the best-told lies.”

  He’d done profiling in the unlikely event that they ever came face-to-face with the man, although he’d never actually expected to. On the outside chance Tabitha happened upon her son, the idea had been to call the police.

  Johnny pulled out an enlarged version of the photo of Mark from the AMBER Alert the year before.

  “Is this him?”

  Braden studied the picture more closely. Longer than he should’ve needed to if he was certain the man in the photo wasn’t his friend.

  “No,” he said eventually, but Johnny wasn’t convinced.

  “You’re sure?” he asked. “If it’s Mark, he’s most likely changed his appearance, grown a beard or his hair, changed the color, could be wearing contacts or gotten a tattoo...”

  “No,” Braden insisted again, just as Mallory said, “Bray?”

  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.

  She’d wanted Johnny to know, though. Even though it didn’t matter at all to their relationship.

  Braden took a breath, then straightened, and Tabitha waited for whatever he had to say. Again, a touch of Mallory’s hand silenced him.

  “That night changed Mark. It’s significant that earlier the same week he’d been told that his mother’s liver disease had progressed. Also of significance is that he still lived with her. He’d never gotten a place of his own, even in college. And until her liver failed, she’d always been healthy and active. There was no reason a thirty-year-old man needed to be living with her, other than the fact that she didn’t want him to go, didn’t want to be alone...and he didn’t want to leave her.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Matt at all,” Braden interjected.

  “It didn’t sound like the man I thought Mark was, either, not that there’s anything wrong with a man living at home, necessarily. It’s just that the codependency between them was in jeopardy with Martha, Mark’s mom, getting sick. And since it happened at the exact time he and I had an...intimate encounter, he was suddenly gluing himself to my side. Acting like we were a married couple intending to spend the rest of our lives together. Talking about moving in together. He was scaring me, but I got him to understand that I needed to take things slowly.

  “I was trying to figure out what was going on and how to extricate myself from the situation without making things awkward at work or in our crowd. And then I didn’t have to worry about any of that because he quit to take care of his mother. I had to threaten him with a restraining order to get him to stop calling me, but it worked. I didn’t hear from him again until we ran into each other at the hospital one day about six months later.”

  “You were showing,” Mallory said.

  Tabitha nodded. “Mark did the math. He knew I hadn’t been seeing anyone else, that I hadn’t had sex in over a year before him. We’d used a condom, but...”

  Johnny grabbed his soda. Downed the entire thing, then looked around, as though wanting help from the staff.

  “Was he at the hospital to see you?”

  Tabitha felt it should’ve seemed odd that Mallory had homed in on the same suspicion she’d had in the million times she’d rethought that meeting, but it didn’t. The other woman seemed to be in tune with Tabitha’s life—though, more likely, her nurturing personality just made her more empathetic than most.

  “He was there to attend a going-away party for one of his colleagues who’d joined the Peace Corps.” That was the story he’d given her. She’d known the woman slightly, knew her by name and knew she’d joined the Peace Corps. It wasn’t until later, after Jackson’s disappearance, that she’d wondered if there’d really been a going-away party, and then confirmed that there hadn’t been. At that point, the best she could figure was that someone had tipped him off to the fact that she was pregnant. There’d been no reason for any of their peers not to mention her pregnancy to him. From what she’d understood, though, none of them had seen o
r heard from Mark since he’d left the hospital.

  One of the officers on the case had suggested that Mark had been following her.

  She hated to think that.

  “Mark pressured me for parenting privileges.” She forced out the words. “He wanted to attend doctor’s appointments, to help financially, but I knew that until the baby was born, I could legally put him off. After that... I wasn’t going to have much choice. He could compel a DNA test and I’d lose any chance of coming to an amicable agreement with him. I had absolutely no reason to believe he’d hurt Jackson, no proof whatsoever that my son would ever be in any danger with him. On the contrary, there were dozens of people who could testify that Mark was wonderful with children. I certainly couldn’t use the fact that he lived with his ailing mother as a reason for him not to see his son.”

  She’d been trapped. Instinctively she’d known that something wasn’t right with Mark, but she’d had no evidence to back that up. Earlier, when she’d threatened him with a restraining order, he’d immediately stopped harassing her. “So I told him that while I wasn’t naming him on the birth certificate and wanted no money from him, if he’d leave the DNA issue alone, I’d let him have regular visitations with Jackson and would include him in major life events like birthdays, future school functions and sporting activities.”

  “Sounds reasonable,” Mallory said.

  Tabitha looked at Johnny when he grunted. “I would’ve advised you to get it in writing,” he said, then added, “But you came up with what was probably the best-case scenario, under the circumstances.” She couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

  She wasn’t privy to his inner thoughts. Didn’t expect them. And suddenly needed them.

  “It worked for that first year. Mark had Jackson regularly, but never overnight because of his mother’s needs. I always dropped him off and I’d usually pick him up, too, since Mark had his mother to contend with. Jackson was always fine. Never fussy or seemingly upset. He was always dry and the bottles I sent with him were empty and cleaned. That last time I dropped him off, though... Mark’s mom had died, but he hadn’t told me. Or anyone we knew. He seemed perfectly normal when I dropped Jackson off. I had no idea...”