Enraptured

by Ginger Voight

  I had always believed you to be my salvation, dear Rachel.

  Now we have proof that it’s true.

  Of course, he was still insecure and scared and vulnerable. All these things he confessed in his letters rather than to me.

  Every time I see you with Alex, I can’t help but think of you in his arms and in his bed. It’s like a knife in my gut. You fit together in a way you and I never will. Do you see it too? Do you regret your choice? Do you long for his touch and merely tolerate mine?

  I would ask you these questions if I were not afraid of the answer.

  These were questions he pondered until the night where we almost lost the babies.

  Tonight I saw the transformation into my father complete. I hurt you and I nearly cost us our children. All the way to the hospital I bargained with God. If he saved them, if he saved you, I would do whatever I needed to do to honor this family I have been given… this love I do not deserve.

  I am not my father.

  I give my life to you, Rachel. Every moment of every day. I give you my heart and all that I am, good and bad, weak and strong. And maybe one day I will have made up for my many sins and finally be worthy of the love you so generously shared.

  This is my legacy now.

  It was the last letter that he wrote.

  He didn’t need to write any more because he didn’t need to hide any more. The minute he confessed his love to me, it opened him up to me, to our children and ultimately to Alex as well.

  We had freed him from his lonely room.

  That night when Alex came to visit, I handed him the book.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  “When Drew was a kid, he started writing letters to express those things he felt he couldn’t otherwise. They started as letters to your father, but over the years he began addressing them to anyone he didn’t feel he could share these thoughts with face to face.”

  He opened up the book, startled by the familiar penmanship of the scanned letters, forgotten remnants of a lost eleven-year-old boy.

  “This is your real brother, Alex,” I said softly. “And you deserve to know him.”

  Alex spent the next couple of weeks engrossed in the book. Like me, he had to take many breaks when the emotion got too raw. Unlike me, he couldn’t read it alone. Much of the time he read it right in my hospital room, on the chair by the window, as I dozed, read or simply waited nearby.

  There were times he would go to Drew’s hospital room, the book tucked under his arm, perhaps to read some of those old letters to his brother as a way to draw him back to us.

  Or answer the questions Drew posed in those books, painful questions that deserved answers.

  Alex finished reading on August 1st.

  My water broke two days later.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Because my condition had been so meticulously monitored for weeks, Dr. Rombach felt confident that I could deliver both babies naturally, rather than a C-section. They both presented head down, and neither shared an amniotic sac. Once the first sac broke, the pain began in earnest. Alex was my coach as the hours passed. He held my hand and helped me breathe through each contraction until my epidural was finally administered that afternoon.

  It gave us a chance to talk as we waited for nature to take its course. “You never did tell me what names you have picked out.”

  I laughed. “It’s a secret.”

  “The minute your legs go up in stirrups, there are no secrets,” he grinned.

  I returned the smile. “Drew picked the names,” I finally confessed. “He wanted something unusual so that our children could break from tradition and carve their own path.”

  “Please don’t tell me you’re naming the babies after fruit or something.”

  I chuckled as I shook my head. “Remember the comics he used to read?” He nodded. “There were a couple of characters he used to idolize in his youth as strong, uncompromising individuals whose destinies were much bigger that they ever believed possible.”

  “That’s a lot of pressure to put on a little baby,” he said softly.

  I caressed my vast tummy. “They’re strong. They’re Fullertons.”

  He reached over to place his hand on my stomach, completing the family circle.

  As much as we had stalled labor for months, dilating to deliver seemed to take forever. It was midnight before we were moved into the operating room.

  I was terrified that something might go wrong, but Alex’s voice was soothing in my ear as he kept me focused. “Look in my eyes,” he would say. He sang under his breath, making me wish I had the foresight to ask him to bring his guitar. What a gentle and loving entrance into the world that would have been.

  The first baby came quickly, with a loud yowl to announce her arrival. Both Alex and I were reduced to tears when we realized how much like a Fullerton she already looked. She had a shock of black hair and her father’s sharp features, and she had no problem at all running the joint the minute she took her first breath.

  I held the warm, squiggly baby to my breast. “Winter,” I whispered, anointing her with the name her father had chosen for her as I kissed her gently on the forehead.

  She was whisked from my arms to be weighed and checked, while Dr. Rombach delivered the second baby. Raine, as it turned out, was far more reluctant to leave the womb she had called home for long months. Likewise her cry was gentler and quieter. I could tell right away that this smaller baby would be far less demanding. She barely made a peep as she looked into my eyes for the first time. It was like she knew something we didn’t.

  Alex fell in love with her from the moment they placed her into his arms.

  The babies were small, weighing roughly five pounds each. Winter weighed a little more, Raine weighed a little less, but they were completely healthy otherwise. It made all the time spent in bed for months worthwhile, even if that meant I couldn’t help Alex fight for Jonathan, or exonerate Drew.

  These babies had been my purpose.

  When I lost Jason years ago, I never thought I would once again hold a baby to my breast. Now I had two. I was overwhelmed by the gift of them, and the miracle of them.

  And I couldn’t wait to share them with Drew.

  The next day a nurse finally rolled me to Drew’s room as Alex walked alongside, both of us carrying our precious cargo. My heart beat like a galloping horse as we approached his door. It had been two months since I had seen him, the last time being on a Santa Barbara sidewalk all covered in blood.

  I had no idea what to expect.

  My hands shook as I clutched Winter closer, and they rolled me to the bed.

  The Drew I knew and loved did not lie in that bed. This was another man entirely, an older man, a broken man. His neck arched, his mouth gaped open and skin sunk in around his strong features. Much of his thick, dark hair had either fallen out or been shaved away, and he looked like he had aged twenty years in the two months he’d been unconscious. There was a reassuring drone of the heart monitor nearby, but I saw no sign of life in the rigid figure on the bed. It was as though he was a scientific experiment, half human, half machine.

  I couldn’t stop my strangled cry if I wanted to. This agitated Winter, who immediately let the world know it.

  Alex stepped toward the bed. “I brought a surprise,” he said softly to his brother. “You’ve added two beautiful girls to the Fullerton brood. Meet your daughters, Winter and Raine.”

  I couldn’t even speak. All I could do is stare at the shell of a man I loved. Alex sent me a reassuring glance.

  “Rachel’s here too. Just like I promised.”

  The nurse lifted Winter from my arms and I rolled closer to touch his icy hand. I covered it with both of mine, to will my life into his body. “Drew,” I managed to croak. “I’m here.”

  As earnestly as we all watched for any sign of awareness, the monitor beeped on and Drew’s body stayed in its frozen state. Alex nodded to the nurse and they exited to give us time alone.


  I took a deep, shaking breath. “I’m sorry it has taken me so long to come,” I said. “But if you could see our girls, you’d know it was worth it. Everything,” I eked, “everything was worth it.”

  I thought about our long journey that began with an email a lifetime ago.

  “I found your letters,” I confessed. “I read every one. I wish…,” I started, but then shook my head. “It doesn’t matter what I wish. Maybe this was just our journey to walk, exactly the way we have walked it.” I traced his hand with my fingers. “You often wrote of me being your salvation. You were mine, Drew. I was living a half-life before I met you. I thought that’s what I deserved. And you gave me this life that I could have never imagined for myself. All I can possibly hope in return is that I gave you a love you never imagined for yourself. I am proud to be your wife. I am honored to be the mother of your children. And if,” I started, before I was strangled by a wretched sob. “If you come back to me, I’ll spend every single day I have left on this earth giving you all the love you always deserved. No matter what.”

  His hand remained limp in mine and I wept silently at his bedside.

  I was devastated as they returned me to my hospital room. I wanted to ask Alex why he didn’t warn me for what I was about to see, but I knew it was because I never would have believed it, any more than I believed what the doctors had told me.

  I was still stuck in stage one: denial.

  When we returned to the mansion a few days later, I was surprised to find that Millicent had returned with Max. They were all waiting, with Cleo and Harrison, with balloons and a big cake and lots of love to patch up my broken heart. They fawned over the babies, especially Max. Now that he was the older cousin, he adopted Jonathan’s caregiver attitude. He was willing to help in any way possible, whether it was feeding the babies or rocking them to sleep.

  That night I returned to the bedroom upstairs. It felt like a tomb. I opened his closet and sank to my knees in front of his clothes. They hung silently, waiting for him to return.

  But the man who used to wear them might never return.

  I knew that now.

  I juggled this grief with the wonder of new motherhood. I often cuddled the babies in the bed I had shared with Drew, to breathe life back into that dark room where loss lurked in the shadows. Max would join me, but Alex never would. “It’s his room,” he said quietly. “And you’re his wife.”

  Now that the babies had been born, and all the other promises he had made to Drew had crumbled, the only thing he could offer his brother was his honor. And that was what he was determined to give.

  Despite our full house and the two babies who demanded my attention, I truly felt lonelier than I ever remember feeling in that house. Whether it was Drew’s unused clothes or Jonathan’s closed bedroom door, I knew that our family was still incomplete, still fractured.

  Even Yoda couldn’t muster the same enthusiasm.

  I decided I wanted to petition the judge to fight for custody of Jonathan. Drew still lived and therefore he still had a right to his son.

  It was our last hope to pull him back from the abyss. And I was ready to fight anyone I had to in order to make it happen.

  “If only we could get another judge,” Alex remarked when I told him of my plan.

  “Why can’t we?” I asked.

  I was a Fullerton now. It was time to act like one. Limitations were for other people, not for us, and I was no longer content to be held hostage to the whims of others.

  Inevitably this one small decision would jumpstart a chain of events none of us saw coming… one that would change everything forever.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Among Alex Fullerton’s many talents was the uncanny ability to uncover hidden information, especially when it came to protecting his nephew. As he dug around to find a judge more sympathetic to our situation, he unearthed a history between Judge Pemberton and Aazim Jaffer Hosein that had heretofore been undiscovered. She had operated as one of their family attorneys before she had been assigned to the bench, and TruNews had once courted her for her expert opinion for a show that they had developed but never made it to air.

  This proved a conflict of interest, especially now that Aazim and Elise were engaged. This resulted in us being delivered right back to Judge Schultz. We appeared before the judge by the beginning of September, only to learn that Jonathan had been shipped off to a boarding school on the East Coast. His grades were so low, and his misconduct so high, that he was on the verge of being expelled yet again, mere weeks after being admitted.

  The judge was fatigued by this ongoing battle. He ordered visitations, hoping that Jonathan would be able to turn his behavior around if he was able to do the one thing he wanted to do more than anything: see his ailing father.

  This posed a problem, as there were restraining orders still in place for Alex and me, and Zoe no longer worked for Elise. Once Jonathan headed east, so did Zoe – to work for yet another family under the EAL umbrella.

  Alex phoned her that night, but she was a different girl than the one we met earlier that year. She was frightened and didn’t want to encourage any kind of relationship between them.

  Within days, Alex headed on a plane to New York to figure out what was going on. He met up with Agent Delgado and they managed to convince Zoe to meet them in secret. At first she had been reluctant to give them any information. She was terrified to speak.

  As it turned out, she had reason to be.

  She finally confessed that Troy De Havilland had been a frequent visitor while she lived with Elise. She began to suspect that they were sleeping together, since their conversations were frequent and secretive. “They had a fight the day before Memorial Day,” she told Alex. “He told her he wasn’t going to let her and Aazim go to his party in Santa Barbara. He told her that he had things under control and for her to be patient.”

  The night of the party, Jonathan had disappeared. “She was frantic because she knew he was on his way to Santa Barbara. She was on the phone all morning, as was Aazim. It felt like damage control, but I wasn’t sure why.”

  “Like they knew what was coming,” I said to Alex when he relayed the story to me that evening on the phone.

  “They knew,” he confirmed.

  As time passed, Zoe began to uncover information that linked Troy to both Elise and Aazim. She didn’t like the way Elise treated Drew’s fate like justice served, and she especially didn’t like that she would say such things around Jonathan when he was so clearly distraught.

  “She began using herself as a shield,” Alex told me. “To protect him.”

  And that was when Troy confronted her.

  Thanks to her foreign status, he had a bargaining chip. He told her to forget all about Drew, Elise and Jonathan, and he’d set her up with a new family back east. And of course, she couldn’t refuse, or else she risked deportation.

  That night Agent Delgado began investigating phone and bank records. Within three days she had a paper trail that connected one of Aazim’s companies to Pablo Rojas.

  This company also made sizable donations to Troy’s various fundraisers, and all the money passed through Prescott Petroleum Bank in Houston.

  It was just the breakthrough we needed.

  The day that Elise was supposed to bring Jonathan to the house for a visit, Agent Delgado was already in place to meet her. This was a good thing, considering she didn’t bring Jonathan with her at all, citing her bogus RO as a reason. She had come to double down on her threat to take him to Dubai when she married Aazim.

  She was shocked to see federal agents waiting for her. She glared at Alex. “What kind of game are you playing now?” she wanted to know, though I could see fear in her eyes as they darted from Agent Delgado to Alex.

  “That’s what we’d like to know,” Martina said as she handed her a printout that detailed what they already knew. “What part did you play in the fall of Teton Tech?”

  “I don’t know what you are talking a
bout,” she scoffed. “Anything business related goes through Aazim.”

  “Good to know. Considering two more federal agents are waiting to greet his plane.” Her eyes widened. “Maybe you can tell us about this $100,000 ‘donation’ to Villa de Rojas. It was posted May 30.”

  She shrugged. “Not my money,” she denied easily.

  “But it was your plan,” Martina prodded. “A plan for revenge. A plan to get rid of Drew Fullerton once and for all so you could get his son, and his inheritance, all to yourself?”

  Her chin trembled as she shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she mumbled again, only this time far less convincingly.

  My blood ran cold as I watched her squirm. Alex squeezed my hand in his.

  “That’s fine,” Agent Delgado quipped. “We can take it to court. Present the evidence we’ve unearthed so far, which I’m sure is only the tip of the iceberg. We have enough here to seek, at the very least, conspiracy to commit murder. So I hope orange is one of your wedding colors, because you will see jail time for what you’ve done.”

  “I didn’t do anything!” she exploded. “It wasn’t my money. He didn’t even die!”

  “You bitch!” Alex roared as he flew across the room, only to be held back by two burly federal agents.

  Agent Delgado held up a hand to Alex. She turned back to Elise. “You’ll be relieved to know that you’re not the one I’m after. I’m after Troy and Aazim, and anyone in EAL who set up companies to launder money for the Rojas cartel. I mean, I’ll take you if that’s all I can get. And I guarantee they’ll all watch you go down in flames, letting you take the fall while they skate free – again. So it really is up to you. If you confess we can work on a plea bargain or reduce your sentence. But I need something concrete to take down De Havilland. If you have it, now is the time to offer it.”