Enraptured

by Ginger Voight

  The other agents stepped in behind her. She burst into tears as she nodded. “It was Troy’s idea. He suspected that Alex and Drew were working with federal agents and threatening his operation. He knew he needed to stop them. He said that as long as Drew was alive, he’d never let me have custody. But as soon as Drew was gone, I could have Jonathan and his whole inheritance. He swore no one would trace it back to us because of Drew’s own alliances with Rojas.”

  “And you can prove it?” Martina asked.

  Again she nodded. “Aazim knew we couldn’t trust him. All the communication was recorded, every phone call, every visit. He knew that even if we couldn’t use it in court, he could put it on TruNews and take down Troy’s career. So we both had equal leverage.”

  Alex glared at her as she sobbed into her hands. “How could you do this, Elise?”

  “You don’t know what it was like!” she cried out. “I never had control of my life. First it was my parents, then it was Drew. I just wanted to stop being a victim for once! There wasn’t any other way. He was never going to be happy until he took Jonathan away from me forever.”

  “You’ve done that to yourself,” I told her.

  Martina handed her paperwork. “As part of a plea bargain, you will be asked to relinquish your parental rights to Jonathan Fullerton. You can fight it, of course, but conspiracy to kill his father would almost certainly ensure those rights are stricken from you permanently anyway. This way, you can relinquish voluntarily, and Mrs. Fullerton can begin adoption proceedings as soon as possible.”

  Elise’s deadened eyes met mine. It was the final shot fired in the war between us, and we both knew it. She took the paperwork. “Do you have a pen?” she asked Agent Delgado.

  “You can have your lawyer look it over,” I suggested, but she shook her head, completely defeated.

  “I just want it over. I just want it all over.” She scribbled her consent across the dotted line, as our lawyer, and several federal agents, bore witness to it.

  They led her out to the dark car in the driveway, and that was the last I saw of Elise McAuliffe.

  Within hours Jonathan Fullerton returned to his home in Beverly Hills. He flew into my arms the minute he saw me, and I sank to my knees to hold him tight. “Mom,” he whispered into my neck, and I nodded through my tears. At last it would be true.

  He had several priorities when he returned home. He wanted to say hello to Yoda of course, but he also wanted to meet his new sisters. He stared down at the round crib they shared. “Girls,” he pondered momentarily, and wondrously. Finally he decided, “Cool,” with a smile.

  The next thing he wanted to do was see Drew. Both Alex and I agreed that we should warn him about how different his father looked, and be fully honest with him about his prognosis. I took him by the hand and led him up to his room.

  “We’re not going to go see your father today,” I announced softly.

  “Why not?”

  I took a deep breath. “Your father has been very sick, Jonathan. His body has been fighting a losing battle for months. When you see him, it will be a shock. It was for me,” I added, telling him that I hadn’t seen Drew in the two months it took me to have the girls. “But I have something for you.”

  He sat on his bed and I sat next to him. I produced a book from his nightstand. “When your dad was a little boy, about your age now, he started writing letters to his dad. They contained all the things he never felt he could say to him. Like a journal.”

  He nodded as he opened the book.

  “This is your real father, Jonathan. No matter what you see in that hospital tomorrow, or even what you remember from the past. This is his heart. These are his dreams. This is his gift,” I concluded with a catch in my throat.

  He nodded again as he ran his hand along the page.

  I left him to read privately and he didn’t emerge from his room until ten o’clock the following morning. He was dressed in a dark suit as he descended the stairs. Alex and I gathered the girls and we all headed to the hospital.

  I watched Jonathan’s face as he entered Drew’s hospital room. His eyes misted as he took it all in, but his chin tipped upwards in an effort to be strong. He walked to Drew’s bedside and took his hand in his. “Can I be alone with him?” he asked without looking at us.

  I nodded and followed Alex out of the room. Twenty minutes later Jonathan joined us in the waiting area near the nurses’ station. His eyes were bloodshot and his nose was red, but he was completely composed as he called us all back into the room. Nothing had changed for Drew, even with Jonathan’s return.

  Jonathan took a deep breath before he spoke. “Dad once talked about being in a lonely room. He felt like a prisoner there. And we all know what that feels like.”

  I swallowed hard as I listened.

  Jonathan took his father’s hand in his. “I think it’s time we open the door,” he said as his voice shook.

  Alex suppressed a cry as he turned away. I walked over to Jonathan and placed my hand on his shoulder. “Are you sure?”

  He looked up at me. “Weren’t you?”

  I thought back to that hospital room in Texas, where my baby boy had lingered but a week.

  I had held onto Drew much, much longer. And it wasn’t fair to him. I nodded.

  We called Dr. Vidal, who brought the necessary forms. Jonathan refused to leave. He wanted to be there as the machines were switched off and the wait for death began.

  We listened to Drew’s heartbeat slow as each second passed. Alex walked over to his brother’s side. There were tears in his eyes as he bent to whisper something in Drew’s ear. His hand covered Drew’s for a moment. “You will always be my hero,” he managed before he finally had to turn away.

  Jonathan was next. He crawled into bed next to Drew and held his hand tight as he tried his best to contain the tears that demanded to fall. “I’ll never let you down, Dad,” he confessed in a broken whisper. “I promise.”

  Finally I walked to my husband’s side. I could barely see his face through my own tears as I brushed my hand through his hair. There were no words that could ever mean as much as the three I whispered as I leaned forward and kissed his lips one last time.

  “I love you.”

  The monitor finally silenced.

  Our Drew was finally free to fly away.

  Epilogue

  I stared out the window at the vast green pasture. Ominous clouds gathered overhead, a thunderstorm in the making. I smiled to myself. God, I had missed Texas.

  A throng of rowdy pre-teens raced through the spacious kitchen where I stood, barreling through the double doors that led to the back yard. Nancy shook her head with a smile as she approached. “I swear that brood gets louder every single time they get together.”

  I laughed. “I happen to love that sound,” I informed her.

  It was the sound of life… of love, of laugher and family. And it was my favorite sound in the world.

  She wrapped an arm around me. “So what do you want me to do?”

  “The individual cakes are already frosted,” I said, referring to two tiny round cakes decorated in white and pink frosting. “I’m finishing the big cake,” I said as I piped yellow frosting onto a chocolate sheet cake. “Guess all that needs to be done is take the meat out to the grill masters.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Masters, my ass. Greg’s eyebrows are still growing in. Did you have to buy a grill the size of Toledo?”

  I held up my hands. “Take it up with Alex. I handle the garden. He handles the barbecue. That’s the deal.”

  Millicent laughed from her position at the kitchen table, where she cut up vegetables for the various salads. “He’s certainly taken his transplanted Texan status to heart.”

  “We’re only here four months a year,” Alex announced as he walked through the kitchen, picking up on the conversation. “I say, go big or go home.”

  We all looked at him with a smirk. “Go home!”

  “I don’t have to take
this,” he said as he raised his nose in the air. “I’m going home.”

  He swaggered outside where all the kids waited.

  Jonathan sat on a swing next to Becca, where he skillfully strummed his guitar. The twins, now officially a year old that very day, clapped their hands as they listened.

  They adored their big brother. He was perhaps their favorite human alive.

  I heaved a sated sigh as I watched them. I had fought long and hard for all of them, and I adored them beyond measure. I had finally adopted Jonathan, but I no longer homeschooled. He belonged to a private academy now, one where he got excellent grades and had an even better reputation. He had grown up far quicker than he should have, but he was managing this early maturity well. He was on track to head to college in a little less than four years, and he was determined to earn it by the sweat of his brow, rather than the power of his last name.

  He would be president of Fullerton Enterprises International by the time he turned twenty-one.

  After a year spent backpacking in Europe, anyway.

  There was really no hurry. FEI finally started to stabilize once again shortly after Troy De Havilland was indicted for his part in Teton Tech and the money laundering scandal. Alex tried to step into his brother’s shoes for about six weeks before he realized everyone would be much happier if he left such matters to those who thrived in an office environment. He missed his horses and fresh air, so he turned the business over to the vice president and backed out of the executive life gracefully and happily. He maintained a controlling interest, and knew enough to keep us from wandering down any nefarious road like before, but he was back on the ranch by Christmas, as were we all.

  After Drew’s funeral, we all rather collectively decided to shutter the house in Beverly Hills. We couldn’t bear to sell it, but the memories there were much too painful for all of us. Instead, we moved to the ranch and I allowed my children to live much like their grandmother before them.

  There was never a question of us all staying together. We were a family, as unconventional as it was. We needed each other, and there was no turning back for any of us.

  But it wasn’t the same as before, either. Alex and I were devoted to Drew’s memory, I as his wife and he as his brother. Our focus was on the children. We had a full house now, two boys and two girls, and that became the source of our joy.

  We all fell into a rhythm together that quite simply fit.

  By spring, I decided I wanted to expand our family back to Texas as well. My girls had proud Texas roots, and I wanted them to know where they came from.

  We bought a ranch just west of Dallas/Fort Worth, where we could have the peaceful country life that we all had come to treasure. It was our summer home, and everyone, including Cleo and Harrison, were welcome.

  In fact, Cleo and Harrison liked it so much they decided they wanted to stay in Texas year-round. And I could hardly blame them, even on days like this when the temperatures inched towards three-digits and humidity hung heavy in the air.

  Summers in Texas were why God made air conditioning. Besides, if one didn’t like the weather in Texas, one only had to wait around fifteen minutes or so for it to change.

  And that was really the most fun of all.

  We’d already experienced several thunderstorms since we had arrived in late May. My California guys loved it. Alex and Jonathan would sit on the porch for hours watching lightning cut across the darkened skies, and Jonathan’s artist eye already had him itching to capture the phenomenon on film. He’d scan the skies eagerly for his next opportunity, making our wraparound porch one of his favorite hangouts on the ranch.

  That was where the twins’ birthday party ultimately ended up for that very reason. Alex played his guitar, along with some help from Jonathan, as rain poured around us. I held both girls in the swing, and they rested against either breast. My arms, and my heart, were full.

  But days like this were understandably challenging. Every ‘first’ we had experienced in this past year reminded me of the losses we had all suffered. Drew wasn’t there to see his daughters take their first steps or say their first words.

  And now he was missing their first birthday party.

  He had essentially been gone from before they were born, and that weighed heavy on my heart anytime I stopped to think about it.

  Thankfully chasing twins around every day gave me little time to do so. The nights were the worst part of it, where the house got quiet and my bed got lonelier. I thought about all the time we wasted and regret chased me like a mongrel dog.

  Fortunately things were a lot simpler for my girls. Even though their father was gone, Alex and Jonathan in particular were devoted to keeping him alive for them, so they got to know the best part of Drew Fullerton, a man so much larger than his tragically shortened life. Almost every night Jonathan would read to them from his dad’s book of letters. Alex would tell them all about Drew as a child, and had created several photo albums for them so they would know who he was and how much he was loved.

  When Winter had mimicked her favorite cousin Max and mistakenly called him “Daddy,” Alex corrected her gently and showed her Drew’s picture. “That’s your daddy, sweetheart,” he said with a smile. “But I love you, just like he does.”

  How I loved him when he did such things.

  In fact, the love I had for Alex before couldn’t hold a match to my feelings for him now. He had proven himself in every sense of the word as my partner, my friend, and my family. I couldn’t imagine my life without him, nor did he give me any reason to.

  I knew he would take care of us and be there for us until it was his turn to shuffle off this mortal coil, just like there was no question that I would be there for him.

  There were no others. We were it.

  Jonathan had tried to match-make in recent months, to let us know it was okay if we ever decided to take our relationship to the next step. There were no secrets anymore, so he understood how complicated our relationship had been in the past. It had taken all these months for him to make peace with it, and when he did he decided, “If you can’t be with Dad, you should be with Alex. It’s your turn to be happy, Mom.”

  I hugged him tight. “You make me happy, Jonathan. You and your sisters.”

  While my insightful son insisted that I needed more, Alex and I saw no point to rush into anything. Our relationship was already transcendent in so many ways. It was more solid than a marriage, and so much deeper than a friendship.

  And though we weren’t ashamed of what we shared, then or now, Drew’s ghost remained a third wheel in our relationship. We still had so much to work through, and we refused to exorcise our grief in bed.

  We were content to let what was meant to be happen at its own pace.

  I liked to think of Drew as our guardian angel.

  When the time was right, he would let us know.

  Little did I realize that we would have his answer before we returned to California.

  The weather remained stormy for the week following the twins’ birthday. We had a basement, thankfully, so that we had a place to go if it got really severe. As soon as the sirens went off that Thursday afternoon, I corralled everyone down the stairs to safety. Millicent and Jonathan took Max and the twins, while Cleo and Harrison rounded up some supplies.

  I walked outside to look for Alex. He had been at the stables for much of the morning, and I grew concerned that he had yet to return. I peered over the darkening horizon down the pasture toward our stables, but it was too far away to see anything. I glanced around at the sky, looking for any sign of a funnel cloud or rotation, before I darted down the path to find him.

  The wind whipped my hair around my face so hard it felt like whips cutting into my skin. Hard raindrops fell, propelling me faster as I ran down the hill, screaming his name.

  I couldn’t even hear my own voice over the thunder and the wind.

  The stables were dark as I reached them. “Alex!” I cried as I kept one eye to the churning
clouds above. Panic rose like acidic bile in my throat. I couldn’t go through this again. I couldn’t lose someone else… and I most certainly couldn’t lose Alex. He was my rock.

  My hero.

  “Alex!”

  The sirens wailed loud as hail began to pummel the top of the stables, giant chunks of ice that bounced off the roof and onto the ground in quarter-sized rocks. I looked back at the house, which seemed much further away than it normally did. A sizzling bolt of cloud to ground lightning hit the pasture off in the distance before I could even think about making a break for it.

  Yet exposed as I was, I wasn’t afraid for myself. I worried for my children, even though they were relatively safe and secure in the basement of our home. And I worried about Alex, since I had no idea where he was at all.

  I slid down onto the cold ground in the middle stall. The walls rattled from the claps of thunder, and I ended up curling into a ball with my hands on my ears to buffer the sound.

  I could barely hear the muffled, “Rachel!” being called from the distance.

  I shot to my feet in time to see Alex sprint down the hill from the house. I nearly cried with relief as he approached, but he was as ominous as the thunderclouds above us.

  “What the fuck did you think you were doing?” he yelled as he reached the stall. “Are you crazy? Why would you come out here?”

  “I thought you were here,” I tried to explain, but he was livid.

  “How could you risk something happening to you?” he raged as he grabbed me roughly by the arms. “Do you know how stupid that is? You have children that depend on you, Rachel!”

  “And I depend on you!” I shouted back, and he released me just as roughly. “Do you know what would happen to me if I lost you?”

  “Me? I’m nothing!” he shouted right back at me. “I’m an uncle. A relative. A stand-in.”

  Rain drenched us as I stared at him. “Is that really what you think you are?”

  He considered the question that had haunted him his whole life. “It should have been me!” he finally snapped as he turned away.