Together Again (Never Too Late Book 5)

by Aiden Bates

  She smiled and her shoulders loosened up. "So, it's not bad?"

  "No. It's your home. Our place, it's a home for you, and you'll always be welcome there. It's still not where you grew up." He wrinkled his nose at her. "No one's going to fault you for feeling homesick."

  They ordered their lunches. "My DNA test results came back. A counselor went over them with me. My birth parents are there. At the hotel." She toyed with her napkin, eyes on the table.

  "They are." He nodded, and kept his posture relaxed. "Have you seen them?"

  "I haven't spoken to them yet, but there's one woman there, it's like looking into a mirror and watching myself age. I mean my mom told me that when she got me my mom was too busy to pay attention to me, and I was crying. She had too many children around her, and she was yelling, and she clearly couldn't care for me. I was clearly neglected, so were they all—"

  "It probably looked that way to her." Pat covered her hand with his. "The fact is, you were with your aunt, who was watching her own kids, and several other children, while your mother went to an appointment. Your parents were thoroughly investigated, and they found no signs of neglect."

  "I know." She looked out the window again. "I just have no idea what to think right now. I don't know what I'm going to do. I want to meet them, but I'm afraid. I don't know them, they don't know me."

  "You don't just have to pick up and move right back in with them. Not yet. That's something you can talk about between yourselves, and work up to." He got her to lift her eyes and made sure to smile. "Maybe you can go for visits with them, and then maybe an overnight here and there. I don't know how this is supposed to work. I usually do murder cases."

  "Yikes." She grimaced.

  "I'll admit that this is a little different, but it's nice to work for live 'clients.' Anyway, you're in our lives, you're part of our family now too. Elias and I aren't going to kick you out or anything. And the Randalls, they get it. They want you back, of course. They love you, even if they don't know you. But because they love you, they're willing to wait for you and take things at your pace. That's what Elias told me anyway."

  She frowned. "He's spoken to them?"

  "He spoke to them before he even met you. They were the first family he called, one of the first ones on his list." Pat chuckled. "They sought him out when they got to the hotel, and he's proud enough of you that he spoke to them a bit. He didn't want to get you worked up until the DNA came back, though."

  She hummed. "I guess that makes sense. I'm still not sure how I feel about it, but I guess that makes some sense." The waitress dropped off their lunch orders. "Do you think that they'd be okay with meeting up, after we get back?"

  "Let's text Elias and find out?"

  Elias replied, very soon, that they were willing. The pair wolfed down their food and ordered a smoothie for Elias before heading back to the hotel. Elias hadn't been feeling all that great lately, but the smoothie might help a little.

  The smoothie didn't fail to delight and earned Pat a kiss to boot. "You're the best alpha ever." He turned to Merab. "Are you ready for this?"

  She straightened her shoulders. "I don't think I'll ever be 'ready.' But I'm going to do it anyway." She held Pat's hand as they headed over to the elevators.

  Elias led the way up to the Randalls' room. The Randalls opened the door for them, and they greeted Pat and Elias kindly. Their eyes were solely for Merab, though. Mrs. Randall reached out, but her husband put a hand on her arm. "She doesn't know us, honey," he said, a tear escaping from his eye.

  "It's okay." Merab couldn't speak above a whisper. "This is hard on you too."

  Merab let both of her birth parents hug her, and all three of them cried. Elias slipped an arm around Pat's waist, and they stood at a discreet distance and watched. After a moment, Merab stepped back. "Could we maybe sit down? I feel a little weak in the knees." She laughed nervously.

  "Yeah—yes, of course." Mr. Randall indicated the small round table. "Please."

  Pat guided Elias to a cushy chair off to the side, and then he leaned on the arm. He thought he caught something about Elias' scent that made him suspicious, but he didn't want to say anything. Besides, Elias was supposed to be unable to have children, right?

  The conversation between the Randalls was awkward and stilted, at least at first. No one knew how to start. Pat had to get the ball rolling. "So, Merab has grown up on a farm. They didn't get out, you know at all, so she doesn't have a lot of context for how people off the farm live. Maybe you could start by telling her who you are and what you do?"

  The Randalls nodded. Mr. Randall cleared his throat. "I'm an administrator at the VA hospital in Brockton." When Merab looked blank, he smiled. "I'm sure you've already spent enough time in a hospital to realize that they're big and complex places. People like me help hospitals run—we make sure that floors are staffed and the bills get paid, so that the doctors and nurses and health care providers can concentrate on getting people well."

  Mrs. Randall smiled at her daughter. "I'm a teacher. I teach second grade—little kids, around seven years old." She looked down. "Did… did you go to school?"

  "Mom—uh, she didn't feel safe sending us to school. I get why now." Merab sighed. "Sorry. That's going to take a long time to get used to."

  Mrs. Randall sniffed, but she smiled. "They told us that she raised you. I don't… I don't like that, and I resent what she did to me and to our family. But, baby, I can already see that she raised you into a good young woman. I'm not going to be mad at you about any of it, okay? If you call her Mom, I will not be angry. I promise."

  Merab choked back a sob. "I don't… I mean, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's so much. I want to know you, but I don't know you."

  Pat sprang to her side and let her lean into his injured arm. It hurt, but he gritted his teeth and didn't let it show. "It's okay, Merab. It's okay."

  The Randalls exchanged glances. "Would it help, maybe, to see some pictures?"

  "You have pictures?"

  Mr. Randall got up and went to the desk. He grabbed a small photo album and brought it back, shoes crushing the carpet with soft whispers. "You were our first child. We called you Asra. It was my mother's name." He sat back down and opened the album. "Here is your mother in the hospital. That's you, on her chest like that. Oh, she loved you. And you, you were such a good baby. You just held onto her finger and slept a lot."

  Merab watched, fascinated, as the pages turned. "You were adorable, but you weren't very interactive for the first few weeks. I finally got a smile out of you when you were about five weeks old. And then, oh, honey, I couldn't stop." Mrs. Randall smiled over at her daughter. "Look at that. Look at that adorable, toothless little smile."

  "Are there… are there more? More babies, I mean."

  "We had two more children." Mr. Randall closed the book. "You have a brother called Darius and a sister called Amara."

  "It hurt, when I found out I was pregnant with Darius." Mrs. Randall turned her head away. "I was still holding out hope that his big sister was going to come home to me. After a few years, though, they declared you legally dead. It had been too long."

  "Dead?" Merab gasped. Pat winced in sympathy. That had to be hard to hear. He couldn't imagine anything like it.

  "One of the things that Morrison's law firm is helping with is getting that decision reversed." Elias spoke up from his comfortable chair. "You're not the only ones that happened to. We're going to work it out."

  "So, what happens now?" Mrs. Randall folded her hands in her lap. "I know you're not ready to just come home, but your room is ready."

  "You might have trouble fitting into the bed, though." Mr. Randall managed half a grin. "We haven't changed a thing since the day you disappeared."

  Merab hid a snicker behind her hand. "I… I want to get to know you. And, ah, my brother and sister. I do. I'm just… It's hard to let go of everything. It's like, I know in my head that Mom lied, that you didn't hurt me. I can see the report, I bet, if Pat and Ryan
would let me look at it. But I've spent sixteen years hearing that you did. So even though I know you're probably good people, I can't just turn off that fear."

  "We understand." Mrs. Randall nodded.

  Pat cleared his throat and repeated his plan for gradual reunion. "Either side can put the brakes on at any time, or hold things up. And maybe Merab, since our house is yours, maybe you'd like to have the Randalls over for dinner sometime. It doesn't have to be one-sided, or feel one-sided."

  Mr. Randall jumped a little, and he smiled. "I don't want you to feel like you have to give up your foster family. And to the extent that it's possible to stay in touch with the other—with your brothers and sisters from this experience, I want you to be able to do that too. We want what's best for you, and for your happiness."

  Merab broke down, crying onto Pat's chest.

  "Poor dear," Mrs. Randall said. "I think she's overwhelmed. I know I'm close."

  "I think that if maybe we can get her someplace quiet, that might help. Maybe even back to Providence." Elias stood up. "We'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

  "Thank you for today." Mr. Randall shook Elias' hand, and Mrs. Randall gave her daughter and Pat a giant hug.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Elias' exhaustion lasted through the next week as the team struggled to reunite broken families. He still felt that his fatigue could be attributed to the circumstances. After all, the work was hard, and the lawyer volunteers couldn't be there during the work week. It wasn't just monotonous work, either. While they had the team of counselors, who were helpful, the bulk of the work turned out to be emotional labor.

  Merab was a rock. She and Pat did a lot of work with the kids, helping them to get used to the idea of how everything was going to change. They eased the kids into the notion that maybe their birth parents weren't as bad as they'd been told, that maybe their mom had made a "mistake" about them. Merab broke down a few times in private, but she kept a strong face on for her siblings.

  Dealing with the parents was something else. Elias had to take a lot of breaks to remind himself that all of the parents' feelings were valid. The Randalls were open and accepting of everything that their daughter had gone through and of the person that their daughter was. Not all of the parents were quite so open.

  The Ratakers were the parents of fifteen-year-old Alex, taken at one year. Alex now went by Eliezer, and had been the boy that shot Pat. They were horrified to learn that their son had shot a cop, and promised to take him in hand and deal with him right once he'd paid the consequences for his crime. Elias almost cried when he heard that, and he flagged the case for referral to DCF. "Look," he told them, "Pat isn't interested in pressing charges, and he's doing his best to get the charges dismissed. You have to understand, these kids haven't seen or heard anything about the outside world since they were taken. He can't be held responsible when he doesn't know what a police officer is, or what an ambulance was."

  "He obviously needs discipline." Blandine Rataker pursed her lips. "We'll be taking him home immediately after he's discharged."

  "Actually, I don't think that's very likely. He doesn't know you. He's not… he's not just going to accept you as a parent. It's harder with older children who have been brainwashed like this for longer. It's not necessarily impossible, but it's harder. We have to take things very carefully and make sure that everything is done to minimize trauma to the child."

  "We are his parents and we know what's best for him." Blandine sniffed and turned away.

  The Pawlitzkis, whose son Tristan had nearly died from complications from the diphtheria, showed another typical reaction. They were terrified, and they were looking for someone to blame for what had happened to their son. They understood that Zavia Nixon wasn't quite in her right mind, so they blamed the state. The state made an easy target, and there had definitely been some failures on the part of the government that made fertile ground for their anger.

  How had no one put the abductions together until someone turned up dead? In fact, deaths had happened in the past. Why was it only now that a death sparked discovery? Was it because of the diphtheria or was it because the boy in question was a cherubic looking white boy? Why hadn't they found the lair before they had? How could they miss a farming operation large enough to support more than twenty people?

  Elias didn't have answers for all of those questions. He had answers for some. "The pieces weren't put together initially because local agencies didn't treat each incident like part of a pattern. They had no reason to. Even when they'd heard about an abduction in, say, Duxbury, a criminal usually operates in a tight geographic space. So, they're not going to be looking to Duxbury for a similar crime when a kid gets grabbed in Gloucester." He rubbed his temples. "There are places where the crimes could have been stopped earlier, if we look at it in hindsight."

  Pat appeared behind him, like a guardian angel. "I can assure you that now that we've seen this type of crime, it's something that will be included in all police training. We will need a little help from you, however." He flashed his sexiest smile at the Pawlitzkis.

  "Law enforcement is your job, not ours." The husband stuck out his jaw.

  "It is. What we need is for certain laws to change. For example, we need to make sure that all child abductions get reported to the State Police Abused Persons unit, so that someone who watches the entire state can put patterns like this together." Pat put his good hand onto Elias' shoulder, and Elias relaxed into his touch. "You all live in Chelmsford, right? Okay, your state senator is Marina Welch and your state rep is David McKenna. Start leaning on them. Talk to all of these people here about leaning on their reps, too. What's happened to you shouldn't have happened, but we can't change the past. All we can do is to make sure that it doesn't happen again."

  Elias marveled at his alpha's acumen. He was proving to be truly gifted when it came to dealing with the children, and he wasn't half shabby when dealing with the parents, either.

  Elias was finding that separation from his alpha was something he could tolerate less and less. He needed his touch more than ever, and he practically crawled into his lap whenever they were in a position to be sitting down. Was it just the emotional strain of dealing with all of these broken families? Was he getting sick?

  He had himself tested for diphtheria, just in case. He'd had his shots. They were a condition of his employment with HomeSafe. Still, things happened. Maybe he'd gotten a bad batch of vaccine. Maybe this strain was just too strong. Whatever it was, there was no harm in getting checked out.

  The doctor asked him questions about his symptoms, and squinted at him suspiciously. "Those aren't symptoms of diphtheria, Mr. Salazar. They're symptoms of early pregnancy."

  Elias frowned and shook his head. "I'm sterile. I had a miscarriage years ago. They told me I had too much scar tissue because of it."

  "Well, I don't know what to tell you, but you don't have diphtheria."

  Elias went home that weekend on edge. He apologized after snapping at Pat badly enough to make Merab jump, and then explained that he hadn't felt well all week. Merab offered to make dinner, while Pat held him in bed for a while. Elias tried to tell Merab that she wasn't obligated to cook their dinner, but she waved him off. "I don't mind helping out. Besides, you're not feeling well and it's not like Pat can do much besides poke at the microwave right now."

  Once Elias was ensconced in bed, with Pat's arm around him, he told Pat about his visit to the doctor. "I don't know what else to do," he said. "He says it can't be diphtheria, but I can't think of what else it could be."

  Pat fell silent for a long moment, and Elias wondered if he'd fallen asleep. Then he spoke. "Okay. Do you have a regular doctor?"

  Elias squirmed. "No. After the whole… after the thing, I just didn't want to deal."

  Pat nodded. "Not judging," he said. "I don't have one either. But, uh, I know one. I still do some volunteer work, you know? There are a lot of Brazilians in JP. Dr. Pereira is pretty damn good. He's dealt with omegas before
, he doesn't judge, and he can talk to you about what happened before." He kissed the side of Elias' head.

  Elias sat up, snarling. "What's to talk about? It was a miscarriage. It was a disaster. The world ended."

  Pat wrapped his arm around Elias' waist and rested his head against Elias' back. "It was a miscarriage. It was a disaster. The world didn't end. We're together now, we'll be together forever no matter what happens here and now." He swallowed; Elias could feel his throat working against his back. "And your scent has shifted a little."