by LS Sygnet
“I guess I’ll start. The night I found you in New York, for a moment, it looked like you hesitated. About getting on that jet.”
I stared at the cliff.
“I wasn’t sure you heard me until you turned around.”
Sniffle. Dab at the eyes with the napkin.
“Helen, were you having a hard time leaving?”
I whispered my reply.
He leaned closer. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“Yes,” I cleared my throat. “Yes. I tried to tell you.”
I heard the throaty swallow. “Can I ask if the reason you hesitated had anything to do with me?”
I nodded.
“Yes, I can ask or yes, it had something to do with me?”
Tears dripped from my chin. “You,” I said.
“Why did you run away from me?”
“I think that’s obvious. I was out of time. If I didn’t fix my mistake now, I’d never have another chance.”
Johnny reached for my hand. “I meant why did you run when you didn’t get on that flight? If I was part of the reason you couldn’t go –”
“You were coming so fast,” I said. “I was afraid.”
“Of me?”
“That you would stop Dad from being free.”
He lifted my hand and pressed it to his lips. “Doc, how do you really think I knew where to find you?”
I shrugged. “I didn’t mean it when I said you weren’t a good investigator. You’re really very, very good.”
“Not that good. You covered your tracks so well –”
“You knew about Fields.”
His breath fanned the damp spot on the back of my hand when he chuckled. “I got the name off the rental agreement in your car. I followed you to that airfield, Helen. Your father called me early Thursday morning and told me what you planned to do.”
“He… why?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m forever grateful that he did, and that the man has connections and the sharpest mind I’ve ever seen. I’d love to take credit for how he covered your tracks completely, Helen, but I can’t. I had nothing to do with a missing body at the hospital morgue.”
I pulled my hand away, covered my mouth with both. “Oh my God. That’s what he meant.”
“What?”
I sobbed so hard my body shook.
“Helen…?”
I wiped my face with open palms. “When you called my name, I thought I was imagining it. A trick of the mind, because leaving you like that was killing me. I thought he was asking me if it was you. He knew it was. I turned around and saw you. He told me to get on the flight. I turned back and looked at him. He smiled at me and said, I had to be sure. Go to him.”
“Dangerous gamble.”
“I think he let me give him freedom because it mattered to me, not to him.”
“David is right. Wendell loves you like no one else.” Johnny pulled a key from his pocket and reached for my ankle. One hand slid up my calf. He unlocked the monitoring device, and dropped it on the table before he reached for my left hand. He tugged the wedding band off my finger.
“Johnny –”
“Shh. He loved you enough to accept freedom he didn’t necessarily want. I love you enough to give you the freedom you do want.
“I think it’s been a long haul for both of us. You should turn in. I’ll clean up.” He leaned in and brushed his lips against my cheek. “Goodnight, Helen.”
Chapter 24
It was pre-dawn when I woke. My stomach rumbled in protest over the long stretch it suffered without being filled. That was the easy problem to solve. Even in sleep, I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about what happened last night.
Free again. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Particularly in light of the fact that there was another huge lie hanging over my head. I sucked my lower lip between my teeth. A couple hours of peace, communicating without words layered in razor wire had been welcome. To tell the truth now, to risk that peaceful cloud that shrouded our home seemed a gamble I wasn’t ready to take.
My heart was firmly in the driver’s seat. It ignored the warnings from my brain that if Sanderfield or whoever was behind what actually happened to me a month ago were caught, the truth would come out anyway. There was no second attempt to kidnap me. I used it as a convenient excuse to slip away and rescue my father, to answer the nagging questions about which of my parents was responsible for stealing me as a newborn.
I crawled out of bed and stretched mightily. Shivers raised the tiny hairs on my arms. Why was it so chilly in here? The curtains billowed out from the windows of my bedroom. Johnny must’ve come in and opened them after I fell asleep.
My bedroom door was open too, along with every other window in the house. The noxious paint fumes were gone. I plodded through the gallery toward the guest room. The door was open. Cheery baby-chick yellow paint was completely dry on the walls.
It was a room that truly radiated warmth and love now. I closed the windows and started to complete the task around the rest of the main floor. So chilly! I grabbed my thick fuzzy robe in the bedroom and dug out a pair of fluffy slippers from the closet.
Interest in something beyond myself and the bitterness in which I wallowed for weeks sparked anew in my heart. I flung open the front door and walked down the driveway. Just inside the gate was the opaque blue plastic bundle covered in dew. I shook the bag and sent the droplets spraying to the concrete before returning to the house with the morning paper.
One look at the headline reminded me why I preferred to ignore the media.
Darkwater Bay reacts to OSI closure.
Fabulous. I could hardly wait to read it.
I prolonged the explosion of temper by brewing a pot of coffee and rummaging through the refrigerator. Eggs. Bacon or sausage? Both. I moved to the pantry and retrieved the ingredients for homemade biscuits. Mmm. Buttered flakey dough swimming in warmed honey.
My belly fluttered its approval, lower than the stomach. I chuckled and paused for a soft caress. “Good morning, angels. Are you telling me that you’re going to be born with Mommy’s sweet tooth?”
Tiny punch in response.
“Good boys.”
I decided to allow the aroma of breakfast to rouse Johnny and settled on a stool at the bar after it was tucked into the oven to keep it warm. The morning paper stared up at me, daring me to go ahead and read it.
Sure it was a mistake, I didn’t resist the siren’s call anyway. I started reading. For the most part, the article made me laugh at the outrage poor Collangelo brought on himself. His action, according to two editorial pieces, smacked of caving in to pressure from the other side.
What truly interested me was the public outcry from Darkwater Bay specifically. Comments like, it’s a tax bill that was actually worth something. Closing OSI was the biggest mistake this state could’ve made. Leave it to our politicians to back-track from doing the right thing.
Johnny shuffled into the kitchen and scratched his belly. “Mmm. Something smells good.” He poured a cup of coffee. “Unleaded?”
“No. Coffee gives me an acid stomach first thing in the morning. That pot is for you.”
He sipped, hummed his approval and put the cup on the counter. A bone popping stretch followed. “Did you already eat?”
I shook my head. “It’s warming in the oven. Do you want to shower first or eat now?”
A faint smile curled the corners of his mouth. “Knowing you these days, the correct answer is eat now.” He gestured to the newspaper. “How bad is it?”
“For Joe? Terrible. For you and OSI, it’s great.”
“Well, at least the people we tried to protect appreciated our effort. I suppose that counts for something. Maybe.”
I slid off the stool and rounded the island. “Take your coffee, sit down with the paper and read it for yourself. I’ll get breakfast on the table.”
“You don’t have to do this, Helen.”
“I know,” I said. �
��Speaking of knowing me, since when do I ever do anything that I don’t want to do?”
“Good point.”
I set the table around him, poured a carafe of mango-orange juice, and warmed a small dairy pitcher filled with honey in the microwave oven. Plates piled with bacon, sausage, scrambled eggs and biscuits followed. Last, I brought small bowls of salsa, sour cream and black olives to the table.
Johnny’s eyebrows twitched.
I shrugged. “Sudden craving for spicy eggs.”
He folded the paper and set it aside. Johnny watched me heap my plate with food. He shook his head and chuckled. “I love seeing you eat this way. I doubt Dr. Harvey will be worried the next time you step on the scale.”
“Are you calling me fat?” I mumbled around a sausage link.
“No, I’m telling you that it’s not possible for you to lose weight with at long last, a normal, healthy appetite. The only weight it looks like you’ve gained is baby. Babies.”
“I think I felt a kick this morning,” I said.
Johnny’s eyes widened. “Really? Already?”
“A tiny one, maybe. We were talking about them inheriting my sweet tooth.”
His gaze and smile melted my heart.
“You talk to them?”
“All the time. Do you think that’s silly?”
“No,” he said. “Maybe you’ll let me talk to them sometime.”
“Of course.”
We finished breakfast with a sense of calm quiet. While I cleaned up, which basically included finishing off the last of the bacon before loading the dishwasher, Johnny went off to shower and get ready for work. The freedom he gave me weighed heavily on my mind.
I didn’t trust Sanderfield. His face stared at me from the front page of the Sentinel. Andy Gillette’s words had yet to cease haunting me. And just because I staged an abduction didn’t mean that Gillette lied about how I was viewed by him, his gang and at least one other person in the world. Somebody believed they had the right to strip me of my freedom.
I started searching the house. Couldn’t find what I sought anywhere. Finally, I breeched a confidence that would’ve otherwise risked the tenuous peace under our roof. I opened Johnny’s briefcase.
It was empty, save for the one item I needed to find.
“Helen?” This time it wasn’t thrown out like a militant call to arms.
I snapped the briefcase shut. “In the office. Are you leaving for work?”
He appeared in the doorway. I tucked the ankle monitor beside the fax machine out of plain view.
“Yeah.”
My breath hitched in my throat. Would he ask for my plans today? Lecture about being careful?
“I doubt it’ll be an early night for me.”
“Do you want me to keep dinner warm?”
“If it’s no bother,” he said. “Well, I just wanted to say goodbye.”
I stepped forward. “You want to tell the boys goodbye?”
“Really? Now?”
“If you feel weird about it –”
“No!” Johnny said quickly. “I want to talk to them.”
I lifted my shirt and bared the growing bump.
“Wow,” Johnny said. “It’s so much bigger than it was at Dr. Harvey’s office.”
I pulled his hand against me. Our little angels jumped in response.
“Oh my God! Was that them? Did they just move?”
“Yeah,” I said. “They’ve been wide awake since before breakfast.”
“They sleep?”
“Mm-hmm. They sleep, they wake up, sometimes it feels like they’re using my bladder as a trampoline.”
Johnny dropped to his knees in front of me. His hands spread over my abdomen reverently. “Hi babies. It’s Daddy. I have to go to work, but I wish I could stay home with you all day. Every day.”
The fluttering stopped. I imagined them listening intently to their father. “Keep talking, Johnny.”
“I love you so much,” Johnny said. “I love you, and Mommy loves you –”
It was the hardest kick I’d felt to date. I smiled.
Johnny’s eyes reddened instantly, and he stared up at me. “Do you think they heard me?”
“I read an article online the other day. They think that amniotic fluid actually amplifies sound. I’m sure they did hear your voice. You know, communication is only seven percent the words we use. The rest of it is body language and tone. Scientists have proven that emotion is something people continue to understand even when they’re unable to communicate in return.” My fingers ruffled through Johnny’s hair. “They know their daddy’s voice already, Johnny.”
His fingers slid to my hips and held firm. Johnny pressed his cheek against me, sniffled. He turned his face and kissed one side of the slight swell softly, then the other and let me go. “Thank you, Helen. Thank you for sharing that with me. You have no idea how much it means to me.”
Oh, I’m pretty sure I did know.
He slowly rose. “I guess I should get to the office. We’ll be at the penthouse. You know, if you need anything, or if you’re downtown later and want to pig out with company.”
He reached for his briefcase. I manacled his wrist.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
Tiny lines deepened around Johnny’s eyes. “I’m uh… not sure. Am I forgetting something?”
I let go of his wrist and retrieved the ankle monitor.
“Helen, I put that in my briefcase last night.”
“I know you did. Despite what I said about it initially, I do feel safer with it on, when you’re not here.” I perched on the edge of the built-in desk that wrapped around half the office and pulled up one pant leg. “Please put it on me, with my willing consent.”
His hands trembled finely when he locked the device into place. “Are you sure about this?”
“Johnny, I need to tell you something, but before I do, I want you to know that last night, how things have been this morning, asking you to talk to the babies, none of that happened for any other reason than desire on my part to share with you again.”
“Okay.”
“I mean it. You’re going to be suspicious of me, my motives, and I’ve given you plenty of reasons to feel that way.” I paused. “Look at me. You’ve always been able to tell when I’m lying. What do you see now?”
He hesitated for just a moment. “I think you’re telling me the truth.”
Now came the tough part.
“I don’t want more fighting. I don’t want us angry with each other.”
“I don’t want that either,” he said softly. “Whatever it is, if you tell me the truth, we’ll work through it. I don’t want… I’d love things to heal between us, like David prayed last night.”
“When I left to go rescue my father, I wasn’t entirely honest about what happened.”
“I don’t understand,” Johnny said. “Weren’t honest about what? I already know why you went, that you wanted answers about Marie.”
“That’s true. And when I told you last night that I felt that I had to act because I was running out of time, that was true too. I didn’t want to leave you. It really was killing me. I didn’t think I had another choice.”
“And now?”
“You wouldn’t have helped me, Johnny. Remember what you said? No more secrets. Please don’t lie to yourself. You couldn’t have helped me rescue Dad.”
“No,” he stared at the floor. “I don’t suppose I would’ve been willing to go that far.”
“And you wouldn’t have been willing to let me try either.”
“Of course not. It was incredibly dangerous, Helen. What if the authorities caught you? What if I’d been some officer from corrections who was willing to shoot first?”
I sucked in a deep breath. “Good. You see this from my perspective. I’m not sure if I ever told you this before. You know I have money.”
He nodded. “It’s not much of a secret, Helen. You told me you didn’t need to work.”
“Okay,” he drawled. “I’m not sure I follow where you’re going with this.”
“I could’ve fought Dad’s battle for him. I could’ve put together a legal team that made O.J.’s Dream Team look more like a nightmare. He would’ve been acquitted. Of that I have no doubt. The case against him was circumstantial at best. His fingerprints weren’t found on the money that was taken from the armored car, only Marie’s. She drove that night. She gunned the engine on that car that ran down and killed the guards transporting the money. A good lawyer could’ve argued that Dad wasn’t even with Mom when she rammed her car into the guards and stole the money. For all the world knew, she could’ve picked Dad up at a bar where he might’ve been having drinks with his sergeant. There was reasonable doubt all over the place.”
Understanding sparked in his eyes. “And all these years, you’ve blamed yourself for not using Wendell’s money to save him.”
“Yes,” I said. “I love these children with all of my heart, Johnny. But I knew that there wasn’t much time before it would be impossible for me to save Daddy. I’d be big as a barn, and then I’d have two children that nothing could tear me away from. As much as I love my father…”
“You love our sons more.”
I nodded. “So I saw an opportunity that day, the day I left, and I grabbed it.”
“When someone tried to abduct you again.”
“Johnny, you need to be quiet and listen to me. My plan… I’d been working on it for months, since around the time that Ned Williams died in January. I thought I had all the time in the world to…”
“It’s all right, Helen.”
My body trembled. Fear. Guilt. Shame for being the liar Johnny believed me to be. I’m not sure. I forced the words from my lips. “There was no abduction attempt. I… I needed a plausible excuse for my disappearance.”
Johnny stared at me in silence, face an inscrutable mask once again.
“I am sorry. So sorry. In hindsight, I could’ve told you I wanted to go off to a spa for a few days, or go back to Georgetown to pack up more stuff. I just didn’t think you’d let me, and I was –”
