Читать книгу Her Lost And Found Baby - Tara Taylor Quinn - Страница 11

Chapter Two

Thankful for the food truck that provided frenetic distraction and took a lot of physical and mental energy, Tabitha worked hard beside Johnny all day Monday, barely taking time to nibble on the contents of a bowl with everything. Sitting in the driver’s seat as she ate, she watched Johnny take orders and then make the bowls, joking with customers, talking to them from inside the truck as he worked, never missing a beat.

He was drop-dead gorgeous. She’d seen him shirtless on the beach. His baby blues and ready grin didn’t hurt, either.

Stepping sideways from the window to his prep board, he grabbed a knife that had cost as much as her monthly car payment and began chopping with expert precision.

You’d think he’d been born a chef rather than the only son of a prominent California family who’d groomed him from birth to take a top legal position within his father’s enormous holdings.

The way he played acoustic guitar on the beach, you’d be forgiven for thinking he’d been born to become an entertainer, too.

But Johnny loved to play and sing; he just had no passion for performing. No desire at all to enter the cutthroat world of the music business. No real need for fans or accolades, either.

No need for her accolades...not that she offered them.

A female voice ordered a veggie bowl with extra dressing. Johnny’s comment, something about the dressing, made the woman laugh.

Tabitha had grown to crave the laughter he brought to her life. Just as she’d grown to love putting on her light purple polo shirt with the Angel’s Food Bowls logo on it and climbing up into his food truck with him. She’d helped him create the logo. And choose the shirts.

His sabbatical was three-quarters through, which meant that in another three months he’d be leaving “normal” life to resume his place in the society of the elite. She had to shudder even thinking about it. To have people watching you all the time, to always be “on,” to have to go to extremes, like taking a sabbatical and buying a little house through a third party just to get enough anonymity to grieve... She didn’t envy him that.

But she could tell that he missed it all—the life he’d been born to. The way he talked about his parents, his uncle, his cousins. They were a close-knit family.

And that she envied.

She was going to miss him terribly when their time together came to an end...

“Eat up there, missy, line’s a-forming,” he said with a grin in her direction. She blinked. Realized she’d been staring at him. And accidentally toppled her half-filled rice bowl off her lap and onto the floor of the truck.

* * *

Never one to cry over spilled milk, as the saying went, Johnny didn’t give a rat’s ass about the dressing-smeared rice, veggie and meat mixture plastered on the floor near his seat in the hundred-thousand-dollar food truck. He cared that Tabitha was so far off her game he’d hardly recognized her that morning.

She’d been near tears when she’d thanked him for helping in her quest to find Jackson. Her hand had been shaking when she’d passed him a cup of coffee. She hadn’t caught several things he’d said to her, although they’d been in the truck together. And she’d messed up two orders.

A pediatric nurse had to be able to keep calm in the midst of horrible stress and, sometimes, unbelievable tragedy. This woman had lost her son and missed less than two weeks of work in the year since.

But that day, stress seemed to be getting the better of her.

Unable to give in to his instant desire to head to the front of the truck and help her clean up the mess, or do it for her, he continued to work the crowd. He prepared a bowl, took off his gloves to make change and then washed his hands, pulling on a fresh set of disposable gloves before preparing the next order.

Then she slid into place in front of the window to accept payment for his most recently completed concoction. That allowed him to keep on his prep gloves, but he couldn’t help contaminating them anyway, with a hand to her back. Letting her know she wasn’t alone.

* * *

“You okay to do this tonight?” The question burst from Johnny about a mile from the daycare just after dark fell that July evening. He’d been trying to figure out a subtler way to ask it for most of the afternoon.

“Of course!” Tabitha’s over-the-top enthusiasm—over-the-top for her—brought more concern rather than easing it. From the wheel of the little SUV he’d purchased to tow behind the food truck, he could only afford a quick glance in her direction. But it was enough to tell him, as if he didn’t already know, that this trip was different from all the rest.

And that it was taking a toll on her.

He just wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do about it. His role seemed to be changing, but they hadn’t discussed that. He had no idea how it would change, what it would become. They were friends. They talked. Even cried a little.

But they each went home to their own privacy, to dispel the deepest stuff alone.

Their friendship had come with an end date before it had begun. They’d both understood that from the beginning. It was part of why they worked. Why they were able to provide each other with the opportunity they both needed for venting and sharing.

There was no judgment and there were no expectations, nothing to further complicate things. Because they both knew they were living in a time out of time. Both of them had other lives they’d return to as soon as their goals were achieved.

They were helping each other with plans they’d made before they met, not embarking on a life they’d built together.

She’d already collected a list of daycares within her chosen parameters before he’d moved in next to her and had just added to it as time passed—a few of those she’d found had posted pictures that bore a slight resemblance to Jackson. Many did not. All of her daycare searches were within a day’s journey by car. According to Tabitha, Mark was obsessive about his mother and wouldn’t stray too far from her grave. Over the past six months of working the food truck, Johnny had visited every daycare on Tabitha’s growing list. Starting in Mission Viejo and working outward.

Of course, the daycares that posted actual pictures of their kids were in the minority, and could only do so with parental permission. It wasn’t likely that a man who’d kidnapped his son would grant that permission. Still, looking on the internet every night, finding the occasional photo kept her going.

The Bouncing Ball daycare stood out from the rest because it had a client with a Pinterest board she’d created celebrating her own child. And, odd as it was to Johnny, some modern-day parents seemed to think it was cool to plaster pictures of their kids—and even their kids’ classmates and pals—all over their social media pages. He got it to a degree; friends and family could all share the special moments.

But so could strangers who preyed on postings like that.

And then there was Tabitha, searching daycare websites and pictures every night. She’d typed in “San Diego daycare” on Pinterest, and seen the picture the mother had posted, along with the name of her toddler’s daycare. The parent had probably thought she was doing a good thing, giving the daycare publicity.

Tabitha was completely convinced that the picture she’d seen, the one she’d printed and kept in her purse for at least four days, was of a two-year-old Jackson. Certain. Said she’d seen herself in the eyes gleaming up at the camera. He’d been grinning, along with half a dozen other kids.

“It might not be him.” His job was to support, not discourage. But she was in over her head on this one. He could feel it.

“It’s him.” His peripheral vision told Johnny she was watching him, but with the traffic, he couldn’t take his gaze off the road. Wasn’t even sure he wanted to.

“He looked healthy, Johnny. And happy, too...”

Was that why she’d fixated on that particular photo, that particular kid, when there’d been a dozen others during the months they’d been friends? Because the boy had struck her as being happy?

“I understand why now,” she continued, sounding like she was giving testimony at a church rather than conversing about her missing son. As if she was somehow seeing some kind of sign. Sacred. Unquestionable.

The whole thing was scaring the hell out of him. For her sake. And his, too, in that he had no idea what to do about any of it.

If she’d been Angel, he’d have asked the tough questions. He’d have pushed. And she’d have told him what was in her deepest heart. Together they’d have figured out a Plan B. Because there was always a chance that Plan A wouldn’t work out...

Tabitha’s Plan B had always been the next photo. The next daycare. She’d never before indicated that she’d found her end point.

“He’s happy because of Mallory Harris... She’s, I don’t know. I felt confident in her ability to not only watch over the children in her care, but to truly love them. That’s why Jackson looked so happy. He’s being loved.”

Tabitha had once told him she was sure she’d been born to be in the pediatric medical profession. She’d known, even as a young kid playing with her dolls, that she was going to grow up to help sick children.

They hadn’t been baring their souls or anything. The topic had come up when he’d been telling her about the reason for his sabbatical. About Angel’s passion to own and run her own food truck and his quest to live it for her, since she couldn’t. It was a way of preserving her dream, of honoring her life, far more than hanging onto the restaurant she’d owned and run. He’d sold that, used some of the money for the food truck start-up, and donated the rest.

He’d been expecting Tabitha’s reaction to it all to be more of the pat on the head his father had given him.

Instead, she’d understood completely. Hadn’t just encouraged him, but offered to help in any way she could. Because she had a passion of her own—her yearning to help children in need. Separate and apart from her own immediate and completely pressing determination to find her son.

Leaving him to wonder if he was the only one who didn’t seem to have been given that one talent, one thing, that ignited passion within him. Or maybe it was just the passion he lacked.

“And I think it means that Mark is loving him, too,” Tabitha’s words broke into his thoughts. “As long as Jackson is little, Mark will get what he needs from him,” she said as he rounded the last corner and could see the professional building ahead. “Right now, with Jackson completely dependent on him, the whole codependency thing works. But when Jackson starts to assert his own independence—which the terrible twos will certainly bring on...” Her voice drifted off and he was pretty sure she’d just shuddered.

Was that why she was suddenly changing, seeming almost desperate? Not because of this one photo, but because Jackson had turned two and she was getting scared? Worried about her son’s safety when he clashed wills against an emotionally unbalanced father?

“Kids learn about their world by challenging their boundaries,” she was saying as he pulled into the parking lot. “Of course, Mark’s never shown a single violent tendency to me or any of the others who knew him at the hospital. Or, at least, not that any of us ever heard of. There’s no reason to assume he’d physically hurt Jackson...but there’d been no reason to suspect he’d kidnap him, either...”

Which could be why the police weren’t finding them. Not only were there fewer resources being allocated on a case gone cold, but Mark wasn’t a man who raised any alarms, or drew attention. Johnny parked at the daycare but left the engine running. Tabitha’s son’s father had been a nuclear medicine technician at the children’s hospital where she worked. He’d been wonderful with the kids, she’d told him months ago. The guy had quit shortly after Tabitha had broken up with him. His ailing mother had needed full-time care.

He’d still lived with her, apparently, although Tabitha hadn’t actually known that until after their breakup.

Those golden eyes with the flecks of green turned on him and Johnny had to draw a long breath. “What’s Mark going to do when Jackson challenges their mutual dependency? When Jackson wants independence?” she asked, meeting his gaze head-on. “Taking Jackson makes Mark a criminal, but it doesn’t make him violent,” he said, drawing on case studies from law school. “A man who made his living helping sick children... I assume he’d have to have a decent bedside manner to keep his job.”

She nodded and he continued. “And a guy who nursed his mother so she could die with dignity as she wanted to, at home...”

Tabitha had given him those details months ago. Thankfully he’d remembered enough to be able to repeat them back to her now, when she needed to hear them.

She nodded again. “You’re right. He’s gentle and nurturing...” She grabbed the handle of her door.

She was ready to go in. His job was done. For another few minutes, at least.

* * *

The Bouncing Ball could have been any number of other daycares she and Johnny had toured over the past six months in various southern California cities. Still wearing the jeans and matching purple polo shirts they’d worn all day on the truck, they’d seen the two rooms designated for two-year-olds. They also saw a larger three-year-olds’ room, for next year when “Chrissy” was ready to move up. They’d toured the walled-in outdoor playground, accessible only from inside the daycare and outfitted with top-rated equipment, including swings and slides geared for younger children. The lunchroom, was furnished with plastic tables and chairs suited to toddlers.

They’d seen a multipurpose room, complete with a small stage, and heard the sound equipment in use. They’d even been invited to take turns at the musical instruments in a soundproof room intended for early music lessons. While the orchestral instruments were only used by instructors, there was a keyboard, a drum set and a plastic guitar with real strings made for little fingers. And there were various other noisemakers, from maracas to bells and tambourines, that the kids could use with supervision.

From room to room, as she saw the high-quality accommodations, Tabitha couldn’t help gushing about how much “Chrissy” would love it there, how happy she, herself, would be as a parent to know that her child was spending her time away from home in such a safe and nurturing place.

Inside she was shaking—with relief, gratitude and fear—as she looked at the surroundings she was certain had housed her baby boy for the past year. Picturing Jackson there, believing that he’d been in this wonderful place, believing that Mark had at least found the best care for their son, brought the relief. The gratitude. Seeing what she supposed her son must have seen for the past year kept her tears close to the surface.

And the thought of being there, possibly tipping Mark off that he was soon to be caught, struck fear in her.

Twice she’d been on the verge of exposing too much of the emotion raging insider her, and both times she’d felt Johnny’s hand on the small of her back. Both times he happened to ask Mallory Harris a question pertinent to their tour. Both times she was grateful he was there.

And grateful that they’d be going back to their hotel together that night, to share a glass of wine in the living area of the suite Johnny always insisted on getting for them, before parting to go to their separate rooms. As with all the other tours, he’d sit with her, discuss what they’d seen and heard. He’d ask if she’d felt anything, if her mother’s instinct had alerted her to anything. And he’d be supportive. Helping her maintain hope. He was giving her wonderful memories in the midst of the absolute worst time of her life.

No matter how much she’d been craning to look for any sign of Jackson, she saw nothing that night.

Nor had Mallory said anything to indicate that something could be amiss. They had questions they asked on every tour. Carefully worded questions about steps daycare personnel take if they ever see or suspect foul play. How they handle bullying. And how they help children without siblings join in group play. Things that could indicate if they’d had any recent suspicions or experience with foul play, or a toddler with no siblings.

“And over here—” they were finishing the tour with a miniature gymnasium, really only the size of a big bedroom, but complete with gym floor and miniature basketball hoops “—are our trophies,” Mallory said, taking them to a plexiglass-enclosed case that resembled something you might see outside a high school auditorium. Johnny moved forward; she knew he was something of a sports buff who’d played varsity baseball and basketball in high school.

Tabitha came up behind him to peer over his shoulder. Simply to be polite, not because she had an extra brain cell to allot to sports awards. She glanced at them, her mind on how to finagle a way to see Jackson. For the first time ever, she’d felt something when they’d walked in. Maybe if they enrolled “Chrissy” they could get a roster of the parents of the other two-year-olds for carpooling or fund-raising activities. Not that a roster would give her Jackson, since Mark had obviously changed their names or the police would already have found them. But she could see if there were any two-year-old boys who had only a father listed.

A little face had been staring back at her from a photo on one side of the case as her mind wandered...and then Tabitha was grabbing Johnny’s shoulders, leaning against his back, thinking she might actually be going down.

He turned, his arm sliding around her, and although she was still leaning heavily on him, the dizziness passed as quickly as it had come.

“That photo of the kids who were on the winning team in the Easter egg hunt...”

“As I said, we find ways to get everyone into the showcase,” Mallory said. “We have to be a bit creative with the littles, but at The Bouncing Ball, every single one of our children is a winner.”

Mallory’s voice faded in and out. Tabitha didn’t turn around, didn’t look at the photo again. Didn’t need to. She had a cropped copy of it in the purse she’d left in the car. It was the photo the mother had posted on the internet of her little girl at school this Easter.

“...not everyone wins all the time,” Mallory Harris was saying. “And there are some who think that teaching kids that everyone’s a winner is not preparing them for real life. But I believe that every single person on earth has the potential to win at something, whether it’s at being a parent or being good in a sport, at a job, good at cooking or growing flowers. Or good at smiling and making others feel happy. We all have something special to offer the world, and I like to think that after spending their first four years with us, our kids are better prepared to look for whatever that something special is—in themselves and others.”

Tabitha was nodding vigorously. She could feel tears pressing at the backs of her eyes. Jackson’s team had won an Easter egg hunt. The picture on the internet had just shown the top halves of the children’s bodies, not the entire scene out in the daycare yard.

“That little boy in the front of the photo... He’s holding the basket...”

“Jason, yes. He was the team captain and got to carry the basket,” Mallory was saying. She didn’t give a last name. Didn’t reveal any information. But...

Jason. Close to the Jackson the one-year-old had known as his name. Jason. Now they had a name to offer the police in Mission Viejo, who would get in touch with the San Diego department. She’d learned how it would work if she ever got any information regarding her son’s case. Not that she’d told anyone besides Johnny and the investigator he’d hired what she was doing.

The FBI had been called in when Jackson first went missing; they had a special team that had been particularly helpful during the critical first hours—but local police had also stayed involved.

Jackson was still on file as a missing person, but law enforcement had seen many other cases come and go since his disappearance. There was only so much they could do without more to go on. There’d been virtually no new leads.

Until she’d found one.

Jason.

“His parents must’ve been really proud of him,” she said, still leaning on Johnny although most of her strength had returned, for the moment, anyway, as she addressed the other woman.

“His dad was,” Mallory said casually as she led them back to the daycare’s entry. “Jason’s mom passed away, died of liver disease a year after his birth.”

Jason’s dad had been a single father for the past year. Jackson had been stolen away from her by his father a year ago. Jason’s mother had supposedly died a year after his birth. Jackson had been stolen from her a year after his birth.

Johnny held her up. They were at the door and she couldn’t make her feet move to get her out of there. Jason’s supposed mother had died of liver disease the year before. Mark’s mother had died of liver disease a year ago. It was something he’d be able to talk about in detail, having nursed her to the end of her life. That would have given credibility to his lies.

Jason was Jackson. She’d known. She’d hoped she was right. She’d thought she was.

Now she knew she’d known.

After twelve long, excruciating months, she’d found her son.