by Kate James
Sawyer was sitting at his computer, tapping away at the keys, his back to her. From the look of his hair, whatever he was working on was either frustrating him or required deep concentration, since it was evident that he’d been dragging his fingers through it.
He did it again, and Shannon felt the emotions—the love—swirl up in her. She cleared her throat as Miranda knocked lightly on the door frame and left.
Sawyer’s back straightened and he swung around in his chair.
She saw a mixture of feelings cross his face, before he rose and gestured to the meeting table in the corner of his office. “Thanks for coming here, Shannon. Can I get you a drink?”
She was about to decline, but thought better of it. A drink might ease the scratchiness in her throat and give her something to do with her hands. “Coffee would be nice, thanks.”
Sawyer stepped out briefly. A few minutes later, Miranda brought in two mugs of coffee. She closed the door behind her when she left.
“How’s Dylan?” Shannon couldn’t help asking before they started.
“Good. Especially considering the Stockholm syndrome thing...” His lips compressed into a hard, straight line. “Dylan had just been getting over not seeing ‘tía’; now he keeps asking about that woman. Elaine. I understand the psychology of it intellectually, but emotionally? It’s a whole different matter.” He took a long drink of coffee. “So you have information for me?”
She nodded. “Elaine Brant has been charged.”
“As she should be, and about time,” he murmured. Shannon wondered how she could be sitting there with the man she loved, speaking to him as if they were...colleagues. Or distant acquaintances. Her own feelings might have been rioting, but she didn’t sense anything like that from him. No personal connection. She thought back to the caution Madison had given her, that his feelings might not have been as invested as hers. He’d needed a lifeline to hold on to during his time of crisis. While his son was missing.
“Brant’s in custody, and it didn’t take long to get a confession from her.” Shannon’s heart twisted at the thought of what she had to tell him. “This is not going to be easy, Sawyer. I have to warn you.”
His eyes narrowed. She’d never seen them as dark and hard as they were at that moment. “How could anything be worse than my son being taken from me? At least now I’ll have some answers.”
She sighed. “Yes, you’ll have some answers, and not just about Dylan.”
“What are you talking about?” His voice had an edge.
“Sawyer, Brant’s obsession started years ago. Jeannette didn’t leave you and Dylan of her own volition.”
Sawyer’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.
Whether he wanted it or not, Shannon had to comfort Sawyer before she went on. She’d do the same for anyone in this situation, wouldn’t she? She placed her hand on his.
“Sawyer, Elaine Brant has wanted retribution since you prosecuted Rankin. She held you responsible for sending her fiancé to jail and, in her opinion, ruining her life. She was a nutritionist contracted by the fitness club where your wife worked out. She abducted Jeannette.”
Shannon watched as Sawyer tried to process what she’d just told him. “But...that’s insane.”
Shannon nodded. “She might well be. Elaine had a pathological fixation on her former fiancé. She was raised in poverty, with her parents spending any available money on alcohol, so the lifestyle marriage to Rankin became an obsession. She’d been pregnant with his child at the time Rankin was sent to jail. Not only had she lost her fiancé, according to her—and the medical reports have verified this—the stress of the situation caused her to miscarry.
“When she took Jeannette, Brant wanted vengeance. She wanted to hurt you—an ‘eye for an eye,’ to her way of thinking. She was driven by rage and, as I said, a desire for retribution. But she hadn’t thought it through, nor had she intended to keep Jeannette for long.”
“But...but how is any of this possible? Jeannette was in a public place. There had to be people coming and going, security cameras...” The devastation was clearly evident on his face.
“I’m so sorry,” Shannon murmured before continuing. “Although Brant wasn’t consulting for Jeannette, they’d known each other in passing. Brant asked Jeannette to have coffee with her. Once she was in her car and they were some distance from the fitness center, Brant—a tall, fit woman—was able to overpower Jeannette and use chloroform on her.”
Sawyer got out of the chair, shoved his hands in his pants pockets and stared out the window. “Go on,” he said, his back to her, his voice low and vibrating with anger.
“As I said, Elaine hadn’t known what she intended to do with Jeannette, other than hold her for a while to make you suffer. When Jeannette unexpectedly came to from the chloroform while Elaine was driving east through Arizona, they grappled in the car. Jeannette jumped out while it was moving. Elaine tried to hold her back and all that had remained in her grasp was Jeannette’s locket.”
“That explains how Dylan got it.”
“Yes. She’d given it to him. Elaine disposed of Jeannette’s possessions—her handbag with all her identification and the gym bag she’d been carrying—but she kept the locket.
“She didn’t know what happened to Jeannette after she jumped out of the car and she was too worried to go back and see for herself. Of course, we know that Jeannette landed in a ditch and suffered a concussion. Elaine claims she had no intention of hurting Jeannette, and the thought of Jeannette being injured or killed terrified her. She purchased a prepaid phone at a convenience store farther down the highway and called 911. She didn’t want her to die, but she worried that if Jeannette was alive, she’d return home and identify her. After that, she kept an eye on your home—which is how she knew about Dylan. She felt guilty but still breathed a sigh of relief when she read that the SDPD presumed Jeannette was dead. Elaine believed she’d avenged what had happened to her.”
Sawyer turned back and took a couple of steps toward Shannon. He looked as if he was going into shock. The color had drained from his face; even his lips had lost their tint.
“So why now? Why take Dylan after three years?” Each word was tortured. Each breath a labored wheeze.
Shannon took a sip of coffee to soothe her scratchy throat. “Elaine carried on with her life. The more time that passed, the more confident she was that her role in Jeannette’s disappearance would go undiscovered. She started dating a dentist. He wasn’t from a wealthy family like Rankin, but his income was solid enough to satisfy Elaine. They got married and he wanted children almost immediately, but she couldn’t conceive. She was told that the miscarriage had caused irreparable harm, and she couldn’t have children.
“She blamed the fact that her husband left on her inability to have children. Leary and Bigelow interviewed him. He said his leaving had nothing to do with her not being able to bear children. He said he would’ve been fine with adopting. He proved it, too, by showing them copies of the research he’d done. But Elaine wouldn’t hear of it. She was too blinded by her anger to realize that her husband had left her not for her inability to conceive, but because it was obvious to him that she was emotionally unstable. Elaine again turned her anger and hate on you, believing that the downward spiral of her life had begun with Rankin’s conviction. Wanting children and not being able to conceive, she decided it was only fair if she took your son. If she took Dylan.”
Shannon was struggling to maintain her own composure. She wanted to weep for Sawyer, for Dylan—for what she’d hoped they could’ve had as a family. “Her thought was that she’d have a child—a replacement for the one she felt you’d caused her to lose—and she’d be hurting you at the same time. And she ruthlessly put her plan in effect.” Sawyer walked slowly back to the window, as if his bones would shatter if he moved any faster. He stood with his back to her aga
in.
Shannon could tell how tense he was from the rigidity of his back, the throbbing pulse in his neck.
She wanted to go to him. To hug him and try to ease the pain.
But she didn’t think he’d want her to.
“Thank you for the information,” he said without turning around. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to be alone now.”
His words confirmed her suspicion, and her stomach twisted into a hard, tight knot. No, she definitely could not survive these ups and downs.
What choice did she have other than to comply with his request? She rose and silently walked out the door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
AT THE SOUND of the doorbell, Dylan came racing out of his room, Rufus hot on his heels. “Is that Aunt Meg?”
Sawyer was immensely grateful that Dylan seemed to be bouncing back so quickly from his ordeal “I expect it is. Would you like to let her in?”
“Yeah!”
He ran to the door, Rufus scrambling along beside him. He dutifully asked who it was, the way Sawyer had taught him. When he heard Meghan’s voice, he swung the door open wide.
“How’s my favorite nephew?” Meg asked as she picked Dylan up and swung him around.
“I’m your only nephew!” Dylan responded with a giggle.
Sawyer leaned back against the doorjamb as he watched their greeting. Their ritual done, Meghan walked over to him. She did a swift but thorough perusal.
“I’m doing okay,” he said before she could say anything.
“Yeah?” she asked with a skeptical look.
“Dylan, why don’t you get your sketch pad to show Aunt Meg the drawings you did this morning?”
“’Kay,” he said and ran off again.
Meg waited until Dylan was out of earshot. “I can’t stay long because I have to get to the lab—and yes, I know it’s Saturday—but I wanted to stop by and see you. How are you really doing?”
Sawyer sighed. “Better than I was.”
“Well, that’s something. Have you told Dylan about Jeannette?”
Sawyer followed Meg into the living room and sat down. “Not yet.”
Meg shook her head. “You’ll need to do it soon, since you’ve agreed she can meet Dylan next weekend.”
“Yeah. I know it.”
Neither of them said anything more as Dylan ran back into the room. Meghan sat down next to him, and oohed and aahed over the drawings he showed her. When they’d gone through all of them, Meg encouraged him to go back to his room and draw some more.
Once they were alone again, Sawyer told her about the progress Dylan was making, according to his therapist.
“Before I go, I have one more question for you,” Meg announced. “Have you seen Shannon?”
“Don’t start in on me about that.”
She sighed. “We’re worried about you. You can’t shut yourself off from people and, if you ask me, you shouldn’t shut her out.”
He shook his head. “That’s my business, Meg. Nobody else’s.”
“Don’t jump down my throat. I just call them the way I see them—and I can see that you’re hurting and unhappy despite having Dylan back.” She gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Just think about it. Okay?” Before he could respond, she got up and started toward the door.
Sawyer had barely been able to think about anything but Shannon, he acknowledged after Meg left. But thinking hadn’t gotten him anywhere. And this time, he hadn’t been the one who’d backed away from their relationship.
Meg had made an important point, though. He’d have to tell Dylan about his mother, since he’d be meeting her in a week. It wouldn’t be fair to spring it on him too suddenly.
Meg had already spoiled his mood, so he might as well get it over with now.
He walked to his son’s room and looked in.
Dylan was sitting on the edge of his bed, drawing pad on his lap. Rufus sprawled on the floor and Dylan seemed to be drawing a picture of the dog.
Sawyer walked in and pulled up a chair facing Dylan. He rested his forearms on his knees and leaned forward. “Can I talk to you for a few minutes, champ?”
Dylan nodded and put his sketch pad aside.
What an incredibly sweet kid he was, Sawyer mused. He said silent thanks again for having him back home and physically unharmed.
“You remember we talked about how Mommy went to heaven?” Sawyer asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, Mommy did go away, but she didn’t go to heaven.”
Dylan reached for Joey. His blue eyes—so much like Jeannette’s—were clouded.
“Where did she go?”
“She went to a place called Arizona.”
“Is she coming home now?”
“No, she isn’t.”
“Doesn’t she love us?”
How to answer that one? Sawyer wondered. Stay as close to the truth as possible, he decided. “When Mommy went away, she...got sick and she forgets things now.”
“Like to make her bed in the morning? And brush her teeth before she goes to sleep at night?”
Sawyer burst into laughter. “I think she probably remembers those things. Mommies have to. But she forgot everything else from before she got sick.”
Dylan’s lower lip trembled. “She forgot us?”
Sawyer got out of the chair. Sitting on Dylan’s bed, his back against the headboard, he pulled Dylan close to his side. “Unfortunately, she forgot everything.”
“So she forgot us?” he persisted.
Sawyer closed his eyes and searched for the right words. “She didn’t want to, and she couldn’t help it. She had an accident—and hit her head very hard. You know how you have to wear a helmet when you ride your bike? So if you fall, you won’t hurt your head?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, when she hit her head, she wasn’t wearing a helmet. That’s what made her forget everything.” He pressed his lips to his son’s head. “And, yes, she forgot us.”
Dylan burrowed closer to Sawyer. “That’s why she hasn’t come home?”
“Yeah. That’s why. Here’s the good news, though,” Sawyer said with forced cheer. “She wants to see you.”
Dylan twisted around and looked up at Sawyer. “If we see her, will she remember us?”
Sawyer brushed Dylan’s hair from his forehead. He couldn’t lie to him. “I don’t think so, champ.”
Dylan turned away.
“But we can help her make new memories of us.”
Dylan looked up at Sawyer again and gave him a hesitant smile. “And she can help me make memories, too, right?”
“Yes, she can. She’d like to come see you next Saturday. Are you okay with that?”
Dylan stared down at his hands as the Mickey Mouse clock by his bed ticked away the seconds. Finally, he raised his face to Sawyer again. “I think that’s okay... Will she be my mommy again?”
“She always was and always will be your mommy.”
Dylan nodded thoughtfully. “But not like other kids? Their moms live with them.”
“No, not like that.” Sawyer wondered if he should tell Dylan now about having a half brother and sister, but chose to leave it for now. He had no way of knowing if Dylan would see it as a plus or be upset by it. He’d rather let him absorb one shock at a time.
“What would you like for lunch?” he asked to change the subject.
“Anything I want?” Dylan asked hopefully.
“Within reason,�
�� Sawyer responded with a genuine smile.
“Can I have a tuna sandwich?”
Sawyer ruffled his son’s hair. “You sure can. If you want to stay here for a while, I’ll prepare it in about half an hour and call you when it’s ready.”
“’Kay.”
Dylan’s spirits seemed good again, Sawyer mused as he walked out of his son’s room. He was a remarkably resilient kid, and Sawyer was grateful for it. They were on their way back to normal.
Then why did Sawyer’s world feel so empty and why was he so dejected?
Shannon. The answer came to him without effort.
He missed Shannon.
As Sawyer was making the sandwich, Dylan came out of his room, Rufus plastered to his side.
“It’s almost ready. Are you hungry, champ?”
“Kinda. But I wanted to show you my drawing first.”
“Okay.” Sawyer turned to Dylan.
“I drew a picture for Shannon, Daddy.”
The breath caught in his throat. “You did?”
“Uh-huh.” Dylan took a rolled-up sheet of paper from behind his back and handed it to Sawyer.
Sawyer unrolled it and felt as if he’d been hit by a thunderbolt.
Dylan had drawn a big heart in bold red crayon. Inside it was an uncanny depiction of Shannon, Dylan, Rufus, Darwin and himself. Sawyer, Dylan and Rufus were standing on one side, facing Shannon and Darwin. Sawyer had his arm extended, holding something between his fingers, obviously offering it to Shannon.
“What is all this, champ?”
Dylan looked down and scuffed the toe of his sneaker. “When we talked about Mommy, you said she wasn’t coming home. But that’s okay because I don’t really know her. I was thinking...”
Sawyer put the sheet down on the counter and crouched in front of Dylan. “And?” he prompted.
“I was thinking I want a mommy. Like other kids have. One who lives with us...and tells me to make my bed in the morning and brush my teeth before I go to bed.”