Together Again (Never Too Late Book 5)

by Aiden Bates

  Finally, Reggie and Janine sat down with Pat and Elias, and with the Ratakers, and with the Randalls. Doug, as Eli's lawyer, joined them. They looked around the table and finally Janine from DCF sighed. "There isn't any easy way to say this. Mr. and Mrs. Rataker, we think it's best if your son moves in with the Randalls."

  This was news to Pat. It was news to Elias, too, but the couple sat back to listen to the explanation while the Ratakers sputtered.

  "Alex is our son." Blandine Rataker poked a finger into the conference table. "He lives with us. Period."

  "Ordinarily, yes, that would be true." Reggie, the counselor nodded and pulled out a file folder. "However, we do need to consider the child's best interests here, and I'm not sure that you have a good grasp on what his best interests are. You're more interested in making him pay for things that aren't in his control, and never were, than you are in getting a son back that you'd lost. We're going to allow visitation every other weekend, for six hours. At the end of six months, you'll be able to go before the judge and we'll re-evaluate."

  Janine glanced at Pat and Elias and gave them an apologetic smile. "We did consider leaving him in the custody of the Salazar-Tessaro family, but they'll be changing residence soon enough and we thought it would be best if he stayed with the girl who he has a familial relationship with. We've already discussed this with the Randalls, and they're on board."

  Blandine snarled at Asra. "She is not his sister! That's a delusion! Don't you get it? You can't encourage them in these delusions, they need to be nipped in the bud!"

  Eli wrapped an arm around Asra, who glowered at the Ratakers. "We are brother and sister," she retorted. "I'm sure that you would have been there for him if you could, and I'm not trying to take that away from you. But when he fell and hurt his knees, I am the one who was there. When he asked about his old life, I am the one who was there and asking the same questions. When the diphtheria affected his leg, I am the one who mixed up compresses for it. I'm his sister, in every way that counts."

  "The fact is," Pat added, "that Eli—or Alex, whichever you want to call him—gets so anxious whenever he visits you that he has to go hide somewhere. I know you care for him, in your way, but I think both sides need a little more time to come together."

  Elias reached out to the Ratakers. "He is alive. And you do get to have contact; you get the hope of having that relationship going forward. It's just going to take time."

  Most families fell somewhere in between the two extremes. Pat visited them all, on a very regular basis. Some of the families had a hard time with their child's agoraphobia. Others had a difficult time with their child's ignorance of popular culture. They all loved their children, but they also had difficulties adjusting to the stranger in their midst.

  Pat and Elias did their best to help them through it.

  They also began a dual search for a house and a nanny. They wanted a house that was relatively convenient to the Red Line, so that Pat could get to school, and they wanted a house that was relatively convenient to Brockton. Asra and Eli were still part of the family, after all, and so were the rest of the Randalls now.

  They found their house in February. It was in Sharon, a little further away from Red Line access than Pat would have liked, but he was willing to live with it in exchange for seven bedrooms. The house itself was a contemporary with a weirdly open floor plan and multiple levels, that would guarantee privacy but still let Pat and Elias keep up with their family. Pat appreciated that. He loved the fact that they could have barbecues for their new friends and extended family. He also loved the fact that they could afford to hire someone else to mow the lawn, because he had no idea how to start a lawnmower.

  Turning his brain to adapt to that, to being able to afford to have others do things and to expect others to do things, was a challenge. He consoled himself with the fact that Elias genuinely wanted to give that to him, and with the fact that he wasn't likely to suddenly be good at things like mowing lawns.

  Finding a nanny was another issue altogether. Pat knew that it was necessary, but he couldn't help but squirm at the idea of it. It just felt too weird to him. Elias took point on the project in the end, because he'd at least seen his sister and sisters-in-law go through the same search. He wound up reaching out to an agency, which took one look at their intake form and decided that what they needed was a nanny from Brazil.

  Pat didn't mind that. He knew that the Salazars would lose their minds, but a Brazilian nanny would be perfect for him. He'd been an American citizen since he'd been fourteen and his father had become a citizen, but he still had an affinity for Brazil and wanted to help people from his first country to get ahead in the world. A Brazilian nanny would speak Portuguese, at the very least, and she would know how to give their child the dishes that still spelled comfort for Pat.

  When the nanny showed up at the end of April, ready to learn the family and their dynamics, Pat didn't think much of it either. She was a pretty young woman of twenty, probably of partial indigenous background, with a ready smile and laugh that were positively infectious. Her name was Susana Machado, and Elias fell in love with her right away.

  The name Machado gave him some pause. She, for her part, froze when she saw him. "Are you Patrízio?" she whispered, clutching her water glass to her side.

  "No one calls me that." Pat frowned. "Why? Are you somehow related to my mother?"

  She let out a hysterical little laugh. "Ana Machado is my mother." She put her glass on the counter and threw her arms around Pat. "I'm your little sister."

  Pat flinched, but after a second he hugged back. His issues with his mother weren't this girl's fault, and he knew better than to transfer his resentment.

  Susana settled into the house quite nicely. She was like a little ray of sunshine, on the third floor, and while Pat might have been a little hesitant to let her in at first, he couldn't help but succumb to her joyful behavior. Elias approved. "She's a great young woman, and of course she's family."

  The fact that she was family was part of the problem, of course. But Pat didn't want to hold it against Susana.

  Susana had to work up the courage to talk to him about his mother, but she did it. "She found out that I was coming to the Boston area, and she asked me to look you up. She said to tell you that she was sorry about when you came to see her the last time. My father, he's kind of jealous."

  Pat snorted. "I think she has a type." Pat's dad had been jealous too, when he was sober enough to care about anything.

  Susana laughed. "I guess so. He's a good man, but… well, he didn't like to hear about the life she had in America, before she got deported. So."

  "So, he made her chase me off." Pat nodded. He wasn't sure that it made anything better. He was still her son. She should have said something then, but she hadn't. "Okay. I guess it doesn't matter anymore anyway. We'll never see one another again, so." He looked out the window. "I still miss her sometimes, but…"

  "She misses you, too." Susana put a hand on his arm. "But you have a nice life here."

  He grinned. "You know what? I do now. I really do."

  Zavia Nixon never recovered enough to stand trial for her crimes. Some of the families were angry about that, but they didn't see her. They couldn't see her. She wasn't going to be paraded around to satisfy their rage. Justice and revenge were two different things, and sometimes they were incompatible. She would spend the rest of her life in a secure facility. She would be comfortable, and she would be safe, but she would never be able to destroy another family. That was going to have to be enough.

  Pat tried to see her at least biweekly, depending on her treatment. She was a smart woman—she'd had to be, to raise so many children off the grid, with no one the wiser. She cooperated in giving information about the children, so that their families could try to re-integrate them. She also freely acknowledged that she would always be a danger. "It's best that I am where I am," she told him. "I love my babies, and I miss them, but I would always see things that I ma
ybe shouldn't. And I wouldn't be able to say no."

  Months passed. Elias and the baby grew. At first, there was just a little bump, and then there was a bigger bump. He and Pat entertained themselves by balancing the remote on Elias' belly and watching the baby kick it. It was a good distraction from all of Elias' fears.

  Elias had scheduled a C-section, due to the risks from his previous miscarriage, so the baby's arrival was a surprise to no one. Thomas Elias Tessaro was born at 8:42 p.m. He weighed eight and a half pounds, and he was twenty inches long. He opened his eyes, looked out at the world with a placid expression on his little face, passed his APGAR test, and promptly fell asleep.

  Pat hadn't thought that he'd ever get to this point. As he sat in the hospital room, holding his newborn son and looking over at his mate, he couldn't think of anyplace else he wanted to be.

  <<<<>>>>

  Preview Chapter: Deliver Me

  Carter stood outside the exam room and gripped his tablet. He hated these types of conversations. Hating them didn't make them any less necessary, of course, but he hated them nevertheless. There was no way for them to go well. Either he gave too much information and scared the crap out of his patients, or he gave too little information and scared the crap out of his patients. Either way, the patients went away angry and frightened, and his was the face associated with bad news.

  Oh, well. That was what they paid him for, after all.

  He knocked on the door, gave the people inside a moment to collect themselves, and then let himself in. "Mr. and Mrs. Cecil, I presume?" He held out a hand to both parents-to-be. "I'm Dr. Idoni. I'm pleased to meet you. Make yourselves comfortable. This is your first child, am I right?"

  Mrs. Cecil nodded, while her husband frowned. "We went over all of this with the nurse."

  "I know. I know. I just don't like to assume that everything I'm reading is what was said." He shrugged. He was stalling, and he knew it, but he couldn't help himself. "Sometimes things get transcribed wrong. I'd rather get things right, you know? Anyway. You just had your first ultrasound. It's a little later than we usually expect them, but that's actually a good thing in this case."

  The couple exchanged glances. "Why is that?" the wife asked. She placed a hand over her abdomen, even though she wasn't really showing yet. Her jeans were a little tight, and Carter knew what he was looking for, but most casual observers might think she'd just gained a little bit of weight.

  "Well, it's because if we'd done the scan at eight weeks, we would have missed something. It might be nothing, and it might be important." He sighed and logged into his tablet. All that it took were a few taps and he was able to bring up the image he wanted. "Do you see this bit right here? See how it's translucent? That's a red flag. It's called nuchal translucency." He swallowed and wiped his palm against his white coat.

  "What does that even mean?" The husband scowled and took off his red baseball cap.

  Carter tugged at his sleeves. "Sometimes it means nothing. It can indicate a congenital heart defect. It can also indicate certain chromosomal abnormalities, but those are extremely rare. What we usually do, when we see an ultrasound like this, is schedule a fetal echocardiogram. That will clear up at least one issue for us, one that we can look at and prepare for now. If your baby does turn out to have a heart defect, the fetal echocardiogram will clue us in on how severe a defect we're talking about and help us come up with a treatment plan."

  Mrs. Cecil covered her mouth with both hands. "A heart defect?"

  Damn it. There was the terror. "We always hope that it's one of the false positives, Mrs. Cecil. And sometimes that does turn out to be the case. It's like in your house, right? You take a look around to see if anything's out of place. When you see that something's not quite where you left it, you take a closer look. Sometimes you just didn't leave it where you think you did, or else a window got left open and the curtain pushed it out of the way.

  "Other times, sure. It's something you have to look into. Maybe someone's been in the house. You don't know, so you have to look a little closer. That's what the fetal echocardiogram is for." He took a deep breath. "And, of course, there's the amniocentesis. That can't be done for another few weeks, and I'd like to talk to you about your risk factors for some of the chromosomal abnormalities before we get into performing a test like that. The fetal echocardiogram is extremely low risk, whereas the amniocentesis is still low risk but does carry some risk of miscarriage."

  Mr. Cecil scowled. "Look, I don't know if our insurance will cover that. I'd have to call and stuff."

  Carter nodded. He heard that a lot, and he sure wasn't going to judge this guy for the hesitation. "I hear you. I'll be honest. I don't know how much it would be, out of pocket. They don't tell us. We're supposed to guide our patients based on what's right from a purely medical standpoint." He didn't bother to hide the bitterness in his smirk. "I think we should have all of the information available for you, but it's not really my call. But anyway. What I can tell you is that Silver Oak has an office set up specifically to help people find options. So, what I would recommend, and you don't have to take my advice but, you know, I did study this for a long time, would be that you go ahead and set up the appointment. Talk to your insurance company, and then talk to the payment office. We'll see what happens from there."

  Cecil nodded, his eyes far away. His lips were still pressed together, giving him more wrinkles than he should have had at his age, but he'd given up some of the resentment. Maybe it had just been the fact that Carter let a little bit of his accent show through. Funny, he'd never thought that being from Tennessee would be at all useful in New York, but here he was. "We'll see what happens, I guess."

  Mrs. Cecil got down from the exam table, and the pair headed out to make their appointment. Carter pressed the necessary buttons on the tablet to authorize the appointment, and that was the end of it. At least, that was the end of it from his side of things, until the next appointment anyway.

  He headed back toward his office to make the necessary notes in Mrs. Cecil's patient files, but Allan grabbed him on his way past. Allan wasn't a doctor; he was a nurse practitioner. He worked exclusively on omegas, like himself. Like Carter, too. "Where you going, Doc?" Allan asked. He put a hand on Carter's arm.

  "Back to my office?" Carter tipped his head to the side. "Like I usually do between appointments?"

  "No. Did you forget? We've got that lunch meeting with the new management team." Allan crossed his arm over his chest. "Don't tell me you were going to skip it."

  Carter rolled his eyes. "Oh, come on. I'm not an accountant. I'm not in HR. I deal with obstetrics, gynecology, and omega-specific medicine. I'm not useful in a business meeting. Putting me in there would be like putting an over caffeinated toddler into a room full of elderly nuns with a box full of firecrackers and a book of matches."

  Allan lifted his eyebrows. "You do have such a way with words. Fortunately, firecrackers are illegal in New York, and attendance is mandatory." He linked his arm through Carter's. "Come on now. At least they're feeding us lunch."

  "Okay, but the lunch comes from the cafeteria, Allan. No one wants to eat food that comes from the cafeteria." Carter followed along, mostly because it would create a scene to fight back too hard. "And attendance is mandatory or what? What's the consequence of staying back and doing the job we get paid for?" He shook his head.

  "I don't know, but these guys are wearing, like, really nice dark suits, and that makes me nervous. Can we maybe not find out what the 'or else' thing is until they've fed us?" Allan pulled him into the largest conference room that the floor had and gestured to the back where a table had been set up with boxed lunches for all.

  Carter bristled. What if someone didn't want the box lunch? What if they were vegetarian, or Muslim, or had a food allergy?

  "I see that look on your face." Allan elbowed Carter in the ribs and shoved a box lunch into his hands. "Take your burrito and sit down."

  They found a seat in the middle of the roo
m and tucked into their lunches while they waited for the presentation to begin.

  The faces at the front of the room were new, but none of them were unexpected. They were older white men, dressed in suits that could only be differentiated by the tie. They pursed their lips together and scowled at the people who worked in Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Omega Medicine. They scowled even deeper as the room got more crowded. "I don't like the looks of this," Allan whispered. "They're doing a head count."

  "I'm not surprised," Carter told him. "Look at their ties. They have no souls."

  Allan snickered, drawing scowls from the suits.

  After ten minutes, a younger man strode into the office. This one also wore a suit, but his suit was light gray and double breasted. The dress shirt underneath was a kind of very fine gingham, with a bold brown tie that dripped money. He had a lean and hungry look to him, one that he took care to emphasize with a neatly trimmed beard that highlighted his high cheekbones.

  Ice blue eyes stared straight ahead as he stormed up to the front of the room and took his place at the center of the table. Carter caught a whiff of leather as he passed, and it wasn't from anything that the guy was wearing. The fashion victim, whoever he might be, was an alpha.