His statement to that effect had really hurt.
She was at the point of running various scenarios through her mind, trying to come up with ways to broach the topic with Johnny, when she noticed the police car parking across the street from their truck. A uniformed officer got out. Came toward the truck.
She glanced at Johnny. And then she realized the man probably just wanted a bowl for lunch. Word was getting around about them.
There were four people in line ahead of him, but the officer didn’t wait. He went straight to the window.
“Are you Ms. Tabitha Jones?” he asked. His blond hair and blue eyes made him look...kind. His bulk was a little intimidating.
“Yes.” Her mind was blank just then.
“Tabitha?” Johnny must have seen, or heard, the officer because he was behind her.
“I need to speak with you, ma’am,” the officer said. “If you could please come with me?”
Heart pounding, she glanced at Johnny again. She was in trouble?
“I’m sorry, we’re going to have to close,” Johnny was saying to the people gathering around the truck. He gave no explanation. Just exited the truck as she got her purse, then closed and locked up the window and the truck. Keys in one hand, he grabbed her hand with the other.
The officer led them to his car.
“What’s this about?” Johnny asked, stopping a couple of feet short of the car.
The man looked at Tabitha. “I believe we have your son, ma’am. I was sent to bring you to the station to be reunited with him.”
Tabitha’s tears were instantaneous and uncontrollable. She had no questions. She was aware of nothing but the open car door. Sliding inside. Hearing white noise in her head. Seeing flashes of color, of bodies milling around. The car started and began to move.
* * *
Johnny sat in the back of the patrol car, watching Tabitha, who’d been shown to the front seat, willing her to turn around. She didn’t.
Nor did she speak. Not to the officer, who’d said detectives would explain things to her at the station, and not to Johnny. She sat still, although periodically she reached up to wipe her face. It was as though she was afraid to believe Jackson was really at the end of the car ride. Afraid to believe her wait was almost over.
She’d done what he suspected was all she knew how to do anymore—closed in to take care of herself.
The second the car stopped at the station, she was out of it. Moving toward the door. Johnny caught up with her. “Maybe we should wait for the officer,” he suggested.
She jumped as if she hadn’t even known he was there. But she nodded. Stopped. Stared at the door.
They were shown down a long hall and into a small conference room where they were told to wait. Tabitha hugged herself, standing right in front of the door, and it was too difficult to watch.
“Hey,” Johnny said, putting his arms around her. “It’s going to be good.” What the hell he meant by that, he had no idea. He just had to let her know she wasn’t alone.
The door opened and she gasped. And then grew still. A woman in a brown suit stood there, but there was no child.
“I’m Detective Shanley,” she said, holding out her hand. “I’ve been working with Detective Bentley in Mission Viejo and just need to speak with you for a few minutes.”
“Where’s Jackson?” Tabitha asked. “Is he okay?”
“He’s fine,” the detective assured her, guiding them to a thin-cushioned couch with metal arms in a corner of the room. As soon as they were seated, Johnny on one side of Tabitha, the detective on the other, Detective Shanley told them the details of how they’d found Jackson.
Tabitha hadn’t been wrong when she’d seen that picture of Jason. Hadn’t been wrong in believing she’d found her son. And she hadn’t been wrong to have faith in Mallory Harris. As it turned out, Matt had been trying for a while to get Mallory to go out with him. The night after she’d first met Tabitha and Johnny in the pub, the night after she heard Tabitha’s story, she’d finally accepted Matt’s invitation. She’d spent the past week dating him to learn whatever she could about him. And so she could keep Jason close.
Mark was a smart man in a lot of ways. He was good at keeping his cover. But he’d had no idea Mallory had Tabitha’s list. Not only had she been able to confirm all the likes, dislikes, mannerisms and idiosyncrasies Tabitha, with Johnny’s help, had listed, she’d gone farther than that. She’d asked leading questions to trip him up. Had asked him if he’d been in the delivery room with his wife, and when Mark had said yes, she’d asked enough questions to realize he was lying. He didn’t know enough about the moment-to-moment experience of childbirth to pull it off. Only someone who’d actually been in a delivery room would know.
The culmination had come when Mark told Braden he was taking off the anniversary date of his wife’s death. He’d told Mallory that he was over his wife. That the relationship hadn’t been working even before she died. There would have been no reason, then, for him to take time off from work to commemorate that date.
“So...did she confront him?” Tabitha asked. She seemed to be doing so much better, although Johnny knew she had to be dying to see her baby boy. At that point, he was eager to meet the young man himself.