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Chapter or Story
The Visit - by MMB
Chapter 12 - Epilogue
"Mom! It's Grandpa on the phone. He said Sam called and is already down there, waiting for us; and wants to know if you want Sandy to pick up anything from the store on the way to the park? Have we forgotten anything?"
"Tell him we need sodas - and ICE!" Parker called back to her stepdaughter, still struggling to get the tee shirt on her three-year-old daughter over her swimsuit. "And then tell him that Trisha is being difficult again, and that we might be just a little bit late getting there after picking up Tommy."
"Mommy! It's too warm..." the dark-haired imp was insisting, trying to squirm out of her mother's patient grasp.
"No, it isn't," Parker insisted, finally having success pulling a hand through a sleeve. "The breeze is chilly today, and you're just getting over a cold. It's a tee shirt, or you don't get to turn on the water spouts."
"Mom..." a deep voice sounded behind her.
"Daddy!"
Parker took advantage of her little girl being distracted by her father coming into the room to pop the second arm down a sleeve. She stood and swung the child up into her arms and then held her out to Paul to take. "Here," she said, brushing curls back out of her face and letting her breath out noisily. "You get urchin-duty today."
"Oh, thanks a lot," the tall man grinned down at his wife, never failing to admire the way she could handle both teenager and preschooler while nearly seven months pregnant. "I just came into see if you're ready yet."
"I just need my suntan lotion," she puffed, then pushed past him into the hallway toward their bedroom where she'd left the tube on nightstand when she'd found it earlier.
"Here," she heard Paul hand off Trisha to her older sister so that he could follow. "Parker?"
She turned, and her storm-grey eyes were glowing. "I'm OK - really. Just excited."
Paul patiently took the lotion from her hands and began spreading it across her shoulders and down her upper arms. From the heightened color in her cheeks and ready smile on her face, excited didn't begin to describe her. "You'd think you hadn't seen any of these people for decades, sweetheart."
"I haven't seen Sam since his wedding," she protested as his huge hands came to rest on her shoulders, "or Deb since her graduation from high school."
"I think you just like playing hooky from the office every once in a while - especially on a nice, warm summer afternoon." Paul bent and nuzzled into his wife's neck the way he knew would get him a response. "Even your Dad's starting to fuss at me to talk you into not going in on Saturday mornings anymore."
She patted the bulge in her middle. "Trust me, I'm not going to be going into the office at ALL after a bit. We're going to be a single paycheck family soon enough. "
"Touché," he chuckled at her. "C'mon. Everybody's waiting for us."
The two of them walked out of the bedroom to where Janine was waiting for them next to the stack of grocery bags and wicker picnic basket. Without a word, Paul reached out and whipped the cap from his oldest daughter's head and turned it around so that the visor was in front where it belonged. "Dad..." was the immediate complaint.
"Don't." was the firm response, backed by a shake of the head from Parker when the girl looked to her for backing. "Not today, OK?"
Janine's face folded into a frustrated grimace as she bent to pick up her share of the load. Parker bent with her, putting her dark curls down near her stepdaughter's long, straight locks. "Just for today, OK?" she bargained with the girl earnestly. "I'll talk to him about it tonight."
"Mom, you KNOW that I'm not..."
"Yes, I know you're not - but your cooperation today would go a long way toward helping me convince him not to land on you so hard about it all the time. What do you say?"
Green eyes not completely lacking in suspicion took the measure of her stepmother's intent. "OK, but you PROMISE you'll talk to him?"
"I promise, baby."
Janine sighed and then straightened with several bags snared to her arm. She gave her father a frustrated glare and then headed out the front door and down the stairs two at a time. "One of these days you're going to fall down those steps and break your neck if you keep taking them like that," Paul called after her.
"Ease up on her, honey," Parker put a hand on his arm around his youngest daughter. "She does that only because it's the only way she can rebel right now. I swear, I need to get you two Nerf bats or boxing gloves this Christmas at this rate!"
"And I thought fourteen was a tough age for her," he grumbled, then gave his littlest girl a squeeze. "Whatcha say we go to the park and have some FUN?"
"Yeah!" Trisha crowed happily.
~~~~~~~~
Sam, ever the athlete, had even remembered to bring a Frisbee. While Deb and Janine took Trisha over to the wading pool to cool off in the water, Paul, Broots and his new wife Sandy and Sam and Sam's new wife Becky spread out across the grass by their picnic site to play a rowdy game of catch. Sydney and Parker both bowed out of the game, each for their own health reasons, to set up for the meal and rest in the shade. A shy and retiring eight-year-old boy sat on the grass at their feet, his attention divided between the raucous game and the bugs crawling through the grass.
"How are you feeling?" Papa inquired as Parker finally took her seat next to him to watch the antics of the other adults, her hand smoothing across her bulging tummy. "Everything OK?"
She glanced at him indulgently, sitting next to her with his still-customary beret perched jauntily on an even balder head over thin-wired sunglasses. "I'm fine, Papa - the baby's just active today." She gazed out at her family. "Hard to imagine six years ago that one day we'd be doing this, isn't it?"
He chuckled and put his arm around her shoulder. "Unimaginable is more like it," he responded as he patted her far shoulder. "Have you heard the news yet - Becky's expecting too."
Parker turned and stared at her Papa. "Already?" she breathed with eyebrows flying high on her forehead. "That didn't take them long..."
"He waited long enough to marry the girl, ma petite - I'm not surprised they decided to start their family right away."
"Did he tell you that his brother has opened a branch office up farther north, and he and Becky are thinking of relocating to Ventura?"
"Thinking about it - Becky admitted that they're already looking for a house between Ventura and Ojai." Papa smiled - it wasn't often that he was more up to date on the family gossip and developments than his daughter was. He blinked as a pink rubber ball from a family game a few picnic sites away from them bounced up to his feet. Tommy started badly and then bent to retrieve it and hand it up to the old man sitting next to his half-sister. "Thank you, Tommy," Papa said gently, taking the ball with one hand and smoothing the boy's hair back with the other.
"Uh... mister? Did you see my ball?"
Sydney handed the preschooler the ball with an easy smile. "Here you go," he said.
"Tell the nice man “thank you,” Josh," spoke a deeper voice from behind the picnic table - a deep voice that neither Parker nor Sydney had heard for years. Both turned as if electrified.
"Jarod?" Parker was the first to get past her complete shock to speak, while Papa sat next to her with his jaw agape.
"Parker?" The tall, dark-haired man did a double-take, then looked at the older man sitting next to her. "Sydney? My God, is that you?"
Parker rose slowly and moved into arms that were held out to her and then hugged her very gently. Jarod pushed back and looked down at the bulge in her middle. "Seven months?"
"Almost," she answered, letting him go so that he could put out a hand to pull her Papa to his feet and embrace him too. She looked out across the grass and saw that the Frisbee game had come to a halt while Sam and Broots stared at the commotion near their tables and Paul frowned and began to walk toward her. "Paul, Broots, Sam! You'll never guess who we just found!"
"Oh my God!" Broots gasped. "Jarod!"
"Paul," Parker bubbled at her husband the moment he came close enough for her to grab onto, "I'd like you to meet Jarod. Jarod, this is my husband, Paul Ruiz."
Paul studied the face of a man about whom he'd heard plenty in the years since he and Parker had begun seeing each other. "So you're the friend she played with all those years ago - the genius?" he asked cautiously, putting out a hand.
Jarod chuckled and shook the offered hand heartily. "So they tell me, and yes, I grew up with Parker." He shook Broots' hand next. "Good to see you again, Mr. Broots."
"You too, Jarod. I always wondered where you'd gotten to."
"Where's Deb?"
"Over there," Parker pointed, turning to look at the wading pond. "With my daughters Janine and Trisha. Trisha's the one screaming..." She turned back and couldn't help but notice a somewhat shy little boy sidling close to Jarod's pantsleg, much as Tommy was trying to hide behind Sydney's pantsleg. "And who's this?"
"This," Jarod said, swooping down and hauling the child up in his arms, "is my son Josh. Say hello to the nice lady, son..."
"You're living here in the area now?" Sydney demanded, sitting back down again with a slightly pale face.
"Papa?" Parker was immediately attentive. "Where are your pills?"
Sydney waved her off with a casual hand even as he fumbled in a breast pocket for the little pillbox that held his supply of nitroglycerine tabs. "Damned angina," he grumbled in a low voice.
Jarod moved to sit down next to his mentor and watched the older man take his medicine with a concerned look on his face. "My wife and I moved to Phoenix about six months ago - we just found out about this park a week ago. Sydney..." His eyes flicked quickly between his mentor's face and the pale face of the little boy who hung on Sydney as if for dear life.
"Well, I'll be damned." Sam joined the group with his arm around his petite wife's shoulder. "I always knew that the Lab-rat would show up again one of these days..."
"Lab-rat?" Becky repeated, gazing up into her husband's face in confusion. "What?"
"It's an old nickname - one that I'd hoped had been forgotten," Jarod smiled at the pretty little blonde and then gazed up into the huge ex-sweeper's face. "Hi, Sam. Long time no see."
"Your wife?" Sydney was craning his neck to look past Broots in the direction the ball had come originally.
"Yeah. Laura and I met when I helped her father with an accountant that was bleeding him dry, and we just hit it off..." The Pretender turned and waved at someone in the distance, then put his son back down on the ground. "Josh, go tell Mommy to come over here, OK?"
The little boy collected his ball from the ground and set off at a trot for his mother. Jarod returned his attention to his former mentor. "Sydney, you're having trouble with your heart?" he asked again, obviously not willing to take silence for an answer.
"Papa had another heart attack last year," Parker spoke up, knowing how reluctant her Papa was to discuss his own health of late. "We're having a hard time getting him to take it easy lately."
"Fuss and bother," Sydney waved his hand again dismissively. "I want to hear more about YOU. What are you doing now?"
"I actually stayed in one place long enough to do my degree in psychology and counseling," Jarod admitted with a shy smile. "Of course, I had a reason to stay put for a while - Laura was pregnant with Josh. But lately, I work with children in the foster care program here. I just transferred in." He bent forward and touched Tommy's head very gently, making the boy start and snuggle in closer to Sydney again. "Who's this?"
"My half-brother, Tommy," Parker told him, moving to sit next to Sydney and provide her semi-autistic little brother with just a bit more protection. "Raines got to him." Her eyes told him the rest.
Jarod swallowed hard. "God, Parker, I didn't know..."
"He's much better than he was at first," Sydney explained in a soft voice that had the boy looking up and finding comfort, as was the intent. "We've been able to take him out with the family on picnics for about a year now - and he's slowly socializing." Sydney's face pinched slightly. "He still doesn't talk, however, and he tends to stick fairly close to Parker and myself when out in the open like this."
Jarod watched his former mentor's fingers thread themselves gently and repeatedly through the boy's close-shorn locks. Then his dark eyes found Parker's. "What else have you been doing with yourself lately, besides raising a family and taking care of little brother?"
"I've been working for the public defender's office for the last two years," she told him as Paul found a seat next to her and gathered her close to him yet again. "But I'm going on indefinite leave in about eight weeks."
"I should hope so!" Sydney spouted from his seat, and Jarod chuckled at the paternal defensiveness displayed so carelessly.
"Jarod?" a shy voice spoke from behind the crowd, which then parted to reveal a tall and thin woman with her hand held carefully in her son's. "Josh said you wanted me over here?"
Jarod stood and looked around at the group of people he'd tripped over so suddenly. "You know how I told you that there were some people who were very important to me a long time ago - and that someday I'd find them so you could meet them?" He smiled at her. "Well, this is Sydney, the man who raised me. Sydney, this is my wife, Laura." He barely waited for the two to shake hands before he was leading her on. "And this was my best friend, Parker."
Laura's thin eyebrows could fly up a forehead with almost as much skill as Parker's ever could. "You mean, the infamous MISS Parker?"
Broots snorted in amusement and Sam chortled heartily. Even Parker gave a soft chuckle. "Just plain Parker now," she corrected, putting out her hand. "So you're the one who finally caught him?"
Laura gazed down at the woman her husband had always told her was intimidating and cold and found that she had a wonderful sense of humor. "Took some work," she admitted to her husband's former huntress, then looked up into the face of the man who had put a very protective and slightly jealous arm around her. "You don't look like you did too badly for yourself either though..."
Parker's arm tightened possessively around her husband's waist. "I was lucky," she said fondly as she patted a knee. "He practically fell into my lap."
Jarod stood and put his arm around his wife in a mirror gesture of Paul's, but his eyes dove into Parker's. "Are you happy?" he asked softly.
She nodded and leaned against Paul reassuringly. "And you?"
Jarod kissed the top of his wife's head. "Very much so." He glanced over at Sydney. "You call him Papa now?"
"He adopted me legally years ago," she explained. "He got me out of there, and saved my life."
"He got you out of there?"
"He came back for me." Parker didn't want to dampen the jovial mood. "And then he gave me 24/7 therapy until I was ready to live again." She did, however, have one question for her former nemesis. "Tell me, though - Broots told me once that you waited for some “loose ends” to be taken care of. Did you mean..."
"When you disappeared, I was hoping that it was because you'd finally woke up and got the hell out of there," Jarod admitted, "but I couldn't find out where you'd gone to. You left very little by way of paper trail, you know. All those years before that, I always knew where you were - and suddenly you dropped off the face of the earth. Yeah. You were my loose end. I waited until I thought you were safe." He looked back and forth between her and Sydney. "You came to live with Sydney and changed your name to his. No wonder I couldn't find you - I never imagined you'd ever accept anybody's help getting out of that hell-hole."
Paul's arm tightened around his wife. Even though she was with people who knew what she'd been through, he knew how much she hated to be reminded of those days. "Sydney kept her safe," he told the tall Pretender firmly, "until I could take over for him."
Parker patted his knee again, knowing that, despite his bravado, Paul was feeling just a little threatened by the reality of a man who probably knew his wife even better than he did. Once she had his attention again, she leaned into him, letting him know by her closeness that he had nothing to worry about, wrapping his hand across her belly so that he could feel the movements of their child as yet more reassurance. She had told him about Jarod long ago, before their marriage - told him everything about their closeness and decades-long relationship - and hopefully after today, he'd never have to wonder about whether he'd lose her to this old flame again.
"And we're all safe now," Broots told them quietly. "All of us."
"Mommy! Mommy! Janinie pushed me in the water and Debbie jus' laughed!" Trisha came streaking across the grass from the wading pool, water dripping from her hair and suit.
Parker was ready for her with a towel in which to wrap her daughter the moment she was close enough to grab. "Come here, imp - I want you to meet someone." She presented her daughter to her best friend. "Trisha, this is Jarod, someone Mommy knew when she was very young. And this is Laura, his wife."
"Hi," the child chirped in a small voice. "Mommy, I sit with Grandpa now?"
"You come and sit with Grandpa now," Sydney held up his arms for his granddaughter and then looked at Jarod with twinkling eyes.
"Grandpa," the Pretender repeated, then bent to his own son. "Do you know who that is?" he asked the boy. Josh shook his head solemnly. "That's your Daddy's mentor - someone just as important as any Grandpa. That's..." he thought for a moment, "...Grandpa Sydney."
"Hello, Josh," Sydney greeted the little boy very graciously, then looked up into his former protégé's face. "You're sure?"
"I'm sure," Jarod nodded at him firmly. "If you don't mind..."
Sydney looked around him, and then up into his daughter's face. "Of course not. We are all family here, after all."
He had thought the happiest moment of his life was the day he'd signed his name on the paper that had made Parker legally his, or the day that he'd walked her down the aisle to be married to his best friend. But this day would forever be right up there with those two others - for this was the day he got his other child back.
Contented beyond all measure with one wet grandchild on his lap and another sitting shyly and inquisitively close by, Sydney watched his family make room for the new additions. Broots and Sam accompanied Jarod to fetch his picnic supplies to add to the group's while Parker, Becky and Sandy did their best to make Laura feel at home.
His gaze impacted with Parker's over the top of Trisha's head as the women began to ready the food for serving, and he could almost hear her voice in his head: "I love you, Papa."
"I love you too, ma petite," he mouthed silently back at her, and saw her smile.
FIN.
Chapter 12 - Epilogue
"Mom! It's Grandpa on the phone. He said Sam called and is already down there, waiting for us; and wants to know if you want Sandy to pick up anything from the store on the way to the park? Have we forgotten anything?"
"Tell him we need sodas - and ICE!" Parker called back to her stepdaughter, still struggling to get the tee shirt on her three-year-old daughter over her swimsuit. "And then tell him that Trisha is being difficult again, and that we might be just a little bit late getting there after picking up Tommy."
"Mommy! It's too warm..." the dark-haired imp was insisting, trying to squirm out of her mother's patient grasp.
"No, it isn't," Parker insisted, finally having success pulling a hand through a sleeve. "The breeze is chilly today, and you're just getting over a cold. It's a tee shirt, or you don't get to turn on the water spouts."
"Mom..." a deep voice sounded behind her.
"Daddy!"
Parker took advantage of her little girl being distracted by her father coming into the room to pop the second arm down a sleeve. She stood and swung the child up into her arms and then held her out to Paul to take. "Here," she said, brushing curls back out of her face and letting her breath out noisily. "You get urchin-duty today."
"Oh, thanks a lot," the tall man grinned down at his wife, never failing to admire the way she could handle both teenager and preschooler while nearly seven months pregnant. "I just came into see if you're ready yet."
"I just need my suntan lotion," she puffed, then pushed past him into the hallway toward their bedroom where she'd left the tube on nightstand when she'd found it earlier.
"Here," she heard Paul hand off Trisha to her older sister so that he could follow. "Parker?"
She turned, and her storm-grey eyes were glowing. "I'm OK - really. Just excited."
Paul patiently took the lotion from her hands and began spreading it across her shoulders and down her upper arms. From the heightened color in her cheeks and ready smile on her face, excited didn't begin to describe her. "You'd think you hadn't seen any of these people for decades, sweetheart."
"I haven't seen Sam since his wedding," she protested as his huge hands came to rest on her shoulders, "or Deb since her graduation from high school."
"I think you just like playing hooky from the office every once in a while - especially on a nice, warm summer afternoon." Paul bent and nuzzled into his wife's neck the way he knew would get him a response. "Even your Dad's starting to fuss at me to talk you into not going in on Saturday mornings anymore."
She patted the bulge in her middle. "Trust me, I'm not going to be going into the office at ALL after a bit. We're going to be a single paycheck family soon enough. "
"Touché," he chuckled at her. "C'mon. Everybody's waiting for us."
The two of them walked out of the bedroom to where Janine was waiting for them next to the stack of grocery bags and wicker picnic basket. Without a word, Paul reached out and whipped the cap from his oldest daughter's head and turned it around so that the visor was in front where it belonged. "Dad..." was the immediate complaint.
"Don't." was the firm response, backed by a shake of the head from Parker when the girl looked to her for backing. "Not today, OK?"
Janine's face folded into a frustrated grimace as she bent to pick up her share of the load. Parker bent with her, putting her dark curls down near her stepdaughter's long, straight locks. "Just for today, OK?" she bargained with the girl earnestly. "I'll talk to him about it tonight."
"Mom, you KNOW that I'm not..."
"Yes, I know you're not - but your cooperation today would go a long way toward helping me convince him not to land on you so hard about it all the time. What do you say?"
Green eyes not completely lacking in suspicion took the measure of her stepmother's intent. "OK, but you PROMISE you'll talk to him?"
"I promise, baby."
Janine sighed and then straightened with several bags snared to her arm. She gave her father a frustrated glare and then headed out the front door and down the stairs two at a time. "One of these days you're going to fall down those steps and break your neck if you keep taking them like that," Paul called after her.
"Ease up on her, honey," Parker put a hand on his arm around his youngest daughter. "She does that only because it's the only way she can rebel right now. I swear, I need to get you two Nerf bats or boxing gloves this Christmas at this rate!"
"And I thought fourteen was a tough age for her," he grumbled, then gave his littlest girl a squeeze. "Whatcha say we go to the park and have some FUN?"
"Yeah!" Trisha crowed happily.
~~~~~~~~
Sam, ever the athlete, had even remembered to bring a Frisbee. While Deb and Janine took Trisha over to the wading pool to cool off in the water, Paul, Broots and his new wife Sandy and Sam and Sam's new wife Becky spread out across the grass by their picnic site to play a rowdy game of catch. Sydney and Parker both bowed out of the game, each for their own health reasons, to set up for the meal and rest in the shade. A shy and retiring eight-year-old boy sat on the grass at their feet, his attention divided between the raucous game and the bugs crawling through the grass.
"How are you feeling?" Papa inquired as Parker finally took her seat next to him to watch the antics of the other adults, her hand smoothing across her bulging tummy. "Everything OK?"
She glanced at him indulgently, sitting next to her with his still-customary beret perched jauntily on an even balder head over thin-wired sunglasses. "I'm fine, Papa - the baby's just active today." She gazed out at her family. "Hard to imagine six years ago that one day we'd be doing this, isn't it?"
He chuckled and put his arm around her shoulder. "Unimaginable is more like it," he responded as he patted her far shoulder. "Have you heard the news yet - Becky's expecting too."
Parker turned and stared at her Papa. "Already?" she breathed with eyebrows flying high on her forehead. "That didn't take them long..."
"He waited long enough to marry the girl, ma petite - I'm not surprised they decided to start their family right away."
"Did he tell you that his brother has opened a branch office up farther north, and he and Becky are thinking of relocating to Ventura?"
"Thinking about it - Becky admitted that they're already looking for a house between Ventura and Ojai." Papa smiled - it wasn't often that he was more up to date on the family gossip and developments than his daughter was. He blinked as a pink rubber ball from a family game a few picnic sites away from them bounced up to his feet. Tommy started badly and then bent to retrieve it and hand it up to the old man sitting next to his half-sister. "Thank you, Tommy," Papa said gently, taking the ball with one hand and smoothing the boy's hair back with the other.
"Uh... mister? Did you see my ball?"
Sydney handed the preschooler the ball with an easy smile. "Here you go," he said.
"Tell the nice man “thank you,” Josh," spoke a deeper voice from behind the picnic table - a deep voice that neither Parker nor Sydney had heard for years. Both turned as if electrified.
"Jarod?" Parker was the first to get past her complete shock to speak, while Papa sat next to her with his jaw agape.
"Parker?" The tall, dark-haired man did a double-take, then looked at the older man sitting next to her. "Sydney? My God, is that you?"
Parker rose slowly and moved into arms that were held out to her and then hugged her very gently. Jarod pushed back and looked down at the bulge in her middle. "Seven months?"
"Almost," she answered, letting him go so that he could put out a hand to pull her Papa to his feet and embrace him too. She looked out across the grass and saw that the Frisbee game had come to a halt while Sam and Broots stared at the commotion near their tables and Paul frowned and began to walk toward her. "Paul, Broots, Sam! You'll never guess who we just found!"
"Oh my God!" Broots gasped. "Jarod!"
"Paul," Parker bubbled at her husband the moment he came close enough for her to grab onto, "I'd like you to meet Jarod. Jarod, this is my husband, Paul Ruiz."
Paul studied the face of a man about whom he'd heard plenty in the years since he and Parker had begun seeing each other. "So you're the friend she played with all those years ago - the genius?" he asked cautiously, putting out a hand.
Jarod chuckled and shook the offered hand heartily. "So they tell me, and yes, I grew up with Parker." He shook Broots' hand next. "Good to see you again, Mr. Broots."
"You too, Jarod. I always wondered where you'd gotten to."
"Where's Deb?"
"Over there," Parker pointed, turning to look at the wading pond. "With my daughters Janine and Trisha. Trisha's the one screaming..." She turned back and couldn't help but notice a somewhat shy little boy sidling close to Jarod's pantsleg, much as Tommy was trying to hide behind Sydney's pantsleg. "And who's this?"
"This," Jarod said, swooping down and hauling the child up in his arms, "is my son Josh. Say hello to the nice lady, son..."
"You're living here in the area now?" Sydney demanded, sitting back down again with a slightly pale face.
"Papa?" Parker was immediately attentive. "Where are your pills?"
Sydney waved her off with a casual hand even as he fumbled in a breast pocket for the little pillbox that held his supply of nitroglycerine tabs. "Damned angina," he grumbled in a low voice.
Jarod moved to sit down next to his mentor and watched the older man take his medicine with a concerned look on his face. "My wife and I moved to Phoenix about six months ago - we just found out about this park a week ago. Sydney..." His eyes flicked quickly between his mentor's face and the pale face of the little boy who hung on Sydney as if for dear life.
"Well, I'll be damned." Sam joined the group with his arm around his petite wife's shoulder. "I always knew that the Lab-rat would show up again one of these days..."
"Lab-rat?" Becky repeated, gazing up into her husband's face in confusion. "What?"
"It's an old nickname - one that I'd hoped had been forgotten," Jarod smiled at the pretty little blonde and then gazed up into the huge ex-sweeper's face. "Hi, Sam. Long time no see."
"Your wife?" Sydney was craning his neck to look past Broots in the direction the ball had come originally.
"Yeah. Laura and I met when I helped her father with an accountant that was bleeding him dry, and we just hit it off..." The Pretender turned and waved at someone in the distance, then put his son back down on the ground. "Josh, go tell Mommy to come over here, OK?"
The little boy collected his ball from the ground and set off at a trot for his mother. Jarod returned his attention to his former mentor. "Sydney, you're having trouble with your heart?" he asked again, obviously not willing to take silence for an answer.
"Papa had another heart attack last year," Parker spoke up, knowing how reluctant her Papa was to discuss his own health of late. "We're having a hard time getting him to take it easy lately."
"Fuss and bother," Sydney waved his hand again dismissively. "I want to hear more about YOU. What are you doing now?"
"I actually stayed in one place long enough to do my degree in psychology and counseling," Jarod admitted with a shy smile. "Of course, I had a reason to stay put for a while - Laura was pregnant with Josh. But lately, I work with children in the foster care program here. I just transferred in." He bent forward and touched Tommy's head very gently, making the boy start and snuggle in closer to Sydney again. "Who's this?"
"My half-brother, Tommy," Parker told him, moving to sit next to Sydney and provide her semi-autistic little brother with just a bit more protection. "Raines got to him." Her eyes told him the rest.
Jarod swallowed hard. "God, Parker, I didn't know..."
"He's much better than he was at first," Sydney explained in a soft voice that had the boy looking up and finding comfort, as was the intent. "We've been able to take him out with the family on picnics for about a year now - and he's slowly socializing." Sydney's face pinched slightly. "He still doesn't talk, however, and he tends to stick fairly close to Parker and myself when out in the open like this."
Jarod watched his former mentor's fingers thread themselves gently and repeatedly through the boy's close-shorn locks. Then his dark eyes found Parker's. "What else have you been doing with yourself lately, besides raising a family and taking care of little brother?"
"I've been working for the public defender's office for the last two years," she told him as Paul found a seat next to her and gathered her close to him yet again. "But I'm going on indefinite leave in about eight weeks."
"I should hope so!" Sydney spouted from his seat, and Jarod chuckled at the paternal defensiveness displayed so carelessly.
"Jarod?" a shy voice spoke from behind the crowd, which then parted to reveal a tall and thin woman with her hand held carefully in her son's. "Josh said you wanted me over here?"
Jarod stood and looked around at the group of people he'd tripped over so suddenly. "You know how I told you that there were some people who were very important to me a long time ago - and that someday I'd find them so you could meet them?" He smiled at her. "Well, this is Sydney, the man who raised me. Sydney, this is my wife, Laura." He barely waited for the two to shake hands before he was leading her on. "And this was my best friend, Parker."
Laura's thin eyebrows could fly up a forehead with almost as much skill as Parker's ever could. "You mean, the infamous MISS Parker?"
Broots snorted in amusement and Sam chortled heartily. Even Parker gave a soft chuckle. "Just plain Parker now," she corrected, putting out her hand. "So you're the one who finally caught him?"
Laura gazed down at the woman her husband had always told her was intimidating and cold and found that she had a wonderful sense of humor. "Took some work," she admitted to her husband's former huntress, then looked up into the face of the man who had put a very protective and slightly jealous arm around her. "You don't look like you did too badly for yourself either though..."
Parker's arm tightened possessively around her husband's waist. "I was lucky," she said fondly as she patted a knee. "He practically fell into my lap."
Jarod stood and put his arm around his wife in a mirror gesture of Paul's, but his eyes dove into Parker's. "Are you happy?" he asked softly.
She nodded and leaned against Paul reassuringly. "And you?"
Jarod kissed the top of his wife's head. "Very much so." He glanced over at Sydney. "You call him Papa now?"
"He adopted me legally years ago," she explained. "He got me out of there, and saved my life."
"He got you out of there?"
"He came back for me." Parker didn't want to dampen the jovial mood. "And then he gave me 24/7 therapy until I was ready to live again." She did, however, have one question for her former nemesis. "Tell me, though - Broots told me once that you waited for some “loose ends” to be taken care of. Did you mean..."
"When you disappeared, I was hoping that it was because you'd finally woke up and got the hell out of there," Jarod admitted, "but I couldn't find out where you'd gone to. You left very little by way of paper trail, you know. All those years before that, I always knew where you were - and suddenly you dropped off the face of the earth. Yeah. You were my loose end. I waited until I thought you were safe." He looked back and forth between her and Sydney. "You came to live with Sydney and changed your name to his. No wonder I couldn't find you - I never imagined you'd ever accept anybody's help getting out of that hell-hole."
Paul's arm tightened around his wife. Even though she was with people who knew what she'd been through, he knew how much she hated to be reminded of those days. "Sydney kept her safe," he told the tall Pretender firmly, "until I could take over for him."
Parker patted his knee again, knowing that, despite his bravado, Paul was feeling just a little threatened by the reality of a man who probably knew his wife even better than he did. Once she had his attention again, she leaned into him, letting him know by her closeness that he had nothing to worry about, wrapping his hand across her belly so that he could feel the movements of their child as yet more reassurance. She had told him about Jarod long ago, before their marriage - told him everything about their closeness and decades-long relationship - and hopefully after today, he'd never have to wonder about whether he'd lose her to this old flame again.
"And we're all safe now," Broots told them quietly. "All of us."
"Mommy! Mommy! Janinie pushed me in the water and Debbie jus' laughed!" Trisha came streaking across the grass from the wading pool, water dripping from her hair and suit.
Parker was ready for her with a towel in which to wrap her daughter the moment she was close enough to grab. "Come here, imp - I want you to meet someone." She presented her daughter to her best friend. "Trisha, this is Jarod, someone Mommy knew when she was very young. And this is Laura, his wife."
"Hi," the child chirped in a small voice. "Mommy, I sit with Grandpa now?"
"You come and sit with Grandpa now," Sydney held up his arms for his granddaughter and then looked at Jarod with twinkling eyes.
"Grandpa," the Pretender repeated, then bent to his own son. "Do you know who that is?" he asked the boy. Josh shook his head solemnly. "That's your Daddy's mentor - someone just as important as any Grandpa. That's..." he thought for a moment, "...Grandpa Sydney."
"Hello, Josh," Sydney greeted the little boy very graciously, then looked up into his former protégé's face. "You're sure?"
"I'm sure," Jarod nodded at him firmly. "If you don't mind..."
Sydney looked around him, and then up into his daughter's face. "Of course not. We are all family here, after all."
He had thought the happiest moment of his life was the day he'd signed his name on the paper that had made Parker legally his, or the day that he'd walked her down the aisle to be married to his best friend. But this day would forever be right up there with those two others - for this was the day he got his other child back.
Contented beyond all measure with one wet grandchild on his lap and another sitting shyly and inquisitively close by, Sydney watched his family make room for the new additions. Broots and Sam accompanied Jarod to fetch his picnic supplies to add to the group's while Parker, Becky and Sandy did their best to make Laura feel at home.
His gaze impacted with Parker's over the top of Trisha's head as the women began to ready the food for serving, and he could almost hear her voice in his head: "I love you, Papa."
"I love you too, ma petite," he mouthed silently back at her, and saw her smile.
FIN.
