Miss Parker

I entered the classroom and greeted the teacher by means of a casually raised hand. Miss Jenkins smiled at me and went back to helping a small boy with his drawing. The pencil in his hand looked too big for him and his face was screwed up in concentration. A jolt of pain went through me when I thought of Donald, whose spot right next to Sammy had remained empty today. Sammy got up from her table and approached me quickly, hugging me and pressing her cheek against my middle.

“Mommy!” She tugged at my blazer’s sleeve. “Come and see my picture!”

She was a bit surprised when I crouched down first, pulled her towards me and gave her a firm hug, kissing her cheek at the same time.

“What’s wrong?” she asked mildly puzzled but I just gave her a smile.

“Everything’s fine, baby. So what about that drawing?”

I followed her to her desk, her little hand firmly in mine and looked at the drawing as requested. “Who’s that?” I asked, looking down at the five people she had drawn. Two of them were a little shorter than the others and everybody was smiling under a bright sun.

She pointed at a figure in black. “That’s you, Mommy. This is Daddy.” He finger moved to the person next to my likeness. “This is me!” she pointed out one of the smaller figures that was dressed in pink. “And that’s my little brother!”

I stared at the small figure in light-blue that stood next to Sammy, holding her hand, smiling, as a pang of shock went through me. Had Jarod not honored my request and told her about the baby already? I suddenly felt weak with the thought of how sad she would be if my hunch that something would go wrong proved to be justified.

“That’s pretty, Sam. But do you have a little brother I don’t know about?” I teased.

She just grinned and squeezed my hand. “No, but I will have!”

She was so happy that I didn’t have the heart to spoil it for her by explaining that there were still six months and many risks to go before she could be sure about that. So I just smiled and pointed out the fifth person on the drawing.

“Now, who’s that?” I asked her to steer her away from the topic of little brothers.

“That’s Kenny,” she explained and I shook my head. She had been talking about someone named Kenny at lengths recently, but Miss Jenkins had told me not to worry because children her age sometimes tended to have imagined friends.

“Ah, he’s good-looking,” I said and looked curiously at the black and white top he was wearing and the grin on his face, spiky yellow hair on his round head. She had drawn a few creases in his face which made him look old.

“Will you put it on the fridge?” she asked, eager for her work to be recognized.

“Of course,” I answered and straightened up to a standing-position, feeling dizzy immediately. I really should have eaten the sandwich Greg had bought me for lunch, but I had simply forgotten due to that noon’s revelation. I had promised myself to take things a little easier as not to put too much pressure on the baby, so I was pretty angry with myself now and decided to take Sammy out for cake and ice-cream to catch up on some needed calories.

She looked at me quizzically for a moment. “You okay, Mommy?”

“Perfect. Just get your jacket and your bag and we’ll go to the mall for ice-cream.”

Her face lit up. As wise as she sometimes seemed for her age, the prospect of sticky sweet food mesmerized her just as it did other children. She ran towards the back of the room to collect her things and left me pondering her drawing. I bent over to retrieve her colored pens and when I looked up again, Miss Jenkins had approached me quietly.

“Hi,” she smiled. “Sorry for not talking to you earlier, but Max here needed my help.”

“Totally understandable,” I said, working hard to keep the sarcastic tone out of my voice. My rapport with Val at the office, the scaring of lawyers and the sharp-tongued closing arguments did nothing to help my dealing with other people. Jarod had once set me straight about my ways that were rather inappropriate at times and so I gave my best to be sweet to people.

“I heard about what happened to Donald,” Miss Jenkins said. “It is terrible. Poor Linda must be crushed.” She shrugged helplessly. “Donald drew a few pictures last week and I thought she’d maybe be happy to have them. Would you mind taking them over to her? I understand you live right next to each other.”

I doubted that a reminder of happy days would benefit Linda a lot, but true to my ambition to be helpful and friendly, I nodded. “Of course, no problem.”

“Thanks.” She handed me two folded sheets of paper and smiled sadly. “Sammy doesn’t really understand what happened. I thought I’d leave it to you to explain.”

I nodded and took in her wrinkled face, the slightly frizzy graying hair and the huge glasses perched on her nose. She was truly a nice woman and I sometimes I regretted not being able to do this kind of people justice.

“You look a little pale, Miss Parker. Are you alright?” she asked me, reaching up to touch my shoulder. Before I could restrain myself, I had taken a step back and bumped into one of the desks. The little boy sitting at hit glared at me.

“I ruined my picture because of you,” he sulked.

“I’m sorry.” I gave him a halfhearted smile, then finally dared to look back at Miss Jenkins.

“I’m sorry, too, Miss Parker,” she told me, looking half apologetic, half worried. “You don’t seem to be too good at these things, dear.”

I wondered whether I should be angry or hurt, but found that I was neither. She seemed to genuinely try to understand my ways and although I would never tell her why I was so bad with people, I was grateful for it.

“You’re right. I’m not good at this,” I replied and reached my hand out for Sammy who came running towards me, her face bright with excitement.

“Miss Jenkins! Mommy’s taking me out for ice-cream!” she announced and grabbed my hand, bouncing up and down beside me.

“Looks as if we had to go now,” I smiled.

“Give Linda my best. Oh, and we will have a parents’ meeting Saturday night to discuss the...” she gave a pointed look to indicate that I knew what she was talking about. “...latest events. Maybe you can make it.”

“I’ll try,” I replied although many parents in one room were anything but a nice prospect for me. Most of them didn’t really like my attitude, but since they adored Jarod because of his charms, his commitment to their causes and the fact that he had a private practice for pediatrics, I would ask him to go.

Half an hour later I watched my daughter eat her way through a giant serving of vanilla ice-cream, chocolate sprinkles and strawberries. The appetite for this kind of food, her manner eating it and even the content smile on her face reminded me so much of her father, that it was almost scary. I took a sip of my water and had one of the chocolate cookies she had insisted we bought. I decided to not catch up on the paperwork I had abandoned after Val’s visit after all but instead to have a decent meal and then curl up on the sofa with a book while I would have my husband massage my feet.

Said husband came walking towards us right that moment and set another awe-inspiring amount of ice-cream down on the table. I couldn’t help but smile as he started munching through it in much the same way Sammy was.

If I really had a boy, I would want him to be just like Jarod, I thought, then dismissed the cheesy thought. I was becoming soft.

Jarod had noticed my gaze and misinterpreted dreaminess as appetite, so he wiggled his eyebrows. “Would you like some?”

He offered his spoon to me, but I shook my head and pointed at his bowl. He grinned back and spooned something up, ready to feed it to me. To do him a favor, I ate the ice-cream, then licked my lips.

“Thanks.” I slipped out of my shoe and caressed his shin with my bare foot. Sammy was always embarrassed when we were acting like lovebirds around her, so I did my best to hide it. We both knew that I hadn’t been fair last night when I had refused to open up to him, so I felt like I had to make something up to him.

“You must try mine to!” Sammy stuck out her spoon, but I held up my hand.

“No thanks, I’ve had enough.” I returned to my cookie and my watching my family enjoying their ice-cream.

It could have been such a nice family-outing, if not for the fact that we still had to discuss a sad topic with her. I waited until they had finished their ice-cream and my cookies, then tried to catch Jarod’s eye to signal him that we had to do it. He understood right away and pulled Sammy into his lap while I rounded the table and sat on the bench next to them.

“Do you know why Donald wasn’t at preschool today?” I asked softly and her face immediately fell.

“No. Something bad has happened, hasn’t it?”

I looked at Jarod for help. He was generally better at these things and I didn’t want to be too bold and scare her.

“He has disappeared and the police are now looking for him,” he explained.

“Is that why Linda is always crying now?”

“Yes,” I said and put her hand on her back to comfort her. “We hope they will find him soon.”

“You would cry, too, if I was gone?” Sammy asked and I felt tears welling up inside me at the mere thought of it. In many ways I was still a lot like the person I had been at the Centre, but when it came to my daughter I had become a complete and hopeless softy. Since I didn’t trust my voice, I just nodded.

“Mommy can you help find Donald?” she asked now, with a pleading look in her eyes. I can only make his abductor rot away in prison, I thought regretfully. If he was ever caught. Or I could use my enhanced senses and try to find him that way. If only I knew how.

Jarod

Miss Parker had been meaning to read a book but had discarded it quickly after I had begun to massage her feet. “These high heels aren’t good for your feet,” I told her sternly while she was leaning back, eyes closed and groaning happily. She opened her eyes and gave me a dirty smile.

“But they look hot and I know you like it.”

I abandoned her feet for a moment to give her a kiss and she used the opportunity to pull me towards her by my shirt-collar and deepen the kiss.

“I think my feet won’t need you anymore,” she whispered and wrapped her arms around me, nestling her face into my shoulder.

“I am sorry about last night,” she said after a short moment of silence. “All this is just a little too much for me.”

At least now whenever she returned to her old ways she noticed it and always apologized. I didn’t answer but simply stroked her hair.

“I hope you don’t regret getting yourself such a difficult wife.”

“No, I don’t. If I had wanted someone simple, I would have picked somebody else.”

She smiled almost shyly and sat up next to me, her legs in my lap. “But you have something to apologize about, too.”

She looked at me expectantly and I stared down at our joined hands, wondering what it was that she meant. I couldn’t come up with anything so I shrugged. “What?”

“You told Sammy about the baby.”

I pulled my eyebrows together, surprised by that allegation. “No, I haven’t. I told you I wouldn’t, so I didn’t.”

“That’s strange. She drew a picture of our family today and when I asked her who the other kid was, she said she knew that she would have a little brother soon.”

“That’s strange indeed. Maybe she overheard us talking?”

“I checked on her, she was fast asleep when I got home from the night out with the girls.”

“Maybe she likes to pretend to be asleep. Like her mother,” I told her pointedly and she gave me a sheepish look.

“I thought you hadn’t noticed.”

“I notice everything, Parker. Now tell me what this is all about.”

Miss Parker

I knew that Jarod wanted his question to be answered, but I didn’t really know how. The least I wanted was to worry him and he had been so overjoyed with the news that I didn’t want to ruin it for him. Still, I had already done that by trying to avoid him.

I put my hand in the back of his neck and let it rest there as if to comfort him.

“Remember last time I was pregnant, Jarod? I knew Sammy was a girl before any doctor could tell me and I think it’s happening again.”

He looked skeptic of what I was telling him. “What do you mean?”

I sighed, aware of the fact that it had to sound obscure to him. He hadn’t been there that last time at the Centre when I had been able to open my mind so wide that I had almost been able to hear other people’s thoughts. After that incident, when I had finally been allowed to leave hospital we had been very preoccupied with preparations for Sammy’s arrival plus I had been weakened considerably by the smoke-poisoning. I had never experienced it again, mostly because I hadn’t allowed myself to. So Jarod had never been a witness to what I had been able to do and from the way he talked about Project Cassandra, I was almost sure he thought it wasn’t making any sense.

“I mean I have a very bad feeling about my pregnancy.”

“So you don’t want the baby?” He sounded sad and I felt frustration well up inside me.

“On the contrary, Jarod.” I made him look into my eyes so he would see the honesty there. “I do want this baby so much, but I am so afraid that something will go wrong.”

He took both my hands in his and looked at me intently. “We have been talking about this so often. You need to see someone about that. Look at you, you seem fine. The only thing that’s dangerous to the baby is that you’re winding yourself up and that you’re not taking enough care of yourself in the process.”

I narrowed my eyes and squeezed his hands back with a little too much force.

“You don’t understand what I mean, Jarod. This is not irrational. It is not due to the fact that I haven’t dealt with my past. This is very real.”

He shook his head. “You had a fifty-fifty chance of knowing the baby’s gender and you were very confused because of your amnesia. You can’t let yourself believe that there was any scientific base for Raines’ desperate plan. With the prospect of losing the Centre he probably went nuts towards the end of his life.”

I realized that he had either no idea what I was talking about, or he plainly didn’t believe me. I was too shocked to speak, so I simply sat there, feeling very alone. I wanted so badly to believe that he was right and that I was simply overreacting. But with what I had experienced yesterday and the many coincidences in the whole story, I feared that I was not.

He pulled me towards him and I rested my head on his shoulder while he gently stroked my back. “We’ll just have lunch together more often and I make sure you’re resting enough.”

“Don’t patronize me.”

I knew my protest sounded weak since suddenly I felt extremely tired.

“Just don’t worry. I’ll make sure you’ll both be fine.”

I let him hold me and although his closeness always calmed me, I couldn’t shake off the familiar sense of foreboding. For the very first time in our marriage, my husband couldn't understand what I was feeling.

William Cornwell

I pinched the bridge of my nose and scrunched up my eyes, reaching blindly for the bottle of water I always kept on my desk. My wife Maura kept bugging me to eat more and drink more water to avoid getting dehydrated but with the strains of a big case I almost always forgot.

Especially when a case was as painful and as close to home as this one. I quickly closed my eyes and opened them again, then shook my head to chase away the drowsiness that came from the exhaustion of a night without sleep. I had stayed at the office all night along with many colleagues, some on duty, many volunteers, to sort through the information we had gathered, double-check interview reports and look at files from offenders in the area. So far, we hadn’t turned up any results.

The family was obviously not doing well. The mother was hysterical, the father stony-faced and obviously unable to give comfort to his wife. It was always sad to see these things happen and from experience I knew, that even if we managed to find the kid, their marriage might be over by the end of it. So far, the chances of finding Donald seemed to grow dimmer with every passing minute. The only comfort was that we were still within the forty-eight hours they say are the time frame in which a kidnapping victim is most likely to still be found alive. I consulted my watch and had to hold it away from my face in order to recognize the digits that were blurring in front of my tired eyes. Half past eleven. There was not much time. And I desperately needed a huge cup of coffee and something sugary to keep my blood sugar levels up. Maybe I was getting too old for this at forty-eight.

There was a knock at the door and I raised my head warily, wondering who it might be. Not Val again, I prayed. She was all energized up and impossibly angry already. It was her way to avoid worrying about things, but it really took some patience to keep up with it.

“Yes!” I called and sat up straight, automatically reaching for my tie that I had discarded long ago. Last night after the Chinese take out whose remains filled the room with the smell of chip fat. Time to open a window, I thought.

The door opened and my sister’s friend Miss Parker walked in, as usual dressed elegantly in a black suit and the kind of high heels that Val would scowl at with any other woman. In the beginning I’d had no idea how these two could get along so well, but since I had been witness to their good friendship at several occasions, I was starting to get the picture.

“Well, hello, Miss Parker.” I greeted her and she nodded graciously, barely avoiding to sneer at the rather prominent smell of stale food that dominated my office.

“I am sorry.” I hurried and opened the window wide. “I’ve been working all night so I didn’t have a chance to take the garbage out yet.”

“That’s okay.” She gave a weak smile and proceeded towards the desk. I was sure she wasn’t trying to get closer to me but rather to the open window that was located to my left hand side.

Finally she stopped and reached her hand out for me to shake. “Good to see you, Will.”

“Good to see you, too. Congratulations on the little one, anyway.”

She shook her head in disbelief. “Has Val sold that information to the tabloids, too?”

“Yeah, but only the ones in North America,” I joked and offered her the chair that faced mine in front of the desk. She grinned and picked up the unsteady pile of folders I had placed there.

“Oh, right here.” I gestured towards a small empty spot on my desk and she dumped them there.

“I see chaotic desks run in the family,” she commented and lowered herself into the chair. I reckoned I deserved some fun and watched her cross her bare legs elegantly.

“So what do I owe your lovely company to?” I asked, aware of the fact that my British accent that ridiculously still dominated my family’s speech although we had been living in the US for two generations was what I had charmed my wife with back in the days. It did seem to work on Miss Parker since she gave a smile which was a bit rare with her.

“Well, I was wondering whether you had learned more about the Hanson case, yet?”

I threw my hands up in frustration. “Nothing yet. ´We’re looking at it from all angles but there’s not much we could come up with yet.”

“Any prints from the garden gate?” she asked.

“Many. We’re still working at running them through the system. Nothing yet. Now we’ll see whether we can match them with the family and the neighbors.”

She nodded and looked at me regretfully for a moment, as if she was going to tell me something, then shrugged.

“I am sorry to bother you about this, Will. I know you’re really stressed out with the case and all and you don’t need another prosecutor bugging you for information.”

“Hear hear,” I told her sternly, then gave her a grin that I hoped would look at least half as boyish as her husband’s. “It’s okay. You’re a nice change from Val from time to time.”

“You better not tell her that.”

“Speaking of Val: Maura and I are hosting a barbecue tonight. Well, it doesn’t look as if I could be in attendance, but Val is invited and you know how difficult things are between her and Maura.”

Miss Parker nodded, obviously well aware of the tension between my sister and my wife of many years. I didn’t tell her that my wife wasn’t particularly fond of her either.

“Why don’t you drop by, bring that husband of yours and the little princess and keep Val away from the liquor?”

“Well, that’s a very kind of you. Thank you, Will.”

Maura Cornwell

I was angry at my husband. I understood that he would have to work all night on that kidnapping case and my heart broke at the idea of a child having been taken away from its parents, but the fact that along with his impossible sister, he had invited her impossible colleague, on whom I knew he had a crush, was a little too much. The crush was innocent and he would have never acted on it, since he was a man far too honorable to even consider it. He probably wasn’t even aware of the fact that he was attracted to her, but I couldn’t stand her. She was different from Val and around her calm husband she was almost bearable, but her usually snippy tone and clipped voice unnerved me along with her always perfect outfit. She was a wife and the mother of a young girl but dressed as if she was still out hunting men. I wasn’t even sure whether she would stay faithful to her husband. He was very good-looking and smart, but she looked like the type who liked to get recognition from other men, too.

My garden was already buzzing with activity and my spirits lifted a bit while I watched the children play and the adults chat amicably. Our annual barbecue was always a great opportunity to invite dozens of old friends and introduce new ones. That barbecue had already caused some great marriages in its two-decade tradition.

Val stood thoughtfully, watching the kids play soccer while she was nursing a big glass of beer. She actually preferred to drink it from the bottle and had raised both eyebrows when I had ordered her to use a glass, but I didn’t allow for such manners around my house. Especially not a woman's. The fact that she was working in a man's job didn't mean she could behave like a man, too.

The doorbell rang again and I went to answer it. Jarod’s big grin and his very friendly manners helped me considerably while I pasted on a smile to greet his wife. While he looked casual in jeans and a shirt, she was wearing a light green summer’s dress that made me raise an eyebrow although it was modest and basically fit the occasion. Still I felt as if she was trying to make a point and show off how good her figure was despite the fact that she had a child.

“Hello,” I greeted her and was relieved that my voice didn’t sound too strained. She smiled and I once again noticed how penetrative her eyes were. Maybe it was the contrast of the grayish blue to the blackness of her hair... I didn’t know why but she always gave me the creeps.

“Thank you so much for having us. Sammy is all excited already,” she told me, the brilliant smile not ceasing.

“Speaking of which, I think I’ll go and introduce her to the kids,” Jarod said and reached his hand out for his daughter. The little girl was adorable, which she probably owed to the fact that she must have inherited her mannerisms from her father. She smiled and waved shyly, then followed Jarod into the garden.

“We brought some wine,” Miss Parker said and pointed at her huge bag. “It’s a white so maybe we can put it in the fridge.”

“How sweet of you!” I gushed, really kicking myself not to avoid her gaze or snap at her. She walked ahead of me into the kitchen on her impossible high heels which she would certainly not have any fun with on the lawn, I thought spitefully.

I knew that she hated cooking or handling food and that she mostly left it to her husband, who seemed to be very good at it. Stupid really, that she pursued her job with so much ambition and left typically female tasks to her poor husband who was busy enough with his practice. So I couldn’t stop myself and asked her to help me with the salad in the kitchen while she was there. Why I burdened myself with being alone with her at all, I didn’t really understand. She nodded and I watched her cut the bread while I arranged canapes on a plate.

Miss Parker

I had always known that Maura didn’t like me. She probably hated me even more than Val, not hiding the fact that she did not approve of women pursuing their own careers. She did not take into account that I only worked halftime to be able to be there for Sammy when she came home from preschool or that Val didn’t have any kids at all. Maura also looked the part: With carefully curled blond hair and a pink blouse along with a modest light gray skirt she was the new millennium's equivalent of a Stepford Wife. She always stood in the doorway of her big, perfectly groomed house that was stuffed with doilies and dominated by the color pink. I had never spotted a trace of her husband in it and it made me feel sorry for him whom I liked a lot. She also liked to criticize other women where she could, during which her face bore great resemblance to that of a person who'd had too much vinegar.

Today she didn't attack me right away. As usual she wasn’t downright rude, but I could hear from her voice that she would have rather insulted me than be friendly. She sounded as if she was playacting whenever she addressed me with friendly words.

When I had finished slicing the bread, she handed me an already half full basket to put it into and our fingers brushed very slightly as I took it from her. It felt like an electric shock and I gasped and instinctively let go of the basket and grabbed the counter. I allowed her to bent down and pick up the bread. She probably hated me even more for it, but I was too shaken to worry about that, as long as she would never touch me again.

That afternoon Sammy had been with a friend so I’d had time to simply sit in the garden and try to concentrate on the weird feeling I was having about the kidnapping. It had felt as if I had missed something, which had also prompted me to visit Will.

I had taken up a few easy exercises that I had remembered from the times Raines had tried to push me into exploring my senses as a child and it had worked even better than during my last pregnancy. Maybe it was due to the fact that I now acknowledged it more or was under less stress, but I obviously had opened my mind already to other people’s feelings. The wave of dismay and hatred that had swept over me when my fingertips had brushed Maura’s had very nearly knocked me off my feet in its unexpectedness. My heart was still racing and I felt as jittery as if a jolt of electricity had just gone through me.

“How stupid of me,” Maura piped up and gave me another one of those fake-smiles that now made me feel very sick. “Oh, you’re so pale!” she exclaimed and set the basket aside. Probably happy to be rid of me, she reached for my arm to guide me to a chair outside. I immediately stepped back to avoid her touching me and held up my hands.

“No no,” my voice sounded flat and hoarse. “You go on with this and I’ll just go outside for a breath of fresh air.” I could see from her facial expression that she was scandalized that I had so brusquely rejected her attempt to help me, but I didn’t care.

Alone in the hallway, I leaned against the wall and took deep breaths. I had only now realized how dangerous it could become to explore a sense that was so alien to me and that could bear all kinds of risk for me and for my unborn child.

If this was just the beginning, what else could be happening? And who was there to turn to and ask since Jarod didn't believe me? I laughed bitterly when I remembered that Raines had experimented with this on my mother, so he was the only person who had known about it. And all files had blown up along with the Centre. For the first time I regretted that every trace of it had been erased either by the fire or by the Triumvirate who didn’t like their secrets out in the open.

I knew that I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I just let this go and abandon Donald if I was likely to be the only person who could help him. Slowly I walked into the living-room and looked out into the garden where Sammy was sitting on the lawn next to another little girl and looked at a picture book. If it was my child who had been taken away from me, I would risk everything to get her back, I thought. And I knew I would do it for Donald, too.

I straightened my dress and slowly brushed my stomach with my palm. Maybe that was where the bad feeling about the new baby came from. The fact that trying to find Donald would put more stress on me than I could imagine. I swallowed. Was it really worth it? But then I knew that I didn’t have a choice.

TBC