Then she slid into place in front of the window to accept payment for his most recently completed concoction. That allowed him to keep on his prep gloves, but he couldn’t help contaminating them anyway, with a hand to her back. Letting her know she wasn’t alone.
* * *
“You okay to do this tonight?” The question burst from Johnny about a mile from the daycare just after dark fell that July evening. He’d been trying to figure out a subtler way to ask it for most of the afternoon.
“Of course!” Tabitha’s over-the-top enthusiasm—over-the-top for her—brought more concern rather than easing it. From the wheel of the little SUV he’d purchased to tow behind the food truck, he could only afford a quick glance in her direction. But it was enough to tell him, as if he didn’t already know, that this trip was different from all the rest.
And that it was taking a toll on her.
He just wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do about it. His role seemed to be changing, but they hadn’t discussed that. He had no idea how it would change, what it would become. They were friends. They talked. Even cried a little.
But they each went home to their own privacy, to dispel the deepest stuff alone.
Their friendship had come with an end date before it had begun. They’d both understood that from the beginning. It was part of why they worked. Why they were able to provide each other with the opportunity they both needed for venting and sharing.
There was no judgment and there were no expectations, nothing to further complicate things. Because they both knew they were living in a time out of time. Both of them had other lives they’d return to as soon as their goals were achieved.
They were helping each other with plans they’d made before they met, not embarking on a life they’d built together.
She’d already collected a list of daycares within her chosen parameters before he’d moved in next to her and had just added to it as time passed—a few of those she’d found had posted pictures that bore a slight resemblance to Jackson. Many did not. All of her daycare searches were within a day’s journey by car. According to Tabitha, Mark was obsessive about his mother and wouldn’t stray too far from her grave. Over the past six months of working the food truck, Johnny had visited every daycare on Tabitha’s growing list. Starting in Mission Viejo and working outward.
Of course, the daycares that posted actual pictures of their kids were in the minority, and could only do so with parental permission. It wasn’t likely that a man who’d kidnapped his son would grant that permission. Still, looking on the internet every night, finding the occasional photo kept her going.
The Bouncing Ball daycare stood out from the rest because it had a client with a Pinterest board she’d created celebrating her own child. And, odd as it was to Johnny, some modern-day parents seemed to think it was cool to plaster pictures of their kids—and even their kids’ classmates and pals—all over their social media pages. He got it to a degree; friends and family could all share the special moments.
But so could strangers who preyed on postings like that.
And then there was Tabitha, searching daycare websites and pictures every night. She’d typed in “San Diego daycare” on Pinterest, and seen the picture the mother had posted, along with the name of her toddler’s daycare. The parent had probably thought she was doing a good thing, giving the daycare publicity.
Tabitha was completely convinced that the picture she’d seen, the one she’d printed and kept in her purse for at least four days, was of a two-year-old Jackson. Certain. Said she’d seen herself in the eyes gleaming up at the camera. He’d been grinning, along with half a dozen other kids.
“It might not be him.” His job was to support, not discourage. But she was in over her head on this one. He could feel it.
“It’s him.” His peripheral vision told Johnny she was watching him, but with the traffic, he couldn’t take his gaze off the road. Wasn’t even sure he wanted to.
“He looked healthy, Johnny. And happy, too...”
Was that why she’d fixated on that particular photo, that particular kid, when there’d been a dozen others during the months they’d been friends? Because the boy had struck her as being happy?
“I understand why now,” she continued, sounding like she was giving testimony at a church rather than conversing about her missing son. As if she was somehow seeing some kind of sign. Sacred. Unquestionable.
The whole thing was scaring the hell out of him. For her sake. And his, too, in that he had no idea what to do about any of it.
If she’d been Angel, he’d have asked the tough questions. He’d have pushed. And she’d have told him what was in her deepest heart. Together they’d have figured out a Plan B. Because there was always a chance that Plan A wouldn’t work out...
Tabitha’s Plan B had always been the next photo. The next daycare. She’d never before indicated that she’d found her end point.
“He’s happy because of Mallory Harris... She’s, I don’t know. I felt confident in her ability to not only watch over the children in her care, but to truly love them. That’s why Jackson looked so happy. He’s being loved.”
Tabitha had once told him she was sure she’d been born to be in the pediatric medical profession. She’d known, even as a young kid playing with her dolls, that she was going to grow up to help sick children.
They hadn’t been baring their souls or anything. The topic had come up when he’d been telling her about the reason for his sabbatical. About Angel’s passion to own and run her own food truck and his quest to live it for her, since she couldn’t. It was a way of preserving her dream, of honoring her life, far more than hanging onto the restaurant she’d owned and run. He’d sold that, used some of the money for the food truck start-up, and donated the rest.
He’d been expecting Tabitha’s reaction to it all to be more of the pat on the head his father had given him.
Instead, she’d understood completely. Hadn’t just encouraged him, but offered to help in any way she could. Because she had a passion of her own—her yearning to help children in need. Separate and apart from her own immediate and completely pressing determination to find her son.
Leaving him to wonder if he was the only one who didn’t seem to have been given that one talent, one thing, that ignited passion within him. Or maybe it was just the passion he lacked.
“And I think it means that Mark is loving him, too,” Tabitha’s words broke into his thoughts. “As long as Jackson is little, Mark will get what he needs from him,” she said as he rounded the last corner and could see the professional building ahead. “Right now, with Jackson completely dependent on him, the whole codependency thing works. But when Jackson starts to assert his own independence—which the terrible twos will certainly bring on...” Her voice drifted off and he was pretty sure she’d just shuddered.
Was that why she was suddenly changing, seeming almost desperate? Not because of this one photo, but because Jackson had turned two and she was getting scared? Worried about her son’s safety when he clashed wills against an emotionally unbalanced father?
“Kids learn about their world by challenging their boundaries,” she was saying as he pulled into the parking lot. “Of course, Mark’s never shown a single violent tendency to me or any of the others who knew him at the hospital. Or, at least, not that any of us ever heard of. There’s no reason to assume he’d physically hurt Jackson...but there’d been no reason to suspect he’d kidnap him, either...”
Which could be why the police weren’t finding them. Not only were there fewer resources being allocated on a case gone cold, but Mark wasn’t a man who raised any alarms, or drew attention. Johnny parked at the daycare but left the engine running. Tabitha’s son’s father had been a nuclear medicine technician at the children’s hospital where she worked. He’d been wonderful