Honestly Love You (PASH: Russells/Chad)-Chap. 20
by caroline crane
 

Hank stared at the birth certificate in front of him while he waited for Chad and Ethan to arrive. The thought of giving Ethan Crane an update on his progress made his head ache, but the guy was footing the bill and he owed it to Chad to try to get along with him. He shook his head as he imagined them as best friends again. It seemed like a mathematical impossibility, but there it was, and lately they were spending more time together than ever.

He looked up as Beth stopped next to his table, a flirtatious smile lighting up her face. He loved that she didn't even know she was flirting with him, it made her even more beautiful. Stop thinking of Beth as beautiful, he told himself. Friends, you're just friends. No matter what Luis says. "Hey, babe, what's up?"

"I thought you could use a little jolt before you had to face his Highness," she teased, setting a cup of black coffee down in front of him.

Hank groaned at the thought of Ethan slipping into Crane mode and promised himself he wouldn't lose his temper. After all, he'd come this far and he wanted to help Chad. "Thanks, Beth," he said, picking up the coffee as he smiled up at her.

"No problem. Let me know if you need backup," she whispered, turning away as the front door opened and Ethan walked in, followed by Chad. They slid into the chairs across from him as Hank quickly folded the birth certificate and shoved it in his pocket.

"Hey Ethan, hey Chad," Hank greeted them as they sat down.

"Hank," Ethan said, but his tone didn't have the arrogant edge Hank had grown to loathe over the past weeks. "So do you have any news for us?"

Hank stared at Ethan for a moment while he tried to figure out what was wrong with him. Finally he shrugged and told himself he didn't really care what was bothering Ethan as long as it meant he wasn't going to pick a fight. "I don't have a lot to tell you," he said, biting the inside of his cheek to keep the guilt at bay. He hated lying to Chad, but there was no way he was going to spring on him that he might be a Crane without some kind of proof. "Chad and I tracked down Orville, I'm sure he told you about that. I'm planning to head to the hospital tomorrow and try to track down someone that knows something about the baby from the accident."

"You think there might still be someone there that knows something?" Chad asked.

"It's worth a shot," Hank answered. "Orville wasn't much help."

Ethan scowled and leaned forward a little in his chair. "You mean you've got nothing new? After all this time you can't tell us anything? What am I paying you for, Bennett?"

Hank rolled his eyes and chastised himself silently for believing for a second that Ethan might lose his attitude. "Ethan, I've told you before, these things take time. If you'd wait and let me contact you instead of calling me every two days for an update you wouldn't be so disappointed every time I tell you I'm working on it."

"Now look here..." Ethan began, but he trailed off when Chad grabbed his arm and looked at him sharply.

"Ethan, bro, just let the man do his job. He knows what he's doing, okay?" Chad held Ethan's gaze with his own stern glare, until finally Ethan sighed and acquiesced.

"Okay, fine. Have it your way." Ethan slumped back in his chair and pouted, and Chad felt an instant stab of guilt. He'd spent the entire evening at the mansion with Ethan last night, watching his friend brood over whatever was happening with his father and grandfather. He wouldn't talk about what was bothering him, but it was obvious that something was wrong, and Chad had a feeling that whatever it was had something to do with Theresa.

He turned back to Hank and lowered his voice. "So did you find anything out about the connection between Orville and Dr. Russell?"

Hank cringed at the mention of Eve. He knew he was going to have to talk to her eventually, but the thought of confronting her about her relationship with Julian turned his stomach. Not only was she Grace's best friend, but he didn't want to be responsible for hurting T.C. The whole situation was getting a lot more complicated than he bargained for. "I don't know anything yet, but when I do I'll be in touch," he finally said.

"Okay. Thanks, man," Chad said, standing up and motioning for Ethan to follow him. As Hank watched them go he couldn't help noting the similarities between them - the way they carried themselves was starting to look similar, even the twin expressions on their faces as they each lost themselves in thought. "There has to be another explanation," he told himself as he stood and crossed to the counter to talk to Beth.

"How'd it go?" she asked when he stopped in front of her.

"Short and sweet," he said. "At least they didn't drag it out."

"So did you mention the birth certificate?"

He shook his head and sighed, leaning heavily on the counter as he wondered if he should have mentioned it to them. "No, I didn't have the heart to get Chad's hopes up, and the less Ethan knows about his father and Eve the better. At least for the time being." He forced himself to relax the tension in his jaw and smile as he met her eyes. "So, you up for a little investigation tomorrow?"

"Count me in," she answered, struggling not to look as excited as she felt. The smile tugging at the corners of her lips betrayed her, though, and she had to remind herself she was excited about the investigation and not about spending more time with Hank.

~

"Baby, I'm sure Whitney's fine," T.C. said into the phone as he stared out the window of his office. He sighed inwardly as he listened to Eve ignore his words and keep right on ranting about Whitney spending time at the Crane mansion. Ever since Whitney graduated from high school Eve had been acting more over-protective than usual, and T.C. couldn't help wondering if some of Whitney's recent behavior stemmed from the fact that her mother was so worried about her.

"I just don't think it's such a good idea, her spending all that time with the Cranes," Eve said. "It was fine when it was only a few times a week, but lately she's been there every day. It can't be healthy, she should be spending time with her own friends."

"She is," T.C. insisted. "Sheridan's become a good friend to Whitney. Besides, Theresa is always at the mansion these days, maybe Whitney's been spending more time there because of her."

He heard his wife sigh as a muffled voice sounded in the background. "I have an emergency, T.C. We'll talk about this later."

"Alright, baby," he answered, hanging up the phone as he heard the line go dead on the other end. He'd wondered at first if he was just being selfish by encouraging Whitney to spend time with Sheridan, if he was just trying to hold on to the only part of Meredith he had left. He'd told himself a thousand different times over the years that he never really loved her, that he was just a confused, lonely kid and she'd been in the right place when he needed someone to need him. But as he gazed out over the football field he knew it wasn't true - he'd loved Meredith, loved her enough to try to convince her to leave Alistair and run away with him. He'd even entertained the fantasy of adopting Sheridan so they could raise her together.

"Over Alistair's dead body," he muttered to himself as he remembered the fear in Meredith's eyes every time he suggested it. No, she'd never escape Alistair's grasp no matter how far or how fast they ran. She knew it even though he refused to see it back then. But Sheridan had grown up to be so much like her mother, and as much as T.C. hated Julian and Alistair, he wanted his daughter to know the influence of the only part of Meredith he had left.

You're playing with fire, he reminded himself silently as he turned away from the window to look at the pictures of Eve and the girls on his desk. He had everything he'd ever dreamed of now; a wife that loved him, two wonderful daughters that could do no wrong, and a job that he loved. He'd given up his dreams of tennis stardom and he tried not to be bitter about it, but the healing that Meredith had managed to do during the brief time together had died with her. Now his bitterness over her death was tied so closely to his bitterness over the death of his dream that he couldn't tell the two apart anymore, and he blamed Julian and Alistair for both situations equally.

He sighed and tried to push his memories of Meredith out of his mind, but bringing Sheridan into his life even vicariously had somehow managed to blur the line between his past and his present, and he felt dangerously close to opening that Pandora's Box somehow. He knew no one knew the truth, except perhaps Alistair, and the old man would never say anything unless he could use the information to his advantage. No, the feeling of dread he had must just be his old memories playing tricks on him.

A knock sounded on his office door as he stared into space and a moment later the door opened and Chad stepped in. "Sorry I'm late, Coach. I had to meet Hank and Ethan before I came over."

"How's the investigation going?" T.C. asked, thankful to be able to focus on Chad's past instead of his own for awhile.

Chad let out a frustrated sigh and sank into a chair across from T.C.'s desk. "I knew it was gonna be hard to find anything about my folks, and Hank's done a lot more than I did on my own. But it's frustrating, all this waiting around."

"But he's making some headway, that's good news," T.C. said rationally.

"Yeah, he found out about a baby that was involved in a car crash about twenty years ago. A black baby in the back of a Towncar, with only a driver. They took the kid and the driver to the hospital but a few days later the baby disappeared without a trace and the driver died. Hank thinks the kid might have been me."

T.C. leaned forward with interest. The story Chad told certainly sounded mysterious, and he wondered if Hank could be right. "So they have no idea where the baby went?"

"No, that's the frustrating part," Chad sighed. "After that there was nothing. But that crazy old coot Orville was the photographer that took pictures of the baby. That's gotta mean something, right?"

T.C.'s eyebrows shot up at the mention of Eve's patient. "That old guy that kept telling you he knew about your past and then changing his story?"

"Yeah. Me and Hank went to visit him in his nursing home but he was acting crazy as usual." Chad bit the insides of his cheeks to keep from telling T.C. that Orville had called Eve almost immediately after he left. He hated thinking that Eve might know something about his parents and not be saying anything, and he knew how T.C. would react to that theory. Chad really liked T.C., but when it came to Eve he was unbelievably overprotective.

"Well, if anyone can figure it out it's Hank," T.C. said. "He's a good man, I'm sure he'll find the answers you're looking for."

"Yeah, I hope so," Chad answered as he stood to leave the office. "I'm gonna go do the equipment inventory. Let me know if you need me."

"Sure, Chad," T.C. said distractedly. He barely noticed when the younger man let himself out of his office, he was so wrapped up in wondering about the child in Chad's story. Was it really Chad, or was it some other baby that disappeared? And who would be driving an infant around in a Towncar in 1980? He couldn't help wondering if that story, like every other scandal in Harmony history, somehow led straight back to the Cranes.

~

Eve groaned as she read the message in her inbox. She slipped out of her lab coat and hung it in her locker before leaving the doctors' lounge and heading for her car. She needed to talk to Orville before anyone else got to him - the old man was doing his best to keep Eve's secret, but she knew he hated keeping the truth from Chad. Still, if he was having any second thoughts about protecting her secret a reminder of Alistair's threats would be enough to get him back on track.

She let herself into her car and started the engine with trembling hands, telling herself that she was doing the only thing she could do. She didn't want to make Orville keep covering her tracks, but she'd tried to make it up to him as best she could with a nice room at a good nursing home where he'd be taken care of properly. She knew it didn't make up for all the years Alistair had stolen from him, but it was the best she could do.

"I'm doing this for T.C.," she told herself as she pulled onto the highway that would take her to Woodlawn Assisted Living. She couldn't let T.C. find out what Orville knew about her affair with Julian, and Chad's past coming out would just raise more questions than she could risk. A stab of guilt wracked her as she reminded herself that she was keeping a boy from finding out the truth about his parents, but she steeled her heart against the pain and told herself that he was better not knowing anyway. His mother was dead, after all, and God only knew who his father was. Letting him find out that he was the bastard child of Alistair's second wife and her lover would only cause him more pain in the long run.

When he'd first arrived in town and she heard his name she felt like she was seeing a ghost, but when Orville told her who Chad was she realized that Alistair must have used the name she gave to her own son as some sort of sick joke. Her blood ran cold as she thought of the only man in the world that would find that amusing. First he'd tried to buy her out of Julian's life, and when Fate intervened and took her son he'd gotten his revenge by giving her baby's name to another illegitimate Crane. My baby's name, she repeated silently as she wiped at the tears that threatened to fall. It wasn't much of a name, but it was the only thing she could give her child, and Alistair had taken that from her too.

She'd wished for Alistair's death more times than she could count over the years, but he was still breathing, tormenting her without even having to pick up a phone. She wondered fleetingly if his reach was long enough to surpass even the grave. She might never be rid of him, even after his death her past would continue to haunt her. "Damn you, Alistair," she muttered as she pulled into the parking lot of the nursing home. She took a few minutes to fix her eye makeup before she let herself out of the car and walked into the retirement community, stopping at the desk long enough to greet the on-duty nurse.

"Ah, Dr. Russell, it's so nice to see you," the nurse said as her eyes fell on Eve. "He's been asking for you."

"Thank you, Mary," Eve said. She turned down the corridor that would lead her to Orville's room, praying that if Hank and Chad decided to come back to Woodlawn that the staff would be discreet enough to not mention her latest visit.