John and Jerry had not been happy with Jane's promise to Jax to support his actions "no matter what," but they had agreed to go along with it for "awhile" because they didn't want to risk hurting Jax any more than he had already been hurt. And Jax had agreed to keep up appearances by mourning Brenda publicly, while privately pursuing every avenue money could buy to try to find her.
Jax had not wanted to have a memorial service for Brenda, since he did not accept that she was dead, but Jane had convinced him that her friends - who knew nothing of Jax's belief that Brenda was still alive - needed to be able to come together to remember their love for her and to grieve her "death." He reluctantly agreed to a simple service that was held in a small park that Brenda had loved, near the hospital. She had told Jax that she often went there when things got too hectic, and when she just needed to be alone with her thoughts.
The memorial was held five days after Brenda's disappearance. The service had been beautiful from start to finish. A succession of Brenda's friends had spoken about her loyalty and her humor and her tenacity and her endless capacity to love, then Dara Jensen had closed the service by singing "Like You." It was one of Brenda's favorite songs, and one that, as Dara had prefaced for the crowd, "might not be one that is traditionally sung for a service such as this, but aptly described most people's feelings about Brenda." By the end of the service, there were no dry eyes in the park, including Jax's. Although he still believed that Brenda was alive and out there somewhere, and he was not grieving her death as were all of the others, he was still grieving. He grieved the loss of her in his life at the moment - he desperately missed holding her and loving her and just sharing each day with her. But he took comfort in the fact that his heart was still telling him not to give up, and so he couldn't. He just needed to take it one day at a time. But as each successive day passed, and no trace of Brenda was found anywhere, he became less and less sure that his heart had been right.
Angel grew stronger daily, and Tom and Angel continued to bond, and as they did, Tom found it harder to deny his growing feelings for her. He began fantasizing more and more about what it would be like to have her with him always - to have her love him completely. And every look that she gave him and every action that she took seemed to feed his growing fantasy life, even though nothing that she said or did would have suggested to an outsider that she returned his feelings, nor was even aware of them. Because she wasn't. She was just being herself - or at least the only self she could remember. But Tom wanted to believe that she was falling for him just as he was falling for her, and so he thrived on everything she did. He had no idea who she may have been previously, and he didn't care. He just knew that he loved being with her, and thanked heaven for this time he was having with her.
Tom had decided to ignore the ring on Angel's left hand, and she never mentioned it, which seemed strange to Tom. It was almost as if she felt it was "just there" - like a birthmark or something. To her it seemed as much a normal part of her anatomy as having two hands and two feet. Tom couldn't decide if that was good or bad for him and his fantasy about them, so he just decided not to think about it. Denial is a great state sometime! he had laughed ironically.
Tom had called Mike Harmon's little store when phone service had finally been restored, and had added a few new items to his list of previous needs: a pair of ladies Keds, size 5; 2 pairs of ladies' jeans, size 2; women's lingerie, size XS; and several ladies' shirts, also XS. When Mike had come with the supplies a few days later, he had hoped to catch a glimpse of who Tom had ordered those extra things for, but Tom had met him on the road a half mile up from the cabin, foiling Mike's curiosity - and Mike's chance of carrying any information about Angel back to the townsfolk.
Tom had been coming to this cabin in the southernmost tip of Charles County, New York, nearly every year since his dad had built it when Tom was 10, and he was quite familiar with the locals, and they with him. They had watched him grow up, and they knew his shyness with women. They were also aware of his rocky marriage to Emma, and subsequently rockier divorce, and the fact that he had not done a lot of dating in the two years since the divorce. He wasn't quite sure how they knew all about this, but they did. He often joked with his fellow agents that the FBI needed to hire the entire population of Brighton as informants because they got information faster and easier and more reliably than the FBI!
Tom knew that he should be doing whatever he could to find out who Angel really was, but the truth was, he didn't want to - not yet. Not until he had had the chance to let her know him and maybe even fall in love with him. If he was living a fantasy, so be it, but he at least wanted to live it for awhile. I'll look into who she is later - when my vacation is over, he reasoned. Just a few more weeks - what could it hurt? What about her family? his conscience nagged. And what about the man who gave her that ring? Doesn't he have the right to know where she is and that she is safe? But Tom's increasing infatuation with Angel won out over his waning conscience, and so her presence in his cabin remained his little secret.
In his office at J&J Jacks, Jax shifted restlessly at his desk, staring at the stack of phone messages from his mother. His parents had reluctantly returned to Alaska yesterday, and only then on Jax's urging, but his mother seemed to be constantly calling to see how he was doing. It was barely 9:30 a.m., and she had been gone less than 24 hours, and she had already called at least five times - twice just since 8 this morning! Given the time difference, when did the woman find time to sleep? He knew she was just concerned for his emotional well being, but he needed a break from her hovering. And he needed a break from the looks of sympathy and the words of condolence that everyone in the office seemed compelled to give any time he passed any of them. Sometimes he just wanted to shout, "Brenda is not dead!" but he knew the furor that would cause, and so he suffered in silence.
He got up and crossed the room to the massive office window that overlooked the Port Charles harbor. Normally the view of the water would bring him peace, but today it only stirred his heartache. The water reminded him of that night...
It had been ten days since Brenda's accident, and his team of detectives still had been unable to turn up anything about Brenda, and with each passing day Jax's heart became a little less sure that she was out there and waiting for him. He needed something to guide him - a sign of which way to turn; whether to continue looking for her, or to accept what the state of New York had already decreed: that Brenda Veronica Barrett - soon to have been Jacks - was indeed dead. He suddenly felt trapped here in this spacious office 20 stories above the city skyline, and he needed to escape - to get away from it all - if only for a few hours. He hit the intercom button, and barked: "I'm leaving for the rest of the day, Addie, and I will be out of touch and out of town." With that he grabbed his jacket and headed out of the office by way of his private elevator to avoid running into anyone who might hamper his pilgrimage to find some peace of mind.
An hour later he had exchanged his Armani suit for his black jeans and his black, leather jacket, and his BMW sedan for his Harley-Davidson motorcycle, and was heading south on Highway 101. He knew he shouldn't do this, and had Jerry or his parents suspected what he was doing, they would have tried to stop him - "for his own good." But he needed to go "there" - to again see where it had happened. He pulled up to the bend where Brenda's car had gone off the cliff, and stopped just short of the edge. He noticed that the state of New York had replaced the guardrail already. Guess they didn't want anyone else winding up at the bottom of the river, he thought sarcastically.
He took off his helmet, and looked down the steep cliff and into the Charles River below. This morning it was calm and lazy, unlike that night when the river had been wild and turbulent. Perhaps if the river had been calm, he could have saved her, he thought. But it hadn't been, and he hadn't been able to save her, and now she was gone...He inched the bike still closer to the edge. It would be so easy just to go a little further, then he wouldn't have all this uncertainty and pain - especially the pain. But his heart stopped him. A little part of his heart still believed that Brenda was alive, and that little part was enough to make Jax pull back from the edge and back onto the highway to follow the river wherever it might take him.
"In my midnight confessions..." Tom sang along with the golden oldies station on the car radio as he made his way back to the cabin - and Angel. He was in a great mood - it was a beautiful afternoon, and he was back to cruising with his own set of wheels. The service station had returned his car the previous day, and this was the first chance he had really had to drive it to see if the transmission had been fixed properly. For the $1200 that the station had charged, he figured it had better last for as long as the car did! That little bill and the items that he had just charged while he was in Port Charles had pushed his MasterCard to the limit, but he didn't care.
Tonight was a very important night in his relationship with Angel, and he had needed to purchase a few necessities to make the evening a success. He smiled down at the roses on the seat next to him, and then he glanced in the rear view mirror and caught a glimpse of the fancy red bag, bearing the logo 'Michel's Boutique, Port Charles,' and the black, silk dress that it contained. That little, black dress, and the shoes to go with it, had set him back over $300 - more than the new CD player in the box on the seat next to it - but she was worth it. And on top of the new CD player was a stack of new CDs that the clerk guaranteed were the best love songs ever recorded. He hoped that all of these things, and the romantic dinner he planned to cook, would give him the courage to tell her how he felt. He continued to sing, "...in my midnight confessions, when I tell all the world that I love you!" He smiled at the song, and hoped it was an omen for the night that lay ahead.
That was when he felt it - that first jerk that told him that despite $1200 of repairs and a week without the car - his transmission was still not working right! He grabbed for his cell phone to call the Brighton service station to give them a piece of his mind, but the battery was dead after having been locked in the car for over a week. "Shoot!" He hit the steering wheel with the ball of his hand, and moaned, "Why did this have to happen now?" So instead of going straight back to the cabin and to Angel, Tom made the detour to the Brighton Service Station and QuikLube, hurling every four-letter word he had ever learned as a boy at each passing mile that took him further away from his dream evening with Angel.
Jax sat by the side of the road, completely stymied by his present situation. His bike, which had had a tune-up less than a month before, had just suddenly sputtered and then stopped for no apparent reason - at least none that he could see - and in the middle of nowhere, no less! "It's a good thing I opted to bring this!" he muttered, as he pulled out his cell phone, turned it on, and called AAA. The person on the line told him that someone from the nearest AAA-approved service station would be sending a truck soon to help him out, and that he should just stay put. "Like I have a choice!" Jax laughed ruefully, as he returned his phone to the inside pocket of his leather jacket, and settled himself on the road beside his very expensive - and very dead - motorcycle to await the arrival of Billy, the tow truck driver from the Brighton Service Station and QuikLube.