DRAKE

As we drove along the highway that bordered the coast on our way to Ethan's, I held Kate's hand.

"How are you, Mrs. Morgan?" I kissed her knuckles. "Excited about tonight?"

"I am," she said and squeezed my hand. "I've been thinking about it all day."

"Me, too," I said, a surge of lust right to my dick at the thought of having Kate all to myself for the night. "We're lucky that Elaine is such a willing grandmother."

"I know," she replied and watched out the window at the passing scenery. The area was beautiful, with tree-lined streets at the edge of the cliff overlooking the bay.

We pulled up in the driveway and I parked the car, going around to Sophie's door to remove her car seat while Kate gathered up her diaper bag. We went into the house and were greeted by a smiling Ethan in his wheelchair. He zoomed around, the joystick in one hand, a bottle of beer in the other. He seemed in really great spirits.

"Come in, come in," he said, waving to the living room. "We're going to sit on the deck and watch the ocean for a while. The ribs are on the barbecue and are cooking low and slow, Cajun style. They've been on all day."

"Sounds fantastic," I said and carried Sophie inside. While I took her out of her car seat, Kate went into the kitchen to speak with Elaine and so Ethan and I went to the deck. They had a playpen set up for Sophie filled with toys, so I put her into it and she was happy to play for a while. I sat on a lawn chair beside Ethan, who handed me a bottle of beer from a cooler.

"So, tell me about Liam," Ethan said, eyeing me from under the brim of his Yankees baseball cap.

"I want to try for joint custody," I said. "I don't want him living with his grandmother instead of me while Maureen is in Indonesia. I don't want him to grow up without at least one parent in the home. No offense meant against Brenda, but I am his father."

Ethan nodded and took a drink of his beer. "Maureen's not happy about that, I take it?"

I shook my head. "She thinks I'll be a bad influence because of the trial and my past."

Ethan didn’t say anything for a moment and I wondered if he felt she had a point.

"I have to tell you that, as a former judge, I might be concerned on first reading of your case that she might be right. I have the benefit of knowing you, and I know the opposite is true. If anyone would be a good – a great – influence on Liam, it would be you. But you're going to have to overcome a judge's natural prejudice against you."

"I understand," I said, trying to see it from a judge's point of view. "I have two strikes against me already. I don't need any more."

Ethan nodded. "The key will be to marshal a whole lot of positive character witnesses for you, people who can counter those black marks. If I were your lawyer, that's what I'd recommend. You have a stellar record at NYP both as a world-class neurosurgeon and as a professor of neurosurgery. You have a history of volunteer work with Doctors Without Borders in Africa. You have a charitable foundation you started in honor of your father that does good works around the world. You're independently wealthy, practicing medicine when you really don't have to work at all. All those things will be weighed against the two black marks. It's more important what you have been doing in the last five years of your life, rather than in the previous ten when you were younger."

I watched the surf, my mind on how a lawyer would represent me in front of a judge. What he or she would say.

"Do you know any good lawyers out here?"

"I'll check around with a few judges I know. They can suggest a few who know how to finesse a case like yours."

"I appreciate it. I hate that I have a case that needs finessing but I guess I do."

"Don't worry about it. You deserve to be Liam's guardian, considering you saved the boy's life. That'll be worth a whole lot in the mind of a judge. At least, it would with me if I had your case in front of me."

We sat silent for a moment and listened to the sound of the ocean washing onto the beach.

"I wish Maureen were staying," I said finally. "I hate to think how this will hurt Liam. I know how it will hurt Liam. He's even younger than I was when my mother left me."

Ethan reached out and patted me on the arm. "The judge will take it all into consideration and I have to admit that he'll be sympathetic to you, given Maureen is practically abandoning the boy. Her objections to you having custody will be seen with a very jaundiced eye."

"I don't want to do anything to hurt her," I said, truthfully. "I understand she's sick. People do things that aren’t in their own best interest when they are depressed. My mother was depressed after my brother died and she never got over it. I just hope that Maureen gets over it and comes back. She's choosing between Chris and Liam. I hate Chris for making her choose him over Liam. Even though she says it's only for six months, why couldn’t she just suck it up for six months while Chris is away?"

"Depression is hard to understand unless you've been there yourself."

I turned to look at Ethan, surprised. "You have?"

Ethan nodded. "After Kate's mother died, I was alone and was at a point in my career when I had to put in long hours. Luckily, Elaine came along and helped me through it. As to your mother, a lot of couples break up when a child dies but it's usually the mother who takes custody during a divorce. It's rarely the father. Even today, it's still uncommon. Regardless, whatever cracks existed in their relationship are magnified and sometimes, the parents aren't strong enough to do what it takes to stay together."

I exhaled, sick about Liam having to say goodbye to his mother for even six months. Who knew whether they'd return at the end of that time? Maybe Chris would want to stay there. Would Maureen want to stay with him? Would Liam ever be healthy enough to go and live with them in Indonesia? Sure, they could afford the best quality medical care that money could buy in Indonesia, but it wasn't the same as medical care Liam could get in the states.

"Liam really can't go somewhere like Indonesia to live until he has the all clear from his doctors, but he'll always be at risk due to his medications to suppress rejection of his transplant. Even though we were a perfect match, he'll always be on a low dose of steroids. That puts him at risk of infections and diseases that he might otherwise avoid."

"Maureen will have to make a hard decision at some point. Hopefully, she'll get over her depression and come to her senses about what really matters."

"Hopefully," I replied.

"Speaking of mothers, have you ever tried to contact yours?"

I didn't say anything for a moment. I'd always been curious about my mother's life after she left me, but I had to admit there was a part of me that felt abandoned and angry at her for leaving. I hadn't done any research into her life and what happened to her after she left. It was always a sore point with my father and we avoided talking about it like the plague.

"No, I haven't. I should, now that I'm out here, but it's been twenty-eight years since I saw her."

"You should look her up. You never know what wounds might be healed if you do."

I glanced at him and he nodded meaningfully before taking another drink from his beer.

"I wanted to ask you about the case," Ethan added. "When will you have to testify?"

"I haven't heard yet from the prosecutor. He wants me to come back to Manhattan to go over some details in the case and talk about my testimony. My lawyer will let me know when they need me. Until then, I don’t even want to have to think of it and how close we came to Kate and Sophie dying."

"You'll do fine," Ethan said and held up his beer. "Just tell the absolute total truth and you won't have any problems. Don't hold back any details out of embarrassment. They always come out in the end."

"I won't, but honestly, my actual experiences with Lisa were not very memorable. I do remember pretty much everything from our time at NYU, but our encounters back when she was with Derek Richardson are a blur."

Ethan shook his head. "Like I say, just tell the truth the best you can remember. You won't have anything to worry about."

"I hope so. I wanted our time in San Francisco to be worry free for Kate. I knew I'd have to fly back and testify in the trial, but I didn’t expect there to be so much national coverage."

"Juicy gossip with lurid details sell copy. It was inevitable that it would become a national story, given the details."

I told Ethan about my run-in with one of the hospital admins and with Christy.

"She actually said she'd warned the nursing staff about you?"

I nodded and we discussed how to handle these kinds of situations at the hospital. I appreciated having Ethan as a confidant because he knew how to handle these kinds of issues after a life-long career in the justice system.

"You know, you don't have to work, Drake. You could stop completely and live off your investment income."

"I love my work," I said, because it was true. "I don't want to think I have to give it up because of what happened. There's nowhere that I could work where my past wouldn't be quickly discovered and discussed in the staff lunchroom. I have to just face things and buck up, as my father would say."

"It's true," Ethan said and held up his beer. "You're still young and have years ahead of you. You could quit for a couple of years, spend time volunteering, or doing nothing. You could return to practice once all this blows over and becomes nothing more than a bad memory."

"I doubt it will ever go away completely. People will always know I'm the Doctor Dangerous whose ex-lover tried to kill my pregnant wife and who killed an old friend of mine."

"It'll get better with time. You could go up to Canada. Or you could move to Europe or Africa and work there. There's probably a lot of hospitals who would be totally pleased to have a highly skilled young neurosurgeon on staff."

I sighed and took another sip of my beer. "Thanks for the vote of confidence. I'll play it by ear. If things get too bad at the hospital, I'll consider taking a year or two off. I don't know what I'd do with myself in the meantime."

"Live."

I shrugged. "I've always worked, since I started medical school. I've never taken more than two weeks off."

"Now's as good a time as any to learn how to relax. You could write a text book."

I'd never thought about it, but I could write about robotic surgery.

"I'll see how things go, but thanks for listening."

"My pleasure," Ethan said and smiled.

When Kate came out onto the deck, she bent down and kissed me.

"What have you two been talking about?"

"Stuff and things," Ethan said. "The stock market and the price of wheat in China. That kind of thing."

"I don't believe you for a moment," Kate said with a laugh. "What do you know about wheat prices in China?"

"That's code for private man stuff," Ethan replied.

"Oh," Kate said and gave me a look of surprise. "Forgive me for intruding on your father-son tête-à-tête. Can I get either of you a refill?"

"As a matter of fact, I think we'll crack the bottle of wine, if you don't mind. Drake? Can you do the honors? I'm not as handy with a bottle opener as I used to be."

"I'd love to." I smiled and stood up, giving Kate a quick kiss before going into the house. She squeezed me, smiling up into my eyes, her expression suggesting so much more would happen between us in a few hours, once we finished dinner and were alone back at the house. I felt a surge of emotion at the thought of how eager she was and hoped it would wash away all the negative thoughts about Maureen and Liam and the trial in Manhattan.

I needed some Kate time.

Badly.