This is a continuing adaptation of Judith McNaught's Remember When

Feels Like Home

Chapter 19

It feels like home to me
It feels like I’m all the way back where I belong

“Jax?” Brenda questioned as their cab pulled up in front of the police station.  He didn’t respond until she waved her hand in front of his face to get his attention.  “Jax,” she repeated.

“Huh?” he asked, starting slightly.

She squeezed the hand she held in hers gently and said, “We’re here.”  She gestured out the window behind her.  The driver stopped the car at the bottom of the steps to let them out.  She handed him some money and opened the door, pulling Jax along behind her.  The cab drove off as soon as the door was shut again.

Brenda started to walk forward, but Jax stood still, his resistance stopping her and pulling her back.  He looked up at the building and took a deep breath.  Brenda could feel the nervous tremble in his hand as he finally moved towards the steps to go inside.

Just inside the doors, the Assistant District Attorney in charge of Jax’s case met them in a hurry.  “Mr. Jacks!  It’s about time,” he said in a rush, motioning them to follow him into the offices.  He sounded quite displeased that it had taken them so long to get back to him. 

Once they were in a closed room, everything seemed to start in slow motion for Jax.  He had a feeling whatever he was there for them to tell him was bad news.  He couldn’t explain it, he just had a feeling.  He felt Brenda reach for his other hand to hold them both in hers.  He tried to concentrate only on what the ADA was saying.

“Here are the facts of your case, Mr. Jacks.  A key employee of your company made illegal bids on a company using inside information.  We have your signature on the document authorizing him to make those bids.  That makes you one hundred percent as responsible for the transactions as your employee.  Am I correct so far?”

Jax could do nothing more than nod his head silently.

“I’m sure you well know that inside information in any business is out of bounds and illegal to use.  But it is particularly illegal in the business you are in, of taking over failing companies.  See, if you knew in advance that a company was going bankrupt, you might make a move on the company before it was legally allowed.  But I’m sure you knew that.”

Brenda didn’t like the tone the ADA was beginning to take.  It sounded more than a little patronizing and certainly ominous of the evidence they might have.  Instead of allowing it to continue, she interrupted, “I’m sorry, can I say something here?”

“Of course, Mrs. Jacks,” the ADA said, stopping his sentence.

She turned to Jax and forced him to look at her.  “Jax, I think we may want Alexis to be here before this goes any further.”

Jax nodded slowly, but said, “Why?”

“Because, I don’t like the direction this is going.  I just think it would be best.  Don’t you?”

“You are more than welcome to call your attorney, Mrs. Jacks,” the ADA said innocently, as if he’d been offering from the start for her to use the phone.

Ignoring the man, Brenda picked up the phone and dialed Alexis’s number at home.  She asked their lawyer to come to the police station immediately to meet them.  Hanging up, she faced the ADA again.  “I think we’ll wait, if you don’t mind.”

The attorney looked annoyed before agreeing.  “Fine, if you would like.”

“One more thing,” Brenda requested.  “Can I have a few minutes alone with my husband, please?”  She was remaining polite, but only through a serious effort on her part to do so.

The Assistant District Attorney left the room, closing the door loudly behind him.

Jax hadn’t moved since Brenda had hung up the phone.  He continued to stare at the table top and their hands on top of it.

“Jax,” she said to get his attention.  She saw his eyes slide back to glance at her before returning to their riveted spot.  She knew he was at least listening to her.  “Are you okay, honey?” she asked.

Finally, he sat back and looked at the wall across from them, still not looking at her or meeting her gaze.  “I’m fine,” he said softly.

“You don’t look it,” Brenda replied.

“Well, how do you think I should look right now, Brenda?  It’s quite obvious they have more evidence against me.”

“I don’t think it is.”

“Oh really?” he said sarcastically.  He pulled his hands from hers and shoved one through his hair, frustrated.  “If you didn’t think it was, then why did you call Alexis down here?”

He had a small point with that.  She turned in her chair to look at his stoic profile.  “I just wanted to cover all our bases, Jax, and you know that.”

“Right.”  But it was clear from his tone that he wasn’t really agreeing with her.

A few seconds of silence passed before Brenda took a different approach.  “Jax, why are you doing this?”

“What?”

“Pushing me away again.”

“I’m not,” he replied rigidly.

“Yes, you are,” Brenda said through her teeth, trying not to get angry with him.  She knew he was thinking the worst about the situation.  “Look at me, dammit!” she exclaimed.  She pulled his face to finally look at her, but as soon as she let go, he moved to stare at the wall again.  “Jax, stop it!”

“What, Brenda?  What do you want me to do?”  He pushed his chair back and stood up, beginning to pace the small room.  “You want me to lean on you and let you make all of my decisions for me?”  He didn’t pause for a response because he wasn’t looking for one.  “Do you want me to just stand by quietly as my life goes down the toilet in front of me?”

“You know I don’t, Jax!  But what I don’t understand is why you are!  Why are you sitting here quietly instead of telling that DA to stick it?  Why are you sitting here quietly instead of telling them that you didn’t know you were signing the go-ahead for that deal?”

Jax started to laugh out loud at that.  “What good do you think that would do me, Brenda?!” he exclaimed.  “You think they’re just going to say ‘Oh, okay, Mr. Jacks, I didn’t realize you didn’t KNOW your employee was going to do that, that makes everything okay, you can go now.’  Do you really think they would do that?  Forget the fact that it is MY company and I’M the one responsible for everything it does.  Because I didn't know what Norton was going to do, that makes it okay.”  He turned away from where he had stopped to look at her and started to pace again.

“But I don’t get that, Jax.  Why does all of that matter in this?  You can’t control what your employees do one-hundred percent of the time.  There are probably some doing illegal things right now, they’re just not getting caught.”

“It doesn’t matter, Brenda!”  His voice raised in frustration.  He wasn’t intending to yell at her, but he was.  “Don’t you see?  That’s the whole point.  The ONLY thing that matters here is that it was one of my employees who did this.  Whether I knew about it or not is not the issue.”

Brenda watched his expressions as he spoke.  He nearly fell apart when he said his last sentence.

“But I should have known,” he said softly, almost to himself.  He stopped pacing and buried his head in his hands.  “I should have known,” he repeated.

“Jax-“

He looked up at her, his face pained.  “Don’t you get it, Brenda?  That is what is killing me here.  I didn’t know this was going to happen and I should have.  A good businessman always knows what’s going to happen next.  And I didn’t.”  He gestured to himself.  “I didn’t see this coming and that makes this all my fault.”

She could see the anger and the tears glittering in his blue eyes as his voice broke on his last words.  She said nothing, instead she got up and walked over to him, putting her arms around his neck and holding him tightly.  It was a few minutes before he reciprocated and put his arms around her waist, burying his face in the crook of her neck.  They stood like that for a long time until the door opened behind them.

“Jax?” Alexis said as she walked into the room carrying her briefcase.  She saw the two of them in their embrace and looked sheepish.  “Sorry to interrupt.”

Jax and Brenda broke apart from each other quickly.  Jax wiped discreetly at the corners of his eyes and turned to face his lawyer.  “It’s okay, Alexis.  I’m glad you’re here.”

“Okay, then, why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

Brenda filled her in on the earlier phone call and the aborted conversation they’d had with the Assistant District Attorney.  “So what do you think it means, Alexis?  Does it have to be bad news or is it possible they have something good to tell us?”

“It depends on what you mean by good, Brenda.  If you think they could be dropping the charges, I’d say the chances of that are highly unlikely.  But it could be evidence that incriminates Robert Norton further or that exonerates Jax to some extent.  Anything like that would be good news.”

“So it could be?” Brenda asked.

“I don’t want you to get your hopes up, Brenda.  The way everything is going right now, nothing is certain.”  She stopped talking when the door opened for a second time and the ADA returned to the room.

“Ah, Miss Davis, how nice of you to join us,” he commented slightly snidely.

“Yes, well, I’ll forget the fact that I should have been here from the start and you knew it, Tim.  Now why are we all really here, if you don’t mind my asking?”

The man at least had the sense to look slightly chagrined because he knew Alexis was right.  “Okay, here’s the deal.  We’ve recently been informed of further wrong-doing by Mr. Norton in this situation.”

“And what would that be?” Alexis questioned cautiously.

“Well, it seems that Mr. Norton has admitted to being hired by someone else to set Mr. Jacks up.  He was paid to get a position such as he had in the Jacks corporation and to fulfill whatever these other people had in mind.”

“So what does that mean?  Do you know who it was he was working for?” Brenda asked.  Jax had yet to say anything or even move to indicate his reaction to the news.  It was what they already knew, but hadn’t had the proof of yet.

“No, not yet.  Mr. Norton wouldn’t reveal that to us.  We asked Mr. Jacks down here today to see if he might have an answer for us.”  With that, he focused his attention on Jax.  “Do you know who might have been trying to set you up, Mr. Jacks?”

Jax finally met the DA’s eyes and shrugged.  “I’ve made a lot of enemies in my time,” he said vaguely.

“Jax!” Brenda whispered vehemently.  He looked at her and she whispered so that only he could hear, “Tell them!  Now’s your chance!”

“What was that, Mrs. Jacks?” the DA asked.

“Nothing,” she said quietly when she saw that Jax wasn’t going to cooperate with them.

The DA turned back to Jax.  “Surely there must be someone whose name you can give us, Mr. Jacks.  You must suspect someone.”

Brenda watched as Jax put on his businessman façade and stood up from the table.  Gone was the man she had been comforting only minutes before.  He was now the cold, unfeeling business dealer he played in his office.  “It’s not my duty to suspect someone, is it?  I can give you a list a mile long of hundreds of people I’ve upset in my dealings.  Now, if you would like, I will give you that list, but somehow I don’t think it’s going to advance your investigation any further.  Clearly you have nothing to truly go on here except the word of another criminal I hired.”  Jax’s voice was hard as he spoke, his accent making it more ominous sounding to Brenda.  He leaned his hands on the table and stared the DA in the eyes.  “Now, until you have something real to tell me, you can contact me only through my lawyer.”

With that, Jax turned and walked out of the room, closing the door hard behind him.

“Jax!” Brenda exclaimed, jumping up to run after him.  She opened the door again to find that he was already gone from the squad room and most likely headed out of the building again.  She verified that when she ran down the steps in front of the building and saw no sight him anywhere.  She didn’t know if he had gotten in the first cab or if he had gone off on his own and she hadn’t the slightest idea of where he was going.

Brenda returned to the room where Alexis waited for her after wrapping up their meeting with the DA.  “So what’s the deal, Alexis?” she asked when she approached.

“Well, you can tell that husband of yours that his office tricks don’t go over quite as well out of the office as they do in it.  He didn’t exactly make that DA happy just now.”

“No, I imagine not,” Brenda agreed.  “What are they going to do now?”

“I don’t know exactly,” Alexis shrugged.  “Probably question Robert Norton to try to get an answer from him.  If that doesn’t work, they’ll probably start going through Jax’s files to see who he made mad last and go backwards from there.”  Something must have occurred to her at that moment because she turned to face Brenda with an odd expression on her face.  “He knows who did this, doesn’t he?  And I don’t mean what you may have told him happened this afternoon.  I mean, he knew before that, didn’t he?”

Brenda nodded.  “Yeah, he does know.”

“So why won’t he tell the DA’s Office who to investigate?  Does he think they won’t believe him or that I might care if he blames my brother for it?”

“I have no idea, Alexis.  I really don’t.  And I can’t find him right now to ask him.”

“Either way, no matter what happens, we still have a court date to prepare for.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Jax stopped walking away when he reached Central Park for the second time that day.  He didn’t know what had made him respond the way he did to the DA’s news.  He supposed he should have been happier to hear that Norton was admitting to being hired to set him up.  He probably should have told the DA outright who was really behind the whole thing.  He did know, he just didn’t have the concrete proof.  Maybe he should have told them and let them get the proof against Stefan.

But none of that mattered now.  He had done what he did and he was sure he wasn’t on the high-praise list of the DA’s office now.  In fact, they were probably looking for more proof against him now instead of the other way around. 

He tried to pinpoint what had made him react the way he did to the news.  It wasn’t that it wasn’t good news or that it didn’t have the potential to be good.  All of it did.  But he was tired of being the victim and not being treated that way.  He had been treated as a criminal ever since they had first arrested him.  He’d be damned if he was going to be the one to help the police get the evidence they needed.  Granted, it was his company and he was responsible, but Brenda had had a point earlier.  He hadn’t been the one to direct Norton to make that bid.  He had been set up from the beginning by Stefan and by his brother.  He needed everyone to find that out on their own instead of him pointing it out to them.  He was innocent.  Now, he just wanted everyone else to believe that, too.  And for some reason, it mattered that they figured that out on their own instead of with his help.

Jax started to laugh cynically to himself thinking about his brother’s involvement in the whole situation.  It had taken him some time to come to terms with the fact that Jerry, his own brother, would do something like this to him.  He thought he’d been helping when Jerry had come to him and asked him for a job three years ago.  He’d had no idea that his brother hated him so much.

Or maybe it had nothing to do with hate.  Maybe it was just about the money.  Knowing Jerry the way he did, that was entirely possible, too.  His brother had never done anything without there being some kind of pay off for him in the end.  It was part of what had torn apart their family all those years ago when Jax had first left Alaska.  Once again, Jerry had shown his true colors and done something Jax couldn’t forgive him for.  What was worse was that through his own stupidity, Jerry had inadvertently involved their parents and placed the blame on them for years because of it.

In his greedy need for money, Jerry had agreed to launder money for the mob.  One of the clients they had in the company was a crime lord and he needed a way to get clean money.  Jerry had agreed to do it for him.  He had used their parents’ money and, specifically, Jax’s deals, for the laundering.  When the police had gotten too close to the whole thing, Jerry blamed John and Jane to Jax and everyone else but himself to the police.  Jax had found out the truth from Jerry and not from his parents and, never really giving them a chance to explain the real truth, he’d given up their fortune and cut them out of his life.  He’d thought then that it would be for good.

After he’d been forced out of Port Charles by Stefan, he’d returned to Alaska.  Knowing he couldn’t make his dreams come true on his own, as he’d wanted to believe, he went to his parents.  He finally heard the truth about Jerry’s mob ties and forged a tentative truce with his parents.  John had backed him in starting J&J Jacks of Alaska and he’d been off and running to do whatever he wanted to do.  And he was good at it, as they came to find out in the future years.

Jerry had never even entered the picture until he’d come to Jax looking for that job.  And then again when John made him part of the deal to marry Brenda.  In fact, he didn’t even know what kind of contact Jerry had with their parents anymore.  Whatever it was, it couldn’t be less than Jax had with them right now.  He hadn’t heard one word from either of them or his father’s investigator since before he’d been arrested.

Done feeling sorry for himself and rehashing the past, Jax got up from the park bench he’d been sitting on for an hour.  Glancing up at the sky, he noticed the dark clouds beginning to gather quickly indicating a storm was headed their way.  He started to head in the direction of his apartment building.  He knew Brenda was worrying about him because he’d walked off the way he had.  For some reason, he couldn’t stop doing that to her.

When the rain started to pour down on him less than a block later, Jax merely shook his head at the irony of it all.  The summer rain was freezing for this time of year and halfway home, he was drenched to the bone.  He picked up his pace and nearly jogged back to the apartment building.  He shook the water from his hair under the awning of the front entryway as he went inside.

For thirty-four floors, he dripped on the expensive carpet in the elevator.  The cool air-conditioning was doing nothing to help him dry off as his wet clothes clung to him.  He shivered involuntarily as the doors opened on his floor. 

Brenda jumped when the door opened in a clatter of keys, but she didn’t get up from her position on the couch.  She’d been watching the storm outside and worrying where Jax was.  It was no surprise to her when he walked in the doors soaking wet.  She tried to mask her concern for him, but knew she didn’t do it well.

Jax smiled sheepishly at his wife who was waiting for him on the couch.  The room was darkening with the storm since there were no lights turned on yet.  “Hi,” he said softly.  He stayed in one spot, still dripping on the carpet.  Watching her carefully as she approached him finally, he wondered what she was thinking.

She grabbed one of his hands.  “Jax, your hands are freezing!” she exclaimed.

“I know,” he responded.  It wasn’t his biggest concern, neither were the shivers he was feeling more frequently.

For some reason, she was either too angry or too worried about him to care to hear the apology he was getting ready to say.  “Well, come on, you’re getting the carpet all wet!”  She led him by the hand to their bedroom where she pushed him gently towards the bathroom.  “Go get out of those wet clothes and take a hot shower,” she directed.

“Okay.”  He didn’t argue and closed the door behind him.  Stripping the clinging, cold clothes from his body, he immediately began to feel warmth.  He turned on the water in the shower and stepped into the stream of water.  He had just picked up the soap when he heard something behind him.  He whirled around to find Brenda stepping into the shower behind him.  He stared at her for a long moment, trying to read her expression.

Brenda had stopped trying to hide her worry for him.  She didn’t want to feel at odds with him, especially at a time like this when he needed her most.  She could see through the façade he’d tried to show her when he came into the apartment.  She knew he was scared to death, but he was continuing to play it off as if it were nothing.

As she opened the shower door and he turned to face her, she just looked at him.  In the next instant, he was in her arms, holding her as tightly as she held him.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered in her ear over the rush of the water around them.

She released him enough to look up into his eyes.  “I know,” she said back to him.

He kissed her hard then with every ounce of emotion he had in him.  Her arms went around his neck as she pressed into his flesh with hers.  He put his hands behind her and lifted her slightly, waiting for her to wrap her legs around his waist, which she promptly did.  His knees threatened to buckle them as the intensity of their kisses suddenly went off the charts.  He leaned her against the wall as they continued to make love to each other.

Afterwards, the water was beginning to run cold when they turned it off and stepped out of the shower.  Jax wrapped a towel around the both of them and held his wife close to him, resting his chin on the top of her head.  “Brenda,” he said quietly.

“Yeah?” she asked, her voice muffled against his chest.  He pulled back to look at her.  She raised her head from his chest.  “What is it, honey?”

“I think it’s time you knew the whole story.”

“Of what, Jax?”

He took a deep breath and sighed.  “Of my family.”

 

Chapter 20

 

Song Excerpt:  Feels Like Home by Chantal Kreviazuk and can be found on the Dawson’s Creek Soundtrack.