DECEPTION IN DENALI - SECOND EXCERPT FROM CH 1

Maryann asked him to come help search for her daughter because she, the woman he once thought would end up being his mother-in-law, was dying of cancer. The search for Deborah would die when she did, and most likely that would be soon.
Jackson didn’t hesitate for a moment, but Maryann took his silence for reluctance.
“Please Jack?” she begged. “Do it for your son.”
“My son?” he breathed.
“Yes Jack, you have a son and his name is Michael. No one knew about him until three years ago when Deb left him on the doorstep of the rental house I keep here in Anchorage,” she told him. “It was the middle of the night and I never even got to talk to her.” Maryann was crying and it broke his heart. “Michael has some minor developmental delays and she asked me to get him the help he needed because she couldn’t provide it while living in hiding.”
“How could she just give you her son, our son?” He would have taken him in a heartbeat, even at twenty-one and about to graduate college.
“It’s a good thing she did Jack. He’s thriving! Most of his delays have disappeared and they expect the rest of them to be gone as he gets older. Thanks to Deb, your son will be able to live a normal life.”
Tears clouded Jack’s voice. “He’s my son too, why didn’t she bring him to me? I thought she loved me.”
“I’m so sorry, Jack. She said in the note, that if I took him anywhere near Nevada or told anyone living there about him, she would come back and take him away again. I couldn’t risk that.”
“Nothing makes sense,” he whispered. “Why doesn’t she want him here?”
“I’m not sure, son. She was running from something there. That’s my only guess.”
“Me?”
“She loved you. She wanted a future with you. That wouldn’t be my first guess.”

He told her about his family’s cruise to Alaska and that he would be in
Anchorage as soon as it ended. He had to find Deborah and bring her to see her mother one last time before she passed. He would grant Maryann her wish. And then he would bring Deborah and Michael home for good. Most people would say it was a pipe dream, but he really missed her. She was alive and he was going to see her again come hell or high water.

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