This is the Voicemail for Dr. Tara Knowles. If this is an emergency, please hang up and call 911 now. If not, please leave your name and number at the beep, and I'll call you back.


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Hi, it's Tara. Leave a message, I'll get back to you.

"Abel, honey, please don't play with Mama's files." It's odd, the things that echo the past.

Abel had been taken from home when he was too young to remember what he'd learned over the two extra years he'd had with Tara and Jax - and his grandmother - but he still had some of the exact same habits, like how he currently had managed to grab some of the manilla folders that Tara had stacked on the coffee table so she could do her paperwork and still be with her family.

Keira was on her hip, lunging for the pureed sweet potatoes that Tara was heating up, and she could hear Thomas 'reading' to himself in their bedroom over the sound of the TV.

"Jax, honey," Tara called over her shoulder, "could you give Abel a coloring book and put up my files? I need to feed your daughter before we go out to dinner." His daughter, said with good humor purely because in times like these, she'd sometimes say the kids were his, like she's avowing herself of responsibility.

The fact that the file Abel was currently scrawling all over wasn't one of her patients probably was worse than him drawing on them, but she didn't actually know that, yet. All she knew was that they were going out to dinner tonight - she was actually dressing up in a dress short enough that if they actually made it to the restaurant, it'd be a miracle, and Molly was watching the kids - he deserved a good birthday, and she'd do her best to make it happen.

"Thomas! Thomas, watch where you're-"

Even as Abel curled closer to his mother, Thomas hurtled himself forward, paying no heed to the man who was walking down the path in the park. "Oh, goodness- I'm so sorry," Tara was levering herself to her feet - it wasn't easy with a sleepy one year old and a precocious toddler, even less so now that she was five and a half months pregnant herself.

It only took her a second to get up, though, and she shifted Abel higher on her hip as she moved to catch Thomas' hand where he was staring up at Charlie with wide, wide eyes. "Sorry, he's not really all that great in watching where he's going, yet." She smiles wider, ruffling Thomas' hair. "We're working on it."

It's hard, making time for each other. Both of them have jobs, even though Jax spends more time with the boys than he does working on cars. They've got the house to work on and continue making a home, a baby to get ready for - and Tara's only just stopped being so tired that she'd just found herself in bed in the morning when Jax had put her there more times than she could really count.

But they do make time. They make time, and it's not just because they've got a new set of rings on their fingers. They've figured out what's important - family, friends, each other - and they're willing t put in the investment to keep those bonds strong. There's no discussion of What Happened On Father's Day, there's no mention of the letters that are safely tucked into a box in the attic. There's life before, and life now, and they don't really talk about what was - and it suits them just fine.

She's starting to get the boundless energy she had with Thomas, where she'd just catnap during the day, but she started wandering farther and farther in Charming until Bobby had a Talk with her about how it was a pain in the ass for the prospects to have to run all over town to keep an eye on her. Today, though - that's not Jax inside and prospects in tow. Instead, it's the boys with the sitter, and they're going to do the ultrasound and then go to dinner. It's an actual date, and hopefully it'll go better than her last visit.

Everything was fine - the baby was measuring normally, no evidence of anything wrong, still due in the first week of March. The problem, though, was that the doctor had an issue. With Jax. With Jax's vehicle of choice, and with his kutte, to be exact. So, new doctor, hopefully a better appointment, and then dinner.

Getting in was simple, and Tara stares at the ceiling before she looks over at Jax. "I'm so glad you're here." It's quiet, those words. She's just thinking about appointment after appointment when she'd either been alone, or worse - with his mother. About having to go in and show him pictures but never actually having him see this, past the first time. Letting go of his hand, Tara tugs him closer by the edge of his kutte for a kiss, smiling as her eyes search his. "I love you. Let's see our kid, huh?"

It's a routine that's become a soothing force in itself. If Tara gets home early enough, they eat together, then she and Jax play with the boys, and eight thirty they go down with a story. Tara and Jax take turns; one of them reads while the other changes clothes and diapers, and kisses and soothes.

Both boys get held while the other gets changed, and then books go away and they both go into the crib together - Thomas is nearly at the point that he's going to need a toddler bed, and it's a good thing they're still looking for houses because they're going to need the bedrooms for the boys. Right now they're living on top of each other, with two adults and two small children in a two bedroom apartment.

Neither of them notice the cane that leans against Tara's chair as she reads the story, Thomas snugged against her chest, drooling against her neck. He's already in clean pajamas, and Jax has Abel on the changing table.

She carefully shifts him up, and he's already dozing. He's always been a quiet, cuddly boy and while Tara loves both her sons, there's something in Thomas that reminds her so much of Jax that she smiles at him over his head.

Waiting until the boys were down was the easy part. Jax has recovered enough that he can carry Abel, although Thomas (wiggling, happy Thomas, who now weighs nearly thirty pounds) was a little harder especially if he was awake.

The apartment's full of boxes, somehow - she's only been there four months, but they've been packing and buying things they'll need an Macha's got her own set of things (she's currently roughly the size of a housecat, and she's blissfully asleep in her dog bed.)

Tara'd been rolling this over in her mind for weeks - since the church, since the stabbing, since the overwhelming wave of relief when she'd realised that she wasn't pregnant. It's the advice from Allison, from one of the nicest priests that Tara's ever met, and John Watson that replay in her head over and over, and it's why she comes close and bends to kiss him before moving to sit beside him on the couch and she sort of folds herself in so that she's sitting in the corner, her legs tucked up under her.

"So," she says without really a lot of preamble, "There's no way for me to really... say this in a way that makes it sound like things that okay," she says with a sort of huffed laugh, "But there's some things we should talk about, that've been sitting for... a long time, between us, and.... I just... need to talk to you about them." Her bottom lip is pulled between her teeth, and she glances up at him like she's waiting for him to give her the goahead.

It takes her hours to actually let herself call him.

The first time had been a mistake; she'd fumbled around, calling everyone she knew like a cry for help. She couldn't hold herself together, couldn't manage this on her own. What she said then was simple; I need you to come to the hospital. It's Jax. She'd meant to call him, too, but now that the surgery was done, now that people were gone and he was in recovery and there was nothing she could do...

She felt so alone. She'd meant to call him in the beginning, but she'd called Mary instead. Now... now that Jax was resting, and the boys were with Melissa, and she found herself alone. She found herself in the bar across the street from Darrow General, and it didn't matter what time it was. It didn't matter how little sleep she'd gotten. She'd get sleep - she would, but everything was in pieces and broken; everything was a mess, because he told her-- because Jax told her that he'd gotten her a ring and she'd started crying. Because she'd lost it.

And now she was in this dive bar with a rum and coke and she looked like death. She'd been thinking to call him - she didn't know how late or early it was, but she needed a friend, and somehow... there was something about John that made Tara think he'd understand, maybe.

What she said in the phonecall wasn't actually important. It was pretty much I'm going to be honest - I need you to come to Flannigan's, I can't do this. Please. Just you. Not Mary, who had been well meaning but her saying that this place was a new start after Jax had been stabbed again, just like he'd been back home... that wasn't something she could deal with.

She sat there - and had drained at least two drinks, enough that when he comes in, it takes him talking to her for her to notice him. She's still in her scrubs, and even though she's washed Jax's blood off her arms, she's not wearing her brace; the raised ruin of the scar across the back of her hand and the thin, straight scars from the repeated reconstructive surgeries go unnoticed by her, even though the only person who'd seen it before today was Jax.

Technically, it's her day off. That's why she wasn't in her labcoat or her scrubs, why she settled herself in the chair next to Jackson's bed early in the morning after she's dropped off the boys with the McCalls because... because they were lifesavers. Because she and Jax had been so lucky to find people who were truly compassionate and who cared.

Sunlight streamed through the windows in his room, and he was still asleep when she moved to pull his kutte out of her bag, and slowly kept working on sewing it back together. She had sinew and suturing needles, and skin was skin, as weird as it sounded. She hadn't told him that it had to be cut off of him, didn't tell him what bad shape it was in - but it could be repaired, and she was working on it.

He'd been in the hospital for three and a half days now, and things were... better. Not great, still, but better. They hadn't talked about the ring thing, again. They hadn't talked about her complete breakdown, and if Tara had her way.... they wouldn't talk about it. Her head was bent as she carefully worked on putting the left shoulder back together; luckily they'd missed his patches when they'd cut it apart. She didn't notice that he'd woken, instead staring down at the black leather with her lower lip between her teeth as she carefully sewed it back together.

She's got a tiny, squirming ball of fur in her coat.

Tara's thinking about calling her Isis - and she hasn't the faintest idea why. She took the dog after one of the aides casually mentioned that it was so hard for pits to get adopted, even when they were babies.

Two hundred dollars and some paperwork later, and Tara's got a tiny, squirmy gray and white puppy. She text Jax - not I got a dog, or So how do you think about moving a little faster on buying a house, but just:

Something came up, I'll be home in a couple of hours. Everything's okay! <3 T.

She went to the beach. She went to the beach and dropped to her knees and let the tiny puppy explore, picking it's way through rocks and branches and barking - a high-pitched squeak of a bark - at an old horseshoe crab shell.

She looks at Tara and her tail wags, and it's not long before Tara bundles her up. She goes to a pet store, and buys things. Lots of things; a crate and toys and food and a bed and they all go into the back of her SUV, and she's got a collar and a leash (neither is black; they're a bright blue that remind her of Jax, that remind her of Thomas's hat when he was a baby.) She doesn't think of it that way, but they're Jax's favourite color, and when Tara looks at the ball of fur that's nestled on her front seat, sleeping already... she smiles.

And she grabs one of the bags out of the SUV, the puppy in her coat as she comes inside. She doesn't even know if they allow pets in their apartment, and she doesn't care. She doesn't care, and she shuffles her bags in her hand so she can unlock the front door, slipping in. She's glad that she's there in time before the boys go to bed, and the chorus of Mommy and Ma happen at the same time, and she flashes a smile at Jax. "Hey, babe," she says as she puts down the bag - clearly from a pet store - and something inside her coat makes a squeaky yawn sound.

Her hair was still too short.

Jax was head-down in writing in his journal and it reminded Tara of JT's 'manifesto' that he'd left his son. That that's what started all of this, that and the letters. Until they'd seen those pieces of Jax's father reaching out from the past, there had been no questions or doubt.

Now her hair was a foot shorter than it should have been. It was all connected in a weird way, and she found herself staring in the bedroom mirror. She combed out her wet hair with her fingers, the towel wrapped around her as she dripped into the beige carpet all apartments seemed to have. She looked... tired, she felt. Tara didn't know when she'd become the woman in the mirror, but she didn't really like it. "I'm going to keep growing my hair out," she said quietly, without so much as a Hey to get his attention.

"D'you think that'd be good?" She eyed it for another second, before she looked at him over her shoulder even as she moved to pull clean clothes out of the dresser.