And Now, Back to You (Heartstrings #2)

CHAPTER 1 JACKSON

JACKSON

“Do you believe in fate?”

“I believe that you should put your shoes on,” I answer without looking up from the toaster oven.

“Answer the question first.”

“I don’t think I will, thanks.”

I slept like garbage last night. There’s an unidentified substance on one of my glasses lenses from packing lunches.

I had to switch my Tuesday shirt with my Thursday shirt after an unfortunate incident with the peanut butter jar, and the only thing holding me together is the hope and glory of the emergency cruffin that’s currently in the toaster oven. I refuse to burn it.

Adeline huffs. “This is a serious question, Jackson.”

“A serious question at half past seven on a Tuesday morning is not a serious question, Addie.”

She is undeterred next to me, starry-eyed and shoveling Lucky Charms into her mouth. A horseshoe marshmallow flies into the sink.

“Do you believe in fate?” she asks again.

“Do I believe in cosmic forces that guide our decision-making and lead us on a predestined path to an already decided end?” I twist the toaster oven knob hard to the right. “Absolutely not.”

Her eyes widen. “Really? After everything we’ve been through?” Adeline hip-checks me on the way to return the cereal box she’s been eating directly out of, her face a teenage mask of outrage. “Don’t you think fate brought me, you, and Penelope together?”

I snort. “No. I believe Child Protective Services brought us together. Custody hearings. Our mother’s inability to be a responsible parent.” I nod toward the front hallway. “Shoes, please. We’re running late.”

“I need my bonus cereal first.” Adeline exchanges the Lucky Charms for the Froot Loops and pours them into a rogue coffee mug, exactly one piece of cereal at a time. I stand at the toaster oven and try not to have a mental breakdown.

“Are you doing this on purpose?”

She slants me a look only a fifteen-year-old can. “What?”

“The thing with the cereal.”

Another three loops hit the sides of her container. Plop. Plop. Plop. She stares at me with a smirk. “What thing with the cereal?”

“Never mind.” I don’t have time for this. I pop open the front of the toaster oven and slide out the tiny tray holding my sanity. “Where’s your sister?”

“Why is she my sister when she’s late, but your sister when she’s ordering that weird hippie pizza you like?”

I carefully wrap the cruffin in a paper towel and cradle it close to my chest. Like a newborn.

Adeline frowns. “Did you sleep last night?”

“I did.” Four hours, give or take, but I was definitely unconscious at some point.

“Don’t lie to me. You’re eating your emergency cruffin and you’re being more snippy than usual.”

“I’m never snippy.” I grab the cereal box out of her hand and put it back in the pantry behind us, ignoring her pout. “And I’m not that predictable.”

“Jackson,” Adeline says. “You’re the most predictable person I know.”

She hikes her backpack higher over her shoulder, her dark blond hair swinging in the ponytail she tugged it into. For all the things my mother did lack—common sense, the concept of a schedule, the ability to remember to feed her children—she didn’t miss when it came to passing on her genetics.

Honey blond hair with just a hint of curl. Pale blue eyes. The way our bottom lip dips on one side when we smile. Adeline, Penelope, and I might as well be carbon copies of one another, different fathers be damned.

“Why do we have to leave so early?” Adeline whines.

“Because I have a meeting at the station.”

Adeline’s eyes narrow. “About what?”

“I have no idea.” My role at the radio station doesn’t usually require one-on-one meetings with the boss. I occupy a solid thirty-six seconds of airtime every hour. I report the weather and traffic, and then I disappear into the background. Exactly how I like it.

The rest of my time is spent managing the finances for our local station. The spreadsheets calm me. Maybe Maggie, the station manager in charge of 101.6 LITE FM, wants to talk about my new color-coding strategy.

“Is Maggie going to give you your own show?”

I don’t like the thread of excitement I hear in her voice. Or the sheer panic that immediately grips me by the throat.

“No, I don’t think she wants to do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’d have nothing to talk about.”

“Or maybe you’d have too much to talk about,” Adeline says, shuffling forward to pluck off the corner of my cruffin.

I try to slap her hand away, but she manages a piece, popping it into her mouth with a grin of victory.

“Last time you covered for Aiden, you ranted for, like, twenty-three minutes about snow lightning.”

For someone who voluntarily works in radio, I don’t have a great relationship with ad-libbing.

Whenever I’m asked to fill in for one of the other hosts, I tend to go off the rails.

It’s not so much stage fright as it is .

. . a complete and total break from reality.

Without my script, my brain goes blank. I lose command of the English language.

I’m pretty sure I black out. I never remember a thing about it, either, except a lingering sense of humiliation.

I sigh. “You shouldn’t be listening to me on the radio. You should be sleeping.”

“Ms. Singh doesn’t mind.”

Our eighty-six-year-old neighbor stays with the girls on the nights I work late. She sits in the living room and works on her never-ending cross-stitch and makes passive-aggressive comments about the lack of sweets in the pantry. “Oh, good. I’m glad Ms. Singh doesn’t mind.”

“Penelope and I like to listen sometimes when we’re falling asleep. Do you remember when we were little, and you used to read us the forecast instead of bedtime stories?”

“Yeah, I remember.” I remember their little heads tucked together on a shared pillow, looking up at me with wide, unblinking blue eyes.

Mostly cloudy with a low around fifty-nine.

Monday. A chance of showers. Partly sunny with a high near seventy-three.

I had no idea what I was doing with them, but I knew I wanted to give them something better than they had.

Something better than I had. “You can always text me when I’m at the station.

Or if you don’t want me gone at night anymore, I can restructure my hours. I don’t need to do the weather report.”

Adeline shakes her head. “Absolutely not. You love doing the weather report, and we’re fine here.

Ms. Singh has been working on matching scarves for us.

Can’t burst her bubble.” She sneaks over and steals another bite of my cruffin.

I allow it. “Plus, I kind of like the idea of you putting the entire city of Baltimore to sleep.”

I consider that. “I can’t tell if that’s a compliment or not.”

“It’s a compliment.” She collects her coffee mug of cereal from the counter. “I’ll let you know if we’re unhappy with your work situation.”

“Promise?”

“When have we ever had an issue with letting you know we’re unhappy?” She flicks me in the middle of my glasses. “I promise, Jackie.”

“Good.”

When I officially took custody of the girls, I told them I might not always do the right thing with them, but I promised to try. All they had to do was talk to me. I was only twenty and they were only eight, but we figured out how to be a family.

Which is why I hope I’m not being fired from my job this morning. This meeting with Maggie appeared on my calendar late last night without any context. Just a blank invitation, a block of time shaded in blue, and the foreboding subject line PLANNING.

My attention ping-pongs between the clock, the stairs, and the front door.

“Penelope!” I bellow. Adeline flinches. “We need to go!”

“I’m coming!” she screeches back.

“You said that ten minutes ago!”

“Yes, well, I’m working on it!”

“Why don’t I believe you?”

“Because you have trust issues!” immediately floats down the stairs. “Something to discuss with your therapist!” she adds.

“I have! At length!” Another number ticks forward on the glowing neon clock beneath the microwave. “If you’re not down here in thirty seconds—”

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” she manages, breathless, her feet pounding down the stairs.

A head of blond hair appears, cropped to just above her shoulders.

When she was ten, she decided she wanted to be different from her twin.

That manifested with a self-administered haircut in her bedroom closet that had them both crying for two weeks afterward.

She blindly picks up her backpack off the floor, her nose glued to her phone.

“Penelope. You know the rules. No phones before school.”

She holds up her hand. “There’s a reason.”

I grab my messenger bag and loop it over my shoulder. “If I have to listen to another podcast about whether you’re Team Conrad or Team Jeremiah, I’m going to lose my mind.”

She spares me a quick disgusted look. “That’s because you can’t handle being wrong.”

“The only reason you’re Team Jeremiah is because of their on-screen chemistry,” I say, fired up all over again.

Listening to that podcast in the car on the way to Ocean City was the worst decision I’ve ever made.

Neither of us talked to each other for a full day.

“If you paid attention to the damned books, you’d be Team Conrad. ”

Penelope quickly shushes me as Adeline tips over to get a look at the screen. Her eyes widen.

“Oh, shit,” Adeline says. “I didn’t realize that was today.”

I begrudgingly try to look over both of their shoulders, but the phone is angled down and two heads of blond hair block my view. “What are you talking about? What’s happening?”

“The turtle,” they say in unison.

“What turtle?”

Adeline reaches over and turns up the volume on the side of Penelope’s phone. A familiar feminine voice fills the kitchen.

“Welcome back, Baltimore. We’re having a shell of a time down at the National Aquarium as we await the arrival of Domino, a green sea turtle who is ready to make a splash in Charm City.”