Chapter 21
CHAPTER 21
The loft door slid open. Irene walked in, and Jackson followed behind her. Stupid nerves jangled my body the moment I laid eyes on Jackson's big frame. He exuded a solid, unshakable presence that instantly made me feel nervous and safe at the same time. My eyes slid past his direct gaze, and I proceeded to flush hot.
I forced myself to focus on Irene. “How was your afternoon?”
“Decadent,” she smiled. “After a walk with Jackson, I went back to the hotel and had a long nap and a swim in the pool.”
He was watching me. I could feel it.
“Oh, that sounds lovely,” I smiled trying to shut out his presence. I failed to ignore how tall he was, how his baseball cap was pulled so low on his brow, how green his eyes were. I swear his broad shoulders seemed to get bigger every time I saw him. Why was I noticing him again like this? Was it because of the kiss? I needed to get my mind back in the slow lane with this guy.
Footsteps pounded down the stairs and then Matt stood in front of his mom.
“Sweetheart,” she beamed, opening her arms. Matt bent down and gave her a long hug .
Matt straightened and Jackson and him eyeballed each other.
“Want a beer?” Matt asked.
“Sure.”
Matt went to the fridge and cracked open a couple of cans. “Want to go out on the patio?”
“Yup.” Jackson took his proffered beer, and then the two of them walked outside.
“Can I get you a glass of wine?” I asked Irene.
“That would be nice,” she made herself comfortable at the island.
I poured her some wine. “I decided to send out for dinner tonight. It should be here in a bit.”
I looked outside. Jackson and Matt stood facing each other and seemed to be in a serious conversation. Matt looked agitated as he talked, but Jackson had one hand in his pocket and looked relaxed as he listened.
“It’s been like that since they knew each other,” Irene said as she glanced over her shoulder. “Matt talks and Jackson listens.”
“I didn’t realize until recently how integral Jackson has been to your family. Matt never really mentioned him.”
She looked carefully down at her wine. “Jackson was more my husband’s intention. I would never say this to Jackson’s face, but when he came into our family, it came at quite a price to Matt.”
That wasn’t exactly what I had expected her to say. “Jackson shared with me some of his experiences with Ted and how he came to live with you.”
“Jackson never talks about Ted.”
“Well, I don’t want to exaggerate how much he told me, I'm just trying to figure out what happened.”
"I have known Jackson since he was a little boy and not once have we been allowed to talk about Ted. Not once.”
I was pretty sure she was exaggerating. “Can you tell me how Jackson came to be part of your life?”
“You know that Matt’s dad was a police officer, right? ”
I nodded.
“We lived in a small town. Ted was the town drunk. Harry was called to deal with Ted on a regular basis for various reasons, most of them not good. Typically they just stuck Ted in a drunk tank. But that left them with a small child on their hands.”
“Jackson.”
She nodded. “Night after night, this little kid would sleep in the police waiting room. In the morning, my husband would drive Jackson to school. Harry couldn’t take it. One night, he showed up at our house, with Jackson in tow.”
“Oh wow.”
“Jackson was trembling and dirty. I have never seen a more malnourished looking child in my life. You would think he'd have been grateful. We offered him food and a warm bed and yet he just fought us. You would think that our home and our generosity would have been preferable to a police station waiting room, but he didn’t want to be with us.”
“He wanted to be with Ted.”
She raised one eyebrow. “That he did.”
I stole a glance at the patio. As if he could sense me Jackson turned his head and looked at me. I dropped my glance.
“What happened?”
“Ted kept getting drunk. My husband kept bringing Jackson home. And it was like that every single time. The only thing Jackson asked for was to be brought back to Ted. He never cried. He fought. He fought that separation tooth and nail. At age seven, he had more fight in him than two grown men. Harry and I were just trying to be charitable. Then one night, it was like he realized that even if he stayed over, he'd still return to Ted. Harry dropped him off. He walked past me, climbed into his bunk bed and was asleep within two minutes.”
I swallowed my pain. My heart ached for that little boy. The little boy that knew only violence and suffering at the hands of the one person he should've been able to trust. And even when they removed him from all that heartache, he just wanted to go back to it.
“What happened to Jackson’s real father?”
She shrugged. “Who knows. His mother was quite trashy, and when she died, Ted was the only one left. Ted was his legal guardian.”
I tried to phrase my question with tact. “Did anyone think about calling social services?”
“We lived in a small town. Our options were to report Ted and have Jackson shipped off to some foster home in the city. Harry was scared Jackson would get lost in the system.” She lifted her shoulder. “We had unofficial custody of Jackson more than half the time. My husband checked up on them frequently.”
I could not wrap my mind around the idea that letting a young child face physical abuse had been an option at all.
She saw the look in my eyes. “We did what we could. You should know that. Every time Jackson landed in the hospital, we took him to our house. We tried to adopt Jackson unofficially. He had his own dresser, his own toys, his own clothes. He even had a placemat at our table with his name on it. But once his wounds healed, he started asking to go back to Ted. No amount of convincing could get him to relent. Harry would haul Ted into the station and read him the riot act, and Ted would promise to behave, and the entire cycle would start over. Jackson wanted to go back there. We didn’t make him. He asked.”
That sounded like a terrible reason to let him go back. I didn’t want to say anything, but I questioned their judgment on that one.
Her eyes blinked without emotion. “You don’t know Jackson as I do. He has this fierce loyalty. We tried to get Jackson to talk about Ted and some of the accidents that seemed to happen, but Jackson only protected him. Ted was completely off topic. He has been for all these years. He’s never once let us talk about Ted. Not once.”
“He didn’t want Ted to be alone.” I murmured to myself. My eyes strayed to Jackson, who laughed at something Matt had just said. He looked relaxed as he leaned back against the railing with a beer casually slung in his hand. His plain navy t-shirt stretched over his hard chest.
“So that’s why I find it hard to believe that Jackson would talk about Ted with you,” Irene watched my face.
Had Jackson openly talked about Ted with me? Perhaps I had been overly nosy and disrespectful of his boundaries?
“Where is Ted now?”
“Ted fell in the drunk tank and hit his head. He died six days before Jackson’s 16th birthday.”
I watched as Matt talked grandly, gesturing big. He had Jackson’s full attention. Jackson rewarded him with another laugh, making me marvel at his beautiful smile. “When they hang out they seem to get along. As children did they get along?”
“They got along, but as I said before, I think the situation was very hard for Matt. My husband and I fought about that. I saw changes in Matt. I knew he felt threatened and that broke my heart. But Harry insisted that Matt needed to learn that love wasn’t exclusive. But growing up in this unconventional situation took its toll on Matt.”
My eyes widened in disbelief. Why was she worried about Matt? What about Jackson who was orphaned and frequently hospitalized by the violent drunk? What about the people whose job it was to protect children like Jackson? Why had they looked the other way? My stomach tightened in anger.
“Is that where this animosity started?”
She shook her head. “It started at Harry’s funeral. The casket lowered into the ground, and we stood there in prayer. Suddenly, Matt was on top of Jackson. They were rolling around and throwing punches.”
My lips parted in shock.
She shook her head. “It took five men to break up that fight. One man to restrain Matt. It took the other four men to hold Jackson back. I thought Jackson was going to kill Matt. It was so horrible. And embarrassing. Jackson took off. Neither Matt nor I heard from him for two years after that.”
“What was the fight about?”
“Neither one of them will tell me.”
We sat there in silence, lost in our thoughts. She began again. “Matt has expressed that he wants to mend this rift. I only hope that Jackson is man enough to let that happen.”
I raised my eyebrows. “From what I have seen, it looks like Jackson wants to mend the rift too.”
She sighed. “We'll see.”
The meal was the Irene-and-Matt show. They were like two old lovers catching up. I stopped counting the number of times she reached out and touched his arm. She laughed at all his inside jokes, and they had a lot of them. Matt held center stage and Irene played his faithful audience. Jackson and I sat silently listening. Matt and Irene had eyes for only each other. They hung onto each other’s words. They talked about things only they knew. My experience at private schools helped me realize that they were excluding us from their conversation. I looked at Jackson who listened with a benign look on his face. He didn’t try to participate, but he didn’t seem annoyed either. A dark thought crossed my mind. Had it been like this when he was a child?
I sighed and pushed my noodles over my plate. I was still trying to wrap myself around how bizarre the last 24 hours had been.
Matt had cheated on me. I was still waiting for the shock and the horror to crash over me and send me into another spiraling mess. Some chick had put her mouth around him, and that probably wasn’t the worst of it. It was alarming that I felt nothing over this fact. Shouldn’t I be feeling some measure of anger or pain? Shouldn’t that bother me more than it did? I was more anxious about my lack of reaction than anything.
Could this all be just because his actions alleviated my own guilty conscious? Or was the shoe going to fall off in a few days and I would lose it? Only time would tell. I just needed to focus on the plan. We were going to get married, and everything was going to work out.
When we finished eating, Irene announced that she needed a ride back to her hotel.
“I can take you,” Jackson offered.
“No,” Matt jumped in. “I'll take her.”
The competitive nature of Matt embarrassed me. Had I never noticed before how he could act like a jealous, petulant child?
After they left, Jackson and I cleaned up the kitchen in silence.
“I’m going out for a bit,” he said.
“Sure. Have a good night.”
I jarred awake to the sound of the downstairs door opening. I rolled over and looked at my alarm clock. 2:48 AM. I listened intently and heard footsteps come up the stairs.
I opened my bedroom door just in time to see Matt walking up the stairs.
“What are you still doing up?” he asked, a weird expression on his face.
I rubbed my face and yawned. “I just woke up. Are you just getting home now?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“That must have been quite the talk with your mom.”
“Yeah, time got away from us. ”
I smiled at him. “That’s nice, babe. I'm glad you two had some time to catch up.”
“Well, I better get some sleep. I have a long day tomorrow.”
“Love you,” I said.
Without answering, he disappeared into his bedroom.