44. Jack
44
JACK
R osa chews a fingernail, evaluating me with a look of suspicion. The four of us — her plus me, Bunny and Sarah —are standing around the firepit, bright flames warding off the chill in the crisp air. I’d be hard-pressed to say who feels the most awkward right now. Given that I’ve practically trademarked the art of not giving a shit, the fact that I’m feeling self-conscious at all is a pretty big deal.
Then again, this is a big deal. By the next morning after I texted her, I had a message back from Sarah. I thought about just calling her, but decided to stick to text until we could talk face-to-face. She was surprisingly receptive to coming out to my place, so we set a time for the weekend after Bunny’s book convention and I tried my damndest to push it out of my mind.
When I heard the crunch of tires on the gravel driveway a little bit ago, I looked in the mirror, took off the shirt I’d just changed into and went with the one I was wearing initially. After grabbing my jacket, I took a quick swing out to the yard to make sure the fire was going strong. Then I squared my shoulders and tried to ignore the churning in my guts as I walked to the front of the house.
Guess it’s going well enough so far.
“So… you’re my uncle now?” Rosa asks, clearly trying to puzzle out this new development. “Were you my uncle when we had our field trip?”
I’m stuck for a response. I glance at Sarah. I’m still not used to seeing her with darker hair. In response to Rosa’s questions, Sarah gives me the same oh-shit look I’m sure I’m giving her. We’re all functional adults here. How come none of us thought of this, or figured out what to say beforehand?
Bunny pipes up. “No, no —he’s always been your uncle. He just lived, uh, really far away for a long time. Too far away to visit.” He darts Sarah a glance over Rosa’s head. She gives him a quick nod. “He, um, just moved here and was going to surprise your mom with a visit. He didn’t know he’d see you on your class trip and…” He trails off and blinks at me, his eyes begging for rescue.
“Didn’t want to spoil the surprise,” I finish. Rosa looks from Bunny back to me. Her finger is out of her mouth now, at least, and her expression is curious.
“How did you know who I was?” she asks.
There’s nothing wrong with telling kids white lies, right? “Oh, I could tell as soon as I looked at you. Because you look exactly like my mom —”
“Nana,” Sarah interjects.
“Right. You look exactly like Nana did when she was your age.”
“Nana’s old,” Rosa observes. Sarah snickers, and I grin. “How old are you?” she demands.
I sigh. “We’re going there, huh?” I raise an eyebrow at her, a half-smile on my face. “I’m thirty-four. About a year younger than your mom.”
“ You’re younger?” Bunny’s eyebrows go up. Sarah hides a grin behind her hand.
I roll my eyes at both of them. “By an entire thirteen months, yes.”
“That’s old, too,” Rosa says.
“Hey!” Sarah places a hand on Rosa’s shoulder and puts on a mock-offended expression. “He just said he’s younger than me. If you’re calling him old, that means I’m old, too.”
Rosa looks carefully at the faces of all three adults before squirming and looking away. “I’m bored,” she announces.
“Yeah, why don’t you go play,” Sarah says, waving towards the woods.
“Can I have your phone?” Rosa looks at her mother with bright eyes.
“ No . I don’t have enough battery. I need to save it so the GPS can get us home.”
Bunny’s got a little wrinkle between his brows as he watches this back-and-forth. “Hey, I know what,” he says. Rosa looks at him. “Why don’t we go exploring? I bet there’s all kinds of treasures we can find in the woods.”
“What kind of treasures?” She looks back at Sarah’s phone in her hand, then out at the trees, clearly weighing his offer.
“I don’t exactly know,” he says with a shrug. “You find different stuff every time.” He hops up and beckons to her. “C’mon.” I watch them leave, feeling gratitude mixed with a kind of awe. I had no idea Bunny was any good with kids.
“You need to charge your phone?” I ask.
Sarah smiles a little. “Nah, I just didn’t want her to spend all afternoon staring at a screen instead of doing something.”
“She liked the nature center the other day. I’m sure she’ll have fun exploring with Addy.”
“Mm-hmm.” Sarah nods but looks like her mind is somewhere else. We both fall silent, the weight of years and recriminations heavy between us.
Fuck it, I’ll start. “So when did you kick Barry’s ass to the curb?”
“Not soon enough,” Sarah says with a grimace. “Did Addy tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“I’m not really sure how he picked up on it, but he asked if Barry used to get physical with me.”
“ What?” I blink at her, and by the time my eyes reopen, I’m white-hot with rage. “He what?”
With a grimace, she looks away. “It wasn’t, like, all the time. Mostly when he was drinking.”
“Well, that doesn’t fucking make it OK! Why didn’t you tell me? I’d have wiped the floor with his sorry ass —and if I ever cross paths with him again, he’s not gonna know what hit him.”
Her lips thin. “I figured I could take care of myself. It wasn’t me I was worried about,” she says. “I worried that he’d take it out on Rosa or use her against me —you know, like try to fight me for custody.”
“Did he?”
She barks out a harsh laugh. “He wanted nothing to do with her. He waived visitation rights so fast it kind of —it was a pretty damn eye-opening moment, tell you what,” she says, shaking her head.
“Is the fuckface paying child support, at least?”
Sarah’s shrug has a bit of a squirm to it. “Intermittently. It’s —we’re OK.”
“What are you doing these days?”
“Oh, I’m still working for Andover. He opened a second dealership a couple of years ago out by the fairgrounds, and I’m a receptionist there. It’s just part-time. Mom helps out with watching Rosa when she can, but she’s still working too, so…” She shrugs.
“Mom still got the house on Hillside?” Sarah nods. “And you? Still over on Mulberry?”
Her expression says she really, really doesn’t want to answer my question. “I moved back in with Mom,” she says quietly. “With Rosa.” Her mouth twists into a wry grimace. “She’s got your old room, actually.”
With a pop, a big ember shoots out of the flames before spiraling down and landing near our feet. I rub it out with the toe of my boot. As badly as my sister hurt me all those years ago, my heart hurts for her now. It’s also dawning on me that Bunny was right. His words are in my head: Jack, she’s a single mom — and with a fucking deadbeat ex who can’t be bothered to support his own child, to boot.
“You’ve got a gorgeous place here,” Sarah says, changing the subject. She shifts in her seat to hold her hands out to warm them, looking at the flames instead of me. “The fire’s nice.”
“Uh, sorry. You cold?” Bunny had tried to dissuade me from hanging out by the firepit today. But even though the house is clean, it’s not exactly childproofed or kid-friendly or whatever. “I can grab you a blanket or, I guess, we could sit inside.”
Sarah’s smile is slow creeping over her features, but when she turns to look at me again, it looks genuine. “Nah, we can stay out here. But a blanket might be nice.”
“ S o, how did you figure it out?” she asks when I come back with the plaid throw blanket that seems to be Bunny’s favorite. “I mean, about Rosa,” she adds as she tucks it around herself.
“She wanted to know why I had the same last name as you did, and then gave me this whole story about how she has her dad’s last name but you don’t anymore.”
“Ah.” Sarah’s looking at the fire again. “Yeah, that makes sense. Banner and Porter. One plus one.”
I chuckle, maybe a little awkwardly. “Yeah, then I realized she was a dead ringer for Mom in the old family pictures.”
She grins at that and brings her eyes back to me. “Yeah, she kind of is, isn’t she?” For a moment, there’s just the sound of logs crackling, before Sarah throws me for a loop with her next question. “Did you put Addy up to this? Ask him to contact me, I mean?”
“No. A thousand percent no. Honestly? He suggested it and I pretty much told him to pound salt. And I wasfucking livid when he told me he’d gone ahead and reached out to you anyway,” I admit.
She frowns. “Are you still mad at him?”
Wasn’t expecting this question, either. “No.”
“You wouldn’t hurt him, then?”
Fuck , that cut deeper than I would’ve expected. I scowl to cover the ache in my chest. “Abso-fucking-lutely not. That’s not who I am. That’s never been who I am. Addy knows that,” I add, defensiveness creeping into my voice despite myself.
“Yeah,” Sarah says quietly. “Is it…” She bites her lip. “I don’t want, um, details , but is it the same way it was with Nathaniel?” When I frown and give a little shake of my head, not sure what she’s getting at, she flushes and looks down. “You know,like, bruises and all?”
I sigh, trying to ignore the flash of heat in my cheeks. “What do you want me to say? Yeah, it is like that. It’s consensual. We talk about stuff. He has a safeword.”
“A what?”
“A verbal ripcord. A word he can say to stop anything he doesn’t like or isn’t OK with.”
“Oh.” Her brows knit together.
“I know it might not make sense to you, but it works for us. Can you respect that even if you don’t understand it?”
Sarah laughs a little, and her expression relaxes. “Addy said something like that, too. He seems like a sweet guy. Got a good heart.”
“He is. And he does.” I think about what’s been on my mind since Bunny told me. “Did you really ask him if he loves me?”
Sarah nods. “I did.”
“Why?”
The question makes her frown. “Dunno. Just wanted to see what he’d say, I guess.”
“Did he really say he loves me?”
“Yeah.” She exhales a quiet laugh. “I probably shouldn’t say that, though, because he also said he hadn’t told you yet.”
“It’s alright. I know. I mean, he did say it.”
“Do you love him?” she asks. I’ve been watching the fire, but I turn to look at her. Her arms aren’t folded across her chest anymore, and her posture has relaxed. She looks more like the person I remember before, back when she was a sister instead of a stranger.
What I want to say is that I love him a thousand times over, if for no other reason than his harebrained, stubborn insistence on making this happen. I was fucking furious at him, but I couldn’t stay mad, because he loved me and thought he was doing the right thing for me. And for a single mom he’d never even met, because he’s got the biggest heart of anybody I know.
Sarah looks at me, a quizzical tilt to her brows, and I realize she’s still waiting for me to answer. My mouth has gone dry. I swallow and nod. “Yeah. And he knows it. Look, if you don’t believe anything else I say, I guess there’s not much I can do. But at least believe me about this, OK?”
Her eyes search my face. “I do believe you. I was surprised as hell when he messaged me. I didn’t have any idea you were back in the area, let alone that you’d met Rosa.”
“For what it’s worth, I did text you.” She frowns. “You changed your number.”
“Oh.” She’s quiet for a minute. “Yeah, I did. Why didn’t you look for me on social media or whatever? That’s what Addy did.”
I can hear the heaviness in my sigh, so I’m sure Sarah can, too. “Because I figured the radio silence I got after I texted you was enough of an answer.”
“Fuck.” Her face scrunches up, and for one awful moment, I think she’s going to cry. But instead she just gives her head a shake and matches my deep sigh with one of her own. “Sorry.”
“Yeah.”
That probably wasn’t the answer she wanted, because a crease appears between her brows. “Sorry,” she murmurs again. “For everything.” When her eyes shift to mine, I realize they’re a little glassy.
I’m looking into those eyes that feel like looking into a mirror, those same eyes that made me realize with absolute certainty who Rosa was. Family. Blood. Genetics. Call it whatever the hell you want. I can’t believe I’m thinking this, but I’m ready to take a shot at it again, to open up and see what happens.
Sarah’s hand is resting on the arm of her chair. I reach over and give it a squeeze. “It’s OK,” I tell her. “For real. We’ll make this work from here, sis.”
“Yeah. We will.” She squeezes my hand back. “Thanks.”
We’re both quiet, just listening to the logs crackle. I roll the dice on another question. “What about Mom?” When Sarah doesn’t say anything, I glance over at her. “Did you tell her you were coming here?”
She shakes her head. “No. I wanted to talk to you first before I said anything to her.”
“How do you think she’s going to be?”
Her mouth twists into a grimace again. “I dunno. Might take her a bit to come around, but I’ll talk to her. I’ll…” She trails off, staring into the flames. “I’ll figure it out. I fucked it up between the two of you. I’ll un-fuck it. Promise.” Her voice shakes a little on the last word.
“Sarah.” She blinks but keeps looking at the fire. “Look at me.” She does, reluctantly. “I know you’ll un-fuck things with Mom. You’re a force to be reckoned with, and I know you can do whatever you have to do. I have faith in you.”
Sarah looks like she’s going to say something back, but a shout interrupts us. “Mom, lookit — we found treasure!” Rosa holds up a bird’s nest in one hand and an antler in the other as she crashes through the woods and back into the yard, Bunny two steps behind her.
“ Ugh .” Sarah looks a little horrified.
Bunny reaches over Rosa and takes the antler out of her hand. “Hey, hey. I said you could show it to your mom but we agreed I was going to carry it, right? You’ve got the bird’s nest, and you need to hold it with both hands. It’s fragile.”
When they get back to the firepit, he takes the nest from Rosa and puts it, along with the antler, on the little log table between the chairs. Sarah’s lip curls and she moves her purse away from the antler, which makes me laugh.
“It’s OK,” I tell her. “It’s just a shed. It’s not gory or anything.”
“Ugh,” she says again, but she looks like she’s mostly over it, especially when Rosa starts chattering about everything else they saw in the woods.
Damn, the kid sounds so much like I did at that age. I realize there’s a smile on my face as I stare into the crackling flames, just absorbing everything that’s unfolding right now.
A yelp jars me out of my reverie. I turn quickly and see Bunny, sitting on the edge of his seat, his eyes huge as he looks down at his phone screen. He brings a hand over his mouth. “ Oh my God,” he breathes.
My heart jumps into my throat.