Chapter 25 #2
I fiddled with my phone for a second, taking in the garish looking rugs and the massive grand piano in the corner of the room that I genuinely wondered if anyone ever used. Not to judge, but the lady I’d met didn’t strike me as a very musical person.
When I’d calmed down some, I copy-pasted the number from my notes and hit dial.
It rang only once, barely giving me any time to formulate what I wanted to say, before the other end of the line picked up.
“Hi, baby,” Jason’s voice was as warm as ever. It rushed through me, licking at the last of the ice in my limbs, chasing it away. I glanced down at my phone, confused. Had I…had I misdialed? But no. No. I hadn’t.
I knew I hadn’t.
Everything came to me in a rush.
Realizations compounding on top of one another like logs in a stack.
The reason Jason had been so sure that “Santa” would want me to have the money.
The reason he’d stumbled over his words sometimes when talking about it.
The conversation I’d overheard on Thanksgiving that I hadn’t been able to make sense of at the time.
The fact that Jason was the most giving, selfless, kind-hearted man I’d ever met.
Jason was Santa.
Jason was Santa.
A laugh escaped me. I couldn’t help it.
It felt so obvious now. Deep down, I think I knew. Of course I’d known. There was no one else in the world that was as giving as Jason was. Both Santa and Elf. It made…a wicked amount of sense.
“Joe?” Jason sounded concerned. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I grunted.
And I was okay.
I was more than okay.
So much was beginning to make sense. About his childhood. The things he’d admitted. About his reaction to the Christmas tree we’d put up.
“Why’d you call? Not that I’m not delighted to hear your voice. Of course I am. I just—”
“Just wanted to hear you,” I said, voice soft. I leaned back into the unyielding couch cushions, looking at the room with a new perspective. “And I…had a question.”
“Yeah?”
“When you were a kid did you ever play piano?”
Jason made a confused sound. “God, yes. Fucking hated that thing.” It was a testament to how far we’d come that he admitted as much as he did.
I could see that now. Could see the way he hid behind his lies, the same way he’d run from me.
Scared that he wouldn’t be accepted for who he was, as he was.
“Why?”
“It was just performative,” Jason sighed. “My mom wanted to say she had a son who played, so I had to learn to play.”
“Did you quit?”
“Of course.”
I lay down on my back, staring up at the massive ceiling.
Trying my damndest to picture what it would’ve been like to be a kid inside this museum.
Surrounded by nothing but quiet emptiness.
Only opulence for company. The answer was…
lonely. It would’ve been lonely. As full as it was of stuff, it felt so… hollow.
Nothing about this place felt friendly or home-like. No wonder Jason had grown up as goofy and bright as he was. His personality expanded to try and fit a tomb this large. His desperation to matter seemed even more prevalent now.
How many times had he lain on this couch, staring at this ceiling, praying for someone to care?
“I thought your parents weren’t around?” I said quietly.
“They weren’t,” Jason confirmed. Again, surprising me by how much he was opening up.
A dam had apparently broken after the other night.
He’d never been so candid. Something had changed.
“I probably could’ve quit playing sooner, honestly.
But I think part of me hoped that if I kept doing what they wanted me to, eventually they’d come to one of my performances. ”
“Did they?”
“No.”
That simple, two letter word carried more weight than anything else he’d said.
“I hate your parents,” I told him. Jason made a startled sound. It was half laugh, half pained.
“I did too, for a long time,” he admitted. On the other end of the line it was quiet. Only the whoosh of his breath. Was he at work? Or driving? Or at home? Surrounded by his walls full of community projects. “But I don’t anymore.”
“Why?”
“When my dad died…” Jason paused as he gathered his thoughts.
“It gave me a lot of perspective.” I waited, hanging on his every word.
Any second Grant might come back, cutting this short.
I didn’t want him to. Didn’t want to miss a single thing Jason was about to say.
“I realized it hurt more to hate them than to love them where they were at…if that makes sense.” I wasn’t sure I understood.
Jason must’ve sensed that, somehow, even through the phone.
“My mom will never be the mom that comes to my performances, checks my report card, or bakes me cookies.”
My mom was all of those things.
I’d never…I’d never realized that was something I should be grateful for.
That she cared too much, maybe.
“But she picks up when I call, every time,” Jason finished. “When I have a hare-brained scheme…” The Santa Fund, no doubt. “She’s the one that backs me up. She wants to hear all my gossip, all the time. And she cares, in whatever way she can, even if it’s not the way I always wished she would.”
“You don’t think she can change?” I asked, heart hurting for him.
“Maybe it’s more that I don’t care if she does,” Jason sighed. “I’m fine with the way things are. I stopped having expectations that she’d show up for me. I have other family now. Family I chose.”
So much about him was beginning to make sense.
Puzzle pieces falling into place.
Jason took care of everyone else because no one had ever taken care of him.
“I learned pretty young that family isn’t blood,” Jason finished. “Family are the people that show up for you when you need them.”
A feminine voice sounded on the other end of the line. Madison maybe?
“I gotta go, Joe-by,” Jason said softly.
“Mean old Madison needs me to grab something from the top shelf—ow.” There was a thwacking sound on the other end of the line.
“Madison says hi.” He laughed, and I knew—right then—exactly what he was talking about.
About family being who chose to be with you.
Because Madison was there with him, right then.
Having heard this conversation, she was distracting him. Giving him something to do—because being helpful was the way Jason coped. Lighting up the secret pessimist because he needed it.
The truth was…as bright as Jason was, his light was easily dimmed.
He was the kind of guy that’d gift you the shirt off his back and ask for nothing in return.
Giving, and generous, the way his mother apparently wasn’t.
And as much as he projected optimism, this conversation had made it pretty clear how he viewed the world.
He expected to be disappointed, so that he never was.
“Oh, before I go—” Jason started. “I wanted to ask you if you’d do something for me.”
“Anything.” The word was out before I could overthink it.
“There’s this party…I know it’s not…” Jason blew out a breath. “I know it’s weird,” he admitted. “That it’s probably not your thing. But I have to go—and I could use the company. Could use a friend.”
Jason’s hand squeezed the nape of my neck tight the moment I was buckled, bringing my mind back to now.
To the present.
To sitting in the passenger seat of my own beat-up pick-up truck, dressed to the nines in a suit that probably cost what the new floor in my living room had. Spending time with a man who didn’t know I knew his secrets. Every last one of them.
I wasn’t sure what tonight was.
If maybe he was going to tell me?
Knowing him…it could be another ploy to push me away. Assuming I’d treat him differently because I knew about his money. Thinking the worst, as always, because the worst was all he’d been shown when he was too young to process what that sorta thing did to his head.
But I was bound and determined to prove him wrong. Not just at the gala, but after, too. I wanted to show him that his one optimistic thought was right. That he had a family in Belleville. With everyone there—with me.
We were going to be the family he’d chosen.
I was going to help him, the way he helped everyone else.
Jason Harker would never be lonely again, if I had anything to say about it. And if the plan I was hatching up worked, this would be his best Christmas yet.