Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
When they made it back downstairs, Jet was nowhere in sight. Not that Myles had expected him to be, but he still had to stifle his annoyance and then the regret that quickly swamped it when he didn’t find his nephew.
He was still choking on that cocktail when Lucky hurried over to him.
“He tidied up your table until Jake took over from him, then went up,” Lucky informed him, digging right into Myles’s brain like he’d always had the knack of doing. “When he came down, he didn’t say a word to anyone. Just stormed out. I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to find out where he was going.”
“No reason you should have. He’s not your responsibility.”
“You’re family, he’s family,” Lucky said simply.
“Uncle My-my?” Shelly tugged on his hand. “Are we going to the Y now?”
“We should find Jet,” Myles told her.
“Maybe he’s at the bookshop,” she suggested.
“Maybe.” It was a logical place for Jet to go, proving Shelly’s understanding of her brother when Myles couldn’t fathom him. And since they hadn’t explored much of the town, despite it being weeks since they’d arrived, it was as good a place to start as any.
“Come on.” Her tone veered perilously close to a whine as she tugged at him again.
“Let’s get MJ and take a walk over there,” Myles suggested.
“Your dog is asleep in Scratch’s bed in the kitchen,” Lucky told him. “He’s fine here. Go do what you have to do. We can let him out or whatever he needs.”
“I appreciate that.” The line between relying on their old friendship and feeling like he was taking advantage of generosity he hadn’t earned blurred a little bit more, and Myles hesitated.
And like always, Lucky plucked the thought out of his head.
“Don’t for a second think you don’t deserve my help,” Lucky said.
“I used to be the hot mess, remember? And you kept me as safe as you could when I was doing some truly stupid stuff. Now it’s my turn to help you get your feet under you. Please. I owe you.”
“You don’t.”
“I made our lives out there harder than they had to be and never really had the chance to say how sorry I was for that. This is me, making amends. We became a family, as dysfunctional as we were, and looking after your dog for an afternoon is the least I can do.”
“You’re doing way more than that, and you know it.”
“Yes. It’s true. But I’m happy to do it, so please. Go find Jet. Take Shelly to the Y. Do what you’ve got to do. The dog is fine.”
“Thank you.”
Lucky grinned, the now-familiar wide and deeply happy expression Myles had never seen on him in their old lives, but that he was getting accustomed to seeing on him these days.
He did find Jet at the bookshop, but had only a view of his back as Jet stood at the bin of LPs while he leafed through them. It couldn’t have been more obvious he was ignoring Myles if he’d plastered as sign to his back stating as much.
“Hey there.” Stephanie approached Myles and Shelly where they paused in the front room. “Tension?” she asked, but it was clear she didn’t need his affirmative response.
“You could say that.”
“You want me to watch her for a minute?” She reached for Shelly’s hand, but the little girl drew back, half hiding behind Myles’s leg.
“I want to go to the Y!” she insisted, louder than necessary.
Myles heard Jet’s sigh from across the room. “Take her to the damn Y,” he muttered.
“Jet, we need to talk.”
“No, we don’t. Go take her to the Y.”
“You don’t want come?”
He said nothing. Meaning he probably did but was not about to admit it.
“Fine.” Fed up with navigating an emotional six-year-old and a pissed-off teenager, Myles scooped Shelly into his arms. “But you stay close to the B and B.”
“Whatever.”
“Jet—”
“I got it,” he snapped.
“We will talk when I get back.”
“You’ll talk, you mean.”
“Jet—”
“You’re going to miss her second class if you don’t go.”
“He’ll be fine,” Stephanie assured him in a low voice.
“Yeah.” Myles wasn’t about to get into it with her. Jet hardly needed Myles to hover over him like he was a child. “Keep your phone on,” he told Jet.
“Always do.”
“I’ll be back in half an hour.”
Jet grunted.
You’re the adult here. Do not take it personally. An easier thought to think in the privacy of his own head than to feel in the tender bits of his heart.
Myles hefted Shelly in his arms and turned back to the shop entrance without saying anything more lest he bite back at Jet, who had a right to be angry, even if the disrespect he dished out had to be addressed. Eventually.
“Breathe,” Stephanie told him as she held the door for them.
Myles appreciated her advice, even if he didn’t need it.
She wanted to help, and that in itself gave him the space to pull in a breath and focus on what he could do.
Which wasn’t make Jet listen to him, or convince him to understand why he hesitated over the letter.
Not, at least, until Jet let go of some of his own anger, which—did teenagers even know how to do that?
“I won’t be long,” he told her.
She smiled at him and nodded.
“Not that I’m asking you to do anything.”
“I know. But you do know we’ll all keep an eye out.”
Myles had to shake his head at that. “This town,” he said.
She grinned. “We get that a lot.”
Of course it took longer than Myles liked to get Shelly settled into the class. He was so thoroughly done with people and the incessant sound of loud kids cluttering the background of his thoughts by the time he was done, he didn’t immediately go back to his car when he stepped out of the Y.
“And why should I?” he asked himself. “Jet’s old enough to look after himself for a minute.”
Ruthlessly, he shoved down the reminder he’d brought them all here, in part because Jet had been doing a dismal job of looking after himself any time he’d been on his own in Calgary.
“Which is normal teenage behavior.”
But he’d just lost a mother who he felt had betrayed his trust. They were half a country away from their home because Myles had been drowning. And now Jet’s absentee father had contacted them, out of the blue, with no real explanation about why. Nothing about any of their lives was normal.
Stopping to lean his cane against his leg, he fished the letter out of the pocket where he’d stuffed it to find the lawyer’s number and call it.
“Airedale and Giroux,” a female-sounding voice said.
“Hi. This is Myles McCreevy. I’m calling for Daniel Giroux.”
“He’s in a meeting right now. Can I tell him what this is about and have him call you back?”
He shouldn’t have expected anything different. Lawyers almost never came to the phone on a moment’s notice. With a sigh, he explained about the letter. “I was wondering if he had any idea why Priory wanted to see Jet now.”
“I will give him all this information, and I’m sure he’ll get back to you soon.”
“Fine. Thanks.” Myles hung up. “For nothing, really.” But the receptionist was only doing their job, so he couldn’t really hold it against them for doing it well.
Shoving phone and letter back into his pocket, he took stock of his surroundings.
A Tim Hortons squatted in the centre of a parking lot on the corner.
A stream of cars surrounded the little brick building, slowly filtering past the speaker to the drive-though window, similar to every Tim Hortons everywhere.
The familiarity of it had a soothing effect on his mood.
Grasping the smooth, comforting wood of his cane, he turned his steps towards it.
He was acutely aware of the LCBO as he passed.
Like the Tim’s, the liquor stores in Ontario all had a recognizable aesthetic, but this was not one he found soothing.
The mere sight of a liquor store had stopped being a siren call to him long ago.
But the memories of sitting on the curb, waiting, hoping—those had been slower to fade.
It was a moment, in fact, before he realized that the dishevelled form slumped on the knee-wall along the drive between the two buildings wasn’t a figment of his imagination.
The figure leaned on the last post of the wrought iron fence atop the wall.
The green army-issue, multi-pocketed jacket was grubby and threadbare, and covered an equally worn maroon sweater.
A plaid collar stuck out at odd angles from the sweater’s crew neck.
The holes in the knees of the cargo pants showed a grubby pair of jeans beneath.
Myles knew that distinct, heavily layered look for what it was. For an instant, it felt like looking in a mirror. The sidewalk beneath his feet tilted, his head spun, and he reached for the fence, only to miss, his cane clattering onto the sidewalk as he swayed.
A dirty hand shot out to catch him, and the figure, moving faster than it had at first appeared capable of, rose and eased him onto the wall in their place.
“Easy, bruh. You okay?” The voice from behind the scraggly beard was higher-pitched—maybe younger—than Myles expected.
“Yeah.” He nodded and lowered his head to press against a fist resting on his knee. “I’m good. Thanks.”
“No worries.” There was shuffling, and the wood-on-concrete scrape of his cane, then feet in holey Vans shuffled into Myles’s swimming vision. “You sick or something?”
Myles shook his head. “No. Just dizzy.” Not a surprise, considering he’d ended up wearing more of his breakfast than he’d eaten.
“Good deal.” The cane came to rest against the fence next to him, and the shoes shuffled a little farther away. “Take it easy, eh?”
He couldn’t see the shoes anymore, and Myles held up a hand. “Wait.” He used the fence and then his cane to get upright. Another wave of light-headedness overtook him.
Once again, the person grabbed his hand and hung on, grip strong, until Myles managed to sort out his dodgy hip from his good one and distribute his weight in a way that would keep him upright. “Sorry. It’s… been a morning.”
“No shit.” The comment dropped, heavy with sarcasm.
“Yeah.” Myles straightened. “I get it.”
“You have no idea.” Stormy grey eyes drilled into him. “No clue.”