Chapter Two Feedback Loop #2
Jake almost laughed, but it caught in his throat. Right alongside the lump. “I hope you don’t mean that.”
“Why not?”
Jake swallowed hard. “Your mum would want better for you.”
Teddy looked back out the window. “She ain’t here to say owt for me.”
The van suddenly felt a whole lot smaller.
“No.” Jake gripped the steering wheel. “She ain’t.”
He took him in then. Blazer sleeves creeping up his wrists.
A bruise fading yellow along his knuckles where he’d clearly hit something instead of saying what he felt.
Thirteen and already wired tight as a snare drum.
And there it was again. That weight in Jake’s chest. Not grief exactly.
Nor even anger. Something knotted between the two.
A responsibility he hadn’t chosen but wouldn’t drop if it killed him.
Jake would shoulder every bill, every whispered comment, every five-in-the-morning call to drag the lad out of trouble if that was what it took. Anything to make sure Teddy got the chance Jake and Robyn never had.
He cleared his throat on noticing Lou’s hut up ahead. “You had brekkie?”
Teddy glanced down at his hands. Shook his head.
“Alright.” Jake swung the van around and pulled up outside Lou’s greasy spoon, a little tin box parked opposite the builders’ yard where steam clouded the serving window and the smell of frying bacon cut through the cold.
He hopped out and went to the counter.
“Eh up, Jake. Bacon buttie, is it?” Lou reached for the rolls, knowing his order like she knew his entire life. Apron streaked with grease, hair shoved up in a claw clip. She’d known him since he’d been Teddy’s age.
“Y’alright, Lou? Two of those, please, love.”
He leaned on the counter while she worked, glancing back through the windscreen. Teddy sat hunched over his phone, chewing on his chapped lips and pretending he wasn’t still angry.
None of this was fair on him.
Lou wrapped the rolls in paper and passed them over. “That your Teddy?”
“Aye.” Jake grabbed the ketchup and drowned one side of the roll. “Thirteen going on permanently hacked off.”
Lou gave a low hum. “Teenagers hit different, don’t they?”
“Aye.” He bit into his roll, and a blob of ketchup burst out the side, splattering down his hoodie. “Fuck.” He smeared it with his thumb, making it worse. Looked like someone had shot him in the chest.
Lou passed him a napkin. “You’re hopeless, you.”
He took it with a grunt, dabbing uselessly. “Ta.”
She leaned on the counter. “How’s your mum these days?”
“She’s… hanging on.”
That was the safest answer.
Some days she was fine. Making tea. Watching quiz shows. Asking about work as if nothing had ever happened. Other days she drifted. Quiet. Lost somewhere he couldn’t follow. Whole house feeling too big and too small at the same time.
“She’s got a lot on.” Lou jutted her chin towards the van. “Teenagers again an’ all.”
Jake huffed a breath. “Aye. S’pose.”
It wasn’t just Teddy. It was everything that came strapped to him.
The meetings at school. The letters with bold writing across the top. The forms asking questions no one ever wanted to answer properly. The looks. The way conversations dipped or flatlined altogether when they walked into a room. As if trouble followed them in on its own two feet.
And Lou weren’t wrong.
His mum shouldn’t be doing that again.
She should be nipping round on Sundays with a tin of biscuits.
Slipping Teddy fivers when no-one was looking.
Playing gran. Getting the soft bits. Not packing lunches.
Arguing about homework. Or lying awake wondering who he was messaging at midnight.
She should be in grandparent territory. Spoiling.
Loving. Handing him back when it got hard.
What Jake got from his Nanna. All sugar and warmth.
But that life had been taken from his mum and all.
Jake tapped his phone against the reader. “Cheers, Lou.” He grabbed the second roll and stepped away from the hatch. “Ta-ra.”
“Oi, Jake?”
He stopped mid-another bite, another splodge of ketchup dripping down his front. “Mm?”
“You hear about the girl?”
He swallowed his mouthful. “What girl?”
“Emily Fisher. She were working at the King’s Arms.”
Jake frowned. He didn’t keep tabs on barmaids. That was Deacon’s territory. Jake preferred the other side of the bar. Though lately even that had been mistakes wrapped in smiles and poor decisions.
“What about her?”
Lou drew a breath. “Gone missing.”
Missing.
That wasn’t a throwaway word here. It was a bruise. One the town pressed at but never talked about properly. One that lingered in Jake every single day.
“Never came home from her shift last night.” Lou shook her head. “Her dad’s been out looking. Came by t’ask if I’d seen her.”
Jake felt that move through him. Cold and fast and sickeningly familiar.
Lou glanced at the van where Teddy still sat hunched over his phone. “He might’ve heard. You know what this town’s like.”
Jake turned sharply, watching the lad through the wing mirror. Head bent. Shoulders tight. Scrolling, but not really seeing. Fuck. In Hartswick, news didn’t break. It leaked. Slid under doors. Passed in whispers. Lived in people’s eyes before it ever hit a headline.