Chapter Thirteen JACKIE #3
We stare at each other in silence. My chest heaves. I’ve been keeping the frustration deeply hidden, but this is not who I am. Somebody who steps back and leaves others in charge of her life.
Finally, Carter nods and hands me a file he’s been holding onto since he walked through the door. “The breaching attempts were nothing sophisticated, didn’t involve high-level techniques or cutting-edge technology. We can easily block them if they try again.”
I sift through the reports in the file. “So what’s the point? Everything they aimed to breach was superficial. Why plan the explosion? And the break-in at my place? It doesn’t make any sense.”
My brother nods in agreement. “We haven’t connected the dots yet, but their sloppiness gave Logan’s cyber forensic team a trail.”
“You know who they are?!” I spring up, ready to pack my bags.
“They’re in Nevada. A dark web extortion group.”
A glimmer of hope pumps me up. I’m so ready to get it all over with. “We should let Turner know; maybe he’ll give a statement faster, and everybody will calm down.”
“The FBI have asked us to keep it under wraps until they round everybody up. Otherwise, we might lose them.”
I instantly deflate and plop back down. “We are just going to…wait?” The media scrutiny and the commission’s delay are only making things worse.
“They’re under surveillance. Nobody wants to risk missing an important piece of the puzzle that could come back and bite you in the ass later.”
We go through what else is going on back at the office: Joseph’s renewed efforts to set Logan up with the daughters of the ladies he’s on the boards with, and his son’s increasingly elaborate excuses to evade said blind dates.
By the time Mom knocks and pops her head around the door, I’m wiping away tears of laughter, imagining Logan, who survived several deployments in the most dangerous war zones, hiding from New York’s most eligible socialites.
We pace the grounds together, Mom inspecting Eliza’s new additions to the garden. Not that I’d know anything about it, but apparently they formed a bond over the proper way to prune a rose bush.
She gently lifts the leaves of a rose and nods approvingly before she’s on her feet, worry clouding her expression as she surveys me next. “Not sleeping?”
Falling asleep is a real struggle. Between all the doom and gloom scenarios racing through my mind about the company, and hearing Adam move in the next room, I toss and turn for hours. Then, vivid nightmares yank me from sleep, and I bolt upright, heart racing furiously.
There’s no point in burdening her with all that. “If that’s your way of saying I look like hell…I’m in the middle of the woods. Who cares?”
“Maybe you should talk to someone. I heard therapists do Internet sessions now.”
“They’re called online sessions, Mom,” I laugh. “Stop trying to sound older than you are. The little old me act doesn’t suit you.”
“Fine. Don’t want to be pushy, but you’ve been through a lot.”
“I’m fine,” I mutter, looking intently at the freshly cut grass.
She huffs, walking ahead of me, toward the dock. “That attitude didn’t work for your brother. You’re no different.”
“I’m not in denial. I know my limits,” I insist. “We’ve had attacks before, but this is sidelining me more than I’d like.” I fall into step with her. “Maybe I’m getting cabin fever.”
We stop on the edge of the water, watching Adam in the distance, making his way back, breaking his trajectory with a loop or sharp turns. He still chases the fun in everything he does, and it’s so adorable in a way I don’t want to consider.
“Blanca was thrilled to see you,” my mother says lightly. “She told me they’re planning to visit again next week.”
“Not that it wasn’t fun to have her around and spend some time together,” I say, choosing my words carefully. “But why would you tell her where I am?”
Mom reels back, one hand flying to her chest. “She’s practically family.”
“She isn’t, though.” My tone is firmer now. “There’s a reason we have security protocols. I’m not here on vacation. I’m hiding, Mom.”
“Oh?” She arches a brow. “But Adam gets to know?”
My gaze shifts over the surface of the clear lake. “That’s different…”
The muffled hum of the motorboat grows louder as Adam nears, shirt unbuttoned, tanned chest on full display. His attention settles on me, lingering a moment too long.
“How’s that going?” my mom asks, without masking her interest.
“As bad as expected.” It’s been awkward, even with the truce. After years of hostility, what is there left between us?
She hums, deep in thought. “How peculiar.” Oh, I don’t like the sound of that. “Remember when you sent me to the house? For the box of pictures?”
“Yeah…”
“Adam was there. Drunk, sitting on the steps,” she says evenly, but her words shift the ground under me.
My lungs seize. My thoughts trip over each other.
“I invited him in and we had a chat over some tea. He was a blubbering mess,” she tuts sympathetically.
“What…” I struggle not to let my voice waver. “What did he want?”
Mom looks over the now-still water nearly wistfully. “To know why you’d disappeared on him. The neighbors told me he’d been coming there every day.”
My throat is dry. “You never thought of telling me this before?”
“Would it have made a difference? You were so adamant that you wanted to leave. I wanted to support you.”
The question guts me. I remember the first doubts after I got settled. Wondering if I made the right choice. If I should’ve given him a chance to deny everything.
“Maybe this is something you should ask him yourself.”
She always managed to fill in the blanks when I told her almost nothing about my feelings for Adam. “Whose side are you on?”
Mom takes my hand, her lips pulled into a warm smile. “Yours. Always yours. That’s why I’m telling you.”
“It was such a long time ago. It doesn’t matter anymore.” The knot in my throat is painful. “It’s not like I can change the past.”
“No.” Her voice carries the weight of a lifetime of compromises. “But the future is yours. And you get to choose who will join you along the way.”
Her words echo long after she leaves to visit her brother at the farm, refusing to fade. They urge me to dig deep, searching for an answer to a new question I hardly dare voice.
After I sigh for the fifth time, Eliza slaps her knees and springs off the couch, planting herself in front of me with a determined glint in her eye. I’m still curled in the corner, reading the same paragraph for the hundredth time.
“Want to help me with a project?” she says cheerfully. “I found a wooden trunk that needs a good scrub and a few little flowers painted on it.”
Her plan is as transparent as every naked dress at the Oscars this year. “You know I’m no talent. I’ll ruin your project.”
“You won’t,” Eliza chirps with the enthusiasm of a daycare teacher talking to a difficult toddler. “You’ll give it personality.”
It never ceases to amaze me how she threads optimism and hope into every aspect of her life. My privileged upbringing should have given me the same colorful view. That a mistake here and there doesn’t matter. That not everything has to be perfect.
But then I’d be living a lie. I can’t take the risk of showing my imperfections. There’s a reason my painting room was always locked when people came over. Nothing I created there had to be flawless. The image of it trashed and stomped on still sours my stomach.
But I can’t refuse Eliza when she looks at me with those puppy dog eyes, so I peel myself out of the cozy spot and follow her out back.
“Why don’t you invite Blanca and Will here when they come back?” She asks as we cross toward the barn Carter built to house her endless creativity.
When they materialized in town, I hadn’t thought much of it. I was genuinely happy to see them. But pondering it afterward, something about the entire visit had felt…off. A subtle discomfort I couldn’t quite shake. I couldn’t ignore the underlying sense that certain moments were too choreographed.
Like Blanca conveniently disappearing at just the right times, leaving Will and me alone in scenes that felt a little too intentionally romantic.
When I told her what had happened between us in London, and that we’d left it at that once I was back in New York, she’d reacted like I’d missed the last train to my happily ever after.
“Carter might pop a vein if any more strangers cross his doorstep this summer,” I say. “It’s fine. They give me a reason to head into town.”
I keep my tone casual, but I’m honestly relieved that I get to use this excuse. I don’t want to mix company right now. Especially when Adam is here. Blanca has never been subtle about her opinion of him, or his roots. She’s made that abundantly clear. Repeatedly.
I stopped trying to change her mind a long time ago.
“Hm. You know we wouldn’t mind if you brought friends. It must be hard. Always surrounded by so many people, then suddenly getting stuck here with the two of us.”
“There’s no one else I want to see.”
“Really? But you talk about all these people and go to so many fancy events.”
“I’ve decided to keep only the friends who weren’t using me to get into my brother’s pants.”
Laughter bubbles out of Eliza, ringing out clearly in the evening hush. “Um…not to be crass. But I am. I did…” she stammers. “I mean…You know what I mean.”
I grin at the embarrassment blooming over her cheeks. “Yeah, but you didn’t lie to my face about it. Somehow, Mr. Grumpy found you all by himself.”
If Carter’s office was a study in minimalism, Eliza’s space is glorious chaos. An explosion of colors and textures, cans of paint, tools, fabrics, boxes of accessories, a drawing easel, and brushes of all sizes line the walls and work benches in her barn.
She points to everything we need, and we sit at the long oak worktop, a dirty-looking wooden box between us.