8
Lila
By Sunday evening, I had almost convinced myself one family dinner would not kill me.
That optimism lasted until I pulled into my father’s driveway and saw Matty’s truck parked out front. Beside me, Jade looked up from the sketchbook in her lap, took one glance through the windshield, and sighed with the kind of suffering only a dramatic sixteen-year-old could make look sincere.
“If Uncle Matty puts me in a headlock and asks what I’m drawing, I’m reporting his truck stolen.”
I snorted. “You are not.”
“He knows I’ve hated Doodles since middle school.”
“He’ll retire it when he dies.”
She shut the sketchbook and dropped her head against the seat. “So never. Great.”
A small, real laugh escaped me, easing some of the tightness in my chest before I opened the door.
My father’s house looked exactly as it always had, neat brick and trimmed hedges, everything orderly enough to suggest the people inside should be too.
It was the kind of house that treated chaos like a personal failure.
Growing up there meant learning to carry discomfort quietly enough that it passed for good manners.
Jade grabbed her sketchbook and climbed out beside me. “You ready?”
“No.”
Her mouth twitched. “Good. Me neither.”
Matty opened the door before we could knock.
“There they are.” His light-brown hair was pushed back in the same careless way he had worn it since high school, and the soft scruff along his jaw did nothing to hide the easy grin that made him look younger than he was.
He still carried the broad shoulders of the athlete he had once been, though life had settled him into them now instead of daring him to use them.
He hugged me first, easy and automatic, and for one second it still felt like being twelve and safe and home before life grew clever and complicated.
Then he spotted Jade and lit up the way he always did around her, as though every eye roll she had ever thrown at him only made him more determined to adore her.
“Hey, Doodles. Whatcha been doodlin’?” Before she could escape, he hooked an arm around her shoulders and dragged her into one of the half-headlock hugs he had inflicted on her since she was small enough to find them funny.
“Uncle Matty, stop.” She shoved at him with the edge of her sketchbook. “My hair.”
He laughed and tightened his arm for another second. “What? You too grown up for your favorite uncle now?”
“Yes.” She smacked his arm harder, and Dad’s voice carried from deeper in the house.
“Leave the girl alone.”
Matty released her with a grin that promised he had learned nothing. Jade immediately began fixing her hair with the offended dignity of someone who had been grievously wronged in public.
Dad appeared in the foyer a second later, silver threaded heavily through his neatly cut hair and close-trimmed beard.
Age had sharpened the lines around his pale eyes without softening the assessing look behind them.
He wore a pressed shirt and the same controlled expression he had carried through most of my childhood, every inch the man who had once worn a badge and never learned how to stop expecting the world to line up when he gave it a look.
He kissed my cheek, brushed another kiss over Jade’s temple, then looked at me. “I tried making your mother’s pot roast. Go see if you can save it.”
I stared at him. “Hello to you too.”
His mouth almost twitched. “That was hello.”
I had barely turned toward the kitchen when the doorbell rang. Dad glanced toward the foyer and said, “That must be him.”
I stopped in the middle of the room. Matty did too, and Jade went still at my shoulder, reading the change in me before I had decided what I felt about it. Dad didn’t need to say the name. Only so many men from my childhood still struck him as the perfect answer to a question I had never asked.
He opened the door.
Jude Mallory stood there with a bottle of wine in one hand and the same polished smile he had worn since we were teenagers, as though he had spent years practicing how to look harmless and interested at the same time.
He was handsome in the clean, respectable way my father appreciated, with a steady job, neat hair, good posture, and the confidence of a man who understood which doors opened more easily when people approved of him.
Matty spoke first. “You comin’ off shift?”
It sounded casual enough. It wasn’t a welcome.
“No. Your dad and I ran into each other at the store.” Jude stepped inside anyway.
“I invited him,” Dad said as he shut the door. “He remembered your mother’s pot roast.”
Of course he did.
Jude looked at me and smiled. “I haven’t had one of these dinners since we were kids.”
That was true. He had known us long enough to make belonging look natural.
He had grown up circling the edges of our lives through summer cookouts, holiday drop-ins, graduation parties, and random afternoons when Matty dragged half the neighborhood through the backyard.
He worked with Matty now, which made it even easier for Dad to slide him into place.
Familiarity had always been Jude’s strongest card, and he played it like a man convinced it would eventually pay out.
“Family dinner is usually family, Dad.”
Dad looked at me as though I were being difficult for sport. “Jude is not a stranger, Lila.”
“No,” Jade said dryly. “That’s kind of the issue.”
A laugh nearly escaped me. I swallowed it and touched her arm in warning, mostly for appearances.
She glanced up at me with wide-eyed innocence. “What? He’s still doing this?”
Jude laughed, though something in it pulled tight. “Still sharp, huh?”
“She comes by it honestly,” Matty muttered.
Jude crossed to him and pulled him into a quick, familiar hug that landed heavier than Matty seemed to invite.
It wasn’t exactly awkward. They worked together and had known each other too long for the gesture to be strange, but I caught the brief stiffness in my brother’s shoulders before he smoothed it over and stepped back.
Jude turned toward me next and opened his arms as though I were the natural next stop.
Jade moved first. She caught my wrist and said brightly, “Mom, you were going to show me how to save Grandpa’s roast before it became a crime scene.”
She tugged me toward the kitchen with such determined sweetness that I almost smiled. I let her pull me away.
The second we were alone, she turned on me. “Why is Grandpa like this?”
I lifted the lid from the roast, mostly because I needed something to do with my hands. Steam rolled upward, carrying beef, onions, rosemary, and a scent I knew well enough to make my chest ache before I tasted anything.
“Because your grandfather still thinks life can be fixed with enough planning.”
“That was not an answer.”
“It was the answer.”
Jade leaned against the counter and folded her arms. “No, really. Why him?”
I kept my attention on the pan. “Because your grandfather thinks I should be married, and Jude looks safe on paper.”
Her expression sharpened. “We are fine.”
“I know.”
“And if he’s worried about a father, maybe we could start with the actual one instead of dragging Officer Eager into Sunday dinner.”
My hand stilled over the roast. I looked at her. “What do you mean by that?”
She glanced away for half a second before meeting my eyes again. “You know who he is.”
It wasn’t a question.
I set the spoon down carefully. “Of course I know who he is. Where is this coming from?”
“That box in your closet, for one thing.”
Cold moved through me all at once.
Her chin lifted. “You think I don’t know it’s there, but I do. And after the way you reacted the other night when you woke up from that dream…” She paused, watching me too closely. “I’m not stupid, Mom.”
She wasn’t. Jade had my mouth, her father’s instincts, and a gift for noticing the things I would rather leave buried.
Before I could answer, footsteps sounded in the hall. Matty leaned against the kitchen doorway and looked between us. “You two plannin’ to feed us, or are we all gonna sit in there and eat crackers?”
Jade straightened without missing a beat. “We were discussing whether there’s a safe path through the dining room that doesn’t involve getting trapped by Jude.”
Matty snorted and looked at me. “Kid, it’s one dinner.”
“That,” Jade informed him, “is exactly the kind of thing people say right before a terrible dinner.”
He ignored her and kept his attention on me. “He’s not that bad, Li.”
I gave him a look.
“What?” Matty shrugged. “He’s got a decent job, and he’s known the family forever. You could do worse.”
“Could do better,” Jade said.
“I didn’t ask you.”
“You should start.”
He rolled his eyes, but no real heat lived in it. “I’m serious. The guy’s been into you forever.”
I turned back to the counter before I said something sharp. That should have warned him.
It didn’t.
“I’m serious, Li.” Matty was still looking at me like I had made the situation more difficult than it needed to be.
“The guy’s steady. Good job, good reputation, and none of the drama you’ve had to deal with.
He’s the kind who stays. The kind who doesn’t run out on a woman and leave her with his mess for the rest of her life. ”
The words struck hard enough to pull all the air from the kitchen.
I went still, and Jade spun toward him so quickly that her sketchbook bumped the counter. “Are you insinuating that I’m a mess, or that I was a mistake, Uncle Matty?”
For a second, he only stared at her.
“Jesus, no.” His answer came fast. “No, baby. That is not what I meant.”
Her chin rose. “Then what did you mean?”
The full weight of his words caught up with him, and remorse wiped the easy confidence from his face. “I meant your father was a bastard for leaving and not taking responsibility, whoever he was. That’s what I meant.”
Jade held his gaze, making him sit in it before she said, very clearly, “That is not how it sounded.”
“Lila, I’m sorry.” He looked at Jade next. “And Doodles, I’m so, so sorry. It was stupid, and I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”