37 #2
“People talked. Parents, I mean. About Mom being a single parent for all those years. About how she wouldn’t say who my dad was. So there were rumors.” She moved her fork through the casserole without eating. “The kids heard their parents say stuff and then it all kind of landed on me.”
Dad’s palm hit the table hard enough to jump the silverware. “What?”
Jade flinched, and my whole body went rigid. Dad looked at me, shock already turning toward anger. “Did you know about this and not tell us? You let that happen to her and didn’t say a word?”
“Dad—” Matty started, but I wasn’t interested in being managed from either side.
“I only found out just before we moved. But yes, it is one of the reasons we moved. To get her away from the toxic culture of this town.” Years of frustration sharpened my voice before I could contain it.
“God, have you not paid attention to this place all these years? How godly everyone acts on Sundays and how mean and gossipy they are the rest of the week? How they look down on anyone they think is beneath them?”
Dad’s face darkened, but I was past caring.
“This town is full of stifling bigots,” I said. “Half of them have dirty secrets in their own closets. I know that from working in the hospital. I’m sure you know it too, Matty, from the station. But they still walk around acting like they’re morally superior to everybody else.”
Dad opened his mouth, anger gathering again, but Jade cut across it with more calm than any of us deserved.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said firmly. “We don’t live here anymore. I don’t have to deal with it anymore.” She sat straighter. “I love the school I go to now. I love the people there. The community in Bay of Saints is great. I’m happy there.”
The anger drained out of Dad almost visibly. What replaced it looked older and harder to fight. Regret, maybe. The realization that something had been hurting Jade under his nose while the rest of us were busy with our own battles.
Matty reached across the table and covered her hand. “That’s all that matters, Doodles. Your happiness. That’s all that ever mattered.” His attention shifted to me. “Yours too. Both of you.”
The sincerity landed somewhere I wasn’t prepared to examine over casserole.
Dad cleared his throat and looked down at his plate. “I, uh... bumped into Jude on Friday when I was at the hospital for my checkup.” His fork moved through his food without purpose. “I invited him to dinner, but he said he couldn’t make it.”
I groaned before I could stop myself. “Dad. I really wish you would stop inviting him. I have no intention of ever dating him. I am not interested, and I never will be. Besides, he has a girlfriend.” Both men looked up. “In Bay of Saints, apparently,” I added. “Strange enough.”
Matty’s expression shifted. He looked at Dad, then back to me. “I’m kind of surprised either of you have even seen him recently.”
I frowned. “Why?”
“Because he took a sabbatical from work.” Cop focus replaced the remnants of dinner tension in his face. “No one’s heard much from him in a while. He was supposed to come back last week, but he didn’t. Left a message saying he needed the time extended.”
Cold moved through me so quickly my fingers tightened around the fork. I set it down before anyone noticed.
“He’s been in Bay of Saints several times,” I said carefully.
“He keeps... happening to be in the same places I am. The grocery store. The coffee shop.” Matty’s eyes stayed on mine as I continued.
“He said it was because he has a new girlfriend there and is thinking of moving and transferring to live with her. But I don’t know. It’s felt kind of creepy.”
Jade had been attacking a roasted carrot with more force than necessary. She looked up. “I’ve always said he was Lewd Jude.”
Dad stared at her like she had announced something absurd. “He is a good kid from a good home. You are all making a mountain out of a molehill. I’m sure it really is coincidence. He probably did find someone else, since you won’t give him a chance.”
Across the table, Matty met my eyes. The look passed between us quickly, but I knew my brother well enough to read it. He didn’t believe in the coincidence either, and he intended to look.
I nodded once. Some of the tightness in my chest eased with the silent promise.
Dad either missed the exchange or chose to. He cleared his throat and reached for another subject. “Remember the cabin? Out past Eastwick Hollow?”
The question caught me harder than it should have. Matty’s face softened too, and suddenly I could smell old campfire smoke and summer air, remember mosquito bites and Dad laughing more easily than he did now. The cabin held some of the last uncomplicated memories we had as a family.
The memory softened my voice before I could stop it. “Yeah,” I said quietly.
Matty nodded, looking toward Dad. “Of course.”
Dad smiled for real. “I was thinking maybe we should take one last trip out there. All four of us. A weekend soon.” He folded his hands on the table, looking around at us.
“Then I’ll probably sell it. I’m not getting any younger.
We haven’t really used it since Jade was little, back when Matty was just making detective and you were finishing nursing school.
Seems silly to keep pouring money into the upkeep if nobody’s actually enjoying it. ”
The idea hit me less because of the sale than because it meant an ending. Some family places survived only as long as people kept returning to them, and we hadn’t.
“I can’t afford the upkeep,” I said before Dad could ask. “But I’d love one last trip.”
Matty nodded. “Same,” he said. “No way I’ve got time to maintain a cabin, but one last camping weekend? Yeah.”
All three of us looked at Jade. She blinked at the sudden attention. “I don’t remember it, obviously. But if you all just got those looks on your faces over it, I kind of want a memory like that too.”
Dad clapped his hands together once, decision made. “Then it’s done. I’ll plan everything. One last camping trip. No electronics. Just like back in the day. Just us and nature.”
Jade’s face went stricken. “Wait,” she said. “No electronics?”
Matty and I looked at each other before answering at the exact same time. “Yep. Cabin Morgan’s number one rule. No electronics.”
That finally cracked the tension for good. Jade groaned and sank back in her chair. “Maybe this won’t be fun after all.”
The three of us laughed at once, sudden and genuine enough to startle me. Jade rolled her eyes while smiling through it, and for a few seconds the table felt less like a place where old wounds had been dragged out and more like somewhere we might still know how to be a family.
Night had settled cool around the house when Jade and I finally got back into the car. I started the engine and backed out of the drive, waiting until we reached the road before I looked over at her.
“Well,” I said, “that wasn’t a complete disaster.” The fact that I could say it without irony felt like its own victory.
Jade snorted. “High praise.”
I smiled. “Your grandfather didn’t mention your dad. Your uncle apologized. You got invited on a potentially cursed no-electronics camping trip.”
She looked out the window before turning back to me. “Honestly? For this family, that’s basically a Hallmark ending.”
A real laugh broke out of me. I glanced over once more as Dad’s house disappeared behind us. “I’d say this was as much of a success as we could’ve asked for.”
Jade folded her arms and settled deeper into the seat. “Sure. If by success you mean nobody cried, Grandpa only defended Lewd Jude once, and I’m apparently about to be held hostage in the woods without Wi-Fi.”
I laughed again, easier this time. The dinner hadn’t fixed anything. Matty still had years of hurt to work through with Jackson, Dad was still stubborn enough to defend Jude despite every reason not to, and the look my brother had given me promised that problem had only begun.
Still, Jade had left the house smiling beside me. Progress didn’t look particularly graceful in this family, but I was starting to think it counted anyway.