Chapter Eighteen #2
My mother gives it one last try, this time lower, almost a whisper. “You know what this means, don’t you? If you stay here, you’re cut off. No money. No name. No help. You’ll spend the rest of your life here, scrambling, with—” She glances at Hooper, then at me, “—with whatever this is.”
I say, “I know.”
She hears that I mean it. She turns and walks to the car without another word, not looking back. My father lingers, just long enough to make sure the point is made, then follows her.
They get in the SUV. The engine starts. It reverses all the way down the drive, the tires leaving two perfect lines in the snow.
Macon does not move until the vehicle is fully onto the county road. Then he steps back, disappears into the morning.
Hooper stands with me for a moment, silent. I look at my hands, still at my sides, steady as stone. He says, “You want a minute?”
I shake my head. I say, “No.”
He opens the screen door and waits for me to walk through first.
Inside, Jojo stands in the hall with Emilio, who is now awake and gnawing on his fist, happy as any baby in the world. Jojo holds him out to me, eyes big, but calm, like he’s seen a hundred of these scenes and knows how they end.
I take Emilio. He fits perfectly against my chest, and when I rest my chin on his head, I feel the steadiness transfer from my body into his.
Hooper comes up behind me, wraps one arm around my shoulders, the other around Emilio, and just holds us there.
For a long time, nobody says anything.
It’s enough.
I stayed in the hallway until the SUV’s engine faded to nothing and the glass in the window stopped trembling with the echo. I watched the black streaks of the tires as they cut back onto the county road, straight as a promise.
For a long while, I couldn’t move. My arms and legs felt locked in place, my jaw clamped down so hard that even when I tried to relax it, the ache just migrated up behind my ears.
Hooper never said a word. He just kept his arm around me, his other hand resting in the small of my back, thumb brushing a slow, hypnotic circle. Emilio fussed for a second, then calmed, his tiny hands resting on the fabric of my shirt.
I listened to the sounds of the house—the tick of the old clock, the faint hum of the heater, the way the boards in the kitchen creaked as Jojo retreated with the baby bottle and set it on the table. In another room, a door opened and shut, the sound perfectly ordinary.
After a while, I said, “I think that’s it.”
Hooper squeezed my shoulder, just once. “Not unless you want another round,” he said, and the deadpan of it made me almost laugh.
I shook my head. “No. That’s enough.”
He let go, gave me space to walk down the hallway on my own. It felt strange, like my body didn’t fit right in the gravity of the house anymore, but I made it as far as the living room before I had to sit down.
Emilio squirmed, and I shifted him to my lap, resting his back against my thigh. I watched him watch the ceiling, his face soft and blank, as if nothing at all had changed in his world.
Hooper stood in the archway, hands in his pockets, waiting for me to make the next move.
I said, “They’ll file anyway, won’t they?”
He shrugged. “If they want to waste the money. Rawley’s lawyer said the record is airtight, and even if they got a judge to listen, it would take months to schedule. By then, nobody’s going to care.”
I looked at Emilio, then back at Hooper. “They care.”
He nodded. “They do, but they don’t know how to win.”
The words hung in the air, heavier than I expected.
In the kitchen, Jojo poked his head around the corner. “You want some coffee?” he asked, voice tentative.
I nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.”
He came in and set the mug on the end table, then perched on the edge of the couch, eyes flicking from me to Hooper and back. I could tell he was running his own version of the math—what did it mean to say no, what happened next, would the walls still be standing by dinner.
I said, “They always talked about what came after.” I didn’t realize I was going to say it until it came out. “Like, you could do whatever you wanted, as long as it made sense for what happened after. College, work, family, the whole run. Never the day-to-day. Just… the future.”
Jojo nodded, slow, like he understood.
I took a sip of the coffee, bitter and over-brewed, and let it burn the roof of my mouth. “I don’t know how to do the future,” I said.
Hooper stepped into the room, walked over, and crouched down so he was eye level with me. He looked at Emilio, then at me. “You don’t have to,” he said. “That’s why we’re here.”
He set a hand on my knee, warm and steady.
I felt something loosen, not all at once, but enough that I could draw a breath without feeling like I was about to shatter.
Emilio let out a single, high-pitched giggle, and the three of us just stared at him, as if he’d solved the problem nobody else could.
Jojo smiled, real and bright. “He’s going to be a handful,” he said.
Hooper grinned. “Runs in the family.”
The house felt different then, like the worst was over and the only thing left was the slow, careful build of a real life.
I sat back, watched the steam rise from my mug, and let myself think about tomorrow. Not the big, terrifying future, just the next day, the one where nobody came up the drive, nobody told me what I owed, nobody made a threat that wasn’t followed by coffee and a half smile.
It would be enough.
For now.
Hooper put his hand back on my shoulder, and I leaned into it, just a little. For the first time in years, I wasn’t running the math on what I had to do to survive. For the first time, I wanted to see what came next.
I looked at Emilio, then at Hooper, then at the house, and realized I finally believed it could be mine.
All of it.
Later, when the house was quiet and the only sound was the wind curling around the eaves, I sat at the kitchen table and looked at the stacks of paper left over from my attempt at organizing the ledgers. My name was on one of them, in Rawley’s all-caps handwriting: “JAMES, LIAM—legal/priority.”
I read it over, the ink sunk deep into the grain of the page, the edges already curling from use.
I thought about the way my mother had said “You don’t have a family. You have a situation,” and how for the first time, the words landed, but didn’t stick.
I ran my finger over the name, tracing the letters, then folded the paper in half and set it under the mug.
The next day, and the one after, and every day after that, would be exactly as real as I wanted it to be.
For the first time, I wanted it all.