Chapter Sixteen
~ Jackson ~
I ate my eggs at the kitchen table in the morning quiet, watching the steam rise from my coffee cup in a straight line that thinned as it reached the ceiling.
The farmhouse around me held its breath—the kind of quiet that hadn’t decided yet if it was going to hold or if the day would break it apart the way yesterday had.
The baby was quiet too, settled somewhere low and central, the weight of it both strange and familiar against the inside of my skin.
Across the kitchen, my mother moved in small, careful increments.
She filled her coffee cup at the counter without making a sound, set it down without drinking, drifted to the window to look out at the valley, came back and refilled it again.
Her slippered feet made almost no sound on the tile.
Her shoulders stayed drawn in, chin slightly tucked, like she was trying to take up less space than her body actually occupied.
I watched her from my seat at the table and registered, with the flat clarity of a man who had spent his whole life cataloguing threats, that she had been doing this exact thing my entire life and I had simply never had the bandwidth to see it.
Not because she was hiding, exactly. More like she was waiting—for permission, for direction, for whatever cue would tell her it was safe to exist at full volume.
The realization landed somewhere behind my ribs like something with an edge—not quite anger, not quite sadness, but something adjacent to both that made it hard to breathe for a second.
Cruz was out on a perimeter walk with Morales—conspicuously, usefully absent.
He’d disappeared after breakfast with a two-fingered salute and a look that meant he’d read the situation exactly right: my parents needed to think the space belonged to me, not to him, at least until they’d decided whether they were staying or going.
The perimeter check was real—three men with guns had tried to breach the property less than twenty-four hours ago—but the timing was tactical.
Cruz had a gift for knowing exactly when his presence would help and when it would make things harder, for understanding the difference between showing up and taking over.
I was halfway through my eggs when my father came into the kitchen. He moved differently than he had the night before—not the hot anger of the kitchen-table reckoning, but something cooler and more calculated. His shoulders were set, his jaw tight, his eyes giving away nothing.
Wounded patriarch. Disappointed general. The look of a man who had apparently decided a night’s sleep had restored his authority.
He stood near the counter with his arms crossed and his jaw set, watching me.
“This pregnancy,” he said finally, his voice level. “It’s a mistake that can still be corrected. There are options. Procedures that can be done safely, even at this stage.”
The words landed between us like something with weight—not quite physical, but present enough that I had to set down my fork with careful attention.
“Cruz is a temporary arrangement,” my father continued. “Not a real future. Men like him—they don’t stay. They can’t. It’s not in their nature to settle down and play house.”
I didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just kept my eyes on his face and my hands exactly where they were on the table.
“You’ve embarrassed the family in front of people who mattered,” my father said, his voice dropping another half-octave. “Elena’s father sits on three boards with me. The Garcias have been family friends for twenty years. That kind of relationship isn’t easy to rebuild after something like this.”
He didn’t raise his voice. Didn’t need to. The disappointment in his voice carried better than anger would have—the kind of register that landed exactly where he wanted it to, that made a person want to shrink rather than push back.
I let him finish every word. Let him complete the familiar performance he’d decided we were having, the one where he was the injured party and I was the prodigal son who’d finally gone too far.
Then, without raising my own voice, I asked: “Which of you falsified the designation tests?”
My father went completely still—the kind of stillness that meant I’d hit exactly the target I’d been aiming for.
“Which of you falsified the designation tests?” I asked again, same flat tone, same unhurried pace. “Because someone did. Someone looked at the results and decided I couldn’t handle knowing who I actually was. Someone made that call. Was it you? Or was it Mom?”
The kitchen was very quiet around us—just the soft tick of the heating system, the clock on the wall, and the sound of my mother breathing, careful and controlled from her position by the window.
My father’s answer came out in pieces, each one landing like something that cost him actual effort to produce.
“It was for your own good,” he said, his voice carefully neutral. “An omega son with no interest in women would have had no future worth having. No career path. No respect. No real place in the world. It was a practical decision.”
I looked at him for a long moment across the kitchen, the grow lights humming faintly through the window from the greenhouses outside. Something shifted behind my sternum—not quite anger, not quite relief, but something adjacent to both that made it hard to breathe for a second.
“I built a life,” I said, my voice level. “A real one. On land I chose. With work I chose. With people who see me exactly as I am and don’t ask me to be something else for their convenience.”
My father opened his mouth—already reloading for another volley.
“The only thing your practical decision cost me,” I continued, cutting him off, “was thirty years of understanding myself correctly. Of knowing who I actually was instead of who you needed me to be.”
Something flashed across his face—too quick to catch, gone before I could name it.
“I’m not angry anymore,” I said. “I’m just done. You can stay through tomorrow for the drive back. But I’m not going to pretend this is something it isn’t, and we are not going to have this conversation again.”
My father opened his mouth—already forming words, already deciding which version of the performance we were going to have next.
I didn’t wait for what came out of it. I picked up my plate, set it in the sink with careful attention, and walked out the back door toward the greenhouses, leaving everything still sitting between us exactly where it belonged.
I was still in the fourth greenhouse an hour later, crouched at the end of the grape rootstock row, checking the base of the vines where the drainage problem had been worst before Cruz helped fix it.
My hands moved through the familiar sequence without requiring my full attention—fingers working the soil loose around each stem, checking for the firmness that meant healthy growth rather than rot, the methodical cataloging that came from having done it a hundred times before.
The air in here was warm and close, smelling of damp soil and cedar mulch. The grow lights cast their steady yellow-green wash over everything, turning the leaves a shade that lived somewhere between living and lit.
Outside, the morning had fully arrived—light spilling across the valley in a long sweep, the mountains to the east visible as solid shapes against the pale sky.
I heard my mother before I saw her—the soft creak of the greenhouse door, the hesitation in her footsteps on the gravel path between rows. She stopped at the far end of the row and didn’t come closer. Didn’t move into the space I’d claimed, didn’t try to shorten the distance I’d put between us.
She stood there with her hands folded at her waist and her shoulders slightly curved, watching me as if she was working hard to keep herself together.
“I’m sorry,” she said. Two words. No explanation for my father, no attempt to reframe what happened at the kitchen table the night before or this morning. Just those two words, delivered as if she knew exactly how insufficient they were.
I stayed crouched at the rootstock, my hands still on the base of the vine, and didn’t tell her it was fine—because it wasn’t, and she knew it wasn’t, and saying so would be its own kind of lie.
“I know you were in a position you didn’t build for yourself,” I said finally, my voice level.
“I’m not going to cut you out of my life.
But things are going to be different going forward.
I’m not going to pretend anymore. Not about who I am, not about what I want, not about who belongs in this house. ”
My mother nodded once, slow. “Can I ask about the baby?” The question came out small and careful, like she wasn’t sure she had the right to ask it, like she was expecting the door that had just opened to close again immediately.
I looked at the vine under my hands—at the dark green of the new growth, at the careful way Cruz had sealed the drainage channel to keep water from pooling under the subfloor—and made a decision.
“The nursery’s down the hall from the bedroom,” I said.
“East-facing window. Crib’s positioned to catch the morning light.
I drove forty minutes to pick up the rocking chair from a furniture maker in the next town.
Cedar-lined toy box at the foot of the crib.
Shelves with soft things in greens and yellows.
No pink, no blue. Just things a child could reach for without thinking about what they meant. ”
Something shifted in her face when I started describing the nursery—a change that meant she was actually listening rather than just waiting for her turn to speak.
Her expression went nakedly hopeful in a way that cost me something to look at directly—not the careful performance she’d perfected over thirty years of marriage, but something honest and unfiltered that made my chest tight for a second.