It’s me,” I said. “Jordan? #2
I scootched around on my knees on the bed and plopped down on the edge, glad to let my feet have a rest finally.
A quick glance around let me know that other than needing a good dusting and sweeping, the room had been kept fairly clean.
The bedding might need to be laundered, since I wasn’t sure how often Jack cleaned the sheets in an unused attic room, but it looked good enough for my first night’s sleep in the house.
Along the wall to my left was the old desk Jack had dragged up to the room for me when I was a small child.
If the memories suddenly flooding my brain were, in fact, true.
Something I could use to play with my action figures or use to draw and color.
On the other side of the room was a squat bookshelf which still contained books for a kid much younger than sixteen years old.
In the corner next to the bookcase was a chair that maybe one of my buttcheeks would fit into if I tried.
I’ll have to see if I can bring a different chair up here.
I bounced off of the bed and kicked my shoes off, leaving them in the middle of the floor.
My socks felt wet when the cooler, inside air hit them.
Of course, I had probably sweated a gallon—a lot of it from my feet—so that was probably the reason.
I padded across the wooden floorboards to the backpack atop my suitcases and unzipped the front pocket.
The cell phone I extracted was nothing new or fancy, but it worked.
Well, it worked when it was charged. One glance and a tap of the screen let me know it had died sometime between leaving the motel that morning and arriving at Jack’s house.
I dug around in my backpack for the charger, and with the phone and cord in my hand, I searched the walls for an outlet.
Finally finding a socket beside the desk, I plugged in the charger and connected my phone, then laid the device on the desktop.
It would have plenty of time to juice up while I had some lunch.
Maybe by the time my belly was full and I had cooled down, I would be able to text Mom and let her know I got to Jack’s okay—and that he had actually let me in the house even though she hadn’t called him in advance like she said.
All thoughts of what had or hadn’t been done got pushed out of my head when I felt my stomach grumble again. Even two floors away, my nose picked up the scent of the food Jack had been cooking when I arrived.
Leaving all of my belongings behind—which I never did on the road, but I felt safe to do at Jack’s house—I ventured out of my room once again, slapping the light switch off as I went.
The smell of the food seemed to be searching me out, filling my nose and beckoning me downstairs with each step I took on the stairs.
The banging around I heard on my way upstairs was gone and I could hear Jack shuffling around in the kitchen, finishing up lunch.
When I got downstairs and made my way through the living room into the kitchen, I found Jack getting a couple of bowls out of the kitchen cabinet.
A large serving bowl full of…something…was sitting on the table.
When Jack closed the cabinet and turned, his eyes landed on me and he nodded. He pointed at the kitchen table and then at the living room. Then he shrugged.
“Uh,” I said, “we can eat wherever you want. I’m used to eating in the passenger seat of Mom’s car or on a motel bed most of the time, so either choice will be downright fancy.”
Jack grinned and his face contorted like he had tried to laugh.
I just smiled. Finally, he motioned at the table and indicated I should have a seat.
So, I slid into the closest chair and waited.
While Jack began ladling something out of a pot on the stove into the bowls, I leaned over and peered into the serving bowl on the table.
Sliced cucumbers, tomatoes, and purple onions with some type of vinegary dressing.
It looked refreshing. And healthier than anything else I’d eaten in a long time.
Jack finished filling the bowls with the ladle and made his way over to the table.
He set a bowl in the spot across from me and then put one in front of me.
He padded back over to the cabinets and retrieved the paper towel roll and a couple of spoons, then grabbed his notepad and pen.
When he finally slid into the seat across from me, I looked down and confirmed that chili was what he had cooked for lunch.
However, it looked homemade. Lots of kidney beans, black beans, tomatoes, and peppers.
Big hunks of meat. My stomach grumbled again.
When Jack held a spoon out to me, I accepted it gratefully, and immediately dug into the bowl of chili before me.
I didn’t care that it was the southside of Hell outdoors—I was starving and in an air-conditioned house.
The chili would be great. As I shoveled the first spoonful into my mouth, Jack rose from the table again and got two more bowls out of the cabinet, along with serving utensils.
When he came back to the table, I was scarfing down chili, so he took it upon himself to load a serving of the cucumber salad into a bowl and pass it to me.
Then he was up and filling a glass of water at the sink before setting it before me.
When he finally sat down to enjoy his meal, I was tipping the glass back, swallowing the cool drink as quickly as I could.
My stomach was begging me to fill it with everything.
I could barely breathe since I was shoving food into my mouth and pouring water down my throat as quickly as I could.
I hadn’t realized how thirsty and hungry I was.
For several minutes, I shoveled food into my face—both the chili and the salad—and drained my glass of water.
Jack gestured at my empty bowls and glass when I was done and I was sitting there across from him, practically panting.
“Um, yeah.” I was embarrassed. “Can I have more?”
Jack nodded and gestured that I should help myself.
So, I got up from the table and went over to the stove to refill my chili bowl, and then I filled my glass at the tap. When I sat down across from him again, I didn’t dig into my food like a starving animal. I ate like a sensible human being.
Jack watched me throughout my quest to stuff myself, but once I slowed down, he let his spoon rest in his bowl and reached for his pen. I had just finished filling up my other bowl with more of the cucumber salad when he turned the notepad for me to look at it.
How is Margie?
“Fine,” I said. “I guess. She’s still being an actress. We were in Dallas this morning. That’s where we stayed last night. I guess she thought she had a lead on a job there, but as soon as we arrived yesterday, she made a call and found out it fell through.”
Jack began writing in his strange block letters again.
“When she said she had called you,” I continued without waiting for him to finish, “I figured she did that last night or something. Or in the middle of the night while I was sleeping, I guess? When she woke me up at butt-early-thirty this morning, she said she was going to drop me off to stay with you, and then she had to get to Vegas because she was going to be in a show. One of the casinos or something?”
Jack finally finished writing and turned the notepad to me.
She have a new boyfriend?
That question bothered me. I was staring at the block letters my stepfather had written on a notepad—a man my mother was still legally married to—and he was asking if she had a boyfriend.
Of course, he knew my mother as well as I did.
He didn’t even look hurt at having asked the question. It was just a question.
“She’s had a few,” I answered, picking at my salad and avoiding his eyes.
I saw Jack nod out of the corner of my eye. He set the notepad to the side and grabbed his spoon from his bowl. We ate the rest of our meal in silence. Not that silence was rare around Jack—but I didn’t try to fill it.
Jack didn’t touch the notepad again until we had finished lunch, cleaned up the plates and table, and put everything away.
Once that was done, he went to the table and wrote down another question.
This time he was slower, as if hesitant to write whatever he was going to write.
Finally, he picked the notepad up off of the table and held it up to me.
Your last name still Burke?
Burke. That’s Jack’s last name. The same last name mine was changed to when I was a toddler and my mother had married Jack.