22. Jake
JAKE
Carol showed up with a casserole and zero patience for my nonsense, which honestly tracks.
She let herself in through the back door the way she always has, dish in one hand, purse in the other, and took one look at me before she'd even set anything down on the counter.
"You look like the losing side of a bar fight."
"Thanks. I really needed that today."
"You needed a shower two days ago and a shave before that. I'm just working through the list in order." She set the casserole down hard enough to rattle the burners, then crossed her arms and studied me properly, the same stance she'd used on me in this exact kitchen more times than I could count.
"Deacon called me."
"Of course he did."
"He said you canceled two jobs this week and won't pick up for anyone but him. He's worried. I told him worried men are useless at figuring out what actually needs saying, so somebody competent had to come do it herself."
"I'm fine, Carol."
"You are so far from fine that fine can't even see you from where it's standing." She pulled out a chair and pointed at it like a woman herding livestock.
"Sit down before you fall down. I made enough for four people because something told me you weren't going to want to sit with just your own thoughts today."
I sat.
She didn't sit across from me right away, busying herself with plates instead, giving her hands something to do before she trusted herself to look at me head on.
"Talk. Or don't, and I'll guess, and you know I'm usually right."
"I don't think you'll guess this one."
"Try me anyway."
So I told her. All of it, start to finish, the box in my closet and the matchbook and six weeks in Millbrook that had somehow rearranged my whole life twice now, six years apart. Hart, the name half that town still knew me by.
Earl and his guest books. The drive to Aria's with four openings rehearsed and every one of them abandoned the second I opened my mouth.
I told her about the word Aria used at the end, quiet in a way that had scared me worse than shouting would have, and how it had followed me around every hour since.
Carol went very still somewhere in the middle of it, a stillness I'd only ever seen on her twice before, once at Emily's funeral and once the night she found out her own husband wasn't coming home from the hospital.
"Lily is yours."
"I think so. I know so, really. Everything lines up. The dates, the drawing, the way Earl remembered the family arguing about board spacing."
I rubbed both hands over my face, exhausted in a way sleep hadn't touched in days. "I've known for weeks and I sat at her table anyway, ate her cooking, let her cry about a man she thought she'd lost, and the whole time I was him."
Carol sat down slowly, like her knees had made the decision without consulting the rest of her, and set both palms flat against the table the way she did when she needed the surface to be real for a second.
"Okay." A long breath.
"God, Jake. That is a lot to take in."
"I know."
"I need you to hear the next thing I say, because it matters more than anything else in this kitchen right now, and it is not going to be the thing you want to hear."
"Say it."
"You don't get to fix this by showing up on her porch with your face doing what it's doing right now and asking her to forgive you on your schedule instead of hers." Her voice stayed level, but there was steel running under it I hadn't expected.
"You already took five years of decisions away from that woman without meaning to. Do not go and take this one from her too, on purpose, just because you're impatient to feel better about yourself."
"I'm not trying to feel better. I'm trying to fix it."
"Those aren't always the same thing, and most men can't tell the difference when they're standing this close to it." She reached across and knocked her knuckles once against my forearm, gentler than her words had been.
"You want absolution. She's not obligated to hand you any, not on your timeline, maybe not ever. That's the part you have to sit with before you go knocking on anything."
I didn't have an answer for that, mostly because she was right, and knowing a thing about yourself is never quite the same as hearing someone else say it out loud.
"So what do I do? Nothing? Just wait?"
"There's a difference between giving a woman room and disappearing on her, and most men manage to get it wrong in exactly the same direction every time." She tapped the table once, punctuating the point.
"You let her know the door's open. You don't push yourself through it. That's the whole trick. Everything past that is just details."
"That's not much of a plan."
"It's a better plan than the one you've been running the last three days, which as far as I can tell involves not eating and not answering your phone and hoping the problem solves itself out of pure guilt.
" She stood and started plating food I had no appetite for, the smell of it filling the kitchen anyway, familiar and grounding in a way I hadn't earned.
"Eat something. You'll think clearer with food in you. You always have."
I ate because arguing with Carol about food had never once worked out for me, and because some stubborn animal part of my brain agreed with her even while the rest of me was still busy being useless.
The screen door creaked before I'd finished half the plate, and Noah came in with his sketchbook held out in both hands, offering it the way he always did when something inside it mattered enough to interrupt.
"I made a new one," he said.
I set my fork down and took it, expecting the dinosaurs or the house with four bedrooms or some new invention of his I hadn't seen yet. It was none of those.
It was the fence. Same wood, same familiar line dividing the yard, except this time there were two separate houses on either side of it instead of one shared roof holding all four of us. A stick figure that had to be me stood alone on my side.
A stick figure with long looping hair stood alone on hers. Between them, pressed right up against the fence line, two smaller figures reached one hand each toward the top rail, fingers almost touching, like they were trying to climb over it themselves since the grown-ups clearly weren't managing.
Something in my chest folded in on itself, quiet and total.
"I couldn't figure out where to put the door," Noah said, tapping the drawing where a door should have been, where there wasn't one. "It's still two houses right now. Not one yet."
"It's a good drawing, bud."
"It's not my favorite one." He said it plainly, no drama in it, just a fact laid down the way he laid most things down.
"I liked the other one better. The four bedroom one."
"I did too."
"Is it going to go back to that one?" He asked it the way he asked about the weather, an honest question with no weight behind it yet, because he didn't have the context to know how much weight it actually carried.
"I don't know yet. I'm working on it."
"Okay." He accepted that the way he accepted most adult non-answers, with a small shrug, and reached for the sketchbook again like the conversation had run its course.
"Can I have a snack? Carol brought the good crackers."
"Go ahead."
He wandered off toward the pantry, entirely unaware of what he'd just handed me, and Carol and I sat there a moment with the drawing between us on the table, neither of us saying anything, because there wasn't a version of a sentence that could follow that one without sounding small.
"That boy sees more than either of you give him credit for," Carol said finally, quiet now, all the earlier sharpness gone out of her voice.
"He shouldn't have to draw something like that."
"No. He shouldn't. But he did, and now you both know exactly what it looks like from where he's standing, which is more honest than anything either of you grown-ups have managed to say out loud this week.
" She slid the drawing back toward me, careful with it, the way you handle something you understand is worth more than the paper it's on.
"Keep that one somewhere you'll actually look at it. Not in a drawer. Somewhere you'll see it."
"I will."
"Now, about that door you don't get to knock on yet." She stood, gathering her purse, the conversation shifting back into the practical register she seemed to trust more than the tender one. "Write it down instead."
"Write what down?"
"Whatever you'd say if she let you finish a sentence for once in your life. You're better on paper than you are standing in front of somebody, always have been. I've read your invoices. Full sentences and everything, which is more than your mouth manages most days when it counts."
"You want me to send her a letter?"
"I want you to give her something she can read on her own time, in her own kitchen, without your whole face sitting across from her making it harder to think straight.
Let her decide when she's ready to look at it.
That's not cowardice, whatever you're about to tell yourself.
That's the first genuinely patient thing you'll have done since this whole mess started. "
She left not long after that, pressing a hand briefly to my shoulder on her way out, the kind of touch that carried more than the two seconds it lasted, and I sat at the table a long time after her car pulled out of the driveway, the drawing propped against the sugar bowl where I could see it from every angle of the room.
I started the letter that evening, after Noah was down and the house had gone quiet in that particular way it does once the small chaos of a kid finally exhausts itself for the night.
The first draft ran two pages and sounded like a legal defense, every sentence built to justify instead of apologize, and I tore it up before I'd even finished reading it back to myself.
The second draft was too short, four lines that said nothing true, the kind of note a man writes when he wants credit for trying without actually risking anything real.
The third draft I kept starting with her name and then sitting there for ten minutes with the pen not moving, because everything after Aria felt too big to fit on a page that size.
I lost count of how many I balled up and threw toward the trash can before midnight, missing more than I made, the kitchen floor slowly filling up with failed attempts at honesty.
The one I finally kept barely filled half a page, shorter than I expected honesty to be, once I actually found it. I told her I wasn't asking for anything. I told her I understood if she never wanted to see the handwriting again after this.
I told her the truth was hers now, whole and unedited, to do with whatever she needed, on whatever timeline got her there, and that I would be exactly where I'd always been if she ever decided she wanted the rest of it.
I read it over twice, folded it once, and did not let myself read it a third time, because a third time was how second-guessing usually won.
I mailed the note instead of knocking, because some things you have to say slow enough that she can say no without having to say it to my face.