Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Jet carried both cardboard trays with hotdogs and fries to a picnic table while Myles grabbed a handful of napkins and hobbled after, leaning on his cane more than he wanted to. The short walk from the house, around the block to the dog cart had taxed him more than he’d expected.
“We have to talk about school,” Myles said as they settled at the wooden table.
Jet watched and said nothing as Myles spread a few napkins out over the faded blue paint and carved initials; then he set Myles’s tray on top of them.
Jet’s leg bounced, and he scowled from under the fringe of his bangs. Most of the red had been trimmed away over the summer, but the black that was left only served to draw attention to his dark eye makeup. “Right now?”
“Yes, now. We don’t have any more time to put it off. You don’t have to go back to the high school, but you do have to graduate.”
“How would I do that without going back?”
“Online. Part-time. Different school. This is what we have to figure out.”
Jet scowled at his hotdog. “What about Shells? Have you registered her yet? Because I know Mom wanted to put her in a different school from where she went to kindergarten.”
“I know that too.”
“So?”
It was Myles’s turn to squirm. He’d asked Pat for advice, but Pat didn’t have kids, and her information about appropriate schools was third party, at best.
“You haven’t, have you?” Jet accused.
Myles decided silence was the better option than admitting he’d also put off Shelly’s school registration.
“Maybe,” Jet said, suddenly much less confrontational and aggressive, “you should ask yourself why that is.”
Myles met Jet’s gaze, ready to demand what he meant by that, but then, he didn’t really have to, did he?
Jet’s relationship with Priory Bently was concluded.
Natalie’s house had reverted to being their father’s house, with her gone, and refused to warm up to Myles or the kids.
Even Pat was less than a month away from packing her life into her tiny home with her partner and leaving the city to become a musical nomad.
The construction company had run just fine all summer, throughout the busiest season of the year, under the people Natalie had carefully selected to be in charge.
There was no reason it couldn’t continue to do so, wherever Myles was in the country.
His input was not only surplus to requirements, but pretty much useless, since he’d never bothered to learn anything about the construction business.
“I bet Ontario has a lot of really nice Montessori schools for a six-going-on-sixteen-year-old girl possessed by an art demon,” Jet said.
“At this point, we would never get moved in time for the start of the school year.”
“So, home school her for a while. See how that goes. Then we can take our time. You can talk to Steven, look for a house, if that’s what you guys want.
I’m sure the lawyers can work out what to do about our adoption stuff.
” He leaned forward over the table. “We all want to go back, Uncle Myles. You aren’t a pig farmer anymore, and you aren’t going to ever be one again. Your farm’s gone, and your family…”
Myles gulped at the reminder that both his parents and his only sibling were dead.
“They’re in Griffon’s Elbow,” Jet said, surprising him and tearing his thoughts away from loss and into light.
“Adoption?” Myles said, picking the one thing out of Jet’s list they’d yet to really discuss.
Jet shrugged. “I assume you’ll adopt Shelly officially. Just because that’s what the case worker said would make everything else a lot easier as she grows up.” He pushed his french fries around in his ketchup while Myles waited.
“You don’t have to adopt me, obviously. I’m practically—”
“Do you want me to?” Myles asked.
“Never had a father,” Jet mumbled.
“You do have a father, Jet.”
Jet’s gaze, up through his lashes and bangs, was fierce.
“He signed that away before I was even born, and thought he could buy a son with a trust fund.” Jet’s grin was just as fierce as his glare, and a little bit feral.
“It was decent of him to give us the money even after I said no to that shit, but no matter what, it was only ever going to be you.” He shrugged like his next words were no big deal.
“You’re already my emergency contact on, like, everything. ”
He huffed out a sharp breath. “For fuck’s sakes, fine, alright?” He blinked, wetting his lashes, spilling a few tears down his cheeks, which he wiped away fast. “I don’t want to be an orphan, okay? There. Yes. I want—I’m still calling you Uncle My-my, though.”
“Fair enough.” Jerking his chin at Jet’s plate, Myles said, “Eat up. Pat’s probably already brought Shelly back to the house from their shopping.”