Chapter 20 #2
He grinned. "Good of you to finally notice."
The sound of a car outside made Colleen look out the window.
It was Moore with Jordy in tow, the two of them looking exactly like the photo that Jordy had texted her.
Soon the entire crew had settled into their respective jobs, with Dean acting as project manager.
Colleen was a worker ant in this project; whatever her father told her to do, she just did.
Jordy asked to be paired with Colleen, so the two of them worked on painting trim while Kell and Luke handled filling in holes.
"How's it going?" Colleen asked. "You have fun at the Forsythes' last night?"
Jordy smiled. "Yeah. I've never done that before, had an overnight with my cousins. It was cool. When I move here, I want to do that again."
"That’s great," Colleen said, momentarily wordless at how casually he said that.
His face went dark.
"But Mom called me this morning. She heard I spent the night there and yelled at Jake."
"Why?"
"She said I should have told her, and Jake and Dad should have checked in with her."
"You're here though. No one needs to ask her permission for you to do things when you're here."
"That's what I said."
"Did Moore talk to her?"
"She doesn't want to talk to him, says everything has to be through lawyers now."
"Oh."
"But that's Dad's fault."
"What do you mean?"
"He's the one who started with all the lawyer stuff. That's why Mom never has any money, because she's always paying for lawyers."
The casual way Jordy said this triggered a giant defensive response in her. Lines were being crossed today. Big ones.
"You know that's not true," she informed him, unable to stop herself.
Jordy jolted. He looked up at her but pressed his fingers in place on the blue tape around the molding.
"What?"
"It's not true that the lawyers are your dad's fault."
"Mom says Dad's always using lawyers to make her life miserable through me."
"He does hire lawyers, but it's more to protect his time with you."
"Mom says he's always using them like a weapon, to try to bleed her dry."
"Do you know why he started using lawyers?
" She bit her lower lip and glanced over.
Moore was gone from the spot where she had just seen him.
Should she say something? Was it time? She knew Moore didn't want Jordy to know the truth about what happened when he was five, and yet he held these opinions of his father that were so volatile and ignorant of the goodness she knew was at Moore’s core.
Jordy's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean? You act like you know something–why did my dad start using lawyers?"
"It happened when you were five."
He blinked, then he blinked again. Suddenly, a rapid spurt of them turned his face emotional. His eyes filled with pain.
"When I was five? That's when Dad kicked me and Mom out of the house."
Something in the way he held himself made her suspicious. It was just a sense, not rational.
“Jordy,” she whispered, “has someone been talking to you about this?”
Chewing on the inside of his cheek, he avoided eye contact.
“Nathan. Reggie. They, uh, said something when I was at their house. No one agreed on what really happened, and then they all suddenly shut up. It was weird.”
“Weird?”
“Nathan said something about Mom taking me. Then Reggie and Tori said Dad was the one who was in the wrong. I tried to ask what the hell they were talking about, but… It was like they all knew something about me I didn’t know.
I almost texted Dad to come get me, but then we started watching anime and I just chilled. ”
All the air in her lungs disappeared, as if someone had come up from behind and struck her twice. Her gut tightened, pushing up on her diaphragm, forcing her spine to straighten.
"Okay," she choked out, touching his hand. "Let's go talk outside."
“Why can’t we keep talking in here?”
“Because what I need to tell you is private.”
“Oh.”
A worried look passed over his features, settling in for the duration, and her heart nearly broke.
No, Jordy wasn’t her child, but she felt so connected to him.
Never being able to tell him the truth of what had happened to him had kept them apart, a secret she’d held out of respect for Moore that created a distance between her and the teen.
Now, finally, she was going to close the distance.
They headed out toward a bench near the flagpole, but Colleen decided on the fly that sitting would be a bad idea. Talking to a teenager was awkward enough. Movement would be key here, so she kept walking.
“Your dad didn’t kick you and Cammie out when you were five.”
“That’s what Mom said he would say.”
“Have I ever lied to you?”
“Uh… no.” Astonishment flooded his voice. “You never have.”
“I need you to listen. And try to understand. You’re fifteen now, not five. And you’ve been lied to for years by your mother.”
“What?”
“When you were five, she took you. Just… disappeared. No one knew where you two were for months.”
He just blinked.
“Moore hired investigators and lawyers to track you down. And eventually, they found you and your mom, living in California with Mike.”
His eyes drifted to the ground.
“Cammie fought your dad in court, over and over. He flew to California to see you and she called the cops. It was ugly, Jordy. I’m not going to tell you all of it right now, because this is a lot, but you can always ask for details whenever you want.”
“My mom said Dad kicked us out. Said he never tried to see me. She said that it was his fault I’m a grade behind. Said–”
“She said a lot of things, Jordy, that aren’t true.”
“I can’t believe this. Do–is there proof?”
“Proof?”
“Yeah. Like, if Dad tried to get custody of me, where’s the proof? Papers? Something like that?”
“You mean documents? Your dad has plenty of those.”
“I don’t want to ask him. Would Grandma and Grandpa have them?” He pulled out his phone and began texting.
“What are you doing?”
“We learned in critical thinking class that when someone tells you something you don’t believe, ask for proof. Then validate the proof. I’m doing that now.”
Jordy stared glumly at his phone, then looked at her.
“This is real?”
“It is.”
“Then why didn’t Dad tell me?”
“He never wanted to say anything bad about Cammie in front of you.”
“That’s–but–but–”
His phone buzzed. He read the screen, frowning.
“Grandpa says it’s true. And he took pictures of some of the court paperwork. Said I could ask Nadine Khouri or Chief Anderssen for details about the missing child case.” Jordy stared hard at the screen. “I was a missing child?”
“For a time, yes.”
“Like an Amber Alert?”
“No. It never rose to that level, but something like that.”
Leander had taken about ten pictures, reacting quickly to Jordy’s request. She imagined him in his home office, the polished oak desk shining as he sighed to himself and pulled from one of the drawers full of legal paperwork the Mottins had subsidized.
A good portion of their retirement savings had gone to fighting for Jordy.
“This is a lot, Colleen.”
“It is.”
Tears made his eyes glisten as his jaw began clenching.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because Moore asked me not to.”
“I thought you were my friend!”
“I am!”
“Friends don’t keep secrets like this from each other. I feel like such an idiot! Does everyone in town know? Uncle Slicer? Uncle Trey?”
She took in a long, deep breath to buy herself time as he turned to her, red faced and furious.
“They do! I’m a joke here in Luview, aren’t I?
Just some sad little kid who doesn’t even know anything about his own life!
Grandma and Grandpa, Dad, you–” he spat out.
“And Mom, all of you are liars! ALL OF YOU!” he screamed, turning and running along a path into the woods, down toward the dock on the lake.
Adrenaline coursed through her, her body an ocean of fear.
That had not gone well.
At all.
A burst of laughter from the lodge was a bizarre moment of cognitive dissonance. The rush of her own tears made her shoulders shake, her hands flat against her thighs as she tried to control the tremors building in her.
In an effort to stop Jordy from being mad at Moore, all she’d done was alienate him from all the other adults in his life, too.
Including her.
The front door to the lodge swung open, Moore’s fast footsteps a gigantic clue that he somehow knew what had just happened between her and Jordy.
“Colleen!” he called out, his voice tight. “Where’s Jordy?”
“He ran off into the woods.” She leaned against a small potting table outside the greenhouse and fought her tears.
Moore showed her his phone screen. It read:
You lied to me all these years.
Then a two-word expletive.
“Did you–did you tell him about us?”
“No.”
“Then why is he… oh, no. No, no, no. You told him? About when he was five?”
“I–he asked.”
“He asked? He specifically asked, ‘Did my mother steal me?’”
“Not in so many words, no, but the topic came up and–”
“I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU!” Moore bellowed, sounding so much like Jordy, she suddenly thought she was reliving his outburst.
"I don't understand why you're so upset."
"That's the problem, Colleen–you don't understand!"
"I do, though," she conceded, reaching for his arm, needing the tactile connection to be able to navigate this difficult conversation. "And I've kept this secret all these years, I've respected what you wanted. But Jordy came to me to ask about it, and–"
"And what? And you decided to violate what I had asked you to keep confidential?"
"I decided that, in that moment, I would give him what he needed. That I would give us what we need."
"Us?" he asked. "What do you mean by us?"
"We matter, Moore. You keep pushing back when we're going to tell him about us. That poor kid lives with so many secrets."
“I can’t believe you told him! Damn it, Colleen, that wasn’t yours to tell!”
The way he slammed his palm, hard, on the scarred table made her feel it in her gut, as if he’d dropped an anvil straight through her body and it caught in her belly.