Chapter 8 #3
I looked around at the incredible views surrounding me. The campground was nestled in a little bowl valley between hills with taller mountains behind them on one side. The grass was beginning to green up with early spring, and the sun shone down on all of it behind a few white, puffy clouds.
The campground was wide open and spread out, and many of the sites were empty, presumably because it was still April, when a winter cold snap could hit at any time.
“We don’t have to talk about this at all,” I reminded him. “You’re the one pushing.”
“You can only ignore important things for so long, Trace. Eventually, you have to face them head-on.”
“I’m not ignoring it. I’m rejecting it full stop. Asked and answered. And the answer was no.”
“Okay,” he said, sounding like he was getting ready to call my bluff. “So let him have Jacob Andrew Mason, age thirty-two. Looks like the guy is in debt up to his eyeballs, and his parents are in the wind. Well, hang on…”
After a few more keystrokes, he spoke again.
“Dearest daddy is in state prison for the next seven years for assault and extortion. Has a record of a lesser assault and drunk and disorderly stuff. Mom looks like she’s living her best life working as a cocktail waitress in Tampa.
One sister, Shay, who’s in high school. He’s her legal guardian, or he was until she recently aged out. ”
Well, that kind of made me feel sorry for the guy.
“And Jakey himself has a record.”
My spine stiffened. “What kind of—”
“Narcotics. But he was eighteen, and it was small potatoes. We’ll give him a pass on that one. Community service. Credit score is shit. Probably because of the mortgages on the restaurant and mobile home out back. Gifts from Mom and Dad that keep on giving, looks like.”
“Why not walk away?” I thought out loud. “He didn’t have to take on his parents’ mistakes.”
“No record of a college degree. Maybe he didn’t want to leave the familiar. Start over. He sure as hell didn’t have any money to start over with, and he had his sister to worry about. Maybe she didn’t want to leave her friends.”
“Maybe. But keep digging. Just in case.”
JJ sighed.
I knew he thought I was being a jealous idiot. And I had to admit he was partly right. I didn’t want to like Jake.
Still, in my work, I had learned to trust my gut and follow my instincts. It was part of what made me so good at tracking and at search and rescue.
“Fine,” he agreed. “But for the record, I think a better way to protect my cousin is for you to tell him you have feelings for him and whisk him back to Legacy to give a relationship a try. Then again, what do I know? I’m just a kid.”
“You? Hardly.”
JJ let the silence land heavily over the line before saying, “You do know I’m younger than Wolfe by several months, right? And I’ve been married for five years? And you don’t actually think of me as a child. We both know you don’t.”
“Could you hammer this point home harder, please?” I grumbled.
“Talk to him.”
“I’m going to!” I snapped. “Jesus. But it’s not going to be, ‘Hey, Wolfe, wanna fuck? Because I think your dad murdering me is the perfect way to start something between the two of us, don’t you?’ Give me a break, JJ.”
“Mm,” he said again, maintaining calm like a total asshole.
“Tell me about Whitney. What’s going on?”
His wife wasn’t my favorite person. She always seemed to judge JJ for being his usual, good-natured self. But to be fair, I hadn’t lived near them during his marriage, so I’d only spent time with her at family events. And being in large groups of Marians wasn’t the ideal way to get to know someone.
“We’re working through some stuff,” he said. “I’m seeing a therapist, which has been good. Learning a lot.”
“Yeah? I’m proud of you.”
“There’s Uncle Trace again,” he said with a laugh. “Couldn’t help yourself, could you?”
“What have you learned?”
He blew out a breath. “A lot. But here’s one that might be relevant to our discussion.
It took me a long time to realize that Whitney has a habit of telling me what I need or want.
It makes me feel like an idiot. Like I can’t be trusted to know for myself.
And the fact that I used to defer to her about it wasn’t good.
It made for a more peaceful marriage, maybe, but it meant I didn’t get what I actually needed or wanted. ”
I took a minute to think about that. The parallel to my situation with Wolfe was painfully obvious.
I winced as I remembered the night of the kiss. My final words to him had literally been, Wolfe, you don’t want this.
“So what did you do?” I asked. “To fix it?”
“I talked to her. Asked her to go to couples counseling so we could work on it together.”
“Good. That’s good. And what did she say? How’s it going?”
“Nope, this isn’t about me, but nice try.” Keys clacked in the background. “Give me a few hours to do a deeper search on our buddy Jake. In the meantime, get your head out of your ass and ask for what you fucking want, regardless of what everyone says you should want.”
I stared at the phone long after he’d hung up.
And then I heard the crunch of tires on gravel and looked up at a familiar black van pulling into the campground.