42. Jack
Chapter 42
Jack
“Y ou have to do this,” Dad said over the workbench as I remeasured the batten I was about to cut for a stud wall. It was an odd height because of the roofline, and I forgot what the measurement was supposed to be by the time I’d extended the tape, so I glared at him before going back to the wall.
The big job was kicking off, and we’d had a change order come in for the flooring. So instead of getting to focus on the job I was actually supposed to be finishing, I would have to spend the afternoon doing his job.
“Dad, you know I hate paperwork.” Ninety-three. Got it. “Can’t we get someone else to do it? God knows I’ll be hiring someone to handle it when I do have to take over.” Ninety-three, ninety-three, ninety-three. “A lot of contractors don’t do their own paperwork. Or emailing, or scheduling, any of the admin stuff.” I lined up the measuring tape and made sure it was straight, then readied my pencil for the mark. Ninety— Fuck.
“Ninety-three,” Dad said, his voice deep and sharp.
“I know,” I said, too sharp in return. The glare he levelled at me made sure I recognised that. “Sorry,” I muttered as I marked the cut.
“I know you can hire someone,” he said, following me as I lowered the saw onto the batten. “But if you don’t know how to do it, you won’t know how to manage it.”
I rolled my eyes, but he was right. I just didn’t know how to articulate that I wasn’t particularly interested in managing it, either. I’d never fought Dad on the stuff he’d asked me to do, and maybe it was just that Morgan had got in my head a bit. But I had to admit the work was getting to me.
“I’m on it,” I promised, and as thanks, Dad dropped a new folder on the workbench to add to the ones I already had back at home.
* * *
I wrapped up work a couple of hours early so I could go home and start on the cursed paperwork Dad was on my case about. I had to drive past Morgan’s on the way, and it took a Herculean amount of effort to keep my eyes on the road, even in the rain. I held my breath without even thinking, as if she might pop out into the road in the middle of a workday. I let it out as I turned onto the main road at the end, almost disappointed that I hadn’t caught a glimpse of her.
But I did see someone I wasn’t expecting on my journey; Phil’s car was parked out front as I pulled up to my house, the sides splashed with mud from my driveway. I could hear shouting as I approached the house, and as I opened the front door and shed my raincoat and my now-muddy boots, the shouting formed into words.
“The man had been baking for all of five seconds,” Amy said, quite passionately. “And yet he was still a finalist.”
“But he couldn’t make it happen when it counted, which is all that mattered!” Phil sat on a barstool opposite Amy, who was standing at the sink. An untouched pan of brownies sat between them.
“If you gave Chigs a time machine and quadrupled his experience, he’d be way better than Giuseppe. So proportionately he’s the best.”
“And yet,” Phil taunted, leaning across the kitchen island, a smile on his face, “Giuseppe took home the win. You can’t argue with that.”
“That’s not even what we were arguing about. You said Giuseppe was the best, not that he won.”
“Don’t be pedantic,” Phil said. “That’s obviously what I meant.”
Amy threw her hands up. “Obviously it wasn’t obvious!”
“Hello, you two,” I interjected, and they both turned to look at me like I was the least welcome interruption ever. “Phil, what the hell are you doing in my house?”
“Just educating your sister on Bake Off royalty, apparently.” When I didn’t respond, just holding his gaze until I got a real answer, he sighed. “I was dropping off your outfit so you could pack it. I was just gonna leave it outside, but the kid here was out by your pond.” He jabbed his thumb in Amy’s direction.
“I’m not ‘the kid’, dickhead,” she said, swatting at him from across the island.
“You are until I decide otherwise,” Phil retorted, sticking his tongue out.
“Who’s the kid now?” I asked, risking life and limb to reach between them for a brownie. “Also, as thrilled as I am to see you, I’ve got loads of paperwork to do. Dad will end my life if I don’t get it done today.”
Phil held his hands up as if I’d pulled a gun on him. “Definitely don’t wanna be pissing off Papa Evans,” he said, standing up and grabbing his car keys off the worktop.
I watched in amusement as Amy said goodbye by flipping him the bird. He blew her a kiss, which made her even more furious, glaring at him until he shut the front door behind him.
“You realise you’re the one letting him wind you up like that,” I said, taking his place at the island. I took a bite of the brownie, which was heavenly, of course.
“I know,” Amy said, hanging her head in her hands with her elbows propped up on the edge of the sink. “I don’t know why he gets under my skin so badly.”
“I can think of a reason,” I said under my breath, but she heard me anyway, snapping her head up to scowl at me.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Listen,” I said, shoving the last of the brownie into my mouth. “I’m not gonna be that classic, overprotective big brother. That’s not me. You’re a grown-ass woman, and he’s a good bloke.”
“Ew,” she said, twisting her face in disgust. “Both to him being a ‘good bloke’” – she curled her fingers into speech marks – “and to what you’re implying to begin with.”
“Whatever you say,” I said, smiling smugly at her. I could tell I’d hit a nerve, and I wasn’t sure what it said about my brotherly instincts that I was more amused than annoyed or concerned.
Amy grabbed the folder Dad had given me. “What’s he got you doing this time?”
“Change order for the flooring,” I said, trying to banish the thoughts of Morgan that were suddenly front and centre. “They want to do the vinyl instead of the wood to save money.”
“Well that’s fine,” she said. “You just need to make sure you calculate any labour cost changes and flag any timeline dependencies.”
I looked at her in confusion long enough that she groaned and came around to sit next to me, muttering something about “weaponised incompetence”. She leaned over the change order and entered the details for the new flooring into her phone, pulling up the trade listing. “See how it says delivery date of the thirtieth?” she asked, pointing to the date on her screen. I nodded. “You need to put that into the schedule and move things around to accommodate it,” she said. “I’m betting Dad wants you to be able to communicate how that impacts the schedule?”
I nodded again.
“Okay, show it to me.”
I stood up and went over to the little desk in the corner, where I had several folders now piled up, and an A3 paper with the schedule written on it pinned to the wall. I took it down and brought it over to Amy, spreading it out across the surface. She looked down at it and then back up at me, her mouth wide.
“You’re using a paper schedule?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said, “that’s what Dad showed me.”
“Jesus Christ,” she said, grabbing my laptop off the sofa and typing in my password.
“How do you know that?” I asked, gesturing at the computer.
“Please,” she said dismissively, “you’ve had the same password since you were a teenager. MrJackMichelleGellar?”
I felt my face go red, dropping the subject as immediately as possible.
“Here,” she said, turning the screen to show me what looked to be the website for some project management software. “This is the one Chris used. You put in all the pieces of the project and the dependencies, so when you move one thing, it moves all the other things, too. It’s called a Gantt chart.”
“That’s cool,” I said, pulling it towards me. It definitely sounded better than the paper version, which I’d already had to Tipp-ex half to death as things had changed. “Why doesn’t Dad use this?”
“Because he’s old,” she said. “Set in his ways.”
“How much does it cost?” I asked, scrolling down the page. I saw an option for “pricing”, so I clicked it, my mouth falling open when I saw that there was a free plan available. “I’m sorry, free ?”
“Probably,” she said. “You’ll miss out on some features with the free plan, but it’ll still be better than paper.”
“Anything’s better than this, honestly,” I said, running my finger along a crease in the paper schedule, trying to smooth it out.
Over the next hour, Amy helped me set up the upcoming project in the software. The good news was that it was immensely better than the paper version; processing the flooring change took about twenty seconds, and I could even export the new timeline to send to Dad. All of the documents were easily scanned in and stored against the project, too.
The bad news was that, despite the novelty of the new system and how easy everything was, I still found it exceedingly boring.
“Can’t you just do this?” I asked Amy as we finished, multiple hours before when I thought I’d be done. “You’re so good at it.”
“Hey, you pay me, and I’m in,” she said, sounding surprisingly keen on the idea. I squinted at her sceptically.
“You don’t think that sounds horrible?” I asked. “Working for Dad? Managing all those projects?”
“Not really,” she said. “It actually sounds kind of … dare I say fun?”
My eyes went wide as I closed my laptop. “You may dare, but I sure as hell don’t. Guess I’d better get used to it, though.”
I stood to start putting everything away, ferrying it all back to my desk before sinking down on the sofa. I’d assumed Amy would follow, but when I looked up, she was still stood in the exact same position, her face wearing the same expression.
“Yeah, about that,” she said. “I think you really need to talk to Dad about this whole family business thing.”
I felt myself go cold all over. It was like déjà vu; a flashback to my fight with Morgan. Maybe a bit more tender, a bit less loaded, but the same damn thing over again.
“What are you talking about?” I asked, giving her the opportunity to say anything except what I knew she would. What Morgan had tried saying to me, too.
“Your heart’s clearly not in it,” she said, moving to sit next to me, “and I really think you need to consider bailing out.”
I swallowed hard, my mouth going dry. “Amy, I don’t wanna?—”
“I know,” she said, putting her hands up. “But honestly, I’m really worried about you. Your horoscopes have been terrifying for weeks. And every time something bothers you, you just gaslight yourself into being okay with it. It’s disconcerting.”
I shook my head, desperate for her to drop it. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
“And yet I do anyway,” she said. “Because you’re never going to be happy doing this. Even once Dad retires, do you think he’s gonna leave you alone? Do you think you’ll ever be able to change things to the point that you don’t hate it anymore?”
I opened my mouth to disagree, but we both knew she was right. I’d imagined it before: taking over the business in name only, Dad still calling all the shots from behind the scenes.
“You’d just be his puppet,” Amy said.
“His support character,” I said quietly.
“Sure,” she said, confusion passing briefly across her face. “Whatever that means. But either way, it’s not fair to either of you. You’ll end up resenting him, and he’ll be bitter with you. And Mum and I will be stuck in the middle as always.”
I sighed again, resting my head back against the cushion. “You’ve always been so much better with him than I am,” I said. “Why couldn’t you be the joiner in the family?”
She laughed. “You say that as if you’re the joiner in the family.”
I narrowed my eyes at her.
“You’re not,” she insisted. “You never have been. You’re good at it, yes. Of course you are. Just look at this place.” She held out her hands, gesturing to the house. “But we both know it’s not what you want to be doing.”
Again I opened my mouth to protest, and again she cut me off.
“Don’t make me get that damn magazine.”
The moment she mentioned the magazine, the thoughts of Morgan I’d been holding back all day came flooding in like a dam had burst. I remembered her standing over by the table, looking at the advert. How terrified she’d looked when we heard about Fatima and Jared, as if she knew what it would mean. Her gasping at me at the gala, like I’d just slapped her. Her asking me in her lounge how I could expect her to commit to me if I couldn’t even commit to myself.
“Just fuck off, Amy,” I said, standing suddenly. She startled backward in surprise, pressing herself to the back of the sofa as I stormed past her and to the back door. I flung it open, my steps splashing as I walked to the edge of the deck, my t-shirt almost instantly soaking through. I felt like I was about to explode; like the pressure inside me was reaching a bursting point, and I needed to do something. Anything.
“Fuck!” I yelled at nothing in particular, causing two ducks and a pigeon to take flight.
I looked down at the raindrops on the water, which for some reason made me think of Morgan, too, because it seemed everything did these days. I thought of all the times I’d been on the river with her: that first swim on our weekend away, her first time kayaking, a nighttime swim in the nearby forest that had turned into skinny dipping, and then to making love against a tree … it all felt so real, so tangibly close, and yet so far away. And the space between here and there – between what I had and what I’d lost – felt like a screaming chasm in my chest.
My breath grew fast and shallow, and before I knew it I was crying, despite my best efforts to keep it at bay.
How had I let it all slip through my fingers so easily? I’d had exactly what I’d wanted, and she’d been mine . She hadn’t chosen to leave me , just to leave here . I’d been the one to draw the line, to give the ultimatum, despite having told her all those weeks ago that she should do whatever would make her the happiest. I was the villain in my own fucking story, and I hated myself for it.
“Jack?” came a quiet voice from behind me.
But I didn’t turn around, instead sinking to the deck right where I stood, rain be damned, wrapping my arms around my legs, drawing them to me. I buried my head there so my little sister wouldn’t see my tears, but she came up behind me anyway. Instead of trying to hug me, or shush me, or anything like that, she just sat on the deck, her back to mine, holding me up whilst I held her up in return. She leaned her head against me, her cheek resting on my shoulder blade, whilst I cried quietly into my knees.
“I really fucked up,” I said after a while.
“Phil told me you guys broke up,” she said. “Do you wanna tell me what happened?”
I sighed. “She’s taking a job in York, apparently.”
“Wow,” Amy muttered. “There must be something in the water.”
I shook my head, though I know she couldn’t see it. “It wasn’t the same as Jared,” I said. “I knew she was applying. Hell, I sent her the job listing.”
I couldn’t see Amy’s face, but I could hear the frown in her voice as she responded. “Why the hell would you do that?”
I shrugged. “It was before she and I … well, I’d hoped she would change her mind once we got together.”
“Did you say that to her?” Amy asked, and I didn’t blame her for implying that maybe I hadn’t. I didn’t have the best track record of sticking up for myself.
“Yes. But then…” I hesitated to admit the next part, because I wasn’t proud of it, even if I’d felt it was the only way. “I may have given her an ultimatum.”
“Yikes,” Amy said. “Because ultimatums are always such a good idea.”
I sighed. “If you’re trying to make me feel better, try harder maybe?”
Amy moved to sit next to me so we were shoulder-to-shoulder, dangling her feet off the edge of the deck.
“I’m not trying to make you feel better,” she said. “I don’t think I can do that. But tell me what you said, and what she said back.”
I wasn’t sure what reliving it would achieve, but I took a deep breath, not having to dig very hard to find the memory. I’d been replaying it enough over the last two weeks that it was pretty top-of-mind.
I told Amy what Morgan had said about the job. About how she wasn’t Jared, but that I was stuck, and she wouldn’t let me keep her stuck with me.
“Ouch,” Amy said. “I imagine you didn’t take that well?”
“Not exactly,” I admitted. “I told her if she wanted to be with me so badly, she should be willing to do it even if I didn’t have my shit together.”
Her sharp intake of breath told me Amy didn’t love this.
“You know you’re both the bad guys here, right?”
“I know .” I buried my face in my knees again. “I’ve been replaying it in my mind constantly since it happened.”
Amy was silent for a long moment, but then she shook her head. “But like, do you know actually?”
“Excuse me?” I sat up straight.
“I mean, prove that you know what you did wrong. Because I can tell you for free, it wasn’t just the ultimatum.”
I frowned at her. “What are you on about?”
She stood up without saying anything and walked back into the house, and I just gawked after her. Then she walked back out again with the RIBA Journal. I groaned.
“Not the fucking magazine again , Amy!” I said, then gasped as she chucked it as hard as she could into the pond.
I leaned over the edge to watch as it stayed open to the spread I’d had it on for months now, the page changing colour as it saturated with water, then sank further and further from the surface until I couldn’t see it anymore.
Once it was out of sight, I whirled around to face Amy.
“What the hell was that about?!” I shouted.
“How did that make you feel?” she asked. “Seeing it sink away like that?”
“Fucking fuming!” I said, looking back over to the spot where the magazine had been. I hoped it hadn’t pinned one of the fish or something.
“Good,” Amy said. “Anger. I can work with that. Now what else? Tell me what you feel.”
I felt my jaw tense; she was talking to me like I was a child. But I bit my tongue, quite literally, and exhaled slowly, trying to give her the benefit of the doubt. I closed my eyes and held the image of the magazine hitting the water in my mind.
“Not good,” I said.
“‘Not good’ is not an emotion,” she said. I huffed, but then wracked my mind for what I was feeling.
“Angry,” I tried.
“You already said that,” she said. “Go deeper. Why were you angry?”
“I was sad?” I tried again, straight away.
“ No ,” she said insistently. “Jack, just fucking try please. What did you feel ?”
I forced myself to try to give her an answer, but I felt like an idiot. It was eerily like when Morgan had got me to admit that it was fear driving my lifestyle. Except now it was Amy having to play therapist. She’d already watched her big brother have a meltdown, and now I couldn’t even answer a simple question. What was wrong with me?
I focused in on my breathing and tried to calm down, but it was futile, like I was trying to fill that chasm inside me. The chasm that appeared whenever I thought about Morgan.
The same chasm that had spread even further open when I’d watched a future I’d once dreamed for myself sink away in front of me.
Oh. Oh. Was it really that simple?
“I feel grief,” I whispered, more to myself than to Amy. But I knew she heard me, because she pressed her shoulder to me again.
“That’s good,” she said. “Tell me more.”
“Like I’ve lost something that didn’t feel like it was mine to begin with,” I said, and I felt her nod. “Something I wanted so badly, but felt like it was part of a different life. One I don’t get to live. One I said goodbye to a long time ago.”
Amy turned me towards her and put her hands on my arms, ducking her head down and forcing me to catch her gaze. “Jack, listen to me,” she said. “When you and Aria broke up, you were devastated. I get that. It changed who you were as a person.”
Talking about grief, and Morgan, and my future, I felt the mention of Aria in my chest like I hadn’t in years. I felt more tears well up inside me.
“But the decisions you made back then? No one’s holding you to them. You can do whatever the hell you want with your life.”
I shook my head. “It’s a bit late for that,” I said. Amy dropped her hands and flung her arms out to the side, gesturing around her.
“Why?” she asked. “I don’t see anyone holding a gun to your head, making you do anything.”
“But people count on me!” I said, my voice hoarse.
“They do,” Amy said, smiling and nodding. “But only because you’ve made it that way. You’ve put yourself in the position to be as helpful as possible to everyone else, and that’s so lovely. But you need to understand that they would survive without you. And maybe they should.”
On an intellectual level, everything she was saying made sense. I’d embedded myself so that I felt safe, and that became the new status quo. But in becoming embedded, I’d also become … yes, stuck.
“Fuck,” I said, rubbing my hands over my face, which was burning hot despite how cold it was outside. “I’ve really fucked this up, haven’t I? All of it.”
“It’s fine,” Amy said, clearly trying to sound as casual as possible. “Nothing’s permanent. Everything is changeable.”
“I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul,” I said jokingly, but Amy just stared up at me. “‘Invictus?’” She shook her head. “Never mind.”
“No, no,” she said, shrugging, “whatever makes you feel better.”
I let out a laugh, which clearly surprised her, because she started nervously laughing, too.
“It does, clearly,” I said, then pulled Amy in for a hug. “Thank you,” I said. “I’m supposed to be the one doling out the wisdom, though. Could you try to be a little less mature?”
“Sorry,” she said, pulling away from me and stepping back towards the door to inside. “You’re being enough of a baby for the both of us.”
“Oh fuck no,” I said as I charged after her. I grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back along the deck; she tried to wriggle away, but she was no match for me. I wrapped an arm around her hips and hoisted her over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry.
“Put me down!” she yelled through laughter, banging on my back with her fist. I carried her over to the edge of the deck.
“Not until you bring back the magazine you threw,” I said, eliciting a blood-curdling scream from her as I dropped her into the pond. “I’m gonna need it.”