Page 21 of Redemption

I sighed, sinking into the loveseat by the window. “I guess I’d better tell you before he turns up. So you know how Daddy had been visiting Jack in prison?”

“Yes,nowI do, apparentlysomepeople felt that wasn’t something important that should be shared with me, their best friend,” Maddy spoke through gritted teeth.

“So the part you’re most angry about is that Heartthrob Leo kept it from you, rather than Dad visiting Jack?” Maddy’s cheeks flushed when I used her teenage nickname for Leo.

“Don’t call him that!” She shrugged. “I mean I guess it bothers me but, I also get why Daddy was seeing him. Holding onto grief and anger takes so much out of a person. He needed to move on and forgive.” She paused. “Like we all do.”

I reeled. “You understand why?”

“Yeah, don’t you?”

No.“Well, you might not be so for it when you hear this. Daddy had a deed written up to gift the cabin to Jack when he came out of prison.” I sat back, waiting for Maddy’s outrage to kick in, but it never did.

“I guess that makes sense. He’s not going to haveanywhere to go. You remember his family from the sentencing hearing, right? They abandoned him. He has no one.”

Anger flooded me at how easily she saw the reasoning and didn’t find an issue with it. “Because he killed someone, Maddy! There’s a reason why!”

She shook her head at me. “He made a mistake, it was an accident. How many times have you done something stupid that could’ve had disastrous consequences but luckily it didn’t?”

I gaped at her. “It’s not the same, Mads.”

But she was on a roll. “Last night, for instance. You were wasted, what if you’d walked out into the road and a car had swerved to get around you and crashed, and the driver died?”

“I feel like we’re getting off topic.”

“Funny how that happens when someone tells you something you don’t want to hear,” Maddy singsonged.

I glared at her. “Well, luckily for us, I found the deed and it hadn’t been signed by Jack.”

“So, make him sign it?”

I spun away from Maddy, unable to comprehend her nonchalance. “Are you for real? Why should I?”

“Because it’s clearly what Daddy wanted, Kat,” she said softly.

I folded my arms over my chest and sulked like a teenager, like Tilly. “I don’t want him here.”

“I know. But we’re getting into a morally gray area here. And you don’t do morally gray and you know I sure as hell don’t. Morally gray is Daisy’s department,” she joked, weakly.

I snorted. She wasn’t wrong. I knew she was talking sense but I didn’t want to hear it.

“It was awful nice of him to call Leo tomake sure you got home safe last night,” Maddy said, examining her cuticles.

My gut clenched as my brain flashed back to the moment I was puking and he held my hair and ran his big palm over my back. I shook my head. “It’s guilt, Mads. He owes us, don’t forget that.”

“Maybe this is a sign from above, for us to live and let live, and move on. We’ve all lost so much. Let’s just put good vibes out in the world.” Maddy squeezed my arm and left the room.

I looked out the window, down at the land. “A sign…” I had asked Daddy for one, and then the next morning Jack had appeared on my front porch. And then I’d found the deed.

I glared up at the sky, a sinking feeling in my belly. “Not funny, Daddy.”

*

That evening, we were all sat around the dinner table again. Tilly was pushing her food around her plate, not really interested in anything. She’d been withdrawn since she got suspended, she was probably missing school and her friends. Maybe she had a boyfriend and she was keeping him secret. That reminded me…

I nudged her. “I was at The Lonely Bison yesterday.”

She gazed up at me, her green eyes brightening.

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