Page 57 of Fa-La-La-La Faking It
“I don’t know why you’re asking me about this. I don’t know anyone by that name,” Gus barked and fished around in his bedsheets for the remote control. When he found it, he jammed buttons at random, like he might stumble upon one that would make Jace go away. “You can leave now. I’m tired. I’m old and I need my rest.”
Jace sat down in the chair he usually occupied when he and Gus played chess. He wasn’t going anywhere. This conversation was obviously going to be their toughest chess game yet.
“Uncle Gus, I know about Marilyn. I know what happened on Christmas Eve. I just want to talk to you about it, so I can know you better. That’s why I’m here. You’re the whole reason I came back to Bluebonnet.” He took the printed copy of the newspaper article out of his pocket, unfolded it and placed it on the over-bed table secured to Gus’s bed. He smoothed down the creases so the article lay perfectly seamless and flat.
Gus stared at it and didn’t say a word as his eyes filled with unshed tears.
Jace waited. And waited. Still...nothing.
He cleared his throat and gestured toward the picture that accompanied the article in theBeacon. It was the same photograph he’d found in the storage closet—the one with Charlie nestled in Marilyn’s arms and her horse leaning over the fence railing behind her. “I found the original of this picture in the barn at your farm, along with a lot of Marilyn’s things. You obviously loved her very much. I’d love to hear more about her...about your life together.”
Finally, Gus turned his gaze on Jace. The old man’s eyes were glassy and bloodshot, but beneath the grief and sadness, a fury was building. Rage like Jace had never witnessed before burned in the bottomless black of his pupils.
“Don’t say her name ever again,” he spat. “You didn’t know her. You’ll never know her. You don’t get to talk about her as if you did.”
Jace felt like he’d been sucker punched, but he wasn’t giving up. If he let it go now, he’d never get the chance to have this talk again.
“Then tell me about her. I want to know her, Uncle Gus. I want to know you, too. The real you. This...” A lump clogged Jace’s throat, and he swallowed it down. He waved a hand at the frail man in the bed—a man he scarcely recognized anymore. Physically, he was nothing but a shadow of the uncle who’d taken him in all those years ago. But he’d changed in other ways too. He’d always been a quiet man, but he’d hardened since that time. He’d been holding on to so much unresolved grief and trauma that it had poisoned him from the inside out. Not all at once, but slowly over time. Day by day. Year by year. Decade by decade. “This isn’t the uncle I remember. You’re my family, Gus. I want to be here for you. All you have to do is let me.”
“What were you doing in the storage closet at the barn?” Gus demanded, homing in on one small detail above and beyond everything else Jace had just said. “I told you that closet was off-limits. I forbade you to ever set foot in there.”
“When I was ten years old,” Jace snapped back, and immediately regretted it. Letting his uncle’s cruel words get to him wasn’t going to help matters.
“I’m a grown man now, and I’m all you’ve got,” Jace said with exaggerated calmness. “You need me as much as I need you. I’m here to help.”
“I don’t need your help, and I never asked for it, either. I can die all by myself. People have been doing so since the dawn of time.” Gus pointed a shaky finger at the door. “You need to leave now.”
Jace stood and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Fine. Maybe both of us could use some time to cool off. We can take this up again when I come back tomorrow.”
“You misunderstood me, boy. I want you to get out and stay out.”
Jace’s blood turned as cold as ice. He shoved his hands in his coat pockets so Gus couldn’t see how profoundly his words had just affected him. “You don’t mean that.”
“The hell I don’t.” Gus pounded his fist on the over-bed table with such force that the printout of the article from the Beacon fluttered to the floor.
Jace wasn’t about to pick it up. Let Gus lie there on his deathbed and look at it for the rest of the day. What did he care?
“Don’t tell me what I mean,” Gus said, voice dripping with venom. “Now, go. What are you waiting for?”
Loss swept through Jace. Whatwashe waiting for? For his uncle to rescue him, take him in and make all his problems disappear like he’d done back when Jace was a dumb little kid?
If so, he’d be still waiting long after Gus was dead and buried.
Nothing was ever going to change, was it? Gus was never going to let him in. The man was locked up tight, and he didn’t care who he hurt. Jace had been foolish to come back to Bluebonnet and even more foolish to think he could get to know a person who was unknowable, down to his very core.
Jace closed his eyes tight. All at once, he was a kid again, hiding in the back corner stable in the barn, but this time Gus wasn’t coming to find him.
No one was.
“Goodbye, Uncle Gus. I always loved you, and I always will,” he said. It was like talking to a brick wall. “Merry Christmas.”
Jace turned his back to the bed and prepared to leave room 212 for the final time. If that’s what his uncle truly wanted, then that’s what Jace would give him—one last parting holiday gift.
Even if it killed him.
Chapter Nineteen
Adaline’s phone had been blowing up all morning while she’d been working on Maple and Ford’s wedding cake. Every time it pinged with a call or a text, she glanced at the display to make sure it wasn’t Jace. Then she got back to work. Everyone else would just have to wait.
