Page 27 of Finding Jack
“Are you ready to talk about this now?” I asked as she veered toward the hallway and her bedroom.
“I didn’t know there was anything to discuss.”
“Ranée. Stop being weird. Why does Sean care if I talk to Jack?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then why not just say that?”
“I don’t know.” She ran her fingers through her hair and caught the lint, holding it in front of her to glare at it with slightly crossed eyes before she changed direction to drop it in the kitchen garbage can.
“Seriously. Something about this smells funny.”
She immediately checked the bottom of her shoes, discovered the piece of straw, and sent it after the lint into the trash.
“Not literally smells funny. I mean about this whole you/Sean/Jack situation.”
“There’s no situation.”
“Then why do you keep pushing the issue?”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Why do you suddenly have so many questions about Sean?” Then they shot wide open. “Wait, are you crushing on my brother now?”
I snorted. “Am I sixteen? No. Stop deflecting.”
“Then it’s Jack. This is about him. Why so many questions?” She gave the same gasp she gave every time she found a new carton of ice cream in the freezer like it had been delivered by magical freezer elves instead of me. “Have you been talking to Jack? Do you love him now? Isn’t he way better than Paul?”
It was my turn to examine her face, trying to figure out why she was being deliberately obtuse. I wouldn’t mention that I’d been talking to him yet, mostly because I didn’t want her to think she’d succeeded in bossing me into it. But also because I’d thought of another angle to get the information I wanted.
“I don’t actually even know anything about your brother. He’s older, right?”
“Five years.”
That would make him in his early thirties. “So if you’re both from Nevada, how’d you both end up on the west coast?”
She walked back into the living room and kicked off her shoes before settling on the couch. “School and then work for both of us.”
“You didn’t like Nevada?”
“It’s Nevada.” She said it like it explained everything. I’d only driven through it on the way to other places, and based on what I’d seen from the interstate, maybe it did.
“What does Sean do? I know he’s outdoors a lot.” Maybe it would give me some insight into how he knew Jack.
“He is. That’s his job.”
“What does that mean?” I remembered the flannel shirt she’d bought him. “Whoa. Is he an actual lumberjack?”
“No. He’s an outdoor nature guide. He works in the national forest outside of Portland.”
“So pretty much a lumberjack.”
She rolled her eyes. “Actually, he was a nurse, but he burnt out and had a career change.”
“Isn’t he kind of young to have burned out of one career already?”
“He worked in a pretty intense unit. There’s a million things you can do in nursing, but he wanted a total change, and he moved to the woods. Well, near them. I think he can’t get enough of them right now because of growing up in the desert. I don’t know if he’ll ever get tired of the rain and the green.”
I glanced out our window, and even though my view was another building I smiled. Even on the sixth floor I could still hear faint snatches of sound from the street. “I get that. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of the city.” I’d grown up north of LA in the most stereotypical suburban neighborhood imaginable, where all the houses and shopping centers and schools looked the same as they bowed to the power of the HOA.
