Page 36 of Carry Me Home
I watched her grab a Yeti stout from the beer fridge. She didn’t seem like herself. Her shoulders rounded slightly; her chin drooped. Her normal energy was replaced with something much more subdued. The change made me nervous, considering everything that had gone down on Saturday.
She slid the bottle toward me without making eye contact. On impulse, I grabbed her wrist. She blinked up at me like she was surprised to see me sitting there. “Jack.”
“Hey.” I studied her. “What’s going on?”
“Oh, you mean with Maya? My mom told me two hours ago that she wasn’t available to pick up Maya from school. Luckily, Essie was on her way back into town from Lodestar so when I called Brax to tell him I might have to close the bar for an hour, she offered to help. I don’t know what I’m going to do tomorrow, though. Or—” Her voice broke.
“I can pick up Maya. I leave Lodestar at two. That’s plenty of time to get her from school. She can hang out with me at Sweetie Pies, or I can bring her here.”
She stilled, her dark irises widening. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah. Of course.” My eyebrows went up as I stared back at her from over the rim of my beer bottle. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“It’s a lot of responsibility, that’s all.” She fidgeted with a loose thread on the cleaning rag.
“I happen to like responsibility.” I wasn’t just saying that. It was the truth. I enjoyed feeling a certain amount of weight on my shoulders. That weight was what made life matter. It meantImattered. Without that weight, what was even the point?
She laughed softly but shook her head. “Thank you. I really do appreciate the offer, and maybe I’ll have to take you up on it for tomorrow, but the truth is that if I don’t fix things with my parents, I’m…fucked.” She pressed her fingertips to her eyes with a disbelieving laugh. “God, I’m sofucked.”
“Ace,tell me.” I white-knuckled the beer bottle to keep myself from shaking the truth from her. I couldn’t stand to see her like this. So worn down.
With a sigh, she pulled a white envelope from her back pocket and tossed it on the bar between us. I took a swig of beer, flicked open the flap, and pulled out a card withthank youembossed in gold calligraphy across the front.
Then I read the contents and the whole world flipped upside down.
I read it again to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating.
“Janie.” My gaze shot to hers. “What. The fuck. Is this?”
“It’s an apology to Todd for themisunderstanding”—fury made her choke over the word—“at the party Saturday. My mother wrote it and handed it to me at the breakfast table. She intends to send it with a Williams-Sonoma charcuterie gift basket. Because we’resocivilized.” Her voice dripped with scorn.
My fingers tightened on the card and my forehead furrowed as I scanned the note again. “Your name is at the bottom.”
“She reminded me that she will be watching Maya this summer when I’m at work. A favor for a favor, you know.” Janie gave a derisive snort. “I told her no. So, today she let me know what it would feel like to be without reliable childcare.”
“She threatened you?” I demanded. I couldn’t imagine my mom ever pulling shit like this. Even my dad. He was a deadbeat, but he wasn’t fuckingevil.
“It’s not a threat. It’s quid pro quo. A favor for a favor.”
“That’s not how families work.”
“That’s howmyfamily works.” She was back to playing with the rag. Her teeth strummed her bottom lip as she pulled at the loose threads. “I signed it. I haven’t told her yet, but I signed it.”
Fury consumed me. “You can’t.”
“Well, I did.” Her hand clenched around the rag so tightly her knuckles blanched. “Principles are great for people who can afford them, but you know what? They’ve always been too expensive for me. Maya is the only thing that matters. Everything else can be compromised. And…they know that. They know I’ll cave. I always do.”
The bleakness in her tone made me want to get in my truck, drive out to Belmont Ranch, and make her mom cry. But all I could do was sit there like a useless lump on a barstool. There was nothing I hated more than feeling helpless.
“It would be so much better if I could just skip the drama and not drag it out when we all know how it’s going to end.” Janie stared off into space, drumming her fingers on the bar. She sighed. “But I never do. I go down fighting, but I still go down. Just have to get my bad out first, I guess.”
“I like your bad,” I said.
She snorted. “You’re the only one.”
“There’s no one else who can watch Maya this summer?” It was a desperate question. Janie wasn’t stupid. If there were another option, she would have thought of it already. “Is itthe cost?” A couple of my military peers were parents, and the amount they shelled out in daycare bills was sometimes more than a mortgage.
“Money isn’t an issue,” she said distractedly.
