Page 108 of Have a Bear-y Little Christmas
“No,” she said finally. “But thank you. This is something that I need to do.”
“I understand. As long as you know you don’thaveto do it alone.”
“I know.” Another sweet, tiny soft kiss. “Now, I believe you said something about a roast chicken?”
“I believe I did.”
Chapter 27
Jeannie
Well-Earned Closure
My leg bounced rapidlyas I sat in one of the few booths at the café, staring down at my untouched coffee.
Never in a million years had I thought that my parents would show up at my door, and never in a million and one years did I ever expect to feel like a sixteen-year-old girl again. So small. So powerless. So confused as to why those who were supposed to be protecting me weren’t doing their job.
For a moment, it felt like I was about to crumble, but then I’d found the anger that had been hibernating in me for so long, waiting for the chance to actually be absolved. I guessed Remy was an even bigger influence on me than I thought.
But all shifter jokes aside, I was intensely grateful that he was waiting down the street in his mommy-mobile just in case things went sideways. I had messed up by isolating after getting the bad news, and yeah, I could use some more therapy, but for the moment I was ecstatic to have him in my life.
The door chimed for probably the twentieth time since I’d arrived, but this time, my parents were walking through the entrance.
It was entirely surreal seeing them as they were. The last time we’d spoken had been nearly half my life ago, when my mother’s hair had only just begun going gray at the temples and my father hadn’t quite yet gone bald. Somehow, they both seemed smaller now. Less the patriarch and matriarch of our household, and more like sad, wrinkled old people.
It made me feel better. A tacit sort of acknowledgement that I had grown past them. Even though I was nervous about what they might say, I wasn’t afraid like I might once have been.
“There you are, Juni—Uh, I meanJeannie,” Mom said, sliding into the booth first. Ick. It felt weird to use that term for her, but at the same time I wasn’t about to call her by her first name. “I’m so glad to see you here.”
“I set up the meeting,” I said neutrally, deciding that the ball was in their court and they would dictate how this meeting went. After all, I owed them nothing. If I decided that they hadn’t changed, then I fully intended to walk out the door and never look back at them again.
“I know, but still, I was worried you might get cold feet.”
That was reasonable. I had certainly thought about it, so I couldn’t really fault her for that.
“How did you find me?”
“Oh, we showed you yest?—”
“That newspaper clipping is how you found out about Max, that he was sick, and even what city we’re in, but you didn’t wait outside the cancer clinic hoping to run into us. You came to my address and knocked on my door. The newspaper clipping didn’t tell you all that.”
They got that sort of disgruntled expression on their faces that I recognized so well from my childhood. It was the sameone they wore whenever I asked too many questions or poked too many holes through their blanket statements. Well, I wasn’t a kid anymore, so they couldn’t brush me off like they used to. If they wanted to continue to have a conversation with me, they had to answer.
It was definitely a tip in the power scales, and it was working for me. I had spent so much time as a kid being scared, or confused, or believing I was downright too weird to function. That something was broken in me, that I couldn’t be a good kid like everybody else and just fall in line. Now I knew better, and I could use that knowledge to get the closure Juniper had always been owed.
“We hired a private investigator,” my dad answered, and I was relieved that he was choosing to be honest right out the gate. Not that he’d been much of a liar when I was a kid. No, my father had definitely been a man of his word. The issue was the words that he spoke.
“Why?”
My mother took over again, which made sense. She’d always been more of a yapper than my dad. “Because, like we said, we realized that we failed you and wanted to reconnect. For a long time, the wounds ran too deep, but once we saw that little boy’s face and found out what the two of you had to go through, we knew we had to try.”
“That man we saw at your house,” Dad cut in. “Is he the father?”
I debated lying to them, because it really wasn’t any of their business, but it would be hypocritical to expect honesty from them and not give the same in return. “No. He’s never been in the picture.”
I waited for their disapproval, certain it was coming, but strangely enough, they almost seemed... pleased by it?
“Well, it’s a bit unorthodox, but I can’t complain about having someone to carry on theWulfhundename.”
