by Kim Law
“Impressive win, honey.” Harper infused her congratulations with a heavy dose of irony.
“I remain the champ.” Nick pointed out the reason for his overabundance of joy. “That’s all I’m saying. No one can touch me.”
“No one wants to touch you,” Jaden added with a smirk. He reached behind him for the game box and began helping Dani put the pieces away as everyone else gathered up empty glasses and plates. It was family night for the Wildes, and Dani and Ben had offered to host. The family got together one Saturday night every couple of months to either have dinner or play games, and whoever could be in town showed up.
Cord wasn’t there this time. Having driven over only two weeks prior for the wedding, he hadn’t had the extra time to make it. But Nate wasn’t there, either. And he was definitely still in town. It was anybody’s guess where he’d disappeared to.
“I’m going to run your dad and Gloria home,” Ben told Dani. He rose with the game in his hands. “I’ll put this away and check on Mia before I go.”
“Can I go with you, Dad?” Haley asked.
“Of course you can.” Ben and Haley disappeared from the room, and a few seconds later, Ben could be heard through the baby monitor, checking on the baby.
“You and Ben have created a good life here.” Jaden spoke quietly, not wanting to be overheard as the others were still milling about the house.
“It’s turned out really well,” Dani agreed. Ben had purchased a lake house just up the road from where Jaden and his siblings grew up, and though it kept Dani separated so she and her new family could do their own thing, it also allowed her to be close enough to check in on their dad if the need arose.
Everyone except Ben and Haley came back through with their coats on and leftovers in hand, and Gabe and Erica offered to drop Jaden off on their way through town. “We’ll get him back,” Dani told them. Then she reached over and patted Jaden’s outstretched leg. “You’ve all spent a lot of time with our baby brother lately. It’s my turn now.”
In understanding, the group left. Ben and Haley followed seconds later, and suddenly, the house that had been nothing but chaos for the last several hours was as close to silent as it would ever be.
A clock ticked from the mantel in the office across the hall, and Mia made a cooing noise through the monitor. Dani moved to the couch and smiled as she relaxed back into the cushions, and Jaden followed her across the room. He stretched out in the recliner.
“I’m happy for you, sis.” He closed his eyes and felt himself relax. “You deserve everything good in the world.”
“Thank you.” With Dani being eleven years older than him, most people might not think they’d be as close as they were. But Dani had practically raised him.
“I was glad Dad and Gloria made it tonight,” he added. Earlier in the day, he’d been told their dad wasn’t feeling well and planned to stay home.
“Me too. He’s been feeling ‘under the weather’ a little too often lately.”
Jaden opened his eyes. “What do you mean?” He hadn’t noticed anything.
But then, he hadn’t been around his dad because he’d refused to stay at the house.
Dani glanced over. “I think something might be wrong with him, Jay. Gabe had concerns a few months ago, and Cord did some questioning at the time, but nothing ever came of it. Only, Doc Hamm has been out to the house a couple of instances that we know of, and I’ve heard that his car has been seen pulling away from there another time or two.”
“Doc Hamm is still practicing?” Doc Hamm had been their family doctor when Jaden had been young.
“And apparently making house calls.”
Jaden readjusted the chair so that he sat up. “What do you mean wrong? Is he sick?”
“I don’t know.” Her look of concern only increased. “But haven’t you noticed that sometimes he seems to be . . . somewhere else? Sort of like he just spaces out?”
Jaden thought back over the night, but he honestly hadn’t picked up on anything.
He did remember a phone conversation with Megan about a month ago, though. She’d run over to the store to meet with the maintenance man late one night, and when she’d returned, her headlights had highlighted his dad out on the front porch. He’d been brandishing a broom. She hadn’t been able to see whatever he’d been swatting at, and when asked, his dad had mumbled something about bees and gone back in.
Jaden hadn’t thought anything else of it. But now he had to wonder. “Do you think his mind is going?”
“Possibly. But I also caught him using a cane one day. I stopped by unannounced, and when I came in, he was in the kitchen with Gloria, and I’d swear he needed the cane just to stand. He explained that he and Gloria had found it while browsing in a local consignment shop and that she’d fallen in love with the design on the shaft. She then took it from him, and he sat down at the table.”
Jaden studied her. “And have you seen Gloria using it?”
“Not once. Nor have I seen Dad with it again. But it is still in the house. It’s propped by the fireplace. As if it’s a decorative piece.”
“And you don’t think that’s all it is?”
She shook her head. “My gut tells me that he needs it.”
Jaden frowned at her phrasing. He wasn’t in the mood to hear about listening to one’s gut. “So he’s got arthritis,” he said, explaining it away. “And he doesn’t want us to know it’s affected his mobility.”
“I considered that, too.”
“But that’s not what you think now?” Worry gnawed at him.
“I don’t know what I think. Something about it worries me, though.”
Jaden glanced away. His sister’s look was becoming too intense, and it was hard to think with that kind of pressure directed at him. And then he realized who should know about their dad. “Has Nate said anything?” Nate had been staying at the house while he’d been in town.
“I don’t think Nate’s spending a lot of time there,” she offered.
“Then what is he doing?” At first Nate had stopped by the office most days, but that had slowed. He still showed up when Jaden needed to be taken somewhere. But other than that, he’d been scarce.
“I don’t know,” Dani admitted. “But I think something might be off with him, too.”
He shot her an incredulous look. “You think he’s sick, too?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Sorry. Poor word choice. I just meant like he’s walking around unsure of what he’s supposed to be doing.”
A whimper sounded from the baby monitor, then the sounds of Mia fidgeting in her sleep. Both of them paused in their conversation, Dani having pushed up on the couch cushions, ready to go the second her daughter indicated she needed her. The noises soon subsided, and Jaden picked up where they’d left off.
“Why is Nate even still here? Do you know?” Nate hadn’t stuck around this long since he’d left at eighteen.
“You mean, other than trying to take care of you?”
“Yeah.” He smirked. “Other than trying to take care of me.”
“Beats me.” She returned to her slouched position on the couch. “I asked him last week if he was thinking about moving back home, and he changed the subject.”
“I’ll talk to him.” Jaden began forming the conversation in his head. Nate would be picking him up for his surgical follow-up appointment Monday afternoon, so Jaden could use the time to feel him out. He just had to try not to make it come across as if he were doing exactly that.
“Good luck,” Dani said wryly. Then, as if understanding that his thoughts had gone to his counseling skills, she turned her head to look at him. “Are you going to be able to finish everything with school okay? Do you need me to do anything?”
“You’re assuming I won’t be going back?”
She eyed his splint. “I don’t see you up and running anytime soon.”
“Maybe not,” he admitted. And maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to stick around there, either. He liked tha
t he’d been able to spend time with his family tonight. They’d rarely had those kinds of relaxing evenings when he’d been growing up.
And what would be the point of returning for one month when he planned to turn around and come back, anyway? Which was likely all it would be if he wasn’t able to put weight on his ankle for another four weeks.
“I’m good,” he said instead of arguing the point further. He’d figure things out when the time came. Right now, he just had to make it through the next counseling session without needing to be helped back into bed.
His next appointment to work with Dr. Wangler would be the following Tuesday, and assuming he didn’t slam his foot into anything, he should be fine.
“Your friend is good,” he said. He was glad he’d taken his sister’s recommendation and would be studying under her for the upcoming year.
“She is. She worked with Ben and Haley when Ben first got custody.”
He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t realized that. “No wonder they’re doing so well.”
Janette Wangler had a natural ease with patients that he knew he hadn’t fully developed yet. She had a way of simply . . . connecting with them. Sort of how Arsula seemed to do with every person who came into the office.
He frowned at his own thoughts. He’d told himself he wouldn’t think about Arsula tonight. Mostly because he’d done nothing but think about her for the last couple of days. Since he’d told her—while in a drugged state—that he didn’t want her to be mad at him anymore.
He’d also basically begged her to make Megan love him again.
What a sap. Stupid painkillers. They made him run his mouth like an overflowing dam. He refused to take any more of them.
But really, Arsula had been the one to mess things up between him and Megan. Why shouldn’t she be the one to fix it? And after what he’d witnessed over the last two weeks, he’d bet his right hand that if anyone could talk some sense back into his ex, it would be Arsula. The woman seemed able to get everyone to open up. To see things her way. Not that he’d been eavesdropping or anything.
“Are you aware that your office feels like a counseling session most of the time?” Jaden complained, and his sister peeked out from under drooping lashes.
“So we’re finally going to talk about Arsula?”
He held back his smirk. He’d skirted the subject when Dani had picked him up earlier, only to bring it right back there now. “I’m just pointing out . . . does the woman ever actually do any work for you? Best I can tell, all she does is talk to people. About everything. And I swear, I think they make appointments to come in and see her.”
“No.” Dani chuckled lightly, her eyes once again closed. “She keeps her appointments outside of office hours. They just stop in with updates. But I don’t see any harm in it. It gives them a chance to take in the ad work I have hanging on the walls, to see some of the projects we’ve done. You never know when a friendly visit might turn into a new client.”
Jaden had missed half of what his sister said, because his head had almost exploded after her first sentence. “Are you saying that she does meet with people? As in, she counsels them in some fashion?”
He’d known that was how she saw herself.
“Not counseling so much. She just helps them to see themselves better.”
“That sounds like counseling.”
She eyed him as if bored. “It’s not the same thing at all. She’s helping them to hear themselves as opposed to analyze themselves.”
“As in, hearing your subconscious telling you to break up with someone?” he muttered, not meaning to say that out loud, but at Dani’s instant cringe, a question he’d been asking himself got answered. His sister knew the reason Megan had broken up with him.
He hadn’t told anyone that part of the story.
“Something like that,” Dani finally replied, her tone heavy with sympathy.
“And you don’t think Arsula’s a nutjob?”
Dani smiled with fondness. “I think she’s fantastic. She can be whimsical, but also freaking brilliant. So no, I do not think she’s a nutjob. Granted, I’m also not positive everything that comes out of her mouth is one hundred percent spot-on, but she’s not stupid, Jaden.” She peered at him with seriousness. “Look closely at her. Have you bothered to do that yet? You’ll see something way more than what she presents on the surface.”
“Why wouldn’t she just present reality? What’s she hiding?”
“I’m not saying that she’s hiding anything. Just that she doesn’t wave all her greatest attributes around for the world to see. She can be subtle.”
He thought about her looks. About her constant talking. And about her losing her shit and throwing things over one little disagreement.
Or threatening to flush his drugs and steal his crutches.
“We’ll have to agree to disagree on that one,” he told her. “I don’t believe there’s a subtle bone in her body.”
Something akin to disappointment flashed across his sister’s face. “She’s been helping you out for almost two weeks, Jay. You’re living under the same roof. Am I guessing right that you haven’t had even one real conversation with her? Gotten to know her at all?”
Mia cried through the monitor, a sound that said she meant it this time, and Dani pushed herself up without waiting for his reply. But the second she returned, with Mia bundled in a blanket covered with pink monkeys, she settled into a wooden rocker—then she angled an answer-the-question-before-I-have-to-make-you look his way.
He grudgingly confessed, “I’ve not exactly been the best patient.”
“So you’re saying you’ve been a pain in the butt like you were as a kid?” She chuckled. “Anytime you didn’t feel well, you’d stomp around the house, making sure everyone knew it.”
That had only started after their mom died, but he didn’t point that out.
Before that he’d stayed silently in his room. Being ignored.
Mia made a slurping noise as she fed, and Dani turned wondrous eyes on her daughter. He liked seeing his sister like this. So loving. So . . . nurturing.
So the opposite of their mother.
“She’s a miracle, Jay,” she murmured. “I never thought I’d have kids after coming home to help with you guys.”
“You seem to be adapting well.” He watched as she stroked a hand over Mia’s dark hair. “You and she are bonding okay? No issues with new motherhood?” He knew issues could arise, even for people who hadn’t grown up with a mother incapable of love, but for people like Dani . . .
She lifted a knowing gaze. “Don’t try to psychoanalyze me, baby brother. I pay good money for that already.”
“And it’s done wonders. You’ve come so far. You and Dad have come so far.”
She kept her gaze on his. “And how about you and Dad?”
“What do you mean?”
Dani rolled her eyes. “Why wouldn’t you stay at the house after your accident, Jay? You know Dad would have been fine with it. Plus, it’s not even his house anymore. It’s ours.”
When their dad had originally retired from managing the orchard, he’d deeded the house and orchard over to the six kids. Dani had opened the retail store after that, but it had been done as a subset of the business.
“I’m aware of that.” Jaden didn’t offer an answer to her question.
“Then what’s the issue? The house isn’t even the same one we grew up in. Gloria has brought a whole new life to the place. Every room is different.”
“I know that, too.”
She growled with frustration. “Jaden. Talk to me. I just want to help.”
And he didn’t want her help. “Don’t try to psychoanalyze me, big sister.”
For a moment she looked as if she didn’t intend to stop her line of questioning, but finally she acquiesced. “Fair enough. We each have to work through our own crap. I get that. But as an outsider looking in, let me just tell you that unless there was a lot more going on the night of the wedding than
either you or Arsula admitted to, then your staying with her doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
“I had to stay somewhere,” he argued. “And Megan was at the house. And she’d just broken up with me.”
“And you know she could have stayed with me until she moved out. Heck, you could have stayed with me. For as long as you wanted!”
He took in his niece. Dani’s first biological child. “You’re a new mom, Dani. With a history that could make being a mom a struggle if you aren’t on top of things.”
“But I am on top of things.”
“True. But you don’t need the added stress of having me underfoot.”
“I’m also your sister.” Her voice lowered, and she pleaded with her eyes. “I’m your big sister. I’m supposed to help out when you need it.”
“You helped out plenty years ago.”
Hell, the woman had practically been his mom. Even before their mom had died.
“You know I was happy to do that, right? To come home and be here for you guys.” She lifted Mia to her shoulder. “I wouldn’t change those years for the world.”
Jaden didn’t reply to her statement. Because that wasn’t exactly the truth, he knew. But he also knew that she didn’t regret being there when they’d needed her. Without her, he, Nick, and Nate would have ended up a mess. And the verdict was still out on Nate.
He wondered again where Nate had been tonight. Then he wondered how Megan had spent her evening. Normally she’d have been at his family’s get-togethers, too.
He decided to change the subject. Enough talking about him and what might or might not be driving his need to not be living in his childhood home. Plus, he was desperate to know something about Megan, and at this point, pretty much anything would do.
“How’s the manager search going?” He then came right out with what he really wanted to know. “How’s Megan doing?”
He meant how was she doing both as manager and just doing, and he hoped his sister would key in to that without him having to spell it out for her.
“It’s going . . .” She quit talking as she readjusted Mia to her other side, and then she offered him a tight smile. “Megan seems good. She fits in well around town, and I know she’s getting out occasionally. She’s living in Erica’s old place now. Also . . .” She let out a little sigh. “She’s thrown out the idea of offering her the job, Jay. Permanently.”
