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“I’m not going back to work,” he said.
Jeremy stared at him, brow furrowed in puzzlement. “Huh?”
He took in a breath and said firmly, “There is nothing in my life more important than you. And right now, we need to be together. We have to make a life without your mom, Jeremy, and I don’t think we can do it back home. We’ve tried for two years now, and it’s not working.”
His son was staring at him now, wide-eyed. “I don’t understand. Are we going to... live here now?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I thought we’d stay for a while and see if we like it.”
His focus on the “we” seemed to be working, because Jeremy calmed a little. “Stay with Aunt Tris?”
“For a while,” he repeated. “But we should look for a place for us too.”
Jeremy lowered his gaze, but then gave him a sideways look. “What about school?”
“We’ll figure that out.”
“Aunt Tris is a teacher,” the boy said.
Jackson found himself smiling rather crookedly at the almost sly note in that observation. “Yes. Yes, she is, and we can talk to her about what to do about getting your royal smartness back to learning. You’ve got some catching up to do.”
He wasn’t really worried a lot about that. He knew Jeremy was a very smart kid, and he was already ahead of most others his age in reading and math, and probably other things too.
Like the hard realities of life. And death.
After another moment of silence, Jeremy asked, “Where’re we going?”
Jackson hesitated, then decided to risk the joke. “You mean you don’t want to go into that doctor’s office over there?”
Jeremy’s eyes widened as he looked the direction Jackson had nodded. “No! I don’t wanna go there. I’m not sick. I’m just... sad.”
Jackson thought his heart was going to shatter. “I know,” he said, barely able to manage a whisper. “So am I.”
His son’s gaze snapped back to his face. “You still miss her?”
He reached out then, because it felt like the only thing to do. The therapist had told him it would take many repetitions of the same answer to convince the boy. He clasped Jeremy’s shoulders in both hands and gently squeezed as he said, letting the achehe always felt into his voice, “I will always miss her, Jeremy. Always.”
That declaration of shared pain soothed the boy, at least to where he nodded as he blinked back the sudden tears Jackson knew all too well.
“So, where are we going?”
Sensing the moment had passed, Jackson shrugged. “Your aunt had some papers to grade, so I thought we’d just drive around a little, look at stuff.”
“Okay.” He sounded interested enough. But then he asked, “Can we go back to Nic’s? I really want to ride Pie again.”
He should have expected that. Cautiously, he said, “Eventually. But it’s Sunday, so I think we give Pie the day off, okay?”And me the day off from dealing with the woman who, if she doesn’t hate me, doesn’t like me much.
“Oh. Okay.”
The boy seemed to accept that easily enough. As he pulled out of the parking lot and back onto Main Street, Jackson had the thought that the conversation they’d just had would never have happened back home. And that alone told him this had been the right thing to do.
They drove past the library and the statue, and Jeremy asked if they could go back and see Joey again. Jackson immediately agreed to that. They went by the courthouse and then, across the street, the saloon. He smiled inwardly at the juxtaposition again, wondering if it was intentional. They stopped at the park and walked around, and at the south side, he saw Jeremy looking across the street at the elementary and middle schools that faced it. The boy didn’t speak, but Jackson couldn’t help thinking that he was wondering what it would be like to go to school here.
Finally, he pulled in behind the western wear store. Jeremy stared at the sign at the back entrance, which portrayed a saddle bronc rider aboard a horse in full buck, completely airborne.
“Is that what Uncle T used to do?” Jeremy asked, a little wide eyed.
“Yes, but on a bull and without a saddle,” he answered. “Even scarier.”
