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She sipped at her wine, pushed a strand of hair that had fallen forward behind her ear, then glanced toward the hallway entrance. There, two doors down, his son slept—hopefully—in the foldout cot in the room that usually served as his sister’s office. They’d had a discussion about this, and it had been Tris who’d suggested that instead of putting the boy on the sofa out here where he had usually slept when they visited—when Leah had been alive—they share the room.
“I just think he needs to know you won’t leave him too,” she’d said, giving him yet another glimpse into the mind of a kid who wasn’t quite old enough to completely understand the concept of death. As a teacher, Tris had more than once dealt with a child in Jeremy’s position.
Even as he thought it, she asked a very teacher-like question. “Pulling Jeremy out of school like that... aren’t you afraid that will mess him up more?”
“I’m not sure he could be messed up more,” he admitted.
“Then we’ve got a job ahead of us,” she said, calmly.
Again, he felt the stirring of regret that she and David hadn’t had children. Then felt bad for that feeling, because it would put his sister in the same shoes he was in, that of a person grieving their so very much loved spouse and striving to keep their equally beloved child from strangling in the clutches of their own grief. Even if he didn’t fully understand it, Jeremy knew his mother was gone. And it had been Tris who had warned him that the boy might find a reason to blame himself, which was exactly what had happened. Jackson had spent a long, sad night holding his son and assuring him that him scaring his mom with his new slingshot glider hadn’t made her so mad at him, she’d left.
“How did you do it?” he asked bleakly. “How did you get past losing David?”
She set her glass down and stared at him. “What makes you think I have?”
He knew he’d made a big mistake. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
“You think because I get up and go to work every day, I’m past it? You think because I’m functional, I’m past it? Well, stick around, brother mine, and you’ll see what a mess I still am. If you hear me crying in the dark, ignore it. If you see me wearing his shirt, ignore it. If you—”
Jackson got to his feet and pulled his sister up out of her chair. He enveloped her in a hug, squeezing as tightly as he thought he could without actually hurting her.
“I’m an idiot, Tris. You already know that, but in case you’d forgotten, that was my latest reminder.”
He felt her sigh against him, and finally she hugged him back. “I think it’s in the brother’s job description.”
“Wish I wasn’t so good at it.”
He heard, muffled against his chest, the familiar laugh. “And that is why I love you, Jackson Thorpe. You’ve never let it all go to your head, when you easily could have.”
“Maybe that’s because I know damned well I just happened to be doing the right thing in the right place at the right time.”
“Three rights don’t make a wrong, you know.”
He leaned back, gave her a wry grin. “Four rights. I forgot to add that it was in front of the right person.”
“Some people would see that as meant to be.”
“In my world, most would see it as sheer dumb luck.”
“I know. One of the things I don’t like about your world.”
“One of the many,” he said, knowing his sister did not have the highest opinion of his line of work.
She backed away far enough to give him the determined look he knew so well. “But I’m proud of you,” she said with that Tris-like adamance that had been in her voice ever since he’d been old enough to understand when she was defending him.
“And I you, sis. You handled this much better than I have.”
“You have Jeremy to worry about too. And like I said, I’m not past losing David any more than you’re past losing Leah.”
“We’re a couple of miserable ones, aren’t we?”
Her expression changed then, gentled. “But we had something many people are never lucky enough to have. Someone to love completely, and who loved us the same way.”
He had to swallow, and it was tight, before he could get out a single word. “Yeah.”
“Now,” she said with that finality that warned him she was about to start organizing. “I think we should take a drive tomorrow, so Jeremy can see a bit of the countryside, then head into town for lunch and a walking tour of Last Stand.”
He sighed. “As long as you know he’s likely to not be interested. He hasn’t been interested in anything. The shrink he was seeing said he’d never had a tougher case.”
