AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“That was just a few months after Leah was killed. I didn’t plan on... using that pain, putting it on public display. But I had to think about how the character would be feeling, and... it just sort of happened.”
“That must have been harrowing.”
He let out a compressed breath. “The minute the director on that one yelled cut, I walked off the set. Told him to get what he needed out of what he had, because I wasn’t doing it again.”
And she guessed from the finality in those last words that he was also through talking about it.
“I don’t know how you did it the first time,” she said quietly, and left it at that.
She took another sip of coffee and looked around, toward the big great room where the fire now crackled happily in the big stone fireplace.
“I always liked this house,” she said, watching the flames, figuring he wouldn’t mind the abrupt change of subject. Judging by the way his tone changed, he didn’t.
“I can see why. It’s the perfect combination of spacious, with the high ceilings, but homey, with the relatively small footprint,the rustic feel, but all the conveniences. And the location’s unbeatable.”
She’d glanced at him when he started to speak, but by the time he’d finished, she was practically gaping at him. He’d verbalized her exact thoughts about the house he now lived in.
The house she’d often thought she’d like to live in herself.
And again, the images slammed into her brain, of them doing just that, living together under this vaulted roof.
A noise broke the flood. It was the sound of Jeremy coming down the ladder. He came running toward them, something in his hand, and with a different kind of shock, it hit her that she was happy, happy in a way she’d never known before, to see the boy acting so... normally. He’d come a long way in the month they’d been here, and it did her heart a new and unfamiliar kind of good to see it. She felt so attached to the child, and not simply because she was teaching him to ride. She felt connected in a kind of way she’d never known before. He mattered to her, a great deal, and when the inevitable moments of sadness swept over him, she felt a physical pain herself.
“I almost forgot. Mrs. B said I should show you this,” Jeremy said as he skidded to a stop beside the table, a sheet of paper in his hand.
Jackson took it, saying in a clearly teasing tone, “She makes you do stuff on paper instead of on a computer?”
Jeremy shrugged. “S’okay. I didn’t have to write something long.”
Jackson looked at the page in his hand. Nic could see it was a paragraph in rather wobbly printed letters that were still quite readable. The green-inked paragraph below it she knew was her mother’s writing, both from the ink color—she always said that she didn’t like using red on children’s papers, she wanted the subtle signal to be go-ahead green, not stoplight red—and the flowing style of the cursive.
She glanced at Jackson’s face as he read her mom’s note. And she knew she hadn’t mistaken the sudden sheen in his eyes. He blinked a couple of times, proving her right.
“Is it bad?” Jeremy asked anxiously, looking at his father. “I don’t read that curvy writing so good.”
“No, it’s not bad.” Jackson’s voice held a husky note she found shiveringly emotional. “Not bad at all. It just reminded me of something we haven’t done in a while.”
“Oh. You mean when you’d read me stories at night? I told her that’s how I knew about that book.”
“Yes.”
There was a moment of silence before Jeremy said, almost shyly, “I miss that.”
“Me too,” Jackson said, his voice still noticeably tight. “How about we start that again? Pick out a book and we’ll do it tonight.”
There was no mistaking the way Jeremy’s face lit up. Without another word, he turned and ran across the great room to the ladder and scrambled up to the loft. He hadn’t needed to speak. The delight on his face was reaction enough. And a glance at Jackson told her he hadn’t missed it. She felt a new kind of emotion at the blatantly obvious love this man had for his son.
He sat, staring down at the paper in his hand for a long, silent moment, and she had the feeling he was trying to rein in his emotions.
“May I?” she asked, gesturing at the single page.
He didn’t answer, but handed it to her without looking up. At the top, in childlike, but clear enough printing, was a paragraph describing his favorite book. She didn’t recognize the title, but to her surprise, the summation of the story of two kids and a dog who find themselves in the middle of nowhere trying to get home was nearly perfect and had her curious about the book itself.
Her mother’s familiar hand, in the green-for-go ink, said much the same thing, but ended with,This is excellent, well above the expected for Jeremy’s age. He told me how you often read stories to him at night, doing all the different voices. He misses that. Now that you have more time of your own, perhaps you could revisit the habit. It might help in other ways too.
“Now there’s something not every kid has. A father who can do all the parts reading stories to him.” He looked at her then, and he was still blinking a little too fast. “And I’d bet it was fun for you too.”
“It was. It is. I should never have let it slip by the wayside.”
