Page 160 of The Way the Heart Breaks: Jade’s Story

I pull into the parking lot and ease the truck into a space. Dad doesn't say anything else about Tommy while we go inside, and I'm grateful for it. We get a booth, order lunch, me a cheeseburger, him a deluxe bacon burger, and we both get fries.

“So, you wanna talk about⁠—”

“Not here,” he glances around. “We don’t need to give them anything more to talk about when it comes to our family.”

I hold up my glass of water and tap it to the one in front of him, “Agreed.”

He smirks and lifts his glass up and takes a drink.

It dawns on me then, that this is the first time we’ve hit Barbs Diner since the accident, and I’m happy that things are feeling more and more normal. But in the same breath, it feels like it’s wrong to feel that way.

Jasper and Jason would want this, I remind myself, as I often have to.

When the food comes, he steals one of my fries. I steal two back. He complains that we ordered too much food, we should have split the fries, and then finishes half of it anyway.

Outside, I get in the driver's seat without any sort of conversation about it. When I start it up dad says, “Take a right at the stop, and take another right.”

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“Headed to downtown Ithaca. Gotta get a few things for the job tomorrow.”

My hands gripped tightly on the steering wheel as I backed out of my spot. Ithaca is a bitch to drive in, there is no reason we can't go to somewhere else like Cortland. But I suppose that's the whole point in this. He reaches up and turns up the radio it's country music of course. Dad's a country guy. He only does rock for me.

We stop at one place so Dad can pick something up, then another because apparently the first place didn't have everything he needed. I wait in the truck the first time, watching him cross the parking lot with his hands shoved into his pockets, and when he comes back, he has a box tucked under one arm.

“You need help?”

“I've got it.”

He sets the box inside and looks at me. “You're stubborn.”

“Wonder where I got that.” He laughs and shuts the door.

By the time we're headed home, I've started to relax. The sun is higher now, and the fields look different than they did this morning. I roll the window down a little, letting the cool air come in, and Dad looks over at me. “You wanna go to Uncle Johns and shoot with me this afternoon?”

“I’ll call Tessa and see if she’s feeling better. If not, I’ll probably just stay home and try to read the week’s reading requirements so I’m ahead.”

“You have a game this week.” He nods.

“Unless it gets rained out.”

I pick up the phone and dial Alex’s number before Dad can say anything else. He answers on the third ring.

“Hello?”

“Hey. Is Tessa there?”

There’s a pause. “Nope.”

My stomach drops a little. “Where is she?”

“Lucas’s.”

I blink. “Lucas’s?”

“Yeah. She went over there a little while ago.”

Something warm spreads through my chest before I can stop it. I’m surprised by how happy the answer makes me. “Is she feeling better?”