Tears streamed from Jenna’s eyes in rivulets. “I couldn’t.” It felt like the words had been dragged from her, stolen without permission. “You talked about having a family all the time, and when I found out?—”
Country sat up and stripped the quilt from his legs, piling it on her instead. "You should've told me."
Jenna scrambled to sit. “I told you, I couldn’t! I didn’t know what to think, and I wanted to eventually! I called, but you didn’t?—”
“So you’re trying to blame this on me now?” His eyes were dark as he faced her, his words landing like a slap to the face.
“I’m not trying to blame anyone, I’m just saying?—”
“That was selfish, Jenna. To make a decision like that without even giving me the information. To not even let me be a part of it.”
Country kept talking, but all Jenna saw was his slanted brows and moving lips as the world blurred around her.
Jenna slammed the microwave closed. “I told you, I talked with Mom, and she told me not to come!”
Travis threw up his hands. “Of course she told you not to come! What was she supposed to say? She knew you cared about that job more than anything else.”
Jenna clenched the top rail of the chair back in front of her. “How dare you? I don’t love my job more than anything else! It’s a job, Travis! I was trying to honour her wishes!”
“When the woman who gave you life is getting poison pumped into her veins, you might want to consider taking a weekend trip, that’s all I’m saying.”
“This is bullshit, Travis. You know I would’ve?—”
“No, I don’t actually.” Travis closed his laptop, then picked it up along with his bag of All Dressed chips from the kitchen table. “It’s fine, though. I’m here, and I’ll be here until Mom gets through this, so you can go back to Windsor and focus on priority number one.”
“Thirteen years, Jenna. Thirteen years for what?” The truck jostled as Country shuffled to the end of the truck bed and dropped to the ground.
“Thirteen years because I knew what your priorities were, and I didn’t fit!” Her vocal cords scraped like sandpaper.
Country looked back, his eyes dark. “Thirteen years because you trusted your analysis instead of letting me do my own.” He turned and stalked away into the dark.
Chapter Twenty
Jenna slid a second piece of apple cranberry pie onto her plate. “I think this needs to be a new Christmas tradition.”
“It’s good, right?” Rhonda handed her the ice cream scoop and slid the tub across the counter.
“So good.” She dropped a hefty scoop of vanilla onto her plate. She may have been buffering with sugar for weeks now, but that obviously couldn’t end until after the new year. Jenna returned to the dining room and sat down next to Anne and Tina. “Melissa’s missing out.”
Anne sighed. “Melissa always misses out on holidays.”
“How dare she have a family that loves her.” Tina grinned and grabbed another roll from the basket in the middle of the table.
“Okay, my family loves me, they just don’t happen to live here anymore,” Anne said.
Jenna laughed. “My family chooses not to come back for the holidays. Even though they know I’m ten minutes from their house.”
“Do you think it’s personal?”
She took a bite of pie. “Definitely.” Jenna was half joking. Deep down, she didn’t question whether her parents loved her. They’d raised two kids in what her mom liked to call “the arctic tundra” and finally had the freedom to work from anywhere. But she’d be lying if she said Christmas and New Year’s with the gals didn’t make her heart twinge a little.
Travis’s words always came back in those moments. Had she chosen her career and ambitions over her family then? She hadn’t meant to. She liked to believe she would’ve dropped everything and sprinted back to Calgary if her mom needed her, but she’d insisted she was fine. And Jenna had chosen to believe her.
“At least they’re not spending time with your brother and his wife and not you.” Rhonda reached for the bottle of wine and poured a glass. “My family’s all on a cruise in the Caribbean.”
Jenna’s mouth dropped open. “What? They didn’t invite you?”
“They invited me, I just couldn’t get work off.”
