“I’m sorry.” Amelia’s head drooped down and a tear fell onto her hand as her little body shook and more tears started to fall.
“Being sorry is only part of it, Amelia. You need to listen to your mom. She just wants to keep you safe.”
Amelia looked up at me, her big brown eyes red from crying.
“Mommy loves me.”
“Yes, she does.”
“Jack.” I pulled away from Amelia at Melanie’s call of my name. I turned to see her with a soft look on her face. “Thank you.”
I barely heard the words come out of her mouth, so I wanted her to say them again.
“What?” I held my hand to my ear, pretending I hadn’t heard her.
“Thank you, Jack.” When she said it, I’d hoped for a smile of some sort but nothing. She wouldn’t give it to me and it was now my mission to make Melanie smile.
Four
Holden placedour drinks in front of us and I took a sip of my two fingers of Maker’s Mark, letting the warm liquid run down my throat. I savored the flavor that hit me slowly. The guys knocked back their mixed drinks and ordered another round.
It wasn’t like us to have a guy’s night often but when the girls said they wanted to go out by themselves, it gave us the opportunity to get together. So, here we were are at Trend, drinking and talking shit about a new book we’d just got in to review.
“I swear, it was like they didn’t even know what the plot was that they wanted. It started out in a forest and then we ended up on a spaceship. It makes no sense at all,” Chase complained.
“I could only get through to the second chapter before I gave up,” Max shook his head and took a sip of his second drink.
“I’m so glad I don’t have to read these stories.”
“I’ll second that.” I raised my glass to Greg. I never really read the stories that came through, even though I worked on the graphics and promotions for them. I read the layouts and synopsis that the editors put together for me. It gave me a glimpse at what I would be working with, without taking up too much of my time.
I took another sip of my whiskey and thought about Melanie again and where the girls might have gone to on a Monday night after work.
“Where did the girls say they were going again?”
“No,” Max shut down my question immediately before anyone could answer. “You don’t need to know where Melanie is.”
“Oh, I’ve been meaning to ask you about this,” Chase moved in his chair to face me and Greg patted him on the back.
“Don’t worry, he’s failing in all aspects of getting her attention.”
“Her attention doesn’t need to be gotten,” Max stared me down but I wasn’t going anywhere. All he’d made me do was promise not to break her heart. He didn’t say I couldn’t pursue her.
“She’s not paying attention to me anyways.”
“When would you have had the time to see her? I know her schedule like the back of my hand.”
“You’re not her father, Max,” I shot back the last of my drink and waved Holden down to get me another.
“Unless you’ve been stalking her, there’s no way you would have had time to see her.”
“I stopped for gas the other day and she happened to be there.”
“And you just felt so inclined to have to talk to her.” Max rolled his eyes at me and took a swig of his second drink. I could have sworn he was acting like one of the girls right now, but I knew that Max was protective of his sister. Besides her moving to California, apparently the two had been inseparable. I found out from Lilly that she had only met her a few times and besides that she wasn’t even sure Greg or Chase had spent much time with her.
When she lived here previously, Melanie was involved heavily in the clients she worked for. That meant most of her free time while she was in Georgia was either spent with her husband or Max.
“Yeah,” I shot back at him, “I did. She was having a rough time getting Amelia into the car, so I helped them out by pumping her gas. I didn’t know it was a crime to help someone.”
