There’s a beat of silence. Not the kind that’s awkward. The kind where she’s giving me space to say more if I want to.
“I found these boxes,” I continue. “Labeled with my name. Full of stuff I thought he didn’t care about. Newspaper clippings. My first CDs. The notebooks I used to write lyrics in before I could even play guitar properly. Letters.”
Her breath hitches softly through the speaker. “What did they say?”
“How sorry he was.” I rake a hand through my hair. “But he never sent them, Iz. Why didn’t he send them?”
“I don’t know, Jax.”
“I spent so long being angry at him,” I say. “Resenting him just as much as he resented me. Desperate to become something just to prove to him and myself that I was someone worth the loss of my mom.”
“You were always something,” she says gently. There’s a quiet moment where I think she might cry. Or maybe that’s me again.
“I’m proud of you,” she whispers.
“I’m still mad at him,” I say.
“That’s okay, Jax.”
That’s when I lose it again.
Just a few more tears. Quiet but honest.
“I want to keep the house,” I say, wiping my face with my sleeve. “Not just the land. All of it. This house. The memories. Even the hard ones.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I want to fill it with new ones too.”
She doesn’t say anything for a while. Just stays with me.
“He talked about how proud he was of you all the time in the last few years,” she says finally. “But I know he’d be even more proud of you now. Now that you’ve figured out how to chase your wild dreams without leaving your roots behind.”
“I should’ve come home a long time ago.”
“Maybe. But maybe you needed this time to figure out who you are and what you want.”
There’s another pause in our conversation, but I can hear her breathing, and there is something about the sound that anchors me.
“So are you really going to keep the house?” she asks.
“Yeah. Not just keep it. Live in it. Make it mine…ours. You, me—Hell, maybe a dog. Christmas mornings. Burned toast. Arguments over which way the toilet paper roll goes.”
She laughs, watery and real. “Just diving right in, huh?”
“Always,” I say. “You wouldn’t want me any other way.”
After we hang up, I sit with this new version of me for a while. The silence isn’t so loud now. The grief not so sharp.
I look around the room again, and for the first time, I feel like I’m home—not just to a place, but to the man I was always meant to be.
Chapter fifty
Izzy
“IsitweirdthatI’m more nervous to join you for your recording than I am for my first meeting with W&R Mercantile?” I ask Jaxon as he makes his way to me from where he was discussing business with Andre and Annie.
Turns out, Jaxon has not one but two jets. And the one we took last time? The one I thought was impressive? It was the baby jet.
