“Whatever is easiest for you.” Anything Alice made was terrific, and he managed a genuine smile before pulling her into a farewell hug, but inside, he dreaded the coming conversation about Sophie.
Chapter Seventeen
Jack walked toward Alice’s townhouse like a condemned man facing an executioner. He’d delayed this meeting as long as possible. After sweltering on the course all afternoon, he lingered in the country club’s locker room for a long, cool shower.
At least he was clean now, but he was still sick at heart. He didn’tneedto tell Alice about Sophie. He didn’t owe Alice anything, and opening up about his past violated a lifelong resolution: look out for Number One. There was no way to discuss Sophie without cracking the door to the dungeon where he’d locked away his worst childhood memories. Why should he subject himself to that?
Because Alice was hurting. She’d just been accused and humiliated, and he added to her misery by being a jerk about Sophie. This was one area where he might be able to put her mind at ease, even if it was likely to cost him a bundle.
Besides, he was hungry. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast and tempting aromas surrounded him the moment Alice welcomed him inside her townhouse.
“I think I’ve died and gone to heaven,” he said after giving her a quick kiss. “What smells so good?”
She wore one of those charming aprons over her dress, her hair in a long braid draped over her shoulder as she lifted a crock from the oven.
“Lobster mac and cheese,” she said, setting the crockery bowl on a trivet. “Are you hungry?”
She hadn’t changed since he saw her this afternoon. Knowing Alice, she probably went straight to the grocery store to buy everything fresh, then swung into high gear to prepare a meal from scratch. On one of the worst days of her life, she was cooking for him.
It would be easier to enjoy dinner if he could get the hard part out of the way.
“Sophie is my stepmother,” he said quietly.
Alice glanced up and froze. “I thought you said you didn’t have any family?”
He had a father he hadn’t seen in twenty-two years, plus a stepmother and two half-sisters he’d never met. He gestured to the sofa so he could unload the story, then they could eat.
“My mother died of cancer when I was eleven,” he said. “She had been the one who looked out for me and made sure I took my infusions, made sure I didn’t do stupid stuff like slide down the bannisters or jump off balconies. After she died, everything was left up to my dad, and he wasn’t cut out for it.”
For a start, his father was an alcoholic. Social workers said he had been a “functioning alcoholic” while his mom was alive, meaning he could hold down a job and pick up Jack’s clotting factor from the pharmacy. Things got a lot worse after his mother got sick. The stress of caring for two invalids broke Frank Latimer, who was so drunk he wasn’t able to attend his wife’s funeral. He started drinking during the day and missing work. He’d forget to pick up Jack’s prescriptions or buy groceries.
Jack would walk to a convenience store at the end of the street to get whatever he could carry home, usually junk food or boxes of pasta with the bright orange powder. He’d take money out of his dad’s wallet to buy food, but there wasn’t always enough, and Jack didn’t always pay. A couple times he shoplifted easy stuff like beef jerky or candy bars. When he was thirteen, a clerk noticed him shoplifting and Jack dropped everything to run out of the store. He tripped over a curb and got a bad asphalt burn. He hadn’t been taking his injections, so the bleed landed him in the hospital.
“That was when the state got involved,” he told Alice. “A social worker came to our apartment to investigate. There wasn’t any food in the fridge and my prescriptions hadn’t been filled. They wanted to work with my dad to set up a plan for my care, but it didn’t go so well. My dad thought I’d be better off in foster care.”
His dad broke down and sobbed when he told Jack. It was December, and they were alone in the apartment. For once, his dad was sober, but he was trembling and pathetic. It was dark in their apartment, but Christmas lights from the other side of the parking lot sent red and green blinking lights into the darkness. It was too hard to watch his dad blubber; all Jack could do was look outside at the blinking lights, waiting for it to be over.
“My dad finally dried out while I was in college,” he said. “He married a lady named Sophie. I’ve never met her, but she sentme an invitation to the wedding. Dad even wrote a note on the back of the invitation, saying he was sorry for letting me down. He swore he was sober for good and hoped I could forgive him.”
Alice looked stunned, her eyes wide and a little hopeful. “What happened?”
“Oh, I forgave him,” he said, taking care to keep his voice nonchalant. “I don’t want to ever see him again, but I forgave him. I’m glad he got better.”
“You didn’t go to the wedding?”
“Nope. I was still pretty bitter at that point, and was finally getting my life together. Everything was perfect. I had a scholarship for college. Friends. My health was mostly okay, and I had a part-time job doing landscape at a golf course. That had to be my priority. I wasn’t going to waste the money to fly across the country for Dad’s wedding. I used to look at Sophie’s Facebook page. They’ve got two kids now. Girls. I guess they’re teenagers by now.”
His father spent longer with those girls than he ever spent with Jack. He wasn’t jealous, but he still had no interest in getting looped into that family.
“Why is she contacting you now?”
“My dad has emphysema. Sophie has been texting me about it, nagging me to go for a visit. They live in Baltimore, and that’s a long drive just so my dad can tell me he’s sorry. Anyway, that’s who Sophie is. You don’t have any cause for jealousy, and dinner really smells great. Let’s eat, okay?”
He said it pretty definitively, and mercifully, she agreed.
Alice was still processing what she’d just heard as she set the bowl of lobster mac and cheese in the center of the table. She hadselected the perfect bottle of pinot grigio to pair with the lobster. It had a light and crisp zest to complement the lobster, but after what she’d just heard about Jack’s father? The bottle of wine sat in the ice bucket and she hoped he wouldn’t notice.
Her career as an academic was likely over. Her idealized plan of sharing Jane Austen with a new generation of students was smoldering on the ash heap of her failed romance with Sebastian Bell. The life she’d planned was gone, but Jack was still here, and he was a good man even though he suffered from a howling void in his life.
