“There you are,” Otis said, and Adam couldn’t tell if he was upset or not.
“Where are you?”
“Over at Joey’s new place already.”
Adam ground his teeth together, feeling like the stupidest man alive. “I had a huge problem come up this morning,” he said. “And I left late. I’m on the way now.” He swallowed hard. “Trace is going to send something out onthe family text for all of you guys that will explain the situation.”
He held on as he took a curve in the highway a little bit too fast. “How’s Joey doing?” he asked.
“I think she’s had better days,” Otis said almost under his breath. “Oh, here’s the text from Trace.” A long pause came through the line as Otis read it, and he said, “You havegotto be kidding.”
“I’m not kidding,” Adam said. “And I need to get to Jackson Hole as soon as possible.”
“Well, you don’t need to come here, then,” he said.
Adam laughed mirthlessly. “Oh, I think I need to come there,” he said. “All I can do is hope that Joey won’t skewer me alive when I arrive.”
“I said it was fine,”Joey said, but she hadn’t looked at him for more than two seconds since Adam had arrived in her basement apartment. He had coordinated with her uncles Mav, Luke, and Blaze, as they had the biggest trucks and a lot of the furniture that they had donated to Joey.
By the time he’d arrived at her place, everything had been moved in, and Georgia and Aunt Abby and Aunt Dani were unpacking her kitchen. In fact, they were almost done with that.
He was supposed to bring her pink bean bag with him to put in her bedroom, and he stared at the empty cornerwhere it should have gone.
“Maybe you can come with me,” he said.
She sighed and rolled her eyes as she turned back to him. She cocked one hip and glared. “Adam, this is an emergency. You need to go now.”
“I don’t want you to be mad at me,” he said.
“Well, I’m already mad.” She threw up her hands in frustration. “And I have a right to be mad, becauseyoucoordinated the whole move and then you didn’t show up, and everyone was asking me all these questions, like I knew what was going on—and I didn’t.”
“I know.” Adam hung his head, though he’d left his cowboy hat at home and could not hide behind the brim. “This is one of those things I can’t control,” he said.
“I understand that you can’t control a roof caving in,” Joey said. “I understand that the lights are incredibly important to the concert. What I don’t understand is how one-track your mind is, and that you let this one thing, this work thing, overcome everything else you had going on in your life.”
“I know,” Adam said. “In that moment, there was only that one thing, and I needed to fix it.”
“Sometimes you can’t fix things.”
Adam had never felt so low. He couldn’t believe he’d let down an angel here on earth. He moved over to Joey and reached for her hand, barely letting his fingers brush hers. “I am so sorry,” he said. “The moment I am back in town, I will be here. I want you to walk me through the whole thing.”
He had only seen this apartment online, and she hadbeen so excited to show it to him. He really had coordinated her entire move for her and not told her any of the details, and then he had left her out to dry.
He watched her as she studied the floor at their feet. “I can bring dinner back,” he offered.
“And what if you can’t?” she asked. “What if you’re stuck in Jackson Hole for the weekend? Have you ever been in a warehouse where the roof has collapsed due to the weight oficeandsnow?”
Adam pressed his teeth together, because no, he had not.
“I know a bunch of my uncles are going to go with you. You should just go.” Her voice sounded tiny and afraid, and Adam hated it with every fiber of his being. “Just go take care of it, and when it’s done, you can text me.”
Adam didn’t want totexther. He wanted tocall, and he wanted to bring dinner, and he wanted to show up on her doorstep at any hour and have her answer it and be happy to see him.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
Joey nodded and said, “I know you are.”
Someone knocked on her closed bedroom door, and then it opened. “Oh, you are in here.” Otis glanced over to Adam and then back to his daughter. “We need you out here in the kitchen. Little bit of an emergency.”
