“Why didn’t you ever visit?” she asked suddenly, her eyebrows drawn together into a rare frown. It looked wrong on her face. “Why didn’t any of you come and see Esther—not even when she was ill?”
Guilt slithered like ground fog in his belly. “She cut herself off from us when I was a kid.”
Leah was shaking her head before he’d finished speaking. “That doesn’t make sense. She thought the world of you. I could tell from the way she spoke about you and your brother.”
Jackson floundered. “I— Dad said she didn’t want anything to do with us. They had an argument, and she wouldn’t forgive him.”
Leah took a moment to answer, wiping her hands on a piece of paper towel she’d brought up on the tray. “I don’t think that’s true.”
Jackson had never doubted his parents’ word on the subject. He’d just accepted that another person he cared for had disappeared from his life. What if it hadn’t been Esther’s choice at all? Ever since he’d returned to Amity Court, he’d found memories of his grandmother stealing into his mind. Her steady, warm presence; the true sense of belonging he’d felt as he tore through these rooms as a child, built forts in the backyard, made whistles from blades of grass. All those precious moments from years ago that he’d pushed away and buried.
Jackson’s jaw tightened at the suspicion that something had been kept from him. He was sick of being manipulated.
“Wanna watch a movie?”
It took him a moment to catch up with Leah’s question. He’d disappeared so far into his own thoughts he’d forgotten she was there. “Sure.”
She was letting him off the hook. Again. The disappointed resentment that had prompted her question had cleared from her eyes, and instead Jackson saw a soft understanding he wasn’t sure was justified.
“Got anything in mind?” His voice was rough.
“When did you last watchJurassic Park?”
“I’ve never seen it,” Jackson admitted.
Leah’s jaw dropped. “You...” Words obviously failed her. “But it’s disaster-movie genius. And velociraptors are my favorite animal.”
Jackson narrowed his eyes. “Dinosaurs are extinct. You can’t choose them as your favorite animal.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Says who?”
He held up both hands in surrender. The banter felt safer than opening up any more old wounds.
“Right. That’s our afternoon set then!” Leaping from the bed, Leah jogged to the door, pulled it open, and disappeared, only to immediately stick her head back into the room. “Will watching something on a screen make your head hurt again?”
Jackson cleared his throat. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had taken his welfare so much to heart. “It should be OK. I’m happy to give it a try.”
The movie was fun, Leah’s steady stream of chatter undemanding and easy. Afterwards, they ate a simple dinner of pesto pasta in bed, and all the while he prayed for time to slow down, for this day to go on and on. When she offered to read the next chapters ofTraces of Chalk, he lay back and closed his eyes without protest.
Jackson eventually fell asleep to the sensory picnic of Leah’s pear-scented perfume in the air, the cool pillowcase beneath his head, and the flutter of turning pages. Her voice rolled over him like gentle waves on wet sand. She was in his dreams from the moment he drifted off.
Dream Leah leaned closer, as if she might have been about to press a kiss to his temple. The soft cotton of her shirt brushed his jaw.
Dream Leah ran gentle fingers through his hair, just how he liked it, and whispered, “Sweet dreams, Jax.”
And then, even as he wanted to beg her not to, Dream Leah left him alone.
Jackson slept deeply again and woke early. It took him ten full minutes to gather himself, slotting his thoughts in order, one on top of the other. His head had cleared, his stomach hadsettled. Climbing out of bed, he found his balance a little off, his muscles weak, but he felt ten times better than he had the day before. Needing to rip off the Band-Aid immediately, he pulled on his work clothes and left the house before dawn, without seeing Leah. He was at his desk in the office by eight a.m., a bit fuzzy but focused.
In the past forty-eight hours, the bare bones of his life had been tossed into the air like lithomancy stones, tumbling down randomly and forming an unfamiliar pattern. It felt momentous. It felt unsettling. It felt inevitable.
Jackson knew it was time to instigate some changes.
Calling his father before he got sucked into anything else, he insisted that they push for a talk with Landon Peake. The deadline for the loan payment was coming up and Jackson had no intention of letting Landon’s little tea party with Leah at Amity Court pass by without a reaction. They made plans to approach him at the club later on in the week.
Arranging to meet up with Niamh felt nearly as important, and he arrived early for lunch at La Marina on Thursday. She didn’t keep him waiting long, attracting the attention of others when she crossed the floor in a pinstriped navy pencil dress. He studied her objectively as she neared the table and realized with a jolt he didn’t know her favorite animal. He doubted she knew his favorite food. On paper, Niamh might be the ideal girlfriend, but she’d always remained two-dimensional to him and he suspected he was no more solid to her.
She slid elegantly into her seat. “Hey, Jackson.”
