Jake didn’t answer, which Cal assumed was answer enough.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The Harrington Cabin
Jill felt abit like a shell.It had been three days since she’d heard the news, and still, she hadn’t confronted her grandmother.
She hadn’t called her father to tell him.
She’d kept this piece of information solely to herself.
She knew Grandma was… worried or suspicious or something.Because Jill was definitelynotherself.Detached, and not in the way she sometimes got when the writing was going well.
Shewasthrowing herself into writing.But it was a desperate kind ofignore my life with fictionmore than any great creative explosion.
She hadn’t officially sold the book yet, so she probably shouldn’t be putting so much time into it, but her agent was hopeful and Jill just… needed to write this.
Just like she needed tonotthink about suicide.
But it snuck in every thought, every moment with her grandmother.Every meal was a silent, aching affair, where Jill’s mind whirled with the same merry-go-round of thoughts.
Had she witnessed it?Did she blame herself?Had she always planned on keeping it from Dad, or was that just something that had happened because he hadn’t been able to travel back in time to know?
Had Dad really never asked?
And why did Jill have so many damn questions?Questions she was afraid to ask?Why was she spending all this time wondering?Asking near strangers for answers rather than being able to get them out of the people she should?
She didn’t want to hurt Grandma, or Dad, oranyone.
But, damn it,shewas hurting.
And being in the Bennets’ orbit this past year meant she knew the danger secrets posed.She knew all the horrible things that could hide in the shadows if people didn’t tell the damntruth.
What if Grandma had told the Bennets about their long-lost brother?About the abuse their mother had suffered?What if she’d made some way to communicate with them?Could Benjamin Bennet have paid earlier?What domino effect wouldthathave created?
She knew Cal thought there were things he still wasn’t remembering.What if it connected to her grandfather?To more of her grandmother’s secrets?What if there were more truths that needed to come to light so evil didn’t stayhidden.
What if?What if?What if?
And what did it make her if she sat around feeling sorry for herself?If she wished Grandma had done something—reached out, asked for help, let her in sometime in the past three years—didn’t that mean she couldn’t sit here doing the same damn thing?
Maybe her loyalty was to Grandma, but she was starting to wonderwhy.Grandma hadn’t given her the same since Jill had moved here.Ever since the stroke, she had been kept at Grandma’s very firm arm’s length.
And Jill hadlether.
It suddenly felt so wrong and untenable, Jill abruptly got up from her seat, knocking into the coffee table and sloshing some of the cold coffee in her mug over onto her notebook.She didn’t even bother to clean it up.
She marched out into the back yard where Grandma was working in her gardens.Oh, she’d tend these plants.Come out here and hum to them and care for them, but Jill?
It felt like a betrayal to think these things and yet the hurt had dug so deep—no matter how Jill had tried to push it away—that it seemed to grow at an exponential rate now.
Grandma was humming that old lullaby that Jill knew Cal found creepy.Jill had always liked it and wanted to feel warm and happy over her grandmother humming again.That there weresoundsin this cabin again that weren’t just her.
But all she’d felt since Grandma had started talking some was that there was more lurking in her speech difficulties.More lurking in the past, in secrets, in being kept at arm’s length.
She wanted to believe that Grandma thought she was protecting Jill.Or protecting someone.She wanted to believe Grandma was doing the right thing, so Jill didn’t have to upend this life she’d built for the past three years.
But, by God, what kind of life was it for either of them?Hiding up here?
