“You’re saying I shouldn’t deal with any of it, because I can’t deal with all of it. What if I can? Leave some of my baggage behind when I go?”
“Some things are unresolvable. You’re living in a fantasy land if you think you can have it all.”
Not a fantasy. A fairy tale.
As much as every cynical part of her believed him, she couldn’t stop the tiny kernel of desperate optimism unfurling inside her. “I can’t leave.”
Jackson’s lips curved up, but it wasn’t an amused smile. “I didn’t honestly think you would. You’re so damn stubborn, Livs.”
“A stubborn marshmallow?”
“All marshmallows are stubborn. Nothing that soft could hold its shape if it wasn’t stubborn as hell.” He got to his feet. “I gotta go.”
“Where? Do you have a place to stay tonight?”
“Yeah. I’m expected in New York City tomorrow.”
“For what? For work?”
He only shrugged.
“You didn’t see Aunt Maile or Mom.” Now that she thought about it, she wondered why he’d been lurking in the dark. Had he known Livvy was out? Or had he not been able to risk Maile or Tani answering the door?
He ran his hand over his head. The faint moonlight danced over his black hair. “I didn’t come home to see them.”
She wanted to argue with him, but she wasn’tgoing to project her own desperate desire for family on her brother. “When will you be back?”
“I don’t know.”
“Will you... will you come back?”
He thudded down the stairs. The last time she’d watched him stride away from their house, led away in handcuffs, she hadn’t seen him for a decade. She had to bite back a cry for him to stay.
“Yeah.”
It wasn’t a hug or a kiss, but she held that yeah close to her chest. “I’m going to expect to see you then. Soon.”
Jackson walked to the motorcycle and then turned around. “Be realistic and do whatever you gotta do quickly, Livs. It’s not healthy to be here.” His gaze lifted over her head and darkened.
She turned to look over her shoulder and scrambled to her feet. Her mother stood in the doorway, one hand on the door, the other resting heavily on her walker, dressed in a pink nightgown, her hair neatly combed.
How much had Tani overheard?
The woman was motionless, staring after her son, even as the sound of the motorcycle revving and driving off filled the air. Livvy approached slowly. “Mom? I thought you’d be asleep.”
Her mother didn’t respond, and Livvy’s heart clenched. Was that a sheen of wetness in the older woman’s eyes? “Mom?”
Tani blinked and looked at Livvy, and that wetness was gone. “The noise woke me up. I thought it was a neighbor. Then I heard you talking.”
“What’s going on?” Aunt Maile’s voice piped up behind Tani, and then the other woman was there, crowding around her sister-in-law. She tightened the belt around her silk purple robe.
“Jackson was here,” Tani said. There was no inflection in her voice.
“Jackson!” Aunt Maile clasped her hands together. “Where is he? Why didn’t you bring him inside?”
“He didn’t want to come inside,” Tani replied.
There was a snap in her mother’s voice that made Livvy flinch. “He had to go. He’s expected in New York. For work, I think?”
