1
“I want us to be a family.”
Phone to his ear, Jem was pushing open the door, fighting the wind and the snap of cold, and it took an extra moment for the words to register.“What?”
“A family, Jeremiah,” Brigitte said.He still didn’t think of her asMom.“I want us to be a family.”
Night.You could see the brown haze of the inversion around the security lights, and higher, the bottom of a sky full of clouds.The cold froze the hairs inside his nose.
“Okay,” Jem said.
He started across the parking lot toward the Subaru, his work bag swinging from his shoulder, BoomTawk behind him: the cream-colored walls, the tinted glass, the big concrete balls meant to stop anybody from driving their car through the front doors.Not that it hadn’t ever occurred to Jem.Not that it didn’t make a shitload of sense.
“Gerald really wants to meet you,” Brigitte said.“He says you’re important to me, so you’re important to him.He wants to be part of your life too.”
Gerald was seventy years old.Gerald looked like one of those guys who liked to yell at kids to stay off his lawn.Gerald was in charge of the checkbook and the credit cards and the savings account.
“And Maeve and Milo have never met their big brother,” Brigitte said.“Do you know how much Milo looks up to you?”
Milo, who wasmaybeeight.Milo, who—as far as Jem knew—didn’t even know Jem existed.Because Gerald hadn’t wanted the kids to know.Gerald had thought it was all too soon, too rushed.Because it hadn’t fit into Gerald’s perfect fucking life with a wife almost half his age and two charming step-kids.
But.On the other hand.
“Yeah,” he said to buy himself time.“And they’re important to you, so, you know.”He couldn’t quite finish the sentence.
It didn’t seem to matter, because Brigitte said brightly, “Exactly.We’re having a family dinner tomorrow.Please come.I want to meet your—” You could barely hear it when she choked on the next word.“—partner.”
“Tean,” Jem said.
“Yes, I want to meet him.”
He almost said it again.To make her say his name.But the urge was gone almost as quickly as it had come, and in its wake, he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear Tean’s name in her mouth.
For the next few steps, the only sounds were his sneakers on the frozen asphalt and the not-so-distant rush of highway traffic.
“So,” Brigitte said.“You’ll come?”
“I have to talk to Tean.”
“Jeremiah, please.Please?”And then in a burst of emotion: “It’s very important to me.”
If it’s so important, why are you calling at ten o’clock at night?
But he said, “It’s kind of last-minute.”
“Gerald only told me this morning he wanted you to come.I’ve been trying to call you all day!”
Gerald.Of course.
“Your phone is never on,” she said.“It’s like you blocked me.”
“I didn’t block you.”
“I’m not trying to be a bother.”
“You’re not bothering me.”
“It took us so long to find each other again.”Her voice grew smaller.A little girl’s voice.“I don’t want to lose that.”
