Ten
I MADE MY acting debut with Jack’s family the next day at the hospital.
By accident.
But first, we had to sneak him in.
His mother had a VIP room where Jack could wait during her surgery, so the day should have been easy.
The plan was to get him to the room unnoticed—early, by six that morning—so he could see his mom before they wheeled her out. Then he’d wait there until the surgery was over, while Doghouse and I monitored the hospital halls and the rest of the team snuck out to the Stapletons’ ranch to install a few secret security cameras. Things on our end were simple. All Jack had to do was stay in that room.
“You can’t leave the room,” I explained on the drive over.
“At all?”
“Just stay in the room. It’s not hard.”
“Isn’t that a little much?” Jack asked.
“If you’d read the handout—” I started.
“I’m not a handouts guy.”
“This is a high-threat situation,” I went on. “There are multiple opportunities for you to be seen, recognized, photographed—”
“I get it.”
“Once you’re seen here, everything gets harder. So just do what you’re told.”
“Got it,” Jack said. Then he added, “You should know I’m already good at this, though.”
I looked over.
He said, “I bet the oil guys you usually protect aren’t used to hiding. But I’ve been making myself invisible for years.”
“That can’t be easy,” I said. “Being you.”
“There are tricks. Baseball caps are surprisingly effective. Glasses seem to break up people’s pattern-matching. Not making eye contact helps, too. If you don’t look at people, they tend not to look at you. Though the big thing is to just keep moving. Just keep going. As soon as you break stride, they see you.”
“You do know more than my average oil executive,” I said, letting my voice sound impressed.
“See? And I didn’t even read the handout.”
I glanced over at him. He was doing it all: the baseball cap, and the glasses, plus a gray button-down. But even trying to look as unremarkable as possible, he still just … glowed.
“Those execs have a big advantage over you, though,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“Nobody cares about them except me and the bad guys.”
Then Jack narrowed his eyes and studied me. “Do you care about them?”
“I mean, sort of,” I said.
“That sounds like a no.”
“I care about doing my job right.”
“But you don’t care about the people you’re protecting.”
I shouldn’t be saying any of this. Where was my head? “Not in the traditional sense, no.”
Jack nodded and thought about it.
Did he want me to care about him? What a strange expectation. “Caring about people actually makes it harder to do a good job,” I said then, in my own defense.
“I get it,” Jack said.
Anyway, he wasn’t wrong about himself. He was good at this. He knew exactly how to move through a space without being spotted. We brought him in through a delivery entrance and up the service elevator. The hallway was deserted, and Doghouse and I saw him make it to the door and disappear through it without a hitch.
That was one huge hurdle cleared. The doctors and nurses on his mom’s team had signed nondisclosure agreements. Now all Jack had to do was stay there.
But he didn’t stay there.
Just before lunch, after I’d stood at the end of the hallway long enough to know there were 207 floor tiles from edge to edge, I saw Jack walk out of the room and start meandering off down the hallway, like he was headed to the nurses’ station.
“Hey!” I shout-whispered. “What are you doing?”
But Jack didn’t turn.
What was he thinking? Hadn’t we just talked about this? He couldn’t just wander loose.
I trotted after him. “Hey! Hey! What are you doing? Hey! We talked about this! You’re not supposed to leave the—”
Right then, I caught up, and I grabbed his forearm, and he turned to look at me …
And it wasn’t Jack.
It was his brother. Hank.
“Oh!” I said, the second I saw his face—dropping his arm and stepping back.
Shit.
Now that I saw him, Hank was clearly not Jack. Hank was an inch or so shorter. And a little bit broader. And his hair was a shade or two darker. His sideburns were shorter. And none of those details should have escaped me.
If I’m honest, the smell of the hospital, and the lighting, too, reminded me of when my own mother was sick—which wasn’t all that long ago—and it had me slightly off my game.
Hank Stapleton was staring at me. “Did you just tell me I can’t leave the room?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought you were Jack.”
Hank tilted his head. “Can Jack not leave the room?”
What to say? “He wasn’t planning on it,” I said. “No.”
Hank tilted his head. “And who are you?”
“I’m Hannah,” I said, hoping we could leave it at that.
Apparently not. He shook his head and frowned, like Is that supposed to mean something?
And then I did what I had to do. I said, “I’m Jack’s girlfriend.” But I swear it felt like the biggest, fakest, most unconvincing lie in the world.
But here’s the surprise miracle: He bought it.
“Oh, sure,” Hank said, looking me over, remembering. “The one who’s afraid of cows.”
How did he know that? Did my scream give it away?
He went on. “Did you come to see my mom?”
My head started nodding as my stomach turned cold. I wasn’t ready. I hadn’t prepared to meet the family. I wasn’t even wearing my girlfriend clothes. But there wasn’t another answer. “Yes.”
“She just woke up,” Hank said. “I’m going for ice chips.”
“I’ll get them,” I offered, wanting to get him back into the room. He wasn’t Jack, but he was close enough to make trouble.
Plus, I needed a minute to regroup.
“You go on back,” I said. “I brought flowers, but I forgot them in the car. So—ice chips. Next best thing.”
Flimsy. But he shrugged and said, “Okay.”
On the way to the nurses’ station, I explained it all to Doghouse’s earpiece. “I’m going in,” I said. Then, ice chips in hand, I started toward Connie Stapleton’s room—but I paused when I caught my reflection in the chrome elevator doors.
Did I look like a girlfriend? Anybody’s, even?
It was hopeless, but I tried zhuzh-ing myself a little bit, anyway. I took off my jacket and hid it behind a potted plant. I rolled my sleeves and unbuttoned the top button of my blouse. I unwrapped my hair from its bun and shook it out to fluff it. I popped my collar for a second before deciding I was too nervous to pull that off.
I’d just have to make it work.
I mentally reviewed what I knew about Jack’s parents from the file. Dad: William Gentry Stapleton, a veterinarian, now retired. Went by Doc. Widely beloved by all who knew him. Once rescued a newborn calf from a flooded oxbow lake. Married to Connie Jane Stapleton, retired school principal, for over thirty years. High school sweethearts. They’d spent five years in the Peace Corps, rescued homeless horses, belonged to a recreational swing-dancing club, and were, by all accounts, good people.
I knocked on the door, and then I opened it as I said, redundantly, “Knock, knock.”
The three Stapleton men were seated around Connie Stapleton’s bed in chairs they’d pulled close. She was sitting up a little, wearing a dab of lipstick with her feathery white hair neatly brushed—and looking somehow more put-together than a postsurgery patient in a hospital gown had any right to.
She could have pulled off a popped collar. If she’d had a collar to pop.
At the sight of them—live, actual people—I started overthinking it. What kind of expression would Jack’s girlfriend have on her face? Warmhearted? Concerned? What did those expressions even look like? How did you arrange your features? How did actors even do this?
I settled on a half smile, half frown and hoped it was convincing.
Jack must have read my panic because he popped up and strode right toward me. “Hey, babe,” he said in a pitch-perfectly affectionate voice. “I didn’t know you were coming.”
“I brought some ice,” I said.
Jack was looking at me, like I thought you were staying in the hallway.
I just blinked at him, like Change in plan.
He could tell I was nervous.
That must’ve been why he kissed me.
A stage kiss, but still.
He walked right up to me without breaking stride, cupped both hands on either side of my jaw, leaned in, and planted a not-insignificant kiss on his own thumb.
And then he … lingered there.
His hands were warm. He smelled like cinnamon. I could feel his breath feathering the peach fuzz on my cheek.
I was so shocked, I didn’t breathe. I was so shocked, I didn’t even close my eyes. I can still see the whole thing in slo-mo. That epic face coming closer and closer, and that legendary mouth aiming right for mine and then docking itself on that legendary thumb, stationed right at the corner.
Technically, it was not a real kiss.
But it was pretty damn close.
For me, anyway.
As he pulled back, my knees wavered a little. Did he know I was going to swoon? It was like he sensed it coming. Maybe that’s what happened to every woman he kissed—real or fake. He latched his arm around my waist, and by the time he said, “I’d like you all to meet my girlfriend, Hannah,” he was basically holding me up.
They took in the sight of us.
“Hello,” I said weakly, sagging against him, but lifting my free hand in a little wave.
Did I expect them not to believe it?
I mean, maybe. It was so patently obvious that we were two totally different categories of people. If they’d thrown their newspapers and reading glasses at me and shouted, “Get outta here!” I wouldn’t have been surprised.
But that’s when Jack said, “Isn’t she cute?” and gave me a noogie on the head.
Next, Hank swooped over to take the ice chips. “She brought your ice chips, Mom.”
On the heels of that, Doc Stapleton—looking gentlemanly, pressed, and neat in a blue oxford and khakis—took my hand, patted it, and said, “Hello, sweetheart. Come take my chair.”
I shook my head. “I can stand.”
“She’s adorable,” Connie Stapleton said, and her voice just pulled me toward her with its warmth. Then she reached for my hand, and when I took hers, it was soft like powder. She squeezed, and I squeezed back. “Finally. Someone real,” she said then.
And suddenly, I knew what to do with my face. I smiled.
“Yes,” Connie said, looking over at Jack. “I like this one already.”
Just the way she said it—with such full, unearned affection—made me feel a little bashful.
Connie met my eyes. “Is Jack sweet to you?”
What could I say? “Very sweet,” I answered.
“He’s good-hearted,” she said. “Just don’t let him cook.”
I nodded. “Got it.”
Next, she asked the boys to help her sit up better. She was a little nauseated and a little dizzy, so they took it slow. But she was determined. When she was ready, she looked at all the faces around her bed. “Listen—” she said, like she was about to start an important topic.
But that’s when her oncologist walked in.
We all stood to greet him—and he definitely did a double take when he saw Jack, like he’d been told to expect a famous actor in that room, but he hadn’t really believed it.
“Hey, Destroyer,” the doctor said with a little sideways grin. “Thanks for saving humanity.”
“Thanks for saving my mom,” Jack said, graciously nudging us back toward reality.
The doctor nodded and checked his clipboard. “The margins around the edges of the tumor were negative,” she said. “Which means it was very self-contained.”
“That’s great, Mom,” Jack said.
“That means no chemo,” the doctor went on. “We’ll still have to do radiation, but that’s not for eight weeks, after the surgery’s all healed. Right now, it’s about just resting, and staying hydrated, and following the discharge instructions.” He turned to Connie. “We’ll get you on the radiation schedule, and then everybody can take a breath until it’s time to start that up.”
What everybody wanted him to say was that she was fine—that she’d be fine.
Finally, Jack did it. “Is the prognosis…?”
The doctor nodded. “The prognosis is pretty good, though no guarantees. If the site heals well, after her course of radiation she’s got a good chance of being okay.”
Jack and Hank, standing right next to each other, let out matching sighs.
You’d never know they were mortal enemies.
The doctor gave some more details, pulled a privacy curtain while he examined the site, then reemerged, saying, “I almost forgot the most important thing.”
We all stood at attention. “What’s that?”
The doctor pointed right at Jack. “Can I get a selfie?”
ONCE HE WAS gone, Connie Stapleton got down to business.
“I’m not going to ask you to stay for the radiation, Jack,” she said.
“Mom. I can stay.”
“It doesn’t start for eight weeks. You need to get back to your life.”
“Mom, I don’t—”
She shook her head, cutting him off. “But I am going to ask you for something else.”
Now Jack narrowed his eyes like he should’ve seen that coming. “What’s that?”
She paused.
We waited.
“It’s been a hard few years for us. For all of us. And I’d like some good time with you before you go.”
Jack nodded. “I’d like that, too.”
“So here it is,” she went on. “I don’t know how much more time I have left on this earth. Getting cancer really clears a few things up in your head, and after much soul-searching, I’ve decided there is one thing, only one thing, that I truly want right now, and I need you all to make it happen.”
“This sounds like a big ask,” Hank said.
“What is it, sweetheart?” Dr. Stapleton asked, leaning in.
That’s when Connie gave us the most irresistible, there’s literally no way you can possibly refuse me smile and said, “I want Jack—and his cute new girlfriend—to come stay with us out at the ranch until Thanksgiving.”