Twenty-Four
AT DINNER, I kept waiting for Jack to confess the fake relationship to his parents—and Jack kept putting it off.
I’d made us fish tacos for dinner. Maybe he didn’t want to spoil the meal?
I didn’t want to spoil the meal, either.
I found myself looking furtively around the table. I didn’t figure Hank would care too much, but I dreaded the moment when Doc and Connie would realize we’d been lying to them all this time.
When Doc was starting to clear plates and Jack still hadn’t said anything, I got it started. “Doc? Connie? There’s something Jack and I need to tell you.”
Connie lifted her hand to her collarbone in delight. “I knew it.”
“You did?” I asked, glancing at Jack.
“I called it like a week ago. Didn’t I call it, honey?” Connie said to Doc.
“You called it,” Doc confirmed.
I looked at Jack.
“I don’t think this is—” Jack started.
“Let’s do it here,” Connie said. “We’ll handle everything.”
“Do what?” Jack asked.
His mother frowned, like Duh. “The wedding.”
Jack looked over at me.
I sighed.
“Mom,” Jack said, “we’re not getting married.”
But Connie just waved that notion off, like Nonsense. “Of course you are.”
“Mom—”
“I’m telling you. I already called it. You’re perfect for each other.”
Jack looked a little green. This was going to be worse than he thought. “Mom, we’re not getting married. In fact,” he glanced over at me for courage, “Hannah’s not even really my girlfriend.”
Jack’s dad had returned to his seat—and now they both stared at us, uncomprehending.
“Not your girlfriend?” Connie asked. “Why not?”
“She’s actually…” Jack said. “You see…” he tried again. “The truth is…”
“I’m a bodyguard,” I said.
Both Jack’s parents blinked at me, but Hank fixed his eyes on Jack.
“I’m his bodyguard,” I clarified, pointing at Jack.
We gave it a second to sink in.
Then Doc said, “Aren’t you a little short to be a bodyguard?”
“I’m taller than I look,” I said, just as Jack said, “She has a tall personality.”
Jack elbowed me and said, “Take him out in the yard and flip him.”
Doc frowned and shifted his eyes to Jack. “Can she?”
“Like you wouldn’t believe.”
“We were pretending to be a couple,” I went on, staying focused, “so I could stay near Jack and protect him.”
I don’t know what kind of reaction I was expecting … but what I got—from Connie at least—was not it.
“Well, that’s ridiculous,” Connie said. “You should be dating. You’re clearly in love with each other.”
“It was all pretend,” I said very gently.
But Connie turned to Jack like she didn’t believe that for a second. “Jack,” she said, “was it all pretend?”
Jack held her gaze for a second, and then, with a decisive nod, said, “It was all pretend.”
“Please,” Connie pooh-poohed, shaking her head.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “He was acting.”
But that just made her laugh. “He’s not that good an actor.”
“It was a fake relationship,” I said again.
“You’ve been sleeping together this whole time. Were you faking that?”
Jack looked down. “Hannah slept on the floor.”
This got her attention. “On the ceramic-tile floor?”
“I offered her the bed,” Jack said. “She wouldn’t take it.”
Now this, Connie was pissed about. She stood up and reached across the table to bat at Jack’s shoulder. “You let our Hannah sleep on that cold, hard floor? I raised you better than that! Be a gentleman!”
My heart fluttered a little at the words “our Hannah.”
“I was fine,” I said. “I’m tough.”
“You shouldn’t have to be,” Connie said, and for some reason the tenderness in her voice made my eyes sting.
I coughed. “The point is, we were trying to keep Jack—everyone—safe. Without worrying you.”
Now Hank, who had been menacingly quiet, had a question. “Safe from what?”
I looked over at Jack.
Jack took the reins. “A minor—almost nonexistent—stalker situation.”
“We didn’t want to take chances,” I said, “but we also didn’t want to create stress for anyone.”
“You had a stalker?” Hank asked.
“Have,” Jack said with a nod. “Just a minor one.”
“But rather than just tell anyone about it … you lied?” Hank said
“Well…” I said, trying to think of a way to spin it better. “Yes. But with … honorable intentions.”
“I don’t care if you lied,” Connie said. “I just want you to get married.”
Jack shook his head. “Mom, we’re not getting married. We’re not even together.”
“Bullshit,” Connie said, shocking the whole table. Then she offered Jack a deal. “Propose right now, and all is forgiven.”
But before Jack could respond to that, Hank had another question for us. “Why now?”
“Huh?”
“Why are you telling us now? Why not just wait until after Thanksgiving and go on your way, no questions asked?”
“Ah,” Jack said. “So … you see … the minor stalking situation recently became a little less minor.”
Hank tensed. “What does that mean?”
“It means the stalker—who’s always been very harmless, writing me love letters and knitting me sweaters—”
“That’s where the sweaters came from?” Connie asked.
Jack nodded.
“She’s very talented,” Connie said, with a nod of respect.
I decided to help out. “She’s recently ramped things up a bit.”
“How?” Hank asked, still bracing for the full news.
“Turns out,” I said, trying to make it fun, “someone snapped a photo of Jack and me when we were all at the hospital the other week, and, from the angle, it really kind of looked like we were kissing—which we most definitely were not—and now the whole internet thinks I’m Jack’s girlfriend.”
“I told you they were in love,” Connie said to Doc.
Doc patted her hand.
“Which wouldn’t matter too much,” I went on, “except that the Corgi Lady seems to have kind of—”
“Snapped,” Jack said.
I nodded. “And now she’s become a smidge more aggressive.”
“How?” Hank asked.
Jack and I looked at each other for a second, and then Jack took a breath and said, “She wants to murder Hannah.”
I nodded. “In a lot of creative ways.”
I was trying to make it at least a little funny—but Hank wasn’t going there.
“Jesus!” he said, standing so fast he knocked over his chair. He started pacing the kitchen. “You’ve got a murderous stalker on your tail?”
“We only found out this morning,” Jack said.
“She really has been very benign until now—” I started.
“Does she know where we are?” Hank said, stepping to peer out the window.
“No,” Jack said.
“Hank,” I said, trying to sound as professional as possible now. “You’re not in any danger at present.”
“That we know of,” Hank said.
“No threats have been made against you,” I said, “or any member of the family. The only person in danger here is me—and I can handle myself just fine.”
“What if she shoots at you and misses?”
“That’s why we’re removing me from this assignment and replacing me with a full team—both here and at Jack’s place in town. The agency I work for is the best there is. Once I’m gone, the danger will be minimal. There’s a car coming tonight to take me back to town.”
I hoped my tone was reassuring.
“I’m still struggling with the basics, here,” Hank said to Jack, the anger building in his voice. “You were worried enough to hire a bodyguard, but you didn’t see fit to tell us what was going on?”
“I didn’t want Mom to worry.”
But Hank’s voice just kept getting tighter. “Did it occur to you that it might’ve been useful for us to have this information?”
“The threat level was very low,” I said.
“It was an abundance of caution,” Jack said.
“You knew you were in danger,” Hank said, much louder now, “but you came here, anyway.”
“I wasn’t really in danger.”
“But now you are.”
“Even now—” I started.
But Hank wasn’t really interested in what I had to say right then. He turned to Jack with his eyes as dark and hard as obsidian. “Your selfishness really knows no limits.”
Jack stood up fast, so they were facing off. “Don’t call me selfish. You have no idea.”
Doc, Connie, and I stayed seated at our end of the table—out of the line of fire—as Jack and Hank faced off.
“There were a million reasons I didn’t want you coming down here,” Hank said then, his voice shifting up toward yelling, “starting with the fact that I’d be perfectly happy to never see you again. But I confess that you getting us all killed did not cross my mind.”
“I didn’t get anyone killed!” Jack shouted—so loud that the silence afterward felt as brittle as crystal.
“Well,” Hank said next, downshifting to a low tone that was somehow a hundred times more menacing. “I think there’s one dead person in this family who might disagree with that.”
At those words, Jack grabbed his dinner plate and smashed it to the floor so hard I half expected it to leave a crater. Then he shouted, “I didn’t kill Drew!”
“Really?” Hank shouted back, his voice saturated with bitterness. “You’re giving yourself a pass?” He held up fingers as he counted off: “You got in the car—drove too fast—hit the bridge going eighty-five—spun out on the black ice—crashed through the railing and plunged yourself and our baby brother into an icy cold river! Which part of that didn’t kill him?”
“The part”—Jack shouted—“where I wasn’t driving!”
The room fell quiet.
Jack blinked at the floor, like he couldn’t believe he’d actually said it.
Hank took a step back and shook his head, like he was trying to clear it out.
“Honey, you…” Connie said, looking up at Jack utterly bewildered.
“I wasn’t driving the car that night,” Jack said again, quieter. “Drew was driving.”
Hank’s voice was quiet now, too. “You’re saying…”
“I’m saying I didn’t realize Drew had been drinking until we were already on the road. And when I told him to pull over, he went faster. I’m saying that the whiskey bottle they found in the car was Drew’s.”
“But Drew didn’t drink anymore,” Doc said, squinting up like he couldn’t make it all fit. “Not since high school. He was in AA. It had been years.”
Jack let his eyes rest on the floor. “I guess he was having an off night.”
Connie’s face was now bright with tears. “Why didn’t you tell us, sweetheart?”
“Because,” Jack said, “Drew asked me not to.”
Everybody waited.
“When we crashed through the railing,” Jack said, “and hit the water, we floated at the surface for a minute. I was rolling down the windows and popping our seatbelts, but all Drew could do was shake his head and say, ‘Don’t tell Mom and Dad. Don’t tell Hank.’ He said it ten times—maybe twenty? Over and over. And I was just trying to get him focused and get him out, so I just kept saying, ‘I won’t, buddy. Just roll your window down.’ In the end, when the water came in, I pushed him out of the window. And when they found him drowned, all I could think was, That was his last request. That was the last thing he wanted. To not let them down.
“And so I honored it. It seemed like the least I could do for him—for all of us. To not make things worse. Even after the rumors started that I was the one who’d been drinking, I didn’t feel like I could break that promise. I was going to take it all to my grave, whatever it took. But I guess I couldn’t even do that much.”
He pushed out a sigh like he was disappointed in himself.
For a minute, we all just stared.
I thought about how, in his dream, it was always Jack who had to drown and not Drew. Maybe Jack was still trying to save him. Or, maybe he wanted to take his place.
He seemed like the kind of guy who would do that, if he could.
Then, in decisive steps, his ropers crunching over broken bits of Jack’s dinner plate, Hank walked straight over to his brother.
“That’s why you’re wearing his necklace?” Hank asked.
It was Drew’s necklace.
Jack nodded, and then he leaned in and pressed his forehead against Hank’s shoulder. Hank brought his arms up and crooked them into a hug.
And then I could see from Jack’s shoulders he was crying.
That’s when Doc helped Connie stand so they could go to the boys and put their arms around them.
And just as I was thinking I should probably back away quietly and let this little family have a moment to themselves … Connie reached out for my hand and pulled me into the group hug, too.
NEXT, HANK TOOK Jack outside to get some air. A long overdue brotherly moment.
It was only after they were gone that the rest of us remembered that I’d been right in the middle of saying goodbye.
After a beat, Connie turned to me and asked, “Does this whole pretend relationship thing mean you won’t be coming to Thanksgiving?” She was blotting her teary face with a napkin.
I shook my head. “I won’t.”
“Will you and Jack still see each other?”
“No. Not after I go.”
“Not even for fun?”
“I’m not very big on fun,” I said.
At that, Connie burst out with a laugh and said, “You’re the most fun Jack’s had in years.”
I thought of Robby telling me I was no fun, and I felt so grateful to Connie for contradicting him.
“You’re always welcome to come visit us,” Connie said then.
But I shook my head. “That’s not how it works,” I said, noting how tight my throat felt. “I really won’t see any of you again after today.”
Connie shook her head, like she just couldn’t make sense of that.
Poor Doc and Connie. They had a lot to take in.
And that’s when I decided to go ahead and say something real. “I know the timing’s very odd,” I said. “But since it’s my last chance to say it, I want you to know that this was a highly atypical assignment for me. I never, ever get attached to clients. But I got very attached to you.”
“To me?” Connie asked.
“To all of you. In different ways,” I said—and then I hadn’t planned to say this, but before I knew it, it was happening: “My mom died this year, and being with you has been very … meaningful for me.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Connie said, reaching for my hand and pressing it between hers.
“She wasn’t anything like you,” I found myself saying. “She was troubled. And difficult. And she always made things worse instead of better. You don’t remind me of her, but…” My throat felt thick, but I kept going. “I guess you remind me of the mom I always wished I had.”
Connie met my eyes. “I’m glad I could be that for you.”
“While I was here,” I went on, “I felt like I had a family.” I took a breath. “My childhood wasn’t…” I didn’t know what to say. “I guess I never knew what a loving family felt like. And even though…” I felt my voice starting to tremble. “Even though I won’t be able to be a part of this one in the future, I loved being with you. And I’m just so grateful to know that families like yours even exist.”
I took a deep breath and held it, trying to settle myself. But there was one more thing.
“I’ll miss you, is what I’m trying to say. Genuinely.”
“What about Jack?” Connie asked. “Will you miss him?”
I debated how much to confess. “I will,” I said. That seemed like plenty.
“He likes you. I can tell.”
But here we were, at the end. I wouldn’t even let myself wish that were true. Instead, I shook my head. “I think maybe,” I said, “he’s a much better actor than you think.”