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“Good night, Amanda.”
“Really? That’s it? You’re not going to try to argue that?”
Of course I wasn’t. She was setting up a trap I didn’t want to mess with at the moment. She was trying to force some kind of reaction out of me, but I had nothing to give her. I’d keep my irritation to myself, because the truth was, I was nothing like my father. I never allowed my anger to overtake me.
She hopped out of the truck without a word and hurried into the apartment building.
A sigh rolled through me as I turned the radio back to the rock station.
When I pulled up to my family’s property—over one hundred acres of land that had been pretty much unkempt for years—I released a sigh of relief. I could’ve worked on the landscaping, but whenever I offered, Dad made sure to tell me not to touch shit until he was dead and gone. He said once he died, it would all be mine, and I already knew what I wanted to do with it. Mom had dreams way back when about what she wanted the lot to look like. I was going to do my best to make her vision become a reality.
I didn’t believe in angels, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a possibility they were real. If they were, I knew my mother would be an angel, and if she was watching over me, I hoped making her dream come to life would make her proud.
Just as I did every week, I called my brother that night to update him on Dad’s condition.
Derek lived up in Chicago and had been saying—for the past fourteen years—he was going to get back to visit. It turned out I was always the one to make the yearly trip up north to see him.
As we talked that night, I could tell he wasn’t upset by the news of Dad’s deteriorating health. “Well, maybe it’s time for you to step back completely. Let’s be honest, Jax, you’ve done more for that man than he deserves. You don’t have to keep being a parent to a guy who didn’t even parent you correctly.”
I sat down in Dad’s favorite recliner and sighed. “Easier said than done.”
“I’m serious, Jax. You’ve done enough.”
I didn’t respond because after the accident with Mom all those years ago, I didn’t feel as if I’d ever do enough to make up for what had gone down.
“I have a lot of karma to clean up, Der. The least I can do is look after him in his final days.”
He sighed through the phone, and I envisioned him pushing his hands through wavy hair that matched mine. “If this is about the accident—”
“It’s not,” I lied. Of course it was a lie.
Everything about my life was a result of the accident from years before. Every choice I’d made to push people away was because of the mistakes of my past.
“Jax.” I could hear Derek’s pain for me through the phone. “What happened was not your fault. You can’t hold that shit on your soul forever. Believe me when I say this…it wasn’t your fucking fault.”
He told me that every time we talked.
I never believed him.
After we ended the call, I headed to bed and allowed the darkness of the night to rock me to sleep again.
6
Kennedy
If you gave a Kennedy a muffin, you’ll probably pry to learn some facts.
That seemed to be the motto of the people in Havenbarrow.
I’d awakened to more neighborly folks showing up with goodies to welcome me to town. The number of times they handed me food while trying to peer into my home was unnerving. What was even more concerning was how I’d say something to one visitor, and by the time the next one came through, they were already caught up on my whole life story.
It turned out news spread through Havenbarrow like wildfire, and when the stories spread, they somehow became a little worse than when they started. It was as if we were playing telephone in elementary school. Currently, I was an unemployed single female, squatting at my sister’s property without her knowledge.
I’d never truly considered myself a city girl until that moment right there. Back where I came from, no one cared who you were, and the only gift they were offering was a hand pressed to their horn if you waited two seconds too long after a red light switched to green.
The one saving grace for the small town other than my not-so-nosy neighbors the Jeffersons?
My other lovely neighbor, Joy Jones.
Joy was quite the character to take in. That morning when the sun came up, she walked outside on her front porch and sat down in her rocking chair with a smile on her face and a large cup of coffee in hand. A few of my nosy visitors told me it was a daily routine for her.
