Page 53 of Tracking Safety

Jenna held on, her heart aching with gratitude . . . and prayers that seeing them again was the right thing.

Luke stood back and watched the reunion. He wondered for a minute if he should ask everyone else to leave. If he should give Jenna and the kids some privacy. But his family was a part of this. They’d helped to pick up the slack for the past couple of years.

They deserved some answers also. So unless Jenna explicitly looked as if she wanted them to leave, he wouldn’t ask.

He’d told himself on the drive over that he’d manage this carefully. Told himself that he’d introduce Jenna to the kids, give them time to adjust, and he’d keep the emotional temperature somewhere manageable.

He’d had a whole approach worked out in his head.

Then Cora had run across the room, and every carefully constructed plan had dissolved on the spot.

He watched Jenna hold Cora and Jonah, tears rolling down her face. He watched Liam standing by cautiously—heartbreakingly so.

Luke looked away, his heart unable to process everything.

Instead, he stared at the fireplace. At the flames moving against the back of the grate. At the crayon Cora had dropped on the rug.

Unwillingly, his gaze went back to his children. He couldn’t seem to stop himself.

At one time in his life, he’d dreamed about this reunion. Now it was here.

But it wasn’t what he expected.

Emotion churned in his chest. His anger was still there, banked and quiet, waiting for its turn. Forgiveness hadn’t fully formed—and maybe it never would.

His feelings were more complicated than either of those things.

Liam’s face undid him most.

His son—his careful, watchful, too-serious eight-year-old—only stared at his mother.

Luke’s jaw tightened. He breathed through his nose, slow and even, as he tried to keep his emotions tightly controlled.

Someone squeezed his arm.

He looked up and saw his mother had appeared beside him, the dish towel still in her hand. Her eyes were on the huddle of her grandchildren and the woman at the center of them.

She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to.

He knew there was no judgment in her gaze. No I-told-you-so, no careful withholding of opinion. Just the steady, clear-eyed look of a woman who’d lived long enough to know that some things didn’t resolve cleanly.

Cora’s voice rose above the quiet of the room, animated and unstoppable, her words tumbling out like she’d been saving them up.

He caught fragments.

I lost another tooth, and Daddy taught me to braid hair, and I have a drawing I want to show you.

She pulled back just far enough to look at Jenna’s face while she talked, her hands already moving. Then she leaned back in again as if the distance had been too much.

Jenna was nodding. Crying. Nodding some more. Listening to every word as if she was memorizing the moment.

Liam still hadn’t moved closer.

Jonah had climbed partially into Jenna’s lap and studied her face. He reached up and touched his mom’s cheek. Jenna caught his hand, held it there, and closed her eyes again.

Luke pressed his lips together.

He’d spent two years being angry. But he wouldn’t begrudge his children this moment.