Page 104 of Merging Wright

“Baby,” I whisper, blocking her one more time. But when my hands come to her shoulders, she lifts her arms to push my touch off her.

“That’s enough,” Myles states, reminding me once more he’s present, and when I turn on him, my wife brushes past me, rushing out the door.

49

Playlist: “Memory I Don’t Mess With” – Lee Brice

[Mach]

Jane has completely escaped me. I don’t know how she got to Myles’s office, but she hasn’t returned to Ma’s or the town as I searched for her there. When I finally circle back to Ma’s, she’s really gone.

“Her sister took her to Charleston.” Ma stares at me. “What happened?” The softening in her question, along with the unspoken censure, suggests Ma thinks I did something.

Old defense mechanisms react. “Why is this my fault?”

Ma chuckles. “Because you love hard, Mach, and you smother.”

I stare at my mother as we stand inside the dining room. My hands rest on the back of a dining chair while she watches me from the opposite side of the table.

Ma breaks first and shakes her head. “You act first and think second.” The narrowing of Ma’s eyes says she knows I’ve done it again.

Lowering my gaze, I stare at the dining room table, worn and scuffed from years of use. “I offered Jane a partnership stake in Impact in exchange for her to pretend to be my wife.”

“Mach,” Ma sorrowfully mutters. A long pause passes between us. “And she’s upset because you broke a promise.”

“I shouldn’t have offered it in the first place.” A partnership wasn’t something I could give her. When I reflect on it, I’m not certain I have anything to offer Jane.

“So, you lied to her.”

My head snaps up. “I didn’t lie.”

“You didn’t tell the truth.”

“I didn’t lie,” I repeat defensively, like the teenager I once was, standing in this room facing off with Fischer about something inconsequential now.

I didn’t steal your car. I borrowed it.

I wasn’t breaking into your fridge. I was looking for food.

“Is the partnership the real issue?” Ma brings me back to the present.

“That’s why she left.” Is she coming back? She said she’s returning to Chicago, and maybe it’s for the best. Tucker and I are struggling to run a company with each of us taking time away from the office and leaving a newer account executive in charge of the place.

“It’s not about a business partnership, Mach. She’s your acushla.” She stares at me, clutching clasped hands to her chest, like I should understand, but I don’t.

“Ma, enough with the heartbeat crap.” But just thinking of Jane leaving me behind has my heart racing, missing her already.

This was Tracy all over again.

Everything slams into me at once. The fight we had. Her stating she wasn’t going with me. Despite being my wife, she wasn’t leaving Wrightwood for Chicago. She wanted me to go to graduate school without her and then return to this town, raise a family here. I’d been pushing off the family idea, hoping to be established and financially set up in a major city first.

Then she died.

Pregnant, which Myles knew, because Myles was in the truck with her.

Tracy was with Myles.

Jane went to Myles as well.