their mother, not about anything to do with Gage. Of course. Then, yesterday came back into focus. The fact that she had gone to see her mother. That Gage had gone with her. And then...
Well, she didn’t want to think about the rest.
“Yes,” she said.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes,” she said. “She lives in a trailer park, but I imagine you knew that, since you knew the address. Obviously she didn’t manage that money very well after she took off.”
“I know. I make sure that she doesn’t go hungry.”
“How? She didn’t seem like she wanted any help from me.”
“Oh, I get it to her in a variety of ways. But, she doesn’t know it’s from me.” He looked around, his expression stern. “Is he here?”
“The milkman?”
“It’s not 1950, so no, that isn’t what I meant. I meant West.”
“No,” she said, battling against the sharp slice of pain that went through her when she gave him that answer. She wondered how long it would be before it stopped hurting.
“Okay,” he said, clearly not quite sure what to do. She wondered if he had been intent on dragging Gage out of her bed and giving him a pummeling.
He turned as if he were going to go. “Jonathan,” she said, her voice stopping him in his tracks. “Can I ask you something?”
He turned back toward her. “Sure. It doesn’t mean I’ll answer it.”
She smiled. She could always count on Jonathan to be a little bit taciturn. “Have you ever wanted to rebuild things with Mom?”
“No,” he said. The word was so firm, so sure. It surprised her. Because she didn’t really know what she wanted from her mother. Hadn’t until she had gone to that house and realized that she didn’t need anything from the older woman, she only needed to change something in herself.
“Not at all?”
“Rebecca,” he said, his voice rough. “She left you when you needed her most. I’m never going to forgive her for that. I’m never going to want to rebuild that bridge. And if she tried I would be the first one to light it on fire so that she couldn’t cross it.”
The conviction in his voice, the vehemence, surprised her. She didn’t know why it should. Jonathan had always been there for her. And she had kept him at a distance. Sure, he wasn’t the most demonstrative person alive, but she had never made a move toward having it be any different.
“I... I thought...” Her throat started to close. “I just thought that... Jonathan, I have spent a long time being afraid that everyone in my life would leave me eventually because I was so much trouble. Because I needed too much.”
Her words were cut off as Jonathan pulled her into a hard, strong hug. She knew it came from somewhere deep inside of him. Knew that it cost him, because he never did things like that. Ever.
She pressed her face against his shirt, and she let the tears that had gone unshed in her sleep fall.
“If you are afraid of that, then I didn’t do a very good job with you,” he said.
She shook her head, sniffing as she did. Then she pulled away from him. “No,” she said, “it wasn’t you. You never gave me a reason to feel that way. You were there, day in and day out. It hurt me the way that she left. But I know that what she left you with... As unfair as it was for her to leave me, leaving you with all of that responsibility was even worse. She’s just lucky that you’re you. That in spite of the way she was, the way that your father was, you were willing to stay and take care of me.”
“It wasn’t even a hardship, Rebecca. I’d give up my life for you without even hesitating. It’s one reason it killed me to see you with West. I don’t understand how you could do that. I don’t understand how you can want to do anything but kill him slowly and painfully for what he put you through.”
“I don’t know if I can explain it,” she said, knowing even now that it wasn’t that easy. That it would take hours and recounting all of the things Gage had done since he’d come into her life, large and small, in order to make Jonathan even begin to understand. “I definitely wasn’t looking for it. But he’s the reason... He’s the reason that I realized that I’d been hiding. Afraid that people would leave me.