been worried about Jenny not letting him stay; he’d been worried she would. A weekend at his aunt’s was obviously the last thing he wanted. With a shake of her head, she looked down into the grocery sacks Anna had left. There was enough food to last a week. Evidently, Jenny could watch her nephew; she just couldn’t cook for him. Carrying the paper bags, she followed Cody into the house. When would she learn to stop being such a bleeding heart?
She found him in the family room, sprawled out on the couch. She paused, readjusted the grocery sacks. As she stared at her nephew, she felt a pang of remembrance. She knew what it was like to be the kid of two hardworking parents, though unlike Cody, Jenny’s dad had always been home at night. And when her parents had been gone, she’d spent the majority of the time here at the lakefront house with her grandparents. Those times had been magical. Working with Nana in the garden or trolling for trout with her grandfather on the calm waters of Hidden Lake. It didn’t matter how full the freezer was or how busy her grandfather was, he would always make time to take her out during the crisp early mornings.
Maybe that was what Cody needed: for Jenny to show him the magic of the lake. When he’d been younger, they had gotten along so well. But in the last few years—in the last year—their relationship had gone sideways. Now Jenny wondered why she’d been so quick to blame everything on Cody turning thirteen. As she continued to look at him, she realized she was just as much to blame, if not more so. Nine months ago, she’d lost more than Steven. In her grief, she’d found it easier to become detached from her family—from everything. Maybe this weekend was a chance for her to start to change some of that.
She took a step toward the kitchen to set the grocery sacks down, then changed her mind. Nothing like the present to start on her new path. Balancing the heavier of the sacks on her hip, she walked into the family room. “Cody?”
He didn’t look her way.
She tried again. A little louder. “Cody?”
That was when she noticed his iPod and the thin white wires leading to his ears. Even from here she could hear the music coming from his earphones.
Knowing it was the only way to get his attention, she stepped into his line of vision and motioned as best as she could for him to take out his earphones.
With obvious reluctance, he pulled one of the miniature earphones out and glared at her.
“Hey,” she said, with more enthusiasm than necessary. “I thought maybe you’d like to help me unload all these groceries your mom packed. Looks like she’s planning on you staying for a week,” she joked.
He didn’t find her funny. “I’m sure she’d leave me if she could.”
He tried to hide behind a sarcasm only a thirteen-year-old boy could master, but Jenny could hear the hurt. “I’m sure your mom would love to be with you. But it sounds like this new job—”
“Whatever.”
Talking about Anna would obviously get them nowhere right now, so Jenny dropped it. “Hey, what about these groceries?”
He glared at her before picking up the remote and surfing through the channels. “You do it. I told Mom I didn’t want ’em.”
The bags were getting heavy, but Jenny was bound and determined to make a connection with her nephew. “How about after I put this stuff away, we do something fun? There’s a whole cupboard full of board games from when your mom and uncle and I were kids.”
“Bored. Yeah, right.”
Something told Jenny he wasn’t using board in the same sense she was. “There’s Monopoly. Life. Scrabble. Or Clue. That used to be one of your mom’s favorites.”
“Get a clue.”
Jenny bit back a grin. Her nephew was turning into a real stand-up comedian.
“Are you kidding me?” He kept flipping through the channels, then looked at her. “Five channels. What am I supposed to do all weekend?” He turned back to the TV.
“If you don’t want to play a game, there’s a whole shelf full of books upstairs.”
Cody didn’t bother answering. He cranked up his music and continued to push the remote, as if somehow more television stations would magically appear.
She stared at him a moment longer, at a loss for how to reach him. Still thinking, she headed into the kitchen.