His mom cracked open her eyes, cutting short his runaway thoughts, and gave him a soft smile when she saw him standing there. “Jason.”

“Hey, Mom.” His mother had always called him by his given name, insisting that she hadn’t gone through the trouble of picking out a name, only for it to be shortened.

“Your father told me you weren’t coming.”

He rolled his eyes. “Like I would miss the chance to drink free coffee and stare at hot nurses.”

She gave a little laugh. “Thank you.”

“For what?” He sat down next to her and captured her small hand in his.

“For not coming in here with the doom and gloom face. Your brother and sister are looking at me like I’m going to be playing cards with St. Peter next week. And don’t even get me started on how your father is acting.”

He gave her hand a squeeze. “They just don’t realize how tough you are. I know you’re not going anywhere. Anyone who can live with Dad this long can handle way worse than some lame heart attack.”

“You realize I’m never going to be allowed back in this hospital after your father is finished with them, right?”

“Guess that means you better stay healthy from now on, then.”

“Ugh, I’ll probably have to give up bacon. Not sure if that’s a life worth living.” She adjusted herself to sit up a bit more. “But enough about all this. I’m tired of talking about it. Tell me what’s going on with you. You haven’t been by in a long time.”

He frowned, guilt tugging at him. “I’m sorry. I’ve just been busy with the store. I landed a big contract and have been working on that.”

“Oh? Is that what’s got that light back in your eyes?” She nodded in his direction. “You look happier than you have in a while.”

He shrugged. “I guess so. It could mean a lot of money for the store.”

“Hmm.” Her eyes narrowed, giving him that look that mothers had the patent on. “If money made you that happy, you never would’ve left your father’s business. What aren’t you telling me?”

He sighed, not sure if he should bring up Evan when his mom was in a fragile state. It was good news but he didn’t want it to stir up any of the negative memories of when Evan left.

“Spill it, Jason.”

He leaned back in his chair. “You missed your calling as a police interrogator.”

Her perfectly manicured brow arched.

“I saw Evangeline.”

He didn’t think it was possible for his mom to pale any further, but she did. She pulled her hand from his and brought it to her chest. “You found her? Is she—”

“She’s great, Mom. Beautiful, successful, engaged.” He almost choked on that last descriptor, but managed to get it out. “You wouldn’t even recognize her. I didn’t at first.”

She blinked hard, tears lining her bottom lids. Her voice was barely a whisper. “Thank you, Lord. I thought—”

“I know. Me, too.” He grabbed one of the paper cups from the side table and poured her a glass of water, worried that he’d stressed her too much with the news. “Here.”

She took the cup from him, her hand shaking a bit, and sipped. “How did you find her?”

Jace explained how he’d stumbled upon Evan in South Padre, but his mom seemed to only be listening with half an ear. He finished the story, and the room filled with the quiet beeping of the machines. He shifted in his chair and cleared his throat. “Maybe after you’re back on your feet I can bring her by so you can see how well she’s doing for yourself.”

She stared down at her water for a while longer, then finally spoke. “I doubt she’d want to see me.”

He frowned and leaned forward, bracing his forearms on his knees. “Why not? You two always got along.”

His mom looked toward the room’s only window, her whole body seeming to sag deeper into the sheets. “Because she has no reason to want to see me. I was just another person who failed her in her life. I knew how much support she needed when we signed up to have her in our home. But when she wouldn’t open up around me, I felt useless and fell back to working my crazy hours. I gave up.”

“She wasn’t exactly an easy shell to crack.”

“You managed to get by her defenses.” A humorless smile touched her lips. “That was always your gift. Wyatt the brilliant mind, Leila my artist, and you the big heart. You have a way of caring for people that makes it impossible for them to not let you in and love you.”

He smirked. “I think I got the short end of the gene pool on that one, Ma. And that superpower definitely didn’t work on Diana.”

She turned to him, her lips pressed into a thin line. “Don’t say that. Diana was a spoiled waste of space. And you think your brother or sister wouldn’t kill to have a little bit of your charisma? You have friends like Reid and Andre who would literally take a bullet for you. You have every woman you meet wanting to be part of your orbit. People are drawn to your kind spirit.”

Jace almost said that the woman thing wasn’t because of his spirit, but remembered he was talking to his mother. “I think they may have doped you up a bit too much there, Ma. You’re getting sappy on me.”

“All I’m saying is that when none of us could get through to Evangeline, you got her to let her guard down, to smile. I thought it was a good thing for both of you. You were showing your father and I you were capable of being responsible, and Evangeline had someone to relate to.” She shook her head and looked down at her hands. “But as time went on, I knew I’d made a mistake. I saw how you two began to look at each other. I sensed the shift, and I didn’t do anything about it.”

He sighed. “Mom, stop. What happened wasn’t your fault. I was old enough to know better. I should’ve had the strength to stay away.”

His mom didn’t say anything for a few seconds and when she lifted her head to face him again, her eyes were full of regret. “You were all she had holding herself together. When we kicked you out that night, the glimmer of light behind her eyes went out. She begged your father to let you stay, that she could go live somewhere else for a while. But your father told her she shouldn’t waste time being a martyr for you, that you’d have another girl in your bed by the next night, that she didn’t mean anything to you.”

Jace sucked in a breath. “What?”

She swiped at the moisture on her cheek. “I should’ve stepped in and stopped him. Or at least stayed up with her that night and talked to her more. You’d made a huge mistake, but I knew you honestly cared for her.”

Jace put his head in his hands, his heart breaking for Evan all over again. He’d tried to sneak back into her room that night, apologize for the things he’d said, but she’d refused to open the window for him. Now he knew why.

“In the morning, there was a note tucked into my coffee mug. She told me she was sorry and for me not to be angry with you. She said she’d loved you and had wanted it to happen, but realized afterward that she’d made a mistake. She pleaded for me not to let your father kick you out for good—that you didn’t deserve to lose your family, not over someone worthless like her.”

His gut twisted. All those things he’d said to her that night and she’d still defended him. “Why didn’t you ever tell me about the note?”

She took a deep breath, and set the cup down, the beeping on her heart monitor ticking up a bit. “Because it was a suicide note, honey.”

Jace’s breakfast threatened to come up. He gripped the arms of his chair.

“I didn’t tell you because I couldn’t let you bear that on your conscience if she had gone through with it.” She shook her head. “You made a bad decision, but Evangeline was a fragile soul. That night was simply the tipping point. We all could’ve handled things differently.”

“So all this time, you thought she was . . .”

“Yes. And I’ve never forgiven myself for what happened. It was my negligence that started that ball rolling.”

Yeah, maybe she had gotten the ball rolling but his stupidity and his father’s hateful words had dropkicked that ball over the edge. His jaw clenched, imagining how Evan must’ve felt when his dad had told those lies about him. “She ran away thinking I’d used her. That everything between us had been a lie.”

“Well, hadn’t it been?” said a voice from the doorway.

Jace jerked his attention to the door to find his dad leaning against the jamb, newspaper tucked under his arm. Apparently he’d been standing there long enough to follow the conversation.

“Don’t think I didn’t know what you were doing back then—the kind of crowd you were hanging out with, the types of parties you were going to,” he said, stepping inside the room. “You were cycling through women like a chain smoker goes through Marlboros. Evangeline wasn’t anything to you except another conquest. She was just so desperate for someone in her life to love her that she read what she wanted to in the situation. I was the only one who had the guts to tell that poor girl the truth.”

Jace had spent a lot of his life angry with his dad, but as he stood across from him right then, he realized that the anger had finally morphed into hate. “She could’ve killed herself.”

“And whose fault would that have been?” he asked, his voice as cool as the gray of his eyes. “Whatever that girl has been through since she walked out our door—and I guarantee you the street wasn’t kind to a kid like her—has been on you, son. Your fault. Because no matter what we’ve tried with you, you’ve always managed to be a fuckup.”

His mother gasped. “Bill! Stop it.”

His father’s words sliced through Jace like a jagged hunting knife, skinning him until everything inside him felt bloodied and raw. He couldn’t even form the words to respond.

His father made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat as he headed toward his mother’s bed. He tossed the newspaper onto the rolling table, knocking over his mother’s empty cup. “I got you your paper, Sherry. Seems our son is now set on humiliating us in front of the whole damn city.”

Jace’s eye caught one of the headlines on the page his dad had folded: Councilman Speaks Out Against Suggestive Ads by Local Sex Shop. A picture of both their local councilman and Jace’s store were included.

His father righted his mother’s cup and poured a glass of water like he hadn’t just ripped his son to shreds. He took a swig of the water, his back to Jace. “I thought if I was hard enough on you I could make you into a man, but all you continue to be is an embarrassment to this family. I’m ashamed to call you my son.”

His mother’s eyes were wide as she looked between the two of them. “Bill, take a breath. Let’s calm down.”

“No, don’t bother. Let me relieve you of your hardship, Bill,” Jace said, finally regaining his voice. “Because you don’t have to call me anything from now on. For all I care, you can tell people you’re the father of two.”

“Jason, wait,” his mother pleaded.

Jace stepped around the other side of her bed and leaned down to kiss her cheek. “I love you, Ma. I’ll check on you later, but I can’t be around him anymore. I’m done.”

NINETEEN

“He’s still not answering?” Evan asked, nervously swirling her spoon in the soup Andre had insisted she eat when she’d woken up from her nap.

Andre tossed the cell phone onto the dining room table and leaned against the wall. “No. I called his sister, and she said he left the hospital over an hour ago after he had some blowout with their dad. Apparently the two have vowed to never speak to each other again.”