“I’m so sorry,” I breathe out, a knot clogging my airways.
“Anyway, no one knew who my dad was besides my mama, but people around here guessed it was this young man, Jimmy, who walked with a limp and worked at the paper mill. If you believe the rumors, he left town soon after my mama started showing.”
I put a hand to my heart to ease the ache there.
“So, anyway,” he continues, “whenever my grandparents would bring me to town, the gossip would start, and they’d all whisper, ‘That’s Peg-leg Jimmy’s boy.’ My grandparents never corrected them, and over time, the boy part was dropped, and it became ‘That’s Peg-leg Jimmy!’ And now here I am.” He throws his arms in the air. “Peg-leg fucking Jimmy.” He laughs once. “Such a stupid way to earn a nickname.”
Shaking my head, I ask, “Do you mind being called Peg-leg Jimmy?”
“Of course, but what am I going to do?” He heaves out a sigh. “I think the worst part is that it’s not the name my mama gave me. And it would be real nice if people around here respected that. Respected her.”
I can’t help but frown. “I’m sorry you and your family went through that.”
“It ain’t so bad,” he says, shrugging. “I’m happy. Healthy. Get to have a pretty girl in my studio to keep me company.”
“I love coming here,” I admit.
“Good to know.”
“And thank you for the compliment, Paul,” I say, using the name his mama gave him. “You sly dog.”
He chuckles, moving to turn up the stereo. Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space” plays through the air, and I smile, watching him pretend to hit drums in the air. “Are you a Swiftie?” I shout over the music, and Paul laughs.
“I like the melodies in this song,” he replies.
“Sure.” And then I realize, as I watch him, that even though he seems happy, he’s living the exact life I tried so hard to run from. To hide from. Being judged and ostracized felt like such a monumental burden—a burden I fought so hard to escape.
And in the end… I don’t know if I ever did.
50
Jamie
“Why do you think he did it?” Maggie asks, sitting behind the wheel of the company truck.
I bring my feet up to sit cross-legged and stare out the windshield. “I don’t know.”
“Do you think it was like… like he was so overwhelmed by the instant grief of realizing that, without a doubt, your mom was gone forever that he just… wanted to be with her in the afterlife or something?”
I shrug again. “I have no idea.” And it’s not as if I haven’t thought about it. I’ve probably lost months’ worth of sleep over it. For a long time, I blamed myself for his death, too, because if Maggie’s assumptions are accurate—which I’ve often thought myself—then I was the reason she left him. I pushed her, begged her to where she probably felt like she had no other choice, and it was my fault that they could no longer be together.
Or, at least, that’s what the old me would believe.
I’m trying to lose those thoughts, and I’m doing better, but I’ve also come to accept that I’m still a work in progress… and that’s okay.
It’s been two months since everything came out, and it’s taken me that long to work up the courage to tell Mags the whole story—from the moment Tammy and Joseph walked into the diner until… well… now. Because, in a way, I still feel like this chapter in my life is unfinished. And I know when it will end—when I feel like I can finally face Tammy without feeling a certain way. It still hasn’t happened, obviously, and I’m not sure when it will. But that’s the good thing about being in control of your life—you get to make the decisions. And I’ve decided that I don’t need a deadline because, according to my therapist, the most important thing is that I heal, and I overcome this—whatever this is.
“No offense, Jamie,” Maggie says, “but their relationship seemed toxic as hell.”
“No shit,” I almost laugh. I’m pretty sure that if I hadn’t met Holden as young as I did, I’d be repulsed by the concept of love. But he was there, guiding me, shining light on all the possibilities love had to offer.
“God,” she groans, running a hand through her hair. “After all of that shit, how the fuck are you so stable?”
“Hundreds of hours of therapy,” I deadpan, watching the pedestrians moving around the sidewalk. We’re parked at a strip mall in Justice, waiting to meet one of their clients to pick up a check.
“How is therapy going?” she asks. “Are you still doing that weekly video call?”
I nod, turning to her. “Yeah. It’s been helpful, but I still like going back once a month when I visit Gina and doing it in person. Holden and I do a session together when we’re there.”
“You do?” she asks, eyebrows raised.
Another nod. “I think it helps him more than it helps me.” I pause a beat. “You know what I find really helpful?”
“What’s that?”
“Pottery and hanging out in Paul’s studio. It’s kind of therapeutic.”
“That’s not a surprise,” Maggie says.
I raise my eyebrows in question.
“That you find art therapeutic…” she clarifies. “I mean, drawing helped you when you were little, so…”
“That’s true.”
“Is it a man or a woman—your therapist?”
“Woman.”
“Hmm.” She taps her fingers on the steering wheel. “I thought about studying psychology.”
“Before you got your applied mathematics degree?”
“No, I mean, as well as. Like, I could go back now and do it.”
I smile over at her. “I think you’d make an amazing therapist.”
“You think so?”
“I know so.”
“Hmm.”
For a moment, we sit in comfortable silence while she stares out the windshield, and I stare at her. I never really believed in God, or Buddha, or any form of a higher power. I guess I always thought that if any of those were real, then it was pretty shitty He or She or They created something as evil as Beaker. But lately… I don’t know. It’s hard to deny an ethereal being when I’ve been sent so many guardian angels in my life. Gina was the first, then Zeke, Esme… and now Maggie. “Can I ask you something personal, and you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
“Of course,” she almost sings. “There’s no such thing as personal between us.”
“Do you and Big H want children?” I know that it’s considered rude to ask people this, but Maggie’s right—there is no such thing as personal between us. We share everything. Almost too much sometimes.
“We have children,” she quips. “We have you and Holden.”
I exaggerate my eye-roll. “You know what I mean.”
After a moment, she answers, “Yes, and no.”
I watch her, clearly confused.
“Actually, we’ve been talking about opening up our home to foster kids. Maybe even adopting a couple down the road.”