June lifts a single shoulder.
“Abigail, your turn is up. Next? Sariah?”
“Do you think she’s actually nice?” Sariah says to June. “Like, I always thought your mom was a total airhead from watching her show, but that was all fake. Your mom’s really cool. So is your dad’s girlfriend actually as nice in real life as she is on TV?”
“Your own Thanksgiving plans or we’re having a pop quiz, please,” I interrupt.
The kids all groan, but they quit peppering June with questions and start talking about things in town instead.
The parade coming up the day after Thanksgiving, which half of them will apparently be missing. Our football team is still in the playoffs, so everyone’s heading to that game before our weeklong Thanksgiving break. The tour of lights that’s normally out at Tony’s place will be hosted at an alternate ranch this year instead, and anyone still in town is definitely going to that.
When the bell rings, nobody has anything to gather because no one’s gotten anything out. I’m behind on grading, which will cut into my time with Maisey this week, but she has to sleep sometime.
And she’s helping friends on the PTA with side projects for all the holiday festivities coming up in Hell’s Bells.
I’ll get the grading done.
June’s the last person to leave my classroom, which is unusual.
She pauses at my desk, and for a second, I think she’s going to lose the nerve to say whatever it is she wants to say.
But she doesn’t. “I can handle that my dad’s dating again. Abigail wasn’t wrong. He can’t take care of himself. He never could.”
Warning bells are going off in my head.
I don’t like it, but I know these warning bells.
They’re hitting a spot inside me that I don’t like to remember and I don’t like to let other people see. Flint, take care of your father. I don’t feel good this week, and you know he can’t take care of himself.
“You gonna be okay with him for a week?” I ask her.
She rolls her eyes. “He’s my dad.”
“That’s the most nonanswer answer ever.”
Her brows knit together, and she scrunches her nose, then quickly schools her face into a blank expression.
Still picking at one of her fingernails, though.
“You’re not obligated to like your parents, June.”
“That’s a weird thing for you to say.”
I lean back and shrug at her. “I ran away from home when I was your age because my father was a prick, my mom struggled with depression, and I finally realized a sixteen-year-old shouldn’t be responsible for managing a household with people who didn’t even want him there.”
She blinks twice at me.
I keep talking like I don’t want to throw up.
Still isn’t something that’s easy to say out loud, but if I owe any kid the truth, it’s this one.
“You’re allowed to feel how you feel about things that are out of your control,” I tell her. “And picking your parents is always out of your control.”
“How do you know? How do you know there isn’t, like, this soul nursery in heaven or wherever, and you get to pick the parents you want?”
“If there is, you must’ve known something great’s coming. Wouldn’t have picked them otherwise, right?”
She stares at me like I’m an alien.
“Look, I get the Woe is me routine to get sympathy from your friends. I know you haven’t seen your dad in months. I know you’re probably excited in a lot of ways. But you know if you don’t want to go, your mom will throw down and take half the state with her to give you what you want, right?”
“How do you know that?”
Maisey’s voice rings somewhere down the hallway, cheerful as she tells a kid to take a cookie. I slide a glance at June as her lips flatline and then tip up in a reluctant smile.
“You’re right, I’m wrong,” I deadpan. “Your mother hates doing anything for you and is undoubtedly counting the hours until she doesn’t have to make excuses to be close to you anymore.”
It’s astonishing to me that teenagers have yet to develop a more advanced reaction than an eye roll.
“Hey, about soccer—”
“I don’t get to make it in the spring either?” she says.
“I am truly sorry that I didn’t find a way to get you more playing time this fall. You’re good, and you’re a good leader. I should’ve made more of an effort to rotate you in.”
I get the hairy eyeball of teenage doubt, followed by her reshuffling her backpack. “Thanks. I guess.”
“Enjoy your Thanksgiving, June,” I call as she heads for the door.
“You, too, Mr. Jackson.”
Huh.
That’s a win.
She sneaks out around the third-period students starting to filter in the door. I hear Maisey call her name, and I can’t stop myself from smiling.
June’s getting on a plane first thing in the morning, and once Maisey pulls herself together, she’s all mine.
For the next week.
I don’t know what it means long term that I’m head over heels for her. I don’t know how June will eventually react when Maisey decides it’s time to tell her, which, knowing Maisey, will be sooner rather than later.
I don’t know that I won’t end all this with a severely broken heart.
But I know without a doubt that it would be far more painful to not see Maisey this week than it would be to walk away and miss having her in my life, no matter how much it might hurt later.
Chapter 30
Maisey
This isn’t the first time I’ve put Junie on a plane solo, but it’s the first time I haven’t been able to walk with her through security and be with her until the minute she boards the plane.
She’s sixteen now.
Old enough to be treated as an adult by the airlines.
I, on the other hand, am not too old to sit in my truck in the parking lot and sob as I wait and watch for her plane to take off.
And yes, there are cookies involved.
So many, many cookies.
My phone rings as I’m shoving one more in my mouth, and I almost hit ignore until I realize it’s the prison.
“Haawoo?” I sob into the phone.
Cookie crumbs dribble out of my mouth and onto my lap.
Dammit.
Need to get the truck cleaned now, before Earl smells the snack and helps himself to my leftovers.
“Happy Thanksgiving to you, too,” my mother says dryly. “Did your warden also put you on laundry duty?”
“Junie—flying—Dean—saaaad.” I drag out the last word on another sob.
“Awww, sweet Maisey. Honey. It’ll be okay. What you need to do is go sow your wild oats while she’s gone, and then you’ll forget it’s even Thanksgiving. While your mother is in prison and you get to enjoy pumpkin pie. Do you have my recipe? You know no one else’s recipe comes close.”
I sniffle a few times. Take a deep breath. Tell myself I’m okay. Junie will be back soon, she’s not leaving me for Dean forever, and I do have some fantastic plans for this week. “You make the recipe on the side of the pumpkin can.”
“But I put magic in it.”