Chapter 124
Chapter 117: Harrassement
JENNIFER POV
I went still again. This was different from the last one. He had mentioned Nick, her son, who had said horrible things that SEdona told me in fragments, late at night when she couldn’t sleep after going through a session and her whole body was hurting her.
Sedona who had used the cover of night to say the things that he had said to her, about wanting a different mother and now, Nick who apparently told his father to tell his mum that he did not mean
I looked at Logan Hayes, this man who was my daughter’s husband, who had been given
something I hadn’t been given, years of Sedona, Nick and a life in Chicago while we’d been in
Seattle not knowing it existed-and I felt the complicated anger of a woman who was angry at him
and also understood, because forty years of marriage had given me an insight in understanding how people failed the ones they loved, most of all.
I wasn’t forgiving him, not yet and it was not even my place, but I could understand it in a general
way.
“She knows that Nick loves her,” I said, more quietly. “Whatever he said, she knows. She’s his
mother. She’s always known p>
“But she needs to hear it from me,” he said. “She needs to know that I know-that I understand what she was carrying and I wasn’t-I was absent in all the ways that mattered, and I need her to
know that I see it now p>
“Mr. Hayes.” I put the pear in my basket, gently, giving myself a moment. “I hear what you’re saying. I understand that you’re in pain and that you have finally realized something about your marriage
and you are looking for where to put it to avoid the guilt building up in you “But my daughter is in
the middle of fighting for her life. She is twenty minutes from here in a hospital bed, and every unit
of energy she has is going toward getting better. She cannot afford to spend that energy on-“I
stopped. “On managing someone else’s need for resolution p>
He looked at me. Something cracked at the edges of his composure, not dramatically, just a small fixture, that he quickly hid away.
“I’m not asking her to manage anything,” he said. “I’m asking for ten minutes. That’s all p>
“It would not be ten minutes,” I said. “You know that. You’re an intelligent man-you know that there
is no version of that conversation that is ten minutes. That conversation would cost her
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something, and she cannot afford the cost right now.” I held his gaze.
+25 Points
“When she’s better-when she’s out of treatment and she’s had time to find her footing-she will decide what contact she wants. With you, with Nick, with all of it. That decision is hers to make at the time of her choosing, I will suggest that you go back to Chicago with your son and wait for her on her terms p>
“She might not-” He stopped.
“She might not make the decision you want,” I said. “Yes. That’s a possibility you have to live with p>
He looked at the floor, at the grocery store tiles, as he processed what I had said and what he hadn’t been able to fully prepare for regardless.
“I’ve been in Seattle for days,” he said, to the floor. “I don’t know what else to do. I can’t go back to Chicago without-I can’t just leave p>
“You can,” I said. “You can go back to Chicago and look after your son, who needs his father
present and paying attention. You can go back and do the work of being the parent Nick needs right now. That’s what you can do.” I paused. “That’s what Sedona asked for. Through Cameron. That you look after Nick p>
He looked up at me.
“She asked that specifically?” His voice was different now-the raw version, without the rehearsal.
“She did,” I said. “Whatever else she’s decided about you and your marriage, she’s still his mother.
She’s still thinking about what he needs p>
He was quiet for a long moment.
And then his hand-I don’t think he meant to do it-reached out and closed around my hand. Not aggressively. Not with pressure. With the desperation of someone who needed something to hold onto while they received something difficult, the way people held things in hospitals, the way Parker held my hand in the waiting room when the news was coming and we didn’t know yet which
kind it was.
I looked at his hand on mine.
I heard footsteps. Parker appeared at the end of the aisle.
His eyes went to my face first. Then to the man beside me. Then to the hand on mine.
He crossed the aisle.
He didn’t hurry. That was the thing about Parker-he’d never hurried toward conflict, he walked at the pace he wanted and wasn’t concerned about the interval, and the effect of it was that the
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arrival felt inevitable rather than reactive.
He came to stand beside me.
+25 Pointé
He didn’t touch me-didn’t put his arm around me or take my hand back. He simply stood beside
me, which was enough.
He looked at Logan Hayes with the expression he used when he had made a decision and was
communicating it before he spoke.
Logan Hayes released my hand.
“I’m sorry,” he said immediately, and the horror on his face was genuine. “I didn’t mean to-I wasn’t
-“He stepped back. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Mrs. Preston. I don’t know why I p>
“Who is this?” Parker asked. His voice was the quiet version, the version that was more
authoritative than the loud one precisely because it didn’t need to be loud.
“Logan Hayes,” I said.
A pause in which Parker understood. I watched him understand what was happening here as the dots connected together in his head.
“Mr. Hayes,” Parker said.
Logan looked at him.
“Mr. Preston,” he said, waiting to see what he would say in this situation.
“You’re going to leave now,” Parker said. It was neither a question nor a request. But the fact of
something that was about to become true.
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