11

WHAT THE FUCK kind of freak show had he walked into? Jackson was angrier than he had been in a very long time as the plate of chicken and vegetables met the table in front of him.

Hope’s stepdad was not just an asshole. The guy was a sadist. Jackson had been around enough bullies in his younger life – having been tormented by most of them – to know a bully when he saw one, and Robert was a bully. A well-dressed, rich bully, but a bully all the same.

And her mother! Jesus Christ!

His mom had had her problems. God knew she had had her problems, but even when she was at her worst levels of addiction, she would never have let someone talk to him like Robert was talking to Hope.

It was like Hope’s mom was willing to just sit there and take whatever she had to – and for what? So she could eat off fine china and sit at a table that would have easily seated three dozen people in a house so ugly and gaudy that it could have made the cover of Tacky House magazine?

Even his house, as big as it was, was not like that monstrosity he currently sat in. To compound matters, he remembered all too clearly that decorator that Dawson had sent out to his house saying that there were two kind of rich people: those who thought expensive meant good taste, and those who knew better. It seemed her parents fell into the former category, because all the things that decorator had declared forbidden were on full display there in that house.

He knew Robert had grown up in some small town in another state and had made his own fortune, and he could respect that, but there was no way he could respect or even like a man who was a bully, and who was willing to bully the people in his own home.

Jackson had an almost unholy urge to slug the bastard right in his nose just to shut him up.

Robert said, “Really, I am appalled, and I mean appalled, every time someone asks me how you two are doing. I have to tell them all about how well Clara is doing and how proud I am of her. Then, when they realize I have not said a word about you and ask, I have to admit that you are still living a…you know, it is like you want to be poverty stricken, and all I can think is that you are doing this just to defy me and make your mother and I look bad in the bargain.”

Jackson’s jaw worked as anger began to spread. I am definitely going to punch this asshole in his stupid fat face, he thought as he stared at Robert with real loathing.

Robert didn’t notice that look Jackson was giving him, because he just leaned back in his chair and added, “Clara here, she’s doing so well, Hope. I just do not understand why you can’t seem to understand that the job you are doing is never going to make you a success.”

Clara said, “Dad…”

Robert waved off the warning in Clara’s voice. His face was intent, and Jackson could read malice in his words and an expression and that made him madder than ever.

Robert said, “I am just stating facts here. Hope is forever defying me and my wishes with her refusal to do what she was reared, and at my great expense, to do, which is excel. It seems like a waste of the very good education that I provided for her to keep on doing what she is doing. I considered your education, both of your educations, as an investment, and I just do not see where I am getting a good return on Hope’s.”

Jackson’s eyes went back to Hope’s mother. Clarissa sat there impassive, still not speaking. If she was on anyone’s side, he could not tell whose, but he could tell this was nothing new and that Clarissa was not about to speak up in Hope’s defense either.

What bothered him the most was the unresponsive look on Hope’s face. She was used to that treatment. So used to it that she didn’t even blink.

It hurt though. He could see it in the white knuckles of her hand, in the tightening of her full and lush lips. She was hurting, and she was angry.

Who could blame her?

Robert added, “I just don’t understand why you can’t be more like your sister, Hope.”

Clara protested, “Dad, you are not being fair. Finance is not what Hope likes or cares about. She wants to help people.”

Robert glared at Clara. It was obvious he did not like being defied, not even by Clara, who was obviously his golden child. “She is helping nobody. All she is doing is wasting her education, pursuing a subject that will never get her anywhere and will help nobody.”

“How much?” Jackson’s words cut across Robert’s. The steel in his voice finally shut the hateful jerk up.

Robert blinked at him for a few seconds, then asked, “I beg your pardon?”

“How much did her education cost you? Give me a number, and I will write you a check right now. That way you can shut the fuck up about how you feel about how she uses the education you so graciously provided.” The sarcasm dripping off Jackson’s words was made worse by the very real anger running right below that sarcasm.

Clara grinned but then she quickly looked down and away to hide that smile. Clarissa went pale. Hope gawked at him. Jackson smiled at her, but he was far from a smiling mood. He was pissed off so badly he would have gladly throttled Robert at that moment. In fact, his hands were clenching and unclenching as he considered doing just that for the sheer simple satisfaction of it all.

Robert fidgeted. “Look here–”

Jackson jabbed an imperious finger toward Robert. “No you look here. One of these days, you might just end up in the hospital. You might have a disease that you need a cure for. It’s people like Hope who keep people alive.” His eyes raked over Robert in a dismissive way. “Even if they deserve to live or not. I am betting that if you were a patient and in need of the treatment that Hope is sacrificing everything for, you would find it a much better investment.

“Now, I am not willing to wish such a terrible illness on you or anyone else, so instead I am offering to write you a check for the cost of the education Hope got thanks to your generosity. You know, since you seem to think that that was less something a good parent would do because it’s their duty and more what you had to do to in order to have bragging rights to whatever successes she had. Since you can’t seem to have any happiness in her success, which is real and valid, then I’ll just pay you off so you can quit being a jackass about the whole thing.”

Robert’s mouth sagged open. It was clear he was not used to being treated that way. It was also clear that he was nursing a grudge toward Hope, simply because she was not his biological daughter.

That was messed up, and it was wrong, but he would not be the first person to like their own kid more than their step kid. But the way he treated Hope was beyond the pale, and Jackson was sick of hearing it.

Robert said, “I want her to be successful.”

“You want her to be successful as how you define it. She is successful, and you are an idiot if you cannot see that.”

Hope’s mouth hung open. Jackson reached out a finger and casually lifted her jaw. Hope stared at him, her expression torn between shock and laughter.

Robert, however, was wholly furious. He threw the napkin in his lap onto the table. “How dare you speak to me that way in my own home?”

Jackson shot back. “How dare you bully and browbeat her when I am sitting right here? In fact, how dare you bully and browbeat women whether anyone is here to see it or not? I see you, and what I see is a big, fat obnoxious jerk who can’t quit crowing about his own success and who can’t stop expecting these two women here to keep glorifying him with theirs.”

Robert slammed his hands down on the table. He was white except for the two hectic red spots on his cheeks. “I pulled these two out of the literal gutter. Without me, they would be nothing.”

Jackson retorted, “Then you do not know Hope at all. She was born with those brains, and you had nothing to do with that. Nothing. She would have made it with or without you.”

Robert, clearly unused to having his bullying met with anger, snapped, “You cannot come into my home and behave this way!”

“Because, obviously, you are the only one allowed to speak around here. If I go by your playbook, then I can do whatever I like,” Jackson said calmly. “I’m a lot richer than you and far more successful, too. It seems to me that, in this house, if you can claim those things, you can say any hurtful uncool thing you want to say and nobody ever stops you from it, so why not speak my mind?”

Clara choked a bit. Jackson was pretty sure she was trying not to laugh. Hope was just sitting there, her face turned to his. Clarissa was pale and silent, Robert was red and furious.

“Last chance,” Jackson said in a lethal tone. “Either give me a number and take my check or shut your mouth about what she does for a living and all your investment into her future.”

“I want you out of my house.”

Robert’s words came as no shock. Jackson threw his napkin on the table, pushed his chair back, and stood. He held a hand out to Hope. She looked up at him, and then she stood, taking his hand.

Jackson said, “Thank you for the dinner.”

They walked toward the door. Hope opened the closet and got their jackets. Jackson helped her put hers on, feeling the fine trembling that had set in and the tension riding her neck and slim shoulders.

They walked out, and when they got to his car, he opened the door for her. Hope slid into the sleek little sports car, and he went around to the driver’s side and got in. He cranked the engine but did not put the car in reverse.

“I’m sorry if that was out of line.”

“Oh, it was way out of line.” Hope’s head turned so that she could meet his eyes. A smile lifted her lips into a wide grin. “It was also perfect. I wanted to clobber you, not going to lie, but I really appreciate that anyway. I have never seen him so speechless. Ever.”

Jackson’s hand found the gear shift. “I am guessing speechless is not something he is, typically.”

“No.”

The shortness of the word told him everything else. He backed out of the driveway slowly, then sent the car up the street. He said, “I’m sorry.”

Hope’s sigh lifted her shoulders and dropped them again. “Me too. I had hoped that with you there he might not be such a jerk. I sort of used you, and I am sorry because I dragged you into something so awful.”

He said, “Family can suck.”

She twisted her slender fingers together. A vertical slash appeared between her clear eyes. “Mine really sucks. Oh, on paper they all work out. But…well, you know. I don’t know why he is that way; he just is.”

“He’s an ass.” Jackson hooked a finger over the turn signal as he coasted to a light. “There’s that.”

Hope rubbed her fingers along that slash mark between her drawn-down eyebrows. “Yeah, that. That, and he has never forgiven my mom for having a husband before him, or me for being someone else’s kid.”

“I read that.” He had. He said, “If it makes you feel any better, nothing that happened in there was anywhere near as awful as what might happen in my folks’ house at any given time.”

She chuckled, but it lacked humor. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. They’re both clean now, but when they were both on dope, anything was likely to happen. I live in terror of the day they decide to get back on something. I sometimes think they actually might be, but with them it’s hard to tell. It’s not like they are not damn good at lying about it anyway.”

Her gasp was soft, and the hand she laid down on his knee sympathetic. “Shit. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be.” He really hoped she would not move her hand either. The feel of it, warm and alive, burned into his skin through the material of his slacks. “They’ve been clean for…um…six years, I think. Not bad, all things considered.”

“What were they on?”

“It would be a shorter list if I told you what they weren’t on.” He said the words lightly, but there was real bitterness still lodged below that. “They did whatever was easiest and cheapest to get. Crack, heroin, pills, and meth. You name it, they have smoked it, snorted it, popped it or shot it up in their veins.”

She spoke with feeling. “That had to be hard for you.”

“It was. The thing was, they were functional, unlike a lot of the parents in my neighborhood. They never lost me to social services. They never let the electricity get cut off. They never lost the house. They did it just enough to be junkies, but not enough to ever hit rock bottom. It was like being trapped above the last circle of hell, always knowing it could be so much worse, and wondering when the bottom would drop out.”

“You grew up here in the city right? You and Ashton grew up together?’

“Sort of. He was a foster kid, and there was a woman down the block who took on foster kids, her and her husband. Ashton stayed with them until he got sent off to juvie.”

Hope said, “It was that street fight you two got into that got him locked up, wasn’t it? You didn’t get arrested though?”

“I got arrested, but up until then, I had kept my nose clean. Don’t get me wrong, I was no saint; I was just smart enough not to get caught. The thing about my folks was that they were addicts who wanted everyone to think they weren’t, and so I learned how to do all the wrong things while pretending to everyone that I was doing all the right stuff. Ashton is so honest he can’t hide anything, so he got caught a lot.”

Hope leaned back into the plush leather seat and stretched her long legs a bit before saying, “I think you’re honest.”

That statement made his heart swell a little. “You do?”

“I do. You’ve never lied to me, anyway.”

He gave her face a quick look then said, “To be fair, I have never needed to.”

“Well, there is that.”

He squirmed slightly. “Okay, that was a pretty shitty thing to say.”

“I’d agree.” She took her hand off his knee, and said, “But even that was honest.”

On a whim, he took a left at the light. She asked, “Where are we going?”

“To my hood. My folks aren’t there anymore. When I made some decent money I moved them out. It’s pretty rough.”

She asked, “So why are we going?’

“Because there is something I want to show you.”

“Okay.” She didn’t ask what it was, and he was grateful for that. The roads were barely filled with cars that time of night, and so the drive went by a lot faster than it might have.

The old streets looked twice as gritty and rundown as they once had. The houses sagged, their chain link fences slumping toward the ground. The lots between, where houses were lost to foreclosure and neglect had stood, had all gone to weed and seed. The broken bottles and piles of cigarette butts on the curbs said the rest of the story.

Jackson asked, “Where did you live before your mom married the supreme douche?’

Hope said, “I don’t know. They pretty much erased every trace of her life before him. Talking about it was forbidden. All I ever knew was…well, what he just said. It seems he is allowed to say those things, but she was never allowed to talk about my dad. I know his name, of course, and I did a search on him a few years back. He was a guitar player in a blues band and an orphan, too. He was raised in foster care, and so there was nobody else to ask or talk to who might have known him.”

“The guys in his band?”

“They all used these weird stage names. It was part of their gimmick, I guess. If they are still around, I can’t find them.”

“I’m sorry. Nobody deserves that.”

“No.”

He said, “I get it now. Why you don’t want to be with a guy who only cares about money. I didn’t before. I thought it had something to do with you being raised with money, and so it not being important to you, but being raised in a house where it is used as a weapon and a yardstick of someone’s worth must have really turned you off on the idea of it.”

She blinked a few times. “You just put into words everything I never could. That was exactly how it was and still is. I was sitting there, wondering why I still go to those dinners every month when I know what they are going to be like, and part of me knows it is because I do love my mom. I mean, she’s my mom. But the other part of me knows that whatever she feels about me, she sold it off a long time ago. She sold my happiness off for those hideous marble floors and that housekeeper.”

“I have marble floors.”

She groaned, “No way.”

“Totally. But in my defense, I would not know marble floors from a hole in the ground. Also, I am pretty sure I am supposed to do something to keep them clean, but so far I haven’t done much more than buy a broom.”

Hope’s laughter filled the car. Jackson’s joined it as the car slid to a halt in front of a small house with dark windows and a bowed roof.

He said, “That is where I grew up.”

Hope peered past him. “It’s…”

“It was clean and warm, if not safe.” He looked at her. “I brought you here because I wanted to talk about my folks. I told you part of it, but not all of it.”

Her hand clasped his. “Go ahead.”

“Living with people who function despite addiction made me have to learn how to take care of myself real fast and early. I mean, they would be up all night, and then they would pop some magic pill that would get them through the day. Then, they would come home and do something else. They would take a pill to sleep and powder to wake up. They went to work every day, and there was always food in the house, but when people are tweaking – that means when they are high on some kind of amphetamine – they lose track of time.

“They might not eat for a few days. The drugs, you know. They did not feed me either because…well, you know. They were busy getting high. But there was food. I learned how to get it for myself. I learned how to take clothes tumbling in the dryer for the third day in a row out and fold it and put it away. I learned not to believe that anyone was ever going to do anything for me.”

“Jackson, I am so sorry.”

“It’s okay. I was not telling you that so you would be sorry. I have a point here. They were never affectionate, not unless they were sure the Earth was ending, and that happened a lot. You should have been around when the year 2000 hit. Or when they thought a major disaster that was going to kill off the Earth was headed our way.

“I learned that the only way people would love you was if they were afraid they were about to lose you. I was an asshole in every relationship I ever tried to have, because I wanted…well, I didn’t know how to have anything without some kind of crisis looming over us. That kind of drama sucks, and so nothing ever worked out.”

“Jackson, am I…I need to ask you something.”

He heard the trembling in her voice. “I’m not going anywhere.”

She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Jackson, do you know that I love – really love – what I do and that there might be a day when I actually do not have time to spend with you. If this goes to the clinical trial stage I hope for, then I will be working sixteen hour days and more. I don’t want you to feel like you have to be there, and I do not want to feel like we might lose each other because of what matters so much to me, but it is a real possibility, and this is probably the worst possible time to bring that up given what you just said, but there it is.”

Jackson felt his heart give off a powerful ache. He had always known those things, and he worried that one day she would not have that time for him. He said, “That is the whole reason I brought it up.”

“It is?”

“Yes. I do not want to lose you. I also do not ever want to be a guy who does not support you the whole way. More than anything else, I want to be the guy who is there for you. I want to be the guy who stands by you.”

“But there is more to it than that. You see, writing that program, knowing I was doing something that would impact someone’s life in such a major way made me feel good about myself in a way that nothing else ever has or could. I do not want to lose that feeling.”

She asked, “What are you saying?”

“I am saying that if the board refuses to give you the money, I will donate it from my own pocket. Not a loan, not an investment, but a donation earmarked solely for your research for the year.”

“You’re insane!” Her cry echoed around the car. “It’s a five-million dollar a year thing, Jackson! You’d be basically throwing it away.”

He took her chin in his hand and stared into her eyes. “Do you believe in your research? Do you honestly believe that you can do what you think you can do?”

“Yes.” Her voice was breathless, and tears stood up in her eyes. “I do. All the way down to my heart and soul I believe it, but it is one thing to use money raised for the purpose of research and entirely another to take your money and use it.”

“How so?”

“I cannot guarantee you a return of it. In fact, I can guarantee you will never see it again, and I know exactly how hard you worked for that money.”

“I can promise you that the only return that I need is to know I did something that mattered to someone, somewhere, even if it is just you.”

“No.”

What the hell? He was trying to give her what she really wanted and needed. He was trying to be supportive and let her know he would stand with her. So why was she being so stubborn?

Hope said, “Jackson, if you don’t mind, I’d like to just go home now.”

He put the car in drive without another word.