Page 65 of To Have and to Hold

Jack and Perry were exactly where Levi said they would be, sitting in a small interrogation room and nursing lukewarm Styrofoam cups of coffee. As soon as I opened the door, Perry was up and squeezing the air out of my chest.

“Spencer,” she groaned into my suit. “Oh, my God, Spence.”

I held on, meeting Emme’s father’s stare over her head. Alone, I could handle the crashes. With people who cared about me, I waded into the deep.

“It’s so good to see you. Sit with us. Please,” Perry said. She gripped my hand and pulled me to the stainless steel table.

“If you have any…” Jack coughed and sipped at his coffee before trying again. “If you have any news.”

“Don’t do that, Jack, not now,” Perry cut in. “He’s here needing comfort same as us. Can’t you see the poor boy’s face?”

She wasn’t talking about the bruising. Perry’s perceptiveness was the tipping point, but I couldn’t burst with information that Knox could be zeroing in on Emme’s abductor right at this moment. The last I’d see of her father would be the blur of his white workshirt as he flew out of the room. I’d be at his heels, but what could be worse than being left behind in an investigation? Being told that Knox and the mission had failed.

“I trust Knox with Emme’s life,” I said calmly, though the drumbeats of my pulse exposed my secret knowledge. Knox was out there and these poor people were dressed in their Sunday best—Jack in a crumpled gray suit that was probably his only and which he most likely wore on the plane, and Perry in a long-sleeved royal blue dress and black stockings, pretending to enjoy coffee in a police precinct with no clue. “He’s gathering all the information he can and is the most detail-oriented guy I know. If there’s evidence, he sees it. He’s Emme’s best chance.”

“You saw?” Jack asked. “Where she was taken?”

I nodded.

“Do you want a coffee, honey? Your hands are like ice,” Perry said. Without me answering, she got up to pour a hot drink anyway. Her silver-blonde hair was pulled up in a loose bun, and she fiddled with it as she passed me. “I’ll be right back. You two talk a while.”

Busywork. Jack and I both watched her leave, his sieged-upon demeanor progressing further as soon as his wife was out of sight. He possessed red-rimmed, blood-green eyes. He had a shock of hair constantly falling forward and always pushed back, only to creep across the forehead again. His was ebony like Emme’s, but combed with white.

As soon as the door shut, Jack turned to me.

“Ask me what it is you want to ask, son,” he said.

My inquisitive fire re-ignited, but I maintained a mild calm. “There’s nothing I need to know. I’m here to keep you and Perry company and feel about as useless as you right now.”

Jack smiled, but it was wry. “I recognize a front when I see one. You remember when Emme brought you to Jackson for the first time?”

I didn’t blink at the unexpected turn of topic. “Sure. We’d been dating six months and your phone calls demanding to meet me were becoming constant. Sorry.”

I never knew what to say to parents. Often, foot went into mouth, especially with Jack Beauregard. My twenty-four-year-old self was back in this chair, facing him for the first time across the dinner table.

“I don’t deny it. No offense taken,” Jack said with a tired smile. “My girl was infatuated with you. Every time we spoke to her it was I’m going with Spencer to this, I’m taking him to that, he’s meeting me in a few hours. Emme was all about you, so I had to know all about you, too.” He leaned back, his eyes filming over. “If you ever choose to become a father, you’ll understand.”

I appreciated Jack’s choice of words. If I choose. Father was not a word I associated with myself, or in any aspect of my life. “You two were very welcoming.”

“Well, we had to be, to get your guard down enough to see what was really underneath.” Jack’s smile was more genuine this time. “As my wife always says, honey is better than vinegar.”

I never did know if Jack approved of Emme and me. When Emme and I left after the weekend (and sleeping in separate rooms) Jack wished me the best with a handshake, and for the next two years, that grip was the most I had to go on. Even after I proposed and we announced it to her parents, I got a handshake. “Did you discover what you’d hoped?”

Jack leaned back, his stare narrowing as he crossed his arms. “And then some. You are a different man, Spencer. One doesn’t have to look too hard to see the sharp edges you possess. Your eyes give it away first. Then your speech, never using filler words or small talk. You’ve had it hard. And I was worried that hardness would transfer to my daughter.”

I remained straight-lipped.

“I looked into you,” he said.

I focused on a smear of black on the wall behind him, but his blurred face in my periphery kept my attention.

“Used what small connections I had,” Jack continued. “It may not have been right to pry like that, but it’s my little girl. She’d never been so smitten. I had to know.”

“I’m not trying to hide my past,” I said.

“Nor should you be ashamed of it. But you understand how it might’ve been too much for Emme. She doesn’t know those kinds of things…she grew up happy, beloved, protected.”

There it was again. Happy. “You’re not giving her enough credit.”

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