Page 132 of Just Like That

Tears streamed down his face, and it took everything in me to not fall apart.

“Does that mean I get to stay?” He sobbed and I pulled him into me. I hadn’t realized how much Teddy was holding inside. All he wanted was to be loved and accepted.

He didn’t realize that loving him was the easy part.

“Of course. Yes. You are always welcome here. You belong with us.” I rubbed his back and knew I needed every ounce of strength to get through the next part.

I cleared my throat. “But there’s something else.” He looked at me with such hope and love that it nearly killed me. “We got the results back.” My chin wobbled. “Turns out ... I’m not actually your dad, but your half brother.”

Teddy’s intensity grew as he let my words fall over him.

“We have the same dad, which I guess is why we are so alike sometimes. But ... if it’s okay with you, I would still like to take care of you. I want you and Hazel to live with me and for you to live here in Michigan. What do you think about that?”

Teddy wiped away a tear, leaving behind a streak of dirt. “Can I still call you Dad?”

My heart fractured as I pulled him into my chest again. “You can call me whatever you want to.”

“Then okay.” He looked around the meadow. “I do think Mom would like it here too.”

I stood and held out my hand to him. “Me too. I love you, kid.”

“I love you too, Dad.”

“Okay.” I squeezed his hand and sucked in a lungful of cool September air. “Let’s go find Hazel and tell her the good news.”

FORTY-FOUR

JP

The room felt too quiet,too still, considering everything that had happened.

Aunt Bug’s house, the place that had once been loud with the sounds of our messy, chaotic childhood, now held a strange stillness. The kind that comes when the air is thick with unspoken words. My siblings and I sat around the dining room table, staring at the urn in the middle like it might get up and start yelling at us the way Dad used to.

He was dead. We all knew that, but the weight of it hadn’t settled yet.

“I can reach out to his other family,” MJ said softly, her voice almost drowned out by the ticking of the old grandfather clock in the hallway. “Maybe they’ll want the ashes ... his wife, or ... someone.”

Her words hung in the air, and I could see the sympathy in her eyes, like she still wanted to do the right thing despite everything.

MJ, always the good one, always trying to fix what was broken.

Royal leaned back in his chair, giving her a long look. “You’re a good person,” he said quietly.

I felt the familiar pang of guilt shoot through me.

I wasn’t.

I had scooped a bit of his ashes earlier, when no one was looking. I planned to put them somewhere in town, somewhere he would absolutely hate.

The old community garden.

A place he despised. The man had hated anything that thrived on its own without his control, and the garden was like a little act of rebellion against him. That was exactly where I’d put him. That way he would always see how well we were doing without him.

I wanted that knowledge to torture him forever.

Was it petty and a little unhinged? Probably. But I couldn’t find it within myself to care.

Aunt Bug sighed from the end of the table, her hands nervously twisting the edge of a kitchen towel. “I always tried to keep you safe, you know,” she said, her voice cracking with the years of weight she’d carried. “Even though I didn’t want to believe he took your mother ... I tried my best.”

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