Page 18 of The Usual Family Mayhem

“I offered to help them with the business. To file, do books, whatever. Gram and Celia were adamantly against it.”

“I wonder why. You’re the obvious person to help.” His flat voice telegraphed his sarcasm.

“Now you’re just being rude.”

His mouth opened twice before he actually said anything. “First, we don’t know if Cash was poisoned. So let’s not invite trouble.”

Easy for him to say. “That’s not really how I operate.”

“No kidding.” He smiled. “Second, Mags and Celia sell a ton of pies. Abigail is probably a regular customer, like a lot of people in town.”

Every word he said made sense, but I wasn’t in the mood for a rational argument. We were dealing with a very unlikely scenario here. My reaction probably grew out of my need for a distraction from my business mess, but sometimes shocking things happened. My life was a testament to that. This could be one of those times.

“What about the star? It could mean—”

“That Abigail has an allergy they have to be careful of. That she likes extra coconut in her coconut cream pie.” He exhaled as if he’d given a big speech. “There are a million reasons why they’d use a star and none of them are about poison.”

Logic. I recognized it but didn’t appreciate it at the moment. Something—money, poison, health—had gone wrong with Gram and Celia. The gnawing panic inside me told me that much and they weren’t talking.

“You are off on a wild tangent here,” he said.

He really did suck the life out of everything and made it boring. “But the man is dead.”

“Cash probably has a huge amount of stress because of his business and his son. That Austin guy would be exhausting to have in the family.”

“You say that now. It would have been nice if you’d stepped up and defended me at Christmas.” Back then he’d shot me a look that saidbehaveand scurried off with Anna hanging on his arm.

“I did.”

“What?”

“I backed you up at the club. After you left.”

What he was saying didn’t have any relationship to reality. “Again, what?”

He shrugged. “The club manager got caught in the middle. He didn’t want to ruin his business relationship with Mags and Celia or upset the other members. So, I calmed down Cash and my dad. I demanded Austin apologize, and he did.”

Look at Jackson being all chivalrous.“No way.”

“It was a half-assed apology, of course, but the girl said shewas satisfied. Cash made Austin leave and cool off. The club then suspended him for a month. Not a perfect resolution, but it was more responsibility than Austin usually took for his actions.”

Backing me up was sweet and decent. But Jackson had hidden his help, which made no sense. “You never told me any of this.”

“My negotiation skills come in handy sometimes.”

I stared into his eyes, ready for him to make a joke or pull away. He didn’t do either. He matched my stare. We stood there until the roar of a car engine passing by broke the spell.

Despite being unable to swallow, I cleared my throat. “Right.”

“Yeah.”

“Yep.” What else could I say?

“Mm-hmm.”

I heard the hitch in his breathing and tried to calm mine down. “Exactly.”

We needed to stop before we ran out of useless words. I took a giant step back this time and inhaled nice and deep, hoping a flood of fresh air would help restart my brain.

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