Page 171 of One Good Crash
"Oh yeah. We found her alright." He gave a bitter laugh. "You wanna hear something funny?"
Whatever it was, I was nearly certain that it wouldn't be funny at all. Bracing myself, I asked, "What?"
"When we get there, the skank is pregnant."
I stifled a gasp. I wasn't even sure if it was because he'd just called his mom a skank or because the image was such a surprise. Now, I had no idea what to say. Lamely, I murmured, "Wow."
Jax gave a low scoff. "Wow is right. I mean, there we are – me and Jaden – standing on her doorstep. And this doorstep, it's really fucking nice."
"How nice?" I asked.
"Nicer than our whole house back home. And the rest of the place, it's like a palace. And my mom's standing there in the doorway, looking at us like we're a couple of insurance salesmen that she's gotta get rid of."
I sucked in a horrified breath. "No."
"Oh yeah."
"So, what did you do?" I asked.
"Well, Jaden – the dumb-ass that he is – he starts asking, 'When are you coming home?' And she tells him, 'Iamhome. You didn't get the letter?'"
"Oh, my God." My stomach sank at the mere thought. "So she wrote you a letter, telling you she wasn't coming back?"
Jax gave another laugh, just as bitter as the one before. "Shit, she didn't write the letter. She got her husband's lawyer to write it."
I stared at him. "What?"
"Yeah," Jax said. "Turns out, she'd divorced my dad the year before, and neither one of them bothered to tell us."
"But wait a minute. How could they hide it? I mean, that's kind of hard, right?"
"Not for them. They fought all the time anyway."
I winced. "That bad, huh?"
"Eh, you get used to it," he said. "Funny though, they'd been yelling about divorce my whole life. Only sometime the year before, they went and did it." He paused. "Or more accurately, she got the ball rolling."
"Soshedivorcedhim? How do you know?"
"A few years ago, I had someone look into it."
"But didn't she at least want to see you?"
"Me and Jaden? Hell no."
"But why not?"
"Because she'd traded up, probably didn't want the complication."
It was so cold, I stifled a shiver. "Wow." At the sound of my own voice, I winced. "I guess I already said that, huh?"
Jax gave a half shrug. "What else can you say?"
"So what happened after you showed up there?" I asked. "I mean, I bet your dad was pretty worried, right?"
"Doubt it."
"What do you mean?"
