Page 24 of His Best Friend's Baby

“I’m glad things worked out for you, Mac. I really am. You loved Rachel for a long time.” Jesse struggled to keep his voice steady. “But I am not here to mend bridges with my sister. I don’t know her and I don’t want to know her. There’s no point in it.”

“Well, that’s too bad because she’s a heck of a person.” Mac turned to leave. “I’ll come by and see you tomorrow.”

“There’s no point, Mac. I’m getting rid of this house. Even if I have to tear it down with my own hands.”

Mac laughed. “Well, it’s a good thing you started with the roof. It needs a new one.”

The closing door sounded loud as it shut behind Mac. Jesse watched as Mac appeared from the side of the house and climbed into the truck. He drove off with a honk of his horn as though they were a normal family who got along and Amanda lifted her arm out the window in farewell.

Such simple gestures. But the expectations behind them weighed Jesse down. He had to get out of here fast. Otherwise affection and caring would lock him in the prison of this town.

“HE DOESN’T SEEM DIFFERENT than he did three years ago. Is he? I mean, he just looks skinnier,” Amanda said, unable to look away from the guy standing in the broken window. Three years ago at Eva’s funeral, he’d looked mean. He didn’t look like a cold-blooded killer now. Not that she knew what that kind of person looked like, but still, it was hard to imagine that guy killing his best friend, the way the whole town was saying he had.

She tilted her head to stare at his shrinking figure in the rearview mirror. He looked like the dog she and her dad had found by the highway last year. Cold, angry and flea-bitten.

She smiled at the idea.

Gotta write that one down.

The article she was trying to write on Uncle Jesse for her English assignment was going pretty slow, no thanks to Dad making her sit in the car like a baby. Her teacher had already warned her twice that the project was worth thirty percent of her final grade.

When she brought home a C in that class it was going to be all Dad’s fault.

They turned toward Main Street, making Jesse and the house out of sight. Amanda faced her dad, who looked as though he’d seen a ghost. A skinny, lopsided ghost.

“Whoa, Dad. Are you okay?”

He nodded. He wiped a hand over his face and sat back against the truck seats with a shaky sigh.

“Tell you the truth, Amanda, I don’t know who that guy was.” He shook his head.

An illicit thrill shot through her. “Did he, like, pull a gun or something?”

“No.” Dad looked at her askance, as if she’d asked if Jesse wore human skulls around his neck. Which, frankly, she thought he might do when no one was looking. The way everybody talked about this long-lost uncle of hers, she figured the guy was half wolf or something. A wild animal trying to readjust to society.

“Was he wearing clothes?” The scary thought just occurred to her.

“Of course, Amanda. Don’t be silly.”

“If you’d let me meet him, I wouldn’t have all these silly questions.”

Dad groaned. “We’ve been over this a million times, Amanda. I know you want to meet him, and you will—”

“When?”

“Soon. We’ve got to give the guy time. He’s been through a lot and he needs space to be comfortable and get to know us.”

“It’s not like we’re going to get to know each other if I have to stay in the truck all the time. I’m sixteen, Dad. I’m not a kid,” she grumbled, crossing her arms across her chest.

Really, Dad was getting a little lame in his old age.

“You wanted to come and I told you that was the deal.”

“You and Mom act like he’s crazy—like he’d attack me.” Oh, God, that would get her an A in English for sure. “Do you think he’d attack me?”

“You’ve got more imagination than this whole town put together.” Dad didn’t sound as though that was a good thing.

“Well, the whole town thinks he’s going to kill all of us in our sleep or something.”

“You know that’s not true.”

“Clara at the grocery store said that Jesse had been trying to kill Mitch Adams since they were kids. It just took him a few years to get the job done. But Rita says that’s not true, that it was the other way around.”

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