Page 28 of His Best Friend's Baby

Mac said something had happened to her four years ago. Something bad.

It made him sick thinking about whatever she’d seen to give her that terrible adult knowledge. One of his barricades, which stood so tall around any emotion he might feel or share, trembled.

“My name is Amanda. I’m your niece. I wrote you a hundred and four letters last year and I sent you two pictures and fourteen bags of gummy worms because Mom said that’s what you used to like best.” She stood, all elbows and knees, but he could already see the promise in her—she was going to be a knockout. A loudmouthed knockout.

“For all that work you sent me one letter. One dumb letter about cheerleading.”

“Not much of a writer,” he mumbled and dug into the refrigerator for something to do since it didn’t seem as if the kid was going anywhere. Could he kick her out? Physically grab her and throw her out the door? Probably not. Mac would come down off his mountain like a nightmare if Jesse did.

“So can I interview you?” she asked, practically bouncing on her toes. “I want to be a journalist so this would be, like, the best—”

“No interviews,” he interrupted. He’d given one statement to the press after the accident: All of his soldiers acted with valor and courage. It was an honor to serve alongside of them. That was all anyone needed to know.

Amanda’s face fell and, for some reason, that disappointment pricked him like a knife.

“Mom said you could be stubborn,” she muttered.

“Mom?” He’d thought Amanda’s mother had died—that Rachel had married Mac.

“Your sister. Rachel. She’s my mom.”

Jesse whistled through his teeth in surprise and Amanda’s blue eyes turned stormy. “Don’t be mean about Rachel, she’s awesome.”

Jesse shrugged, not about to burst that particular bubble. Amanda just stared at him with that strange forthright manner.

What the hell am I supposed to do with a teenager who’s broken in and refuses to leave?

“Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

“We got out early,” she told him. “Teachers’ conference.”

He remembered the thrill of half days, leaving school with most of the day ahead of him for whatever he and Mitch wanted. It would never have occurred to him to work on an English paper.

“You want something to eat?” he finally asked.

“Do you actually have food in there?” She tried to peer around the open fridge door.

“Here.” He took out one of the many plastic containers Mac had included with the groceries the day before.

“You didn’t even try one of those?” she asked, taking one of the peanut butter cookies. “These took me, like, all Saturday afternoon to make.”

She was already pissed off at him and he’d just met her. “I didn’t ask you to,” he told her, his hackles raising.

“That makes it nicer,” she said slowly, as though he might be stupid. “Makes it a gift.”

He couldn’t help it, didn’t even know he was about to do it until the laugh had clawed its way out of his ruined throat. It was one bad-sounding laugh, like a rusty door slamming, and it hurt like hell but he couldn’t stop.

“You’ve spent too much time with my sister,” he told the girl and watched her smile.

“There are worse things,” she said. He could feel their shared knowledge of those worse things fill the room.

The girl had ghosts. Must be the only reason he hadn’t gotten rid of her yet.

“So, you want to tell me about the war?”

“You want to tell me what happened to you four years ago?”

“No,” she said fast and sure.

Jesse almost smiled at her. Poor kid. “Okay,” he said. He turned away from her and his knee twinged. He’d need another painkiller tonight at the rate he was going. If he could keep them to every other day and still get the roof done, he’d be in good shape.

“Where you going?” she asked. “Aren’t we going to talk—”

“Hell, no.”

There was a pregnant pause. “You shouldn’t swear in front of your kid niece.”

He eyed her over his shoulder and she grinned like the Cheshire cat, the way Mac said Jesse used to, as if everything was going according to plan. He almost laughed again.

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