She’d spent a lot of time by herself. And as a result, she’d spent a lot of time thinking. She thought a lot about the way other people lived. The way families looked on TV. And while she knew there were other struggles involved in their lives, she also knew that some of the good things they showed on sitcoms were real.
“So you got a big table, probably then,” she said.
“What does the size of the table have to do with anything?”
“You know, on TV,” Cricket said. “When everybody sits around this little, cheerful table. Just like this. And they have some kind of casserole. It’s always casserole. And I don’t even know anyone who’s ever eaten a casserole.”
“Yeah, can’t say as I’ve had a lot of casserole experience myself.”
“Well, there’s always a casserole, and they’re all sitting together, and reaching for the dishes, and talking. And we didn’t have a table like that. It was big and long, this banquet hall. As if there were fifty of us, but there wasn’t. And my dad would always sit down at his end, miles away. And that’s just... It’s a metaphor. Really. For my family. All spread out, all engaged in their own thing and not paying attention to each other. Oftentimes we would even have different food. We had a chef. And we could basically put in an order for whatever we wanted at the beginning of the week. We would sit there in the same room and basically all be...separate. And sometimes I just wanted a small table. Because I thought that would fix things.”
“Well, we might’ve gotten a bigger table, but we all sat down at one together.”
“Oh,” she said, feeling wistful. “You all really love each other.”
“You love your sisters,” he said, and she noticed he skimmed over her question.
“I do,” she said. She looked up at him, taking a chance at meeting his gaze. “My siblings are the most important people in my life.”
His lips curved upward, and something in her stomach shivered. She didn’t like it. She didn’t like the feeling at all.
“Well, I... Anyway. I don’t know. I’m just curious. About how other people grew up.”
“Did you go over to anyone’s house when you were a kid?”
“Not really. My sisters went to private school. They were away from home a lot. They sent me away for a while, but I hated it. I wanted a family, and being at school with strangers didn’t help at all. Dorm rooms and formal dining halls and all of that. I just ended up walking the grounds alone. They brought me back. They enrolled me in a school in Gold Valley. But they didn’t really want me associating with any of the local people. So I had friends. But only at school. My parents didn’t let them come over. They didn’t let me go over there. The stupid thing is, I’m not sure my dad would have actually known what I was doing if I hadn’t asked for permission. But I’ve never really known how to live.”
Except, she was deceiving Jackson a little bit. And that made her feel... Well, that made her feel marginally guilty. It wasn’t the most honorable thing, but her deception was all in service to something bigger.
She looked at him, and the sense of intensity, of longing, grew. She couldn’t feel bad. Not now. She wanted him here. She needed him here. And some part of her knew that. On a deep, cellular level. She knew that.
“Anyway. I’m just kind of making up for lost time. For things I didn’t have.”
“So, you got yourself a little kitchen table.”
“Yeah. And you’re the first person to sit with me here.”
He looked a little uncomfortable with that statement. Cleared his throat. She blinked, wondering what he thought she meant. And then she realized her words could be misconstrued.
“Only that...”
She must’ve sounded panicked, because he held her gaze, his expression steady then. “No drama.”
“Right.” His words made her feel immediately soothed and she didn’t really know why.
She’d first felt this weird sort of connection to him years ago. He hadn’t been as broad then as he was now. He’d been lean and rangy, and very different from his brother, Creed, who was often at winery events, fulfilling much the same job as her sister. Jackson wasn’t a salesman. He wasn’t the kind of guy who was in the front of the house. Much like her. He was behind the scenes. It was also very clear that Jackson was an integral part of his family in a way that Cricket had never felt like she was.
Jackson very clearly had a firm hand in everything.
He wore his authority with ease. It was so different from the way her father was. James blustered about, ordering employees around. All Jackson had to do was walk into a room. She had seen him helping with setup at different community parties on more than one occasion. He was a man who led by example. He was a man, she had always thought, to be admired.
And she had. She admired him greatly.
Wherever Jackson was, her eyes seemed to find him.
It was hard to explain how it had felt to find out there was a high probability he was her half brother.
It had been the death of a dream she’d told herself had never been real.
But it had felt like a real, actual death. Before, she might have pretended she knew he was off limits, but apparently part of her had always secretly hoped...
That connection was so powerful. That sense of need she felt when she saw him.
And the connection had only grown and intensified as she had gotten older.
As she began to realize just how much of a misfit she was with her family.
So really, finding out about her mother and his father...it made sense. And she shouldn’t be sad.
“I’ll help clean up,” he said.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“You said yourself you don’t know how to clean. Anyway, there’s no dishwasher here.”
He took her plate, which was empty, went over to the sink and started running water. She could only stare at his broad back, at the way he worked, smoothly and capably.
And then she realized she was staring at the back of him while he washed dishes with her mouth dropped open. Like he was performing some kind of Herculean effort, rather than just scrubbing a couple of dinner plates and a pan.
She scrambled to her feet and looked around the tidy kitchen. There wasn’t really much to do. Not after the spiders had already been chased away and the cobwebs had been dealt with. She grabbed the broom again and began to sweep the floor, even though there was no dirt on it.
But she needed to do something, and she wasn’t going to go stand over by the sink.
“Cricket,” he said. “Why don’t you dry?”