“But I don’t blame any of you, not really.”
“I know. You only blame yourself, but there was a minute there, before Hank walked out the door, when I think everyone in this room got the idea that you did blame him.”
“I’ll talk to him,” she vowed. “As soon as Jason is back safely…”
Left unsaid was what she would do if they didn’t find Jason. Ann refused to let herself even consider the possibility. They had to find him. They had to. Her entire future with Hank might very well depend on it.
Hank had no idea how good Jason’s sense of direction might be, but he was relatively certain the boy would try to make his way back to the highway so he could get back to the Keys. In fact, if he had enough of a head start, he suspected Jason would go straight to Key West. Back home. Even though it had never been much of a home to him, Key West was the one place Jason ever spoke of with genuine enthusiasm. Hank only prayed he could find him before Jason hitched a ride. Despite his reassurances for Ann’s benefit, he didn’t like the idea of what could happen to a kid hitchhiking.
As he drove up and down the dark, winding streets, he cursed himself for not anticipating something like this. He was the one who’d recognized Jason’s increasing alienation, his obvious resentment of the place Hank was filling in Ann’s life. He should have talked to the boy, instead of losing patience with his surliness. If nothing else, he’d owed it to Ann to try harder. He was the grown-up, not Jason. Maybe he wasn’t father material after all. Just when he’d begun to think he had it in him to deal with family life, something like this happened to prove that he was a pretender.
His spirits sank lower and lower. By the time he finally spotted Jason walking along the side of a narrow road, half-hidden in the shadows, he was nearly out of his mind with worry and self-condemnation. Where was the kid’s head, he thought furiously when he could barely pick him out alongside the darkened roadway. Wearing blue jeans and a navy-blue polo shirt while walking at night was a good way to get hit by a passing car.
Before he could make the mistake of yelling, though, he warned himself to slow down. Getting into an absurd argument over where Jason had chosen to walk and the clothes he was wearing wouldn’t help anything.
“Jason,” he called out, keeping his tone carefully neutral. “Hop in.”
Jason kept his gaze straight ahead. His pace never faltered.
“Son,” he began, only to have Jason whirl around, his expression furious.
“You are not my father!” he shouted, then took off, nearly tripping and falling in his haste to get away.
Taken aback by the anger and raw emotion, Hank stared after him for an instant before driving slowly up beside him again. “You’re right,” he called out. “I’m not your father. I’m sorry.”
In the blue-white glow of the headlights, he could detect the sheen of tears on Jason’s cheeks and suddenly his heart turned over. For the first time he truly recognized the scared, vulnerable boy inside that tough facade. With that recognition came another blow: the person Jason most reminded him of in this world was himself some twenty years ago. He didn’t like the fact that he hadn’t admitted it sooner.
“Jason, let’s go somewhere and talk about this,” he suggested quietly, determined to find a way to make things right between them. This time it was not just for Ann’s sake, but for his own.
“I got nothing to say to you.”
“And what about Ann? Do you have any idea how scared she is right now?”
Jason’s step faltered.
“She’s back at Liz and Todd’s blaming herself because you left. She thinks she failed you.”
“She didn’t do nothing,” Jason mumbled.
“You and I both know that, but she doesn’t. All she knows is that you’ve gone and she’s convinced if she’d been there, she could have stopped you. But this is between you and me, isn’t it?”
That drew Jason’s gaze to him. The stark honesty of the words created a palpable tension between them and something new, Hank thought. Hope.
“Isn’t it?” he persisted.
“Maybe.”
“Then let’s go get a soda or something and talk about it, man-to-man.”
“Since when?” Jason said sarcastically. “You always treat me like some dumb kid. Until you came along, Ann always treated me like a grown-up. She depended on me.”
And that, of course, was a large part of the problem that he’d never before recognized. Why hadn’t he seen it before? As Jason saw it, his role in Ann’s life had been usurped by a stranger. Hank had to prove to him that they both belonged, that she had more than enough love for the two of them.
“Fair enough,” he said. “That’s something we should talk about.”
Hank thought he caught a flicker of hope in Jason’s eyes before his shoulders sagged. “What’s the point?” he muttered, starting to walk again.
“The point is that we both love Ann. Neither of us wants her to be unhappy, so we owe it to her to try to work out our differences,” he said firmly. “Don’t we?”
Jason hesitated.
“Jason? Don’t we?”
“I guess,” he said with obvious reluctance.
“Will you get in, then?”
Jason finally turned grudgingly and opened the door. He got into the car, but he huddled as close to the door as he could get. Hank drove to a fast-food restaurant a few blocks away and led him inside.
“Hungry?”
“I guess.”
“Well, I’m starved. How about a burger, fries, something to drink?”
Jason shrugged. Hank told him to find them a table and he took the chance to phone Ann and let her know that he had found Jason and they were going to talk for a while. She
