“Piper, I’ll be back to get you later tonight,” he told his daughter.
“Are you sure you can’t stay?” she asked.
Jake gave a quick glance at Lars. His ice-cold gaze told him he was clearly not welcome at this party. Not that Jake wanted to stay, anyway.
“No, you have fun,” he replied. “I have some things I have to take care of around town while we’re here.”
Piper walked back over and hugged him tightly. In his ear, she whispered, “Thank you, Daddy. I really mean it.”
Considering how hot and cold things were between them at the moment, her words meant a lot to him. “You’re welcome, baby.”
“Come on, honey,” Janice said to Piper. “I want to show you the giant chocolate fountain I had brought in just for you and your friends. I also have a new dress for you. My gal will be here to do your hair and makeup in about twenty minutes. We need to get you ready because our guests will arrive soon.”
Jake’s mother-in-law ushered his daughter inside the house, leaving him standing there with his father-in-law.
“She can stay the night with us,” Lars said. “You don’t have to come back.”
“No, she can’t.”
“That’s ridiculous. We have a full guest suite.”
“She’ll stay with me at the hotel.”
“You’re being petty, you know that?”
“Petty would’ve been not allowing her to come here at all.”
Lars moved his jaw around, like he wanted to say something but resisted. The man was used to controlling everyone in his life. But he had never been able to control Jake. And that had always annoyed him.
“You working again yet?” he asked Jake.
“That’s not really your concern.”
“My granddaughter is my concern. Not you.”
“Yeah, you’ve made that very clear.”
“I know you’re not working. Piper told Janice over the phone.”
“Then why the hell did you ask?”
“So how exactly are you providing for Piper?”
“We’re getting by just fine, thanks.”
Truthfully, things were a bit tight. Jake hadn’t drawn a paycheck since his high school had fired him eleven months ago. Not a lot of schools wanted to hire a coach who had drunkenly tried to choke a ref on the sideline during a game. Jake had gotten sober during the custody battle.
Lars kept pressing. “It doesn’t have to be this hard. Just let the child come live with us. You know we’ll take tremendous care of her.”
“Are we really doing this again right now?”
“Piper needs to be with her family.”
He gritted his teeth. “She is with her family.”
“You know what I’m saying. We can give her what you can’t. The best schools, the best physical therapy, the best of everything. She doesn’t have to live in some shack in the middle of nowhere away from all of us.”
“It’s not a shack.”
Jake wanted to take a swing at the man. His father had helped build the house where they were currently living with his own hands.
“Whatever.” Lars grunted. “Don’t keep her there just to spite us.”
Jake turned to walk away. “Enjoy your party.”
“You’re making her miserable,” Lars continued. “That’s what she tells Janice. Your own daughter hates you. She wants to be with us.”
He didn’t respond, just kept walking. Responding would only escalate things. In some bizarre way, Lars had felt entitled to Piper after losing his only daughter. As if taking possession of her were the fair replacement for Sarah. He’d become obsessed with it. Maybe it was his own way of dealing with the insufferable pain. Jake had tried to be somewhat understanding early on.
“What’s it going to take, Jake?” Lars shouted after him. “A million? Is that what you want? How about five million?”
Jake got in his car, took a deep breath. Every part of him wanted to get back out and confront his father-in-law. The man was ruthless to his core. But if Jake got out, things might actually turn physical. And then Jake probably would lose his daughter in court. Maybe that was Lars’s plan today. Was he trying to entice a physical response out of him? The man was relentless.
Jake started his car and quickly drove away.
TWO
Eddie Cowens had never been seriously incarcerated—not like his deadbeat father, who’d spent the first five years of Eddie’s life in prison for burglary. But Eddie had seen a good amount of local jail time in his twenty-eight years for various misdemeanors. He blamed most of his troubles on his father—or lack thereof. His dad had bolted on him and his younger sister when he was only thirteen after the police had come around asking about a truckload of stolen electronics. He’d overheard his father once talk about disappearing across the Texas-Mexico border and never coming back. Eddie hadn’t seen or heard from the man since. So he’d become the man of the family at an early age and did his best to take care of his little sister, Beth—especially since his mom was wasted half the time. The old lady had been a drunk long before his father had ever left. Not that Eddie really blamed her. That’s just the way it was for them, living the dirt-poor trailer-park life here on the outskirts of East Austin.