I winced a little at the lie.
“She’s a stranger to us.”
“Not for long.”
“Tell her to leave.”
“I can’t. I won’t.”
“Tell her to leave, or I’ll kick you both out.”
“I dare you. I dare you to do that and then tell Mom what you did.”
“This is a private, family matter. The last thing Mom needs right now is to be entertaining some Hollywood bimbo.”
Then I heard a scuffle. Then a clunk. I stepped closer to peek through the screen, and I saw that Jack had shoved Hank up against a wall.
“Does anything about that girl seem like Hollywood to you?” Jack demanded.
It’s a heck of a thing to see two grown men fighting over you. Even if you know it’s not a real fight. And even if you know the fight is really about something else.
Still. I held my breath.
For a second, I thought Jack was going to defend me.
“She’s as un-Hollywood as it gets,” Jack said then, his voice low and menacing. “Have you seen my other girlfriends? Have you seen Kennedy Monroe? She’s nothing like any of them. She’s short. Her teeth are crooked. She barely wears any makeup. She doesn’t self-tan, wear extensions, or dye her hair. She’s a totally plain, unremarkable person. She’s the epitome of ordinary.”
Wow. Okay.
“But she’s mine,” Jack said then. “And she’s staying.”
I was still coping with “epitome of ordinary.”
Another scuffle, as Hank pushed Jack off of him.
I stepped way back so they wouldn’t see me. Of course, that meant I couldn’t see them anymore, either.
“Fine,” Hank said. “I guess I’ll just have to make her so miserable that she leaves on her own.”
“If you make my Hannah miserable—”
My Hannah!
“—I will make you miserable right back.”
“You already do.”
“That’s more about you than about me, buddy,” Jack said.
But Hank was still trying to win the fight. “I’m telling you I don’t want her here. But I can’t even remember the last time you cared about what anybody else wanted.”
“You don’t want her here, but I need her here. And so do you, even though you don’t know it. So back the hell off.”
I guess, at that, one of them decided to storm off, because next I heard the screen door whap closed. Then, on the heels of that, I heard it again.
Out the kitchen window, I could see Hank stomping off toward his truck—and Jack charging in the opposite direction, along the gravel road toward a thicket of trees.
What I wanted to do … was go hide my plain, unremarkable, epitome-of-ordinary face.
For, like, ever.
But Jack was my principal. And this was my job.
So I followed him.
Thirteen
WHEN I CAUGHT up, he stopped walking, but he didn’t turn. “Don’t follow me.”
“I have to follow you.”
“I’m taking a walk.”
“I can tell.”
“I need a moment. To myself.”
“That’s not really relevant.”
“Do you really think you’re my girlfriend or something? Don’t follow me.”
“Do you really think I’m your girlfriend? I’m not following you because I want to. You are my job.”
At that, Jack started down the gravel road again—heading very purposely toward nowhere, as far as I could tell.
I let him get about a hundred feet ahead, and then I took a deep breath and followed.
When Jack said he was taking a walk, he wasn’t kidding. We followed the tire ruts in the road through a cow pasture, over a cattle guard, past a rusty metal barn, and down a long, slow hill into a wooded lowland overgrown with vines.
Was I dressed for an excursion like that—in my embroidered sundress with bare ankles?
I was not.
Every hundred feet or so, I had to shake the rocks out of my sandals.
Really wishing I’d changed into those boots now.
Did Jack know I was following him?
He did.
Whenever we came to a gate, he’d unlatch the chain and wait for me. Then, wordlessly, once I was through, he’d relatch it, and take off walking, and I’d wait politely until he’d reestablished our distance.
I even walked in the opposite rut from the one he was using, out of courtesy.
The road descended deeper into the woods, and the grass got taller, and the path got more overgrown, and just as I was trying to remember what poison ivy looked like, we came to a tumbledown, rusty, barbed-wire gate.