“Yes, as a matter of fact, I have had a crush on a girl. But tell me something—were you able to get all of this out of him in one afternoon?”
“Yep. And the thing about how you don’t listen to him.”
Great. Fantastic. Not only did they have time to discuss all of Cole’s insecurities, they had time to discuss Uncle Jake’s shortcomings, too. “I probably don’t,” he admitted curtly. “Because he whines all the damn time.”
Robin clucked at him. “He’s fourteen. Fourteen-year-olds whine.”
“Okay, you want to know the truth?” he asked, irked that she could have divined so much information from Cole when he could barely get him to respond. “I don’t like Cole. Don’t get me wrong—I love him. He’s my nephew. And I would give my right arm to see him happy and to escape the life we had growing up. But I don’t like him.”
Instead of gasping with shock and indignation for saying such a horrid thing about his own nephew, Robin chuckled and shook her head. “Jake, you’re so funny! He’s fourteen. Everyone knows that fourteen-year-olds are very hard to like. Believe me, I had two sisters who were fourteen after me and they were impossible to like. But the difference is, I think, that they were so full of themselves they were in danger of bursting. Cole doesn’t seem to know where he fits in and doesn’t feel like he belongs anywhere or to anyone. I think he’s kind of lost. Which is understandable—he said you and your mom argue about who has to take him.”
“No, we argue about who wants to take him,” Jake angrily clarified.
“See? He doesn’t like himself, so he sees it all upside down. It’s tough for anyone to feel unwanted, but especially for a teenager, you know.”
He knew. He looked at her in wonder. “How’d you get so smart?”
Robin shrugged, flicked an imaginary piece of lint off her jacket. “I don’t know . . . I guess I’m just extra brilliant. Or maybe because twenty years later, I still feel that way. I really do relate to him,” she said and glanced up at Jake. “Do you think that’s strange?”
“No. What I think is strange is that I am struggling to relate to him, but I don’t really understand why. He’s just like my brothers and I were growing up—angry, defiant, rebellious . . . but for some reason, I can’t seem to see the world through his eyes.”
“That’s because you had hope,” she said matter-of-factly and studied a cuticle as if it was the most obvious conclusion in the world. Yet the suggestion clanged like a bell in Jake. It was so plainly obvious, so simple, that he was stunned he had not realized it before. Of course Cole had no hope—he had lost his father and his mother, his grandmother was a disciplinarian, one uncle was in prison, and the other . . . well, the other yelled at him for the most part.
It was a thought that lodged deep in Jake’s brain and his heart as their discussion turned from Cole to what Ross had been like as a kid, how Jake could see so much of his brother in Cole. By the time Pete came on the intercom and announced they were descending toward Burdette, Robin was laughing at the tale of Jake’s first date ever, and a double one at that, with Ross and the Dewley twins. He had been maybe fifteen at the time, and yes, he had been obsessed with Sara Dewley.
The plane landed on an old, pitted runway, bouncing like a rubber ball as it shuddered to a stop. Robin leaned forward again, looked out the portal window, and winced. “It’s worse than I imagined.” They saw a dilapidated old metal building, and beyond that, the stacks of a smelting plant. When the plane shuddered to a stop and Pete opened the door, they were instantly assaulted by the smell of sardines or something very much like it.
“Processing plant,” Pete offered helpfully at their twin grimaces. Exchanging wary glances, Jake and Robin waited for a young man with a red baseball hat to push the stairs up to the plane.
Robin made a careful ascent to the bottom of the stairs. The young man eyed Jake as he came down behind her. “Where y’all from?”
“Houston,” Jake responded while Robin straightened her clothing and glanced around.
“You the ones for Wirt?”
“Yes,” Robin said, eyeing the man. “How did you know?”
“Oh, ‘cuz Girt sent someone to pick you up.” He pointed in the direction of the metal building. Jake and Robin turned their heads.
Robin gasped.
Jake instantly put an arm around her waist and muttered, “Don’t panic.”
Chapter Twenty
Like hell she wasn’t going to panic.
The . . . conveyance . . . was an ancient pickup, which appeared to have been white at one time, but was now a fleshy color with a red fender, a silver hood, and a steel bumper. A man was sitting in the driver’s seat with the door open, one leg propped on the running board, an oily baseball cap pulled down over his eyes. He spit on the tarmac, looked up, and waved lazily at Jake and Robin.