Don't Let Go(49)

“Jules, wait,” Noah said, springing into action behind me.
“I have to talk to your dad.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“I don’t need you,” I said, wheeling on him on the sidewalk. “I have a twenty-year-old beef with him that’s about to come to a f*cking head right now.”
Noah’s eyes flared anger that I felt had more to do with my saying I didn’t need him than what I’d said about his father.
“You don’t need to drive,” he said, his voice low and commanding. “Give me your keys, let me put some shoes on, and wait your ass right here.”
I felt the muscles in my face, my neck, my whole body twitch with adrenaline.
“Fine,” I said, slamming my keys into his hand.
I walked around to the passenger side while he glared at me, and then he turned back into the house. I got in and felt the cold quiet sink in around me, my breathing being the loudest thing. I pulled Noah’s wallet away from my chest and started at the beginning. A faded photo that was marked Seth, six months. Just six months after I’d seen him last, it was the closest in resemblance to the baby I remembered.
“I loved you,” I whispered, sobs shaking my body again. “I always loved you.”
The driver’s side door opened and Noah got in, grimacing as his knees crammed against the steering column. He adjusted it and shut the door, giving me a look before he started the engine, an odd expression taking over his features.
“What?” I asked.
He shook his head slightly, almost as if that motion, too, were inside his own thoughts.
“The last time we were in a car together, you were crying then too.” His eyes met mine. “You’d already made up your mind.” I looked away, unable to bear looking at him as he said that. “Jules, I didn’t know you didn’t have these pictures, too. I wondered when there was nothing at your house, but then—and now with what you told me this morning about your parents pretending it never happened.” He rubbed at his eyes and raked his fingers back through still-damp hair, making his short cut stick up in little dark spikes. “It all makes sense now.”
“It’s about to make more,” I said.
I turned back to the pictures, running a finger over the last one, the one of Seth in a policeman’s uniform.
“That’s the last one I ever received,” he said, starting the car and putting it in reverse. “That was about four or five years ago. I guess once he hit twenty-one they stopped sending.”
Seth looked so much like Noah in that photo, it was like turning back time.
We were quiet on the drive to the diner. He was right, it was weird being in the car with him again, seeing him at the wheel. Weird and oddly right.
“Who told you I had photos in Italy?” Noah asked finally when we turned onto the street that flanked the river.
“I was talking to Shayna at the library,” I said.
He looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “You two get along too well.”
I would have laughed at that another time. If my world hadn’t been upended and the diner wasn’t rolling into view. Instead, every moment of every day that Johnny Mack Ryan had tortured me with his indifference and ugly words came to the surface and spread over me like a giant shield of armor.
Georgette Pruitt was headed up the sidewalk in our direction, looking purposeful and colorful all in purple. Lord.
“Can I have my wallet back?” Noah asked as he pulled in a spot and parked.
“No.”
I got out and marched to the door, not caring what my drowned-rat face looked like. Not giving any thought to whether I had dried snot down all my black clothing after the day from hell that had barely made it to one in the afternoon.
Not caring if Noah was with me or stayed in the car. What I had to say was between me and his father, and probably a diner full of people. So damn be it.
“Jules, I need to talk to—” Georgette called out, upping her steps to catch up to me.
“Go see Ruthie,” I said, waving her away.
“No, it’s about the Chamber party,” she said, like that made things different. If I had to hear one more thing about flowers or floats or snowy things, even in a party atmosphere, I was going to do something unladylike.
“Ruthie,” I said, already swinging open the door.
I saw him immediately. He was out of the kitchen and behind the bar, refilling coffee during a lull. Good. He’d have plenty of time to give me his undivided attention.
Johnny Mack looked up as I walked in, a scowl clouding his face when he saw it was me before he looked away. Long-buried hurt freshened by recent events stung to the bone.
I slammed Noah’s wallet down on the counter, pictures facing up. “Explain.”
He let go of a deep sigh, sounding exhausted. “Maybe you should explain what you’re doing with Noah’s wallet.”
“I gave it to her,” Noah said from behind me.
Johnny Mack looked up, surprised. “What the hell are you doing with Julianna Doucette?”
“It’s White now,” I said. “Been that way for twenty-something years now, did you miss the memo?”
“Dad, I told you,” Noah said, his voice carrying that dark demanding something that made people listen. “Enough of this.”
“You have that sweet Shayna now, boy,” Johnny Mack said. “Don’t go messing—”
“I could give a shit who your boy is with now,” I said, my voice rising enough to turn a few heads. I tapped the photos in the wallet. “We’re not here for that. I want to know why you have these.”