Laurel and Carl had probably talked more in the last week than in the last four years. She had always respected him, but the better she got to know him, the fonder she became of him.
Sure, he was part of the reason Jackson was so reluctant to show his feelings, and most of the gender-role beliefs Carl had passed on were downright archaic, but he was a good man. She believed without doubt that he loved his wife, son and grandson, and that he really would lay down his life for any one of them. She knew he could not have loved Jackson any more had his own blood run through Jackson’s veins.
“I’ll talk to him some more, Carl,” she promised. And then amended, “Well, I’ll try. He isn’t an easy man to talk to, you know.”
Carl blew out a short breath. “Guess he’s a lot like me in that respect.”
“Yes,” she said gently, impulsively reaching out to lay her hand over his. “He’s just like his dad.”
Carl’s throat worked, and for just a moment, she thought she saw a quick sheen of what might have been tears in his weathered eyes. He masked the emotions immediately, patting her hand and making an effort to sm
ile a little. “You’re a nice woman, Laurel. Good heart. Helping other people isn’t just your job, it’s your nature.”
Now it was her time to blink back tears. Perhaps she was tired, or overstressed, but Carl’s words touched her to the very core. This was the type of approval she had once craved from her own father.
Because he was still Carl, and still uncomfortable with expressing such emotions, he didn’t give her a chance to say anything. Rising abruptly, he pushed his chair back beneath the table. “I think I’d better go before Jay gets back. Tell him… Well, just tell him I dropped by, okay?”
She knew there were many more things he wanted to say, but didn’t know how. “I’ll tell him.”
He nodded, then let himself out.
Gazing after him, Laurel told herself that Jackson was still very much like his dad—and no matter who his biological father was, his dad would always be Carl Reiss.
Fourteen
Jackson was home before ten. Laurel waited for him in the den, where she had been trying to read a mystery that would have held her attention at any other time. She closed the book and set it aside when he came in. “You missed your dad again.”
“Came by kind of late, didn’t he?”
“He’s worried about you.”
Jackson shrugged and dropped into an armchair. “No need for him to be.”
“Maybe you’d like to give him a call? I’m sure he hasn’t gone to bed yet.”
“Not tonight. I’ll talk to him another time.”
“You should talk to him soon, Jackson. He misses you.”
“I said I will. Later.”
“And your mother? She’s waiting to hear from you, too.”
“Yeah. Later. So, have you given any more thought to me looking into that job in Texas? Because I was thinking I could take a few days off in a couple of weeks, when Tyler’s feeling better, and fly out there to talk to some people. If the job looks as good as Kelsey made it sound, we could start looking at houses and school districts there.”
He must have read some of her thoughts in her expression. “This really isn’t as impulsive as it sounds,” he said, his tone defensive. “I’ve been thinking about it ever since Kelsey was here last month. The only reason I didn’t mention it before was that we were both so busy before Tyler’s surgery that we hardly had time to talk. Kelsey said he doesn’t work the crazy hours I do here. He’s pretty much eight to ten hours a day, rarely more than five days a week. You and Tyler and I would have more time together. Isn’t that what you’ve wanted?”
“It is,” she admitted. “I think we need to spend more time together as a family. But it has to be for the right reasons, Jackson. Moving there to escape our problems here won’t work. People carry their emotional baggage everywhere they go, and I don’t like the thought of leaving our friends and family here only to end up unhappy and estranged in Texas.”
“There’s no reason to think that will happen,” he said a bit stiffly. “Our only real problems here have been my working hours—well, and sometimes yours, and the fact that you’ve resented my parents interfering so often in our affairs. That can’t happen if we live so far away from them.”
Laurel gave a sigh of exasperation. Did Jackson really believe he had just concisely summed up their marital problems in a couple of sentences? If he did, then maybe they were in worse trouble than she had even imagined.
“You know what I was thinking about when I drove home from the office tonight?” he asked unexpectedly.
“No. What?”
“Our honeymoon.”