Janice Johnson - From This Day On

The experience was more than strange. They hadn’t been alone together—focused solely on each other—in almost twenty years. She had hardly seen her brother after he’d left for college, when she was fifteen. At Christmas once or twice, maybe. One summer, she remembered, he’d worked in Tucson and, oh, gee, just never managed to get home while she was there. The summer after that, Colorado. Amy hadn’t gone to her dad’s the summer before she herself started college. Not seeing Jakob had been fine by her. Better than fine.

Now she thought, He’s a stranger. I don’t know him at all. Never knew him.

“I’m not sure how we managed to avoid each other so completely for so many years,” he said, as if reading her thoughts.

“Determination and motivation.” Amy sipped the wine then glanced at it with surprise. It had as little in common with the kind of wine she usually drank as she did with her brother the stranger.

His mouth crooked. “I was a shit to you when we were kids, wasn’t I?”

“You were.” She found herself smiling a little, too. “I don’t suppose you were exactly thrilled when I came along.”

“You could say that. I don’t remember much about it. I was only three when you were born, after all. But I was already dealing with the shock of suddenly having a new mother who didn’t seem very interested in me, and next thing I knew she wasn’t fat anymore, and there you were, squalling and ugly and I could tell my daddy was totally in love with you.”

Well, Dad got over that, she thought tartly, downplaying the hurt.

“It’s a wonder older siblings ever like the younger ones,” Amy said reflectively.

“You so sure they do?”

They shared a grin.

He nodded at the menu. “Better decide what you want to eat. Our waiter is looking restless.”

The restaurant specialized in steaks but had a few alternatives. She chose salmon, baby potatoes and a Caesar salad. Once the waiter had departed, Amy looked at Jakob again.

“So what’s the deal? Why did Dad call you about this time capsule opening?”

“I have no idea.”

Amy felt sure he was telling the truth. Or mostly the truth.

“I’m not sure he knew,” Jakob continued. “I suppose that’s what caught my interest.”

“Were you supposed to distract me so I wouldn’t go?”

“He didn’t come out and say so, but that’s the impression I got.”

“What could she possibly have put in it that Dad doesn’t want me to see?” She’d only asked herself the same question a couple dozen times in the past two days. “It’s not likely to upset me even if Mom did something completely scandalous when she was a student. Even if that something scandalous got her kicked out of Wakefield.” Now, that was a new thought, one that explained why Amy’s mother had deleted the college from her personal history.

No, wait. If that was true, why would her mother have updated the college records with her married name and current address?

Because on some level she wanted official forgiveness or at least the legitimacy of being treated like any other former student? And maybe, it occurred to Amy, the reason Mom had been able to keep Wakefield a big secret was that, in fact, the college never had sent her any mailings. This could be the first, necessitated by the fact that she had been included in the time capsule thing. They might have gotten her information from some other alum with whom Mom had stayed in touch, say.

“You know,” Jakob said, “I’ve barely seen your mother since I was—I don’t know, nine or ten?”

She nodded. “By then you were already making yourself scarce when Mom and Dad traded me back and forth, weren’t you?”

A truly wicked grin flashed. “Yeah, but sometimes that’s because I was behind the scenes setting up my latest prank.”

She glared at him. “The snake in my bed was the worst.” A memory stirred, much as the coiled snake had. “No, I take that back. The time you hid in the closet dressed all in black with that monster mask was the scariest.”

“Yeah.” To his credit, he looked chagrined. “Dad was seriously pissed that time. He put me on restriction for a month. I was the star pitcher for my Little League team, and I had to drop out.”

“Which made you hate me even more.”

“Possibly.” He sounded annoyingly cheerful.

It felt really odd to be reminiscing with her former tormenter. The bitterness she’d always felt seemed to be missing. In fact, she realized at one point during the middle of the meal, it felt odd to be reminiscing at all. Had she ever talked about her childhood with anyone, besides the superficial level that was exchanged with new friends, college roommates and whatnot?

No.

Jakob, she figured out as they talked, hadn’t exactly had the ideal childhood, either. First his mother was killed in a car accident, then his father married a woman who had no interest in mothering the little boy. Grand entrance: cute baby sister who entranced Dad. A divorce, another change of school. Then yet another move, this one to Arizona, followed by his father’s third marriage when Jakob was seventeen.

“I’d forgotten you were still living at home when your father remarried again,” Amy said thoughtfully.

“I spent as little time there as possible.”

“You don’t like Martina?”

He shrugged. “She’s fine. I never actively hated her. Truthfully, it was never her at all.”

Amy nodded her understanding.

“She had the sense to stay hands-off, so we’ve developed a decent relationship. She’s good for Dad, which is what counts.”

That might be, Amy couldn’t help thinking, except that Jakob had chosen to make a life a good distance from Phoenix. Of course, that could have more to do with the fact that the young Jakob Nilsson had been hooked on mountain climbing—or at least the idea of mountain climbing—and had immediately headed for Colorado and college in Boulder, within easy reach of a whole lot of impressive peaks he could scale.

“What about your stepdad?” he asked. “Is he okay?”

“Ken’s a good guy. In fact, I like him better...” Appalled, she stamped on the brakes. Oh, man. Had she almost told Jakob, of all people, that she liked her stepfather better than her own mother?

Yes, indeed.

They stared at each other, his eyes slightly narrowed. He’d heard the unspoken part of her sentence, loud and clear. Amy didn’t like the sense that Jakob saw deeper than she wanted him to.

“So.” Intent on her face, he kept his voice low, the reverberation jangling her nerves. “You think you’ll go to that time capsule thing, or not?”

“Why do you care?” That sounded rude, but was real, too. Why was he interested?

His shoulders moved in an easy shrug. “Like I said, now I’m curious. I was kind of thinking, if you wanted company, that maybe I’d go with you.”

She had to be gaping. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

His grin was irritatingly smug. “Nope. What’s family for?”

Amy rolled her eyes, which seemed the expected response, but she also had the really unsettling realization that she had absolutely no idea what family was for. Or maybe even what family was.

Jakob was implying that it meant having somebody to stand beside you. The notion was downright foreign. Amy couldn’t have even said why it was also strangely appealing. It shouldn’t have been, not to a woman who never considered surrendering her independence for anyone, for any reason.

“Do you mean that?”

His eyebrows rose. “That I’d come with you?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah.” He looked a little perplexed, as if he didn’t know why he was offering, either. “Yeah,” he repeated more strongly. “I mean it.”