Chapter 18

We stayed with J.J. for three days. I slept on the sofa in the basement room while Lizzie took the upstairs guest room.

Lizzie and J.J. talked a lot. They reminisced about Wendy and grieved for the tragic loss. They also filled in the blanks on all the missing years.

They both did the best to include me in their conversations, but there were times when I felt that they needed to be left alone.

Neither of them was certain how Mrs. Reynolds would react when she knew what her husband had done to push their son away. Probably she would continue to follow her husband rules for the rest of her life without ever challenging them.

J.J. shared with us how he’d met Meg and how they fell in love with each other.

“She was working as a waitress. I walked in and ordered a large latte. I was so smitten, just from the way she smiled at me, that I came back twice a week for a whole year.” J.J. smiled at his wife.

She held his hand in hers and added, “I started asking for the evening shifts just to make sure I didn’t miss seeing him. He always ordered latte and we talked.”

J.J. raised his wife’s hand to his lips and kissing the back of it. “Meg had a way of getting me to open up and tell her everything. She calmed me down, made me feel like everything was going to be okay.”

J.J. and I recollected some of our happier childhood memories, and of course we talked about me being ‘a bad influence’ on him.

“I always blamed myself after your father found the cops in his driveway,” I confessed to him.

“That’s not why we moved,” J.J. told me with a strange laugh, as if the truth were common knowledge. “We moved because my dad thought your dad had the hots for my mother.”

“What?”

My friend scooped up a handful of peanuts from the bowl in front of him. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Nothing ever happened. They didn’t have an affair or anything. Dad was just incredibly jealous of your dad because he didn’t like coming home to find some other guy from the neighborhood fixing our leaky faucet or unclogging our toilet.”

J.J. pointed a finger at me and spoke with a hint of humor that accentuated the laugh lines around his eyes. “Your dad was a flirt. You know that, right?”

“My mother talked abundantly about the subject after they divorced,” I replied. “But I didn’t know he was putting the moves on your mom.”

J.J. shook his head. “He wasn’t, but it didn’t matter. Dad’s a control freak with a temper. I doubt you even know about the time they brawled in our garage. Remember when your dad had the black eye?”

“He said he fell off the ladder cleaning the gutters,” I recollected.