“Well, maybe you’ll do me a favor, darlin’, and give me a second alone with my boy,” she demanded through suggestion.

“And maybe I won’t,” I replied and Shania looked at Tate.

“Neeta’s fresh in her grave and she’s already rollin’ in it, knowin’ this one’s here, wearin’ her fancy-ass outfit and her fancy-ass shoes, lookin’ down her nose at the rest of us,” she remarked.

Tate stared at his mother for long moments then looked to the heavens and sighed.

Then he righted his head but shook it and muttered, “We’re done.”

“We aren’t,” Shania stated and Tate leveled his gaze at her.

“We are and I mean that in every way it can be meant, you get me?”

She looked like he’d slapped her before she began, “I –”

Tate cut her off. “Jonas has had enough of your brand of dysfunctional bullshit in his life and I didn’t shield him from it. The way I see it, I got eight years to keep him safe from that shit before he finds his own way and I’m doin’ it.”

“I can’t believe you,” she hissed. “Sayin’ this to me, today. Neeta was my girl and we just laid her in the ground.”

“We didn’t do shit.” Tate leaned toward her to say. “You paraded in, as usual, makin’ a big scene and makin’ it all about you. Pop, Stell, Wood and Jonas laid her to rest today. You just showed up and turned it all to shit.” He leaned back and drawled sarcastically, “Congratulations Mom, I would figure that was an impossibility, makin’ shit even shittier, but you managed it.”

“I loved her!” she snapped, her voice rising.

“If you did, then why’d you let her down when she lost her Mom and needed another one? I was young but I remember Neet turnin’ to you and you doin’ what you do best, turnin’ away.” Shania’s face paled but Tate kept at her. “For that matter, why’d you let me down seein’ as you made it so I never had a mother at all?”

Her voice was barely a whisper when she said, “You know me, Tate, you know I gotta be free.”

“Yeah, so the good news is, you can be as free as you want. Rest easy, Mom, we got it covered,” Tate retorted.

Shania’s eyes slid to me and she accused, “This is about her.”

“Damn straight,” Tate shot back and semi-repeated, “damn f**kin’ straight.”

Then he turned away from her and came right at me. He hooked an arm around my neck, turned me and propelled me forward as he prowled to the backyard, through it and to the backdoor.

Once we were inside, I whispered, “You okay?”

“Fuck no,” he replied, not whispering at all.

“Is there something I can do?” I asked and he stopped us in Pop’s living room, turned into me and looked down at me.

“You’re doin’ it,” he stated.

“I am?” I asked.

He looked over my head as he shook his then he looked back down at me.

“You love me?” he asked.

“Yes,” I answered instantly.

“That’s it, you’re doin’ it,” he finished.

His arm staying around my neck, he guided us to Jonas.

* * * * *

It was getting late.

I was sitting on Pop’s couch, sipping at a bottle of beer, leaning a bit into my Dad at my side while my fingers slid through Jonas’s hair, his head on my thigh, his body curled into the couch beside me, he was asleep.

“Like your boy,” Dad muttered and I looked at him.

“Which one?” I asked and Dad smiled at me.

“Both of ‘em,” he answered and I smiled back.

I looked across the room to see people pecking at the remainder of the food on the table, Tate and Stella standing amongst them, slightly removed. Tate had his arm around Stella’s shoulders, she was leaning her head on his and what appeared to be the rest of her weight into his side with her arms loose around his waist. Carrie and Mack were standing with them. From my vantage point I could see Mom in the kitchen with Pop. He had his h*ps to the counter, arm lifted, pulling at a bottle of beer at his lips. Mom was chattering at him while bustling around, moving leftover food from one plate to another, condensing at the same time she tidied. There was music coming from outside and the party was getting rowdy if the noise from the people out there was anything to go by.

“You feeling okay?” I asked Dad, not looking at him.

“Better,” he answered. “Got a new diet and exercises I do every day. Food stinks, I’d kill for some fried mushrooms but if I even looked at ‘em your mother’d have a conniption. She doesn’t even keep shortening in the house, she steams everything. Vegetables, fish, swear the woman would steam steak if she could do it,” Dad replied.

“You have to stay fit, get your cholesterol level down,” I told him.

“Your Mom keeps at it, my body’ll forget what cholesterol is,” Dad muttered, I grinned and looked down at Jonas’s head on my thigh as my fingers slid through his hair.

“Your Mom told me about him,” Dad said softly, “Tate.”

“Yes?” I asked softly back, my fingers moving again through Jonas’s hair.

“Said he took care of you when you found out about me bein’ sick. Brought you all the way to Indiana, laid it out for that idiot ex of yours,” Dad went on.

“Yeah,” I was still speaking softly.

“Gotta say, hon, years I been worried. Years, you with that man. Never trusted him to take care of my girl. Never. Never thought he’d look after you, keep you safe. And, in the end, I was right.”

I turned and looked at my father.

“Dad,” I whispered.

“Can’t tell you, Lauren.” His voice got lower and thicker, his eyes slid toward Tate before coming back to me, “Can’t say… beside myself knowin’ I can quit worryin’ about my girl.”

“Daddy,” I whispered again but said no more because Jonas’s body moved, like a flinch, and I knew he wasn’t asleep.

Before I could say anything to Jonas, Dad, who obviously hadn’t felt Jonas move, kept talking. “He’s a good man, I can tell, it’s stamped all over him but the best part is the way he looks at you and his boy.”

Jonas’s body got tighter.

“Dad –” I started.

“He’d die before he let anything hurt you,” Dad continued.