I sucked in a breath and sighed.

“I’ll be okay, I think? I dunno. Depends on how this goes, I suppose.” Mom put her blinker on and the GPS voice told us to go a mile and Ianelli’s would be on the left. “I hope he’s still working.”

“He was when I texted you. At least you know how to get in touch with him, either way. Call me after, okay? If you need company or whatever, I’m yours.”

“Yeah, sure. Leaf’s meeting Mom and Mormor later, though, so I should be okay until then? But I’ll let you know.”

“Cool. I’m here. Love you.”

“Love you, too, wifey.”

We hung up right as we pulled the car not into one of the lanes to get gas, but the small parking lot beside the garage. It was a white building with three pits for cars, the big aluminum doors lifted to reveal a pair of SUVs on mechanic lifts. Red-and-green lettering announced that I’d arrived at Ianelli & Sons Garage, the sign spinning in slow circles. I couldn’t see any people milling around at first, and I sat there in the idling car with Mom, steeling myself for whatever was to come next.

A blue Corolla pulled up for gas.

The door of the office opened and out walked a tall, thin guy with black hair and a crooked nose wearing a navy blue jumpsuit with his name stitched in white on the left breast. I couldn’t read the letters from where I sat with Mom, but I knew what it said despite the distance.

Jack.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“Do you want me to go with you?” Mom asked.

Mom’s presence was support, but at the same time, she had that hole in her face that insisted on making words and noise and that could go so wrong so fast.

“I got it.”

“You sure?”

“Yep.”

Mom frowned.

“Good luck, peaches. Signal if you need help. If you light him on fire, I’m assuming he was a butthead.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

I fussed with the seat belt, grunting at the stretch of right arm looping over round belly to unlatch myself on the left side. I walked from the car, my hand going over my bump with the distorted cartoon T-shirt face. Jack was either going to assume I’d gotten fatter, or he was going to figure it out pretty darn quick. It was a highly localized protuberance, shall we say.

Thank you, Mrs. Weller, for that fifty-cent vocabulary word.