He just wanted to make sure I wasn’t dying? “Well... nice talking to you. I guess.” I didn’t really mean it. I just wanted to wrap things up.
“Just a minute,” Brandon said, holding out a hand to me again to stop me. “Let him talk.”
“He’s not talking,” I said.
He motioned to Jack again.
I waited.
Jack flexed his hands over and over. “I’ve changed, Kayli,” he said. “I’ve got a job now. And a place to live. A house. A real one.” He paused and then wiped at his lower lip with a thumb before going back to folding his hands again. “I know we haven’t had anything in a while, but I just wanted to let you know...if you need a place to stay...”
“Not needed,” I said, although I wasn’t really thinking about a place to live. I was more struck he’d up and gotten himself a job. Why? He was living on government checks before. Or was it not enough now?
How could he afford a house? His credit was horrible. I didn’t really understand. Who would let him rent?
He looked at Brandon and then at me again. “I know. They tell me you’ve got a place. I just wanted to offer. But maybe you’ll come visit.”
“I’m not interested.”
“I don’t drink anymore,” he said.
“It’s true,” Brandon said quietly. “He’s been at AA meetings regularly. He’s got a nice job. Steady.” He stepped close to me, providing a strong, steady hand at my lower back, rubbing through the robe I was wearing. “He’s trying, Kayli.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “I don’t know what you want from me.”
“Maybe you can come see me every once in a while?” Jack said. “I guess that’s it. Let me know how you’re doing? And let me make up for all the trouble I’ve caused.” He paused to wipe at his mouth again. “Look, I know it’s been rough the last several years…”
“Tell me about it,” I said with a heavy drip of sarcasm.
“I haven’t really been myself. Not since your mother died. But let me make it up to you. I know you don’t need me or anything. You’re good on your own. Let me do something since I couldn’t do it before.”
“There’s nothing I need,” I said. I didn’t understand all this. And why bring him to me now? I questioned Brandon with a stern stare. I wasn’t happy with this.
Brandon shrugged but said nothing, nodding his head in my father’s direction, silently telling me to listen.
I sighed loudly. “I don’t know what you expect from me. You want me to visit?”
“And let me know if you ever need anything.” He made a motion with his hands around the room. “Like here. Let me help pay for some of this.”
“It’s not needed,” I said. I didn’t exactly know how the hospital was funded, actually. Since it seemed to be Academy owned, I didn’t know how it operated. Would I never get a bill?
This time, Brandon interrupted. “But actually, if you’d like, you could spare a bit for the medications, perhaps? If you’d really like to help.”
This seemed to make Jack happy. I wasn’t sure why Brandon was offering this. Jack was just getting on his feet and he wanted to give me money for medical costs? Why was he encouraging it?
“I’ll do that,” Jack said. “Just let me know.”
“I guess,” I said, more to just close the conversation. I could yell at Brandon later about making this more awkward.
Jack stood up and nodded his head. “Well, I guess…”
“I have to get dressed,” I said. “I get out of here today.”
“Right,” he said. He looked to Brandon.
“Once she gets dressed, she’ll have a nurse come in with any prescriptions she needs and we’ll be right out.”
“I’ll wait by the car,” Jack said. He walked out the door.
I waited until I was sure he was down the hall. “The car?” I asked Brandon the moment he was gone. “Why is he waiting?”
“I drove him in. I’ll need to drive him back.”
I sighed. “And there’s no one else here to pick me up?”
Brandon raised an eyebrow. “No?”
I groaned and then shrugged my shoulders. “Why do this now? Why bring him here when I was just leaving?”
“He wanted to see you. And I thought you might prefer to see him here and not at the apartment where he could show up whenever he liked. Especially right now with Alice poking around. At least this leaves you in control of if you want him to come by.” He shrugged. “Besides, might be our last chance if we do get out of town. I just wanted to let you know he was okay.”
Made sense. I probably should have trusted his judgement, but still. “You could have warned me. And what’s this about making him pay for medication?”
“Let him help,” he said. “If that’s what it takes for him to feel like he’s contributing to his own daughter, let him. It’ll help him have some confidence when he’s getting back on his feet. I won’t let him offer more than he can afford.”
I went to the couch where Jack had been sitting and sat down myself. I put my head into my hands, putting pressure at my temples for a moment. “I didn’t really want to see him again.”
Brandon came over, sitting beside me. The weight of his body caused the cushions to shift in the old couch and it had me leaning into him.
He put an arm around me, rubbing my back and shoulder. “I was at his place when I got the call from Corey. It kind of slipped out while I was checking in on him. He got upset when I told him you were in the hospital. He wanted to come see you. I thought the anxiety of not doing so might set him back. I’m sorry I sprung it on you, but with Alice…and I thought you’d say no if I asked you.”
“I didn’t know you were talking with him.” I looked up at him.
He pressed his lips together for a moment, the depth of those eyes piercing me through like he was analyzing my feelings and trying to find the best way to talk to me about what he wanted. “We’ve always kept an eye on him, Kayli. That’s what we do. Not only to look out in case Wil ever went back to him, but to see if he’d help himself at all. And he did. He sobered up after you left. He started visiting the bars less and started looking at newspapers. At job sections…”
I pressed my hands to my face again. “I didn’t ask you to keep an eye on him. Or to get involved.”
“You think you know what the Academy is, Kayli, but you don’t really know. You’ve gotten involved with us, and you might have assumed a few things...”
“You adopted me,” I said. “I heard it. You adopted me and Wil. I still don’t know what it means exactly but…”
He reached around me, grasping the hand that was pressing at my face. He held the hand in his and squeezed it gently. “Look,” he said. “When we take people on, it’s because they usually just need a gentle push in the right direction to get them back on their feet. That’s usually all people need. It can be hard for someone to listen to a family member if that relationship has been ruptured. But if you’re strategic with a few choice people, placed in just the right time to talk to a person at the right moments, you can usually plant ideas into someone’s head…and that just starts them looking at improving their lives.”
“You think Jack just needed a good talking to?”
He smirked. “Not just him.”
I got his intent. “You didn’t talk to me. I recall I was kidnapped and forced to do a job.”
“Sometimes it’s more than just talking. But it worked. You’ve stopped stealing.”
“I would have stopped anyway.”
He shook his head and shrugged. “I thought we would, too. My brother and I…” He pressed his lips together and then released me. “Get dressed. I don’t want to talk about things here.”
I didn’t think I needed to talk more about it. He and his brother set up a scam to get forgotten money from banks, and they’d gotten caught. Axel and the others all had a similar story. They were caught doing something illegal, even if their intentions were good. And then this A
cademy stepped in. Made them some sort of offer. Join them, and they’d get them off the hook.
Was that going to be my life, too? As I got dressed, I was thinking about the hospital, about the apartment they lived in, the stuff they purchased for me sometimes. It all cost money, and it seemed like the Academy paid for a lot, even if they kept their own jobs and businesses, like Axel’s work with animals at the Charleston Aquarium, and Brandon’s bike shop, and Corey creating game apps. How the Academy fit into it all confused me, and trying to learn from them without asking directly just led to more questions. They said the Academy didn’t pay them, but it did. It provided stuff instead of money, like the hospital. Like the teams of people who came to give us support whenever we asked.
And it had gotten involved in my life. It took care of people like my father even when I never asked them to do that.
But did I want that to continue? In a way, I felt an obligation. To listen to them. To behave.