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The ride home from Sunday dinner that evening passed in almost total silence. It was uncomfortable, per se, but there was something uncharacteristically melancholy about it that made the pit in Eddie’s stomach, which had begun developing when she’d first learned Joe wouldn’t be making it out for the meal, grow that much deeper. Jamie had been fine during dinner, but once they were away from the rest of the family, it became obvious that her husband was taking Joe’s absence hard. Truthfully, she was taking it pretty hard, too.
She hadn’t been lying at the table earlier that evening. Most people needed time away from family at some point in their lives. It was why she’d chosen Yale even after receiving her acceptance letter from Columbia. But the Reagans kept their distance in a much different way than most other people. Nicky’s career had taken her across the country, but she still called at least once a week. Jack did the same. The others – her husband and her brother-in-law and sister-in-law – rarely went the entire seven-day stretch between one family dinner and the next without seeing their father and grandfather.
The Reagans were close, even when they were distant. So, not seeing Joe at Sunday dinner? Not having the slightest idea where he was? Of course that was eating at them. It was eating at her, and she’d only recently started getting the hang of the whole “close family” thing. She only hoped that, wherever he’d ended up, he knew that they – all of them – were a single phone call away, no matter what he needed.
“He’s gonna be okay, isn’t he?” Jamie asked quietly, pulling her from her reverie. They were sitting on the couch, where they’d settled after walking in the front door. They’d turned on Sunday night football, but neither of them were paying the television much mind, instead simply sitting there, lost in thoughts of all that’d happened since they last gathered at the Reagan family home.
“He’s gonna be fine, Jamie,” she reassured him, hoping she sounded more confident than she felt. She truly did think Joe was going to be fine, with time. It was the time that concerned her. “Your dad’s right. It’s almost Christmas. He’s probably going to call, and then we’ll just… figure out where he wants to take it from there.”
“And what if he doesn’t want to take it anywhere from there?” Jamie questioned, sounding just about as dejected as she’d ever heard him. “What if this is his way of getting distance, so it won’t hurt him as bad when he cuts us all out completely?”
“Jamie, the kid got into a fistfight with guys he’s worked with most of his career because they were bad-mouthing you and your family. His family. He wouldn’t have done that if he wanted to cut you all out.”
“You sure about that?”
She hummed in reply, shrugging slightly. “Well, I sure as hell didn’t get into any fistfights for my father when people started bad-mouthing him. Had a few drinks thrown in my face because of him. Maybe it was more than a few,” she allowed a moment later, narrowing her eyes in consideration. “But I always just let it go. I never fought back.”
“Why not?” her husband asked curiously.
“Because they were right. Everything they were saying was true. But even then, if I’d wanted to fight for him, argue against what they were saying about him, I could have. I just chose not to. It wasn’t worth it.”
“So, what you’re saying is…?”
“I’m saying, if Joe’s fighting back, it’s because he thinks it’s worth it. It’s because he cares. He just needs a little time, Jamie, that’s all. You’re not going to lose him. We’re not going to lose him.”
He nodded once, then lifted his hand to rest atop her ankles where they were propped up in his lap. “I hope you’re right,” he murmured, his thumb stroking absentmindedly against her skin.
Yeah, Eddie thought to herself, following her husband’s grief-ridden gaze to the photograph of his lost older brother – the photograph that had been given a place of honor next to his mother’s and grandmother’s, that very first day they moved in – with a sad smile of her own. I hope I’m right, too.