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Lynette's in the break room at Whitlock when she hears about Jack's Dad for the first time. She's stirring creamer into her coffee at the counter while Mary, Stef, and Michelle sit at the table, gathered like a conspiratorial coven. Jack himself is nowhere to be seen. A few weeks ago, that would have made her ache a little, but now that they're not dating anymore, she's almost relieved.
“Oh, reminder to block Jack's Dad on all your socials.” Stef says, rolling her eyes at her phone screen. “Dude just tried to get me to pass on an apology.”
Mary scoffs. “The audacity.”
“I know, right? Poor Jack.”
Brow furrowing, Lynette pauses, setting the creamer down on the counter. Angling her head to hear the conversation just a little better.
“Do we know if he's okay?” Michelle asks.
A sigh from Stef. “I don't know… I sent a text aksing him last night, when he told me his Dad left, but he didn't reply.”
Now Lynette can't help feeling intrigued. She turns around, clutching her mug in both hands and tapping a pattern on the ceramic with her fingers. The women’s eyes slide to meet her.
“I’m… I'm sorry,” she begins, giving them a small defusing smile. “I just heard you speaking about something that happened with Jack, and I… I was just wondering what's going on.”
Stef glares a little at her (apparently she isn't forgiven for her sudden break-up with Jack), but Mary sighs, expression more concerned than angry. She gestures for Lynette to sit down, and gives Stef a pointed glance which dissolves her anger- at least on the outside.
“Alright. Fine.” Stef murmurs. “Come sit, girl.”
She pats an empty seat beside her. Reluctantly, Lynette crosses the room and takes it.
“Okay.” Mary sets her phone down, laying her palms down flat on the table. “How much do you know about Jack's Dad?”
Lynette feels a flush creeping to her cheeks. “Uh… not much.”
“Well, you're about to know a lot more. Listen to this.”
Her cheeks are chilled by the wind when she arrives at his doorstep, her teeth chattering with a mixture of cold and anticipation. The beating of her pulse reverberating in her head is quick, fluttering like butterflies’ wings.
Knock knock knock.
She steps back, glances at the driver's ed car in his drive and the closed curtains in the windows of the house. One sign that he's in. One sign that he's out.
Knock knock.
“Jack? You in there?”
There's no response. Not even a flickering in the curtains. Lynette knocks a few more times, just in case he didn't hear her, then twiddles her thumbs and waits.
Nothing.
The silence is eerie, so eerie that she knows she has to break it somehow- and that somehow comes in the form of her announcing, perhaps stupidly, that she's coming in.
She expects to find the door locked, another barrier in her way that she'll have to manoeuvre around. Instead, when she turns the handle, she's immediately granted entry. All that greets her inside is darkness.
“Jack?” she calls, voice wavering a little. “Jack, are you home? It's- it's me, Lynette. I know- I know we haven't been speaking so much but…” she steps forward, and her shoe crunches on broken glass. When she looks down, she's met with the remnants of a portrait. Judging by the slightly discoloured rectangle on the wall among the other photographs, it’s fallen from its place.
Or, more likely, it was purposefully yanked down. Smashed.
Lynette crouches down and picks up the photograph from the wreckage of glass shards that used to be its frame. It shows a happy-looking family- a man, a woman, and a baby. On the back, she reads:
John, Rosemary, and baby Jackie. Summer 1980.
Her stomach sinks. Oh, no.
“Jack? Jack, are you here?”
It's a pointless question. Now she's seen the smashed photograph, it's obvious that her ex-boyfriend is lurking somewhere in the house. The question now is simply ‘where’.
She walks carefully into the living room, heart thundering in her chest, mind racing with things she could say if she encountered him in there. It's empty.
She tiptoes into the kitchen. All she finds is an empty bottle of (ironically) Jack Daniels, not a glass in sight. The picture that's being painted here is not a pretty one.
“Jack?”
Her footsteps grow more hurried as she reaches the stairs, her hand reaching out to grab the bannister before she yanks it back at the appearance of dampness. When she lifts it to her eyes, she sees crimson sparkling in the low light.
Blood. But it isn't hers.
“ Jack?”
There's not an ounce of restraint left anymore. She doesn't care that they're no longer together, that she's technically breaking into his house, that she might be walking into the lion’s den here. The only thought that consumes her mind is to make sure Jack is safe.
The blood trails all the way up the bannister, and when she gets to the landing, Lynette spots droplets of it soaked into the carpet on the way to Jack’s bedroom. It's as close to confirmation that Jack is in there she'll ever get.
Despite her urgency to find him, however, it takes a few deep breaths before she has the strength to reach the end of the trail.
Make sure Jack is safe. Make sure Jack is safe.
Go on, Lynette.
Make sure he's safe.
She takes the final few steps into his room.
The scent of alcohol is overwhelming, and the first thing that hits her senses until her eyes adjust to the new light (a lamp beside Jack's bed) and she spots him, sat on the floor against his bed-frame, a whiskey bottle in one hand while the other, steadily dripping blood, hangs at his side.
“Oh my God. Jack?”
He's awake, but his bloodshot eyes are staring straight ahead at nothingness. At the sound of his name, he blinks, gaze sliding lazily to her face without the barest hint of emotion.
“ Lynette.” he slurs. Hiccups. “ What’re… doing here?”
Swallowing past the sudden lump in her throat, she crouches down in front of him, fully taking in the scene. He's incredibly pale, the bags under his eyes suggesting that he hasn't slept in hours, and he's clearly drunk. Very drunk. When she looks down at his bleeding hand, he instinctively tries to hide it. She's too quick for him.
Gently, careful not to startle him, she reaches for it, drawing it towards her and towards the dim lamplight. The source of the bleeding is his knuckles, cut to shreds (presumably from punching a certain photograph downstairs). His hand is trembling. His whole body is trembling.
“Oh, Jack.” she breathes. “It’s alright, sweetheart. I'm going to go get something to wrap that with, okay?”
He doesn't respond, merely blinks slowly, eyes filling with tears that soon trickle down his cheeks unaccompanied by sobs. Lynette leaps up and runs to his bathroom.
His medicine cabinet is mostly empty, but there's a small roll of gauze all the way at the back. It's a little dusty. Usable, though.
The moment she's holding it in her hands, she's hurrying back to his bedroom and dropping down to her knees in front of him again.
“Here, Jack. Let me see your hand again, alright?”
He complies without a word. A quick inspection reveals no obvious embedded glass shards, so Lynette begins to slowly roll the gauze across his knuckles, sweeping back around his palm and looping over again. Repeats this once, twice, until she can't see any blood spotting through the thickness of the gauze.
“There.” she murmurs. “There, that's better. All better now, Jack.”
Lies. It isn't all better. Her ex-boyfriend looks like a hollow shell of the man she used to know, and she can't help but feel partly responsible. She left him, just like his Dad left him.
God, if only she'd known.
Jack swallows thickly. Sniffs. “ Th-thanks.”
His eyes are rimmed red, the sclera streaked with angry red lightning. When was the last time he had a good night's sleep?
For a moment, all is quiet. Lynette’s thoughts are buzzing, and yet nothing she thinks of to say seems right. In many ways, she's grateful that it's Jack who next speaks.
“ Why… why're you here, Lynette?” he asks, voice thick with drink. “ Come to- come to gloat in my misery?”
His words are harsh, and yet there's no bite to them. Just a defeated acceptance that tells her how affected he is by the events of the past few hours, the past few weeks, the past few months. Perhaps this breakdown has been steadily approaching since the moment he was born.
Perhaps even before that, when his Dad left for the first time during his mother's pregnancy.
“I’m… I'm here because I needed to make sure you were okay.” Lynette says gently. “Because… because I found out what happened with your Dad.”
Jack scoffs, but it's half a sob. He sneers. “ What part? The- the first ab’ndonment or th’most recent one?”
“Both.”
He shrugs. “ S’fine. M… m used to it. He always leaves.”
His eyes move to the floor, to the blood stains on his carpet and his bandaged hand. Lynette doesn't miss the tear that runs all the way down the bridge of his nose and rolls off, melting into the fabric of his sweatpants. Or the next one. Or the one after that.
She reaches out a tentative hand to his shoulder. “I know. But it's not what you deserve, Jack.”
He trembles beneath her touch. Raises his eyes briefly to her, swimming with tears and grief. “ I-isn’t it?”
And all of a sudden, she understands.
The Catholic guilt. His identity as a whole. The connections he's made between himself and the constant walk-outs of everybody that matters in his life. Her own departure when he needed her most to hold his hand and assure him that she wasn't going anywhere.
He thinks it's all his fault.
“Oh, sweetheart.” She begins, on the verge of tears herself. The hand she placed on his shoulder moves to his cheek, her thumb swiping away at the tears that keep falling while he avoids her gaze. “Oh, Jack. You don't deserve any of this. It’s- it isn't your fault. I… oh, God, sweetheart, I didn't know about any of this and I’m so sorry.”
By this point, he really is sobbing, chest heaving, shoulders sagging with the weight of his emotion. The guttural sounds of grief that tumble from his lips are enough for Lynette to switch from merely keeping one hand on him to embracing him, pulling him against her until his nose is buried in her neck and his cries are muffled against her skin.
“It’s alright, Jack.” she murmurs, voice wobbly. “You’re alright, sweetheart. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
In the midst of his breathless sobs, she makes out words.
“ E-e-everyb-body l-l-leaves me, L-lynette. Why- wh-why does e-everybody l-leave me?"
She wants to give him some catch-all answer, but there isn't one. Especially not when she's one of the aforementioned ‘everybody’. She is part of the problem.
And why the hell did she leave anyway? Over a stupid argument? Her own inconsideration of Jack’s vulnerability?
“I… I don't know.” she tells him, defeated. “I don't know, Jack. Some- some people are just shitty. And others… others are sorry. Very sorry.”
It's a pathetic excuse, and she knows she'll have to talk to him about it further when he's sober and a little more stable, but for now Jack clings to her and her words like a boat in a storm.
“ P-please don’ go ‘gain, L-lynette.” He shudders into her neck. “ Please don't… please don't l-leave me.”
She squeezes him tighter than she ever has before, turning to press a kiss to his temple. It's the smallest gesture of affection, but it makes him sob with even more gusto.
This is all he wants, she realises. To be held. To be loved. To be anything except abandoned.
“I’m not going anywhere.” she reassures him with a whisper. “I’m staying right here, sweetheart. Right here.”
This time, she swears to herself, she's going to teach him that he's worth staying for.