Chapter Twenty-One

Jessa’s phone kept going to voicemail. Wade had no choice but to leave the hospital to try and track her down. As he walked toward the parking lot, like he had with his mother a hundred times before, Wade remembered that his car wasn’t there. He’d ridden with Celeste in her Oldsmobile. Looking around the lot, he didn’t see the Olds in the place they’d parked. He didn’t know where Celeste or her car had disappeared to.

Wade walked back toward the emergency room doors and opened the Lyft app on his phone. As it tracked down drivers in the area, he prayed that the driver would be some stranger. The last thing he wanted was another familiar face—some classmate or that dude Trevor, who was apparently everywhere—pulling up to help him home.

Luckily, the driver who arrived in a dark sedan had an unfamiliar face and no interest in chit-chat. The man barely spoke to Wade once the boy hopped into the backseat and shut the door.

As they exited the lot, Wade finally caught sight of Celeste. She was unloading bags of carryout from Waffle House from her car, for some reason. She was so focused that she didn’t notice him pass.

It made sense to get her to like him. She could still cause him a lot of trouble, right? But she hadn’t done that so far. Celeste seemed like a magic trick. She worked on people, building up their trust and compassion by actually listening to them, he figured. It was a pretty good trick, like some sort of motherhood voodoo spell she cast. It was the same sort of trick she’d used on him that day of his surgery, her warm laughter making him confess his thoughts about Dr. Emmett while she drove him home. Each time, he’d spilled most everything to her, granted most of which she already knew, and in return she’d given him nothing about herself.

He reconsidered their interaction. They argued on his front lawn about attempted murder. Then, they went to the hospital. There, she watched her boss bleed out of his eyes. Then she encouraged her boss’s teenage attacker to come out to his own mom, then she just—like, huh?—apparently decided to go to Waffle House for some hash browns.

Celeste followed a path that Wade couldn’t even see. He liked her for that. He’d have to ask her about it later. And he didn’t doubt for one second that he would, in fact, see Celeste again later. Though it was tempting for him to think that the two of them shared a common enemy, Wade figured instead that maybe they just shared a common grief.

He looked at the clock. It was 5:37 p.m. He maybe should’ve waited before taking off, talked to his mother a little bit more.

But Lydie was his priority. And if Stephanie was telling the truth, that Jessa was trying to hurt Lydie, he had to save his girl. Even though he was new, even though he’d been distracted, even though he felt like a kid himself, Wade knew enough about being a parent to know that.

Wade had let himself get too distracted from Lydie. Looking at her made him feel guilty, so he stopped coming home to her. The women in his life considered him a screw-up, so he just stopped trying, fulfilling their prophecy. He should’ve done things differently. He should’ve stepped up. Lydie deserved a better father than that. He had to be more than just some 17-year-old doormat.

Δ

When Wade arrived home, Rev. Lancaster’s SUV was in the Harrells’ driveway, taking up so much space that there was no way around it. The reverend himself was leaning against his car, taking up more space, talking to the bitch neighbor lady so politely. Mrs. Winston must go to his church, Wade thought. It was another reason not to like her.

Wade jumped out of his Lyft and broke for his mom’s part of the house, knowing Jessa probably locked their entrance to the basement. The sedan driver just pulled away like it was nothing, and Wade felt his cell phone vibrate with the notice of the end of the ride.

The reverend reached to grab him. But Wade evaded capture and bolted toward the porch.

“Hey, Wade! My daughter doesn’t want to see you!”

“It’s my house,” Wade shouted.

He fumbled for his keys, got inside, locked the front door and moved toward the kitchen.

In spite of himself, he glanced over his shoulder at his hiding place. Wade could feel the teeth smirking at him from behind the cabinet door.

He could not stop. He had to prioritize Lydie. So, he opened the door and rushed down the basement steps, where he saw Jessa packing a fucking suitcase on the bed’s bare mattress. She’d already stripped off his sweaty, stained sheets, and they sat in a pile on the floor. She glanced up at him in shock.

“You’ve got to be kidding me right now,” he said, voice trembling.

“Don’t, Wade,” she said to him. “Don’t. Even. Start.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me with this shit, Jessa,” Wade shouted. “Like, honestly, you spent one goddamn day with the asshole, and now you want to go home with him like everything’s fucking fine?”

“Do not talk. You don’t get to talk.”

“I can talk as much as I fucking want. You’ve lived here for two months while that asshole just ignored you.”

“—where you became the asshole who ignored me.”

Wade’s face drained of color. The baby started to cry.

“We have a damn baby,” she said to him. “We have a baby, and where the hell have you been all day? Jeez, where the hell are you most of the time?”

“Working,” Wade said. “I have a job. And I have school. And I’m working all the fucking time.”

“You don’t even want me ever,” she said. “We never even watch old movies anymore. We don’t even have Friday night anymore.”

Wade took a few steps down toward her, but Jessa stepped away from the suitcase toward the baby, not even letting him diminish the distance between them by an inch.

“I’m taking the baby, and I’m going back to my parents’ house.”

“Where they’ll treat my Lydie like she’s some sinful mistake.”

Jessa’s forehead wrinkled, for Wade seemed to act like Lydie was a mistake all the time. She picked up their daughter and cradled her.

“It won’t be like that,” she said. “If you’d seen my father today, you’d know that he’s changed.”

“I did see him today,” Wade said, confused. “I saw him at the hospital.”

“When were you at the hospital? I never saw you, Wade. For hours.”

“I showed up just as you bolted, apparently,” Wade admitted. “Stephanie said you were trying to hurt the baby.”

Jessa just kept talking, “And then I come here, and I find the sheets all covered in lube. What the hell did you do? Jack off and sleep all day while our baby was suffering?”

“Apparently, our baby was suffering because of all sorts of shit that you did,” Wade said. “Don’t act all high and mighty, bitch.”

“All I did was try and fix the baby’s hair, and that nurse went insane,” Jessa said. “Don’t you ever call me a bitch again, OK? Never, ever. Fucking pervert.”

“Oh really? I’m a pervert?” Wade asked. “You’re the one who straddled me. I was just trying to watch an old movie. You were the one all fired up to lose your virginity.”

“I care about you, Wade, you stupid idiot,” she admitted. “I wanted you to touch me. I thought you wanted to touch me. We’d been spending time together for months.”

Their words dueled and danced around each other. The baby’s screams drowned both of them out. And Wade realized he wanted to stop.

At that moment, Rev. Lancaster began jostling the backyard doorknob, trying to break into their conversation. Wade was right. Jessa had locked everyone out. He began shouting for her to let him in.

But she just kept cradling her baby, shaking over what happened at the hospital. Wade, even though he didn’t want to give her a moment’s consideration or kindness, just listened. Her father, shut out, just kept pounding on the door.

Jessa took a breath.

“I was just trying to fix her hair,” Jessa said to the baby and to herself. “I don’t know why. She just looked all uncomfortable and in pain. I didn’t want her to be uncomfortable. Singing didn’t work. She was so unhappy. I can’t believe the day she’s had.”

“But she doesn’t have hair, Jessa,” he said to her, softening a little.

“Oh, I know that, idiot,” she replied. “I wasn’t even really thinking. I just wanted to make something nicer for her.”

“And so, you scraped her head with a hairbrush? Really fucking nice.”

“I. Never. Touched. Her. With. The. Fucking. Hairbrush,” Jessa said in a staccato fury. “I never touched her. I would never. That fucking nurse friend of your mother’s just assumed the goddamn worst about me. Because she’s a friend of your mother’s.”

“Stephanie is a completely reasonable person,” Wade said. “I’ve known her for years.”

“I don’t give a fuck, Wade,” Jessa said. “She’s just some bitch who said I was hurting my daughter.”

“Well then, why did they think you were going to hurt her?” Wade asked.

“I was going through my purse, Sherlock. I grabbed a brush. I looked at it. I was holding the baby. And the bitch nurse walked in, like I fucking said, and she yelled at me about brushing the baby’s hair and threatened to call your mother.”

Wade smirked. Jessa caught the look and moved back toward the suitcase.

She muttered to herself, “Everyone in that hospital was judging me. So, I left.”

Wade scoffed.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said.

“Everyone in that hospital is friends with your damn mother,” she said. “They all just glare at me. Unlike you, they never fucking left me alone.”

“You sound so fucking paranoid.”

“I told them all to go to hell,” Jessa said.

“You mean your dad’s house?” Wade asked.

“Enough,” she said to him. “I’ve had enough of you. And this entire day. Baby gets locked in a car, then hit by broken glass. I’m in a towel out on the damn lawn. I have to take the baby to the fucking hospital all goddamn day, and now you have decided you want to be here for the baby, now that I’m taking her away. And you blame me for all of this! Bullshit. I’m out.”

“Not with my baby. You can leave.”

“I have the breasts, Wade. I can take my baby wherever I want. Or don’t you want your daughter to eat?”

Wade spat, “I’m glad your breasts are good enough for someone.”

Her face turned scarlet. Jessa zipped the suitcase. Her father continued to pound at the door, so she waved at him through the window to indicate they were coming.

The suitcase went from the mattress to the ground. She extended its handle and wheeled it toward the door, baby in her other arm.

“We’ll be back tomorrow for the rest of my stuff,” she said to him, crossing the room. “Answer your fucking phone when I call.”

Then, reaching the door, Jessa turned and said her exit line, like the whole thing was a drama.

“You’re a terrible father,” she said to him. The baby continued to cry. As she unlocked the door, Wade tried to reply to her honestly.

“We’re both terrible.” And then he threw his busted-screen phone at her like a rock. It zoomed past her and smacked the door with a crack, then bounced back to the floor.

She smirked at him, like it was all some joke, then opened the door. Rev. Lancaster—glaring at Wade, never speaking but never blinking—grabbed the suitcase so that its wheels wouldn’t drag on the lawn.

Though tempted to chase both of the smug Lancasters down and beat them to death, Wade hesitated. There were too many witnesses. They’d never let him keep the baby. He didn’t have a weapon. He didn’t really want to be a killer. He didn’t want his daughter to hate him. He didn’t want his daughter to never know him. And, the thing that made him angriest, he feared Jessa was right.