fully expected his father would do just that, but after a pause, Harry shrugged. “No. I’ll come. I don’t want to see the idiots in the E.R., though. Call Dr. Osaka and tell him to meet us there.”
“Whatever you say, sir.”
A moment later, the paramedics finally succeeded in loading Harry onto the gurney and rolled him out of the bookstore.
“Are you going to follow the ambulance to the hospital?” Maura asked.
“He doesn’t need me. He’s made that more than clear.” He turned to Sage. “So we’re meeting for dinner. What time works for you?”
She still looked a little green around the gills, and he had a feeling food was the last thing on her mind. “Well, I was thinking I could work until four or so. Any time after that?”
“Let’s say six-thirty. I’ll pick you up at your house.”
“Great. I’ll see you then.”
He picked up his jacket, shook it off from being on the ground, then shrugged into it. With a stiff nod to Maura, he headed out into the snow-crusted streets of Hope’s Crossing.
The encounter with Harry served as a stark reminder of everything he’d been thinking. What the hell did he know about being a father? When he was a kid, his own example had been distant, preoccupied with work, then increasingly sharp—bordering on cruel—as Jack had reached adolescence.
By the time his mother eventually took her own life out of despair and loneliness and mental illness, Harry had given up any effort at establishing a relationship and had shown nothing but disdain for him.
Maybe Jack ought to just cut Sage a break now and slip back out of her life as quickly as he had come. She hadn’t had a chance yet to establish any real feelings for him. She had her mother, her grandmother, a strong support network here in Hope’s Crossing. Why on earth did she need him?
He stopped himself before he could go further down that road. The idea of leaving now, after he had only just found her, was unbearable. He wanted to be a father to her, in whatever limited capacity he could manage.
If that meant achieving some sort of peaceful accord with Maura, he was willing to do that too. He had to think that somewhere inside the prickly, sad-eyed woman she had become were some traces of the smart, funny, tender girl she had once been.
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