Chapter 3: Behind the Shed
The shadows lengthened across the gravel yard, stretching long and dark as the late afternoon sun began to dip behind the rusted skeleton of an old grain silo. Jax motioned with a crook of his tattooed finger toward a wooden picnic table tucked behind the main office shed, far enough from the idling bikes that the engine noise faded to a low, steady thrum.
I followed him, keeping a cautious distance, my fingers curled tightly around the small folded piece of paper still hidden inside my jacket lining.
Jax sat down heavily on the weathered bench, the aged wood groaning under his weight. He didn't offer me a seat, so I stayed standing, leaning against the side of the corrugated metal wall. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his vest pocket, tapped one out with a thumbnail, but didn't light it. Instead, he rolled it back and forth between his thumb and index finger, his gaze fixed on the dirt between his boots.
"Your mother always was stubborn," Jax said softly, speaking more to the ground than to me. "Thought she could change the world with a sketchbook and a pocketful of dreams. When things went sideways—when I caught that six-month sentence down in County for a street fight I didn't even start—I figured she was better off without an anchor dragging her down. I cleared out my locker, left the keys on the kitchen table, and caught a freight train west. Never looked back."
"She didn't want an anchor," I said, my voice tight. "She wanted you to care. Even after you left, she wouldn't let anyone else put your picture in the trash. When we moved into the trailer on Fourth Street, that was the first thing she hung on the wall behind the kitchen table."
Jax stopped rolling the cigarette. His head snapped up, and his dark eyes locked onto mine with an intensity that made me want to take a step back. "She kept it up? After everything?"
"She said people make mistakes when they're young and scared," I replied, quoting the very words I'd heard her whisper to herself on rainy nights when the rent was due and the pantry was bare. "She said you weren't a bad man, just a lost one."
A dry, humourless laugh escaped Jax's throat, harsh as grinding stones. "She didn't know the half of it. Being lost is a choice when you keep walking the same dark roads." He reached up, running a heavy hand down over his beard, his fingers tracing the old scar cutting across his left cheekbone. "What's the paper?"
I froze. My hand instinctively went to my jacket pocket, my fingers brushing against the crisp fold of the lined notebook page I had slipped out of the kitchen drawer before running out the door.
"What paper?" I asked defensively.
"Don't play games with me, kid. I saw you sliding it out back at the diner when Martha was breathing down my neck. You've been clutching it like it's a winning lottery ticket ever since you got off the bus." Jax held out a broad, calloused palm, his expression hardening back into the barrier of tough indifference he wore like armor. "Hand it over, Leo. Let's see what else your mother sent me after all these years."
I hesitated, my heart thumping against my ribs. For a second, I thought about turning around and running back toward the highway, back to the safety of the bus station. But then I remembered the sound of Sarah's dry, rattling cough echoing down the narrow hallway of our apartment this morning, and the way her pale hand had trembled so badly she couldn't hold her teacup.
Slowly, I pulled my hand out of my pocket and laid the folded paper flat on the rough wooden table between us.
Jax’s fingers closed over it. He unfolded the sheet carefully, as if afraid the old paper might disintegrate in his grip. His eyes scanned the neat, familiar handwriting penned in blue ink—not a letter, but a short list of dates, a doctor's name, and an address down in the next county, followed by a simple, unaddressed postscript: He has your eyes. Don't let him grow up wondering if he was ever real.
The silence that followed was heavier than anything that had come before. The distant roar of the highway seemed miles away, swallowed up by the vast, open space of the salvage yard.
Jax didn't move. His thumb lingered over the bottom line of the note, pressing down so hard the paper tore slightly at the crease. When he finally looked back up at me, the tough outlaw facade had completely cracked away, leaving behind something raw, weathered, and entirely vulnerable.
"She's down at County General?" Jax asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
"Yeah," I said, swallowing hard past the lump in my throat. "Room 412. Doctor says she needs surgery they won't schedule without a down payment we don't have."
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Jax stood up slowly, the bench scraping against the gravel. He reached out and placed a heavy, warm hand on my shoulder—a gesture so foreign, so entirely unexpected, that I flinched slightly under the weight of it. His grip wasn't tight, but it was steady, anchoring me to the earth just as surely as the roots of an old oak.
"Go back to the diner," Jax said, his voice dropping into a low, steady command that brooked no argument. "Tell Martha you're waiting for your uncle. I've got a bike to fix and a few debts to collect. I'll meet you by the bus stop at six o'clock sharp."
