Page 142 of You'll Never Find Me

My mom knew I detested classrooms and book-learning. I had to do things to learn things. I made it through high school because I had a good family who helped me when things got tough, and because I wasn’t incapable of learning. I just had to want it bad enough. I managed to graduate with a 3.0 GPA and that was fine with me.

“Sometimes,” my mom said, “I thought you argued with me just because you never wanted to agree with me. Then... I realized you were highlighting the flaws in my thinking, the holes in my ideas, making me dig down for the truth. It didn’t matter what it was or even if you agreed with me, it actually helped. You helped me be a better lawyer, a better advocate for my clients because you are a contrarian.”

“I live to serve,” I said, half joking.

I remembered those arguments and friendly debates. It reminded me that family wasn’t just the past, not simply memories of the good and the bad, but also the present, the future. Family meant something—it always had. Being here, in the middle of my big extended family celebrating the sixty-year union of two amazing people who connected each and every one of us, made me yearn for more. Crave what I had, that I had either given away...or ignored.

For too long, I’d felt as if they had turned their backs on me, but I was wrong. We had disagreed, my mother and I. And my brothers and sisters sided with her, not me. It hurt. I’d felt like the odd man out.

But in the end, ideas and issues and people came and went, but family stayed. Family had your back. Family was your lifeline.

With our family came unconditional love.

I had forgotten that. Mom and I may never agree on whether to prove dad’s innocence, and I’d let that disagreement—no matter how fundamental—put a wedge in my family that had affected all of us, not just me and my mom. I’d put conditions on my mother’s love that were unfair and unjust.

No longer.

I was home, even before my mom reminded me that Angelhart Investigations was our collective dream.

“You have sharp instincts and a deep compassion that is both tempered and enhanced by those instincts,” my mom said. “You intuitively know what to do. I may not have helped Annie Carillo as you did.”

“You would have.”

“I don’t know. I would have weighed the risks, likely opted for finding solutions within the system. And my need to work within the confines of the system may have gotten her killed. Or put her children at risk. But at the same time, the risks you take are dangerous. I would say I don’t know where you get it, but I do. Your father has always taken risks. He’s always stood up for what is right, even when he’s suffered.” She took a deep breath, let it out. “I want you to come with me tomorrow, to visit your father.”

“I visit him all the time—did you think I didn’t? That I turned my back on him?”

“Of course not. I know you see him nearly every week. But he’s been depressed because he feels his decisions have divided us. I want to show him, not tell him, that we’re united.”

“I can’t promise not to investigate Klein’s murder. I won’t promise.”

“I know. And I’m not going to ask you to. But the answers may not be what you want or expect. And I am going to do what Cooper has asked me to do: stand down.”

I didn’t know how my mom could do that, could just not look for the truth, free her husband. But I did know how she could stand with my father and do what he asked of her. I had a feeling my father was going to try to convince me to stand down as well. Maybe he could...but I doubted it.

Maybe if I listened, I could read between the lines.

“Alright, I’ll go.”

I could actually feel the tension leave my mother’s body. “I want to give him good news—that you will join me, Jack, and Tess at Angelhart Investigations.”

I wanted it, but I didn’t know how it would practically work.

“I’m used to working on my own, Mom. I’m used to taking cases that you might not take.”

“I know. We’re a partnership, not a dictatorship. And I might not agree with all your decisions, but I will always have your back. You take the cases you want, and you’ll have the backup. Jack has been going through the motions the last few years. He misses being a cop, misses his family. Seeing his son every other weekend is slowly killing him. He needs you, needs us, more than he’ll ever admit.”

It hurt me when anyone in my family was in pain. And if I could help, even in a small way, I would.

“Okay,” I said. “One day at time?”

My mom hugged me. I hugged her tightly back.

“I love you, Mom,” I said.

“I love you, Margo.” She leaned back and I saw tears in her eyes, but she was smiling. “Now, let’s toast to the most successful marriage I know, and say a prayer that Tess finally sets a date for her wedding.”

I followed my mom into the restaurant, listened to her speech and toast, talked to all my relatives, watched the kids play, and felt like I had truly come home.