Chapter 126 Somebody Chose to Show Up

Chapter 126 Somebody Chose to Show Up
Jake POV

I grab Penny's phone right out of her hand before she can type a single word back.
"No," I say, same as she said to me over Karen's message days ago, and this time I mean it just as hard. "You are not meeting Detective Reyes alone. Not after that security footage, not after tonight, not after any of this."
"Jake, if I don't respond, it might look suspicious,"
"Then we respond together, tomorrow, in daylight, with your mom and my dad's lawyer both in the room." I set the phone down firm, my hands still shaking slightly from everything that's happened tonight. "No more alone meetings with anyone connected to this case. We agreed. No secrets, no going it solo."
Penny nods slowly, and I can see the fear still sitting behind her eyes, but she doesn't argue. We agree to have Diana forward the request to the lawyer first thing, and by the time I finally head home that night, something between us feels steadier than it has in hours, even with everything else still unraveling around us.
The next morning brings something even harder. My dad's first official meeting with the investigators, not the arrest, not the arraignment, but the sit-down where he's supposed to lay out everything he knows, cooperate fully, try to build whatever case his lawyer can for leniency. He asks me to come. Not to sit in the room, but to be there in the waiting area, because apparently even now, even after everything, he still wants his son close by while his whole life gets picked apart by strangers in suits.
I almost say no. Part of me wants to let him sit in that cold little room completely alone, the same way he let me sit alone through two years of grief and confusion. But then I think about Marcus in that hallway blocking the reporter, about Penny refusing to let me walk into that police station without her, and I realize showing up isn't about earning it. It's just about doing it anyway.
I ask Maren to come with me.
She says yes before I've even finished the sentence, same as she did about meeting Lily, same instant, unwavering yes that still catches me off guard every single time.
"You don't have to," I tell her in the car, suddenly second-guessing myself. "This is heavy stuff, Maren. Watching a father you barely know get grilled by investigators isn't exactly a fun way to spend your morning."
"Jake." She looks at me steady, something fierce and certain in her expression. "I spent twenty-three years wishing I had a family to show up for. I'm not going to start skipping the hard parts now just because they're hard. That's not how this works, not for me."
Something about hearing that settles some of the tightness in my chest, just slightly, enough to keep breathing through the drive.
The waiting room at the investigator's office is exactly as cold and gray as I expected, hard plastic chairs, a clock that ticks too loud, the kind of silence that makes every small sound feel enormous. My dad disappears through a set of double doors with his lawyer, and Maren and I sit there, side by side, watching the clock crawl forward one agonizing minute at a time.
"Tell me about her," Maren says after a while, breaking the silence. "Your mom. I keep hearing pieces, the accident, the case, the insurance, but I don't actually know anything real about who she was."
I blink, surprised by the question, surprised by how much I want to answer it. "She used to hum while she cooked. Off-key, completely tone-deaf, but she did it anyway. She'd make pancakes shaped like dinosaurs for Lily every single Saturday, even after twelve-hour shifts at the hospital." My throat tightens, but I keep going. "She used to tell me that the hardest part of being a good person is staying good even when nobody's watching. I think about that a lot lately."
Maren's eyes go glassy. "I wish I'd known her. Even for a day."
"She would've loved you," I say, and I mean it completely. "She loved people who showed up. That was basically her whole thing."
Maren reaches over and squeezes my hand, and for a moment, sitting in that cold gray waiting room with everything else in my life falling apart, something warm settles in my chest. Hope, maybe. Or something close enough to it. Because here's this person, brand new to my life, choosing over and over to show up for a family that's currently collapsing in every direction, and something about that steady, uncomplicated choice makes the whole nightmare feel slightly more survivable.
We wait almost two hours. When my dad finally comes back through those double doors, he looks wrung out completely, gray-faced, older than I've ever seen him, but something in his shoulders looks lighter too, like he actually told the truth in there for once, cost him everything it cost, and it still helped somehow.
"How'd it go?" I ask, standing fast.
"As well as it could," he says quietly. "I told them everything I know. About the money, about the trips, about Daniel Ford showing up." He pauses, glancing between me and Maren, something heavy settling over his face. "I also told them what I remember from the night before your mother died. Jake, there's something I never told anyone. Not even the original investigators two years ago."
My stomach drops. "What?"
"Your mother got a phone call that night," he says slowly. "Late, after you'd gone to bed. She left the house right after it, said she needed to meet someone, wouldn't tell me who. She never came back the same person after that call, Jake. Something scared her badly enough that she started making arrangements the very next morning, the insurance policy, the note about Penny, everything."
"Who called her, Dad?"
He hesitates, glancing toward the double doors he just walked through, like even now, even after finally telling the investigators, some old fear still has its grip on him.
"I found her phone in a box last night," he says quietly. "Old, dead for two years, but I finally charged it. There's one call logged the night before she died. Eleven minutes long. And Jake, the number belongs to someone still working at that police department right now. Someone who interviewed me about this exact case less than a week ago."