Chapter 128 A Little Bit of Air

Chapter 128 A Little Bit of Air
Jake POV

My phone rings while I'm tying my shoes for regionals, and I nearly drop it, seeing my dad's lawyer's name flash across the screen instead of my dad's.
"Hello?" My voice comes out tight, braced for the worst, because that's just how my body reacts to phone calls now.
"Jake, it's Marcus Webb, the lawyer, not your friend," he clarifies quickly, and despite everything, I almost laugh at the confusion. "I wanted you to hear this before it hits the news. The investigators finished their initial review. Your father's cleared of the fraud charges tied to the missing client funds."
The room tilts slightly, but this time in a good way, like the floor finally stopped trying to swallow me whole. "Cleared? Completely?"
"Not completely," he says carefully. "He mismanaged funds. Moved money he shouldn't have touched, missed reporting requirements, made choices that are going to cost him financially and professionally for years. But the investigators found no evidence of criminal intent to steal. It reads as poor decisions made under serious personal strain after your mother's death, not deliberate theft. He'll owe restitution. He'll likely have to sell the house and most of his assets to cover it. But Jake, he's not facing prison time."
I sit down hard on the edge of my bed, the tightness that's been sitting in my chest for two straight weeks finally, finally loosening, just slightly, just enough that I can actually take a full breath for what feels like the first time in ages.
"We're going to lose the house," I say slowly, testing the words out loud.
"Probably," the lawyer admits. "But you're not going to lose your father to a prison sentence. I know that's nothing after everything you've all been through."
It's nothing. It's actually everything, in a strange way. I think about Lily, about how devastated she'd be visiting her dad through glass instead of just having him gone on business trips she at least understood as temporary. I think about my mom, and how she'd probably be relieved too, in whatever way the dead can still feel relief for the people they left behind.
"Thank you for telling me," I say, throat tight. "Can I call my dad?"
"He's actually the one who asked me to call you first," the lawyer says. "He wanted you to hear it from someone steady before he called himself, said he didn't trust his own voice not to fall apart on the phone."
I hang up and just sit there a moment, letting the news settle into my bones. Not a full win. Nowhere close to the life we had two weeks ago. But not the disaster we spent every waking hour bracing for either. Somewhere in the middle, in that messy, complicated, still-painful middle, is apparently where we get to live now.
My dad calls twenty minutes later, and his voice does crack, exactly like he predicted, thick with something that sounds like relief tangled up with shame.
"Jake, I know this doesn't fix what I did. I know selling the house is still going to hurt Lily, hurt all of us. But I wanted you to know," His voice breaks completely. "I wanted you to know I'm not going to disappear on you again. Whatever comes next, wherever we end up living, I'm here. Actually here, this time."
"I believe you," I say, and I'm surprised to find I actually mean it, at least a little, at least enough to let something soften in my chest that's been clenched tight since the night his name first showed up in that article.
I tell Maren the second I hang up, and she cries a little, relief and grief tangled together the same complicated way it's tangled in my own chest. We're both still processing when I remember something important, something that yanks me straight back to today's actual schedule.
Regionals. Penny's regionals, starting in less than an hour.
I grab my keys and text Maren the address, and we pile into the car together, picking up Lily along the way, all of us determined to be in that audience the way we promised Penny we would be.
We make it just in time, sliding into seats near the front as the competition's about to start, Lily clutching her giant handmade sign that says GO PENNY in glittery, slightly uneven letters she insisted on decorating herself. Diana's already there, saving seats, her face lighting up with relief when she sees us squeeze in beside her.
"Any news?" she asks quietly, clearly picking up on something different in my posture.
"He's cleared of the worst of it," I whisper back. "Not everything. But not prison. We're probably losing the house, but,"
"But he's still your dad, still coming home every night," Diana finishes gently. "That matters more than the house, Jake. I promise you that."
I nod, throat tight, and turn my attention toward the stage just as the competitors file out, Penny among them, looking focused and nervous and beautiful in that particular way she gets when she's about to do something hard and important.
She spots us in the crowd almost immediately, and something in her face relaxes seeing all of us there, me, Maren, Lily's ridiculous glittery sign, her own mom sitting proud beside us.
The competition begins, and for a little while, everything actually feels okay. Better than okay. It feels like maybe, finally, something is going right.
Then, halfway through the second round, my phone buzzes hard against my leg, and I almost ignore it completely, except something makes me glance down anyway.
It's from Detective Reyes, the same email Penny apparently got hours earlier and never mentioned to me, forwarded now directly to my own inbox with a short, urgent note attached above it.
Jake, we located the second victim connected to your mother's case. I need you to see this before it becomes public. I'm sorry it has to be like this.
Below the note, an attached photo loads slowly across my screen, and the second it finishes loading completely, my stomach drops straight through the auditorium floor.
It's a photograph of Karen. The same Karen who showed up on our porch claiming to be my mom's sister.
Except in this photo, she's lying motionless on a hospital bed, tubes and monitors surrounding her, a caption underneath explaining she was found unconscious in her home two days ago and has been in critical condition ever since.