It was astonishing...and also horrible to realize that she, the sister who loved him and would do anything for him, was the one who didn’t think him capable.
Will did. Ronnie did. Benny did. She was the only one who doubted him.
More tears welled up and spilled over before she had a chance to stop them.
“I’m sorry, Harper. Please don’t cry.” Jeremy’s eyes grew wet, too, in empathy. That was the kind of boy he was. No, he was a young man, not a boy. But she’d never treated him that way.
Harper swiped at her tears. “I’m just glad you’re home and you’re okay. But we need to go over a couple of rules. What’s the first rule?”
When she stopped crying, he did, too. “I have to take my phone everywhere.” His voice echoed in the nearly empty living room.
They would have to start hanging out in this room again. Her mom would want that.
“And the second rule,” Harper enumerated, “is that you don’t leave work or school unless you talk to me first.”
He was practically bouncing on the sofa. That was her brother, overexcited, racing toward the next fun and interesting activity, forgetting the fright as if it had never happened. “Or Will? Can I call Will?”
Will. She’d told him she needed to reevaluate whether Jeremy should work for him. Until this moment, she’d been positive she’d never let her brother go back there. Now, she wasn’t sure what to tell Jeremy.
“For right now, let’s just keep it that you call me, okay?”
“Okay, but Will always tries to help me. Always wants me to learn stuff. Always wants me to have fun.”
She swore her heart swelled a thousand times bigger as she looked at him a long moment—really looked. Her brother had the exuberance of a child, but the look of a young man. He smiled wide, he loved big. He could forget the bad and move on to the good. She was supposedly his teacher, the person he learned from. But she’d never stopped to think that Jeremy had things to teach her, too.
Like how to stop living in the past. How to trust. And, most important, how to love without holding anything back out of fear.
“Were you scared last night?” She’d never even thought to ask. She’d just assumed. Because she’d been terrified, and because Jeremy didn’t like the dark sometimes.
“I was scared.” He nodded hard. “But then I found a cop. And he was really nice.”
He’d been scared. But she didn’t think he’d been terrified. He’d gotten through just fine. Yes, things could have gone horribly wrong. He could have met bad people. But he’d actually done quite well.
Will had always believed that Jeremy could do more than anyone expected. He’d never seen Jeremy as handicapped. Until that moment in his London flat, Will had never used the word disabled. And she’d seen then how it hurt him to say it.
Whereas she’d constantly set limitations, never let Jeremy expand, never made him test his capabilities. She’d confined her brother. And she hadn’t trusted him to learn from both his mistakes and his triumphs. She’d been afraid that Jeremy wouldn’t need her one day. So she’d forced him to need her.
It was Will’s faith in Jeremy’s abilities that had made him stronger.
And Will’s love.
Will had showered her with that love, too. Every time she’d doubted his promises, he’d made them anyway. He kept on believing in her. He’d bared his soul to her, revealed all his dark secrets, trusted her to keep them and accept him. And when she’d shut him down from the moment Benny called to say Jeremy was missing, he’d still taken care of her. Taken care of it all.
Everything was suddenly so clear. Clearer than it had ever been before.
She’d been wrong, and she needed to make some changes.
Starting now.
She put her hand over Jeremy’s. “Here’s what we’re going to do. First, we’re going out to breakfast. Waffles—what do you think?”
“Yay, waffles.” Jeremy punched the air. “Can I have whipped cream and stuff?”
“All the stuff you want.” She smiled at him, feeling her heart fill. “And after that, I have an errand to run. It might take a few hours. Can you stay home and hold down the fort?”
His eyes went wide with wonder, a look he’d probably displayed with every new and exciting exhibit he found in the Exploratorium. “All by myself?”
“All by yourself.”
She had to start trusting Jeremy.
She had to stop being afraid.
And she had to tell Will everything that was in her heart.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Completely hollowed out inside, Will stared at the frame in his barn. After nearly three thousand rivets, it was starting to resemble a car rather than a birdcage. Over the past weeks, they’d worked on Saturdays and saved Sundays for fun.