Chapter 3 - SHE SPENT FOUR YEARS MOURNING HER HUSBAND—THEN FOUND HIM ALIVE WITH ANOTHER NAME, AND THE TRUTH HE TOLD HER NEARLY DESTROYED THE NEW FAMILY SHE NEVER MEANT TO BUILDJo drove to Omaha with federal agents.
Gideon stayed behind.
Not because he wanted to.
Because Jo asked him to.
“This is between Daniel and me.”
Gideon nodded.
“Okay.”
That single word was harder than ordering a hundred armed men.
Daniel Bradley lived as Michael Reed.
Small house.
Hardware-store job.
No luxury.
No obvious protection.
When agents knocked, Daniel opened the door.
Jo saw him from the car.
Her dead husband.
Older.
Thinner.
Alive.
She couldn't move.
Daniel saw her.
His knees nearly gave out.
“Jo.”
She crossed the yard.
He opened his arms.
She slapped him.
Hard.
Daniel staggered.
“Fair.”
“You're alive.”
“Yes.”
“You're alive!”
She hit his chest.
“You let me bury an empty coffin!”
“I know.”
“Sammy cried for you!”
“I know.”
“He asked me if heaven had birthdays!”
Daniel began crying.
“I know.”
Jo slapped him again.
Then collapsed against him.
Not forgiveness.
Grief.
Four years arriving all at once.
Daniel had entered witness protection unofficially through a corrupt federal contact.
Victor discovered he had copied Ledger Seven.
Daniel believed Jo and Sammy would be killed if he returned.
So he vanished.
The car wreck had been staged.
“Why didn't you take us?”
“I couldn't trust anyone.”
“You could have trusted me.”
“I was trying to protect you.”
Jo laughed bitterly.
“That word again.”
Daniel looked confused.
“You decided what my life would be without asking me.”
“I was keeping you alive.”
“You made me a widow.”
Silence.
“You made Sammy fatherless.”
Daniel looked down.
“I thought someday—”
“No.”
Jo stepped closer.
“You don't get someday back.”
Sammy's reunion with Daniel was worse.
The boy stared.
“Mom said Daddy died.”
Jo knelt.
“Mom believed Daddy died.”
Daniel cried.
“I'm sorry.”
Sammy hid behind Jo.
“Are you really my dad?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn't you come to my birthday?”
Daniel couldn't answer.
Sammy began crying.
Then Daniel did too.
Healing did not happen that day.
Or that month.
But it began.
Gideon stayed away.
Jo noticed.
Finally she called.
“You can come over.”
“To your apartment?”
“Yes.”
“Daniel there?”
“No.”
“Do you want me there?”
“Yes.”
Gideon arrived with pizza.
Sammy opened the door.
“You got shot.”
“I recovered.”
“Can I see?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because your mother will murder me.”
Jo called from the kitchen.
“Correct.”
Gideon smiled.
The relationship between Jo and Gideon developed slowly.
Painfully slowly.
Daniel complicated everything.
Not romantically.
Jo knew within weeks she would not reconcile.
Too much had changed.
She loved the memory of her husband.
The man standing before her was partly stranger.
Daniel eventually understood.
“I thought surviving meant I could come back.”
Jo shook her head.
“Surviving means you get a future.”
“With you?”
“With your son.”
That hurt.
But Daniel accepted it.
Gideon faced federal charges.
Ledger Seven implicated him in financial crimes.
Not trafficking.
But money laundering.
Bribery.
Tax violations.
Obstruction.
His attorneys offered strategies.
Blame Victor.
Blame Malcolm.
Destroy credibility.
Gideon refused.
“My signature is there.”
“You didn't know.”
“I should have.”
“That isn't legally the same.”
“No.”
He looked at his attorney.
“But some of the crimes I did know about.”
Silence.
“I'll plead.”
Jo learned from the news.
She stormed into his office.
“You were going to tell me when?”
“Tonight.”
“You're going to prison?”
“Probably.”
“For how long?”
“Eighteen to thirty months.”
Jo stared.
Gideon waited.
She surprised him.
“Good.”
His eyebrows lifted.
“You should.”
He nodded.
“Yes.”
“If you want Sammy growing up believing you're worth respecting, then don't teach him powerful men get different rules.”
Gideon looked at her for a long time.
“That's why I love you.”
Silence.
He had not planned to say it.
Jo froze.
Gideon closed his eyes.
“Bad timing.”
“Terrible.”
“I can retract it.”
“No.”
He looked at her.
“Don't.”
She stepped closer.
“I love you too.”
Gideon forgot how to breathe.
“But.”
“There it is.”
“I am not promising to wait.”
“I wouldn't ask.”
“I am not becoming the woman who visits prison every Sunday and builds her life around a man.”
“Good.”
“And Sammy comes first.”
“Always.”
Jo touched his face.
“Then come home when you're done.”
Not wait for me.
Not I'll be yours.
Come home.
For Gideon Hale, that was enough.
He received twenty-two months.
Victor received life after trafficking victims testified.
Several officers and judges were convicted.
Hale River Logistics entered federal receivership.
Gideon surrendered assets.
Millions.
Properties.
Political influence.
The empire shrank.
He slept better.
Jo bought the Copper Kettle.
Not with Gideon's money.
She used the five thousand as part of a down payment, added a small-business loan and savings.
She renamed nothing.
The sign still flickered.
The coffee improved.
Slightly.
Daniel moved back to Kansas City and slowly rebuilt a relationship with Sammy.
No custody battle.
No demand for immediate fatherhood.
Therapy.
Supervised time.
Patience.
One afternoon Sammy asked Jo:
“Can I have two dads?”
Jo nearly dropped a plate.
“You have one dad.”
“What is Gideon?”
She thought.
“I don't know yet.”
Sammy nodded.
“Can he be extra?”
Jo laughed.
“We'll see.”
Eleven months into Gideon's sentence, Jo received a package.
Inside was a purple crayon.
A note:
Sammy told me my prison drawings lack imagination.
Apparently purple improves spaceships.
Happy New Year.
—G.
Jo cried.
Then laughed.
Then wrote back:
The coffee still sucks.
Your table is still available.
On the second New Year's Eve after they met, Gideon remained incarcerated.
At midnight he sat alone.
A guard approached.
“Phone.”
Jo answered.
“Happy New Year.”
Gideon closed his eyes.
Behind her he heard diner noise.
Sammy yelling.
Daniel laughing somewhere farther away.
Life.
“Happy New Year, Jo.”
“Next year,” she said, “try making a reservation.”
Gideon smiled.
“Where?”
“My place.”
May you like
And for the first time in his life, Gideon understood the difference between owning somewhere—
and belonging somewhere.
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