Chapter Four—During "Shawn and Gus Truck Things Up"

Maddie felt her phone vibrate in her purse and fished it out as she walked through the parking lot toward her car. She saw the Caller ID and smiled as she answered, "Hi, goose!"

"Hi, Mom."

"Shawn, honey, what's wrong?" she asked, hearing the dejected tone in her son's voice.

He sighed dramatically. "What's wrong with Dad?"

Maddie frowned. "What do you mean? What happened?"

"Mom, he's selling the house!" Shawn whined.

Maddie sat down in the driver's seat of her rental car and stared straight ahead in shock. "He what?"

"Yeah. He's selling the house. Gus and I are in the middle of this really cool case where our favorite food truck guy got murdered and Dad won't help us because he painted the porch and there's cookies in the kitchen and I just…Mom, what the hell?"

"A food truck guy got murdered?"

"Mom! That's not the point!"

"Sorry, goose. Well, what did Dad say?"

Shawn scoffed, "I don't know, something about saying it was 'time' or whatever. It was weird. He didn't even tell me! He just…he put the house—with MY room—on the market! He's selling our house!"

Maddie tried to speak to her son in soothing tones. "Calm down, honey. You're getting all worked up over this. Did he say anything else?"

"Well, a while ago he said that you're never coming back and we all have to accept that, but that's stupid because why would you come back? You've moved on, right?"

There was a pause on the line as Maddie tried to figure out what to say.

"Mom?"

"I don't know what to tell you, Shawn. It's his house. He can do what he wants. But he's right, I'm not going back there. When I moved in during his recovery, that was different. He's doing just fine and he doesn't need me anymore."

"And you were never going to stay in Santa Barbara anyway.

"Yeah," she agreed quickly before changing the subject. "And hey, this way you can go up to San Francisco and be with Juliet, right?"

"What about Gus?"

Maddie smiled. As long as she could remember, her son and his best friend had come as a pair. "Gus will be fine. He's got his own job outside of Psych."

"No, he quit that. Finally."

"Well, your dad is moving on and maybe you should too."

Shawn didn't like that answer one bit. "No! There will be no moving on from anyone around here!" he insisted defiantly.

Maddie laughed. "Well, be that as it may, did you dad say where he was going to move once the house sells?"

"I don't know. I didn't get that far, seeing as he's selling my room with my stuff in it and I have to figure out what to sell on a food truck so we can solve a murder!"

"Shawny, go solve your case but don't forget about Dad, okay? He might say he's moving on, but he loves you and you need him more than you know," Maddie told him wisely.

"Mom, I gotta go. Gus is back. He got jerk chicken." With that, he hung up.

Madeleine ended the call and dropped the phone in her lap. Henry was selling the house. She had told him a month earlier that she wanted to settle down with him but she couldn't go back to Santa Barbara as though nothing had changed. And now he was selling the house. Even if he didn't tell Shawn explicitly, she knew Henry was doing it for her. He was taking the leap to trust her and to make a future for them together. He was selling the house. Their time would come.