tying up loose ends ☆ a jack harlow fanfiction

1998

The Harlows and the Radfords lived next door to each other in a picturesque Louisville, Kentucky neighborhood. They moved in just two months apart from one another in the summer of 1997, when the two wives were both newly pregnant, though neither one knew yet that the other was expecting. Expecting babies so close to one another bonded the two women, and in the early months of 1998, with the spring weather just around the corner, they brought home babies just six weeks apart.

Jackson Thomas Harlow was born with a full head of curly hair and eyesight so bad that he would be in glasses by preschool. Elizabeth Sage Radford was bald with an array of freckles across her face but her mother still insisted on putting bows on her head. The Harlows gave birth to another little boy three years later, while the Radfords looked on enviously. They were struggling with fertility issues and were several years older than the Harlows, so Elizabeth, who came to be known as Beth, would be their only child. The boys who lived next door were the closest she would ever come to siblings, though today, she would never dare say they were that close. She was friends with the neighbor boys and their families hung out together often, but from a very early age, Beth was serious and reserved. Jack was anything but. He was confident and funny and Beth resented him for it. Yet still, they were friends. She had his back always. No one dared to make fun of the eye patch Jack wore to kindergarten to correct his lazy eye, because they knew if they did, Beth would tell the teacher. That's just how she was; she always stood up for what she believed in, and even then, what she believed in was Jack.