Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 135847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 679(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 679(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
“Why?” Hale demanded to know.
“Because you’re clearly intent on fucking up your life. You had the woman you needed, maybe the only one on this entire planet who fit you perfectly. She was right by your side, right in your bed, deep in your life, and you threw her away. Blake called her. She told Blake. Blake told us. You did it the morning after she got cut.”
So, that meant Blake was out.
That stung. He liked her. She’d been a good friend.
Until…
“And what does the box have to do with it?” he asked.
“I’m not going to sit back and allow you to waste your life like your father did,” Tom answered.
“I’m not suicidal. I broke up with my girlfriend. It happens.”
“We saw the interview, Hale,” Genny said.
“Well, Elsa was the one who conducted the interview, Genny, so it isn’t like she wasn’t in the know,” he pointed out.
“You can know, and your heart will still hope,” Genny returned. “But her heart didn’t hope. It was well beyond that. She’d given it to you. That’s what happens when you find the person who it belongs to.”
She had.
She’d fallen in love with him.
Jesus God, this shit had to fucking end.
Hale shook his head. “That’s not on me.”
But it was.
He felt it.
Every day. Every minute. Every fucking second since he left his apartment, left her behind, he felt it weighing on him.
Suffocating him.
Burying him.
He hadn’t taken a full breath since he’d lost sight of her after she climbed the stairs.
Genny put the wineglass down and stood, looking at Tom. “This was a mistake, Tom.”
“No, it isn’t. Don’t give in to his shit,” Tom retorted.
That was when Genny opened him up.
Made him bleed.
“This isn’t my Hale. I don’t know this man. I don’t want to know this man. So I’ll wait until my Hale comes back so I don’t have to have memories of whoever this man is.”
He couldn’t take it anymore.
“Fine,” he clipped. “Fuck it,” he went on, prowling to the box.
He ripped off the tape, opened it.
When he looked in, he saw nothing but a ring box sitting on a piece of paper and what looked like an X-Ray image sleeve.
He pulled out the ring box, finding the piece of paper was attached.
He turned it over, and scrawled on it in his father’s hand, it said, Last.
Seeing his dad’s handwriting, saliva filled his mouth, but he swallowed it down and looked back in the box.
A piece of paper was taped to that too.
It said, First.
And he was right. It was an X-Ray sleeve.
On the edge it said, Corey J. Szabo.
His father wrote those notes.
His father packed this box.
His father put this together himself.
For Hale.
It took every ounce of courage he had to set the ring box aside, reach in and pull that sleeve out.
When he did, he found it was heavier than expected.
Thick.
He shook out the images, but more came out.
A folder.
A medical folder.
On the top was taped another note from his dad.
This one read, Not an excuse, an explanation.
He opened the folder, and he was in such a scattered headspace, trying to detach from what was happening, being pissed it was happening, trying to keep a lock on the feelings he’d been feeling since he ended things with Elsa, at first, he didn’t know what he was looking at.
And then dates on the medical notes stood out.
That was when some of the words he was reading registered on his brain.
He staggered back and fell into a chair, now staring at the words jumping out at him, penetrating his eyes like poisoned darts.
“What is it, Tom?” Genny asked quietly.
“Jesus Christ,” Tom said from above him.
Hale read through some of the notes.
Not all the same doctor, they weren’t so stupid they took him to the same doctor. Though, quite a few of them weren’t doctor notes, but hospital notes.
But they were all about the same patient.
His dad.
Somehow, his dad got hold of these and collated them.
Maybe so no one would get their hands on them.
Maybe for this.
For now.
To tell his son way too late how criminally and pathologically abused his father had been at the hands of his parents.
Now he knew why he’d never met his paternal grandparents.
“Hale, let me have that,” Tom said quietly.
Feeling what he read burned in his brain, and he hadn’t even been through half of it, Hale handed it over, his eyes falling on the ring box.
He reached for it and opened it.
When he did, a slip of folded paper fell out.
But in it was a set of rings he’d seen before. Sparkling. Brilliant. Like they’d just been cleaned. Three of them. Engagement, wedding, and a diamond-encrusted anniversary band.
They were beautiful.
They were beloved.
They were Marilyn Swan’s wedding rings.
Genny’s mother.
The only other woman who Corey Szabo loved.
The only real mother he ever had.
The only real grandmother Hale ever had.
Woodenly, he reached to the floor to nab the slip of paper.