Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 95080 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95080 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
I put my hand lightly on his right shoulder. “It’s time, Lex.”
“I know it’s time,” he agreed in a condescending tone. “I just don’t think that today of all days is the right time for us to be meeting her. We have important family matters to discuss.”
Which only proved that he was not ready for our father to move on. Alex, who had been with our mother the longest, being the oldest child, was not emotionally prepared for our father to date.
“Dad deserves to have someone,” Evan ventured gently. “I mean, unless you’re going to live with him and be his constant companion for the rest of your life, he needs someone to spend time with. Plus, he’s not a monk. He has needs too.”
Alex turned from watching the road and looked sideways at me, completely ignoring Evan. “I just miss her.”
“I know,” I said, my eyes welling with tears. What I wouldn’t give to have her back, to be going home to her right now. Not that my dad was lacking in any way. He was, in fact, much more nurturing than she had ever been. It was simply that you could sit with her and just be still and silent, and that was okay. She had been gifted with that quiet strength, and it had never left her, even when pancreatic cancer had eaten her down to eighty pounds. Never had she complained, never had she blamed God or cursed her life. She had accepted the inevitable outcome, let my father nurse her in her final month, and told us all how proud she was of us and how much she loved us. She’d made me promise to watch out for everyone, and at the time, I didn’t understand why. Why me? How did that make sense? I wasn’t the oldest. I wasn’t the fixer, like Alex, or the showman, like Evan, who brought the whole family together to see him, to look at him. I was the middle child; all I knew how to do was negotiate and get along and…
Somewhere over the span of years I’d learned what she meant. I was the anchor, the linchpin, and my brothers revolved around me. I was younger than Alex and so needed him to fix things for me. I was older than Evan, so he could reach out to me when he wanted to talk. They all came running when I called. She had been counting on me to hold the family together. Normally, I did a better job.
“So?” I asked Evan. “Is the mystery woman staying or leaving?”
“I dunno. I told Dad to keep her there. Your guess is as good as mine, though. Maybe she’ll be there, maybe she won’t. It’s a crapshoot.”
Once we made it to the house my father had bought after selling the big one we’d grown up in, we parked the SUV beside a silver Mercedes that was not my dad’s. The woman had apparently stayed to meet the children of the man she had been dating for about three months. I was pleased. It would give me something to think about besides my stalker. I led the way, and before I got a chance to knock, my father opened the door.
“Dad.” I smiled as I stepped into his arms. He hugged me gently, obviously not sure where I was damaged and not wanting to hurt me.
“Tracy,” he said softly into my hair, rubbing my back.
I hugged him tight, remembering the last time I’d hung on for dear life. It was back in my last year of middle school, when I’d come out to him. I’d been so scared, and he’d told me not to be, to just tell him. When I’d said I was gay, he’d stood up, thanked me for sharing that with him, and opened his arms wide. He hadn’t cared. It had changed nothing. Gay or straight, I was his son, and that was all there was to it. I knew my mother would have felt the same. Nothing would have come between her and her kids.
A few years later I had another epiphany about him. I realized I could call my dad at three in the morning if I was stuck somewhere. He would come and get me, and we would not talk about what had occurred to get me into that situation until the following morning. He never confronted me when I was drunk or embarrassed; he waited for a new day. And if I was hungover, then I had to endure breakfast, which I normally loved unless there had been an incident the night before.
The same was true for Evan and Alex. The amount one had imbibed was directly proportional to what he made you eat. For instance, sausage, eggs, and biscuits and gravy were usually reserved for Alex. Evan and I, who had been bigger drinkers, mostly had chorizo omelets. The worst was menudo. You were in deep shit if he made you menudo after an all-night drinking binge. And he was always so damn cheerful when he served it, asking you all about your night, where you were, whom you were with, and what you had been doing in the wee hours. Then there was the inevitable grounding and added chores. Weeding the garden, pantry rearranging, grout scrubbing, and the worst one, folding everyone’s clothes. God, I hated laundry. The thing was, I absorbed all his life lessons, and they helped me figure out who I was going to be.