Page 11 of Really Truly Yours
I wish I’d driven my Corvette. The top of the line model does one-twenty and doesn’t complain when I demand it.
I’m barely up to speed when city limit signs blur my windows. Pedal to the metal, I find the nearest highway and open this baby up.
Looming surgery my career might not survive? No big. I can handle it.
A sick old man wanting to make nice after upending—no, that’s too kind. After destroying, what, two lives? Three? I don’t know if my biological mother counts. From what Tripp, several years my senior, has filled me in on, she had her own issues.
Yeah, ruining lives is more to the point.
Ruined?
Since when have I looked at my time with Tom and Joy Smith—Mom and Dad—as ruination? Tripp’s life with the Walkers as a negative? Never, but that’s no thanks to the shriveled Donny Grayson. Tripp and I dodged his bullet by sheer luck.
Or grace.
Whatever. Fluky outcomes don’t take the loser off the hook. He played his part in me losing two decades with my adored brother, the first person to ever toss this kid a baseball. That tragedy is only now being rectified. Reconnecting is the entire reason I was in Chandor when I received Sydnee Carson’s call, the reason I was able to easily make it to Mineral Springs, Donny’s home, a town thirty miles to the west. Lucky me. Had I been in Houston, I wouldn’t have made the effort.
Afamily matter.
I see now what she meant, but Donald Grayson doesn’t qualify.
A hilly country road twists me through rolling fields. Ranches big and small dot the landscape in between flashing yellow lights marking nothing towns.
I’m in the middle of nowhere when I cool sufficiently for rational thought. U-turning, I drive an astonishingly long time, constantly thinking Mineral Springs must be around the next bend, before I actually arrive at the backwoods town with its pitted streets and rows of junkyards on both the approach and the departure. I floor it past the one turnoff I now recognize and go east on the highway that will return me to Chandor.
A half-hour later, I circle the nicer town’s courthouse square, attractive at night with white lights lining the tops of buildings and draped around trees. Whimsical banners on old-timey street lamps advertise an upcoming festival. I see why Tripp chose to make Avery’s hometown his.
Could Mineral Springs, with its name that’s far more quaint than the dumpy, seen-better-days place it actually is, have been my home?
On the far side of town, I enter the gate code to Tripp’s new neighborhood. He and Avery sold the house she was living in when they got married and moved into this newly-constructed place a few months ago.
My brother, a federal drug enforcement agent, is nuts about safety. He’s not a pretentious kind of guy and claims he would have chosen a more down-to-earth home if he didn’t know so much about the world’s seamy side and hadn’t made tons of enemies while in the line of duty. I bet when he mows the yard in his tank top in the middle of July the neighbors wonder what on earth has moved in next door. He worked undercover for years and has the copious tats requisite for the job.
The gate slides open, and I wind my way to their up-lit two-story. I’ve been here a couple of weeks. My plan is to leave once the little one my brother and sister-in-law are expecting makes his entrance into the world just under three months from now.
Given the length of Tripp’s and my separation, we need this. When Avery tracked me down eighteen months ago, he and I were reunited shortly thereafter. But the timing was bad. With the new baseball season in its fledgling weeks, my time was spoken for. My team went all the way, and then the off-season had its own demands. And just like that, I was back in the grind of a new season with only snippets of the time I craved for us to get to know one another.
Now, my injury has freed me up to do what I’d wanted to for over a year. Tripp was all-in, and Avery, the sweetheart, encouraged me to take up residence in their guest suite.
So far, my stay has been awesome. Some reminiscences, tons of catching up, plenty of laughs. Today may have changed that. I feel my mood plunging to lows my crumbling career hasn’t managed to sink me.
The security alarm beep-beeps when I enter the foyer. The laughter of my family, real family, tugs me to the open living space on the other side of the freestanding, floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace. No, thirty-something agents can’t typically afford this kind of place. After early years of hardship, Tripp won his own lottery when he was adopted by Jim and Barb Walker, fast-food-pizza gurus of the South and beyond. From what I understand, he came into quite the trust fund once he was grown.
On a white sofa along the wall, his arm is curled around Avery’s shoulder. “Hey, dude. Where ya been? I thought we were watching the game tonight.”
I slip my key into my pocket. “Oh, right. I forgot.”
“Forgot?”
Game one in the first round of the playoffs. My team in my town. “Yeah, I…” I drag my hand along my neck. “Slipped my mind. Sorry.”
Tripp, who doesn’t do subtle, stares me down. Avery’s head tilts in concern. A bundle of worry, I left for my secret rendezvous un-showered and unshaved. Now, I suspect the day I’ve had shows on my face and in the slope of my shoulders. The anger has ebbed, leaving me spent.
He scoots to the edge of the cushion, making me feel like I’m in an interrogation room. “What’s up? Everything alright, Tuff?”
Suddenly, the old name grates even from him. He got his own less-than name from our no-good mother. He held onto his after his adoption, and lo and behold, it aged well, becoming trendy over the passage of time. That isn’t how our mother meant it, trust me.
“Yeah, man. I’m good.” Denial comes, a kneejerk reaction.