Page 13 of Really Truly Yours
It feels like a fragment of my heart seeps out with my sigh. “He’s sick. Cancer and a whole list of things. That’s why his neighbor was the one who met me.”
Avery’s hand goes to her heart. Tripp grunts.
My mind lingers on Sydnee. Hers and Donny’s relationship doesn’t compute. Caretaker type or not, she bit off a lot when she agreed to track me down to bear bad news. Did she assume I’d take her bombshell happily, meeting the man to whom I’m regrettably linked? A jailbird and a drug addict, the man who rejected his son?
Me.
“Are you going to see him again?
I bend over my knees and cover my face. There in the dark, I see Donny’s face, the shell that’s holding a soul that won’t be around much longer.
What will I do with what I received today?
Good question. My heart wants to do the right thing.
The problem is, I get the feeling I don’t have long to figure out what that is.
∞∞∞
My sheets are in a wad when I wake up around eight, a reasonable hour had I fallen asleep at an equally reasonable time. I need a shower in the worst way.
Good hygiene aside, I hope to wash off yesterday’s stink, the figurative kind. It feels like a curtain got pulled back, shedding light on some things about myself I was unaware of. An angry man is never who I’ve been.
And just when I was rebuilding from last year’s idiocy.
What’s done is done. The future is all I’ve got, and that itself is suddenly a giant unknown.
I don’t bother with a shave, but at least I’m clean and no longer smell like that jumble of sweaty sheets once I step into the sunshiny kitchen to brew some coffee.
“Hey, morning, Gray.” Laundry basket under one arm, Avery joins me, setting her load onto a chair and catching her breath.
“You should take it easy, Aves.”
“I’m fine.”
She looks tired. “Tripp at the office?”
She adjusts a headband keeping hair from her face while she works. “He left early today. Couldn’t sleep last night.”
I know the feeling. “Me either.”
She pulls out a second chair and eases into it, one hand on the table for support. That belly grows every day. “I’m sorry, Gray. Sorry you’re having to deal with this.”
I lean my rear against the counter by the sink, the coffee machine gurgling behind my shoulder. “Yeah, and here I thought I had a lot on my plate before yesterday.”
“Trouble rarely arrives on our timetable, does it?”
“Very inconsiderate.”
Chuckling, she puts her elbow on the table and rests her cheek against her palm. “Is it trouble, Gray? You’ve never thought of finding him?”
“Why would I? I’ve got a great family. And he walked out on me. If he didn’t care, why should I?”
Man, it’s starting to feel like that shower didn’t do the trick.
My sister-in-law’s smile is soft. “Wouldn’t it be nice if that’s the way things worked?”
My sigh is noisy. I wait for the last couple of drips, grab my cup, and sit with her. “You can say that again.” I look her in the eye. “I don’t want to care, Avery.”