Page 25 of Really Truly Yours
“Right away, please. I’ll take the bags in and dig out the receipt. You go see if Donny has a red pen. Better yet, a highlighter. That’ll make it easier to separate what’s yours. Oh, and see if he has a calculator, too, because I suck with numbers, and—”
“Shut. Up.”
I freeze-turn, like in the movies. Why? Because I distinctly heard tears.
Nothing has fallen. I doubt she’d allow it. “Sydnee.” Her blue eyes glisten like the ocean. “It isn’t a big deal. I promise.”
“It is to me.”
I want to lay my palm along her cheek. I open my mouth, but…nothing. “Think of it as a thank you. For helping Donny.”
“I didn’t ask for thanks.”
“No. You didn’t.” And what a contrast. I can’t spend fast enough for the women I’m used to. “But that’s what I’m giving. However...”
The pause makes her peek.
“If that isn’t acceptable, feel free to add things up and pay me back next time you see me.”
Her eyes slit, but hey, I’m being real here. My trespass on her dignity was not deliberate.
Hmm. Not the first time you haven’t thought things through, is it, buddy?
She jerks her head, I think in acquiescence. I decide to go with it.
In Donny’s driveway, the inner workings of my shoulder throw a fit when I simultaneously hoist every last one of the grocery sacks. Another thing I failed to think of was keeping Sydnee’s items sorted, so she’ll have to separate stuff inside. Fantastic. That ought to keep the pot stirred a bit longer.
Two steps from Donny’s door, my stomach bucks and rolls like the morning after one of my infamous big nights out.
Sydnee knocks, simultaneously using her key. “It’s me, Donny.”
I don’t know why she bothers announcing herself. Donny’s place is too tiny to lose a flea, much less to not see who’s entering.
Yowza, the smells in this place.
I beeline to the kitchen, dumping bags on the two-top breakfast table, a surface only marginally less cluttered than all the others. Donny’s voice carries after me. Time to face the music.
A picture magneted to the refrigerator stops my heart. Me and Donny and…Mom? I brace my hand on the clunky appliance. All I’ve had of the woman who gave me life has been the vague fragments of a child’s recall. The only way I know this tall woman with long brown hair is my mother is because of the clearer memory the picture suddenly stokes. The three of us are standing in front of a decorated classroom door. Welcome to Kindergarten.
“You alright?”
I swallow hard. Sydnee’s scent, some kind of soap, overrides the house’s stench. Her eyes follow my sightline, and there’s understanding in her reassuring smile. The lightest brush of fingers sweeps across my back. She begins to sort our haul, beginning with the ice cream.
Laugh, scream, or cry?
I rip the picture, my picture, off the fridge. It doesn’t belong to him.
Battlelines come clear. I cover the two steps it takes in this ugly shoebox to reach the living room doorway.
Donny, with his hooked-over spine, rests on a cane. Stained sweatpants balloon around his legs, and a thin t-shirt with the sleeves hacked off, multiple sizes too large, drapes his bony chest. The tattoos creeping down his arms sag. Even crippled over, his height, something he passed along to me, is striking.
My stomach rocks. Me in thirty years?
My fist un-balls. The dogeared picture goes in my pocket.
“Hello there, so—Grayson.”
“Donny.” I manage a nod. Doubleminded me is thrown yet again.