Page 29 of Really Truly Yours

I square up, stare down, and run with the latter. “So I took a second look. Got a little touch. You remember what that’s like, right?” My tone is lightyears nastier than the non-event I reference, and I deliver the line with a bit of gig to it. No one can tell me this man took care with the ladies. For all I know, I got a dozen half-brothers and sisters populating the streets. For that plus a few other reasons, I’m just not taking it from him.

Talk about not being able to pick a side. I’m laughing with the guy one minute, and then the ugly roars out.

Donny caves, his breath quivering on the intake.

Somebody slug me.

I sink onto the end of the sofa. The Bible on the rickety TV table grabs my focus. A changed man?

I peek at Donny. What does that even mean after a life so fallen?

His gaze tracks. He folds skinny hands and looks me straight in the eye. “I s’pose you got questions for me.”

Only ones I’m afraid to ask.

I lean on my knees, threading my fingers. “I want to know about my mother.” Mom. The picture in my breast pocket burns.

He’s quiet at first. “What do you want to know about her?”

“You pick.”

He presses his hands into the armrests. “First of all, I did love her.”

Huh. I hate to be the one to tell him, but I doubt the sentiment was mutual. According to Tripp, there was a revolving door of men in her life.

“Your momma and me lived next door to each other when we was kids. We were friends, but then we got older…”

Yeah, yeah. I get it.

“We also fought a bunch. We had one of them toxic relationships. Both our families was like that. My daddy was in and out o’ jail. Hers was a user.” Donny looks at his lap. “And that kinda became the way for us, too. It’s how it was in our neighborhood, see?”

Not really. But okay. Yeah. My life after adoption was completely sheltered from that sort of junk. I wound up with Godly parents, good schools, nice neighborhood. I suppose growing up how Donny and my mother did leant itself toward different outcomes.

“We were both addicts by eighteen. I never finished high school, and neither did she. Around that time, we had a big fight ’cause she was messing with other guys.” He looks at me. “Sorry, but she was.”

I shrug away a strange sensation. It’s nothing to me.

“’Course, I didn’t give her much reason to be faithful.” He sighs. The occasional dark hair interrupts the mostly silver stubble on his sunken cheeks. He stares into space. “Anyway, I took off. Moved around. Got myself straight and worked the oilfields for a while. But the drugs came back. Got arrested a couple of times for possession and stuff. Did a couple years in the pen.”

Do I dare inquire about the and stuff?

Nope, not up for that.

“When I got out, it had been years since I seen your momma. I went back to our town, and there she was. On her own for the moment, waiting tables at a truck stop. She had a kid.”

“Tripp?”

He nods, pensive. “She told me he was only four, and I thought—” He looks down. “’Course, I knew there’d been other guys, but it still hurt.”

“And then?”

“No matter what, there was always this thing between us. So we hooked up for a few weeks, but the drugs were bad again, for both of us. Had some new warrants I was dodging, and we was fighting like always. She told me she was pregnant, and I just…I couldn’t handle it.”

Donny’s skinny, shaky fingers curl on his thighs. “I spent a good while more in prison, and the next time, when I come back, there you was. You was four by then.”

Yes, that jives with what memory I do have. It was like Donny simply materialized one day. I remember joy when my mother introduced him as my father. My very own daddy. Yep, that’s a memory that stuck.

“So you stayed, what? A couple years?”