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The answer to that question punches me in the chest and I stare, squeezing the stress ball in my hand that the special teacher I’m seeing swears will calm my mind. “No idea,” I say, squeezing harder now, fighting the assault of numbers threatening my mind, “but the church has been coming around a lot lately.”
“They helping you guys?”
I shrug and crush the ball, holding onto it. “I guess. See you tomorrow.” I open the door and get out, slamming the door behind me, and worried my mother needs my support, I head up the stairs.
A wrinkled woman with orange-ish hair is standing in profile to me, facing my mother, and God, my mother looks so thin. She hugs herself and speaks to the woman. “You need to leave.”
“Mom?” I say, uncertain about this reaction. My mother is a kind person. She doesn’t speak to people like that.
The old lady turns her attention to me. “Is this the little bastard you want to call a Kingston?” She looks me up and down beforeeyeing my mother. “He’s no Kingston. He will never be a Kingston. Stay away, you little con artist.” She charges down the steps, passing me, and when my eyes meet my mother’s, I see the pain slicing through her stare.
I rotate and charge after the old lady. “My mom is no con artist. She’s dying, you bitch! You’re horrible. Who are you?”
“No one you will ever know. No one to youever. Remember that in case she doesn’t. You are nothing. You will never be anything to me or us.” She climbs in the car and I rotate again and run toward my mother who is now inside the trailer.
I enter to find her waiting for me, her arms folded in front of her chest again. “We need to talk,” she says.
I shut the door. “Who was that woman?”
“I have lied to you your entire life.”
I clutch the ball in my hand. “What?”
“Your father wasn’t a Navy SEAL. He didn’t die serving his country. That was your uncle, my youngest brother.”
“I don’t understand.”
She grabs another stress ball from the bar behind her and walks to me, pressing it into my free hand. “I had an affair. I slept with a married man, but I swear I didn’t know he was married until I was pregnant. He called me a slut and liar and—” She sobs and covers her face with her hands.
I know on some level I should comfort her, but I can’t do it. Numbers begin to stream and speak to me, they speak in ways I can’t explain, in ways I can’t calm. They tell me what to ask, what to think. “Who was that woman?”
“Your grandmother. You’re a Kingston, son, and before I die, you will be claimed. That will be my gift to you. A ticket out of this hellhole.”
My temples start to throb and data punches at my mind like fists on a bag. I start to lose reality and I can’t hold onto the balls anymore. I try. I try to squeeze them, but they tumble to the ground. I can’t think. I can’t see beyond what the numbers want to say to me. I sink to my knees and in the depths of thousands of numbers, I see only one thing. That old lady with the red hair’s disdainful look as she’d looked at my mother and called her a con artist right before she turned her attention to me, “The little bastard?”
I blink back to the present, my knuckles white where I hold the banister. I’m not a little bastard now. I’m a big fucking bastard thatcould hurt that woman. Harper slides under my arms in front of me, her hands pressed to my ribcage, heat radiating from her palm and down my arms. “I’m sorry,” she says. “She just—”
“Choose now. Her or me.”
“You,” she says immediately. “There’s no question there.You, Eric. If you would have given me the chance, I would have shown you that a long time ago.”
“You were always one of them.”
Pain darts through her eyes. “I was never one of them, but clearly, I’m a fool. You’ll never believe that.” She tries to duck under my arms again and my leg captures hers, blocking her way.
“Actions speak louder than words.”
“Exactly,” she says. “I made a mistake tonight. I know that, but you give me no room to be human. I’m perfect or I’m a Kingston. I can’t do this. I can’t feel what I feel for you and have you destroy me the way you want to destroy them.” She tries to move away again but I don’t even think about letting her free.
“Let me go,” she demands, her voice trembling. “Let me go and maybe this time I’ll have the reality check to finally let you go.”
“What do you feel, Harper?”
“Anger.”
I cage her against the railing, my legs shackling hers. “You said you can’t feel what you feel if I’m going to destroy you. What doyou feel?”
“Too damn much for a man who knows nothing but his own hatred. For a man who wants to destroy everyone attached to this family, and that means me.”
