I let out a slow breath, gaze drifting around the room again—the furniture, the dust, the weight of a life that had been lived here before me.
“Okay,” I said finally.
“That’s my boy,”Dalton said, lighter now.
I huffed out something that might’ve been a laugh, and some of the tightness in my chest eased. “I should go.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Go do your next thing.”
“Right.”
“And, Lucas?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re not screwing this up. If you said something stupid, I mean it, say sorry again, and keep saying sorry, and then, go do some more sexing of the hot, horny cowboy kind.”
“Asshole.”
“Bye!”
Okay. Do my next thing.
This room.
I stripped the bed first. Folded the sheets and stacked them neatly, then found a box and packed up his personal things. A rancher’s almanac with a cracked spine and his notes in the margins. A watch that no longer worked. A ring, old and worn, the inscription inside almost rubbed smooth with time. I turned it over in my fingers longer than necessary before setting it back in the box.
Then, I emptied the drawers. Shirts. Jeans. I cleared the closet too, methodically, bagging it all up and carrying it to the front door. I left a note for Jesse, asking if any of it would be suitable for Goodwill.
The bags were gone by morning. I assumed he was dealing with them.
The ache that settled in my chest as I did all this caught me off guard. Walter Barrett hadn’t wanted me. He’d done nothing for me. He hadn’t come to Denver and fixedanything. He wasn’t my grandfather in anything but blood, and I told myself that made it easier to clear the room.
I pulled down the drapes and aired them out. Cleaned the windows until the glass shone. When the room was empty, I didn’t know what to do next.
I sat on the metal bedstead and tipped my head back. That was when I saw it—cardboard tucked right at the back of the closet, high up on the shelf. Given I was short, there was no way I could reach it from the floor, so I took a stool upstairs, dragged it over, and climbed up to get a better look.
I opened the box and froze.
Photos spilled out first. Loose. Curled at the edges. I picked them up one by one, my hands suddenly clumsy. There was me as a baby, red-faced and furious, bundled in a blanket I didn’t recognize. A couple more from when I was small—five, maybe six—taken with my mom’s old Kodak, the one Dad insisted was still fine long after everyone else had gone digital.
“Jesus,” I muttered at the kid with the riot of unruly curls and huge blue eyes.
Under the photos were letters in envelopes. No stamps. No addresses. Just my name on the front, written in block letters, each one dated.
I stared at the first date too long. I would’ve been two.
“What the hell?” I said because I needed to hear a voice.
There were others, too, one for each year—different handwriting that I recognized.
“Mom.” Writing to her father-in-law. Updating him on my school, my teeth, the things I liked to eat, and the things I was afraid of. The letter opened with, thank you for thecheck and ended with a blackmail request for more in exchange for news.
Was my grandfather sending her money in exchange for information about me? I swallowed hard and flicked back to the photos, needing the anchor. Had he kept them all? How long did the letters run for, after all, she died a few days before my fifteenth birthday. I didn’t need to check the dates to know there were no letters after that. No photos either.
I didn’t have the fondest memories of Mom—she was stuck with my dad, and I was the kid in the house no one wanted. Most of their arguments were about me, vicious, nasty fights that I could sometimes recall word for word. Some kids on the streets told me at least one member of their family looked out for them, at least for some time, but I’d never had that at all.
I sat back, the box open between my knees, the weight of it finally landing. Whatever story I’d told myself about being unwanted, about blood meaning nothing—this didn’t fit. Not neatly. Not at all. Although he was my dad’s dad, cut from the same cloth, so even if he’d known all of this, that ended as soon as I came out as queer.
