I wish I knew my brother enough to agree.
I'd been puttingoff driving into town all week, and I ran out of reasons to avoid going in after Hoyt’s call, because I was reminded that I had a father and I needed to do my duty.
No more.
Just that. Duty.
I told Lucas I had an errand, and he didn’t question it, but I think he knew where I was going.
The facility had linoleum floors, a nurses’ station, and a smell like industrial cleaner over something else. Clean and sad and where people ended up when the people who loved them couldn't keep them safe anymore.
Not that I loved my dad. That was the honest truth, and I'd stopped being ashamed of it somewhere around the third time I'd pulled him out of a ditch. But I drove out herebecause I was his next of kin, and because the Doctor had made the calls that needed making, and because I'd signed the papers, and that was the end of it.
His current support carer met me at the door. “He's having an okay day,” he said, which was his version ofhe might know who you are.
Dad was in the chair by the window when I came in, thinner than he'd been at Christmas, a plaid blanket on his lap, TV on low. He turned when he heard the door.
“Jesse.” He said it flat.
“Hey, Dad.”
I sat in the chair across from him. There wasn't much to say, and I'd learned to stop trying to fill it. Outside the window, the parking lot. Past that, the edge of town. He watched it like he was waiting for something that wasn't coming.
This was what it was now: the two of us in a beige room, the TV too low to make out, and me not loving him, and him losing his ability to know who I am. He wasn't the man who'd driven me into the ground every day of my childhood. He wasn't the man who'd taken a whip to Hoyt and made me watch. He was something smaller and quieter, and I still didn't like him, and I wasn't going to pretend otherwise. But I didn't need to like him to sit here for an hour, and I didn't need to forgive him to make sure the bills got paid.
There was one thing I'd never been able to say to his face. Not because I'd wanted his approval, but because I'd spent my whole life knowing exactly what it would cost me. That fear was gone now. Whether he remembered this conversation tomorrow didn't matter. I wasn't saying it for him.
“Got something to say,” I began, waiting until his eyes finally settled on me. “I’m gay.”
His eyes widened. “Huh?”
“I’ve got a partner and his name’s Lucas. I love him, and he loves me. He’s a good man, and I’ve never been happier.”
Something sparked behind his eyes. Recognition, and for a heartbeat, there was a familiar hate there.
“Filthy...” The slur came out thick and blurred, but the hatred behind it was unmistakable. His right hand clenched into a fist and lifted a few inches from the blanket.
It stopped there.
He didn't have the strength to hit me. Hell, he didn't have the strength to hurt me anymore, not with his fists and not with his words.
The anger drained from his face as quickly as it had come. His hand loosened. He frowned, his eyes searching mine with growing uncertainty. Then even that was gone. He simply stared at me, lost again. I wouldn’t say it again, but I’ve said it with all my heart, so it would lodge somewhere in his brain. Maybe.
“I got a call today,” I said, because something in me needed to say it out loud, even to him. “Hoyt's coming home.”
Dad blinked, slow. Something moved across his face, there and gone.
“Hoyt,” he said, as if he were finding the name somewhere far back. Then he grimaced. “Shoulda fixed him better,” he muttered.
Even losing his mind, he still somehow clung onto hatred. Maybe this should be the final time I visit?
He didn't say anything else. The TV went to an ad for insurance, and he watched it without seeing it, and I sat there until the hour was up and said goodbye, and he said nothing at all as I walked out.
I drove back to Snow Creek with the windows down and the cold air coming in hard, and didn't think about him the whole way home.
We gotHoyt’s room done by the next day, Lucas fretting that it wouldn’t be done in time. Two days later, there was no sign of him, and the accident had happened in Texas, so I had assumed that was where he was heading from. That’s a long-ass way, but still… two days?
“God knows what I’m gonna do when he gets here,” I muttered, forgetting Lucas was in the kitchen.
