Page 57 of The True-Blue Romance

“She wants to call me Papa,” Lee whispers like he still can’t believe it.

“Cooler than Daddy.”

Lee snorts, rubbing his face on his shirt-covered bicep. “God. It’s been a fucking crazy past few weeks. I feel like I blinked and my life became someone else’s.”

I rub his back and dip to the side to meet his teary gaze. “It’s your life, baby. I promise.”

“I feel like I’m gonna lose it. It’s too good to be true.”

“I know. We’re going to move in slowly over the next few weeks. I don’t want to sleep anywhere but here ever again. Is that okay?”

“If you want.”

I narrow my gaze at him. “I want and want and want, Andrew. Next weekend, reserve it for me. I want some us time before the busy season takes off. Once August hits, our weekends won’t be ours until the end of the year. Okay?”

“Okay. Do you think we can get the duck? I really want a duck.”

“A duck, a donkey, chickens, a cow, whatever the hell you want. We’ll get it.”

“Llamas?” Lee asks with a sparkle in his eyes.

“You know I’m scared of them. They spit!”

“No llamas, then.”

“No llamas,” I agree, then Lee and I shake on it like we’re seventeen and making a bet all over again. In an odd way, we sort of are. But this time we’re betting on our future together, which seems a hell of a lot better than anything else we’ve ever bet on before.

11

LEE

Savannah and Joey are slowly moving in, but they haven’t left the house since Savannah came home with us from the hospital last weekend. I love having her in the house all the time. She makes it feel alive. The walls remind me now of the days I stayed with my grandmother before she passed away. When Dad would get drunk, I’d flee his house and run to Grandma’s, where everything was safe and everything was okay. Now my house feels like that all the time as Savannah’s laughter fills the silence.

It all feels too real.

So of course things with my dad take a sharp turn.

Friday afternoon, my phone lights up with the name of the care center. I clear my throat awkwardly and step away from the group of guys that I’d been chatting with in the future blueberry fields. We need to rotate the crops again soon to make sure they’ll be full for next spring.

“This is Lee,” I say into the phone, heart beating double time.

“Hey, Lee, it’s Maisie at the care center. Do you have a few moments to talk about your dad?”

“Yeah, just give me a second.” I step farther away, going with the wind so that my words won’t be carried back to my employees. “Go ahead.”

“His liver enzymes aren’t improving like we’d like. It’s starting to look like liver failure.”

“Oh.” I rub my face, tired already. “What’s that mean?”

Maisie clears her throat. “It means he has cirrhosis of his liver. We’re looking at end-stage liver failure, likely made worse from the drinking, and also why it wasn’t caught earlier on.”

“Oh, okay. So what do you do about that? A transplant?”

Maisie is silent for a very long time. “We can try to get him on the transplant list, but the odds aren’t likely considering his dementia, age, and previous alcohol history.”

“Oh. I guess I don’t understand. What are you saying?”

“This is a complicated decision for you and your family, but mostly you since you’re his healthcare surrogate and he’s not mentally competent to make his own decisions.”