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And I wonder why Ryan doesn’t meet my gaze.
Chapter Four
Dale
Dad and I meet Donny at his apartment in Denver.
He’s his usual jovial self. “Great to see you!” He pulls first Dad and then me into his patented man-hug. “What’s so important that you had to drive all the way out here?”
We already told him everyone was fine when we announced our visit, so he had no reason to be fearful.
He still has no reason to be fearful. So our father appeared out of nowhere. So what? We always knew he existed. Someone sired us. I always hoped he’d be better than what we got, but who was I kidding? Anyone who ran out on two children could never be close to a saint.
“Can I get you a Peach Street?” Donny asks Dad.
“Maybe in a minute.”
“Shit,” Donny says. “Must be serious.”
“It’s serious,” Dad says, “but it’s not a big deal. Not really.”
“O…kay.” Donny raises his eyebrows. “Mind if I have a Peach Street?”
“You don’t need it,” I say. “Here’s the thing, Don. We found our father. Our birth father. Or rather, he found us.”
Donny’s already raised eyebrows nearly fly off his face. “Say what?”
“He got in touch with me—well, a PI got in touch with me on his behalf. Dad and I went to meet him a few days ago, the day you drove back to Denver with Dee.”
“And you’re only telling me this now?”
“We wanted to get the DNA results first,” Dad says. “There wasn’t any point in upsetting you before we knew for sure.”
“I had a right to know.”
“You did. And now you know.” Dad rakes his hand through his dark hair streaked with silver.
“So…what’s he like?”
“About what you’d expect,” Dad says. “For a guy who abandoned a girlfriend with two kids.”
“So they weren’t married.”
“We never found any evidence that they were,” Dad says, “and he confirmed it.”
“What’s his name?”
I scoff out a laugh. “Floyd Jolly.”
Donny shakes his head. “My name is Donovan Jolly?”
“Your name is Donovan Steel.” Dad regards him sternly. “It’s been Donovan Steel for twenty-five years. Before that it was Robertson. It’s never been Jolly. He isn’t even on your birth certificate.”
“Which is weird,” I say, “since he’s obviously the father of both of us.”
Dad wrinkles his forehead. “Hmm. I wonder…”
“What?” we both ask in unison.
Dad chuckles softly. “You two are so in sync sometimes it’s scary. Diana and Brianna were never like that.”
We’ve been through a lot together.
I don’t say this out loud, of course. Donny has long gotten past the past. He’s a better man than I.
“What are you wondering?” I ask Dad.
He brushes off my query. “Nothing. Never mind.”
“When do I meet this esteemed father of ours?” Donny asks.
“Whenever you want, I guess,” Dad replies. “He lives in Grand Junction.”
“In a run-down cracker box,” I add.
“Oh? I suppose I didn’t think he was some virtuous stranger.”
“No,” I say. “He’s a drunk. A doper too, from what we saw. And he likes cats.”
“Fuck, really? A cat person?”
“Crazy, right?”
“What’s he look like?”
“Tall. Balding a little, I’m sorry to say, but I hear the gene for male pattern baldness is carried on the X chromosome, which means we don’t have it.”
“Thank God.” Donny smiles. “Especially for you and that man bun worthy mess of yours.”
I ignore my brother’s comment. We’re alike in some ways. Nothing alike in others, like our personalities, for instance. And the way we prefer to wear our hair. He’s always favored a more clean-cut look. Especially now, working as a Denver attorney.
“Honestly,” I say, “I knew he was our father before the DNA results came back. He has our eyes. The same shape, and the color is the same as mine.”
Donny sighs. “So what now?”
“Nothing,” Dad says, “unless you want to do something. He’s the man who fathered you. Who brought you into the world, along with your mother. So in that vein, I’m pretty damned grateful to him.”
“Should we help him?” my brother asks.
“He hasn’t asked for our help,” I say.
“No, he hasn’t,” Dad agrees. “But I’d be willing to offer to pay for rehab. Get him off the sauce.”
“Why?” I say. “He abandoned us. And he was kind of a dick to you. You punched him, if I remember correctly.”
“You punched him?” Donny chuckles. “Go, Dad!”
Dad resists smiling. “He’s still your biological father.”
“Would you do the same for yours?”
Dad’s face goes pale. His own father, Bradford Steel, passed away in a prison cell not too long after Donny and I came to Steel Acres.
Neither Dad nor his siblings ever talked about him. The most we ever got out of anyone was that he’d made some bad decisions and had to pay the price. We knew his wife, our grandmother, was mentally ill and institutionalized for most of her adult life. The two of them died within forty-eight hours of each other, though in different places. The only information we’ve been able to find indicated Bradford Steel tampered with federal evidence.
