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“My aunt and uncle were world-class assholes.”
“I know,” she said.
He swung around to frown at her. “What’s that supposed to mean? How do you know anything about me?”
“I asked about this scar once, back in the day”—she indicated the ugly mark on his side—“and you told me your aunt and uncle raised you. That was your explanation. I figured A plus B must equal C. They abused you.”
“I hate that word. ‘Abused.’ Like I’m a fucking victim.”
“You were a child, Eight. You were a victim.”
“I don’t know. They were all up in the Holy Spirit, trying to beat the bad outta me. Maybe I deserved it. After a while, I sure tried to.”
That explained the crosses burned into the soles of his feet. They’d been people who warped the word of God to excuse their own evil. There were far too many of those in the world. “If that’s what they were doing, they weren’t on the same continent as the Holy Spirit.”
“You believe in all that God shit?”
She nodded. “I do. I don’t go to church too much anymore, because I work so late most Saturday nights, but I came up in the church. Learned to sing in the choir. Church is a good, safe place where things make sense. And I know damn well no real Christian does that shit. They were just cruel monsters looking for an excuse.”
He shrugged. “I guess. At my age, shit that happened forty, fifty years ago doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Yet here you are, sitting in our son’s room, having an existential crisis over not having a father, and now being one.”
A sad laugh fell from his lips. “Is that what I’m doing?”
“That’s my guess, yeah.” Seeking a more productive path through this moment, she asked, “What had you at my door at two o’clock in the morning? I gotta think there were easier ways to get off, so it had to be more than that.”
His smile was reluctant but genuine. “I wish I knew. Yesterday fucked with my head, and I thought I needed to talk it out with you. But I guess I needed to fuck you.” The smile sharpened, became sly. “Seemed like you needed the same thing.”
“Maybe. This is all fucking with my head, too, you know. You are a tornado rolling straight through the house I’ve been building for ten years.”
His smile evaporated. “Yeah, I know. I should’ve been here from the go.”
That was what he’d meant, how he’d fucked up.
“Now that you’re here, Eight, you have to stick. You see that, right? You’ll do him real damage if you bail now that he knows and wants you.”
“What if I do him damage by staying around?”
“I won’t let you.”
“You’re a cocky bitch, you know that?”
He’d said it with his grin returning, but Marcella wasn’t having that shit. “Every time you call me a bitch, or a cunt, or any other shitty thing, I’m calling you Edgar.”
He winced—he really did hate his name. “Okay, fair enough. Sorry.” They were quiet again, Eight studying the room around him, Marcella watching the emotions scattering across his face like dead leaves in a stiff breeze.
“I’m not a good person, Marce,” he finally said. “I’m bad news. Ilikebeing bad news. You want somebody like me to be Ajax’s dad?”
It was an excellent question, one she’d been grappling with for weeks now—and not for the first time. She looked Eight straight in the eyes, and saw how much Ajax and he featured there. The same color, the same shape. Even the same eyelashes, a little longer than was cosmically fair on a man. “I think … I think youareAjax’s dad. That’s the simple truth. He wants his father in his life, and that’s you. So you’re gonna have to find some good news in your heart and give it to him.”
His chuckle was bleak. “And if there’s nothing like that in me?”
“I don’t believe that. You wouldn’t be here right now if that was true. You wouldn’t’ve come looking for him at all if that was true.”
“Maybe,” he sighed, and fell into quiet again.
Again they sat together in contemplative quiet. Spot rustled around in his cage, drawing Marcella’s attention. When Spot saw her looking, he put his front feet, little gecko paws, on the glass and grinned at her. Cutie.
