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Hobbs caved. “Why are you here?”
“You read my text, Chris.” It wasn’t a question.
“You said it was about Pops. Me not answering you should’ve been your first clue that I don’t care what you have to say about Pops.”
Anyone else would’ve got up and left. Victor seemed to settle deeper into the armchair. He balanced his glass on his flat stomach and twirled the ice around. “He’s dead.”
Something funny happened to Hobbs’s insides at that moment. Everything dried up, like he’d inhaled the desert.
“Well, almost,” Victor amended. “He’s real sick. So he’s almost dead, not dead-dead.”
The dried-up feeling reversed itself, and now Hobbs’s lungs felt too full. He exhaled slowly, like he was doing one of the yoga sessions Rhett was trying out on all the coaches before he made them a regular offering at the gym. “You’re enjoying yourself, aren’t you?”
“I just rode eleven hundred miles on my bike in touch and go weather and my balls are kind of blue. So no, not really.”
“And there’s the real question.” Hobbs was beyond exhausted. Everything good about the evening was gone now, evaporated, wrung out. “Why did you spend a couple days—please tell me you didn’t ride it all in one day—to come out here, to my house, where you’ve never once come, not for any holiday or my birthday or any day at all, to tell me that Pops is dying, when you could have either put that in a letter or, better yet, just kept it to yourself becauseI...don’t...care.” Hobbs praised his lungs for holding out through that mouthful. Those stupid deep breaths in yoga had a use after all.
“Well, not to beat a dead horse, but—” Victor drained his glass and plopped it on the end table “—I did try to call.”
“I’m done with you.” Hobbs turned to go. He headed for the hallway, which would lead to his bedroom. Maybe if he ignored him, Victor would leave.
“It’s for Hannah.”
Hobbs froze. He turned back around.
“Thought that would get your attention.”
Dirty play.
Victor rolled back a shoulder. “She asked me to get you home. Just to see him one more time before he passes. Then you can leave. You don’t have to stay until he dies and you don’t have to come to the funeral, if there is one. Just come see Hannah. And, while you’re there, say goodbye to Pops.”
I said goodbye to him a long time ago.“I’m not visiting Pops in prison. I don’t care how sick he is.”
“They let him out.” Victor leaned his head back on the soft leather chair and closed his eyes, as if the full force of his ride out here had just slammed into his body. “Compassionate release. He’s had dementia for a long time. Can’t remember anything anymore. They say he’ll forget how to swallow soon.”
“Guess that’ll make it hard to drink whiskey.” The words escaped Hobbs’s mouth before he could stop them.
Victor’s expression changed, a tightening around the mouth, though his eyes didn’t open. “He hasn’t had a drink in decades. Unlike you. I can smell you from here.”
“I’mnot an alcoholic.” They’d been over this many times. Hobbs refused to let his father’s alcohol habits dictate his own, while Victor went the other direction and didn’t touch the stuff. “And I don’t beat on people smaller than me.”
“So you’ll come?”
Hobbs felt trapped. Victor had used their baby sister as his trump card, and now, even though no part of Hobbs whatsoever wanted to say yes, he also couldn’t say no. So he said nothing. He went to the hall closet, pulled out a set of mismatched spare sheets and an old blanket his mother had made when he was young. He took them to the living room and dumped them in Victor’s lap. “Spare room has a bed, but it’s not made. Or the couch is real comfy. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Victor didn’t even open his eyes. “Yep,” he said, pulling the blanket and sheets tighter around his chest.
Hobbs showered, brushed his teeth, crawled in the sack and literally buried his head under his pillow. Maybe by morning, with a little luck, Victor would be gone.
