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“Hey, little man, Mommy’s here,” I said, kissing him on the head.
“Don’t leave, pweese,” he said as his eyes grew heavy and threatened to close.
“Mommy’s not going anywhere, baby,” I said, stroking his soft cheek. “Mommy is right here.”
I sat down in the chair next to him and leaned forward, resting my head on the bed beside him. My own eyes were growing heavy with sleep as well, and as my son’s breathing grew even, I drifted off to sleep beside him.
Chapter 7
Alex
“Alex, do you know what time it is?”
I pried my eyes open and searched for a clock or my phone, anything that might answer the question my mother was asking as she stood in the doorway of my old room.
She answered her own question. “It’s ten, and we have to meet with the funeral parlor at 10:45. I thought you’d be dressed and ready by now.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled as I sat up in the tiny twin bed that cracked underneath my every movement. My head spun and started throbbing the second I was upright. “Jesus.”
“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain like that,” my mom scolded me, just like when I was a child. Except I wasn’t a child anymore, and she had missed most of my childhood.
I scowled in her general direction. “I’m not ten anymore.”
She ignored me. “How late did you stay out last night?”
“Not that late.” It was the truth. Duncan called it a night around nine in the evening. That didn’t mean my night ended. I needed a bit more to drink to even imagine sleeping in this shithole. I had wanted to get a hotel, but Mom said she wanted to stay at Dad’s place and guilted me into it.
“You remind me of your dad so much sometimes.”
I don’t know if my mother’s words were intended as a compliment, but they made the blood in my veins go cold.
The last thing I wanted was to be compared to that bastard.
“If you want me to get ready, I need to get dressed.” I shot my mother a look. “Or if I’m like Dad, I guess I should tell you to get the fuck out, but I’m not anything like that asshole, and don’t ever say that to me again.”
“Fine,” Mom said defensively, her arms crossed in front of her chest. “Just hurry up, please.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She stepped out of the room and shut the door behind her. I dug around for my jeans from the day before and found my phone in the pocket. A missed call. It was a local, Denver number, so nothing to do with work. I listened to the voicemail, and I felt like the air was being sucked out of my lungs as Grace’s voice spoke to me on the other end.
She sounded so sad.
I wanted nothing more than to wipe that sadness out of her life and fix everything, but I knew it wasn’t that easy.
Still, I owed her a call back. I checked the time. Not now, obviously, I told myself, but soon.
I hurried up and got ready as quickly as possible and found my mom waiting by the front door.
“Finally.”
“Hey, I know you only want me there because I have to pay for the damned thing,” I said dryly.
My mother’s back stiffened. She couldn’t argue with me because it was the truth. We both knew Dad had died in debt. He gambled away pretty much everything of value that he owned, and even the dilapidated shack likely had a lien on it that someone would collect on before long. And Mom didn’t have a pot to piss in, so either I paid for my dad’s funeral expenses or no one would.
I hated my old man even more for it. I had the money, I could afford it, but I shouldn’t have to.
Consider it my parting gift to you, old man, I thought to myself as I wrote the check to the funeral parlor that afternoon.
