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“Hey, not so fast. I’m not even close to retirement.”
“I don’t know, old man.” Dunc’s bad mood seems to have evaporated. “You looked slow this morning.”
“Fuck, everyone is slow in the morning, even you, chucklehead.” I park the truck and then rub my knuckles over his head.
He allows this for all of two seconds before ducking out and yelling over his shoulder, “Last one in has to give half his fries to the other.”
When I get inside, he's already at the table, and half his burger is gone.
“I feel like I'm not feeding you enough,” I joke.
“You can go get me more,” he says around a mouthful of food.
“You can drive, too.”
“I got homework. Ms. Cotton loaded a bunch on us today.”
“That’ll take you all of a half hour.”
He shrugs, but the knowledge sits uneasy on my shoulders. He is good at math. Really good. Like maybe engineering good. Maybe I’ll ask Ms. Cotton some advice about bringing Dunc around to these advanced math courses while he still can with it only being the start of the new school year.
“The girl you left to take care of me, how long had you known her?”
Dunc’s question takes me by surprise. I didn’t leave anyone. She left me. The burger gets stuck in my throat, and I start coughing hard enough to make my eyes water. Dunc jumps up and pounds me on the back. Once I’m able to swallow the lump, I take a long drink of my soda. My voice is hoarse when I say, “What brought that about?”
It was more that I never got the chance to track her down. I was young and my older sister had died leaving my nephew for my mom and me to raise until I lost her too. It gutted me when Fischl disappeared. I’ve loved three women in my life: my sister, my mom, and my Fischl. All have been taken from me.
Dunc’s ears turn pink, but he faces me down like a man. “I was wondering whether it was a month or a year or what? Like what kind of woman got a hold on you strong enough that you couldn’t bear to take another one to bed? How does that happen?” He sounds almost angry.
“I don’t know, Dunc. I don’t know anything about the matters of the heart. All I can say is I took one look at her and it was like a bell went off in my head. She’s the one, it rang. That bell was right. I’ve never been interested in another woman since.” That’s the best way I can describe it. I think one has to feel it to truly understand.
He stares—actually, it’s a glare—at me for a long moment of silence and then he says, quietly but fiercely, “Fuck.”
CHAPTER6
FISCHL
“Can you just drive?”Sadie pleads with me.
“Honey—”
“Please.” She gives me those big gray puppy dog eyes. I’ve never seen eyes like hers before.
Sebastian says the shade belongs to her birth mother. It really doesn’t matter, though. When it comes to the kids, I’m a giant softy. It doesn’t take them much to convince me to do what they want. I’m only grateful that they are good kids and don’t take advantage of it.
“Okay,” I give, taking the key back from her. Van had to go into school early today, so I’m taking Sadie.
Sadie’s seventeen but still doesn’t have her license. The girl is going to go her whole life with a permit. We actually had to renew her permit because she wasn’t ready to take the driver’s test.
That’s because she never wants to drive. It’s crazy to me because she got a hundred on the written test, but that’s as far as we’ve gotten her to go. When it comes to actually operating the vehicle, she does whatever she can so she doesn’t have to.
I don’t know if I’m supposed to push her to face the fear or give her time. My own mother was so strong in her ways that I find myself doing the opposite, wanting Sadie and Van to take the path they want. I don’t want to force any of my stuff on them.
Sure, I want them to have the core things that make them good humans, but I also want them to have free will. Sebastian and I agreed early on we aren’t making human clones as our parents tried to do with us. They are who they are, and we can only give them a safe area to find themselves.
“I don’t even know this area yet,” Sadie says when she drops into the passenger seat. “I could make a wrong turn and run into something.”
I know it’s just an excuse, but I let her get away with it. She will drive when she’s ready. And if she never gets to that point, then there are enough options out there that she can easily get around.
