2. Duke
TWO
DUKE
The drive to Haven Pines was one I could do in my sleep. The fact my dad’s early-onset dementia had gotten unmanageable and required him to live in the memory care wing of a retirement home was a constant lance beneath my ribs.
With my siblings gone in the wind, Aunt Tootie and I did our best to care for him, but with the demands on the farm, it eventually had gotten to be too much.
It felt like yesterday that I had spent a long afternoon in the field, only to end my day with a call from the police that Dad had wandered to town, gotten confused, and been picked up.
Irate and confused, he’d taken a swing at the officer trying to help him.
I’d failed him.
Tootie couldn’t care for her brother on her own, and it wasn’t long after that I was forced to admit defeat. Dad was safer at Haven Pines.
Walking through the automatic doors, I was immediately greeted by the nurse at the main desk. “Afternoon, Duke!”
I offered a terse nod and continued around the main desk toward the wing that housed my father. The memory care ward had a separate nurse’s station in front of the locked double doors. It was designed for the residents’ safety but bore a striking resemblance to a prison.
The nurse was on the phone but offered me a bright smile and buzzed me in without having to question who I was.
As a regular visitor I saw my dad nearly every day.
If I couldn’t make it, Tootie or one of my siblings would make the trip to Haven Pines to check in on him.
On the good days, we’d even take Dad with us for a family dinner or a scoop of his favorite ice cream downtown.
Immediately through the doors, the decor changed from sterile old folks’ home to a faux neighborhood.
When the wing was built, they had modeled it after downtown Outtatowner.
The hospital rooms were set up to look like a neighborhood of houses stacked like dominos, one after the other.
Doors to the rooms were made to look like the front doors to actual homes, and the outsides were landscaped with flowers, faux windows, and lampposts.
It was quaint, if you could forget the fact that most residents were so far gone they couldn’t remember their own first names. I shook the thought from my head as I approached my dad’s room.
In true Red fashion, Dad was dressed and sipping coffee on the makeshift porch outside his room.
Despite the fact he no longer needed to, I knew he still woke before the sun.
Old farmers were a different breed. Though he was pushing sixty, he still had a full head of hair, combed and styled the same way I’d known it since I was a kid.
His eyes caught my movement, and they locked onto me.
There was a flicker of confusion—that half second where he didn’t recognize his own son—and it always gutted me.
Then, just as quickly as it came, it was gone, and recognition split his face into a smile.
Dad had kind blue eyes, and today they were clear.
He stood and shoved a hand in my direction. “Afternoon.”
I shook his hand and clamped the other onto his shoulder with affection. “Hey, Dad.”
“No work today?”
I huffed a humorless laugh. There was always work, but Dad was a priority. “Slow day. New bushes are being planted this week and next. We had a few rows affected by shoestring virus.”
Dad’s brows pinched down. “Removed the infected bushes and burned them?”
I nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“You’ll have to watch that spot from now on. Four years at least. How many rows?”
I laughed inwardly. While some memories, like his children or his wife passing, became hazy, the man never forgot a damn thing about blueberries.
“Only two. We’re taking care of it.”
Dad patted my arm. “I know you are, Son.” He gestured to the two chairs on his mock porch. “Have a seat.” He lifted his Styrofoam cup. “Unless you want something to drink. Coffee is like tar today, so I wouldn’t recommend it.” He grimaced into his cup but took another sip.
Shaking my head, I sat next to him, as I had done a thousand times before, and stretched my long legs against the porch railing that butted up to the hallway.
We sat in companionable silence as he offered friendly nods to other residents walking on the “sidewalk” and to the nurses pushing their large computer carts down the hall. I wondered if he ever noticed how much younger he was than anyone else on his block.
When Dad finally broke the silence, my heart sank. “Your brother’s got a big game.” He shook his head, lost in memories. “Big game.”
He wasn’t talking about coaching a game at the university. It was a common occurrence for Dad to relive Wyatt’s glory days as Outtatowner’s Golden Boy quarterback—a nickname he fought long and hard to ignore, but in Outtatowner, people were more known by their nicknames, and most hated them.
Except me. I was born August Sullivan—my mom loved that her oldest son was August and she was June.
Often we’d be sitting on the porch, watching Dad make slow, winding progress through the rows and rows of blueberry bushes.
She would sigh, lay her head on my shoulder, and tell me August was her favorite month.
She’d wax poetic about life in our small town and how everything could change with a single decision, if only we were brave enough to make it.
She would often sprinkle tiny gems of wisdom I was too young to comprehend.
My chest squeezed at the memory. Mom had always been the brave one.
As a kid with the name Gus, my peers were ruthless. Especially the Kings. JP King once teased me that he was a King, and all I’d ever become was something akin to a duke .
Beneath him.
He teased and called me Duke so often most people assumed it was my birth-given name.
The joke was on him because I preferred Duke to Gus any day, especially after Mom died.
It was too painful to even recall the way she would ruffle my hair and call me Gus-Gus.
Every time my face would screw up and I would swat her hand away, begging for her not to call me that. Now, I’d kill to hear it one last time.
“Think he’ll break the record this time?” My dad’s eyes were unfocused. He was as lost in thought as I was.
“Hmm?” I asked, pulling my attention back to the present.
“Your brother’s got a hell of an arm, but he’s not focused. If he’s going to break his own record, he needs to want it .”
I hummed in agreement. Correcting Dad would only agitate him, and I was too drained to tackle it today.
“Wyatt always gives it his all,” I conceded.
And he did—Wyatt had gotten to chase his NFL dreams and now, he found his calling as a university coach. He poured his heart and soul into that team, and the only things that came before it were his daughter, Penny, and his woman, Lark, now that he’d fallen for her.
Lee got to fuck around as the town’s favorite bachelor—not that I blamed him. He did his time in the service and saw more shit beyond the borders of this town than anyone. Still, he may have come back changed in ways I didn't always understand, but he didn’t see his time away in the same way I did.
Freedom.
Even Kate had finally moved home after a brief stint in Montana.
I was glad she was back, though I’d be lying if I didn’t say my best friend Beckett falling for my little sister had thrown me for a loop.
It wasn’t that he wasn’t a good guy, it was just that I thought there was a code.
An understanding. Apparently Don’t fuck my little sister was supposed to be explicitly stated.
No matter—the house, the farm, and my dog, Ed, were all I needed.
It wasn’t hard to see that Kate was undeniably happy, and Beckett seemed to be the reason.
I wasn’t such an asshole that I’d ever stand in her way of true happiness.
She deserved it more than most, and I could eventually learn to get used to the googly eyes those two shot each other across the room.
“Afternoon, Red.” The voice from beyond Dad’s porch drew our attention. “Time for your medication.” MJ King, the youngest King sibling, smiled down at us.
We both stood to greet her, and despite MJ being a King, the manners my father had ingrained in me won out.
I wanted to hate her on principle, but her sunny disposition and the way she cared for my father made that nearly impossible.
It didn’t matter that Red Sullivan came from the wrong family.
MJ was patient and kind despite the unpredictability of his moods.
I’d learned to put MJ in a different category of Kings—a category titled Not a Prick.
My secret soft spot for members of the King family ended at MJ.
I watched as my dad grumbled, like he always did, and argued about not needing the medication. MJ spoke with patience and smiled sweetly until Red was, quite literally, eating out of the palm of her hand.
Her older sister Sylvie’s face flashed through my mind.
Our interaction from earlier had rattled me, and I still couldn’t shake the feeling that something odd had occurred in that kitchen.
After leaving the Sugar Bowl, I’d headed straight home to the farm.
I packed up the boxes of berries and didn’t wait to haul them back to town.
Sure, I could have taken my time and delivered them when the bakery wasn’t quite so busy, but I didn’t need any more time alone with Sylvie.
Her presence just did something to me.
Maybe it was the way she had let her typically cool, dismissive demeanor slip, or how her light-blonde hair contrasted with the rich honey browns in her eyes.
Whatever it was, the last thing I needed to think about was a King woman and how she had somehow gotten under my skin with one conversation about Hall and Oates.
Rather than risk having to call her, I’d dropped the berry order off with zero fanfare and figured she’d find them on the kitchen counter whenever she went back there. I also wasn’t sure why I didn’t bother to delete her phone number, now that I didn’t need it.