Chapter 1 #2
“…tired of this crap, and I’m going with him. I have a couple of clients coming by the shop to pick up pieces, and I don’t need to miss them for this.” I realized that Caleb was talking to my mom while I had drifted into my own head. His hand touched my arm after a second. “You good?”
“Go,” I told him. “Call me if you need me.”
I could feel the weight grow heavier in the room as my brothers left. My mom was somewhere to my right, staring at me. Her gaze was always just shy of tangible. It was the only time I ever understood the sighted phrase, “the weight of a stare.”
“Well. It’s just you and me—”
“It isn’t,” I told her. “You can go to the UK and write your book and attempt to make yourself feel better for being a crap mom. But you didn’t need to bring us all together for that. So either you were just trying to get a reaction out of us, or there’s something we don’t know.”
I knew her too well to believe this was it. And when she sighed that heavy sigh that always came before more bad news, I hated myself for being right.
“It’s your father.” Her tone was grim.
I felt my eyelids blink rapidly. It was damn near involuntary—something I always did when she brought up something I didn’t want to deal with. “What about him?”
“He’s going to need help.”
I almost burst into laughter. “Mhm. Yeah, sure. With what? Making his morning coffee? Wiping his ass?” She’d also infantilized him for some fucking reason.
She would have fit well into the 1940s for all that she spent time making his lunches and ironing his suits and…
well, whatever the fuck else she busied herself with when she wasn’t up our asses.
But the silence that followed my question was thick, and I was full of regret for even asking.
“Eventually,” she said very slowly, “yes.”
“So not only am I going to get weird questions from people about how I wipe my own ass, but now I have to hear them wonder about how I wipe his?”
“Jonah,” she sighed out, and it was in that moment I realized she was being serious. This wasn’t her rising to my bait.
Fuck, this could not be real. “And why does he need someone to wipe his ass?”
“Jonah!”
“I’m being serious.” I reached up, rubbing at my eyes until my prosthetics dug into my sockets so hard it hurt. “Can you just, for once, say what you need to say? You know I don’t talk to Dad. I barely talk to you.”
“After everything we did for you—”
“Spare me. Seriously,” I said tiredly. “Enough of this martyr shit. Just…what is going on?”
“Fine. You want the gory details? He’s been sick for a while.”
Cold raced up my spine. “What do you mean, sick? Like…terminal.”
“Technically, yes.” She went with another dramatic pause, but this time, I just sat and blinked until she started speaking again. “He was officially diagnosed with Alzheimer’s about six months ago.”
It took a moment for the weight of her words to hit me, but when it did, I almost fell sideways. “Six months—Jesus, Mom. Six months? And you’re telling me this now?”
“Well, it seemed appropriate since I’ll be leaving the country for a while. Elisa and I are going to do some traveling for the next couple of years, and someone will have to look out for him.”
“You’re his wife.”
“Only on paper,” she said, then laughed like it was some massive cosmic joke. “Stop making that face, Jonah. It’s your duty handed down by God Himself to take care of your parents in their twilight years.”
“Oh yes, I forgot about that passage,” I said dryly. “Honor thy father after thy mother abandons him the moment he becomes a fucking burden.”
I heard her tongue tick, and I knew she was debating about giving me a bible lecture. It was probably good she didn’t with the way I was feeling. “With the salary you boys make, I’m sure if you need help, there’s help to be found.”
“Ah. So it’s about money.”
The truth was, it was always about money. The book was about money. Pushing us into hockey was about money. She assumed we’d be more than willing to hand it over when her author career and attempt to be a Disability Mom social media influencer didn’t pan out.
When Micah first told her to go fuck herself, she didn’t talk to him for a month. That alone was incentive to tell her how I really felt. Only…I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I knew Micah thought I was a coward, and I hadn’t done much to change his mind on that front.
But at the very least, I was willing to be a buffer between him and our parents, which was enough for him.
“I really don’t need this attitude right now, Joe.”
“Jonah,” I corrected.
“I named you. I can call you whatever I want,” she snapped.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I bowed forward over my legs, feeling the table for my cane with my other hand.
It was right where I left it, which wasn’t always a guarantee at her house.
Her other favorite game was putting it somewhere else and refusing to tell me until I gave in to whatever she was asking me for.
It was why the three of us started carrying around spares.
“What do you want me to do about Dad?”
“Look after him. Get him into a facility if you can get the old man to agree.”
He wasn’t old. That was the tragedy of the whole thing. They hadn’t been young parents, but he was barely fifty-five, which meant this was some early onset bullshit. And the fact that she wanted me, Micah, or Caleb to take care of him was hilarious.
It was mid-season, and there was a damn good chance that both of our teams were going to make it to playoffs, which meant I would be at the rink constantly, then on the road constantly.
And Caleb had just bought a house with his girlfriend, not to mention his commission schedule was packed for the rest of the year.
None of us had time, and she knew it.
But I knew her a little too well to be surprised by any of this. She wanted to lock her husband away now that things were complicated. That way, she could forget about him until he died, and she could collect his life insurance policy.
My stomach twisted, and bile rose into the back of my throat. “Where is he right now?”
She sighed heavily. “His apartment, probably.”
His apartment? He had an apartment?
“I get calls about him most days, from people in the neighborhood. He keeps wandering around and trying to buy sandwiches at bookshops and pay for groceries with his house keys.”
“Jesus Christ—”
“Don’t you dare take the Lord’s name in vain in my house.”
“You know what? Fuck this.” I stood, grabbing my cane and clicking the segments into place. I didn’t have an Uber waiting, but I could make it down to the corner of the street before ordering one. Or screw it. I’d grab the bus if I had to.
“You can’t just leave him on his own, Jonah,” she called after me as I started toward the front door.
“Watch me.” It wasn’t like the old man deserved kindness from either of us. He had refused to protect us from her. Why should we protect him now?
“I’m not staying, you know,” she went on. “If you don’t take care of him, the state will take him into custody, and who knows what will happen to him then.”
God, she was a monster, but I wasn’t going to fall for it. If I refused to help, she’d give up her little plan to leave the country and deal with him herself.
And someday, I was going to write a tell-all about the internet’s Disability Mom Darling and what she did to her sons and her husband, all for the sake of cash. I needed to make sure I did it while she was alive too.
I ignored her shouting after me as I made my way out the door, and I didn’t stop moving until I heard traffic.
The bus bench wasn’t too far from the entrance to her neighborhood, and as my cane guided me along, keeping me from tumbling into the street, I heard the shuddering hiss of the city bus approaching.
I reached into my pocket for my card, then tapped my cane against the pole as I waited for it to pull up and stop.
I couldn’t get home on it. It stopped at the edge of town, but I could at least get over to Ford and Killian’s place and play with their new kitten until I was emotionally stable enough to order a car.
Right now, I was shaking and turned around and so angry I felt like I could spit fire. How could she do this?
Of course, that was a ridiculous question. I knew exactly how she could do this. This was entirely her MO.
But Christ, her husband. The man who had stood by her and defended every one of her worst, most questionable decisions?
I tapped my card, then let the bus driver guide me to an empty seat before leaning back and doing my best to pay attention to the stops. Most of the drivers were kind, but a lot of them got irritated when I asked them to keep an eye out for where I needed to get off.
Luckily, I’d been doing this route for a while, so I relaxed and counted off in my head every time we rolled to a halt.
Six stops away, and I was starting to breathe a little easier.
Four stops away, and I wasn’t shaking anymore.
When the bus reached the bench right near the entrance to Ford’s apartment, I made my way to the signpost and waited for it to head off before following the path to Ford and Killian’s door.
God help me if they ever moved. I didn’t want to learn my way to Boden’s house, and I stayed far away from Tucker and Amadeo since they were always—always—screwing.
Not that Killian and Ford could keep their hands off each other, but they usually had the decency to keep it off the couch, so I didn’t have to wonder if I was sitting on a come stain.
I held my breath, knocked, then tried for a smile when the door opened. “Alms for the poor?”
“Shut the fuck up, dude.” Ford gripped my arm and gently tugged me over the threshold. He was lower to the ground, meaning he was using his wheelchair, which was a rare occurrence for him. “Why are you here?”
“Mom drama. I need a drink.”
“Booze-free this month,” he said as he let me go at the entrance to the living room. “Best I can do is sparkling water and a weed gummy your brother left three weeks ago.”
I wasn’t about to ask what Micah was doing with weed gummies. “I’ll take the water and cat cuddles if Nugs is available.”
“On the couch,” Ford said, his voice fading as he headed toward the kitchen.
I walked over and felt for her, then sat and kicked my foot up on the table. I could feel a headache coming on—a slow burn that was going to eventually turn into a migraine.
“Water,” Ford said to my right. He touched the back of my hand with the glass. “And an ear if you need someone to listen to the drama.”
I took the glass, gulped half, then grimaced. It actually was sparkling. I thought he was joking, the fucker. Whatever. I drank another mouthful. “Shitty parents are shitty.”
“Tell me about it.”
I let out another sigh…and then I did.