East Three #3
His eyes started to water. “It means your dad got to be there—we got to be there for the most beautiful and saddest moment of his life. Just in time, he got to see his son be brought into this world.” He swallowed, a long and hard struggle.
“And got to say goodbye to the only woman he would ever love.”
Feeling a little woozy, I stumbled back toward the sink and rested my hands on it behind me. Shoulders caved and head hanging, I tried to breathe. “Why did Noma keep them apart? Could Dad have saved Mom?”
He was quick to correct me for offering a different outcome of the past. “No. He was as confused as you and I are now. Listen,” Styx said, “Noma had her reasons, and they were good ones. She’d lived an out-of-the-ordinary lifestyle.
She’d buried a biker—her first husband. What intelligent woman wouldn’t try to stop her daughter from the same fate?
She raised that young woman from a harsh and deadly world. ”
I thought of Harmony’s words. “Is there anything that is wrong when it comes from love?”
I guess I can understand that—Wait. “First husband?”
“What was that?” Styx tilted his head as if realizing his fuck-up and was preparing to lie.
I shut that shit down. “Nope. Stop. Truth only.”
He ran his fingers through his hair aggressively while starting to pace again.
“Sooo, once your Noma got sick, umm, she—we—damnit. The planner in her took charge, and she asked me to marry her so that, legally, I could be responsible for the real Maddox Gentry. Make sure that after her death, if her false identity caught up to her—and you, legally, I would own what was once hers and give it to you. The real you.” He tossed his hands in the air.
“She was a brilliant woman who took no chances with her baby boy. Life insurance policies, homes she owned… please don’t be mad, Mad G.
She has left you quite the nest egg. You’re a big fish in a small pond.
” When my jaw ticked, he chuckled, “Yes, another very bad example with the fish reference.”
Honestly, how could I be angry at any of this? People who loved me were all doing their best to give me a fighting chance. “Were you there to hear my mother tell Noma about what I am?”
“No, but Noma told me later.”
“So, she knew all along what I am?”
“No… She was a hell of an ER nurse, but her brain couldn’t wrap around…
” He stopped, but his expression spoke of such sorrow for all involved.
“If I told her the words were true, and she thought I had lost my wits, would she have ever let your dad and me near you?” He shook his head as if to free himself from being lost in the memory all over again.
“With your mother gone, I knew Noma would never hand you over. I knew that fierce woman would fight anyone to keep you in her arms.” He exhaled. “Lennox knew that as fact also.”
Carrying the weight of past lies on my tired shoulders, I turned toward the cabinet to stare at my reflection, wondering what I truly was. “If Noma had an inkling, why was she shocked when I told her about seeing stars in the water?”
“On the contrary, you changed everything by admitting that to her. She didn’t even chase me off right away when I caught up to you both at the house.”
Huh? “How did you know about Grandpa’s house?”
He only stared at me through the reflection in the mirror until I figured it out.
It was like finding more lost puzzle pieces, and every time a piece fit into place, I was stabbed with a dull knife. Face deadpan, I said, “You are the grandpa who bought that house for her.”
There was no shame when he groaned, “I have treasured that woman since before you were born, silly rabbit.”
My mind raced to how she would dance in the living room. How Styx had asked for the record album—Wait. Silly rabbit?
Why he was, once again, choosing to poke my nerves with the demeaning nickname again, I didn’t know. Nor did I like it. My lip curled in the mirror. “I’m not a rabbit, old man.”
“But you went underground and hid from predators like one.”
“So did you,” I pointed out with more than a little frustration.
With only a look, he silently argued my invalid point since he had been in California at one point or another.
So, I rebutted, “Oh yeah? Then why the fuck did you remove me from my burrow, smarty pants?”
“Smarty pants?” He gestured about. “Are we in kindergarten?” Then he explained, “I had no choice but to remove you from the household you cared about. You were about to get them all killed, acting like a rogue maniac, stalking that pastor of a church.”
Talking ill about any planned revenge for Baby Blue was not going to fly well with me. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” I swore, then roared with a vengeance I would someday deliver on. “That fucking non-God-fearing man deserves to die!”
Not backing down, he yelled in return, “Ya don’t say! What cha going to do about it? Bite him with your new teeth?”
I roared, “I just might!” Enraged, I looked in the mirror and opened my mouth.
Well fuck, silly rabbit. You have a shiny new pair of fangs.