Cyrus
Chapter twenty
Bonus Family
Rain lashes against the windshield as I drive the winding mountain roads back toward Mom’s house, wipers fighting a losing battle against the storm. Every side street feels smaller, tighter tonight. Everything tunneling back to Billy and Fallon.
Billy.
My daughter.
The realization keeps hitting me in waves so violent I can barely hold onto a coherent thought.
One minute I’m driving, the next I’m remembering her standing barefoot in Fallon’s kitchen with pancake batter on her cheek and those huge blue eyes fixed on me like she was trying to decide whether I was safe.
Whether I was staying. Christ. My grip tightens around the steering wheel. Nine years. Nine years of missing everything.
I picture Fallon pregnant and alone in this town while I built a life somewhere else, convinced she’d betrayed me. Convinced Jonah was the father. All because I listened to the wrong people and let my pride rot into resentment.
The shame sits ugly beneath my skin. So does the rage. At Rosemary. At Jordan. At myself most of all.
Thunder cracks overhead as I turn down the street leading to Mom’s place. Warm yellow porch lights glow through the rain like a beacon, illuminating the familiar wraparound porch where half the women in Bluestone City seem permanently stationed.
And sure enough—
A line of old ladies sits scattered across rocking chairs and porch swings, margaritas in hand, staring at my truck, expectant. Probably praying I’ve come to my senses.
Dotty squints through the storm first. “Well,” she announces loudly enough to carry through the rain, “that boy looks like he got hit by a train.”
Betty gasps. “Don’t say that. When people get hit by trains, they don’t look like that. They’re just dead. Splat.”
Lou snorts into her margarita. “You’d look like that if the train that hits you is Jonah Addams, though.” A laugh, almost. Almost. I kill the engine and sit there for one long second, forehead resting against the steering wheel while rain pounds against the roof.
My daughter. The words still don’t feel real. I climb from the truck, boots sinking into thick mud instantly. Rain soaks through my shirt within seconds as I head for the porch. Every pair of eyes follows me. Curious. Sympathetic. Which means they knew too. Fantastic.
Mom rises slowly from her rocking chair, clutching a faded cardigan tighter around herself. Her expression softens the moment she looks at me, and suddenly I’m not thirty years old anymore. I’m a lost kid standing in the wreckage of his own mistakes. For a second, neither of us says anything.
Then I state an undeniable fact that is destroying me from the inside out.
“I fucked up.”
Her face crumples.
“Oh, honey.”
That’s all it takes.
Emotion lodges so hard in my throat it burns.
I cross the porch in three quick strides and pull her into my arms before either of us can think too hard about it. Mom lets out a shaky breath against my chest, her small frame trembling beneath my hands.
“She’s perfect,” I say roughly, voice shaking despite my best effort to stop it. “Mom…she’s perfect.” Around us, the porch goes completely silent. Even Dotty stops drinking. Mom grips the back of my shirt tightly.
“I tried to tell you,” she whispers. “Lord knows I tried.”
And God. The guilt nearly buckles my knees right there on the porch. Because now I remember it clearly. Her showing up years ago insisting I talk to Fallon. Telling me Fallon was pregnant. And me—young, furious, heartbroken—shutting her down before she could finish.
I drag a hand over my face as rainwater drips from my five o’clock shadow onto the porch boards. “I thought she chose him,” I admit quietly. “I thought Fallon and Jonah—”
“Absolutely not,” Betty interrupts with deep offense.
Lou points her margarita at me. “Frankly, that girl’s been in love with you since before you had anything to be in love with. No offense kiddo, those teenage years weren’t good to you.”
Dotty nods solemnly. “Teenage acne was working against you, honestly.”
Lou slaps Dotty’s back, “Dotty, you remember when he grew like a weed that one summer, and was running around here looking like a T-Rex?” her hands slap the air in front of her. The yellow frozen drink sloshing over the side of the rim. “All height, baby hands, and too big feet. What a sight.”
Mom waves them down without looking away from me. “Cyrus,” she says softly, “that girl has suffered enough.” While I was gone, Fallon stayed here carrying all of it alone. The judgment. The gossip. The loneliness. Billy.
Protectiveness.
Love.
Resolve.
All tangled together so tightly I can’t separate one from the other anymore. “I have to make this right,” I say firmly. The porch goes quiet. Mom searches my face like she’s trying to decide how much to believe.
Then slowly, her eyes fill.
“Well,” Dotty says, easing the tension with a sniff, “it’s about damn time somebody in this town acted right.”