Chapter 9 #3
Finally, Justin sighed, shifted the Bronco into reverse, checked over his shoulder, and eased out of the spot.
“What about the painting?” Dallas asked, pointing toward the gallery.
“That was just an excuse to get you to talk. Lainey’s bright idea. What do you know about hanging artwork?”
“I knew it.” Dallas lifted his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Just drop me at the cottage.”
Justin laughed, though it held an edge. “Dallas Francis True, I’m going to drive around Promise until we fix this. You can talk to me, or you can jump from a moving vehicle. Choice is yours.”
“He came to see me once.” Dallas swallowed, his throat tight. They were passing a series of cotton fields that hadn’t been picked yet. Bolls crowded the rows, vivid pops of white against the crimson earth. Beautiful, somehow. “Dad.”
Justin released a measured breath, knuckles whitening on the wheel. Their father was a bad stretch of road between them, even after all these years.
“After I found my birth certificate in my mom’s things, I created this fantasy in my mind.
She had notes about all of you, though I still don’t know how she got them.
You were these teenage superheroes to me, brothers and a cousin, ready and willing for one more to join the club.
I always wondered why she named me after someone I had no connection to, a family I wasn’t a part of.
And then when I found the box of pictures, I remembered”—Dallas picked at a split in the vinyl seat, worrying the torn edge with his thumb—“the man in one of the photos coming to see us when I was, oh, maybe seven or so. He wasn’t friendly, to tell you the truth. ”
“He was a shit,” Justin whispered.
“Yeah, but I didn’t expect you to be.”
“Damn, Dal, you cut right to the bone,” Justin whispered, rubbing his fist over his heart.
“I’m sorry,” Dallas said, and he was. But his therapist would probably applaud him for finally saying what he felt instead of letting it fester. “That’s the kid talking, not the man.”
At least, he hoped so.
Justin fiddled with the radio dial, moving from Third Eye Blind to Jewel to a burst of static, then finally settling on silence.
“I was mad at him, not you. He left you out of our lives, cut you out until we were in those awful, messy teenage years and clueless as hell. My mom might have been able to help, but by then, she was gone, too. I was never unhappy you came into this family, Dallas. Never. I just didn’t know how to tell you or show you, and by the time I figured it out, it was too late. ”
“It’s never been too late,” Dallas admitted, staring at the cotton fields, his chest loosening in a way it hadn’t in years. He didn’t know what to do with the troublesome fact that his ankle wasn’t the only thing trying to knit itself back together.
The Bronco’s tires whined over the pavement as Justin turned down the lane running between Campbell’s house and Dallas’s cottage.
The sun was dropping behind the pines, throwing copper light across the pasture grass and turning the red earth at the edge of the road almost orange.
Dallas recorded it through the window—the long shadows, the split-rail fence, the pointed line of trees beyond the field—and felt the now-familiar tug.
He was starting to like it here. Worse, he was starting to understand how he might belong.
“What’s that?” Justin asked, nodding to the bag on the floorboard.
Dallas sighed. Detective True. “A book for Sam. We’re doing this reading contest.”
Justin only hummed as he pulled into the cottage’s dirt drive.
Dallas reached for the bag too quickly. Rookie mistake. “I was in Bookends anyway, getting a copy of the New York Times. Wasn’t a special stop.”
“Gotta say, it sounds like a man falling for the kid and the mom.”
Dallas opened the door the second the Bronco came to a stop. “And here I thought the gallery was your most irritating form of self-expression.”
Justin paused, then hung his head and laughed until he choked.
Dallas felt the smile pulling at his lips, and he wanted to deny his brother the satisfaction, but then he was laughing too. Even if Justin was the ultimate shit stirrer.
Climbing from the truck, he leaned back before he closed the door.
“Take care of Sam this weekend. Watch him every second. Gabi was hurt he didn’t want her to chaperone, and if she and I are together—if we go somewhere—I don’t want her worrying.
I’ll leave the number where we can be reached.
” He pointed the Bookends bag at his brother. “Emergencies only.”
Justin simply stared, his eyes wide, the same green as Dallas’s in the fading sun. He didn’t seem to know what to do with finally being let in.
Then again, Justin True had never met a last word he didn’t want to take.
“You have to decide what life you want, Dal. Just like I did. Just like she does.” He shrugged, working hard to make his advice seem casual. “Maybe it’s only fun. But don’t shut it down before it’s had time to be real.”
“You always this insufferable after a breakthrough?” Dallas asked and slammed the door before his brother could say more.