Chapter Thirty-Four

Scott

My father is watching an old episode of Law and Order when I arrive at the hospital.

“Missing the courtroom, Dad?” I ask, plopping down in the chair next to his bed.

He shrugs and pulls out the whiteboard. He’s able to speak in slow, halting sentences now, but he becomes frustrated if he can’t get his thoughts out.

“Bored stiff,” he writes.

“I don’t think you should be talking about ‘stiffs’ considering you were almost one of them.”

He grins from ear to ear, albeit a little crookedly on one side, thanks to the stroke.

“So, I…uh…was wondering if we could maybe talk about some stuff?”

He nods and turns the television off, waiting attentively for me to begin.

“It’s Win,” I begin.

“What did he do now?”

“He stole the last ten years from me, for starters. He admitted that he knew I thought I was the one who was adopted and that he let me keep thinking that.”

“Me too.”

“Well, yeah, but it’s not like I gave you the opportunity to explain it all. You were grieving Mom, and you couldn’t get into it with me just then…and I left. For ten years.”

My father’s face is impassive, so I continue.

“But Win…he let me run all over the state of Minnesota looking for clues when he had the answer the whole time. In fact, he refused to help me when I asked him.”

My father uses a tissue to erase his previous message and write a new one.

“He’s threatened by you. Jealous.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t know of what—in the end he got it all, didn’t he? The wife, the kid…the life that I might’ve had if I’d stayed here in Mayhem.”

“It’s not too late. You can still have that life. IF you want it.”

“I’m not so sure about that…” I mutter. “Win came to me and asked me to leave—to go back to work. Claims that’s the only way we’ll be able to have a relationship…which I think is total BS. But then I got this call—about a really great job opportunity. I’d be able to have a direct impact on so many communities—a chance to really affect some change.”

“Is that what you want, son?”

“If you’d asked me that question a week ago, I’d have said yes, absolutely. I’d already be on a plane to D.C. But now… now things are different. I think…”

“Is this about Jameson?”

I’m so caught off guard by the question that I can only nod at him dumbly, waiting for some explosive display of silent emotion, but it doesn’t come. He watches me. I watch him watching me. After several long seconds, he erases and writes again. I’m almost afraid to look, but he taps on the board with his finger to direct my attention to what he’s scrawled.

“Do you love her?”

“I don’t know, Dad. Love? I mean, I hardly know her…” I sigh and come at it from a different angle. “But when I’m with her, everything feels so right…”

This time, my father sets aside the whiteboard, and I watch with fascination as he swallows hard, scrunches his brow in concentration, and starts to speak in a soft, slow voice.

“If you love her,” he rasps, “tell her. If you don’t, you’ll always regret it.”

“It’s barely been a week! How is that even possible? God, I feel like I’m trapped in some cheesy romance novel!” I moan, rubbing my throbbing temples with my index fingers.

My father looks at me for a long moment, sighs, and then goes back to writing again.

“You’ve loved her longer than you think.”

“What? What does that mean?”

He offers me a shrug and a cryptic smile.

And then I get it. The party at O’Halloran’s. The lemon cake. Jameson as a little girl. It was there even then and probably just below the surface all those years…but she was too young for me at the time. And I had that wicked wanderlust in my blood. And then Mom died… And she married my brother. Now here we are.

“Oh my God…you’re right, Dad,” I murmur under my breath. “I think I have always loved her… I think I do still…” I jump up to my feet. “I have to go talk to her. If she feels the same way—”

My dramatic exit is cut short by the look on my father’s face. He sees something behind me, and when I spin around to find out what it is, I feel my blood run cold. And then hot again. My brother is standing there, leaning against the doorframe watching. And listening. But for how long?

“Win…?”

He straightens up and sidles into the room, not bothering to even acknowledge our father’s presence.

“Okay, you know what? I tried to do this the nice way, but you just can’t seem to stay out of my business.”

“Your business? How am I in your business?”

“She’s my wife.”

“She’s your ex-wife.”

“Scott, I swear to God, if you don’t leave, I’ll make this place a living hell,” he hisses at me.

I’m not impressed. “Oh, please, Win. Dramatic much? What can you possibly do to me?”

When his lips turn up into a malicious smile, I know exactly where he’s headed and I’m powerless to stop it.

“I meant for Jameson. If you think I’m going to let you move back here and play house with her and Jackson, you’re out of your mind. I promise you, I’ll take her to court and fight for full custody. By the time I’m done with her, they’ll have to sell that dive bar of theirs to pay her legal bills, and she still won’t get the kid because I know too many people. And who do you think she’d choose, Scott? You or her son? If I went to her now and told her all this, who do you think she’d choose?”

Before I can make him eat his teeth, a loud thumping noise startles both of us. Our father is banging the television remote on the side of his bed to get our attention. Then he holds up the whiteboard.

“Don’t do it. You’ll regret it Win!”

“Stay out of it, Dad. You don’t need the stress, and you have no say in it anyway.”

I can see the fury in my father’s eyes, and I realize what’s happening here. I’m losing. Because I can’t protect him from the kind of stress and frustration that my brother is going to subject him to. This will certainly cause his blood pressure to spike—maybe even cause another stroke. Or worse. And I’m losing because I can’t protect Jameson from whatever hell my brother intends to put her through. Even the thought of losing Jackson would send her into a tailspin she might not ever fully come back from.

“You’re a lowlife bastard,” I tell my brother.

“Maybe,” he says, “but I’m the lowlife bastard who’s holding all the cards right now.”

He’s right, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it—except envision all the ways I’d like to kill him. And there are a lot of them.

“Fine,” I spit out at last. “I’ll make my travel arrangements and say my good-byes—”

“Uh-uh.” Win is shaking his head. “Tonight. There’s an eight-thirty flight out of Duluth to the Twin Cities tonight. I don’t care where the hell you go from there, but I want you out of the state of Minnesota tonight. And don’t even think about talking to Jameson—or anyone—before you leave. As far as everyone else is concerned, you just couldn’t pass up that great job that I just heard you telling Dad about.”

If I could eviscerate my brother with my eyes, he’d be nothing but a bubbling puddle of ectoplasm on the linoleum floor right now. Unfortunately, that’s one skill I don’t have.

I walk to my father’s bed and kiss his cheek. “I’ll be in touch, Dad, I promise.” He grabs my wrist and murmurs the word “no,” but I extricate myself easily and walk out the door.

“Bye-bye, Unca Sock,” Win jeers as I pass him.

“Go to hell.”

The last thing I see before the elevator doors close is the whiteboard as my father throws it out of the room, and it comes crashing into the hallway, hitting the floor and splitting into shards.