Page 3 of Tru Blue
“Brother. Kennedy and Lincoln. Kennedy’s, I don’t know, two, three maybe? And Lincoln’s…Lincoln’s the boy.”
Their fucking mother and her presidential names. She once told him that it was important to have an unforgettable name, since they’d have forgettable lives. Talk about self-fulfilling prophecies.
Rising to his feet, teeth gritted, his rain-drenched clothes now covered in urine from their saturated diapers, Truman didn’t even try to mask his repulsion. “These are babies, you asshole. You couldn’t clean up your act to take care of them?”
Quincy turned sullenly back to their mother, shoving Truman’s disgust for his brother’s pathetic life deeper. The baby’s shrieks quieted as the toddler patted him. Kennedy blinked big, wet, brown eyes up at Truman, and in that instant, he knew what he had to do.
“Where’s their stuff?” Truman looked around the filthy room. He spotted a few diapers peeking out from beneath a ratty blanket and picked them up.
“They were born on the streets. They don’t even have birth certificates.”
“Are you shitting me?” How the fuck did they survive? Truman grabbed the tattered blanket that smelled like death and wrapped it around the babies, heading for the door.
Quincy unfolded his thin body and rose to his feet, meeting his six-three brother eye to eye. “You can’t leave me here with her.”
“You made your choice long ago, little brother,” Truman said in a lethal tone. “I begged you to get clean.” He shifted his gaze to the woman on the floor, unable to think of her as his mother. “She fucked up my life, and she clearly fucked up yours, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let her fuck up theirs. The Gritt nightmare stops here and now.”
He pulled the blanket over the children’s heads to shield them from the rain and opened the door. Cold, wet air crashed over his arms.
“What am I supposed to do?” Quincy pleaded.
Truman took one last look around the room, guilt and anger consuming him. On some level, he’d always known it would come to this, though he’d hoped he was wrong. “Your mother’s lying dead on the floor. You let your sister and brother live in squalor, and you’re wondering what you should do? Get. Clean.”
Quincy turned away.
“And have her cremated.” He juggled the babies and dug out his wallet, throwing a wad of cash on the floor, then took a step out the door. Hesitating, he turned back again, pissed with himself for not being strong enough to simply walk away and never look back. “When you’re ready to get clean, you know where to find me. Until then, I don’t want you anywhere near these kids.”
Chapter Two
PEACEFUL HARBOR WAS supposed to be Truman’s clean slate. The bridge into Peaceful Harbor marked the line between his old life and his new one. But tonight as he headed over the bridge toward home, his past clung to him in the form of a baby, fast asleep on his shoulder, and a toddler buckled in beside him and resting on his arm. Only these babies weren’t part of his past—but they sure as hell would be part of his future. Anger coiled dark and tight inside him—at their mother, their brother. At himself for not somehow knowing Kennedy and Lincoln existed, which was really messed up considering the circumstances. He didn’t even want to think about what they’d been through, or if his mother had stopped using while she was pregnant, the way she had with Quincy. That had lasted until the week after he was born, when she dove back into the underworld.
With the baby against his shoulder, he grabbed the diapers, unlatched Kennedy’s seat belt, and lifted her into his arm. “Come on, princess.”
She snuggled in against his neck with a gentle sigh, tugging at heartstrings he thought he’d lost long ago. He put the awful blanket over the kids to shield them from the rain, which had slowed to a drizzle, and carried them up to his sparsely furnished apartment. He had no idea what he was doing. The last thing he wanted to do was wake them and start a cry-fest again, but their diapers were ready to explode, and they desperately needed baths.
He carried them into his bedroom and laid Kennedy down on his bed. Her little eyes popped open, her dark lashes sweeping repeatedly over her cheeks. Her face scrunched up, and her lower lip twitched, the edges forming a frown. She began whimpering, and he scooped her against him again.
