Page 84 of Really Truly Yours

The question is for my benefit. “As well as can be expected, I guess. His cardiologist thinks they’ve got the arrythmia under control. The ankle is slowing him down some, not that he was moving all that fast to begin with.”

“And the cancer?”

“I’m taking him to a new oncologist next week, but I don’t expect much in the way of good news.”

Tripp nods appropriately, yet I see through his thin disguise of concern.

“Can we sit for a minute?”

He glances over, swiping at a line of sweat trickling from his hairline. “Sure.”

Tripp sprawls across his end of the bench while I lean on my elbows, massaging my jaw, casting about for right words. The ones I practiced suddenly feel clumsy and completely wrong.

“This must be big. Everything okay?”

“Sure.” Man up, Smith. “No.” I sigh, pushing upright and leaning against the slatted back. “So, you know Donny and I have been talking a lot, right?”

Tripp’s radically inked-up arm lounges across the top of the bench. I’m about to foul that casual demeanor out of the ballpark, aren’t I?

He nods once. “Of course.”

“And I told you what he said about Mom. Him and mom, right? That she was someone he loved?”

“So I heard, yes.” His tone is as dry as chalk lines on a ballfield.

“I also told you that they were together for a long time, right?”

“In and out of each other’s jacked up lives. Yeah, you mentioned it. And I remember him being around some. Never stayed too long that I can recall. Couldn’t compete with all the other guys, I imagine.”

Man, the ugly cadence of bitterness does not bode well. I wonder something all of a sudden. “Do you have any good memories of Donny?”

Tripp’s jaw solidifies. “That’s a weird question.”

Is it? Daring, maybe.

He stares a moment, then eases, humoring the question, probably because I’m the baby brother. “Good would be a stretch. Neutral is the best I can do. I wanted his approval, like you had, but he barely tolerated me. I knew he wished I didn’t exist. Since I wasn’t his, you know?” He shrugs as if it’s trivial. “At least he didn’t have quite the mean streak of some of the others.”

Cheers for good news? Everything inside me groans. “Well, about him and Mom. Did I mention they knew each other in junior high?”

He blinks at the info but keeps cool. Are dots beginning to connect and warning bells tuning up? “No kidding.”

“That’s right. Sounds like they had a very intense relationship.”

“Intensely dysfunctional, you mean?”

“Yeah. Probably so.” Codependent and ugly. “So anyway, they went their separate ways after school, after dropping out, that is. He moved to Oklahoma to live with some half sister and was gone for a long time. Came back for a while, and they hooked up again…”

Distaste runs rampant through Tripp’s hard expression.

“Donny left again and ended up in jail back in Oklahoma. I don’t know all the time details exactly—”

Tripp’s grunt stops me. “I don’t give a…I don’t care about this junk, Gray. What’s your point here?”

Hunching again, I stare at my clasped hands kneading and knotting between my knees. “Tripp, the next time he came back to her, you were there. He always assumed you were someone else’s kid, and she told him as much, but…”

I steal a peek. Tripp’s face has changed. Stilled, like the deer we passed, hoping trouble moves on down the road.

“It wasn’t until years later, after Mom died, he found out…her sister told him…” I suck it up, literally inhale all the way, and look him in the eye. “Tripp, Donny is your father, too.”

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