“Nope. She married my dad when I was seven,” I say.
“So, they’re your stepbrothers?”
“They’re my brothers,” I clarify. I hate that word. We haven’t made that distinction since the first year our parents got married. Their mother was an equal opportunity terrorist. She made them as miserable as she made me and we’d formed a real brotherhood in the trenches of Eliza’s crazy. As far as I can tell, the only reason my father married her is because she was a wealthy widow with the right last name with potential spares for his heir. He adopted them, so we’re not just brothers in spirit—the law says we are, too.
“She’s never been my mother,” I say, and my voice sounds hollow in my own ears. I’ve never said that to anyone about Eliza. I’ve hidden my resentment. Mainly for my father’s sake. But now that he’s gone, so is my restraint.
“Where’s your real mom?” he asks.
“She died.” I shrug because I can’t do anything else. “I’m an orphan.” I say that word out loud for the first time and it tastes as bitter as I knew it would.
“Go be with your family, kid,” he says.
“I’m not a kid, and you’re not old enough to be calling me one,” I say.
“I’m eighteen. In college. My dad’s been dead since I was two, and my mama hates the sight of me. So, I’ve been old enough for a lot of things for a long time,” he says. There’s nothing in his tone that implies that he’s sad about his father, but now that I know what it feels like to have to say ‘my dad’s been dead …’ Or maybe he just has a well-honed poker face. I need to work on mine.
“Listen, your brothers are going to need you to act like you have your shit together. If you can’t do it for yourself, do it for them.” He puts a hand on my shoulder, and it’s oddly comforting—not at all awkward. Still, I don’t want kindness or comfort. So, I shake it off.
“I’m surprised you even care. Don’t the Wildes hate the Riverses? Isn’t that why we’ve never even seen each other before?” I ask.
“First of all, it’s the Riverses who hate the Wildes.” He bounces his ball once. “And I’ve seen you before. Didn’t know who you were. You and that little cheerleader girlfriend of yours come into Eat! over on Wesleyan. I work behind the deli counter. You probably didn’t notice since you didn’t take your sunglasses off the whole time you were in the store,” he says and dribbles his ball a few more times.
“You work there?” I ask.
“Yeah, who else is going to?” he says.
“Doesn’t your family own it?” I ask.
“Yes, and we all work in the businesses until we’re old enough and smart enough to run them. We ain’t like the Riverses,” he says, his dark eyes cocky and daring me to challenge him. I can’t. It’s true. My family members don’t work in any of their businesses. They don’t work at all. But damn if I’m going to let him know it bothers me. So, I smirk.
“I’ll say hi next time I come in. Maybe you can make me a sandwich,” I say.
“Today, I’ll cut you some slack and let you get away with that. But don’t try that on a day that’s not your father’s funeral,” he says and bounces the ball one last time before he tucks it back under his arm.
“Or what? You’ll leave the mayo off my sandwich?” I scoff.
He snorts out a laugh and throws the ball so hard and fast that I barely catch it before it hits me squarely in the chest. “Nah. I’ll use my hands to show you why I can call you kid any time I want.”
I throw the ball back with as much force as I can. He catches it without even looking. Then he turns and starts to walk back through the little clearing in the woods that leads to the door I’ve never dared to open. It’s the emergency access to Rivers Wilde, the neighborhood the Wilde family established when they bought this land from my father, right around the time I was born.
He’s almost disappeared into the brush when he stops and looks back at me.
“Go to your dad’s funeral. Trust me, you’ll never finish saying goodbye, and you’ll be glad you saw him this one last time.”
He leaves, and after a few minutes, so do I.
“You wanted to see me?” I duck my head through the heavy oak door of Swish’s office. He’s had this office in Rivers House for as long as I’ve been alive.
The smell of old books, aged leather, and coffee is comforting. I breathe a sigh of relief when I see that he’s alone. Everyone else has met with me in pairs—mostly with their lawyer present. I haven’t had a truly personal conversation in a whole week.
“Hello, son.” Swish greets me in his swashbuckling East Texas twang that sixty years of living in Houston hasn’t ridden him of. Despite the red-rimmed eyes and the disheveled, finger-mussed state of his normally perfectly styled, legendary silver hair, he’s smiling at me. It’s a beleaguered lift of the left corner of his mouth, but it’s more of a smile than I’ve seen on his face in a month. It’s sincere and warm, and when he says, “I’m glad to see you,” I believe him.
He tugs his glasses off his nose, dangles, then drops them wearily onto one of the haphazard, stacks of paper littering his desk.
“Come in, close the door.” He gestures to it and then hefts his bulky frame out of his chair and strides over to sit in one of the tufted dark red leather seats in front of his desk.
“Sit down, please.” He nods at the identical chair across from him. The warm smile is gone and what’s replaced it is so grave, so grim, that my stomach clenches. I wipe my suddenly sweaty palms down the front of my jeans-covered leg and do as he asks.
He groans through a yawn, presses the heel of his hand to his bleary eyes and rubs them slowly.
He’s oozing fatigue, and it’s catching because I’m starting to feel weighed down by my own as I watch him. He looks old. And I’m very aware of the fact that time is not on his side … or any of ours, really. But, he folds his gnarled, spotted hands over the middle of his infamously large beer belly and leans back in his chair.
“The last two weeks have been … difficult.” His voice is weighed down by all the things we’ve faced this week.
Difficult.
Memorizing the first nineteen lines of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in Olde English for class last month was difficult.
Having to live without someone you love and knowing you’ll never hear their voice again isn’t difficult. It’s impossibly hard.
I wish he would get to the point so I can go back to my room and put on some music and try to sleep. My father loved Elvis. I used to think it was such an odd thing for a boy from East Texas—who grew up sucking at the teat of Wednesday night Bible study, Friday night football, and Sunday morning service—to love music that my grandmother used to call the Devil’s seduction. The night he died, I played one of his albums on repeat and fell asleep to “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” Now I can’t sleep without listening to it.
“Your father was like a son to me. That I have outlived him and his father …” He shakes his head. “I don’t know how to feel about it, Hayes. But the one thing I know is that I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I’ve had a real difficult time finding reasons to be grateful for my advanced age, son. But today, I’m glad I’m here—because you need someone,” he says solemnly.