Текст книги "The Porcupine of Truth"

Автор книги: Bill Konigsberg

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

IT’S LATE EVENING when Turk pulls his rental car into the driveway of my dad’s place. A sense of dread seizes my chest. The party is over. Now it’s time for the reckoning. As much as I can’t wait even another second to introduce my dad and Turk, the uncertainty of how my dad will react to learning what happened to his dad makes me want to lock us in the car and never, ever get out.

We carefully navigate the steep driveway in the dark and walk around to the front door. Something about this reunion feels inappropriate for the back door and the kitchen.

My mother answers when we knock. Her face is tense, and her lips are tighter. Part of me wants to grab her and hug her so hard that it’ll wring all the anger out of her and me. Another part wants to run.

“Hi Mom,” I say. “Not sure how to do this, so. Um. This is Turk Braverman. Dad’s dad’s … significant other. Turk, this is my mom, Renee Warren.”

She sticks her hand out tentatively, like she’s not sure if this is an appropriate response to what I’ve said. Thank God for Turk, who gently takes her hand and then steps forward and hugs her tense body.

Then the three of us walk in, and I squeeze her shoulder as I walk by. It’s like a squeeze question: Are we okay? I’m pretty sure we’re not. She doesn’t respond in any way I notice.

“He’s resting,” she says, as I point to my dad’s bedroom door.

Turk turns to her as if to ask permission. She nods ever so slightly.

Turk and I walk to the door. He knocks, and it takes Dad a long, long time to answer.

He looks at least a year older than when I left. His unshaven face sags, sallow. I think, No. This is not the person I’ve been talking to on the phone.

I hug him as tightly as I feel I can without hurting him. He smells stale, unshowered.

“You came back,” he says, his words labored as he squeezes me. “Yay.”

“Dad,” I say, pulling back from the hug. “This is Turk Braverman. He knew your dad.”

My dad just stands there, like he doesn’t know how to react. Turk sticks out his hand. My dad barely shakes it.

“Would you mind if I came in and talked with you for a bit?” Turk asks.

My dad looks scared. He looks at me. I nod. He looks at my mom, who nods too.

Even with his frailties, I am used to Turk being decisive in every action, every movement. So watching the way he reacts to my father is stunning to me. I can feel his uncertainty. I see it in his tentative glances, and the way he avoids looking at my dad. How weird this must be for him, I think.

My dad steps aside and allows Turk into his room. Turk closes the door.

I look at my mom, whose eyes plead for more information.

“I’m gonna hang out downstairs,” Aisha says, and she slips into the kitchen, heading toward the basement stairs.

When my mother and I are alone in the living room, neither of us speaks for a long time. I sit down on the couch, and she sits down in the love seat. I simply don’t know what to say. I don’t know what her excuse is.

Finally, she takes a deep breath, crosses her legs, and says, “I recognize that what you’ve done here is significant, Carson. I thank you for that. But that doesn’t change the fact that I feel like we need to have a real conversation about boundaries. I feel as though I allow you a lot of leeway, but I am your parent. It’s important for me to locate it when I feel as though my boundaries as a parent have been crossed.”

My face heats up. It gets hot, and then hotter. I feel like a teakettle with the heat turned way up, like if I don’t let something out right now, my head’s gonna start to whistle.

“MORE, PLEASE! ANYTHING, PLEASE! JUST … MORE!”

My mother reacts as if I’ve just socked her in the gut.

“I need more than that kind of talk. I mean it. You can’t do this to me anymore. I’m your kid. Who says that to their kid?”

“Who says what?”

“All this ‘locate,’ ‘own,’ ‘allow’ … You’re so clinical, so cold, Mom. You freeze me out.”

“You think I’m cold?” She sucks in her lips.

I don’t say anything. Her eyes redden and moisten. She swallows. A first tear falls.

This. This is what I’ve been afraid of all my life. This is why I count. So I don’t say something that melts my mom. I have melted my mother. I have made my mother cry.

“I don’t think —” I say, and then I stop. We’re here already. No going back. “I just think you sometimes play psychologist with me instead of, you know. Being my mom. You don’t show emotion. You don’t seem to care enough to get angry most of the time. You never hug me.”

This just makes the tears fall more, and she doesn’t wipe them away. It’s like she’s thawing. Liquid streams down her face as she speaks.

“Do you think I don’t know I’m not cut out for this? Do you think I haven’t told myself, every day since I had you, that I can’t do this? Every day, Carson. I hear the voice every day. Renee, you’re doing it wrong. You’re a terrible mother. I try to keep it together, and that only makes it worse.”

“I didn’t say you were a terrible mother,” I say. I look at her face, and she’s grimacing. “Mom —”

“You think you’re the only person with a mother who disappoints you? You think my parents were any better? My mother disapproved of every single choice I ever made. Driving around the country alone made me seem like a … prostitute. Getting pregnant before I was married? Do you have any idea? She wore black to my wedding, Carson. She told me your father was a huge mistake, that I was wasting my life away. When I came back to New York after the divorce, she told me I’d gone and ruined two lives. All I wanted to be was the kind of mother who didn’t do that to her child.”

I can’t imagine my grandma, my sweet, lovable grandma, doing these things. Saying these things. Is nobody pure? Is everybody fucked up? Is that life? Is that okay? Is it acceptable?

“Do you have any idea how much energy I spend trying to keep it together? Do you get that when I measure my words, I’m trying to protect you from me losing my … do you get that?”

“Maybe we should stop,” I say.

“Stop?”

“Trying to keep it together. Trying to protect each other from each other.”

Mom slides down from the love seat until she is sitting against it on the floor. I do the same off the couch. Our outstretched legs touch, and I’m waiting for her to pull her legs away. But she doesn’t. She doesn’t do or say anything.

I study her face. It’s tired. Discontent. She has a pimple on her forehead. She raises her head just slightly, and there’s just a bit of a booger visible at the end of her left nostril.

This horrible, stinky, sad idea strikes me and takes all the air from my body. My mom is just a person. A fucked-up person, like me, like Dad, like everyone.

It occurs to me for the first time in my life that it’s truly possible to know something and not know it at the same time. Because how could I not know that my mother is a flawed person? That she’s just me with slightly more experience? That she dropped me off at the zoo the first day we were here, not because her normal, brilliant understanding of the world had momentarily warped, but because she had no idea what else to do?

I crawl over to her and wrap my arms around her. She slowly gives in to the hug, uncoiling her tense body almost one vertebra at a time. I feel her letting go, and soon she turns toward me and hugs me back.

She leans her head against mine. I don’t pull away. “Thanks,” I say, marveling at the warm feeling of her skull against mine. “That was a treat. This is.”

She sniffles and wipes her nose with the back of her hand. “It shouldn’t be.”

We keep our heads connected, and we talk. For basically the first time in our lives, we talk for real. I like feeling the vibration of her words inside my ears. I tell her about how Grandpa died, and she shuts her eyes and nods as she takes this information in. For the first time in my life, I can feel my mom’s love for my dad. I feel it in my scalp, this palpable love, despite everything, that she has for him.

That feeling is confirmed when she tells me it’s been hard to be back here, but she’s realized that she still cares for Dad, all this time later. Part of me lights up when she tells me this, because it’s the missing puzzle piece, and it flickers brighter.

I tell her about all the people we met on our trip, and all the adventures. She pulls away a bit, and I remember that while Aisha and I were doing all that, I was actively ignoring her.

“Mom,” I say. “It’s okay, really.”

“What’s okay?”

“That you’re pissed at me. I’d be pissed at me too.”

I feel her nod. “I am … pissed.”

I lift my head off hers and look her in the eye.

“If you have to, like, yell at me, you should yell at me,” I say.

“You want me to yell at you?” she asks, like she’s not sure if I mean it.

“I want you to yell sometimes. When I screw up.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

She mock-screams, “No! I won’t yell at you!”

For the first time, I realize my dad is not my only parent with a weird sense of humor. This makes me smile. She smiles just a bit too.

“You’re grounded, by the way,” she says. “Incredibly, outrageously grounded. Possibly for eternity. And if you ever, for any reason, even a very good one, leave the state you’re supposed to be in without telling me, I will come find you and make you sorry you ever lived.”

“Maybe pull back on the yelling a tad,” I say.

She smiles again, and my whole body relaxes. My mom.

When Aisha comes back upstairs, my mom and I are still hanging out, chatting. I can see Aisha take in that something has happened here, and then she just goes with it, pretends that it’s not unusual for Mom and me to talk like we’re actually inhabiting the same world. Turk and my dad are still in the bedroom, and I am anxious for them to come out so I can see how Dad is doing with all this.

Aisha and Mom talk for really the first time ever too, and I get to see a different side of my mom. She’s still her psychologist self; I mean, I guess I’d be surprised if she ever lost that therapist tone. But she also opens up a bit about how scared she felt when she didn’t know where I was, and at the same time how glad she was to know I had Aisha there with me.

“You’re more than welcome to stay here as long as we’re here,” my mother says. “I know how important you are to Carson, and that’s meaningful to me.”

I roll my eyes and say to Aisha, “We want you to locate yourself here.”

My mom narrows her eyes at me.

“Too soon?” I ask.

“Much too soon,” my mother says.

“Be nice to your mom,” Aisha says.

“Sorry.”

I crawl over and kiss my mom on the cheek, and she cups my chin in her hands.

“Apology accepted,” she says.

I hear the door to my father’s bedroom creak open. Dad and Turk emerge slowly. My mom and I stand up. Dad looks small. He stares at the ground, emotionless.

“It’s chilly in here,” he says, and no one responds. No one says anything and no one moves. We’re all just waiting for something we can work with, I guess.

When she gets tired of waiting, my mom goes over to my dad. She clasps his hand in hers. The she leans in to him, and he puts his head on her shoulder. She envelops him in a hug, and he hangs there in her arms, his own arms splayed out and not around her, and someone who didn’t know my dad might think he didn’t want the hug. But I know him a bit, and I know he does want it, that he desperately needs it. He just doesn’t know how to react because he’s sad and he’s broken, and that’s a tough combination.

Watching my mom hold my dad is like the time I went to the planetarium and watched this show about the stars and the planets. There’s this place where the planets shift, or maybe the sun covers the moon completely or vice versa, I don’t remember exactly what. I just remember feeling like the earth was shifting and my balance was gone and even though I was sitting and looking up at the ceiling, I felt like I could just fall over.

Turk comes and stands on my right, and Aisha stands on my left. I lean on both of them. They hold me up, and I’ve never felt this way before, supported like a building needs support beams. They keep me upright as the planets of my parents collide and stay collided.

Eventually we all sit down, my mom and dad on the love seat and the three of us on the big couch. No one says much of anything.

My dad finally says, “He was alone and sick, and I couldn’t help him.”

Turk shakes his head slowly. “He wasn’t alone.”

My dad nods vacantly.

“He loved you very much and he knew you loved him and that’s the truth,” Turk says.

“Why did this have to happen to me?” Dad asks. “Us, I mean.”

No one has an answer for that one.

“All this wasted time….” he says.

Turk tells a few funny stories about the things my granddad did in San Francisco, like the time he dressed up for Halloween in a blond wig, pantsuit, and poofy hat, and around his midsection was a bulky felt square, with six round white dots on the back side, one round white dot on the front.

“He was Princess Die,” Turk says, and my mother, of all people, laughs. My dad hangs his head, and I realize it’s not that easy taking this all in, hearing about what your dad was doing when he wasn’t with you, for whatever reason. Like if your dad can’t be with you, he should be miserable the whole time. I definitely know that feeling.

I guess Turk gets it too, because he says, “At least once a week, Matthew, I’d wake up to your dad’s sobs. He was an utter mess, not being able to be with you.”

My dad chews his bottom lip. My mom squeezes his hand, and after a while, I see him squeeze hers back.

It’s after midnight when we finish talking, and my mother tries to figure out where everyone can sleep. Turk will get the living room couch, she says, and she brings out fresh linen for him.

“Would you be happier on a nice, working air mattress?” I ask.

He moves his head from side to side, considering this. “You have an extra one?”

“Nope. We don’t have any. We have one that leaks air, and Aisha’s been sleeping on that one. I’ve been sleeping on the rug with a blanket. But on the positive side, I now have a wealthy grandfather who owes me presents.”

“Carson,” my mother says, but Turk laughs.

“He’s right, you know. I’m a single guy in my seventies with money and no one to spend it on. Until now, that is. Let’s go shopping in the morning.”

“That meeting,” my dad says softly.

“Of course,” Turk says. He looks at all of us and says, “Your father has asked me to take him to an AA meeting. Aisha, would you take a look online and find one tomorrow morning?”

She nods, and the room seems to soften. I close my eyes and it’s almost like I can feel my grandfather’s spirit expand and sigh and relax. And I know that whether or not that’s really happening, wherever my grandfather is or isn’t, he’s happy about this.

THE NEXT MORNING, I jump out of bed as soon as I’m awake, kiss the still-sleeping Aisha on the forehead, and speed upstairs. It feels like Christmas morning to me. Like there are presents under the tree.

Turk is snoring on the living room couch, and even though I don’t hear any other creatures stirring, I go into my dad’s room. He’s sleeping. I stand and watch, and then I find myself looking for glasses and bottles, which is kind of terrible. I know he’s going to a meeting today, but part of me is worried that the conversation with Turk was too much for him, and he must have snuck a drink.

“What are you doing?” he groans when he opens his eyes and sees me on all fours, peering under his bed.

“Nothing,” I say, standing up. “Sorry.”

“I guess I can’t blame you,” he says. “But no. No booze. I promise.”

I sit on his bed next to him. The sheets are a bit sweaty, and he feels warm.

He yawns audibly. “Everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine. I just …”

My brain and my heart are full. It feels like I could open my mouth and everything I ever held in there could come out, jokes or yells or tears or who knows what. I don’t know what’s first and what’s last, and I’m tired of trying to control it.

“I miss you,” I blurt. “Goddamn … Not like a week’s worth. Freakin’ … Like years’ worth. Can I just sit here with you for a bit? We don’t have to talk. I just want to be with you.”

A smile pours over his face. “Sure, kiddo. Yeah. That’d be all right.”

I smile back, then I put his hand in mine and I squeeze. I try to squeeze life into it.

“I told you I’d come back,” I say.

“Yup.”

“It was a long trip,” I say. I’m fishing for a compliment, so I stop.

“Thanks,” he says. “If I didn’t say that yet. Thanks.”

“It was nothing.”

“Yeah.” He tickles my palm with his fingers. “Sounds like a whole lot of nothing.”

I want to ask him everything at once. I want to know how he’s feeling, and what’s going through his mind. But he’s staring off into the distance, and sometimes it’s okay to not say anything. No jokes, just being together in the silence.

He finally says, “Thanks for not listening to me and doing what you did. You’re a good son.”

I look at him. His eyes are young like a child’s, and they’re weary like an old man’s, and then he smiles, and his teeth are yellowed in places. I don’t know if he’ll make it to fall, and that’s not something I can deal with. He has to be okay. He just has to. You can’t come back into someone’s life and then die. It’s just not right.

“You’re a … dad,” I say, leaving the “good” part out.

He laughs. It’s good to have someone who shares your blood, who gets your jokes and you don’t have to explain. I’ve missed that in my life. And now, at least for this moment, I don’t have to.

After breakfast, Aisha asks me if I’ll take a ride with her. I know where we’re going. She sits rigid as she drives us up Rimrock Road about a mile and then turns north, up toward the actual rim.

“Here goes everything,” she says.

The house she’s lived in all through high school is tall, thin, and built up into the rocks. It’s elevated a good twenty feet, and we have to climb some stone steps to get to the entrance. There are huge floor-to-ceiling windows on the first and second floors. We stand at the top of the steps and look up at it. The house looms over us, judgmental and stern. I feel really small standing there, and Aisha’s fear radiates off her skin as she tries to catch her breath.

Finally we march up to the bright-red front door.

Her mom answers. She’s a smallish, dark-skinned woman with Aisha’s cheekbones, and she wraps her arms around Aisha and squeezes with all her might. Aisha stands there, arms at her sides, and it’s like the air around us swirls with unsaid stuff.

“This is my friend, Carson,” Aisha says, pulling away, and her mother eyes me. “He’s been putting me up.”

Her mother gulps. “Thank you,” she whispers to me.

“Who is it?” a loud voice booms from above us.

Aisha’s mother jumps a bit. “No one.”

“Mommy!” It’s the youngest I’ve ever heard Aisha sound.

Her mom shakes her head. She puts her finger on Aisha’s lips, and she steps outside and closes the door behind her. “He’s not ready. You know how he is,” she says.

“Well, he needs to get over himself. Or else you’re not gonna be seeing me again.”

“You have to be patient with him. You know your daddy.”

“But —”

Her mother raises a finger, telling us to wait. She scurries inside and returns with a slip of paper, which she hands to Aisha. “I got a second cell. He doesn’t know about this number. You stay in touch with me, hear?”

“Mommy, you gotta —”

“He’s on a rampage,” she says. “Football stuff. This is not the right time.”

And her mother is closing the door on us.

Aisha screams, “Dad!”

Nothing.

“Dad! Get down here, Dad.” Her voice echoes in the canyon beneath the Rim. I hear it reverberate off the rock.

More nothing.

“I know you can hear me. You have to come down. You have to stop this. You don’t come down and that’s it. Hear me? … You’re gonna lose me. Forever. Dad?”

We stand in front of the door for a bit. Then we sit down on the steps, and Aisha puts her head in her hands, and she cries. I hug her and she cries some more, and then I cry too, because Aisha deserves to be celebrated by her dad. She doesn’t deserve to lose her father.

No one deserves that.

When the tears subside, we stand up, and Aisha stares at the door like she’s trying to memorize it, like she’s trying to memorialize the moment. I let her do her thing, and then she clasps my hand and we walk back down the stairs in silence.

When we get down to the bottom, she glances back at the house. We both look up, and there, standing against the floor-to-ceiling window on the second floor, is a huge, bald black man with his large arms crossed against his chest.

Aisha raises her hand to him.

He doesn’t move. I feel my heart crack.

Then he slowly uncrosses his arms, and he raises a hand back to her and places it against the glass window, and Aisha makes a noise I’ve never heard before, like a squeaky bleat, and she bounds up the stairs. Her dad disappears from the window. From a distance, I watch as the door opens, and he grabs her in his arms and lifts and hugs her, and he swings her around.

I can’t hear the words. Standing there, I realize that I may never get to know what the words are. I’m the sidekick, and this is her moment. They talk for a bit, and Aisha’s dad crosses his huge arms again and Aisha motions wildly with hers while she says whatever she says. Then she leans in and listens to him as he says whatever.

She rises onto her tiptoes to kiss his cheek, and he puts his face in his hands and his body begins to convulse. He turns away from her, shaking, and Aisha watches, her hands on her hips.

He turns back and gently kisses her on the cheek, then he hides his face again and walks inside. Aisha is left standing alone, in front of the red door.

Just as I’m deciding to go to her, she comes walking down the stairs. I see her eyes are wet and glassy. I give her a big hug, and then we get in the car and drive off.

“Well, I suppose it’s better to know” is all she says.

Aisha takes a grief nap when we get back, and I tell my mom what happened. She listens with her hands holding her head like a vice, like she’s trying to keep her skull from exploding.

“Where will Aisha stay when we go back to New York?” my mother asks.

I shake my head. I can’t even think about that. If we go back, does that mean Dad is dead? Could he come with us? Too many variables, too many things I don’t want to imagine.

“Is she done with high school?”

“Just graduated. Was going to Rocky Mountain College here, but her dad withdrew her.”

“Maybe I can chat with her about her options,” she says, and I stand up and kiss my mom on the cheek.

“Thank you,” I say.

Dad and Turk return after going to two AA meetings back-to-back, and Dad looks glassy-eyed and wasted. I notice his legs as he sits on the couch. They are so skinny. It makes me think of my grandfather, and how thin and frail he probably was at the end of his life.

“I don’t think this is going to work for me,” he says.

“You don’t need to think,” Turk tells him. He’s sitting on the other couch. I’m in the doorway, just listening. “Not right now. Just go in with an open mind and listen.”

“It won’t work. Not if we get to the point where I have to pray.”

“God wants you to be quiet.”

Dad squeezes his eyes shut. “Did you just tell me to shut up? Did you just tell me God wants me to shut up?”

“No,” Turk says. “Be quiet. There’s a difference.”

That night we have dinner as a family. Mom grills chicken breasts and Turk helps out in the kitchen, boiling corn on the cob and slicing tomatoes for everyone.

Mom sits next to Dad at the table and cuts up his food for him. The look in his eyes as he watches her care for him tells me he still loves her completely. And when I see how tender she is as she tucks a napkin into the lapel of his shirt, I see that she loves him too.

“Delicious,” my dad says.

“Thanks,” says my mother. “I’m glad you like it.”

“So when we head back to New York, where are Aisha and Dad going to stay?” I say, half kidding and half not kidding at all. I expect my mom to stare daggers at me for saying this, because obviously we don’t have the room. Unless Aisha sleeps with me and Dad sleeps with her…. Well, come to think of it.

“We’ll see,” Mom says.

“For the record,” I note, “that’s not a no.”

“Let’s be here now,” she says, and I don’t snort but I want to.

I savor the tart of the tomato against the roof of my mouth. “Can we get a dog when we go back to New York?”

“I would say that’s down the list of priorities quite a ways,” she says.

“Ours is a family that could use a dog. That would help.”

As Dad talks a bit about the drunks at the meeting and the things they said, and Turk keeps shaking his head and saying, “Anonymity, Matthew, anonymity,” I think about how amazing it is that we’re having dinner together as a family. Before Aisha arrived, Dad ate in his room, and Mom and I were like two ships passing in the night. Even after, we were this weird, fractured household. How did this happen?

I love it. I love sharing food with all these crazy-ass, totally imperfect people like me.

My mom stabs another piece of corn and puts it on my dad’s plate. “How are you doing?” she asks Aisha.

Aisha says, “Scrambled.”

I reach over and squeeze her arm. “Scrambled how?” I ask.

“I’m sad, but also I’m done,” she says. “Like truly done with them. And I’m done letting them own God. Nobody gets to use God as a weapon against me anymore. I just fucking reject that stuff. Nobody owns my God.”

I know my mom wants to say, “Language,” but she doesn’t. Turk smiles. “Good. Good for you.”

“You should trademark God,” my dad says.

Mom exhales. “I love you, Matthew. I do. But shut up, please. Really.”

My dad smiles and zips his lips closed.

Apple, meet tree, I guess. Because the sad truth is that the trademark comment came into my head too. So I zip my lips shut too, and my dad laughs.

Aisha says, “I think that’s the worst thing you can do to a person. Make them believe that whatever you think about them, that’s what God thinks too.”

That makes me remember Pastor Logan, because the one thing that has not happened today is the thing I most want to see. I want to know what in the world he was thinking, keeping what he knew a secret from my dad for so long, all while continuing to pretend to be this close, caring friend of the family.

“The pastor,” I say to Turk. “Let’s ambush him. I’ll go with you. Go over there and just watch his eyes pop out of his skull when he sees you. I want him to burn.”

Turk shakes his head. “I get it, but no. I don’t think so.”

I’m shocked. Outspoken religious rebel Turk? He’s not going to confront the pastor? I look over at Aisha for support, and she seems game.

Turk takes a drink of water. “Explain this to me. How did you find me? How did all this get started?”

I describe going over to ask the pastor a few questions, and Aisha seeing one of Grandma’s boxes. I tell him what it took to get the box, and how Pastor Logan came so close to catching me in his attic that he nearly sat on my head. My mom looks like she’s going to have a heart attack. My dad laughs.

“So do you want the twelve-step reaction to all this?” Turk asks.

This shuts my dad’s laughing up, and I shake my head. “No thank you, please,” I say, and I cut off a piece of chicken breast and stuff it in my mouth with my fingers.

When no one else says anything, I relent. “Fine, go ahead,” I say.

“We talk about cleaning up our own side of the street. We ask the question, ‘What’s my part in this?’ I cannot change someone else. It isn’t my job, actually, to tell the pastor what he did wrong. I’m happiest if I do the best I can do, and leave the rest to God.”

I stick my finger down my throat dramatically and look at Aisha.

She isn’t laughing. “That’s like me and my dad,” she says. “I can’t make him do the right thing. I just have to take care of me.”

“You got it, dear,” Turk says, putting his arm around her. “That’s it exactly.”

Aisha gives me a gloating look and sticks her tongue out at me.

“Teacher’s pet,” I say. “So I’m supposed to just let God punish him, as if God sits around punishing people for their ways?”

Turk shakes his head. “What business is it of yours whether he’s punished?”

“Well, he should be.”

“So you’re God now?”

I shrug. “I’d be a good one.”

“No doubt,” Turk says. “But maybe for now, you can figure that the pastor is punishing himself. You don’t think he feels a little bit guilty about his role in all this?”

I think about it. The pastor has been taking care of my dad for years. Of course there must be some guilt in there. I’d never thought about that before.

So after dinner, I go over to the pastor’s by myself.

He answers the door in his red-and-white striped pajamas. “Carson,” he says.

“I’m just here to say sorry for stealing that box.”

He sucks in his lips. “I had a feeling you might be responsible for that.”

“It was wrong of me to steal it, and I’m sorry. But the stuff in it belongs to my family, so we’re going to keep it.”

He lowers his gaze to the ground. “Do you know?”

I nod. “My granddad’s lover is next door.” I want the word lover to scald him.

“I’ve prayed about this,” he says. “I’ve prayed and prayed.”

I have so many things I want to yell. The rage is heating my chest from the inside. But Turk said not to. So I don’t.

“I promised your grandmother. It was her dying wish. She did not want your father to have to deal with who his father was.”

It’s like an apology without the apology. Instead of just saying sorry, which I would actually like to hear, all I’m getting is a rationalization.

So I put my trembling hand up. “Nope. Not interested. None of my business.”

I walk away with the pastor still standing there at the open door.