Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
“You must have really pissed your father off last week,” his mother interrupted like what he said didn’t even matter. “It got to the point he called me to see if you’d been in contact. He doesn’t want a memorial.”
“It’s not about him, mother,” Lucas snapped back. “It’s too bad for Ronald if turning my phone off and taking bereavement days burns his world down. I’m done being the idiot trying to put the flames out. Stop acting like you don’t know about the memorial this week. At least have the respect to tell me to my face that you don’t want to be there because there isn’t a preapproved guest list, Mom.”
“We’ll still be flying out tomorrow,” Hanson put in quietly. “Either way.”
But firmly.
As if it wasn’t up for discussion.
Lucas nodded, frustrated again but willing to hide it for the moment if they could get on with this brunch so it could be over quicker. “Fine—it’ll be mostly friends and people who knew Jacob outside of his family, anyway. I’m not sure you or Penelope would fit in very well. Let’s see it as a bright spot, huh?”
Penelope took a big gulp of the orange poison in her glass, and set it back down harder than necessary. She peeked over at her husband, but the scowl affixed to her slightly-overfilled lips told Lucas something nasty was on the way.
She didn’t fail.
“So, we’ll be missing the drug addicts he made friends with and whoever else he met playing around with mutts,” she said.
Nope.
Lucas couldn’t do it.
He tried, though.
No one could say he didn’t try.
Standing from the table, annoyed that he’d checked his coat in at the front and couldn’t just put it on and leave immediately, Lucas raked his shaking fingers through the short crop of his hair before turning to stare down the couple across the table.
Neither of them moved.
Hanson didn’t get up this time.
Good.
“Did anyone ever tell you that when you fade your hair high,” his mother started, “you look even more like your father?”
Yep.
That’s why he’d always hated it. Except he wasn’t anything like Ronald Dalton at all. The backhanded comment barely even stung.
“Who’s the judgmental one now, Mom?” Lucas asked. “I guess because you can afford to stay drunk all day is the way you tell yourself that you were better than Jacob? Now I get why you couldn’t stick to AA. Accountability isn’t your strong suit.”
Penelope gasped, her hand fluttering up to cover her chest as if his words had actually hurt. He hoped they did.
It felt wrong calling her a mom.
A mother and mom were not the same things. Any woman could birth a child grown in her womb, but what happened when that same baby found its way into her arms that couldn’t care or love at all?
Well, they were looking at it.
Lucas.
Jacob.
They were the result.
His brother might have needed to find outlets for his pain and issues in the same thing that had ultimately killed him, but Lucas … well, he wouldn’t continue to let these people poison him in the same way they’d done to his brother.
They didn’t get to say what he deserved or when—he made those choices.
He wasn’t the one in the wrong here.
Penelope only glared at Lucas, openly hateful in the way her familiar brown eyes, heavy lidded from whatever liquor she’d consumed before the screwdriver, tried to pin him to the spot where he stood. It wouldn’t work.
He was so numb to her now.
To all of it, really.
A sad fact he didn’t like facing because that meant admitting he, too, played a part in their family’s unraveling. It always devolved into this type of thing—every dinner or family gathering was an eye roll away from an explosive argument fueled with name calling and vitriol. Only in the face of the public or their family’s business did the Daltons manage to put on a good show. Having time away from his parents while Penelope enjoyed her new marriage, and Ronald ran off to the west had lulled Lucas into a false sense of comfort. The days that melted into weeks and months between contacts or phone calls didn’t help any damn thing.
They were all still toxic in the same room together.
“Don’t call me again,” Lucas told Hanson, not even looking at his mother as he delivered the final blow to a relationship that had been crumbling for years.
Good.
This was what they all deserved.
It was human nature to try to save a part of yourself. He recognized that in the helpless way he’d attempted to please or be available to his parents over the years as their estrangement became worse and their bonds were irreparably damaged. As if he truly believed he was the thing that could fix all of them, but really, he was the punching bag in the middle taking the most abuse.