I should have kept the heat I felt close to me, away from him. But I didn't. “Bullshit. You can't screw around with my head this way, Bob Don. You want me to come here, put my neck on the chopping block with your family, and now that you're concerned I'm going to find out some dirty secret of yours, you want to pack me off. Either I'm your son, or I'm not. Finding out something unpleasant about you isn't going to change the way I feel-”
“You feel? How do you feel about me?” He thrust the words in like a sword.
I fumbled for the swing's chain, steadying myself against it. “I care about you. I respect you. I want you to be happy. I just-”
His words cut through my litany of meaningless syrup. “You don't love me, Jordy. You don't love me like a son should love a father. And you never will.”
“You haven't given me time,” I started meekly, but I stopped as he stared into my face. Pain, direct from the heart, made his features tremble.
“Time? How much time do you need? You've had over a year, with us seeing each other nearly every day. I've saved your life once, nearly at the cost of my own.” I felt the heat of Sass's accusation against me in his voice. “I've provided a nurse for your mother so you and your sister don't have to slave away day and night. I've been there for you in thick and thin. And I'm sick, sick of being kept an arm's length from you like I was a goddamned leper.” His voice broke with emotion, and he clumsily wiped an arm across his eyes. When he looked at me again, he was flush with hurt and he jabbed a finger toward my face.
“Either I am your father, or I'm not. For all those long years I wanted to be your daddy. I couldn't. And maybe those empty years mean I never can be. If that's true, I'd just as soon cut my losses and go on. Pretend once again I don't have a son.”
“All those years you wanted to be a father?” My voice sounded like a stranger's, riddled with its own hurts. “Why didn't you ever step forward, then? Why'd you let me live for years thinking I was a Poteet?”
He shook his head, his expression hard. “Oh, no, you don't. You ain't gonna lay this on me, Jordan. I did as your mama asked-”
“Bullshit!” I hollered. Pain I didn't recognize had me in its grip. I felt like I'd been endlessly prodded by a bully who finally faltered and I was flailing back. “You could have done what you wanted, never mind my mother! You could have claimed me as yours! You let my whole life be a lie-”
“I let your life be normal!” he roared. “With a mama, and a daddy who loved you, and a sister! I let you have it all while I had nothing but a drunken wife and all the pain God could give a man.” He glared at me with eyes too much like my own. “You think you know what hurt is? Poor, poor Jordan. So you found out you got the wrong daddy, and you've had a tough year. Hell, I've had thirty tough years, watching you and never being able to reach out to you-”
“Your choice!” I snapped back. “That was your choice.”
He lowered his arm, tired of pointing. “Yes, fine. If you want to play it that way-my choice.”
“You chose not to be my father. And now you want me to choose to be your son-” Anger wobbled my voice. I saw Aubrey watching us from the safety of the gardens. When he saw me see him, he turned and fled.
“I am choosing to be your father, if you'll let me.” Bob Don lowered his voice. “But now you have to go, Jordan. You get out of here. Or you and I never speak again.” His hands closed into fists and he could barely speak. His lips tightened into a vicious frown.
I managed to form words with my bone-dry mouth. “I don't respond very well to emotional blackmail, Bob Don. I don't like ultimatums.”
For a moment the only sound was the rush of the waves on the beach below us. “I don't like doing my damnedest to be a father to you and being made to feel like a redheaded stepchild. You've made it quite clear you think you don't need a dad. I won't trouble you anymore. Get your bags packed and go, then. Take my car. Gretchen and I'll make arrangements to get back to Mirabeau.” Fear played along his face. He glanced away from me, toward the front door.
I shook my head and took his arm. I kept my voice soft. “Stop this. Just stop it. You don't want to push me away. I know you don't.”
“What I don't want is to hurt anymore about you, son. I wish you'd never found out I was your father. Then you could have stayed the ideal son in my mind. I never would have sullied my picture of you with a real person.”
We'd sparred with the truth that lay between us for the past year. I had tried to reconcile the lie my life had been. He had tried to father me past the thirty years we hadn't shared. His abandoning the quest to integrate us into a family seemed completely out of character. I stood my ground.
“I don't believe you. Tell me what it is you don't want me finding out.” My mind nimbled over the possibilities. “Is it about whatever might have happened between you and Paul and Gretchen all those years ago? Or why Sass is such a terror? Or why Tom seems to hate the rest of this family? Or whatever happened to Deborah's parents? Or what Wendy might be up to? Or is it some dirty secret of Uncle Mutt's?”
His eyes were blue steel on mine and I realized, sickeningly, that I'd completely miscalculated. Bob Don meant business, and in the worst way. “This isn't Mirabeau. You are here by invitation, boy, and that invitation has just been revoked. As soon as Mutt gets back, you go. You leave here. If you don't, I knock you out and dump you on the boat back to the mainland myself. Whether or not you and I are still father and son-and the whole concept kinda seems a joke right now, since you won't show me a dog's consideration- will depend on what happens when I get back to Mirabeau.”
Anger coursed into my face; I could feel the blush deepen my skin. Hurt forked my tongue into a weapon. “I haven't exactly behaved like the model son? I'm sorry to disappoint you. But that's inevitable when you stick me up on a pedestal so high I can't even see you or the ground. You haven't treated me like a son; you've treated me like a pathetic charity case, like I'm some mistake you've got to make up for.” Sass's cruel words rang in my ear. You're a mistake. “A mistake. Is that how you view me?”
“Your mama was sharp-tongued, too, when she got riled,” he muttered.
“And what's that shit?” I barked. “I'm sick of these little insights into my mother's character you seem compelled to offer me. Do you think I don't know her? I spent a hell of a lot more time with her than you ever did!”
“That wasn't my choice. I loved her,” he said through gritted teeth.
I shook my head. “It still amazes me she cheated on my father with you. I can't quite picture it. Maybe it wasn't the grand passion you've painted. Maybe it was two or three quickies in the toolshed. God knows there aren't any other witnesses to back you up. Maybe I am a mistake, then. Maybe my mother wasn't anything to you but a convenient piece of ass and all I am is you not having a rubber in your pocket when you got a bad itch to fu-”
He stepped forward then, quickly, and slapped me across the face. The force of the blow was not hard, but I rocked back on my heels, my hands groping for the swing's chain. Shock and surprise lit his own eyes, and as I rubbed my stinging cheek I saw the hand he'd struck me with quaver.
“Jordan-” he croaked.
“You hit me,” I said, my voice shockingly mild.
“No.” He shook his head. “I won't have you talk about your mama and me that way.”
“I don't want to hear the same old litany, Bob Don. You made your feelings clear just now.” A sharp stabbing pain lanced my heart. Oh, what had I done?
He stepped forward, remorse etched in his face. I wanted to hit him. I wanted to hold him. I wanted to turn away and pretend that this terrible exchange had never taken place. Instead I looked past his shoulder to see two boats roaring across Matagorda Bay toward Sangre Island.
15