Mason stopped me before I climbed over her, prepared to knock the smug look off her face.
He stood up and almost fell backward before I caught him. “What the hell is wrong with you?” I said in his ear.
“I saw the bar and I was thirsty,” he slurred. “By the way, we’re all out of Roger’s money.”
I held back the urge to beat him. “Let’s go right now,” I ordered, pulling him by the arm.
With no warning, his legs buckled and he fell beneath the crowd.
My cheeks burned with embarrassment as everyone’s attention fell on Mason and me. I tried to remain cool while trying to figure out how to get Mason out of the bar.
Asher and Leon walked over in time to observe my dilemma. Leon grabbed Mason easily. A cigarette hung loosely from the side of his mouth. Asher helped him by taking the other side.
They yelled at everyone in their way to clear a path; something I would have never been able to do on my own.
“Don’t I know you?” Leon asked Mason. He lifted his head to get a closer look at him.
Mason swayed and fell into the side of the bar.
“I don’t think so,” Mason told him, sliding down the wall. “I’m Mason Vaughn, son of Payton. You probably slept with her somewhere along the line. Who knows? She slept with everything back then.”
Leon didn’t argue. And I was quite confident it was possible Mason’s mother and my father might have slept together.
“Where you guys headed?” he asked us, puffing on his cigarette.
I shot him a glance, but turned away quickly as he unzipped his pants and took a leak right on the side of the bar. I turned away, disgusted.
“Get up, Mason,” I demanded.
Asher helped me lift him, slinging one of Mason’s arms over his shoulder.
“You two staying at Motel 7?” he asked as Leon worked his zipper up and followed behind us as we walked.
“Yeah, something like that,” I said with a sigh. After tonight, we would be without a place to stay at all because of Mason’s drunken binge.
“It was nice meeting you. I’ve heard about you, but never knew what you looked like. You have his eyes. There’s no denying you’re his,” he said, laughing nervously. It was as awkward for him as it was for me.
“He only drinks on Thursdays. He works so much he really never has a moment’s rest. And then there’s the little ones on the weekends. That takes a toll on him, too.”
“Little ones?” I asked, unable to hold back my curiosity any longer. “And how old are you?”
“Pops has five kids. Well, including you that makes six. I’m nineteen. The only thing I ever knew about you was we were born six months apart,” he explained. He tugged Mason straighter as we continued down the sidewalk to the motel. Mason was in and out of consciousness.
“I never knew that,” I admitted.
“There’s me, Conner, Seth, Abby Gale and Quincy. Twelve-year-old twins, seven-year-old girl, and a five-year-old boy. And he means well, I know it wasn’t that way with you, but he means well,” Asher insisted.
We stopped in front of Motel 7 and Asher opened the door. I wish it would just be over already. It was all too much meeting my father and a brother I didn’t know I had.
I handed the key to Asher. My father leaned against the motel. “Can we talk?”
“What could you possibly have to say to me?” I asked, stepping back.
He straightened up and pulled out another cigarette. He offered me one, but I declined.
“I’m your old man. I have plenty to say to you,” he said, lighting up.
“Probably nothing I want to hear,” I said.
“How have you been? How’s life?”
I held back the tears. I never expected a question to hurt so much, but this was like a knife to my heart.
“Really?” I balled my fists. “That’s what I get after nearly twenty years?”
“I was a dumb kid messed up on drugs. I barely knew your momma. She was always coming down to my house to eat supper. I thought she was pretty. I was a boy with a hard-on, what can I say?”
There was so much to be said, like why?
“Nothing.” I turned to leave.
“You have family here, Kendall—a family you could be a part of. And I’m sorry for whatever it was you went through. But I honestly wouldn’t have made it better back then,” he said, and then fell silent.
I turned back around, looking at him. “Do you know she always said I had the eyes of a demon, just like my father?” I waited for him to say something.
But he didn’t.
“Do you know that I barely knew her? I knew nothing about either of my parents. Because my fucked-up Aunt Wanda was the one raising me pretty much my whole life, if you even want to call it that.”
Leon shook his head in disbelief like something had suddenly been revealed to him.
I stepped forward. “So I’ll answer your question on whether or not you could have made my life better. I doubt you want to know after everything I’ve been through. Apparently, you’re not that same man now—your son defends you. Who defended me?”
He nodded his head. “No, I want to hear it. I want to hear anything you have to say.”
I sucked in a breath. “Anything would have been better than Wanda.” I shoved him into the brick wall behind him with everything I had in me. He stumbled and nearly fell.
After he collected himself, he said, “My Gran once told me you can’t make up for what’s lost. You can only make up for what’s right in front of you. I’m not the best guy in the world, but I am your dad and I could try now that you’re right in front of me,” he said.
I closed my eyes, shaking my head in disbelief. “I don’t want anything from you.” I opened my eyes, tears falling. “I look in the mirror every day and see you staring back at me. That’s enough for me.”
I headed inside our room, leaving him alone on the sidewalk, just like he’d left me.
JULY 25
TH
ANOTHER DAY WAS COMING to an end. We had survived a few days in Gusby. We stayed far away from our small town resorting to hiding out in an old barn at the end of town. It wasn’t the best accommodations, but it was the only choice we had with no money.
Mason tended to his hangover in the only way he knew how—by drinking more. We couldn’t afford a room, but we had enough for some cheap booze. As I sat in the corner of the barn on a bale of hay, I couldn’t stop myself from glaring at him.
“What?” he asked, sipping the last of his booze. He was more alert than he had been the night before—the night I saw my father.
“So this is it?” I asked. I was tired and starting to feel like I was coming down with something.
“Is what it, Kendall?” he asked me with that annoyed tone to his voice that seemed to be the norm for him lately. He sat down, settling into the ground, his hands behind his head for support.
“We’re just going to sit here and wait for the other shoe to drop?” I asked. It seemed like our lives had been put on pause and we were waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.
I had nobody else but Mason and I was beginning to wonder if he even cared anymore. It didn’t feel like it.
“I’m thinking. I’ve been thinking for days. I don’t know what to do. I’m not going to lie and say that I do when I don’t,” he said. His expression was blank.
If Mason was giving up, there really was no hope. I couldn’t understand what happened to the cocky Mason from Virginia. He would have refused to go down without a fight. But then he just left. Without him, we were doomed.
I started chewing on my nails. “Why do you think nobody here knows about us?” I hadn’t seen a single thing—no newspaper articles, no reports on the news—nothing.