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“Jefe? Can I come in?”
I lift my eyes from the paperwork on my desk finding him hesitating outside my office door. I motion with my hand watching him walk in like he’s about to deliver a death blow.
“What’s up?”
He shifts his weight, rolls back on his heels and shakes his head. He starts to talk but closes his mouth as soon as it opened.
“Just spit it out already.”
He looks up, eyes full of remorse. “It was Devon.”
“That makes no goddamn sense.”
“I saw the paperwork and the credit card receipt. It was her signature.”
I let out a deep breath, my chest closes like a fist. I can’t breathe.
“I’m sorry. She paid for Dee’s new headstone. I slipped the cemetery worker a few bills and he sang. Said she jogged through the cemetery every morning this summer stopping at Dee’s grave first then John Masters’.”
“What the fuck?” I lean back in my chair, arms behind my head while every cell in my body rebels that it isn’t true but my gut knows it is.
A thousand fragmented pieces of the puzzle click together. Her transplanting to Springdale for one. How she looked that night when we danced under the moonlight spilling through the trees—like someone I swore I had met before. I chalked it up to pure romance, like the old fool I am.
Does she even have feelings for me or was that all a lie too?
My eyes close, fingers lightly rest on the old wood, centering me as I let the dreams die. All the ones I had of me and her.
My heart turns to stone.
My life’s been full of disappointments. I can take one more. It’ll just be one more scar on this old heart of mine that no one will see.
I knew she was trouble the minute she stepped into the bar and walked into my life. I just wish she didn’t carve up my heart and put it on a platter.
“So, what do you want to do?”
“Nothing. I don’t want to do anything. This dies with us. You hear me?”
“Yeah. Loud and clear,” he answers, leaving.
My eyes fall to my wrist. She’s supposed to be here in an hour for her shift. I haven’t seen her all week since she’s been busy setting up her classroom. We mutually agreed she’d only work weekend shifts. Since summer’s over, the weekends are the only time we’re busy anyway.
My hand shakes as I sit back in my chair picking up the heavy desk phone. My fingers punch in the number.
“Rog? What’s going on man?”
I pinch the bridge of my nose, closing my eyes. “There’s no easy way to say this Duke. So I’m just gonna say it.”
“O-okay. Just give me a sec. You caught me rebuilding an engine.”
The sound of clattering tools and voices fill the line followed by running water as he washes his hands.
“What’s up? I’m back.”
“There’s a strong possibility you have a half-sister.”
“Come again?” His voice quiet and deadly.
“You remember the girl I introduced you to at the lake?”