Page 48 of The Bronze Garza

“Put on your seatbelt,” he orders me in his usual clipped and growly tone before I can even get the door closed.

I roll my eyes. “Yes, daddy.”

“You as much of a pain in his ass as you are in mine?” he asks as he shifts into gear and drives off.

“I resent that,” I say. “I’m freakingdelightful. Like an ice-cream sundae drizzled with strawberry syrup.”

He snorts at that.

But after a long while, I tell him, “I’m sorry for this morning. I didn’t know about your parents.”

“Nothing to be sorry about.”

I gnaw on my bottom lip, wavering on my next question. Curiosity is second nature for me. I can’t help it. “Do you talk about them, or are they off-limits?”

“What do you wanna know about two dead people?” His tone is flat and indifferent, making it difficult to read his mood.

“Well, how did they die and how old were you?”

Minutes stretch by, and I accept the prolonged silence as confirmation that talking about them is off-limits.

But then he answers, “Mom died from cancer when I was thirteen. Loved my stepdad more than anything. Had a stronger relationship with him than with my biological dad, and since I was all he had left in the way of family after mom’s death, I chose to stay with him. He kept me, taught me, raised me. Then he died in a motorcycle accident a month before my eighteenth birthday.

“He left me everything; a decent inheritance to start life as a man. But after losing two parents, figured it was time to start working on repairing my relationship with my bio dad and get to know my siblings. So I moved here from Colorado. It took a while but I dropped my resentment and started to like and accept him as a father. He died of a heart attack a year later.”

Jesus.So much loss in such a short amount of time. That’s enough to make anyone disillusioned about life and its purpose. “I’m sorry. That’s...I won’t even pretend to know what it’s like to lose that many people.”

He doesn’t respond.

“Your stepmom is okay, though, right?”

“Monica,” he muses. “The glue that holds the Garzas together.”

“How old are you?”

A dry chuckle. “You can’t help yourself, can you?”

“What’s so wrong with trying to get to know you?” I say. “We’re stuck with each other for the next couple of weeks. And it’s not fair that you know everything about me and I know nothing about you.”

“Who says I know everything about you?”

“Don’t you?”

“I know what’s on paper. Who you were before...” he trails off. “But you’re not that girl anymore, are you?”

“How could I be?” I look down at my fingers in my lap and pick at my nail polish. “That girl was young and naive and oblivious to the harsh, painful, heartbreaking realities of the world. I miss her. Oblivion is sweet. But at some point we have to wake up. Unfortunately, the awakening is cruelly ruder for some than it is for others.”

“Who are you now?” he asks.

With a weighted sigh, I drop my head back against the headrest. “Ask me again sometime.” Then, quieter, I add, “I’m on the road to figuring that out.”

Silence plumes between us, seeping into the crevices of the confined space like smoke.

“Thirty-three.”

I glance over at him. “Huh?”

“My age,” he clarifies. “I’m thirty-three.”