Page 411 of Devil’s Disciples

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about. I try to treat everyone respectfully. It’s how I was raised. If someone gives you reason not to respect them, it still doesn’t mean you’re disrespectful toward them. You just walk away. They’re not worthy of your time.”

He grinned a guilty grin. “Thank you.”

“What was that weird smile about?”

“You and I are more alike than I thought we were,” he said. “My parents did something shitty and disrespectful. After that, I couldn’t find a way to respect them. I walked away, and never looked back.”

He’d mentioned the day we met that he left home at eighteen and hadn’t talked to his parents since.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked.

“Not really,” he said. “It’s not that big of a deal, though.”

“Obviously it is.”

“No. I mean I’m not still torn up about it. It happened. It’s over. I’ve moved on. I’ve forgiven them. But I’ll never forget what they did.”

“Do you want to tell me what it was?”

He fluffed his pillow and plopped his head down on it. He gazed at the ceiling. After a moment of silence, he began.

“Ghost’s grandfather died when he was two or three. He didn’t have a dad, so his grandmother and mom were his parents. They all lived together. His mom was always playing the good cop role, and his grandmother was more of the bad cop. She was strict on him, but he respected her for it. You know when you’re a kid and you hate authority?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

He looked at me. “It wasn’t that way with them. They were both cool. Much better than my parents, that’s for sure. His grandmother baked cookies all the time, and that’d get us over there after school. Half the time we’d all eat dinner there. Five of us. Right before our freshmen year, his grandmother died. Breast cancer. It crushed all of us. She wasn’t just his grandmother, she was our grandmother.”

“That’s sad that she died,” I said. “But it’s sweet you all looked at her that way.”

He nodded and then shifted his gaze to the ceiling. “Well, we made it to our senior year, and his mom was diagnosed with lung cancer. They said it wasn’t that bad, but halfway through our senior year, she died.”

“Oh my gosh,” I gasped. “He didn’t tell me that.”

“He didn’t like talking about it,” he said. “None of us did. We all came from pretty fucked up homes, and not all of us had parents. Good parents, anyway. She was the closest thing to a mother some of us had.”

“That’s so sad. For all of you.”

“So, the funeral.” He let out a sigh. “Cash’s mom went. Tito’s mom went. Baker’s aunt went. Out of respect, of course. My parents said they were coming. The night before the funeral, I’d stayed all night with Ghost. It wasn’t an easy time for him, you know. So, the next day, we went to the funeral. My parents didn’t show. Afterward, I had Ghost drive me by the tavern. They were in there, drunker than a couple of fuckin’ monkeys. They got sloshed instead of paying their respects to a woman we all loved and respected. That was the last straw for me. It was disrespectful, and embarrassing. I decided that was the last time they were going to make me feel like shit, and it was.”

I knew a little about the poor decisions that drunks made. It was time I tell Goose a little more about my father.

“I never reached that point with my father,” I said. “Where I gave up, that is.”

“What do you mean?”

It was my turn to stare at the ceiling for a while.

Admitting the truth wasn’t an easy thing to do. Luckily, there was only one person I trusted with my heart, so there was only one person for me to tell. Considering the story of what his parents had done, it was easy to convince myself that he’d understand.

“My father died from cirrhosis of the liver,” I admitted. “He drank himself to death.”

It was difficult to believe that the man I’d earlier claimed was my hero was a drunk. A drunk that was so deep in his addiction that he drank himself through four stages of cirrhosis, and to death.

“Oh, shit. I just assumed…I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Me, too. Before he got sick, his hands shook really bad if he went any period of time without a drink. That’s why he taught me to crack safes. He could not hold still enough to do it himself. He lost his touch. I started doing it at his place of business when I was a teenager. Then, one night when he was drunk, he told me why he really did it.”

“Damn. At least you guys were close until the end, though.” He rolled onto his side. “You were, right?”