Page 22 of Chains and Vows

One of his eyebrows shoots up. "Both?"

"Long story." Which I have no intention of tellin'. I really fuckin' don't. Got no reason to open that door for a stranger. Got no reason to stand here on this dirt road spillin' blood I been keepin' locked down for years.

But suddenly, words are comin' out of my mouth. Like they been sittin' behind my teeth so long they rotted through the enamel and now they're just fallin' out on their own.

"My mother never recovered from his absence." I hear myself say it and it sounds clinical. Detached. Like I'm readin' off a chart in some counselor's office I never went to. "I say absence because I'm not even sure she knew he was dead. Don't know if anybody told her. Don't know if she woulda cared by then, honestly. She was already gone in all the ways that matter before her body caught up."

I shift my weight and look at the sun. Then back to Laz.

"She didn't pay much attention to me." And that's generous. That's the kindest fuckin' version of the truth I got. "No attention at all, actually. I was furniture in that trailer. I was a mouth to feed that reminded her of a man who left. And after a while, I stopped existin' to her entirely. Just a shape movin' through the kitchen. Just a door closin' at night."

Shut up, Legion. Just shut the fuck up.

But I don't.

"But someone else did." My voice drops. Not soft—just lower and heavier. Like the words weigh more because they're true. "Someone else saw me when I was invisible. Saw me when I was feral, and mean, and covered in dirt, and goin' nowhere good. And that's…" I swallow. Look at the ground between us. At the dust that don't care about either of our stories. "That's my real mother. The one who actually saw me. The one who pointed a camera at me like I was worth recordin'. Like I was somethin' worth rememberin'."

"Huh," Laz says.

And I swear to God, this one fuckin' syllable—this grunt, this acknowledgment that don’t ask for more and don't offer less—connects me to this man deeper than blood ever could.

Deeper than the shared jaw.

Deeper than the matching blue eyes or the father neither of us got to bury.

It's the sound of a man who knows when to shut up and let the silence do the heavy liftin'.

And this is when it hits me.

I have a brother.

"Well… that's good then," Laz says. "Every kid deserves to be seen. You got any?"

"Kids?" I practically laugh. "No. Do you?"

He nods. Slowly. "Yeah. A girl. She's eight."

"No shit. I got a sister who’s nine."

"No shit?"

"No fuckin' shit. And another one who's eighteen. Who just had a baby with a thirty-one year old."

Laz's eyes narrow into meanness. "What?"

"Yeah," I huff. "Tell me about it."

"How come he ain't dead?"

"Well… the funny thing is… he's the son of the woman I call 'mother'."

"Shut up."

I laugh. "Oh, brother. This is just the start of my drama. Because her daughter? She's the love of my life. And there's this will, with this clause about marryin' respectable, and a whole fuckin' ranchin' dynasty attached to it. And look at me. Do I look respectable?"

Laz laughs.

"And my baby sister, the one who's nine? Is in boardin' school now because the other brother, the oldest, respectable one, decided she needed a fairy tale endin' and… well. That's actually why I'm here."