Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 124971 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 625(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124971 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 625(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
He swallowed again. His eyes were misty. I hoped he had a disease where you would drop dead if you cried. He deserved it.
“Where did you spend summer vacations?” he croaked.
“I’d usually convince one of my friend’s parents to sign me out to spend the summer with them and pick me up from school. But I didn’t want to impose, so they usually dropped me off halfway to their house, and I’d just hitchhike. At least I had money for nice hotels. You know I’m loaded, right?”
He bit down on his lip, reclining his head. A silent yes.
I tilted my head sideways. “Please don’t tell me this entire confession happened so I could pay for your lengthy hospital stay. I’d rather burn the money. Literally. On fire.”
He snarled, turning in his wheelchair sideways so as not to face me. “I’d never do that.”
“No, of course not,” I said easily, feeling like worms were eating at me from the inside. “You hold yourself to such high moral standards. I almost forgot.”
“What I did was inexcusable. I’m not looking for forgiveness.” He sounded stern and serious. Almost—and that was really ironic—like a father figure.
“What are you looking for then?” I crossed my arms, leaning against the wall. “Why did you even tell me? No, wait.” I held up a finger. “Before you answer that—when did you find out? And how?”
Charlie blinked at me, like the answer was clear. “The first time we met. It was damn obvious you were mine. You looked like me, talked like me, smelled like me.” He paused, lifting his hand with great effort to pull the collar of his hospital gown down at his neck. “We both have a birthmark the shape of South America on our neck. Kind of like a pointy tooth.”
My hand went instinctively to my neck.
“Now answer my other question,” I prompted. “Why now?”
Charlie closed his eyes. “Because I have a rare genetic disease that is killing me. And you might have it too.”
My hatred and shock were put on pause. He told me about Huntington’s disease while I sat on the bench next to him and read about it on my phone. When I saw that headaches were a part of the symptoms, I speared him with an icy glare.
“You told me you had a daughter. That she died when she was eight months old. Was that true?” I asked, remembering the time we went working together in Harlem.
Charlie tried to shake his head, moaning in pain halfway through. “No. But I couldn’t tell you the truth. Leaving you behind felt like mourning a child. So that’s how I articulated it.”
“Liar on top of a shit dad. Your talents know no bounds.” I paused. “Duffy knows you’re my father, doesn’t she?”
“She found out, yeah.”
“When?”
“On Friday.”
So, she kept it from me an entire weekend. No wonder she acted weird.
Charlie added, “She told me to tell you, or she would. She was never going to keep you in the dark about it.”
Not that it mattered. Being mad at her was redirecting my rage where it didn’t belong. If anything, I now knew why she’d spent the weekend nagging me about getting checked.
“So, I might have Huntington’s disease,” I said to sum it up. “And could die.”
“No,” Charlie said dryly. “You will die. That is a guarantee for all of us. But if you have the disease, it’ll happen sooner rather than later, so you better get your ass in gear and get checked.”
The more I looked at his face, the more I debated beating it to a pulp. “You don’t seem very sorry for passing it on.”
He laughed and coughed at the same time. “I’m only sorry for things I can control. I didn’t even know I was a carrier until I was in my fifties. I had no way to protect you. And I don’t think your headaches have anything to do with the disease. Now, neglecting you, I take full responsibility for that. But I want you to know that there hasn’t been a day—an hour—that I didn’t think about you. That I didn’t wonder who you were now, what you were up to, what you were doing. Every day, when I fell onto the mattress at night, I praised myself for not yielding to temptation and seeking you out.” He sucked in a breath. “And when I finally met you, man, you exceeded all expectations. You were all I ever wished for, and much more. My biggest punishment is knowing who you are and not having the privilege to spend time with you.”
I digested all of this, feeling . . . hell, how was I feeling? Sad, angry, disappointed, startled, annoyed, frustrated. All of the above, multiplied by a fucking hundred. More than anything, I was confused. Because even though he had ruined my life, arguably killed my mother, then neglected me (and on top of that maybe passed on a dangerous disease to me), I still couldn’t hate him all the way.