You could have knocked Quinn over with a feather, and he hadn’t even been drinking bottles of whiskey. That I knew of.
“The night she died, she had been drinking,” I continued.
Adlen, Fitch, and Quinn gasped in unison.
“She showed up at the ranch, drunk, telling me to take my engagement ring and stuff it where the sun didn’t shine. She didn’t want me. She didn’t want the baby. And she was leaving this ‘one-horse town’ to start over,” I swiped at the tears in the corners of my eyes. “Celeste had an abortion appointment the next morning. But she never made it.”
I had their attention now. The secret train finally made it to the station and was unloading its three decades of craptastic cargo.
“A few years ago, I checked into her autopsy. She wasn’t lying about the baby,” I sucked in a breath. “And her blood alcohol was twice the legal limit. She died instantly in the crash.”
I realized my siblings and Quinn weren’t the only ones hanging onto my every word. The bartender stared at me with his mouth hanging open. I wiggled my glass at him. “Another, please? I think I earned it.”
Without another word, he refilled my glass.
“All this time?” Adlen swiped away tears. “You’ve been carrying that around all this time?”
I nodded.
I thought when the day came that I told the truth, I’d feel freer. The truth shall set you free and all thatsnazzy nonsense. But the only thing I felt right now was regret. And chest pains.
I was 51. Perhaps I needed to start taking baby aspirin for my heart.
Yeah, right.A voice in the back of my head that sounded suspiciously like a 5’4” Cuban beauty mocked me.
“I’m so sorry, man,” Quinn’s eyes were also filled with tears. “I had no idea.”
I shook my head. “No one did. And no one will.”
I pointed to every single one of those motherfluffers.Dang it. What the heck-fie is up with me not being able to cussety-cuss-cuss?Maybe I short-circuited something in my language chip. Maybe I could get Wysdom Ward to reset it for me.
The thought of Wysdom Ward opening my brain and restarting my cussing gene caused me to giggle. Again.
“Lord have mercy,” Adlen snorted. “I don’t know what’s got him so giggly, but I think it’s time we took him home.”
Both men made sounds of agreement. Then, there was pulling, yanking, tugging, cussing, and a whole lot of smack talk, mostly from me.
And it wasn’t long before the world went blissfully black.
