“Why you?”
“Because I kept your secret from him.”
“Well, that’s not cool either. I mean, he shouldn’t be mad at you. I’m the one who told you to keep it secret. I’m sorry. I was kinda glad you and him started becoming friends. Sully, too. He doesn’t have,like,anyat home. Sure, he knows the guys my uncle and my granddad hang around, but other than that, he’s a total shut-in. The guy doesn’t even really date.”
“He feels like it would upset you…”
Colton snorts. “Well, that’s stupid. He and Mom were like, I dunno, not really in love anymore or anything. Before she died, she asked me if I would be okay if they got divorced. I told her sure, they both deserve to be happy, you know?”
Oooo-kay. New revelation unlocked. Colton knew all about this all along. This literally ate Evan up inside. Again, the talking thing. They should try it sometime.
“So you wouldn’t be upset if he moved on?”
This makes Colton laugh out loud. “Are you kidding me? I’d love it. It’d give him somethingelseto fixate on rather than hyper-focusingon me and my bullshit.”
My jaw goes slack. “You two and the walls you built aroundnothingare absolutely appalling, you know that?”
“What do you mean?” Colton asks, confused.
“Your dad feels like by moving on, he’s disgracing your mother’s legacy in some way.”
“Again, dumb,” Colton reiterates. “The thing with my dad is that he’s fixated onlegaciesand shit. He’salwaystoo worried about what other people think of him. He acts like he’s this big, tough dude, but he’s really not. As long as the chick he dates doesn’t think she’s going to take my mother’s place, I’m fine with it. He’s only in his thirties, does he seriously think he can’t move on?” he adds, speaking like a man decades wiser than his given age.
I don’t even get to respond to that when Morgan peeks her head inside the door. “Sorry to interrupt, but Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“We’ve got a little, uh, toilet issue in the boys bathroom again. I can’t find Evan…”
And therein lies that question once again. Where the heck is Evan?
Chapter Nineteen
They say that hardships come in threes, so I certainly hope this is the third and final fucking thing, because I don’t think I can take anymore. First, it was getting that text from my brother that had my heart sinking into my stomach: Dad’s boat didn’t return to the marina when it was supposed to, and a storm was on its way in. I didn’t even get to fucking process the news about my son having a boyfriend when I gotthatnews.
Then, when I took a ride to wait for word from Gannett—since there is spotty cell signal at camp—I got a flat tire from some sharp piece of metal lying somewhere in the gravel road. Luckily, and I use that term loosely, a passerby stopped to give me a ride to town, so I could get a new tire. I say loosely, because that passerby was fucking Kai, on his way in to get Brooks for Pride in Portland the following day.
I will give him some credit. He did look genuinely sympathetic when I told him that I was worried about my dad and crew beingpossibly lost at sea. Kai wasn’t his normal impish self. He seemed like a whole different person, and it was odd, to say the least.
Finally, not having gotten word from Gan, I started to panic and hopped on the road to Ternbay myself. By the time I got there, a trawler was towing Wagner’s broken down boat to shore, just as a massive storm was rolling in. Amidst all the commotion there, not only did my phone slip out of my pocket and fall straight into the fucking drink, but dad also had a heart attack right there on the dock.
The good news is, he’d waited to have the coronary when he was safely on land, and he’s absolutely fine now. If it seems like I lack empathy, it’s because I do. The man eats like shit, and treats his body even shittier, all while knowing the risk. This wasn’t his first rodeo, unfortunately, so he had some of his pills on hand he’s supposed to take when he gets chest pain, and we were able to get him to the hospital pretty quickly.
All he’s done since is bitch. He bitched about the cost of an ambulance ride, when he had a car and could have driven himself here. He bitched about the state of the potholes in the road on the way there. He’s bitched about how he’s absolutely fine, and how all this hubbub is for nothing.
In fact, he’s so fine this Tuesday morning that he’s in his hospital room bitching to the doctor about how he wants to be discharged, just as he has been since roughly—oh, I don’t know, the minute he came out from his heart cath on Sunday, where they had to put in another couple of stents.
“Why can’t my ole’ lady keep an eye on me? What needs ta be observed anyway? I feel fine. T’want nothin’ an old man like me hasn’t dealt with befoah,” he gripes in his thick Downeast accent, where ‘r’s’ are used arbitrarily. “The food heah sucks!” he addscheerfully.
“It’s low sodium. You’re one juicy steak away from needing open-heart surgery, Mr. Waters. Try eating that lobster you’re so good at catching. If you don’t drench it in butter, it’s a healthier protein,” the doctor grumbles. He then sighs, clicks out of Dad’s chart, and walks out of Dad’s room, asking the nurse to draw up discharge paperwork.
Wagner takes this opportunity to turn his fantastic attitude on me now. “Ya know, this wouldn’ta never happened if you’da just stayed home and helped out, instead’a runnin’ off to that camp.”
“Hate to break it to you, but I’m going back after you get out,” I tell him. “And since I already know you’re going to ignore doctor’s orders to rest, I cleaned out your engine while you were in here giving everyone a hard time, so you’re up and running again.”
He snorts. I guess that’s as much of a ‘thank you, son’ as I’m going to get. “Makes you like workin’ there so much, anyways?” he asks.
I sigh. “Because Dad, the camp is actually a really nice place. It needs a lot of rehab though. They haven’t had a dedicated maintenance worker there since it started. Brooks, essentially theonlyowner, needs the help.”
