“Briony, my boy, it’s so good to see you!” His father cheerfully addressed him.
Brian shuddered at the use of his name. While he wasn’t resistant to his heritage by any means, he’d been taunted and then some over hisgirlyname, and had adopted a much more western name to avoid the inevitable bullying and grief that came with his true name.
Though it was listed on every legal thing from here to sundown, only his family called him Briony—with the exception of his sister, of course.
“Dad, you’re looking... well,” he said, glancing between his father and mother, who looked rather tired and exhausted herself.
Tellulah collapsed in the chair by the window, browsing her phone, completely uninterested, but Brian knew her better than most.
She was more observant than most gave her credit for.
“This heart can’t be stopped so easily, I told them doctors that!” his dad said with a laugh.
Brian eased a fraction, but the fact his mother’s expression looked pained told him all he needed to know.
“Donny...” His mother sighed. “We need to tell him.”
Brian’s heart nearly stopped itself. The severity, the weight of her words caused a fresh flush of anxiety and panic to flood him.
“Tell me what?” he asked shakily.
“Mary, please, he just got here. We—”
“Your father is in stage two congestive heart failure. Which means...”
Brian’s world stopped. His mother’s eyebrows furrowed, and silence befell the room. He knew damn well what it meant.
Since his father’s initial heart attack barely two years ago, Brian knew one day he’d be standing here, making plans to take over his father’s life’s work. But it didn’t make the fact it was actually here any easier to deal with.
“How long?” Brian asked, cutting through the thick silence.
Tellulah sighed behind him.
“Five or six years, if we are lucky,” his mother said with a sniffle.
Five years.
It didn’t seem like a lot, but it also seemed so far away from this moment Brian wasn’t sure what to say or do.
A lot could happen in five years...
“Which means we’ll need to start the process of retirement as soon as possible so we can...”
“You aren’t kicking me out of my office yet, woman!” his father grumbled.
“Donny, please, you know it’s what needs to be done...”
“I know that no one is going to be able to do this job as good as me, and I will do it until the day I die!” he bit.
Brian felt as if he would pass out. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t had this very conversation every Thanksgiving and Christmas. The one where his family pressured him into ‘thinking about’ taking a more ‘adult job’ with the Leehan library, weaseling his way onto the library board, priming him for his inevitable future taking over his father’s head chair at the university.
His father had made it well known that was what he wished, since Brian had started his studies. But Brian did notwanthis father’s cushy, university chair. He loved the little town library he worked at, where he knew everyone’s names and what they liked to read, where he regularly read stories to the kids of the community and hosted book club. Where he could disappear into the back stacks for hours pouring over legends and myths like he was thirteen again.
Reading tales of gods and Goddesses always provided him a sort of comfort in his darkest days. The bullies and terrorizing teenagers of his youth would not follow him or find him in the library, curled up in the back beneath the window.
He hated the idea of sitting behind a desk mailing out grant letters, schmoozing with donors, and overseeing a boatload of adult and young adult students. He’d never been quite as social or as charismatic as his father, a skill which was apparently needed to lord over the Leehan Library.
“Donny...” His mother pinched the bridge of her nose, sighing deeply again. His father’s mood was quite fickle, easily upsettable.
