“It’s the end,” he continued.“I get leave to go see her one last time.Dad and I are in the hospice, holding her hand.Giving her presence.And that bitch…”
I braced.
“…turns to Dad…”
I braced harder.
“…and says, ‘I can’t die without you knowing, John.Ranger isn’t yours.He’s Derek Johannsen’s.’”
My body locked in shock.
But my mouth breathed, “What?”
“Yeah,” he snarled.
“Oh, Hutch,” I whispered.
“She died about two hours later.We held her fuckin’ hand.Both of us.I wanted to leave, but I didn’t because he didn’t.”
“Right,” I pushed out, only just holding myself together.
“We get her in the ground, and that’s all he can talk about.He wants a DNA test.”
Ohfuck.
This was going to get worse, I knew it.
“I said I didn’t give a shit about a DNA test.I didn’t know who Derek Johannsen was.But I knew who my dad was.Dad wouldn’t listen.So I took it, reiterating that I couldn’t care less.I wasn’t gonna meet this man.He had nothing to do with me.I had a father.I loved him.And that was it.”
“Yes, that was it,” I agreed carefully.
“It wasn’t it, May,” he bit out.“The results came back.Mom didn’t lie.I wasn’t Dad’s kid.He got one thing good from her.Me.He had one shot at leaving a legacy of his time on this earth.Me.She took that away from him.She was fucking dying, and she still cut his legs right out from under him.She didn’t have to tell him that shit.She did.She did it just to be nasty.Cancer had eaten her away, she can’t move, can’t even go to the bathroom by herself, but she sure had the energy to gut him.”
“But your dad knew how you felt about him.”
“Yes.He wrote that in his suicide note.”
The tears instantly hit my eyes.
“No,” I breathed.
“Yeah,” he countered.“Put a shotgun under his chin and blew his head off.”
I latched on to his hand with both of mine.“Oh my God, Hutch.”
“I was back on base.I got more leave.”
I leaned to him, pulling his hand to my mouth, holding it tight, kissing it between saying, “Oh my God, baby.I’m so damned sorry.”
“Me too.”
I dropped my forehead to our hands and squeezed hard, pulling in breath to try to hold it together.
“I saw his play.”
I lifted my head to look at him again.
“He gave his life to her in order to give me what he thought I needed.His note told me he loved me.It told me he was sorry.It told me he was proud of me, that I was born his son, and he would die, and I was still his son.But he didn’t explain why.So I don’t know if she humiliated him so deeply with that, he couldn’t live with it.Or if he couldn’t live with having given so much to a woman and her son only to lose everything, first her, then me.”
