~ 56 ~
PEYTON
There were a lot of truths you had to face in life. Good truths and bad ones. Hard truths, that were sometimes bitter to swallow.
At the moment however, the truth of the matter was undeniable.
Theo’s father was dying.
“Hey, chin up, okay? We talked about this a zillion times.”
The man resting upright in bed looked a whole lot better than the last time we’d seen him. He’d gained some weight back. He’d regained some color in his face, too.
All of these things, we knew, were a result of him stopping treatment. And in doing so, we also knew, he was accepting the inevitable end.
“Ripley?”
Ripley stepped forward immediately, his smile bright as the sun.
“Yes, dad?”
Dad.
Theo’s father was a dad to us all, at this point. No question.
“Can you talk some sense into this kid’s head?”
Six months of cherished visits. Six long months of standing quietly by his bedside. On the bad days, we’d watched over him while he slept. On the good ones, we’d wheeled him outside, so he could feel the warmth of the sun on his face.
The four of us had taken turns caring for this man, as much as we could. And Theo — as well as his brothers — had loved us for it.
“Talk some sense into him?” Ripley laughed. “No, probably not. But I could hold him upside down out the window, if you want. Shake him a few times.”
Theo’s dad laughed, coughed, then laughed some more. “Think it’ll help?”
“No,” Ripley admitted. “Probably not.”
Theo rolled his eyes. Ripley stuck his tongue out at him.
“Ah, it’s just as well then.” The old man’s tired eyes shifted back to his son. “He always could talk circles around me, too.”
A hell of a lot had happened in six months. We’d taken off, and come back. We’d figured some things out, too. Good things. Important things.
The smoke finally did clear, just as we expected it would. Donovan Prescott’s empire had thoroughly fallen. The ruins, predictably, were picked over by people who’d waited avery long time for its inevitable demise.
And there had been alotof those.
There were stories, and press releases, and plenty of photos of us thrown up all over the internet for a while. But as always, attention was fleeting. It wasn’t long before newer, more interesting stories rose up, seizing the public’s attention. Interest waned; over the course of a very slow month. A few weeks after that, the news cycle had forgotten about us entirely.
“Peyton…”
“I’m right here.”
He reached for me, and I squeezed his frail hand carefully from the other side of the bed. Theo’s father looked around in a morphine-induced haze for a moment or two. Then he smiled, as his eyes finally settled upon me.
“When I was a kid, there was this amazing hill my father would take us to in the winter,” he began, fondly. “We’d ride sleds down it for hours and hours. The whole neighborhood would gather there, racing each other, every time it snowed. And you know what happened?”
“You crashed?” I guessed, adding a grin.
