The Dirty Truth

“If this is going to work . . . you’re going to have to let me in. You’re going to have to shed some light on what she’s been through—and what you’ve been through. Otherwise I’m just feeling around in the dark and getting nowhere.”

My jaw sets.

It’s been a lifetime since I’ve let anyone in, but I’m at the end of my rope with Scarlett.

“Tell me about her parents,” Elle says. “Her father was your brother, right? What was he like? And what was her life like back in Nebraska? What did she go through that was so awful you had to take her in? I need context, West. She’s not just some troubled teenager—she’s so much more than that. I just want to know why.”

“Come with me.”

I take her to my study, where I pluck a small leather-bound photo album off a corner shelf. The thin binder holds fifty photos, maybe less. But it’s the only window I keep to my past.

“Here.” I place it in her hands, our fingertips brushing.

She cracks the spine, flipping to the first page—an image of a grinning toddler version of myself holding my newborn brother.

“Will, Scarlet’s father, was my younger brother,” I begin. “He was nineteen when he got Scarlett’s mother pregnant. She was a junior in high school at the time. Keep in mind, this wasn’t out of the ordinary for people in Whitebridge. Anyway, Will was . . . different than me. He was funny and witty and the friendliest kid you’d ever meet, but he was also very unsure of himself. Deep down he was lost, just like everyone else. So he always lived in my shadow. Anywhere I went, Will would follow. But after I went away to college, Will found someone else’s shadow to live in. Took him down a darker path for a year or so, and he’d gotten into some hard drugs for a while, dropped out of welding school, lost his motivation to make anything of himself. By the time I got him clean again, he was head over heels with the high school girl who worked part time at the gas station making pizza. I didn’t see what the fuss was, but Will was spellbound. Obsessed. You could tell him the sky was blue, and he’d insist it was orange if Lexi said it was orange. Anyway, they hadn’t been together more than a couple of months when she got pregnant.”

Elle traces her finger along a picture of the two of us standing side by side at Will’s graduation. I soak in the familiar image of Will grinning proudly in his red cap and gown, standing just a couple of inches shorter than me.

“He looks just like you,” she muses.

“Yeah, we were spitting images of each other—on the outside.”

“That must be your mom? She looks just like you two.” Elle points to the woman standing off to the side, her position an ironic and inadvertent metaphor because my entire life, my mother was always standing off to the proverbial side. Close enough but distant at the same time. “What’s she like?”

“Dead.”

She sucks in a breath, the album frozen in her hands. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Of course you didn’t.” I flip to another page. “She died three years ago . . . lung cancer. She smoked two packs a day for as long as I can remember—a slow, drawn-out suicide.”

“That’s heartbreaking.”

“Can’t force someone to be here if they don’t want to be.”

“Everything you do, everything you’ve done . . . is it for them?”

I gather a long breath. “That’s a loaded question.”

Leaving her vanilla-bubble-bath-scented side, I make myself a drink and toss it back in one go.

“What about your father? Is he still around?” she asks.

I give her a terse shake of the head. “My past is like one of those depressingly cliché country songs. There’s a reason I keep a tight lid on it. No one wants to hear about that shit. And I sure as hell don’t want to be some sob story, nor do I want it reduced to some sad little paragraph on my Wikipedia page.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being vulnerable. You’re not made of steel, West. Even if you pretend you are. Maybe you can fool the world, but you can’t fool me.”

Charmed and a bit bemused, I mix her a gin and tonic—a wordless invitation to stay a little longer. Anyone who can hold her own around me is worthy of the privilege. Besides, every second in this room with her is one less second I’m alone with my current reality.

“So tell me, Superman,” she says, settling into my favorite chair. Intentional? Perhaps. Her cherry blossom lips curl into a mischievous grin, and I’m taken back to the first time I saw her wandering the halls of my corporate headquarters. The confident bounce in her step, the sway in her hips, the contagious laugh. The curve-hugging blue sweaterdress. “What’s your kryptonite?”