She took a sharp right into his old bedroom and slammed the door. “I’ll manage!” she shouted through the barrier. “Just like you will when I’m gone, apparently!”
In a state of mental chaos, he twisted the knob, prepared to barge in and demand she let him make her safe. And apologize. Yes, apologize until he ran out of words in his vocabulary. No way he could let her go on believing life would be only slightly difficult without her. It would—will be—a living hell. But his father chose that moment to step out of the bedroom down the hall.
“Woman trouble?” asked Carl after a long pause, adjusting his glasses with artistic fingers. “Want to have a beer and talk about it?”
Tucker didn’t have the heart to explain to his father that he couldn’t drink beer.
With Mary pissed at him, he didn’t have the heart for anything.
“Sure, Pops.”
With a final glance at his closed bedroom door, he followed Carl toward the kitchen.
Chapter 15
Tucker sat down at the wobbly-legged kitchen table and ran his fingers over the wooden grooves. Wallpaper that had been fresh last time he ate breakfast in that very spot was peeling now, completely gone in some places to reveal a much uglier wallpaper underneath. There were buckets and boxes of discarded scrap parts shoved up in every corner of the room, clipped out newspaper articles rolling like black and white tumbleweeds on the linoleum floor.
His mother used to say, “What Carl lacks in organization, he makes up for with enthusiasm.” Tucker could still see her patting his head while saying it on her way to the sink.
Before sitting down on the other side of the table, Tucker’s father set the uncapped beer down in front of him and he eyed it lovingly. Same brand they’d always bought for the house, different label. What he wouldn’t have given to experience the bite of cold going down his throat, especially now when his dull, dead heart had never felt more so. But he settled for thumbing the condensation down the glass instead.
“Well, son.” His father opened his mouth to say one thing, changed his mind and seemed to pick another. “Hell, I don’t know where to start.”
“That makes two of us.” Tucker drummed his fingers on the table, his Adam’s apple about ten times its normal size. “I heard what you said out there. About thinking I was a victim, instead of being involved somehow. And I just want you to know…I’m grateful for that. Especially considering we didn’t part ways on the best of terms.”
The older man let out a puff of air. “Just because we argued doesn’t mean I’d go changing my whole opinion of your character. Of course I knew you’d nothing to do with that…grisly situation. I never could.”
“Thanks,” Tucker managed, unable to look at the man. Staring at the peeling wallpaper instead. “You never, uh…wondered if maybe I’d been abducted, too? Like Mom?”
“No.” His thinning hair trembled when he shook his head. “No, I would never believe an abduction took place unless I’d seen it with my own eyes.” He rubbed at the back of his neck, quietly chuckling without humor. “Or thought I’d seen, anyway. Beginning to doubt myself about the whole thing, you must be pleased to know.”
“I’m not, Pops.” Tucker sighed. “I’m not.”
Carl regarded him for a speculative moment before nodding. Falling silent. “Why did you stay gone so long, Tucker? Where have you been and…” His dad took a long pull of his beer and settled the bottle on the table, twisted it a moment. “What’s happened to you?”
He’d never felt shame over being Silenced. Not until that moment. When he sat face to face with his father and had to admit to being overpowered by two men, whether they were immortal beings of superior ability or not. He’d never thought himself prideful at all, but there it was. Shame over having his strength bested that had been lingering somewhere in his subconscious since the night it happened. “I’ll put us both in danger by telling you everything.”
His father’s gaze didn’t waver. “I accept the danger. Do you?”
Tucker nodded. “Where I’m headed, getting sanctioned for breaking the rules is the least of my problems.” His father started to ask a question, but Tucker shook his head. “Pops…” It was true what they said about age—and in his case, impending death—giving a man perspective. All the arguments and stubborn silences between him and his father were so futile now. Now there was only a need to reassure and embrace this man, faults and all. And hope his father could do the same. Maybe sometimes that meant allowing for the possibility that you’ve been wrong. Even if you don’t truly believe it. “When I lived here, I thought this fascination with extra-terrestrials was nonsense. I thought you were just refusing to accept that Mom left us. But since I’ve been gone, Pops…” He ran a hand through his hair, blew out a breath. “I’ve met beings that should only exist in horror flicks. There is a world that lives in the darkness and I didn’t have a choice when I was made part of it. There’s no going back. Once you’re there. But what I’m trying to say to you is…don’t give up on your aliens. Anything is possible—and I mean anything. I’m trying to say that if you saw Mom being abducted, then I believe you. I should have believed you all along.”