A Fighting Chance (6 page)

And
Kerr Edwards turned out to be the last person I ever hit for sport. I hung up my fighting gloves that night, and I never went back to Perry’s barn again. I kept my pledge by focusing on school, and I visited my mom at least three times a week as senior year wore on. Bucky was disappointed with my choice but he convinced his dad to hire me for a real job around the farm. I didn’t believe in God, but I thought getting my shit together was my way of asking him to spare my mom so she could see that she had raised a son who could be everything she hoped for.

It wasn’t enough.

She slipped in and out of a coma over the next few months, until she fell into one that was eventually deemed irreversible, right after Hamilton accepted me from their waitlist. But I was happy that I had gotten to read the letter to her. She was taken off the ventilator two weeks into my freshman year at college, and died. Funeral attendance was sparse. Some of that was my fault. I didn’t know who to tell and how to tell them. Diane Kimble told me that she was the trustee of a small fund Mom and my grandma had established for me shortly after I was born. She also helped me sell the house, and once we paid off Mom’s debts with her life insurance, I was able to close the financial aid gap some.

My old life was over. Just like
Mom’s. And once the dirt covered the casket, I planned on never returning to Glory. So, all of it—Drew, my hometown, my past—ended up in a grave, too.

Lydia makes chamomile tea for Henry in my apartment as she waits for leftover pasta to warm up in the oven, but I know she’s really just delaying her departure. Henry and I can’t have the type of conversation we need to have in front of her, so we sit at my kitchen table making small talk while we wait. I’m on edge, anxious to hear what he has to say, and more than ready to send him on his way right after. Every once in a while, his eyes drift around the room—to my splayed open textbooks on the coffee table, my poor attempt at decorating the place and, of course, my girlfriend’s ass. As he whistles, he taps on the wood and I can’t tear my eyes away from his mangled hand. Missing fingers? Someone did that to him, I know it’s why he’s here, and it’s nothing I want to be involved in.

I take the pasta out and tell him he’s free to serve himself
, just as Lydia walks out of my room with a bag full of makeup and girl shit and books on her shoulder. “Okay, I got what I need for the night. Did we remember to return the movies to Redbox? I couldn’t find them anywhere.”

“
Yeah. I took them back yesterday…” I say, chuckling. She thinks she’s slick. She’s not listening to me at all. She’s rolling back and forth onto the balls of her feet, peering over my shoulder at Henry.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to stay?” she whispers.

“One-hundred-percent.” I really don’t want her to go, but I don’t want her and my father in the same room, either. My past and present are colliding, and I’m afraid that this life I’ve built will be the one left shattered.

“Okay, but call me if you need anything…” Lydia strokes my face, with concern on hers. “It was nice meet
ing you, Mr. Chance!” she yells, shooting a kind smile at him.

Henry sips from his cup and his lustful gaze follows
Lydia to the door. “You, too, dear.” His brain is still in his dick, that’s for sure.

I lean against the doorframe and kiss Lydia good-bye to distract her from the attention she’s still giving my father. I know
she has a million questions after meeting the man I told her wasn’t a part of my life. She’s the only reason he’s even in my apartment right now, because she invited him as she tried to mediate the confrontation outside.

She
presses her lips to mine one more time, and her reluctance to leave is clear on her face. “Do you have any idea what he wants? After all this time…”

I rest my forehead
on hers. “No, but I doubt I can help him with anything. And don’t you spend all night worrying. I’ll figure it out.”

“You just…you seem different since he got here.
Right now, you look…scared. It’s a lot, so that’s why I’m worried. Anyway, if you can’t help him, I’m sure he’ll be gone in the morning. I really hope so since I’m taking you to brunch!”

“Can’t wait,” I say
. “You want me to walk you out?”

“No, it’s okay. I love you, babe,”
Lydia says as she heads down the hall.

“
I love you, too.” I stand there until I can’t hear her footsteps in the stairwell anymore. I get a sinking, uncontrollable feeling of loss. Lydia’s a beautiful woman, but what really drew me initially was the way she smiled at me, completely oblivious to the burdens I shouldered. And it still took me months after meeting her to finally ask her out. We’ve had our ups and downs, but our relationship has been comfortable and normal. Yet a growing hollow feeling in my stomach tells me that nothing between us will ever be the same again. I bolt the door shut and take my seat across from Henry.

“This is a nice place. Nice school, too. Seems like you’re doing well here.”

“Alert the media…it’s a scientific breakthrough. The fuckup gene can apparently be suppressed,” I say, letting sarcasm spill all over my words.

He snorts.
“And, damn, that’s a hot ass slam-piece you’ve got, son.”

“Don’t call her that…and don’t ever call
me
that again.” I lunge for him and collar him out of his seat.

“I’m sorry…hey….I’m sorry…just trying to break the ice, kid.
I thought you would laugh. You know she’s gorgeous, right? And you were sitting there”—he gestures at my empty chair—“like you had a stick up your ass.”

I have to remind myself that Henry’s not worth a lot of
things, including my aggression, or any of my feelings, really, so I release him and he sits. “How am I supposed to act when my so-called father can fly thousands of miles because he needs something from me, but couldn’t make a ten minute drive to my mother’s funeral?”

He lifts remorseful eyes up to me. “I wanted to, Jess, but
Barbara threatened me with a divorce and sole custody of HJ. I’ve been to her grave a few times to put flow—”

“Just tell me why you’re here before I get really angry.” He hasn’t even attempted to find out anything about me or my life before now, so I doubt he’s ever been to my mom’s grave. “Who did that to you?” I tick my chin up at his hand.

“Punishment for late payment on a debt I owe.”

I chuckle.
I can’t even muster up an ounce of sympathy. “Let me guess, it wasn’t a Bank of America teller?”

He inches his hand across the table
, as if he wants to touch me, but he pulls away suddenly. “I was trying to do a good thing and I got screwed. I gave up gambling, honest. I had been on the right track since I got released.” Shortly after Mom died, Henry went to prison for his role in an intricate car theft ring. “I met a guy in the joint who got out around the same time I did, and he said he had a brother who was starting a business and looking for some investors. The brother seemed legit and he showed me paperwork…the articles of incorporation. He said he’d pay me a fee for finding investors. I called up some old friends and raised the money, but it turned out to be a Ponzi scheme. He used
that
money to fake investment returns for the investors he already had.
I’m on parole.
One dumb thing and I’m back in to finish the sentence, so I needed a way to pay everyone before they went to the cops.”

“Oh God.” I bury my face in my hands
for a second. “And you borrowed from the people who did
that.
”

“Yes.” He nods with urgency, his jaw clenching. “
The brother fled, my friends who invested won’t give me the time of day, and I don’t really have a way to pay back the people I borrowed from—”

“I don’t have it, just so we’re clear. I can’t—no, I
won’t—
pay this off for you. Maybe you should go to the police. I think severed fingers are more than enough to get someone to help you.”

“This was just to intimidate me.”

What the fuck will they do when they
really
want to scare him then?
“That’s some intimidation…”

“They don’t care about the police, and I can afford to lose a few fingers.
They’re probably not going to hurt me anymore. I can’t pay them if I’m dead. They know that, so they’ve started going after what I can’t afford to lose. A guy showed up to HJ’s school while he was waiting for Barbara to pick him up, and asked him…” Henry’s jaw trembles and he’s forced to pause. “If he thought people went to heaven after they died. Henry Junior said yes…and then he asked him, ‘What about kids?’ Fuck, Jess, he’s ten. And they’ll kill him. They did that with another guy. They mailed him his kid—a teenager—piece by piece for an entire—”

“What? Where’s HJ now? Did you get him out of Glory? And what the hell is wrong with you? You got involved with people who kill kids?” I jump up from my chair and pace the apartment, wrapped in jumbled emotions. I’m not close to Henry’s two older kids, but HJ was so small the last time I saw him
, and I remember seeing Barbara strolling him around town before that. We’re cursed with the same problem: being the son of Henry Chance, and it’s completely unfair. My blood heats with infuriation and bitterness. “You know, this fatherhood thing isn’t
really
working out for you, so you should just do the world a solid and get a vasectomy or something. Maybe
that’s
what your loan sharks
should’ve
cut off.”

Henry cringes
from the bite in my words and hangs his head. “It was stupid, I know. I just didn’t want to go back to prison.”

I scoff as I return to my seat. “Oh, right, ‘cause
borrowing money from dangerous people seems like a
much
better option. How much is it?”

“
Fifty thousand,” he says, whispering, and I burst into laughter because he has to be joking. Maybe he and Lydia teamed up to see who could pull the bigger birthday surprise on me.

“
Donuts? Because you can’t possibly mean dollars. What the hell do you expect me to do?” We lock eyes and the answer is so plain in his expression, it rips my smile away. “No.
No.
I don’t do that anymore and I won’t ever do it again. I’m not fighting to earn the money.” I put some acid behind my words to drill into his head just how emphatic I am about this. “No. Not even an option.”

“It’s my last resort idea. I know I don’t deserve your help, and I haven’t ever done anything to make you want to help me, but I don’t have anywhere else to go,” he says with his voice wavering so much I struggle to understand him. “I messed up with you. I’ve been here a week and I’ve watched you be
a better man than I was at your young age. You don’t owe me anything. But he’s my little boy. My little boy! I just want to make right all the wrongs I’ve done, and he’s my very last chance. I have hurt everyone in my life, but HJ still sees me as his hero. I just want to be the man he thinks I am. I want to protect him from my failures and if I get out of this, I’ll be a different person.” Henry wipes tears from his eyes when he’s done speaking.

Did
he ever cry over me? I cast a resentful look at him as he shakes his head at the floor. This man who never sent a card for my birthday or even attempted to work out visitation with my mother just to try to get to know me, now needs me to save his
other
son. This isn’t even about me and it never has been.
It never will be.
I clench my jaw as emotions boil up in me and nearly break through the surface. But I won’t let them, though, because I’m too ashamed of him seeing that it’s all pain and not anger. I won’t let Henry Chance see that he can still hurt me
. He said what he came to say and now he needs to go.
Standing, I walk to the front door and hold it open for him. “Well, like I told you, Henry, I can’t dig you out of the hole
you
got yourself into. You’re better off going to the police. I’d like you to leave.”

I
’m in bed, wide awake and restless a few hours later, and I think about calling Lydia, but I bet I’ll be terrible company, so I stay in my apartment alone. I text my girl one last time to let her know what time we should go to brunch, and I see the voicemail notification from the call I got tonight. Clicking the “speaker” button, I finally decide to listen to it.

“
Hey, Jess, it’s Drew, but I guess you know who it is. I’m calling to say happy birthday, but I don’t know how happy it will be when Henry gets there. He might be there now. I took Miss Madison’s groceries to her house the other day, and she said he had dropped by. Apparently he was just about on his knees begging her to tell him which school you went to. She said he was scared. I don’t trust it but something’s been off about him lately.

“
Anyway, I know I won’t hear back from you, but I still think about you…and I still think about Miss Carla. You should be graduating soon, right? I bet she’d be so proud of you. I bet it still hurts, too, though. I know it still hurts for me, but I know it helps when I think about how much that woman loved you. Shit. This message is so long. Well, happy birthday…again. Bye.”