Prodigal Son (Orphan X #6) - Gregg Andrew Hurwitz Page 0,61
mouth, catching him off guard.
Andre shrugged. “When you’re young, you self-medicate and shit without knowing it. Just to feel better. Good times. Loosens you up. Why not? Then you get older, you do it with purpose. Try combinations. Rum and Xanax. Get pharmacological and shit. You start out chasing good but end up just trying to dull the bad. Till one day…”
“What?”
“You wake up with blood on you, don’t know from what or from who.” Andre rubbed at the scar over his eyebrow. “Had to get in the shower to find out it wasn’t mine. Didn’t know what I’d done till I’d done it. Looked in the mirror, saw a fuckup staring back. Husband in name. Father in name. But really? God’s truth? Just a fuckup.”
Evan didn’t know what to say. Over at the kiosk, the worker had moved on to picking his nose with vigor. The fog crept and bloomed, turning the lot swampy.
“We were all fuckups, weren’t we?” Andre said. “Kids no one wanted.”
Evan thought about Andre’s mother looking down at him as a newborn, seeing the features of her rapist looking back. “Yeah.”
“When you’re outside life, it’s hard to get in. Know what I mean?”
Evan pictured Mia’s condo, candles and throw blankets, laundry and a stocked fridge, TV blaring cartoons, Peter fussing or cracking up, Mia sipping red wine and listening to Miles Davis.
So much warmth. And color. Like looking through the aquarium glass at a wondrous new world.
Evan said, “Not really.”
“Like, ever watch some sports match you don’t understand? On one a’ them second-rate ESPNs—international or something? Like, I dunno, rugby. Or Australian football. It takes you out, right? All those people cheering, crying, chanting, like their lives depend on it, like they’ve been empty their entire lives and now they’re full, brimming with life, with triumph. And you’re outside, right? You don’t know this game. You don’t give a shit. But you envy them being so goddamned alive, for knowing what they care about and what they want and for trying to get at it. For being in it, man. And you’re just sitting there watching.” Andre’s voice grew hoarse. “When you’re like us, that’s how everything feels sometimes.”
Evan caught the words before they came out. I’m not like you.
Andre said, “You’re never jealous of folks like that? People who can just be … you know, happy.”
“You think happiness is the point?”
“Of what?”
“Of life.”
“Ain’t it?”
Evan shrugged. “I don’t know if you can build anything on it.”
“What do you build on, then?”
“Responsibility,” Evan said. “Duty.”
The air seeped through the cracked door, tightening Evan’s skin. He thought about the calm nights since he’d retired, sipping vodka at his kitchen counter in his climate-controlled penthouse. Then he thought about strolling through a mist-draped South American cemetery, tracking and being tracked, a police-force battalion waiting in the wings; the heat blast of a Hellfire missile putting him on the brink of disintegration, every cell screamingly alive; and the sensation filling him sitting here now on the razor’s edge of a mission, each step a high-wire act, lives hanging in the balance, danger coiling itself around him, fork-tongued whispering in his ear.
One trajectory offered what he wanted. The other what he needed.
He didn’t want to hold them up side by side in his mind, because then he’d have to admit which one spoke to his truest self.
Over in the passenger seat, Andre was still musing. Evan checked the mirrors, the intersection ahead, the weight of the dilemma tugging at him.
“Maybe happiness is overrated,” Evan said. “Freedom, too. Maybe the only way to get anywhere worth being is to pick up the heaviest thing you can carry. And carry it.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Is it?”
“The heaviest thing to carry is family. A marriage. A kid. You ever try?” Andre glared at Evan, reading his silence. “What I thought. You don’t know how hard it is.”
An edge of resentment rose inside Evan. It felt unfamiliar, toxic. “I know it was too hard for you.”
“Hell, man. You think it’ll be different, you’ll be different, but you’re not. Our honeymoon we went camping, up the hill, just me and Bri and her PMS. We fought from the beginning. Had fun, too. Then it was all one and not the other. Women all wind up the same.”
“You mean the piece of them you know how to interact with is the same.”
But Andre didn’t even hear him. “And you got no idea what it means to make a baby. People say it’s a miracle. Sure. But