Rebel at Spruce High (Spruce Texas Romance #5) - Daryl Banner Page 0,161

hop up from the couch where we’re all watching a movie—Vann, my mom, and Carl—and sign for the letter, then distractedly pop it open like just another spam letter I get from another college vying for my freshly-graduated attention. As I start to read the letter, however, everything else in the house fades away. The movie. Vann. My mom. My stepdad. Lee. I slowly lower myself to a chair at the dining room table, reading those few yet fateful words on paper. When I’m done, I lower it to the table and stare at a wall. Nothing touches me. Not a sound, thought, nor feeling. Nothing.

My mother appears at the archway. I barely notice her. “Toby, you’re missin’ the best part of the movie!” She seems to take in my eerie mood. “Toby, sweetie? What is it?”

And just like that, not even bringing my eyes to meet hers, the words fall out: “Dad’s dead.”

My mom has no reaction at first. Or perhaps she does have one, but it’s all inside, deeply buried in her heart, somewhere deep down in her soul that no one can touch but her—and this news. She sits rather abruptly into the chair next to me, but stays silent. It’s a particularly strange piece of news that would only affect me and her, as we’re the only ones with a direct relation to him. He’s my biological father and her ex-husband. I barely knew him. He never kept in touch. He vanished like a ghost … and now he is one.

“Oh, sweetie …” she murmurs finally. Then my mom’s arms find a place around me, and while I still can’t bring myself to move or speak, I find myself astonished at how little emotion I feel. I suspect tears might find me someday, but for now, I’m wondering if I missed out on knowing my dad, or he missed out on knowing me, or—considering the reckless, slightly heartless way in which he left—perhaps it was better we were never in each other’s lives.

The next thing I know, I’m sitting on the back porch staring at the backyard, which was freshly mowed just a day ago by Lee, who is likely warming up for his usual lawn-mowing summer gig. Vann joins me out on the porch, by now having heard the news from my mother inside, and he kindly lets me be in peace as the warm, pre-summer air moves slowly over the short grass, barely disturbing a newly-hung tire swing in the corner of the yard. Winona is on the steps in front of us, her head resting on my lap.

“I think the main thing I feel,” I finally let out, “is regret that he never got to know me. I mean, I’m sure he had his reasons. If what my mom said is true, he was a bit of a wild spirit. Untamable. A true rebel heart. That’s what she fell in love with … but it’s also what broke them apart, especially after I was born. My dad just … couldn’t handle the responsibility. He needed his freedom. And is it odd that in a weird, totally detached way … I understand him?” Vann gazes curiously at the side of my face, listening. “I was a bit of an accident. My mom won’t say it, but it’s true. And while I … I never really knew my dad, I always felt like I had a part of him in me. Despite my determination my whole life to be a good boy, to do well, to impress others, to be liked … I always had a part of me that craved standing out. Fighting expectation. Rebelling.”

“You always had it in you,” Vann notes. “You kept saying I’m the one who gave that to you, but … I just helped you wake it up. It was always in you, that part of him.”

I turn to Vann. “And I guess it’s that part of my dad in me that’s rejecting the notion of going to college. I just can’t see myself there. Not at this point in my life, at least.” I meet his eyes suddenly, the subject of my dad dropped for a moment. “Um, did you tell your parents yet about, uh … your decision …?”

“Oh. That.” Vann chuckles and shakes his head. “They’re so damned excited that I finally graduated high school, I think I’ll … give them a little bit of time to enjoy this ‘high school high’ before I drop the not-going-to-college