Chapter Forty

St. Louis was a four and half hour drive South and slightly East. Faith and I took turns driving each hour and talked about everything under the sun along the way. Family mission aside, it was a great time for us to catch up and sew ourselves firmly back together. We didn't realize how much we needed that.

Although our chats always found their way back to Saylor, Kristen, Blake and Juice, we were able to squash a lot of the smaller issues that'd been building up between us. While she'd never like Juice or understand what I got out of letting him 'sneeze down my throat' as she put it—which was worse than saying what we actually did—we were as good as we'd ever been. And no, we couldn't see the Gateway Arch. We came in through the West, without crossing the Mississippi River.

Castleman Avenue wasn't a busy road, by any means, but it was crowded with cars parked along both sides of it. The neighborhood seemed kind of dodgy. Most of the cars were in rough condition, the pavement wasn't any better and there was a considerable amount of trash along its gutters.

The residences were all duplexes of some kind that all looked similar, but no two were quite alike. They were red, brick buildings with a set of stairs leading up to a pair of doors covered by an awning or a portico.

Faith found a place to park after our third pass of the block, but neither of us were very good at parallel parking, so her Audi ended up riding the edge of the curb a bit. It couldn't be helped. She double-checked the address before we got out and walked up the duplex.

The one feature it had that set it apart from the others was its blood red door. It was glossy like polished garnet stone, but there were gray flecks within the paint that gave me a strange certainty about its tenant.

"Want me to come up with you," Faith said.

I nodded and held out my hand. She took it and we slowly climbed the steps, each one at the same time. I was glad she was with me. I certainly would've turned around had I been alone. This was completely insane. There we were, showing up on the doorstep of a complete stranger who could turn out not to be my sister or worse, an ax murderer.

I flashed a wincing smile at Faith and yelled, "Yolo!" I knocked thrice on the Gothic-style door and waited. I put my ear up to it and heard footsteps approaching on the other side. "Someone's coming, it's fine. They probably had to double back for their chainsaw."

Faith grimaced and squeezed my hand tighter. "Stay in front of me," she said, "es tu familia."

I put my arm out in front of her as the doorknob turned. We were ready to cut and bail the moment things got weird. Faith was preemptively humming soft, shrill noises that could turn into a scream at a moment's notice.

The door swung open and there was no doubt in my mind that the person standing in front of me was not my sister. She couldn't have been. She was taller than me and she looked much too old for Mom to have given birth to. Still, I had no other words prepared. "Esmeralda, my name is Regal. I think I'm your brother."

Esmeralda's brown eyes grew wide—one more so than the other, her lips trembled as she struggled for words until she gave up and collapsed to her knees. She sobbed uncontrollably. She clearly knew more about this than either of us. Faith and I looked at each other until she started helping Esmeralda up to her feet. I followed her lead.

"You're definitely related. The mad-eye, la cara, las proporciones y todos," she said.

I couldn't argue that and since we'd already made the long drive, there was no harm in sticking around to hear whatever answers this aunt could provide.

Esmeralda was wearing a saffron salsa dress and she wore it well in spite of her age and lankiness. The attire would've been weird if it wasn't Friday afternoon. We likely dropped in on her right before she headed out for an evening of ballroom dancing.

That was hardly a reason cry though. Faith and I shushed her as we guided her inside. Her unit had right facing rooms and the first one through the door was the living room. We sat her down on a black leather two seater. A black bean bag chair and a padded recliner were flanking it.

They all faced a screen mounted on the wall that had a mahogany console directly underneath it with several framed pictures on top. All of them featured Esmeralda and a man of similar age who was much stockier. There were a few on a beach, one on a cruise ship, some in casinos, among others.

One, in particular, caught my eye though. I grabbed it off the console right away and held it out in front of Esmeralda. It was taken outside of the Big Grove, the most popular restaurant in Solon, IA.

"There's no way you've been to Solon and don't know my mom. You need to start talking," I said.

Esmeralda looked up at me and her face crumbled from sorrow, guilt, remorse, everything, all at once. She choked for air as I stood impatiently. I wasn't leaving without answers. I had a feeling my father was dead and that Esmeralda, Mom or both had something to do with it until she spoke.

"I am your mother, well" —She cleared her throat— "your biological father."

I was beyond confused. I was lost and I didn't know how to find myself or how to begin finding myself even. I looked over at Faith, who'd collapsed down onto the recliner. She was coursing her fingers through her hair trying to get a grasp on everything as well. Esmeralda seemed to find her bearings from having melted our brains.

"I had to choose. This eye, it made me choose," she said.

She kept talking, but I couldn't focus on her words while simultaneously trying to process what was right in front of me. My father had been hiding out four hours away for my entire life and he wanted nothing to do with me.

"Why? Why didn't you need me?" I asked. I could feel tears on my cheeks, but I didn't care. I hated sounding like every other bastard child who had ever confronted their father, but there was no other question to ask. "You didn't bother to check up on me, not once!"

Esmeralda gestured to herself. "Look at me! Theresa didn't want me around, even if I could've been around." She guided me down to her two seater because I could barely stand on my wobbly legs. "I couldn't deny who I was or who I loved. It would've killed me."

"Dad, I'm gay!" I shouted. I was certain I only called her Dad to hurt her. It didn't. No one would've held anything I said against me at that point. "I would've accepted you, but you didn't give me a chance, did you?"

I wiped my eyes and looked over at Faith. I could've sworn she was trying to blend in with the recliner she was on. Her eyes were shut tight and she was sunk down into it with her arms pressed tight against its rests. I looked back to Esmeralda and narrowed my eyes to slits. "I had to grow up thinking my father ran off to Mexico with a woman because he didn't love me. I guess I got the last bit right."

"Identity aside, I had to leave. Let me explain. You need to know this," Esmeralda said, ignoring my despair.

She sat down in the two seater beside me. I flinched, but didn't get up. Up close, there was no denying that she was my other parent. Any feature I'd previously seen as similar enough to attribute to Mom was Esmeralda's entirely. We looked so much alike. It was scary. In hindsight, it was good to know that I could pass as a middle-aged woman in about thirty years, but at the time, I was terrified. That was the only emotion I felt.

"My eye, it allows me to see tunnels that aren't there for anyone else. I stepped into them, good things happened. It led me toward love," she said.

My chest started heaving. I was pissed that she'd used the power correctly from the start. I looked to Faith, nothing. She might as well have been the damn chair she was sitting in.

"And one love only. After I chose Edgar, things became dangerous for Theresa because I still loved her, only in a different way." Even as Esmeralda started breaking down, she wore a pinched expression while shaking her head and shrugging often. Those were obvious tells that she didn't expect to be believed, but wanted to speak her piece nonetheless. There was no way I would've believed her, had I not experienced it for myself. I wondered if she suspected I had the same power. "The tunnels made me choose whenever two people I loved were near. I couldn't choose Edgar, knowing you'd lose a mother, but I couldn't choose her and lose the love of my life. So, we moved far away and it has been dormant ever since."

Esmeralda grabbed my shoulders and tried to embrace me, but I stood up and pushed her away. There was still too much to process. I didn't care how many excuses there were. Her chance to be a parent was seventeen years ago. It was too late for that. I grabbed Faith by the arm and we stormed out of that duplex and into her Audi as fast as my legs could carry us. Esmeralda didn't chase after us. As far as I could tell, she didn't come to the door to watch us drive off either.

#####

I drove the entire way back to Solon in silence. She was speechless and terrified of saying the wrong thing. I'd have been the same. Faith was giving me time to process everything, as much as I needed. She knew I'd speak to her eventually. She was the only one I could speak to about this.

I spent the entire drive reflecting on Esmeralda's warning about my eye making me choose one love. I wondered what would happen if Saylor and Juice crossed paths around me at Homecoming. I wondered how the eye could possibly know which one I'd choose until I remembered it was pretty close and well-connected to my brain.

Still, I somewhat regretted not sticking around to ask Esmeralda questions to find out for sure because now, I was on my own. If I wanted to make a more conscious choice, the only thing that made sense was going through spires near whoever they popped up around, which I'd done with Juice and things had progressed between us as a result.

Meanwhile, they'd slowed with Saylor. Had I been hoping for eye spasms around the wrong person? I spent less time with Saylor and I only had myself to blame. At the same time, eye spasms weren't going to change him. They weren't going to make him into the assertive man I needed him to be. Only he could do that.

I dropped Faith off at her house, said a quick goodbye and drove Miley home. I opened Snapchat and read Juice's message once I laid down in bed.

Juice: Leave your door unlocked tonight.  >:P

I never locked my doors, but the suggestion excited me. Mom had already gone to work, which was a blessing for another reason entirely. Neither of us were ready for the fury I was going to unleash on her. I needed time to process everything, for my mind to craft some semblance of a productive conversation I could have with the woman who lied to me for seventeen years. More than that, I needed to blow off steam or Juice. I let master know that my house was his whenever he wanted to come over, but I fell asleep before he responded.

I woke up the next morning laying in Juice's strong arms and he didn't expect anything from me. Either he had tunnel vision for taking my virginity or the radio silence during my St. Louis misadventure had made him appreciate me. It could've been either. Jerome respected me most when I got mad and fought back. This time, he was selfless.

He treated me like his superior before he left.