She doesn’t have much longer. Treatments have stopped due to the continued growth of her cancer and her weakened body just not being strong enough to take anymore. It won’t be long before my entire world falls apart.
The least I can do is make the most amazing woman in my life her favorite meal.
Chapter 3
Ignacio
I’m going to hear the beeps of these damn machines for the rest of my life, the soft in and out of forced puffs of air. True to form, my grandfather didn’t have a medical directive. There was no DNR on record when he collapsed a week ago, meaning the doctors had no choice but to put him on a ventilator and perform all sorts of lifesaving tactics.
They didn’t know this abusive, bitter old man probably deserved to die right there in the middle of the grocery store by the canned peaches where he collapsed.
But as much as I feel that in my bones, knowing the end is coming very soon, I still feel a little heartbroken. Not for him, but for the grandfather I should’ve had, for the man every boy needs in his life.
He wasn’t always hateful and cold. My mother grew up in a very loving home. He doted on her, treated her like a princess. She could do no wrong in his eyes until she married a Mexican and dishonored her family. His bigotry showed then, and by the time she had a son of her own, they no longer communicated. He wanted no part of her life and in turn, no part of mine, despite living only a handful of miles from each other. Then Dad went off the deep end, and he ended up with her spawn.
Maybe I should be grateful that he didn’t force me into foster care, but from the way I grew up, I have no doubt that probably would’ve been the better option for me. He made sure I knew daily how much my dad ruined her life before ending it.
The injustices I suffered from the age of six and up was the deciding factor in why I decided long ago to never have children. I scrub my hands over my face, not letting my mind go there. I can only handle one damn thing at a time right now, and as I glare at the weak, feeble old man in the bed, I will each forced breath from the ventilator to be his last.
The time doesn’t come until the early morning hours, where despite the machines breathing for him, his heart stops on its own. I watch the line on the machine begin to flatten before it finally remains solid.
I’m sure the pits of Hell are opening up to welcome him home, and as awful as it sounds, I don’t have a tear to shed for him. He hated me when I was born and every day since. Maybe now he’ll find a little peace not having to walk the same earth as the son of the man who destroyed his entire world.
Staff charge in to turn off the machines, and I can only sit in the corner and wait for them to finish. One asks if I want a few minutes alone, but I decline. I’ve given enough of my time to the old bastard, but even though I know I need to stand up and walk away for good, I wait for the orderly responsible for taking the bodies wherever they go after they expire to leave, spending a few more minutes alone in the room once it has been cleared out.
I need to call Wren with all the questions I won’t get answers to on my own, but I’m not a big enough asshole to do that this early in the morning.
For some reason, when I walk out of the hospital for the last time, I feel freer than I have in a long time. Maybe because when I showed up, I thought my last-living relative was soon to be gone, and even though I hated the man, that blood connection still meant something deep down. Seeing Tinley with that boy yesterday changed everything. Even in my anger, I know that kid is mine. I just need proof before I act.
***
Even with as anxious as I am to get answers, my exhaustion wins out. I only meant to close my eyes for an hour or so until I was certain Wren was at the office and able to work his computer magic, but it turned into passing out for six hours on the couch.
I wake with a start, lungs and mouth gasping for breath with the dream that haunted me so often many years ago. I haven’t had the dream of Tinley walking away with tears streaking her face in nearly a decade, but being back home, seeing her again, has brought that demon right back. Only the one I just woke up from included a crying baby in her arms as she left me for good. Still unable to get the sounds of their pain out of my head, I cup my hands over my ears and hum until it goes away, like I did many times in my closet as a child hiding from my drunk grandfather. If I was quiet enough, he’d forget I existed and would wallow in his own pain and misery until he passed out.
When I open my eyes, I busy myself with making a pot of coffee, hoping the tremble in my hands will dissipate as I work. It doesn’t. Of course, it doesn’t. That shake, half anger and half terror will stick around until I have answers. Knowing this, I pull out my phone and call the office.
“What’s up, man? We were just talking about you,” Wren says right as the call picks up.
I don’t doubt they were. The guys at Blackbridge Security gossip more than anyone I’ve ever met.
“I need everything you can find on Tinley Holland.”
Without questions of his own, I hear Wren’s fingers move over his keyboard. I can’t even concern myself with the fact that I’m on speaker phone and there’s no telling how many members of the team are in the room to hear what he’s about to say. I need answers, and as much as I’d like to keep my private shit private, I know they’ll be talking about it the second I hang up. At least this way they’ll get the information straight instead of through whispers of half-truths and exaggerations.
I hear whispering, but it isn’t loud enough for me to decipher.
“Tinley Renee Holland,” Wren begins before giving me her social security number, date of birth, and her home address, one I’m intimately familiar with. “She’s currently employed at Big Freight in Houston. She currently has fourteen college credits from El Centro Community College in Dallas, all general studies. She left her previous employer, another discount store, eleven months ago.”
“And that’s it?”
“She has a son, almost thirteen years old, named Alex,” he adds.
“Is that his full name?” I ask, the palm of my hand growing so sweaty I nearly drop my damn phone.
“Alejandro Cooper Holland,” Wren says, and I can tell he’s reading from the screen in front of him.
A cough or a gasp, some sound of shock, filters through the phone, but barely registers. Wren has just confirmed what I suspected but wouldn’t fully allow myself to believe over the last eighteen hours.
“Hey, isn’t your middle name Alejandro?” someone asks, but I end the call before I can be bombarded with a million other questions.
Alejandro Cooper Holland.
Tinley knew my middle name from making fun of my driver’s license photo. I never told her I hated it. Never confessed that it was my dad’s first name, and one that will haunt me until I die, a little piece of the man that stole my mother from me.
Cooper is her father’s name making her brother a junior. CJ, as the younger Holland is known, was an acquaintance of mine before his sister moved to town. He was always down for trouble despite being several years older, but that friendship crumbled when I began to show interest in his younger sibling. I was good enough to get high and steal with, but when it came to Tinley, he didn’t want me anywhere near her. He only stuck around town for a couple months after her family moved here thankfully.