Page 15 of Shephard

“Goddamn it,” Hunter called after him. “Don’t run out like this.”

“Let him go,” I told him. “We can’t do this anyway. Pops is right. We are worthless.” Now I was laughing.

“No!” My mother never yelled. Not really. She was kind and gentle, caring and nurturing. But right now, she was furious with all of us. But she was also terrified. “You don’t understand. Your father has terminal cancer and was given less than six months to live.”

The news wasn’t anything that I’d expected. At all.

I honestly wasn’t certain how to react either. I’d never been considered a warm person under any circumstances.

The three of us were all military trained, each in different branches. All three of us had followed a mercenary path after leaving our operations. And all three of us were damaged souls. I wasn’t entirely certain we would be good with people at this point. We’d spent so much of our lives behind enemy lines or entirely on our own to complete our missions.

That was the likeness we shared.

I walked closer, pulling our sobbing mother into my arms. “I’m sorry, Mom. I wish I’d known.” I was staring at Jagger who at least had stopped and turned around.

As both of my brothers finally returned, all I could do was sigh.

“Are you certain?” Hunter asked.

“Yes,” Pops finally said while gritting his teeth. “I’ve been nothing but a pincushion for weeks. There’s nothing they can do. I bet you’re glad.” He laughed and walked to his bar.

I noticed he was making four drinks. Not five.

As usual.

I had no right being angry, but it was impossible after all the history not to feel that way. “When do we need to decide?”

“Today. Before you leave.” Pops was very clear in his demands. He wasn’t the kind of man to give anyone an edge.

Or time for that matter.

What I gathered from the conversation was more about reading between the lines. Pops had never been emotional while we were growing up. He rarely showed any feelings other than anger or disappointment. But I noticed the haunted look in his eyes. Perhaps for the first time that I could remember, he was afraid.

I wouldn’t normally give a shit, our last meeting was one of the worst I’d had in my entire adult life, but I felt more than a twinge of compassion. I hadn’t even known I had any left. When you killed as many people as I had, you were forced to lose any feeling at all, or you couldn’t survive.

The big brother. The one the other two were supposed to be able to look up to. I hadn’t been that man for a long time. I’d never believed I owed anything to my family, even though I adored my mother, but at least I could start a conversation amongst men. What we decided was something else. I couldn’t control my brothers, nor did I want to.

And the thought of living in close proximity wasn’t palatable by any means.

“So we talk. That doesn’t mean shit,” I told the entire group.

How sad. My mother looked at me in an eternally grateful way when a huge percentage of the man inside was still ready to walk away.

What a fucked-up family we were.

“First, I need that goddamn drink.”

Jagger had always been the most dramatic of the three of us, even if Hunter was considered a showman. I was the asshole. I liked it that way.

“Yeah, me too,” Hunter told him.

I eyed my father who glared at me with the same mixture of hatred and some emotion I’d never determined as the last time we’d been in the same room. Only then did I head outside. Maybe I’d been placing my thick line in the sand.

Pops left them on the bar, taking his and moving to the opposite side of the room.

The deck was as breathtaking as everything else in and on the house, the wraparound effect seeming as if it was floating in air. The mountains were right there, in your face, majestic masterpieces of Mother Nature. All snowcapped and ready for an adventure. It was strange to see that in Virginia, but it was late October and there’d been an odd blast of cold weather hitting the western part of the state. Another effect of global warming, no doubt.

But I bet it was good for the tourist trade.

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