Page 75 of Half Baked

“Okay.”

“Really?”

I started to repeat my answer, then stopped. “I’m shaken, but I’m determined to pursue this to the end.”

“Even if you keep finding out things you don’t like?”

I twisted in the seat to face him. “Like you said, no one is purely good or bad. We’re all shades of gray. Who am I to judge if my mother had more gray than I realized?”

“But it still hurts,” he said.

“Yeah. It hurts, but my mother was more than a mother and a schoolteacher. She was human with wants and dreams, just like everyone else. I just didn’t happen to know what they were.” I sat back in the seat and drew in a breath. “I think that’s what really hurts—that there was so much I didn’t know about her.”

“It’s like I said earlier. We all have secrets, and parents especially want to hide them from their kids.” He looked like it was tearing him in two to say so, and I remembered what he’d said earlier about my mother having the right motivations.

“What’s your secret, Noah?” I asked, biting my lower lip in anticipation of his refusal to tell me.

He took a moment, then said, “My father is dying. Stage four prostate cancer. Supposedly, he only has six to twelve months to live.” He cringed. “Well, I guess five to eleven now.”

I gasped. “Oh, Noah. I’m so sorry.”

“I’ve tried pretending it’s a non-issue because of how messed up my feelings about him are. I’ve washed my hands of him, so what do I care?”

“He’s still your father.”

“I know, but I’ve let him hurt me too many times to count. I’m not letting him hurt me again.”

“But you’re hurting anyway,” I pointed out.

“Yeah.” The defeat in his voice broke my heart.

He slowed down as he turned into a rundown-looking neighborhood. “But I’m not giving him what he wants. I’m not moving back to Memphis and groveling at his feet. I’m living my own life, and I’m not letting him or my mother tell me how to live it.”

“That’s why your mom was so upset to meet me. She wants you home ASAP, and I’m standing in the way of that.”

“No.” He shook his head in frustration. “She wants me back regardless, but yeah, she feels like there’s a ticking clock now.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, touching his arm. “I wish you’d told me.”

He ran a hand over his head. “You’re right. I should have, but he made me swear not to tell anyone, and it felt like telling you was just one more piece of proof that I wasn’t an honorable man. He gave me an ultimatum—come home or he’d disinherit me”

“Noah! That’s terrible.”

“Just more of his mind games, but I never gave it a moment of consideration. I don’t want his money. Not one penny. I’m my own man, and this is just helping me prove that.”

“And that’s part of the reason your mother wants you to move home?”

“Honestly, I’m not sure she even knows about that part.” He was quiet for a moment. “I thought I could shove it into the background and ignore it, but all I really did was shut everything down. Including you.” He gave me an awkward smile. “Sorry.”

“Noah, we’ll never work if you hide things like that from me.”

“But you have your own shit to juggle without adding mine to the pile.”

“That’s what relationships are for.” I grinned through teary eyes. “Sharing each other’s shit.”

He let out a strangled laugh. “I haven’t read anything worded quite like that in any of the relationship books I’ve been reading.”

My jaw dropped. “You’ve been reading relationship books?”

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