Page 29 of A Little Discovery

Jace starts nodding emphatically next to Scott, but I am confused. Why would my father have any say in what I eat when I’m living here? He didn’t even care when I lived under his roof. So why would he care now? My brain must be more scrambled from the fall than I thought.

“Why does my father have a say in my food?”

The two men in front of me look at me like I’ve said the sky is made of tapioca pudding, but phone guy grabs my knee again before saying, “Scott said yourDaddy,not your father, Lucky. Those are two completely different things.”

Turning to the other two, he tilts his head toward the stairsand says, “Guys, why don’t you head down to the main kitchen and bake us up some cookies while I try to fill Lucky in on some things that we might have overlooked pointing out before moving him in.”

The two of them nod in unison before stomping down the stairs. I hear the door close below which lets me know that me and the phone guy are alone on the top floor. With it being just the two of us now, I grab one of the throw pillows and hug it to my chest and turn to give him my full attention.

“Alrighty then,” I wiggle around a bit to make sure I’m as comfy as I’m going to get. “What did I miss in the introductory course? I can promise, I am an excellent student.”

CHAPTER 20

LUCKY

The guy in front of me chuckles before mirroring my pose, sans pillow, leaning against the other armrest of the sofa to face me. I have a niggling feeling like I should know him… beyond whatever memories I lost from the last week or so. There is something extremely familiar about this guy.

“So what I’m gonna tell you here is something that no one else in the house even knows,” he says as he leans in toward me. “You are the first one under this roof to know this, okay?”

I bounce in my excitement. I love being the first to know about something. I can’tkeepa secret to save my life, but I love hearing them. Nodding emphatically, I wave my hands at him to continue.

“Firstly, since you don’t remember it, my name is Eli.”

I give him a slow nod to acknowledge what he’s said, but that can’t be the secret. He’s purposefully drawing this out, but that’s alright. It’s like a game. Games are fun. I miss games.

“My name is Elliot Hawthorne, but that wasn’t the name I was born with. My full name from before my step-father legally adopted me was Elliot Joseph Grable. I believe you know my birth father?”

How would I… NO WAY!

“You’re one of Gramps’s bastards?!”

I wince as soon as the words are out of my mouth. That woman’s poison has no business coming from my lips.

“I’m so sorry,” I hurry and stammer out. “That d-didn’t come out right. It’s just that my mother… My mother said… for my entire life…”

Eli reaches over and grips my knee to get me to stop with the word vomit apologies. Looking up into his face, he’s smiling. Either he’s got a thing about not liking people in pain, or he really is as nice as he seems.

“I know what your mother thinks of me, Lucky,” he says. “She never did get the point of the whole big sister thing. Her harassment is the reason Mom left Dad and I wasn’t able to play with you anymore. I was seven and you were about four at the time. She made Dad choose between having me in his life or having you.”

So I really did have other kids to play with once upon a time? The relief I feel, knowing that not everything good in my childhood memories was wishful thinking, almost drowns out his next words.

“I was mad at you for a while since you got to spend time with my dad when I couldn’t,” he says, making me sad. I was four. How could I be to blame?

“But Mom broke it down for me. I still had my mom to love me, even though I couldn’t have my dad. Your grandfather was the only one left to show you love, so it wasn’t fair to take that away from you.”

I turn to face the kitchen again. I know I am dealing with a braininjury, but do these things really happen outside of soap operas? It is crazy enough finding out I have an uncle only three years older than I am, but somehow, I just randomly came to be living in his house. This can’t be real. I feel like I must have forgotten something more to the story. He doesn’t seem like he’s finished talking to me.

Eli slides closer on the sofa and pulls me to his side. I don’t fight it. I’m still in shock.

“I am not telling you this to make you feel guilty, Lucky,” he says, kissing the top of my head when I let out a sniffle.

When did I start crying?

“Dad, your grandfather, didn’t want you to know our connection for this very reason. He said you grew up to take on everyone else’s burden but won’t lay your own down. You barely even admit they exist,” Eli says as he gives me a squeeze.

“But, you aren’t alone anymore, Lucky. You have your Uncle Eli to help you carry them. You also have every person in this house, and a few outside of it, whether you want them or not. When you put together a couple Daddies, a Sadist, a switch, a teddy bear, a puppy, a kitten, and a bratty drag queen you can accomplish anything.”

I hiccup a giggle before I pull back to look up into his face. “What do you mean by Daddies? You said before that you didn’t mean my father, but I don’t get it.”

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