Yeah, fucking great. You just ripped a huge fucking hole through my goddamn family.
“Now, when your reports arrive in the mail, don’t be surprised if you feel overwhelmed. A lot of it’s very technical, but if you go to our website, we have tools to help you make sense of . . .” She launched into her closing spiel, and Casey tuned out, peering around his room. Staring at the wall he’d shared with Vince, and trying to conceive how it was that they didn’t share the one fucking thing he’d always trusted they had in common. Their mom. The one thing that had bound them together enough to even lure Casey back here in the first place . . .
He mumbled a half-assed thanks and a good-bye when prompted, and ended the call.
“Fuck me.”
Casey wandered out of his room, numb, and dropped onto one of the kitchen chairs. How in the fuck was he supposed to break this to Vince? Tell the guy that he’d spent the past decade watching the heartbreaking mental decline of a woman who wasn’t even his real goddamn mother?
No matter how Casey tried to word it, all that came echoing back was a big fat tangle of confusion.
He looked up as Nita entered the kitchen. She’d always been like an aunt to him and Vince—their next-door neighbor and childhood babysitter. She’d also been a way sterner taskmaster than their mom, probably because she’d had the energy to be. Dee Grossier, on the other hand, had seemed forever on the verge of a nervous breakdown after their dad took off. To be fair, Casey and Vince hadn’t exactly been the easiest boys to raise. She’d been on a first-name basis with half the nurses in the Elko ER, for Christ’s sake.
But Nita Robles was made of sturdier stuff, physically and mentally. She was a deceptively warm, soft, stocky woman, and the glittery blouses she favored belied the thick skin hiding underneath. She’d been left by her husband a few years before Dee had, and they’d bonded over that. In time Casey had come to learn that if he fucked up anything especially bad, it was best to tell Nita first. She’d come down on you hard, but she wouldn’t fall to pieces crying like his mom had. Plus she was way better at relaying the news that you’d, say, burned down the neighbor’s shed, in a way that wouldn’t throw Dee over the edge.
Casey’s phone was still in his hand, and he couldn’t guess how long he’d been sitting there, shell-shocked. He ought to be over the fucking moon—and he would be, in time. But that shit about his brother . . .
Half brother. Just like you always thought.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Nita said, uncorking a bottle of red wine at the counter.
“I just talked to the DNA people. The company I sent that test off to.”
She froze with a glass in her hand, gaze glued to his face. “Oh?”
He nodded.
She filled the glass nearly to the brim and carried it to the table.
He managed to crack a smile. “You gonna get drunk, Nita?”
“I was going to enjoy a little taste while I watched the news, but I think maybe you could use a bit more than that.” She slid it over.
He shook his head and pushed it back. “I got too much to wrap my head around just now.”
Nita took a sip, swiveling the glass around by the stem. “I take it the news wasn’t good. About you having the dementia gene.”
Hearing her say it aloud, Casey snapped out of his stupor, sitting up straight. Of course that was what mattered most. His entire perception of his childhood and his family was fucked way up, but it wasn’t the most important news. He wasn’t going to go crazy. He had a motherfucking future.
“Fuck it,” he muttered, and stood. He grabbed a second glass from the cabinet and filled it for himself, sat back down across from her. “Fucking cheers,” he said, holding it up.
Looking mystified, she clinked it with hers. “This some kind of gallows humor?”