new cars, and feeling nothing sharper than mild curiosity about where they were all headed in such a hurry.
Then on my seventeenth birthday, my father showed up.
Fourteen years, suddenly.
He’d never remarried. Never had other kids.
I hadn’t seen him in person since my twelfth birthday, a fact that hit me harder standing in the driveway than it ever had over the phone.
He put his hand on my shoulder like he’d earned it and walked me out to the driveway. There it was.
Brand new.
“Happy birthday, kid.”
Mom didn’t say a word.
Marcus stood back near the porch railing, hands shoved in his pockets.
My father was smiling straight at me, but he turned his head toward the porch when he said it.
“Now he knows who his real father is.”
Marcus looked down at the porch steps.
My father held the keys out on his
