“No, I wouldn’t. Do you know what I’d give to be in your shoes? My pa and Matt still alive, no matter how long it had been since I’d seen them?”
The words kept coming out of Dean’s mouth even though he knew he shouldn’t say them. “And do you know how many times I’ve wished we could switch?”
Grady looked at him like he was a cold-hearted fool. “You don’t mean that.”
Dean shook his head, everything breaking inside of him that he’d held together for so many years. “If it had been your pa who lived, he would have sent for you long ago, you know he would have.”
Of course now he knew that Pa had sent for them, but it was hard to change his way of thinking after so many years. Besides, if Pa really cared so much he could’ve come back himself, no matter what Ma said.
“And Alec… it’s the not knowing that hurts the worst. Probably he’s dead, and I’ll never know, but that one tiny speck of hope chews away at me till I’m like to go crazy thinking about it. At least you know what happened to Matt. You know he’s not coming back. You don’t have to go back and forth wondering if he died somewhere all alone or whether he’s turned into such a terrible person he can’t even be bothered to let his family know he’s alive.”
His voice was ragged, as close to tears as he ever got, so he clamped his mouth shut. He was not going to cry. He wasn’t going to run, either, much as he wanted to right then.
He was not his pa.
Grady looked at him, that steady look he had like he could see right inside a person. “Guess I never thought of that,” he said finally.
“Wish I hadn’t,” Dean managed to say.
“It doesn’t make you a bad person.”
“I think it might.”
Grady shook his head. “I’ve done a lot of thinking over the past eight years, too, you know. Used to be I thought my pa hung the moon. And I’d still do nearly anything to have him back. But I wonder, sometimes, what he was thinking when he left. How he could ever break up our family like that. Ever since I married Lena and we had Jack… I can’t ever imagine leaving them.”
I enjoyed this story very much. I relate to it in a variety of ways, several of which are, tangential but my liking of it is real. I was raised in Nebraska, though on a farm. I’ve had, indeed I have, decisions pushed on me by circumstance, that seem to have no “proper” choice: some gain, some loss with any decision. I’ve written a story, much, much different, with the same title, which is what got me to read yours. Turned out that, after reading yours, I’ve realized that the two stories have much in common, in spite of their differences. Still, the core of my response to your story is, well done. It moved me.