Re: quicklog, hotel: graham & jake
[Jake thought it was real simple. Vegas was a stretch of roads and highways, a tangle of traffic arteries away from real small, sleepy Georgia. He didn't think the reach of one woman in Vegas got that far, where the movies in the theater were six months out of date and two at a time, and the school taught abstinence for sex ed. He didn't think much of God either, but God didn't listen when Jake made his prayers at night. God had made him the reason his mom had been out in Vegas, when she could have gone to college any place all over the damn country. God didn't listen to the damp-palmed fears, or make him any close to normal.]
You didn't protect me. You sent me off someplace else. You weren't there for any of it. [And Graham was stuck in his world of seedy underbelly and criminals who ran the world. Maybe it was small, real small, but Graham hadn't been there none for the therapists with their offices filled with small plastic furniture and patient, expectant looks. He hadn't been there when Jake was getting his head flushed some, and then when Jake was trying to play football, even if he was two inches too small. He hadn't been a father, and maybe that woman could find anyplace. Jake doubted it, but Jake doubted the man in the plaid stronger than he thought anything real.
But he wasn't expecting that. Jake stared. Flat out stared, because how in the hell Graham had a baby, he didn't know. Who, he wanted to say, but the words got stuck, like a folded piece of paper in his throat and he stared some more.]
What? [And half-sister or not, Jake didn't consider that family. Family was around for the birthdays and Christmases, family knew if you had a bad day or a good one. That baby belonged to Graham, and Graham wasn't family.]
You got a baby? [And all of that crap about protecting him, about leaving him in Georgia, scared as all hell of what happened to his mom, waiting for his daddy to come on back and get him, being laughed at because he didn't talk and when he did, he talked weird. None of that meant shit. Graham was starting over.]