I could let them show, but I wouldn't.
I gave him a hearty clap on the back as I embraced him and worked fervently to choke back the tears that were stinging the backs of my eyes.
"What are you doing here, son?"
Son.
He'd called me that a lot when I’d been a kid, and every time I’d seen him after leaving Eden for good. It had always given me this strange sense of pride… like if he had chosen to have children, he would've wanted them to be like me. It was a stretch, I knew, because he'd probably only ever meant it as a casual title and he likely called other people the very same thing.
But I’d gotten really good at pretending. My life was pretty much one big lie. I was supposed to love all the things about my life including my fancy apartment that overlooked Central Park, the expensive car in the building’s garage that I never drove, the parent-approved women I was expected to date so I could choose one to marry and have perfect babies with, and the job crunching numbers that years at college in New York and graduate school at Harvard had prepared me for.
One thing I wasn’t good at lying about was numbers and my love for them, especially because numbers made problems and solutions so black-and-white. A classmate had once joked about my brain not understanding the concept of gray. The reality was, he'd been more right about that than I wanted to admit.
So yeah, I pretended Uncle Curtis was calling me “son” because he meant it like I was actually his kid.
"Just wanted to come and see how you're doing, old man," I said. While that part was true, it included a bit of a white lie too. I was actually here because my mother was convinced her older brother was having money problems when it came to the ranch and had sweet-talked me into going to Wyoming to find out if that was the case or not. My mother hadn't told my uncle about her suspicions and while I wasn't happy about having to lie to him, I also didn't want to give him the impression that he wasn't the fully capable man he'd always been.
Because he was.
It was just that business had changed, people had changed. The days of handshakes as a way of agreeing to do business were over. A man's word wasn't what it used to be, not even in a place like Eden. My uncle hadn't learned that yet, and part of me didn't want him to. It was a harsh lesson that’d been thrust upon me "that night."
So that meant I'd have to find some casual way of discovering if his business was in trouble like my mother suspected. I was certain that once I got him to admit that, he’d let me take a look at his books. He'd always been insanely proud of my accomplishments and more than once before I’d left for college, he’d said there'd be a place for me in helping him run his business. But I'd been on a quest back then… the same quest I was still on. Sadly, for reasons I didn't understand, I needed more than just his approval.
Not to mention I didn't know a quarter horse from any other kind of horse. The most I was sure about was that they all had hooves.
I mentally cringed when I realized where that particular thought had come from. Someone had said it to me in jest a long time ago.
Xavier.
It wasn't until my uncle said, "Now don't you go shaking your head at me, son,” that I realized that shaking my head was exactly what I was doing. I’d promised myself the minute I agreed to this crazy plan that I wouldn't let the young man who'd betrayed me and my family so long ago enter into my thoughts. But, not surprisingly, there he was.
"You are staying with me, you hear me?" my uncle asked as he waved his finger in my face. "I've still got your room all set up."
I laughed and tried to dismiss thoughts of Xavier and the instant rage his memory had brought up. I was here for Uncle Curtis. Just Uncle Curtis. No revisiting the past, no wishing things had been different, no wondering what had happened to the boy I'd followed around like a stray dog looking for its master.
"Yes, sir," I said with a grin that required a little more force this time, considering my mind was still brimming with thoughts of a certain son of a bitch who had no right to any real estate in my brain anymore.
Uncle Curtis seemed satisfied and embraced me once again.
"Excuse me, Curtis," a voice said from behind me.
It was a deep, rumbly voice that sent shivers of awareness down my spine.