"Okay." Mark nodded. He looked at the rag in his hands. "Can I say something about the kid, then?"
"Go ahead."
"He's your kid, man." Mark's voice was rough. "I watched you walk that kid up and down the hallway for six months when he had colic. I watched you teach him to ride a bike in the cul-de-sac with your back screwed up from that fall on the job site. I watched you sit through, what, eleven years of Little League where he never once hit the ball. I don't care what some website says. He's your kid. If you let anybody tell you different, including you, I'm going to kick your ass."
Eric looked at his younger brother, sitting on the oil-stained floor with a smear of grease across his nose, and he could not speak, so he nodded, and Mark nodded back, and they went back to work on the truck.
* * *
Telling his mother was harder. He drove to her condo in Sun Lakes on a Wednesday evening, and she made him a grilled cheese, the old way, in a cast-iron pan, and set it in front of him at her little kitchen table with a glass of milk as though he were ten. He told her while she sat across from him with her reading glasses folded in her hands.
She did not look surprised. That was the first thing he noticed. She looked sad, and tired, and very old, but she did not look surprised.