“Dad,” Jase said, leaning against the wall of his apartment and glancing to the living room where the slider door was cracked a bit, the night air slipping inside. “We’ve been through this all before.”

“I know, I know, but just hear me out. It’s been rough around here for the past couple o’ weeks. Landlord’s threatening to throw me on the street.” Ed laughed then, the chuckle rolling into a cough aggravated by forty years of cigarettes. “I’m just talkin’ a couple o’ hundred. Maybe three. You know I’ll pay ya back.”

That, Jase didn’t know. He had no idea how much he’d loaned his old man over the years. But in a way, it was payback to a father who had, in his dysfunctional manner, stood by his two sons when their mother had taken off after the loss of a third child, the brother Jase had never known.

Prescott had given up on the man who, as far as he was concerned, had done such a piss-poor job of single parenting. As for their mother, Marian Selby Bridges, child-bride and runaway wife? Neither Jase nor Prescott had ever heard from her. Neither man knew if she was dead or alive, and neither cared. At least she wasn’t calling and begging for money.

At that thought, Jase cringed.

“The old man’s playing you for a patsy,” Prescott had advised a few years back. Prescott had never bought into their father’s “poor me” act, and Edward Bridges’s series of girlfriends who called themselves “Auntie Maureen” or “Auntie Raydeen” or “Auntie Lou” to Edward’s sons had left a sour taste in both boys’ mouths. It wasn’t much of a wonder that Prescott had moved out and married Lena Hendrix, a woman with a firm set of values and a commitment to God, country, and, once she was wed, her husband.

Prescott had offered advice about handling their dad over the years. “You’re enabling him, bro,” Prescott had said during one memorable phone call. Jase had been in his truck, having just met with his father and, yes, “loaning” the old man a couple of hundred bucks. Again. Prescott had called as Jase was driving through the slanting rain to his apartment. At a red light, Jase waited while a man walking a huge dog crossed the street. His cell had been jammed against his ear listening to his brother. Prescott had said, “Stop. Okay?” Jase didn’t respond as the wipers slapped off the fat drops and the streetlight shimmered scarlet against the pavement. “Just don’t give him the cash. He’ll quit calling. Trust me. That’s what I did and he finally took the hint. Hell, I can’t take care of a wife and two kids and Dad, too.”