I could feel it, oh the emptiness and despair, the pain and humiliation that cuts inside of you, that rots you from your bones. I’d never felt a thing like it. I’d never felt so lonely and awful in all my life.

The room was silent, then, entirely, nary even the buzzing of a mosquito. I couldn’t believe it, my daddy acting that way. Pop, who was my hero, my favorite person in all the world, the man I’d always wanted to be like, who I’d wanted to imitate down to the gold tooth in his mouth ever since I could remember. Pop, who I came all this way for.

“So now, little fella, you know your pop, who he really is,” said Boss Authority. “But didn’t you know all along? Wasn’t it he who left you and your mom to fend for yourselves in that godforsaken town up north? Wasn’t it he who only showed up every year or two, who never bothered to know you, who never bothered enough to be a real daddy? He whose arrogance doomed you, who was so cocky he could not conceive of losing to a little runt like me, that he was willing to bet not only his blood, but yours as well? Who sold you out in a card game? Didn’t you already know he was a scoundrel, a weasel, the worst kind of coward? Haven’t you known it all along?”

Boss Authority laid down a Journey card then, his own Rambling Duke. He looked just like my daddy, he did, same gold tooth, same cocky grin on his face. But on Boss Authority’s card, there was something ghastly to him too. The swagger was all menace, a bully on the prowl, his smile cruel, his eyes glistering with hatred. Blood all over his hands. This Rambling Duke was nothing but a villain, a swine, and a braggart, a dog of the lowest sort. But it was Pop all right, right there in front of me, like the card had flipped him inside out and shown me only his heart, how he really was.

“So tell your tale, boy,” said Boss Authority. “Tell the story of the daddy who betrayed you, the father who let you down, the husband who abandoned his wife, the man who had everything and let it all ride on a game of cards. Tell it to me and tell it to yourself and tell it to everyone in this room. But most importantly, tell it to him, right over there.” And he pointed with his long metal clockwork finger at my daddy, at Pop, weeping there in the corner.

“I’m so sorry, Buddy,” said Pop. “I’m so, so sorry for everything.”

Pop couldn’t even look at me. He wouldn’t dare even raise his eyes to mine. Pop was broken, and Boss Authority had used me to do it.

“No,” I said. “That ain’t my story. That’s not how it goes at all.”

But I was lying. That’s the story the cards told now. I couldn’t say another thing about it.