“She left me twenty-four years ago because she was pregnant with another son. With my son.” His words paralyze me. They blow through my mind and rattle against the sides of my skull. They make my head throb to the point that my eyes water from the pain beating behind them. “But . . .” I blubber. “Braden and I . . . we're the same age,” is the only coherent string of words that I can wrangle together. “You're six months older than him, Tyler.”
