Free The You I Never Knew by Susan Wiggs Page A

rolled down the window. “What?”
    “That doesn’t mean we’re not telling him.”
    She leaned back against the headrest, closing her eyes. “Damn. I was hoping for a quick getaway.”
    “No such luck, Sugar. Tell him. I want him to know exactly who I am.”
    “But—” She opened her eyes. “All right. I’ll tell him.”
    “When?”
    “I’ll… figure out the right time. Sam, I’ve got a lot on my mind. My father isn’t well, and the next few days might be pretty difficult.”
    He stared at her for a long time. She couldn’t read him. Didn’t know him anymore. Yet that stare was as compelling now as it had been the first time she had met him. “All right. But I want him to know, Michelle. Soon.”

Chapter 8
    C ody felt like a cockroach in his grandfather’s house—gross, unwelcome, and out of place. After shoveling horseshit at Lonepine all day, he wanted to shower for about nine hours and then crash facedown in his bed.
    Instead, they were having dinner with Legendary Actor Gavin Slade. That was how Gavin was always referred to: Legendary Actor. Elder Statesman of Western Classics. In capital letters, like the guy was a walking headline or something. Lately, instead of showing him with his arm around some bimbo with big tits, the fanzines showed him alone on a horse, his cowboy hat pulled low over his brow. The headlines announced that he’d been in touch with aliens.
    Cody liked the bimbo pictures better. It was pretty bizarre, thinking about his grandfather getting laid by women younger than his own mom, but it was even worse thinking about his grandfather dying of kidney failure. Mostly, he tried not to think of Gavin at all. It wasn’t like Gavin thought about
him
all the time.
    Cody had tried his best to weasel out of dinner, but he hadn’t gained much sympathy from his mom. After crunching that cowpoke’s trailer last night, he’d used up most of his goodwill points with her. Not that he had many to begin with. Since last summer she’d been driving him nuts, hovering over him, waiting to pounce the second she caught him doing something she disapproved of.
    He’d tried a minor whine—
I’m too tired, I worked like a dog today
—but all he’d gained was the Look. That cold jackhammer of a stare still affected him sometimes, although he was getting pretty good at ignoring her lately.
    When he was little, he used to be moved by the Look. He used to want to do just about anything to please her. Little by little over the years, he’d figured out that there was no way to please his perfectionist mother. No way to win a smile that wasn’t sad at the edges, or to get praise from her that didn’t demand things he didn’t even know how to give.
    So he quit trying, and he wasn’t even sure she noticed. She was so lame, she and that loser Brad. All Brad cared about was making the almighty buck and showing off to the world that Cody’s mom was his lady, like she was some sort of bowling trophy with boobs.
    That was the only good thing about coming here. It gave him a break from Brad the loser.
    “Hiya, Cody.” Gavin Slade came into the living room. Unlike Cody, he looked exactly right in his surroundings. Jeans and a red corduroy shirt and cowboy boots. Big white hair that made his eyes look bluer than the heated swimming pool on the patio.
    “Hi.” Cody hadn’t decided what to call his grandfather, and it would be too dorky to ask. Jamming his hands into his pockets, he pretended great interest in the objects arranged on a lighted glass shelf by the wet bar. After a couple of seconds, he didn’t have to fake it anymore.
    Holy shit. He was looking at an Oscar statue.
    “That’s pretty cool,” he said, pointing to it.
    “You think?” Gavin hooked a thumb into his back pocket like he was posing for a picture or something. Except he didn’t even seem conscious of the pose—it was the natural way he held himself. “I guess so. I liked that movie.
The Face of Battle
. You ever see