“I’ll be goddamned.”

“Would you like to speak with an emotional counselor?” she offered.

“What? Fucking no, I just— Sorry. It’s fine. What else can you tell me? Are there any other weird neurological things in my report?” Anything that might explain the visions, if his mother also shared them.

Apparently not. The woman went through a bunch of results with him, but aside from a predisposition for anxiety and depression, Casey’s brain tested deceptively normal.

“And of course those are very, very common across the board,” the data chick said. “And depression and anxiety are also strongly influenced by environmental factors.”

“Sure.”

A pause. “Are you all right, Casey?”

“Yeah, I’m cool.”

“Well, our thirty minutes are just about up. Have I answered all of your questions?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Great.”

Yeah, fucking great. You just ripped a huge fucking hole through my goddamn family.

“Now, when your reports arrive in the mail, don’t be surprised if you feel overwhelmed. A lot of it’s very technical, but if you go to our website, we have tools to help you make sense of . . .” She launched into her closing spiel, and Casey tuned out, peering around his room. Staring at the wall he’d shared with Vince, and trying to conceive how it was that they didn’t share the one fucking thing he’d always trusted they had in common. Their mom. The one thing that had bound them together enough to even lure Casey back here in the first place . . .

He mumbled a half-assed thanks and a good-bye when prompted, and ended the call.

“Fuck me.”

Casey wandered out of his room, numb, and dropped onto one of the kitchen chairs. How in the fuck was he supposed to break this to Vince? Tell the guy that he’d spent the past decade watching the heartbreaking mental decline of a woman who wasn’t even his real goddamn mother?

No matter how Casey tried to word it, all that came echoing back was a big fat tangle of confusion.

He looked up as Nita entered the kitchen. She’d always been like an aunt to him and Vince—their next-door neighbor and childhood babysitter. She’d also been a way sterner taskmaster than their mom, probably because she’d had the energy to be. Dee Grossier, on the other hand, had seemed forever on the verge of a nervous breakdown after their dad took off. To be fair, Casey and Vince hadn’t exactly been the easiest boys to raise. She’d been on a first-name basis with half the nurses in the Elko ER, for Christ’s sake.

But Nita Robles was made of sturdier stuff, physically and mentally. She was a deceptively warm, soft, stocky woman, and the glittery blouses she favored belied the thick skin hiding underneath. She’d been left by her husband a few years before Dee had, and they’d bonded over that. In time Casey had come to learn that if he fucked up anything especially bad, it was best to tell Nita first. She’d come down on you hard, but she wouldn’t fall to pieces crying like his mom had. Plus she was way better at relaying the news that you’d, say, burned down the neighbor’s shed, in a way that wouldn’t throw Dee over the edge.

Casey’s phone was still in his hand, and he couldn’t guess how long he’d been sitting there, shell-shocked. He ought to be over the fucking moon—and he would be, in time. But that shit about his brother . . .

Half brother. Just like you always thought.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Nita said, uncorking a bottle of red wine at the counter.

“I just talked to the DNA people. The company I sent that test off to.”

She froze with a glass in her hand, gaze glued to his face. “Oh?”

He nodded.

She filled the glass nearly to the brim and carried it to the table.

He managed to crack a smile. “You gonna get drunk, Nita?”

“I was going to enjoy a little taste while I watched the news, but I think maybe you could use a bit more than that.” She slid it over.

He shook his head and pushed it back. “I got too much to wrap my head around just now.”

Nita took a sip, swiveling the glass around by the stem. “I take it the news wasn’t good. About you having the dementia gene.”

Hearing her say it aloud, Casey snapped out of his stupor, sitting up straight. Of course that was what mattered most. His entire perception of his childhood and his family was fucked way up, but it wasn’t the most important news. He wasn’t going to go crazy. He had a motherfucking future.

“Fuck it,” he muttered, and stood. He grabbed a second glass from the cabinet and filled it for himself, sat back down across from her. “Fucking cheers,” he said, holding it up.

Looking mystified, she clinked it with hers. “This some kind of gallows humor?”

He took a deep drink, wincing, and shook his head again. “No. No, it was good news. I don’t have the markers for dementia. Mom does. I don’t. Neither does Vince.”

Her shoulders dropped in almighty relief. “Jesus, Casey.” She crossed herself, then immediately reached across the table and slapped his arm. “Why didn’t you say so? And why do you look so rattled? Actually, wait—let’s let the good news sink in first.”

A-fucking-men. He tried to absorb this new state of reality with every cell in his brain. I’m not going crazy. In ten, twenty, thirty years, I’ll be the same person I am now.

What would he have done different, if he’d known this before? He’d first started getting those disturbing episodes when he’d been living in Vegas, counting cards. He’d assumed the visions must be the first indication that he was going nuts, as his mom had. That had been the first sign of her decline, after all—sudden spacey spells, mumbled nonsense.

After that, his priorities had shifted. To make money while having fun had always been his life’s main focus, and while card counting had accomplished that on a small scale, there was one thing he found far, far more compelling than gambling, and indeed more compelling than money. And so he’d pursued it, and in the end banked himself more cash than he ever could have in the casinos, working on a team. And fuck that it was felony-level illegal, because if he got caught, he’d suffer, what? Five, ten years of a sentence, maybe, before his brain floated off into the ether. So fuck consequences, fuck the future. Fuck everything outside of doing what fascinated him, and enjoying every cent it brought in.

Except now . . .

Maybe he’d known all along, it was time to get out of that scene. Time to accept that the future did matter—a terrifying, exhilarating relief, nearly too much to process. He’d spent so long living his life as though it were about to end, the possibilities that this news had opened were overwhelming. He could make commitments now, sure, but he had fuck-all clue if he was capable of keeping them, of offering them.

He slowed his racing thoughts, pictured Abilene and the baby. If they were his future, he couldn’t say, but he was free to find out. Free to fall in love and have a family, if he was ready for it. Big-ass if.

“Motherfucker.” He couldn’t even believe it. Best news of his life. News that he still had a life.

“I ought to smack you for the cussing,” Nita said, “but I’m too relieved to care.”

“Before we get carried away with the celebrating, there was some bad news, along with the good. Unexpected news, at any rate.”

“So spill—” She paused when Dee’s voice drifted in from the den, needing something or other—the channel changed, a glass of water, the ceiling fan switched on or off. When she wasn’t predicting certain doom, her worries were pretty simple. Nita stood and cast Casey a look, one that told him this conversation wasn’t over, merely paused.

He found his hand in his pocket, worrying the edges of his lighter. He took out the Zippo, flicked it open and closed. He’d been doing that since he was a kid. It soothed him when he had shit on his mind. The clink of the lid popping up, the snick of the wheel, the metallic snap as he flipped it shut again. Twice he’d had the thing taken to a jeweler to get the hinge replaced. It had seen a lot of worries in the past twenty-plus years.