Significant Others Read Online Free Page B

father all over again. After mourning my father, he turned to his past with a vengeance and became obsessed with finding out all he could about his real father. Did I think it strange that my brother redecorated his condo to recapture memories of his father after all these years? Yes. Might I have gone to the same lengths to preserve my heritage if our situations had been reversed? Quite possibly.
    “You still miss him a lot, don’t you?” Donny asked. “So do I.” The sadness was still fresh for both of us, even a year later, I thought, as I wiped the tears from my face, blurring the moisture I saw sparkling in Donny’s eyes. I guess my mother wasn’t the only one affected by the anniversary of my father’s death. Stanley Palladino had not been a big man in stature, but his presence in our world had loomed larger than life.
    Donny took the picture from my hand and placed the silver filigreed frame back on the granite countertop.
    “Hey, we’d better not let Mom see us like this,” Donny whispered. “I don’t want her falling apart again.”
    Donny was a strapper, probably the biggest baseball player in history; so big, in fact, he could have played defensive football. He reminded me of a big stuffed bear I once saw at the Museum of Natural History in Miami. But Donny was not all brawn. He was also sensitive and very smart. Not many people knew that about my brother. Donny didn’t just slide through college on a baseball scholarship. He majored in botany, and his favorite pastime was puttering in his garden in Atlanta and ensuring that Jackson and his girls drank in everything he could teach them about tending indigenous plants.
    No one would have guessed that “The Slugger” grew tomatoes, green peppers, and cantaloupe in a compost heap behind his backyard. And no one would have suspected that beneath that bulk beat a soft, sensitive, and generous heart. I wished I could patch that gaping hole left by the loss of his real father, but I couldn’t. No one could.
    Donny walked over to the couch and began turning the pages of another one of the World War II picture books.
    “My dad was a hero,” Donny stated, “like the guys in this book. Do you think he would have been proud of me? I hope I’ve made him proud. I’m the only thing left of him in this world, except my kids.”
    “Oh, Donny,” I sighed, facing him. “How could you not? You’re the best person I know. Whoever had a hand in making you must have been pretty great. He certainly did something right.”
    “Then why did he have to die?” Donny bit his lip, and I could tell he was close to tears again. He tried to blink them away. At that moment, he looked as young and vulnerable as that eight-year-old in the photograph.
    “I wish I could answer that.”
    “And how come Mom never wants to talk about him?”
    “I guess it’s too painful to love someone and lose them like that,” I answered quietly.
    “I always thought that if I asked her it would seem disrespectful to Stan—to our dad—I mean. Now that he’s been gone for a year, I have some questions.”
    “I’m not sure now’s the right time,” I cautioned, indicating with a slight turn of my head that my mother was within earshot—right in the next room.
    “Questions only Mom can answer,” Donny persisted. “I wish I could have known him. I wish he could have known my children. Do you think they—the ones who’ve passed on—can see what’s going on down here?” And now I knew he was talking about both dads.
    That question was easier to answer. I talked to my dad, my dead dad, all the time, in my mind. His presence was tangible. I felt him looking down on me, watching out for me, watching over me, from wherever he was. I guessed Heaven. Heaven would be lucky to get a good man like Stanley Palladino. I didn’t think that made me crazy. It would have made me crazy if I couldn’t have reached out to him. I still asked his advice, and I thought I heard him answer.
    “I