Of course he had heard the squabble at the front door of his parent’s home, standing just out of sight, listening as always. Although it could hardly be called a squabble. It was more of a mother culling her own young.That slap across this stranger’s face still rung in his ears. They had more in common then he cared to admit in that moment. He was familiar with Maris DeLuca's temper. But perhaps that showed in his willingness to lie to an EMT, saying that he was her brother as they pulled her ragdoll body from the destroyed mustang. He knew what that rejection felt like and he very nearly wanted to pick up the pieces. But...he technically was her brother. Everyone knew about the DiSanno shame, it had very nearly cost Maris her future. She had been promised to his father long before she had become a coquettish and idyllic teenage girl, long before she had become the icy cunt that she was now. Once as a boy while helping his grandfather clean out their attic he'd found an old diary written in a teenage girl’s hand, wistfully expressing a want to love this unborn child. Part of him wanted to believe that it was a mistake, that Maris had never been a loving person. But perhaps if circumstances had been different this woman would have truly been his sibling, and they would have had a loving mother. Together.
But he didn't know her, and he did not know if she had one somewhere. Watching the news sick to her stomach as she saw her child's car totaled. He wondered if they had called any family for her, what they might say when they saw the platinum blonde awkwardly sitting in the far corner of the room. He'd held his grandfather's hand in the hospital as he'd passed, they had told him it would make it easier for the man. But he doubted that would work this time, but was there anything that Lyle did not doubt? He did not doubt art, beauty, and poetry. He did not doubt Lamborghini, he did not doubt the power of a black card. He did not doubt that the iPhone in his hand that very much did not belong to him was vibrating Little One was calling. Did she have a kid?! She was older than him, but he couldn't tell a kid that he'd never met that their mom was passed out and bandaged up, that he didn't know what was coming next. But he also couldn't not tell them that, "Hello?" he croaked out, clearing his throat southern drawl soft as he attempted to speak as if he had some sort of courage "You've reached Maris Evan's phone, this is Lyle DeLuca, a nurse gave me the phone while she is...incapacitated," it was an awkward finish, left hanging uncomfortably in the air, nestled alongside the steady beeping of machinery. This wasn’t him, but at that moment, he was lost in himself and in this town.
