Over 35 years ago, Daniel bought his high school grilfriend Penny a pregnanacy test. He gave her a note asking her to circle Yes or No to tell him the results. She circled Yes, then disappearned from his life. "Life never gives you shit without taking someting in payment." Now, after a hard life that has left him confined to an assisted living center and battling COPD, a woman named Alicia claims she is the daughter Daniel thought Penny had aborted when she left him. "Life never gives you shit without taking someting in payment." As they await the DNA test results to determine whether or not Daniel and Alicia are related, old truths are explosed and new bonds are formed. But always, Daniel remembers the promise of his abusive father ... "Life never gives you shit without taking someting in payment."
Genre: FICTION / GeneralIt's highest point was when it was ranked 164,805 of all paperbacks on Amazon.com on April 25, 2023. Audio sales peaked at 46,071 and the ebook's highest rank was 253,165 of all Kindle books. The book was released wide, so it's available on multiple platforms that do not show sales ranks.
Light filtered into the Community Room through the slats of venetian blinds, leaving bars of sunlight on the scarred table of faux wood. There were bars of light across the face of the man sitting in a gray metal folding chair at the table, but Daniel Fisher didn’t care. He had spent too much time in places where he did not see any sunlight, so his small movements back and forth, letting the light and shadow slide over his eyes like the flickering of an old film strip, was pleasant. He wished for a cigarette, felt the irritable, weak substitute of a nicotine patch on his shoulder, and inhaled deeply of the oxygen coming from the tubes that ran from the little green tank at his side to his nostrils.
He waited.
He picked at a scratched heart on the table with his uneven fingernails. The initials in the heart were KH and AA and he wondered if they were carved by his fellow residents. Why would retirees in an assisted living center still be carving love notes into the fake wood of a cheap table? He turned his attention to his picking finger and its mates and the hand that connected them. His flesh was still browned from years of outdoor work. There were hard yellowish circles of calluses on the palms beneath the fingers and half-moons in the webbing of his thumbs. His fingertips were forever stained yellow from nicotine. And then there were the signs of age -- the dryness and wrinkles, scars from old cuts and scrapes and burns. So much of his story was there in his hands, Daniel mused.
He heard her before he saw her. Her heels clopped on the tiles of the floor with all the staccato rhythm of a two-legged horse. So unlike the sneakers or soft-soled white shoes the nurses and attendants wore. The shoes paused at the wide doorway of the Community Room and Daniel heard Nurse Medina giving her spiel about how the residents enjoyed gathering here for games, television, and socialization.
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Portuguese
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Already translated.
Translated by Victor Oliveira
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Spanish
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Already translated.
Translated by Carlos Diaz
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