AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I didn’t know. Honest. She only told me when I told her about you. It was before they adopted me, and it ain’t like I spent a lotta time gettin’ to know ’em before I left for the Army.”
She patted my chest. “You will now.”
“Yeah,” I said, listening to the sounds of a vehicle pulling into my gravel drive. “Showtime.”
We walked outside, my arm slung over Samantha’s shoulders and hers around my waist, and she tucked her hand into my back pocket as Mama K rushed from their rented SUV, attacking us both in a hug. Samantha stepped away to give us a minute and to greet my dad as he got out of the car. I smiled at him as I hugged the only mother who’d ever truly cared about me, who did still, whispering in her ear while she cried quietly, telling her again how sorry I was for keeping them at arm’s length for the last thirty years.
“Oh, Frankie. I dreamed you’d come back to us someday.”
“Thank you,” I said, “for lovin’ me and for not givin’ up on me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
FRANK
“My mom and dad will be here in two days,” Samantha told my parents as she, my dad, and I sat around the table and Mama K busied herself in my kitchen. “I’m excited for you to meet, but I should probably apologize now. They’re kind of weird.”
“How so?” my dad asked.
“Mm, well, they’re kind of arty. They get so consumed by their projects. It’s literally the only thing they agree on.”
“Well,” Mama K said, “I’m sure they’re fine people since they raised you.” She looked over her shoulder and winked at Samantha. “So how’s Murphy doin’?” she asked, turning back to the stove to stir the chili she’d been working on all day. I’d told my parents about him and how he and Samantha were the catalysts for me finding my way back to them finally.
And Grum, that damn dog. Dr. Masterson had suggested I make Grum a therapy dog, and I grumbled at the idea, but that was exactly what he’d turned out to be. He was like our kid. I reached below the dinner table to scruff up his ears and scratch behind them while we chatted as Mama K finished cooking. I hadn’t eaten her food in a long time, which, according to her, was a sin. Food was Mama K’s love language.
“He’s better,” Samantha said. She seemed pretty at ease with my parents, which made me love her even more. “A lot better. Frank and I went to see him this morning. He’s staying in a boys’ home in Jackson temporarily. And his name isn’t Murphy. It’s Dakota Chaska. He just turned fourteen. I thought he might’ve chosen the nickname Murphy because he loves to read, and maybe he’d taken the name from a Samuel Beckett book, but no. He told me he chose it because, of all things, he likes that show Murphy Brown with Candace Bergen. She played a TV journalist. He said he watched the reruns a lot with his mom.”
“Oh, I remember that show,” my dad said. “We used to watch that. Remember, Kathy?”
“Mmm, yes, it was a good show,” she said, clicking the stove off and pulling a baking tray from the oven. “I love that Candace Bergen. She’s a feisty one.”
Mama K was a traditional Texas woman with long, white hair, but she never wore it down. She’d fixed it up into some kind of braided bun thing on the back of her head. It looked the same as it had when I was a teenager. I remembered ’cause the woman was always cooking, so I’d gotten a good view of her back. My dad’s hair was white now too. He was always happy, always glad to go fishing or watch a game if he knew it was what I liked to do. I was taller by a foot than both of them, and it was easy to see we didn’t look alike, but it didn’t matter to me now like it had when I was younger.
They loved me, and that was all that had ever mattered.
“Do you know how he ended up in Wisper?” my dad asked. “He and his mother weren’t from here, right?”
“No,” I said. “She’s from Oklahoma originally, but they’d been livin’ in a little town in eastern Wyoming with a man she’d been datin’, but that guy kicked ’em out, and they lived in their car for a while. Murphy admitted he’d broken into the bookstore and stole the money and antibiotics. Said his mama used to make him steal for her. She up and disappeared after they stopped here in town months ago, lookin’ for somewhere she could find a job, and Murphy hasn’t seen her since. He did okay findin’ places to sleep and food in the fall, but winter made it a lot harder.”
“It’s just heartbreakin’,” Mama K said.
“Yeah.” It was a fucking tragedy, and it broke my heart more than I could say.
My dad took a swig of his root beer. “What do you think happened to her?” He and Samantha already had something in common. They both drank too much pop.
“Murphy thinks drugs. He told me it wasn’t unusual for her to come home high on somethin’.” I hated to think it, but my gut and my own experience had convinced me she was dead. The ex-boyfriend had been questioned, but he didn’t seem to have any idea where Murphy’s mama was. The local police believed he was telling the truth. He didn’t give a shit about the kid, and he wasn’t a relative, so he had no reason to take Murphy in. Thank God. Another deputy from the area had called to fill me in. The ex-boyfriend sounded like a real peach of a douchebag, and local law enforcement was convinced he was dealing drugs.
“Well,” Mama K said, setting Texas amounts of food on the table, “at least he’s safe now. Alright, g’on, y’all. Wash up for supper.” She winked at me this time, and I smiled, squeezing Samantha’s hand and pulling her with me to the bathroom while my dad washed his hands in the kitchen sink.
“I think they like me,” she said, perched on the counter while I washed my hands, too, like a good little boy. “Did you tell them about the infertility?”
“I think they love you. I knew they would. And yes, I did. Mama K said if you ever wanna talk to her about it, she went through some similar things.”
“They’re really great, Frank.”
After drying my hands on a towel, I turned, spreading her legs with mine, stepping closer. “Yeah, they are. I’d forgotten, you know? I blocked out their kindness all these years ’cause it was easier to pretend I wasn’t missin’ out on anything.”
“I can understand that. But you’re done with that now, right?”
