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“Do you still have a job?” he asked. He wanted to know. He supposed there were things that would change with his mother gone. “Do I have to live with her? I don’t want to. I don’t know this person she is with and I sure the hell don’t want to meet him. He can go fuck off.”
He turned to go to his room. “Sawyer,” his father snapped.
“What?” he asked, spinning around. “It’s not like I was chasing him down the street with a shotgun. I just said he could fuck off.”
His father scowled. He supposed he shouldn’t have shared he’d heard that part of the conversation too. If it was true, and he thought it might be, then who knew what would have happened if his father had caught up with the guy.
He’d like to think his father’s temper wouldn’t have unleashed any way other than a warning. His father wasn’t a killer. He was just a man that couldn’t seem to let go of his wife.
“I wasn’t going to shoot the man,” his father argued. “Your mother knows that. I just wanted to scare the prick.”
“You didn’t answer me on if you were losing your job? If I have to stay with her when you’re gone if you don’t? I can stay home alone. It’s okay. I’ll be sixteen soon and can get my license and drive myself places. I’ll be fine.”
“I don’t think I’m losing my job,” his father said. “I’m meeting with them in a few weeks. While I’m on the road, you can’t be home alone. We’ll work it out. If it’s not with your mother.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t want to talk to her or see her. No way. She just picked up and left without saying goodbye. I come home from school for you to tell me. She can fuck off too.”
His father sighed and wouldn’t say anything to him for swearing. In his mind he had a right to be pissed off.
Sawyer wasn’t going to show any tears, but he was positive they’d come later. No one wanted to think their mother would just up and leave like this. Pick some dude over her child.
“Then I’ll talk with your grandparents. I’m sure they will be fine with it.”
“They live in Charlotte,” he argued, thinking of his father’s parents. The grandparents he loved to visit. It was just a different world than the one he lived in. He wasn’t sure how his father became a truck driver when his parents had good white-collar jobs. Not that there was anything wrong with the work his father did, but it still wasn’t what he was used to.
“Not my parents,” his father said. “Your mother’s parents. They aren’t happy with what is going on. Trust me, they will be a good shoulder for you to lean on.”
His mother’s parents didn’t live that far away. Maybe five minutes. It’s not what he wanted to do either, but it’d be better than his mother.
“I wish you weren’t on the road all the time,” he said.
“Me too,” his father said. “I’ll see what I can do or find once my leg is healed. For now I’m here and it’s a nonissue. We’ll work it out, Sawyer. I’m here if you want to talk.”
“Nothing to talk about,” he said, starting to walk away again. But he stopped first. “As you said, people make their choices and don’t give a shit about those left behind to pick up the pieces.”
He walked up the stairs to his room like normal even when every part of him screamed to run. Instead of slamming the door as was his urge, he closed it quietly and went to lie on his stomach on his bed.
Losing his temper and bursting out in anger wasn’t going to solve anything.
Neither were the tears that were falling, but he’d be damned if anyone else saw them.
1
Count On A Dog
Eighteen Years Later
Faith O’Malley clippedthe leash on the harness of her big shepherd mix, Fred. “Ready for our walk?” she asked the only commitment she had in her life.
You could always count on a dog. That was what she told everyone. Male or not. Though she was happy he was male and when her family—especially her Aunt Jolene—asked why she couldn’t find a guy, she could reply she had one.
Woman’s best friend was in her mind and she was pretty content that the close to one hundred-pound dog loved to be by her side.
Everyone was hooking up in her family and finding love. With her aunt’s help. But Faith wasn’t going to fall for it. She was the last one standing and was going to stay that way for a long time.
Unless she found someone on her own and then she’d rub it in all their faces.
Fred barked once, not even a loud one. She’d trained him well to do what he was told and when. To protect her if need be, but it never was needed. That she’d got Fred a month after moving into the townhouse she’d purchased three years ago at least made her father more comfortable with her living alone.
