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She chuckled. “I know all about Claire’s breakfasts.” Her eyes twinkled behind her glasses. “Why’d you think the quilting circle meets there so often?” Then she stood still, and Butch was dismayed to see tears trickle down her wrinkled cheeks. “I can’t believe it. We had no idea if you were even alive.”
“Mom, sit down, please.” He pulled a chair out for her, and she dropped into it, tugging a tissue from her dress pocket. She wiped her eyes, then looked from Butch to Sol and back to Butch. “How come you’re here together?”
Butch was way past hiding. “Sol’s my boyfriend, Mom.”
She blinked. Blinked again. “Well, shoot.”
“Mom?” His heartbeat quickened.
“You just won me fifty bucks, but if I’d known I’d have to wait thislongto collect, I’d have told him I wanted it with interest too.”
“I don’t understand.”
She sighed. “The week after you left, I told your father you’d run away to be with some boy. He bet me fifty dollars I was wrong.” Then her face tightened. “When you ran away, all I could think was that your father was right when he said you were responsible for Scott’s death. Why else would you have left the way you did?” She swallowed. “Can’t tell you how angry I was with you, but I still wanted to find you, because you had to be really hurting to do that.” Sol sat first, then Butch, and she stretched out her hand to cover his. “Do you have kids?”
He shook his head.
“Then you can’t know.”
“Know what?”
“Nothingstops you loving your child, no matter what they do.”
“Mom…” Butch’s chest ached. “I wasn’t responsible. For the longest time, I thought Dad was right, that Scott killed himself because of me, but—”
“I know.”
He froze. “What? You know about Scott’s uncle? What he did?”
“You think something like that would stay hidden? Melissa called the cops, her brother tried to make a run for it, but they finally caught up with him when he tried to cross the state line into Utah. The story made front page news of theCasper Star-Tribune.” Her eyes grew flinty. “And then I got angry all over again, with your father for believing that of you in the first place, with Melissa for coming over here that night and laying the blame on you, and yes, with you too, for not sticking around.” Her eyes glistened. “I was kicking myself too, because you running off like that could only mean you didn’t feel you could tell me what had been going on.” She stared at Butch. “I tried to find you when I didn’t know whether you were guilty or not, but if I’d known back then what I know now? I’d have tried even harder. But by the time the story broke, you’d been gone twenty years. For all I knew, you could’ve taken the same route out of this world that Scott did.”
His heart quaked to hear the pain in her voice.
Then she squeezed his hand, her gaze drifting to the ring on his finger, and her eyes widened. “Oh my.”
“It’s not what you think,” Butch began. Then he reconsidered. “Okay, itis, but—”
The door opened, and a gruff voice said, “I left them at the creek. Too damn cold for me out there. Whose car is that, May?”
Panic bubbled up from someplace deep, and Butch wanted to turn tail and skedaddle out of there.
Mom squeezed his arm.It’ll be okay,she mouthed.
Then his dad walked into the kitchen and came to a halt when he saw Butch.
“Christ Almighty.”
Dad’s hair was still wavy, except now it was white like Mom’s, his beard too. He stooped a little, and that was a shocker, because Butch remembered when this man had towered over him.
He rose, his right hand outstretched and trembling a little. “Hello, sir.”
Dad stared at his hand, then closed the gap between them in two strides. He grabbed Butch and hugged him, his cheek pressed to Butch’s.
“You’re alive, boy. Holy crap, you’re alive.”
Tears pricked Butch’s eyes. “Yes, sir,” he whispered.
“I swore if I ever got my hands on you again, I’d whup your ass for putting us through this, but now that I see you?”
