Page 31 of The Little Things

I took the stool beside his as Mom stacked pancakes on a plate beside a couple strips of bacon. Fortunately it was cooked properly this time, so my stomach didn’t have the same convulsive reaction it did at Rae’s house.

“Is something wrong?” She looked on with concern as I poured syrup and cut into the stack of pancakes. I shoved the first bite into my mouth, the familiarity of my favorite meal helping ease the tightness clutching at my chest since running out of Fresh Foods.

I swallowed and let out a sigh. “I saw Charles Caswell yesterday,” I said without preamble, ripping the Band-Aid right off.

Rory’s fork clattered to the counter, her face growing pale. “What? H-how?”

The headache behind my eyes was growing. Merely speaking that name out loud turned the little bit I’d eaten to lead. I pushed the plate away, unable to stomach another bite.

“It was at the market, yesterday. I took Rae to get some stuff and I saw him there.”

Dad’s hand came down on my shoulder, that touch releasing even more of the pressure from my chest. That was what they did for me. What parents did. For the first twelve years of my life I didn’t think that was something I’d ever have. I never wanted to take what Rory and Cord gave me for granted. I’d told myself that being a part of this family had healed me, so why the hell was I so affected by one of the two people who hadn’t been part of my life for more than two decades?

“Did something happen?”

I wrapped my hands around my coffee mug, staring down at the dark liquid inside and letting the heat seep into my palms, hoping it would warm the coldness inside.

“Not really,” I answered him, giving my head a shake before taking a sip of coffee. “It was only for a split second. He was turning to go down another aisle. He didn’t see me, but...”

“Go on,” my father coaxed, giving me the nudge I needed.

“I had a panic attack in the middle of the store. I ran out of there like my ass was on fire, leaving Rae behind, I was so desperate to get the hell out of there, away from him.”

“Did she get home okay?” Rory asked, her heart so big it was impossible not to care about the wellbeing of everyone around her.

I nodded. “I called Len before I pulled out of the parking lot, made sure she could pick her up.”

“That’s good,” Mom said with a nod of relief. “At least you made sure she was safe first. I can’t imagine she’d be upset about that.”

“If she was upset, it didn’t stop her from helping me out when she found me drunk on a bottle of cheap bourbon on the floor of Roam’s stall.”

“Oh, Zach.” The sadness on her face was like a white-hot poker to the chest.

Cord was still watching me closely. “Explains why you came in here lookin’ like stomped on horse shit.”

I shot him a flat look as I took another sip of coffee. “Thanks so much for the sympathy, Dad.”

He didn’t look the least bit impressed. “You know you’ll always have that from me, when it’s deserved,” he stated in the dad voice he’d perfected over the years. “You have that from me about running into that piece of shit yesterday. I understand how seeing him could set you off like that, and there’s not a damn bit of shame in your reaction, so get that out of your head right now, because I know that’s where your thoughts are going.”

Damn it. Of course he was right. He understood better than anyone what it had been like for me back then, since he’d been there himself. It was his story, along with my own, that inspired my mother to start Hope House.

Shortly after they brought me into their lives, Rory and Cord had started a foundation, and from there, they’d opened a group home for foster children. Hope House was a saving grace to kids in the system. More kids than I could count had called that place home in the years since its inception, and they’d all been given opportunities most kids in foster care never got. My parents were determined to make it a safe place, an actual home instead of some stopping point before another shuffle, or worse, another hellhole, of which there were far too many.

They hand-picked every single person they brought on to help run Hope House and care for the kids, making sure they were people who could be counted on, who were reliable, and who would break their backs to give the children in their care good lives.

They cared for the children they were charged with. They treated them like they would their own kids. There was no aging out of Hope House. One of the cruelest things that could happen to a foster kid was to turn eighteen and be shoved out of whatever home they were staying in without any prospects or skills or a single opportunity to help them become something. The people running the home made sure these kids were looking at bright futures.

Cord hadn’t been as lucky as I was or the kids taken into Hope House. He’d aged out of the system, and with no other choices, he’d enlisted in the Navy to keep from being homeless. So if there was one person on this planet who could relate with me, who could understand, it was him.

“I will have your back through anything, always, but you know as well as I do that you handled it badly. Using booze to numb the pain is taking a trip down a very dangerous road. You know that. You can’t drink your problems away, son.”

My chest heaved on a powerful exhale. “Yeah, I know, Dad. It was just a bad night. It won’t happen again.”

He reached out and grabbed my shoulder, giving me an affectionate jostle. “I know it won’t. I trust you. And you know you can come to us if shit ever gets too heavy. It’s what we’re here for. It’s what we do, no matter how old you are. You find you’re stugglin’, you let your mom and me do our job and guide you through it to the other side. Deal?”

“Deal.”

Chapter Seventeen

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