Page 1 of The Falcon and the Foe

1

CAL

Iwas not prepared for the day my son came to me and spoke his truth.

“Dad, I want to be a scout. I want to go camping. I want to join the Falcons.”

Like all fathers, I wished my son would’ve been into theater or fashion like I was as a child. Not camping and dirt. But alas, life didn’t work out the way we intended.

“Oh,” was my ineloquent response to my son Josh. “I didn’t know you were into nature and stuff.”

Was that what the Falcons did? They wore handkerchiefs around their necks like my grandmother and were fans of beige outfits. I vaguely remembered them from when I was young. My older brother Derek had joined the Falcons but quit a few months in to play soccer.

“Can I?” he asked again.

“One second.” I moved past him into the hallway of Edith’s house, arms full with two loaded paper bags. She was our next-door neighbor, and she graciously watched Josh after school in exchange for free groceries from Market Thyme, the bougie grocery store where I worked. I would’ve given her my vital organs for all the help she provided, especially when he was younger and daycare was way out of my budget.

Edith gave me a kiss on the cheek. Her husband had died a long time ago, but she filled her days with water aerobics, volunteering, and online Scrabble. Josh and I put away the groceries, and I changed two lightbulbs in her kitchen.

She studied my face, smoothed out an emerging wrinkle on my forehead. “Cal, sweetie. You look so tired.”

“That tracks.” When you worked two jobs and raised a kid on your own, tired was par for the course.

“You don’t have to do it alone.”

That was code forFind a fucking husband already. No thanks, I’d rather stick with perpetual exhaustion.

I cradled her hand and managed a wry smile. “Love you, too.”

* * *

A whiffof nostalgia greeted me every time I entered my house. It was the house where I grew up. When my parents passed a decade ago, they’d left it to my brother and me. Derek has been off the coast of Alaska working on an oil rig, so it was essentially all mine. I hadn’t done much to update it—that required money and time. Fortunately, wallpaper and oak paneling were coming back into style.

“So the Falcons?” I tossed my Market Thyme apron over one of the kitchen chairs. A stack of dirty dishes gave me the evil eye from the sink.

Josh threw his backpack on the table and took out a brochure. The excitement exploded on his face. He was young enough where he hadn’t yet learned how to shove down his emotions.

But gosh, he was a great kid. When I became a father nine years ago, I didn’t know it was possible to love a person or anything as much as I loved my son. Each year that he got older, Josh revealed new layers to himself. I got to watch as his personality formed right before my eyes.

Even though he was adopted, I saw parts of myself in him. In his crooked smile and messy hair, in his curious eyes and hearty laugh.

But I did not see an interest in nature and beige clothing in myself.

He handed over the brochure, which showed boys and girls building a fire and pitching a tent. “You get to play with fire and tie all these crazy knots.”

I once hooked up with a guy in my past life who loved tying me in crazy knots. Was he a Falcon?

“Cool,” I said.

“And you can get badges for doing different achievements.”

“Nice. I’m all about flare.”

“There are weekly meetings where we do fun activities, and then we go on camping trips every few months. We go into the woods with nothing but our backpacks and have to survive for a weekend on just our knowledge about the environment.”

I highly doubted that. Sourwood was a small hamlet with a lot of well-to-do families. No way would that fly with the parents and the kids who couldn’t go six minutes without their phones.

Hell, neither could I.

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