Page 26 of His Fresh Start Cowboy
“I guess, it’s just not the same. Having a surrogate do all the work isn’t like marrying a good woman and starting a family.”
“Why not? A baby is a baby. I don’t know Colt and Avery all that well but I think they’d make great parents. And your parents seem like the type to love all their grandkids, no matter where they came from. Family isn’t always about blood, Rem.”
“I guess.” Rem poked at the crust of his sandwich. “I just wish Brand would figure his shit out, find a girl, settle down, and pop out a son so I can quit worrying about it.”
“You and Shelby talk any more about that fertility test?”
“Some. I hate to think it’s my swimmers, but if the only kid we have is Susie I’ll be fine with it. I just... Shelby’s always wanted a big family. I promised her that when we got married.”
“You can always adopt, my friend. Plenty of kids out there who need loving homes.”
“I know.” Rem shoved the scraps of his lunch into the small, covered garbage can. “Anyway, I’m back to work. Good luck with your folks tomorrow.”
“Thanks.”
After Rem left, Hugo choked down the rest of his lunch, which he followed with a bottle of lukewarm water. He’d need the fuel to finish his day, even though he didn’t really want the food itself. A lot of his adult life had been like that—eating because he needed the food, not because it mattered all that much to him. Growing up, food had sometimes been scarce, and when Hugo was on his own, he’d tried to save every dollar he could, because he never knew where he’d end up.
All of the big, filling meals at Clean Slate had been a luxury he’d never taken for granted, and he’d enjoyed the family dinners he’d been invited to here. Maybe one day, if he ever settled down in one place with a solid job, he could stop seeing food as simply fuel for the day and see it as something to really experience and enjoy.
Maybe.
That night, he and Elmer sat in Elmer’s dining room and worked on a two-thousand-piece puzzle together. Hugo had come over a few nights a week to do this with Elmer. They snacked on pretzels and crackers with squeeze cheese while they worked on the elaborate puzzle as a team. Elmer liked to tell stories about people from Weston, Daisy, and other nearby towns, but he rarely talked about his own personal past. Just as well, because Elmer didn’t ask much about Hugo’s past, and he was grateful.
He also enjoyed the companionship with the elderly man, who seemed as lonely as Hugo felt some nights. Elmer occasionally talked about his late wife and his estranged son, Michael, and Hugo absorbed the information, but he also didn’t push. He’d learned fast that Elmer shut down when pushed, especially about the past. Hugo completely understood that. He talked a bit about his years traveling from Texas to California, but not so much his life in Daisy.
Hugo liked Elmer. The man was kind, generous, and funny. The sort of person Hugo would have liked as a real grandfather.
The next morning, he woke with the sun, unable to get back to sleep for the hornet’s nest of anxiety in his belly. He showered, dressed, ate, and then tried to distract himself with a movie on his laptop. Once it was a decent hour of the morning, he headed into town to fill up the gas tank as per Rem’s suggestion. The last thing he wanted was to get stranded on the barren road between Weston and Daisy, hoping for either a cell signal or random driver to pass by.
He drove with the wind in his face and the sun beating down on him, already pretty hot for late March, but not unbearably so. He kind of liked the scooter, because it gave him a similar feeling to being on a horse. No doors, no windows, just him and the open air. The scooter was way less bumpy, though.
Daisy was similar to Weston in its size and various businesses. The Grove Point CSA was about two miles farther south, closer to the larger town of Grove Point, where a lot of Daisy residents worked. Rem’s sister Sage and her husband lived in Daisy somewhere, but Hugo had no idea where. Besides, he wasn’t there to see them today. Part of him wished he’d called first, but sometimes showing up unannounced worked better. At least he had a great chance that Frank was at work and not at home.
Their house was in a small collection of trailers that didn’t technically have a name, but folks referred to it as Daisy Hill anyway. He drove past the mailboxes at the front of the circular road, recalling hundreds of days collecting the mail after the school bus dropped him off there. No individual pickups in Daisy Hill. Sun, rain, or occasionally snow, students waited by the mailboxes for pickup.
He found the trailer without issue, its familiar white and blue exterior clean and shining like new. An old sedan was parked in the driveway, which told him someone might be home but not who. Frank had always driven a pickup truck, though, so hopefully it meant Mom was home. He parked the scooter behind her car, rather than risk taking up the other parking spot, in case Frank came home early.
The exterior hadn’t changed much. Same small wooden steps by the front door. Same bushes around the front and sides. Buck’s freestanding basketball hoop still lay on its side in the yard, dusty from years of disuse. Clothes sun-drying on the line in the rear of the yard. Hugo had spent eight years of his life here, and yet he felt no real emotion over returning. Maybe a little sadness, but no wistfulness. No fondness for the past.
This was a place he’d survived.
Not completely trusting the helmet would still be on the scooter when he returned, Hugo carried it with him to the door. Knocked. Waited. A long moment passed before the storm door swung inward, and Mom stepped into view. Older, more gray in her dark hair, she was still the woman he remembered patching up skinned knees and putting ointment on bug bites. She stared for several seconds before her eyes widened and her lips parted.
“Hey, Mom,” Hugo said.
“Hugo? My word, it’s really you.” She shoved the screen door outward, and Hugo jumped before it clipped his shin. Then she was hugging the life out of him, making soft sounds not quite sobs but also not quite happy. Just emotional, and why not? It had been nearly ten years.
He hugged her back, missing this sort of maternal, full-body hug, grateful she wasn’t instantly mad at him for having been gone so long. “Hey, Mom. It’s good to see you.”
“I should slap you upside the head with my skillet for being gone so long, but I’m just too happy to see you.” She pulled back and gave him a long once-over. “You look amazing, honey. When did you get in town?”
“Technically? I got into Daisy today. But I’ve been living and working in Weston for about a month. I took a job at the Woods Ranch.”
Her eyes widened. “You’re back to stay? Heck, come on inside before we air-condition the entire world.”
They went inside the aging trailer where a window unit was doing its best to belch cold air out into the room. The interior looked the same, with the faded green linoleum in the kitchen and outdated furniture in the living room. Framed pictures of her, Frank, Buck, and Hugo on the wall above the couch. The same floral curtains on the windows. It was home and yet...not.
“Place looks the same,” Hugo said.
