Page 104 of Free Heart
“I’m sorry, Dad.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well, because the gossip was about me. About me being gay.”
Buck puts his piece of pizza down. “No, son, it was about how your mama’s real daddy was Bob Herron—the Pocatalico River Valley Baptist preacher.”
“What?”
Buck nods. “Sure was. He and your Grandma Alice had quite the long-term fling. Rumor was your Uncle Derek was his too. But your Aunt Ivy was Grandpa Terrance’s through and through.Looked just like him.” He considers. “Bitty Beau was probably Terrance’s too.”
“Wait, wait. You’re telling me…what? Little Grandma Alice? Was getting it on with the River Valley Baptist preacher?”
“Yup. Not a faithful woman, or man for that matter,” Buck says sorrowfully, clucking his tongue. “Caused a lot of unnecessary drama. But I guess Alice loved ’em both. I hear it happens. Nevaeh told me it’s more common these days. She said something about how all the kids are in polycules now?”
“Nevaeh tells you a lot,” Sejin says, looking dazed.
Buck shrugs, going back to the family gossip. “I guess your mama didn’t tell you about all that talk at the church because she didn’t want you thinking of Grandma Alice any different. But I think you’re a grown man now, and you deserve the truth. Your real grandpa was—” Buck pauses, huffs a laugh. “Well, yourrealgrandpa, your biological one, we have no clue about, I guess. What I’m saying is your mama got tired of those hypocrites at church gossiping about her, especially when it was their own damn preacher doing the cheating with Alice.”
“Wow,” Sejin says. “I feel like my whole life is shifting in front of my face.”
“People are just people, son. They all make messes.”
“Do you ever wonder about your biological family, Sejin?” Peggy Jo asks after the silence which follows that astute proclamation.
Sejin shrugs. “At times like this I do. My mom’s father—or fathers, as it seems to be—aren’t biologically related to me, no matter who they are. It makes me wonder. Whatwasmy biological grandfather like? What did he do with his life? Didhehave affairs and scandalous babies? Or was that just my birth mother?”
Peggy Jo laughs, and Buck looks like he’s pondering the question too. “You know,” he says slowly. “I tried, back when youwere eighteen, to see if the adoption agency we went through was still around. We had arranged it so if you wanted, when you were of age, you could ask them for information on your birth mom. We wanted to give you that choice.”
Sejin’s eyes widen.
Buck sighs. “But the agency is closed now. Korea shut down its international adoptions, and all those records went away with the agency, I guess.”
I offer around my bite of pizza, “There are some government-held adoption files. If Sejin wanted, he might be able to request his records there.”
Everyone looks at me in surprise.
“What can I say, I was bored in bed for weeks andweeks—”
“Two weeks,” Sejin murmurs.
“—and I’m obsessed with him, so I got curious about his past. I googled.”
“I don’t know,” Sejin says, shaking his head. “I don’t feel any call to do that right now. I just want to get through the show tomorrow, and Dan’s next free solo climb…whenever he does it. I don’t see any reason to introduce complications into my life. Besides, giving a child up can be very traumatizing to a woman, according to the adoption videos I’ve seen on YouTube. I don’t want to open new wounds if my birth mom is in a good place now.”
“It’d be all right if you want to look into your biological family,” Buck says. “I don’t want you worried that it would hurt my feelings any. You’re my boy, and we both know that. But if you want to explore your lineage, that’s okay too.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
Peggy Jo looks at Buck like he hung the moon. I meant it earlier when I told Sejin that his dad better treat my kinda-mom right. I have a feeling he will, given the son he raised. So, I just sit back and enjoy Sejin’s horror at her pie-in-the-sky eyes.
“What do you have on the schedule tomorrow morning before the big show?” Buck asks Sejin. “Got some time for your old man?”
Sejin smiles, and my chest releases the last remaining tension I’ve been holding onto about his father’s visit. They’re going to be okay.
We’reallgoing to be okay.
I’m healing up nicely, and if her tension around the subject of Bella is any indication, I’m still Peggy Jo’s favorite child. Okay, so that baby Mimi might have an edge on me by a wispy hair on her little bald head, but I’ve got Bella and her baby-daddy beatfor sure. Though, for Peggy Jo’s sake, I hope she and Bella resolve whatever it is soon.
