Page 45 of Long Past Dawn
Dawn put her hand on my shoulder to ground me. “You’re fine, Beau. Just say your piece the way you know how.”
Amity agreed with her on a head nod. “She’s right. You don’t have to ask permission to speak. We just established that we’re all family here.”
I swallowed hard and rubbed my hands on my jeans. “Right, well, I—I, I just wanted to say that we all know what today is. Thanks for being here for me. All of you. And for not taking no ah—ah—ffense at my recent jerkish ba—ba—behavior, drunken door pounding in the dead of night, and acting like a real revolving son of a ba—itch.”
Dawn squeezed my shoulder again while Heaven brushed her hand at me. “We all understood, Beau,” she promised.
“Dude,” Blaze said from where he sat, “you don’t have to apologize to any of us. Besides, you weren’t that much worse than your normal surly self.”
I chuckled and tossed a bottle cap at him, thankful that he broke my stuttering by making me laugh. I always depended on him for that as a kid. Once again, he didn’t let me down. “I know you probably think I’m a baby because I’m still mourning a woman who has been dead for twenty years.”
Amity stood straight up onto her feet to interrupt me. “Beauregard Theodore Hanson! You are not a baby for mourning your mother on the anniversary of her death! I still mourn my mother’s death, and I’m twice your age. Does that make me a baby?”
“No, ma’am,” I said without thinking while Ash calmly pulled her back to her chair. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
“We know what you meant, son,” Ash said, patting his wife’s hand to calm her. “There is no time limit on grief. It will come when you least expect it, but you will also have longer periods where it doesn’t engulf you. Time where you can remember her with happiness in your heart.”
I nodded once. “Yes, sir. I agree. For the most part, that’s where I am with it now. It is only on the big days, like today, that I struggle. I can say that this time, it didn’t have so much to do with momma as it did with my regret for how I treated both of you.”
Amity cocked her head. “Whatever do you mean, Beau?”
I reached inside my jacket pocket and pulled out an envelope, nervously tapping it on my pants before I handed it to her. “For you and Ash.”
She opened the envelope and held the papers out so Ash could see them, too. “I don’t understand what this is.”
“It’s the paperwork we’d need for adult adoption with the ca—ca—courts,” I explained as her hand fell to her lap with the papers in them. “I—I realized that I scre—scre—”
Dawn leaned in and whispered into my ear. “Take a breath. No one here is judging you. Tell them how you feel. Nothing more, nothing less.”
I nodded and started again. “I realized that I screwed uh–up,” I was finally able to say. “What I thought was most important to remember momma by was—wasn’t.”
“Her last name?” Ash asked without judgment in his tone.
I pointed at Ash and noticed my hand was shaking, so I dropped it. “When you asked to adopt m—me when I was a teen, that’s why I said na—no.”
Amity stood and hushed me with a hand on my head. “We understood, Beau. You had been through so much. We just wanted you as part of our family in whatever way you wanted to be.”
“You are part of our family,” Blaze said emphatically, “same last name or not. That is never going to change.”
Amity returned to her seat, and I glanced at the people around me. My tribe. The people I could always and would always count on to have my back. “I know, but now, sitting here all these years later, I’ve come to recognize that I am more a McAwley than a Hanson, not because momma didn’t matter but because she da—did. She wouldn’t want me to live in the past. She would have wanted me to grab that new future when I had the cha—cha—chance. I didn’t get that right when I was fourteen. I was too young,” I explained, clearing my throat again and tapping my fingers on my leg. I had to break the stutter, so there was no mistake in what I was asking tonight. “I’ve seen a lot here. I’ve lived through a lot here. I’ve experienced things I could never think of at nine, fifteen, or hell, even twenty-one. I know what I want now. I want to remember momma for the wonderful woman she was and the strong beginning she gave me. I want to honor you both for the wonderful people you are and the strong love you offered me when I needed it most. If it hadn’t been for you, I might never have received the help I needed for my mental health, much less my stuttering and other issues. I don’t ever want you to think I don’t know tha—that.”
“Son, we don’t think that,” Ash said quietly. “We didn’t think that even when you didn’t want to take our name. We were adults and understood the intricacies of what you were dealing with even better than you did. All we wanted to do was make sure you were loved and cared for as you grew up. We understood that grief is intricate and different for everyone, especially someone your age who had just had his whole life ripped out from under him. That was why we never pushed it. We all deal with grief in our own way.”
Blaze pointed at his father and then me. “For instance, when Callie died, I decided to be a total jackass because I didn’t have any other way to deal with it when I had to keep getting up every morning and moving forward.”
“We understood you were a jackass because of losing Callie, Blaze,” I said immediately. “It was never a question.”
Blaze held his hands out and glanced around the circle. “Then, duh. If you had a brain, it would be lonely.”
I snorted with laughter and shook my head at him. “Okay, point taken. I guess what I’m saying is, if it’s not too late, I’d like to have your last name. I’d like to give my future wife and kids your name. I want to be part of the McAwley legacy, even if it is as a footnote in the family Bible.”
“Footnote my foot,” Amity said sweetly with tears in her voice. “It will be as part of the family tree, won’t it, Ash.”
“Absolutely, son,” he agreed. “I have called you that since you came to my home for one reason. You were my son then, and you will remain my son until long after my death, but I would be honored to sign these papers and make you my son in name as well.”
I put a thankful hand to my chest, fighting back the tears I didn’t expect to creep in at his acceptance. “Thank you, sir,” I said, clearing my throat while Dawn rubbed my back in a soothing rhythm. “Today, that means more to me than you’ll ever know.”
I stood and walked to them, hugging them both without words because I had none left. All I had left was a grateful heart for the love and protection I would always find in their arms, even as a grown man.
