“Gyahhh!”
Rotten. Smells like sour milk, literally.
“Sorry, kitty. No milk today. You’ll have to make do with water.”
For God’s sake. I’m talking to a cat.
I leave the kitchen, and within a few seconds, the cat scurries past me and starts chowing down.
Yeah, she’s hungry. I’ll have to take her to a shelter. Damn.
I walk around the house, searching.
For what? I’m not sure. Just some tiny clue about who this man was. This man from whom I got half my DNA.
Does he have any photos? Any books? Anything that might tell me something about how a man can father two boys, abandon them, and then sell them into slavery for five grand?
His furniture is tattered brocade, and his kitchen table is a card table. The sour milk in the fridge is joined only by some pimento loaf and a box of baking soda. A loaf of molded bread sits on the counter, along with what’s left of a case of cheap beer.
That’s it.
That’s what my birth father had in his house when my real father, Talon Steel, came and offered him the chance for rehab.
Did he really go into rehab and just leave his cat here unattended?
Really?
If possible, the man just disgusted me more. I can’t abide abuse to animals. Like children, they can’t protect themselves from human cruelty.
How I know that better than most.
But I can’t take Floyd’s cat home with me. I just can’t. Not because I’m not a cat person. No. I could deal if it were just that.
It’s because I’d think of the bastard—and what Donny and I went through because of him—every time I looked at the cat.
I can’t put myself through that. The cat deserves better.
I sigh. I hate shelters, but I have no choice. Ava likes cats, but then I’d see the damned thing anytime I visited her.
No. No choice. But maybe I could at least find a home for her. The idea of a shelter makes me want to vomit.
And I already want to vomit big time just being in this house.
I walk around briskly, opening and shutting drawers, looking for something—anything—to make me see that Floyd Jolly was slightly human.
I find nothing.
The man abandoned his cat.
Of course, that was nothing after abandoning two sons.
All I find is a tattered book of poems. A turned-down page marks a poem by Robert Frost.
* * *
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
* * *
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
* * *
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
* * *
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
The words are slightly familiar. I probably read this poem in high school or something. Who knows?
I can’t help a laughing scoff.
Why would my father mark this poem of all things?
He took a path that led him here.
Maybe he was lamenting not taking the higher road? Not abandoning his sons and then forsaking them altogether?
“Yeah, right,” I say aloud and then slam the book shut and throw it onto the old couch.
The doorbell rings.
The junk haulers. Good.
“Come on in,” I tell them. “Take it all.”
“Got it.” He shoves a tablet under my nose. “Sign here.”
I sign quickly and turn to look around the room once more. My gaze zeroes in on the book of poems lying on the couch. I walk over and grab it. The cat, its belly now full, whisks around my legs.
“Hey.” One of the haulers leans down to stroke her head. “She looks a little skinny.”
“The guy who lived here abandoned her for a week. I just fed her.”
“You taking her with you?”
“To a shelter, unfortunately. You want her?”
“My wife’ll kill me if I bring home another stray. Then again, she hates shelters.”
“Tell you what.” I pull out my wallet. “I’ve got three hundred dollars. It’s yours if you give her a good home.”
“What’s her name?”
“Puzzles, I think.”
He scoffs.
“Hey, I didn’t name her.”
He strokes her head again. “Your new name is Bella.” He waves the money away. “Keep it.”
“Please.” I push it into his palm. “It would make me feel better to know she’s going to a good home. Use it for cat food.”
“All right. You’re a good guy.”
“Thanks,” I say.
He’s wrong, though. I’m not a good guy.
I’m fucked up.
And I’ll never be free.
Chapter Forty-Six
Ashley
“Ashley.”
The voice comes from somewhere above me. I’m not sure where. It’s a voice I know.