Page 120 of Cain

“You sure are, buddy,” I agreed, wrapping an arm around him. And with the positive male role models he had, he would grow to love and appreciate the women around him. He would see them as people, not objects to be controlled. Not property. And I was thrilled to watch him grow into a man just like his father.

“This came to the clubhouse for you,” he said, handing me a small paperback book with yellow pages and a warped cover.

It was from Michigan.

Briggs and I had a little arrangement where he sent me the great classic sci-fi books he read with the explicit direction that I had to send them back to him when I was done.

It was like a subscription service.

I loved it.

I flipped it over and glanced at the back before putting it in my purse for later.

“How’s everything?” I asked Cain as he rubbed his hand up and down the baby’s back, soothing him instantly.

“Oh, you know. One of the guys met a girl…”

“And now all hell has broken loose.”

“Ain’t that how it always goes?” he asked, wrapping his free arm around me.

Cain - 20 years

“She’s going to freak out,” our daughter, just ten days short of eighteen, said as we walked down the street.

“Maybe a little,” I said, glancing over to check out her black eye. It hadn’t even fully set in yet and it was looking gnarly.

I’d gotten the call from the school just an hour before. When I’d heard the word ‘fight,’ I’d automatically assumed our son had gotten into a scuffle. He wasn’t a violent kid, per se, but he was quick to stand up for anyone else who was getting bullied. The school hated it, but his mother and I—and the whole of our extended family—were big supporters of his mission. Especially because he’d lost a good friend to suicide after years of relentless bullying. So we were all of the mind that if the school wouldn’t do anything about it, we were okay with our son handling it. Suspensions were temporary. The mental toll of bullying lasted forever.

But when I heard our daughter’s name, I popped out of my seat and started striding toward the door.

Because our girl had been in various forms of martial arts for her entire life. All of them pounded self-control into her relentlessly. That fighting was never the answer. That if it had to happen, it was a last resort.

Sure, she’d had little arguments over the years with other kids. But aside from grappling practice and competitions, I’d never known her to raise a hand to anyone.

“I don’t want to trigger her.”

At some point, all the kids had heard the story of their mother’s first marriage. About the abuse—both mental and physical. We felt it was important for them to know her whole story. You know, aside from what happened to Perry in the end. Maybe that would come out someday. But they were kids still. That was adult shit.

“I don’t think you need to worry about that. Your mom is a lot stronger than you’re giving her credit for. Besides, you handled the situation.”

She shot me a smile, her eyes bright with pride. “Yeah, I did.”

I pulled open the door, listening to the little bird noise the bell made instead of a chime.

It went with the cozy vibes the entire studio had.

In a hilarious twist of fate, many years after Perry and Fred both went missing, the storefront where Fred had held his operation went on sale again after being a small office for a year or two.

I’d snatched it up, since storefronts in the area were hard to come by. It was on the small side, but with some clever renovations, we’d turned it into the perfect little pottery studio.

It was the cluttered, warmly lit, pottery-filled place of her dreams.

She did have four wheels in the back for serious potters, but most of the business came from parents, teens, or wine-and-paint-type nights who came in just to paint something she’d already made.

Either way, she was thrilled that people were coming together to engage in her favorite hobby.

“Mom?” our girl called.