Prologue
His Father
“Don’t make me check that backpack,” I shouted to myson.
“Mom!”
I’d had sixteen years to navigate the wide spectrum of myson’s different varieties ofMom!and get a lock on each version.
This one said,I don’t need my mother to check mybackpack.I haven’t since I was twelve.I’m all grown up.Stop already.
And yet, the boy was always forgetting something.
I was in the kitchen, dealing with the pork in the slowcooker.
I was doing this against my will.
Not against my will when it came to cooking.I was a damngood cook, and I did say so myself.Also, I liked doing it.
No, it was because it was summer.Summer wasn’t aboutslow-cooker meals.That was winter.Winter was stews and chili and enchiladas.Summer was meat on the grill and some kind of salad (preferably one withpotatoes or macaroni in it, let the good Lord bless the woman—and it had to bea woman—who deemed those “salads”).
It almost hurt to put that pork shoulder in the crockpotthat morning.
But I was a single mom.I worked.My kid was busy withend-of-school-year stuff (though, Liam loved to cook, just right now, withfinals and friends and parties and making plans for the summer, he had lesstime than me).
And, I told myself, I was making barbeque pulled pork (thevinegary North Carolina style, and don’t give me any guff about that goodness,I was a barbeque aficionado, and I could appreciate all the different styles,but if you were pulling pork, you went NC).
Pulled pork sandwiches were a summer thing.
Though, I wished I had a smoker.That said summer to me.
Also winter.A smoker didn’t discriminate.
These were the thoughts on my mind so I didn’t think ofother things.
Like the weird stuff going on at work that was giving me avery bad vibe.
Or more importantly, like the chat I’d had with Lee andEddie yesterday.About the decision I’d made.About the conversation I’d hadwith my son that morning.About the decision he’d made.
And about how his father was going to handle it.
(My take: he wasn’t going to handle it very well.)
(My next take: my first take was an understatement.)
Liam walked into the kitchen, all tall, gangly teen.
As I watched him, I took the hit I always took once the boystarted to fade out of him and he began to look like the man he’d become.
In other words, he began to look just like his father.
“You do my head in sometimes,” he grumbled.
Liam was a master grumbler.There was some backtalk, and hemade an art of being a moody teen, but that was as far as it went.I’d neverhad any real trouble with my son.Not a day of it.
Wait, no.I referred to his terrible twos as my torrentialtwos.I’d never seen a more fearless, curious, intelligent child in my life.Hefound ways to get into everything.It was ingenious and exhausting.
(Like his father.)
