Free Cattle Valley 27 - Alone in a Crowd by Carol Lynne Page A

couldn’t go home until he discovered the truth about his past.
* * * *
    In his hotel room, Ryan powered up his laptop. He’d have to pay the required fee for internet use, but it was safer than going to a public WiFi spot where someone could look over his shoulder. He hadn’t realised until he’d thought about it long enough, but he’d never bothered to look into his family.
    He still remembered the day he’d been forced out of his parent’s house with barely the clothes on his back. Unlike some gay kids, he hadn’t been kicked out because he was a homosexual, hell, he wasn’t sure his parents had even cared enough to notice his sexual orientation. Nope, he’d been kicked out for two reasons. The first being that his dad could no longer stand the sight of him, and the second because after the last beating his father had handed out, Ryan had punched him back. He’d known in that moment that one of them would end up dead if he stayed.
    Although Ryan had access to criminal files, he decided to start with Google. He typed in his father’s full name and hit enter, three results that mentioned his father came up, two from the local newspaper and one from the paper in Oklahoma City.
    Ryan pulled up the first link and read an article about his father being listed among a group of men presumed to have been taken as prisoners of war. It was news to him. Ryan’s mother hadn’t mentioned it in her letters. He remembered the far-off glaze in his father’s eyes when he’d mentioned being sent off to Vietnam.
    According to the article, an entire squad of soldiers had been ambushed during a patrol. Seven of the eleven men had been found dead while the remainder were believed to have been captured and taken alive. Other than basic information on his father, that was all the article said.
    Ryan pulled up the next article and read about Benjamin Blackfeather’s return to Tahlequah after over five years in a POW camp. Ryan sat back in his chair and stared at the screen. He wished the article went into more detail, but the Vietnam War hadn’t been a popular subject back then. Five years. He took a deep breath. He couldn’t imagine what that would do to a man.
    No, actually Ryan did know what that could do to a man. He tried to put himself in his father’s shoes. After five years of trying to survive, he’d come home to a broken down trailer, a drunk of a wife and a kid he didn’t even know he had. Not that it excused the things Ryan’s dad had done, but it did help Ryan understand how it could’ve happened. The soldiers returning from the current war received praise and understanding from the public as well as access to therapists and doctors if they needed, but from what he knew of Vietnam, the opposite had happened when the soldiers returned home. “Shit.”
    The statement his mom made in one of the letters suddenly made better sense. She’d said she loved him more after he returned even though he was a completely different man. Even knowing part of what his dad had suffered made a difference to Ryan. He could understand how his mom had felt that way, especially knowing she’d had another man’s child while her husband suffered in a foreign country. Was that why she’d started drinking? Had the guilt of what she’d done been too much for her to deal with sober?
    Ryan shut the computer, more confused than ever. Life had been so much simpler when he’d despised his parents. He opened the mini fridge and withdrew two cans of beer before moving to lie on the bed. To distract himself, Ryan pulled out his phone and called Rio as he took a drink.
    “Hey,” Rio answered.
“Hey,” Ryan returned. “Is Nate with you?”
“Yeah, he’s right next to me on the couch. Why, you wanna talk to him?” “Why don’t you put me on speaker, so I can talk to you both?” Ryan took another gulp
    and winced as the beer burned his throat.
“So, did you see him?” Nate asked.
“Yeah, but he didn’t know who I was.” Ryan went