Free Finding Their Son by Debra Salonen

some guy with a ‘Remember the Little Big Horn’ patch on his cap to come charging through the door to protect his territory.”
    She relaxed visibly. “Oh.” She gave the soup one more stir, then held her hand flat, an inch or so above the large skillet that was heating on the stove. “I thought you were making an allusion to my aunt’s situation.”
    “Which aunt? Didn’t you have two? The nurse and—”
    “Aunt Pam was a nurse-practitioner. My aunt Marilyn was married to a holy roller who ran that little church in Fort Pierre. They eventually moved to Montana.”
    “More Indians to convert?”
    “Less opportunity for Marilyn to escape her creep-oid husband,” she said, more to herself than to him. She startled guiltily when she glanced sideways and made eye contact with him. “There are so many skeletons in the Jones’s family closet we barely have room for coats.”
    Her wit surprised him. He didn’t know why. “Yeah, well, it’s a new world. Being gay isn’t one of those black hole kind of secrets. Just ask my stepbrother.”
    “Seriously? You knew about my aunt?”
    Everyone in Pierre had speculated about her aunt’s sexual proclivity. “The nurse or the preacher’s wife?”
    Her grin told him she knew he was kidding. “The nurse.”
    “Does she still live in Pierre?”
    “No. Hasn’t for years. She lives in San Francisco with her longtime partner. A surgeon.”
    He was glad to hear it. “Good. She helped a lot of people through some pretty tough situations. I give her credit for that.”
    Char didn’t reply. She seemed intent on flipping the tortilla, but it could be that he’d said something wrong. When she carried the bowl of steaming, fragrant soup to the table and placed it before him, he stopped her—one hand lightly touching her wrist. “You don’t agree?”
    She shook her head, the multicolored strands catching the light in an interesting way. “I’ve never had a problem with Pam’s sexual orientation. She provided some stability when my mom was strung out or too in love to remember she was a mother. But she could be very opinionated, and she expected people to do what she said without argument—especially members of her family.”
    The last proviso seemed to hold significance. Eli watched her dash back to the stove. A minute or so later, she delivered a plate with a golden browned tortilla that she’d cut into eight triangular pieces.
    She returned to the counter for a pair of ceramic salt and pepper shakers shaped like turkeys. She set them on the table near his bowl. “When Pam found out about me, she immediately made a plan. Well…um…after she gave me a physical and determined it was too late for me to safely—or legally—have an abortion.” She stumbled over the word. Eli bet it constantly tripped her, even after all these years.
    He had a lot of questions, but the aroma of the soup was making his mouth water too badly to get a word out. He picked up the spoon she’d already set on top of a pretty green and black linen napkin and dug in.
    She scuttled back to the counter and returned a second later with a glass of milk. Milk. Something his mother would have done. Bobbi, who was lactose intolerant, only bought milk for the children. She yelled at him if she ever saw him take a swig.
    “I’ll let you eat in peace. Your clothes are probably ready to go into the dryer.”
    Good, he thought, tearing off a hunk of cheese and tortilla to dunk in the bowl. Hell, the last time he tried to cook for himself, he’d nearly burned down the place. Bobbi had won blue ribbons for her pies and breads at various fairs, but her menu planning changed dramatically when she took a job at the casino three years earlier.
    The money had come in handy—E.J. needed braces, Micah was asthmatic and Juline was a clotheshorse. Looking back, Eli wondered exactly when he went from daddy to Daddy Warbucks.
    Lately it seemed as though he was the guy who said no all the time.
    I sucked as a