I wasn’t leaving Rose for good. I wasn’t even leaving for all that long. But I had to leave. My body begged for sleep. My heart begged for Rose. But I needed to fix my head. For my entire life I’d walked this line between going the right way and going the way my father showed me. He was nothing but a user. Of so much. There wasn’t a person in his life that he didn’t use and eventually hurt. This time he got Rose. And he got her good. It wasn’t even the shit he did in her apartment. It was the fact that whoever he had been dealing with could have come after Rose. And that meant coming after my unborn child. Which was why he probably wanted me to come back.

Now he was in jail again. And I was going to call a lawyer this time. And do everything in my power to keep him in jail and keep him away from everyone I cared about. That also meant finding Rhett and talking to him about our father. I should have done that earlier, but I ran instead.

This time I wasn’t running.

This time I was going to do something I’d always wanted to do.

When I climbed up the porch to the familiar house, the sun was just coming up. That meant I had been up all night. But I didn’t care. This needed to be done right now.

I pressed the doorbell and stepped back.

There was no answer right away.

So I pressed the doorbell again and again.

Wake the fuck up.

I pressed it one more time.

Then a voice growled, “I’m coming! Stop ringing the damn doorbell!”

I grinned.

The door slowly opened.

“Foster?” Frank asked.

He reached for the screen door and pushed that open too.

“Frank,” I said.

“What the hell are you doing here so early? I was just making some coffee. You’re back in town? Everything okay? Rose okay? The baby…”

I stepped forward.

I faced the only man who’d ever truly cared about me. The only man who’d ever loved me like a father should.

I reached for Frank and grabbed his shoulder.

“Foster, what’s wrong?” Frank asked.

That’s when I finally had the chance to break down and cry.

* * *

Frank put his arms around me and attempted to give me something like a bear hug. Squeezing at me. It was a strange situation because I couldn’t remember a time when my father hugged me. And I mean actually hugged me. I could remember times when I’d get a one armed pretend hug or maybe a handshake. But that was always it.

I stood taller than Frank, so even though he hugged me, it almost looked like I was hugging him.

“Come on,” his voice said, calm and soothing. “Let’s get some coffee. You hungry?”

“No way,” I said, my voice crackling. I cleared my throat. “I’m not eating rabbit food for breakfast.”

Frank chuckled. “Prick.”

When Frank broke the hug, he kept his right hand on my shoulder. A firm hold, silently telling me he had my back.

Shit, that’s all I’d ever wanted, wasn’t it? No matter what I did when I was younger, it was just to get my father to tell me he had my back. But instead, he just used me. He used me like I was whiskey in a bottle or pills in a baggie.

We walked to the kitchen where Frank got another coffee mug out. I watched him reach into the cabinet with ease and pour the coffee without his hands shaking as though it were freezing cold in the house.

“You feeling okay?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Getting there. Still far from perfect.”

“You look more comfortable.”

“I have my moments,” Frank said. “Takes me a little bit to wake up and get going, but I feel good when I do.”

“That’s good, Frank.”

He slid my coffee mug toward a snowman shaped sugar dish.

“A little early for Christmas, huh?” I asked.

“My wife,” he said. “Never had the heart to change it out after she…”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Frank said. “Rose would have my head if I changed that. She’s so much like her mother sometimes.”

I stared at the happy snowman. “Rose told me everything that happened. I’m sorry you went through that. How did you get through that?”

Frank shut the fridge and put a small container of half and half on the counter. “I don’t know how, Foster. I just did. I wasn’t exactly father of the year during that time. I relied on Rose and Vivian. Which sometimes felt unfair because they relied on me. They think I don’t know this, but they used to take turns taking care of me. They’d take turns grieving. I’m not sure I could ever forgive myself for that, but we made it.”

“At least you’re here, Frank,” I said. “You could be in jail.”

Frank slowly nodded. “That’s why you’re here?”

“He used Rose,” I said. “I was gone. She was pregnant. And he set her up.”

“What do you mean he used her?” Frank asked.

I gave Frank the quick rundown of what had happened. He turned his head and slowly began to rub his chest.

“I’m sorry, Frank,” I said. “This is my fault.”

“How is it your fault?” he asked.

“I barged into your lives.”

“You didn’t barge anywhere,” Frank said. “The second Rose saw you, it was… a father’s worst nightmare.”

“I did everything for him and he gave nothing back.”

“That’s his personality, Foster. You’re not him.”

“I am him,” I said and slammed a fist to the counter. “I left before I knew Rose was pregnant. And she never told me.”

“You didn’t know?”

I shook my head. “She never told me. She called me last night and I heard the commotion with my father. I packed up and left. I haven't slept in over a day, Frank. Trying to swallow all this down.”

Frank approached me. He touched my arm. “Do you love my daughter?”

“You know that answer.”

“Then who cares? You’re here. She’s here. Foster, I hate your father. I’m sorry for what happened all those years ago.”

“No,” I said. “Frank, I’m not here for that.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“I came to drink coffee,” I said with a grin.

“Then drink it.”

I caught my breath a little as I sipped the coffee. What I really needed was sleep. I needed Rose and sleep.

I wandered through the kitchen and looked around the house. I thought about the first time I was in the basement with Frank, when he tried to scare the hell out of me for being too close to his daughter. Climbing up those old basement steps and seeing the look on Rose’s face when she saw me emerge alive and well.

Standing near that door, I smiled.

I thought about being a father. The next step in my wild life.

“I miss her all the time,” Frank said. “My wife. I could have used her for a lot of situations in life. But I made it. I got through. Even now, I hurt because she would have been great with Rose. I mean, you have kids and at some point you think about when they have kids. It’s just the way it goes. And nothing is perfect, Foster. Believe me. There’s no good time to have a baby with the way life moves.”

I turned and put my mug on the table. “Frank, I want to take care of Rose for the rest of her life. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

“I know.”

“I have to cut ties with my father for good,” I said. “I’m going to pursue any and all legal action to make sure he never gets out, and if he does, he never comes near my family.”

“Your family,” Frank said with growing smile.

“That’s right. My family. My fucking family.”

“Your fucking family,” he said. “That’s why I’m not worried. I should be because you’re a crazy son of a bitch, Foster, but you’ve got a warrior’s heart.”

“I need you around, Frank,” I said. “Not Rose. Not Vivian. Not this baby. Me. I need you around.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Frank said. “I’ve got enough kale to make me live until I’m a hundred years old.”

We both laughed.

I finished the coffee and Frank walked me to the door. At the last possible second, he gave me another one of those bear hugs.

“Stay steady, son,” he said. “That’s all I can say to you. Stay steady.”

“Thanks, Frank,” I said.

He called me son.

I left the house and when I started to drive to go back to Rose, there were three more phone calls to make. The first was to the police station. To make sure my father was put away. I needed as much information as I could get so I could call a lawyer. The second phone call was to Carl. To let him know I wasn’t returning. That I was going to cash out of the music business unless he could find me work that I could do locally. And the final call was to my brother. To Rhett. He didn’t answer it, but I left him a message. There were a lot of things we needed to talk about, but I kept it simple. I reminded him he was long overdue for a guitar lesson.

I wiped the corners of my eyes and drove with a heavy heart.

To go home to the woman I loved.