âem,â I said with a grin. âWe can pretend sword fight.â
âJust be careful. Just because theyâre not metal doesnât make them not dangerous. You could still poke out an eye with one of these.â
âIâll be careful. We rounded the corners and made the ends blunt, see?â Then I nodded to the file folder in her hand. âWhatâs that?â
She looked at it and her expression fell. âOh.â She took a breath. âItâs the background check Chief Montgomery ran on your pa.â
Suddenly, my swords were no longer important to me. Excitement frizzled through my body. It was like an electric bolt of lightning had erupted at my heart and quickly spread throughout my entire insides. âWhatâs it say? Can I read it?â
Looking down at me standing there expectantly, she exhaled so hard her shoulders heaved. âCome in the house. Weâll sit at the kitchen table and go through it together.â
I couldnât get inside the house fast enough. Leaning my swords up against the wall beside the door outside on the porch, I went in and took off my shoes. It seemed to take her forever to get to the kitchen table where I was already anxiously seated and waiting. I could tell there was something inside that folder that my mother obviously didnât like. Still, I was filled with anticipation. I never really got to know my pa. I barely even remembered him. Mostly I remembered the picture I carried around in my pocket that I found in my motherâs closet. And it seemed nobody would ever give me any details about him when I asked anything either. But now, here was a file folder, full of real information concerning my pa. And it was only a few feet from my hands.
We sat there, our chairs almost touching, and my mother laid the folder in front of her. âThereâs not a lot of information here,â she told me. âYour pa never got in trouble with the law or nothinâ like that, thank the Lordââshe said âthank the Lordâ in a way that made it sound like that was a potential possibility, given something else she foundââso itâs really limited to things like employment, family history, stuff like that. Itâs really quite boring.â
âThen why are you so worked up over it?â I asked.
âIâm not worked up.â
âSeems like it to me.â
âOkay, maybe a little. But itâs for something dumb.â
âWhat?â I figured if she was worked up about it, it couldnât rightly be so dumb.
âWell, in a way, I think your daddy lied to me, and that donât sit very well is all.â
âPa was a liar?â I didnât know much about him, but this was the last thing I thought about my pa.
âNow I didnât call him a liar. I said in a way he sorta lied to me.â
âWhat do you mean by sorta?â
âI mean he didnât rightly tell me the truth.â
I couldnât figure out the difference between that being just a âsorta lieâ and a real lie, so I asked her.
With yet another sigh, she flipped open the folder. Inside was a document on blue paper with a staple in the corner. It turned out to have three pages to it.
âHe didnât not tell me the truth, I suppose, better explains it,â she said.
I scrunched up my forehead. âHuh?â I asked. âWhat does that mean? I donât get it.â
âYour pa had a family he never told me âbout. In fact, he had an entire past he seemed to have neglected mentioninâ.â
âDoesnât everyone have a past?â
âYeah, but usually bits and pieces of it come up from time to time in casual conversation. Your pa kept things all to himself. He didnât so much as even hint at any of this.â She was flipping through the pages. I still hadnât heard a word of what any of âthisâ was.
âSo he lied to you by not
C. J. Cherryh
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