Close to the Broken Hearted by Michael Hiebert

’em,” I said with a grin. “We can pretend sword fight.”
    â€œJust be careful. Just because they’re not metal doesn’t make them not dangerous. You could still poke out an eye with one of these.”
    â€œI’ll be careful. We rounded the corners and made the ends blunt, see?” Then I nodded to the file folder in her hand. “What’s that?”
    She looked at it and her expression fell. “Oh.” She took a breath. “It’s the background check Chief Montgomery ran on your pa.”
    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. “What’s it say? Can I read it?”
    Looking down at me standing there expectantly, she exhaled so hard her shoulders heaved. “Come in the house. We’ll sit at the kitchen table and go through it together.”
    I couldn’t 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 didn’t 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 mother’s 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. “There’s not a lot of information here,” she told me. “Your pa never got in trouble with the law or nothin’ like that, thank the Lord”—she said “thank the Lord” in a way that made it sound like that was a potential possibility, given something else she found—“so it’s really limited to things like employment, family history, stuff like that. It’s really quite boring.”
    â€œThen why are you so worked up over it?” I asked.
    â€œI’m not worked up.”
    â€œSeems like it to me.”
    â€œOkay, maybe a little. But it’s for something dumb.”
    â€œWhat?” I figured if she was worked up about it, it couldn’t rightly be so dumb.
    â€œWell, in a way, I think your daddy lied to me, and that don’t sit very well is all.”
    â€œPa was a liar?” I didn’t know much about him, but this was the last thing I thought about my pa.
    â€œNow I didn’t call him a liar. I said in a way he sorta lied to me.”
    â€œWhat do you mean by sorta?”
    â€œI mean he didn’t rightly tell me the truth.”
    I couldn’t figure out the difference between that being just a “sorta lie” 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.
    â€œHe didn’t not tell me the truth, I suppose, better explains it,” she said.
    I scrunched up my forehead. “Huh?” I asked. “What does that mean? I don’t get it.”
    â€œYour pa had a family he never told me ’bout. In fact, he had an entire past he seemed to have neglected mentionin’.”
    â€œDoesn’t everyone have a past?”
    â€œYeah, but usually bits and pieces of it come up from time to time in casual conversation. Your pa kept things all to himself. He didn’t so much as even hint at any of this.” She was flipping through the pages. I still hadn’t heard a word of what any of “this” was.
    â€œSo he lied to you by not