Page 21 of Befriending the Bear (Forestville Silver Foxes #6)

CALLOWAY

M y phone rang at exactly nine o’clock that Sunday morning after the storm, like it had every Sunday for the past few years. I stared at it from across the room, my coffee mug frozen halfway to my lips, and let it go to voicemail.

I knew who it was. I knew what she wanted. And I knew that no matter how much I’d grown or changed in the past few weeks, talking to my mother would send me right back to being that broken five-year-old she never stopped trying to fix.

Fraser looked up from the book he was reading.

He’d picked up clean clothes from his house this morning and had come back right after.

We’d shared breakfast, then coffee, and now books, the comfortable silence broken only by the occasional shared passage or observation.

It was domestic in a way that should have terrified me, but instead it felt like breathing.

“You okay?” he asked, marking his place with his finger.

“My m-m-mother,” I managed, the stutter already worse from thinking about her.

Understanding crossed his face. We’d talked about my parents, about the endless therapy and disappointment, but he’d never pushed for more than I was willing to share. “Want me to give you some privacy?”

“N-no.” The word came out too fast, too desperate. “Please st-stay.”

The phone rang again. Because, of course, she’d call right back. Patricia Gilstrap had never met a boundary she couldn’t bulldoze with good intentions and willful ignorance.

This time, I answered, if only to stop the ringing. “H-h-hello, M-Mother.”

“Calloway! Finally. I was beginning to think something had happened to you.” Her voice filled the room through the phone speaker, as sharp and stinging as the slice of a knife. “You haven’t called in weeks.”

I hadn’t called her in months, actually, since she always called me, but pointing that out would only lead to a lecture about family obligations. “I’ve b-b-been b-b-busy.”

The stutter was already worse, tripping over itself in that particular way it did when she was involved. Fraser quietly moved closer to me on the couch, not touching but present, and somehow that made it bearable.

“Busy? Doing what?”

“W-w-writing.”

A long pause. “Are you making any progress? It seems to me you’ve been working on the same book for an awfully long time. I know Marcus left you money, but?—”

“Y-yes. Same b-b-book.”

“Are you sure that’s the best use of your time? I can’t imagine publishers will be interested in a memoir about such a depressing subject from someone they’ve never heard of.”

Every word from her lips was another stab, killing me with a thousand little cuts. I wouldn’t be surprised to look down and find myself actually bleeding. “I’m w-w-writing for m-me, M-Mom. Not f-f-f-or pub-b-blication.”

“Maybe a change of scenery would help you find motivation again. Which reminds me, your father and I were talking, and we really think you should reconsider Florida. The weather is divine, and there’s a wonderful speech therapy clinic in our neighborhood.

Dr. Morrison says they’re doing amazing things with adult stuttering now. ”

My hand clenched around the phone. Forty-three years since the quarry, and she was still trying to fix me. “I’m n-n-not m-m-moving to F-F-Florida.”

“I don’t understand. What’s keeping you in that dreary little town? There’s a reason we moved away, Calloway. There’s nothing there but bad memories.”

I didn’t even know what to say to that.

“It’s not healthy, Calloway, hiding away like you do. You need to get back out there, meet people. I know losing Marcus was hard?—”

“Mother.” The word came out sharp, clear for once in my desperation to stop her.

“—but it’s been seven years. You can’t mourn forever. He wouldn’t want that.”

The casual dismissal of my grief, the presumption that she knew what Marcus would want, made something hot and painful flare in my belly. Fraser’s hand found mine, steady and grounding. “I’m not h-h-hiding. I have f-f-friends here. A l-life here.”

She made that humming sound that meant she didn’t believe me.

“Oh? And what life is that? Sitting in that house, writing a book no one will publish? And even if they did, it would never be successful since you can’t do public appearances.

Really, darling, if you would commit to more intensive therapy?—”

“I d-d-don’t need th-therapy.” The words fought their way out, years of frustration behind them. “I need you to st-st-stop seeing me as b-b-broken.”

A long pause followed. “I don’t think you’re broken. I only want what’s best for you.”

“N-no.” Something was building in me, something that had been pressing against my ribs since I was five years old and woke up different than I’d been before.

“You w-w-want me to be who I was b-b-before. But that b-boy drowned, Mother. This is who I am n-now. This is who I h-have b-b-been for years, n-now.”

“Calloway—”

“I have to g-go,” I said, the closest I’d ever come to hanging up on her. “I have p-p-plans.”

“Plans? What plans?” Suspicion crept into her voice, as if she thought I was lying to her. Granted, not entirely without reason.

My hand was shaking now, and Fraser squeezed it. His steady presence gave me strength. “I h-have a f-f-friend over. We’re having c-coffee.”

“A friend?” The disbelief in her voice stung more than it should have. “What friend? You never mentioned?—”

“Because you n-never ask about my l-life here. You only t-tell me how to f-f-fix it.”

“That’s not fair. I call every week?—”

“To t-tell me about F-Florida. About new t-t-treatments. About h-how I’m wasting my life.” The words were coming easier now, anger smoothing out some of the stutters. “When was the last t-time you asked if I was h-happy?”

Another silence, longer this time. When she spoke again, her voice had that careful quality that meant she was choosing her words. “Are you happy, Calloway?”

I looked at Fraser, at his concerned green eyes and the way he held my hand like an anchor.

Thought about the past few days. Breakfast together, shared dinners, the way we had woken up tangled together.

How he waited through my stutters without impatience, how he’d learned to read my silences as well as my words. And that glorious, perfect kiss.

“Y-yes,” I said, and meant it. “For the f-first time in years, yes.”

“Oh.” She sounded genuinely surprised. “Well. That’s… That’s good, darling.”

But I could hear the questions building, the need to probe and analyze and fix. “I really n-need to go. My f-friend is here.”

“Will you at least think about visiting? Your father misses you.”

The guilt card. Of course. “M-maybe after the h-holidays,” I said, knowing I wouldn’t. “I’ll c-call you later.”

“Calloway—”

“B-bye, Mother.”

I ended the call before she could respond, my whole body shaking with the effort of standing up to her. The phone immediately started ringing again, but Fraser reached over and switched it to silent. “Hey. You okay?”

I laughed, but it came out cracked. “I don’t know. I’ve n-never hung up on her b-b-before.”

“How does it feel?”

I considered this, taking inventory of the emotions swirling through me. “T-terrifying. And…freeing? God, she makes me feel f-five years old again. Like I’m st-still that kid who d-disappointed everyone by c-coming back wrong.”

“You didn’t come back wrong. You came back different. There’s nothing wrong with different.”

“Tell that to my m-mother. She’s been trying to fix me for f-forty-three years.” I slumped in my chair, exhausted by a five-minute phone call. “She m-means well. That’s the worst part. She genuinely thinks she’s h-helping.”

“I’m sure she does, but the result is that she makes you feel like shit. That’s on her, not you.”

I studied him, this man who’d learned to read me so well in such a short time. “How are you so w-wise about this?”

He smiled ruefully. “Remember what I said about my brothers? About being the family disappointment? I’ve had my share of well-meaning relatives who couldn’t accept that I wasn’t who they wanted me to be.”

“What did you d-do?”

“Set boundaries. Stopped going home for holidays, where I’d have to pretend to be straight. Limited phone calls to once a month. It hurt—still hurts sometimes—but it was that or lose myself trying to be what they needed.”

I thought about this, about the possibility of boundaries with my mother.

She’d call it cruelty, abandonment. But what was the alternative?

Another forty years of Sunday morning phone calls that left me feeling small and stuttering worse than usual?

“She’ll be a-alone. In F-Florida with my dad, who barely talks anyway.

She’ll b-be alone, and it’ll be my f-fault. ”

“That’s her choice. She could choose to accept you as you are. She could choose to see your stutter as part of you, not something to be fixed. But she doesn’t, and that’s not your responsibility to change.”

The truth of it sat heavy in my chest. I’d spent so many years trying to be what she wanted—the son who’d overcome his disability, who’d proven that all her efforts hadn’t been wasted. But I was tired. Tired of feeling like a project instead of a person.

“I n-need some air,” I said, standing abruptly. Fraser started to rise too, but I put a hand on his shoulder. “Give me a few m-minutes?”

He nodded, understanding in his eyes. “I’ll be here.”

I grabbed my jacket and stepped out into the garden. The garden was still a wet, wild mess, carrying the scent of dying, rotting leaves and soggy soil. The sage had somehow survived the storm, its silver-green leaves defiantly bright. I brushed my fingers over it, releasing its sharp, clean scent.

My mother would hate my garden. Too unstructured, too spontaneous. She’d want to impose order, create neat rows, and proper borders. Just like she’d always wanted to do with me.

The thing was, I understood why. I remembered the terror in her eyes when I finally woke up in the hospital. I remembered months of her sleeping in a chair by my bed because she’d been afraid I’d stop breathing in the night. I remembered how tirelessly she had fought to get me to heal.

The stutter had been proof that something had gone wrong, that her baby had been damaged, and she’d never stopped trying to undo that damage.

But understanding didn’t make it hurt less.

I heard the back door open and close softly. Fraser’s uneven gait on the path, the tap of his cane on the stones. He didn’t speak, just stood beside me.

“She used to r-read to me,” I said. “After the accident. Every n-night, for hours. Said it w-would help with the speech therapy, hearing pr-proper pronunciation.” I laughed, short and bitter. “I memorized whole b-books, could recite them in my head p-p-perfectly. But when I tried to sp-speak them…”

“The words got stuck.”

“Every time. She’d get this l-look, disappointment trying to hide b-behind encouragement. ‘Try again, s-sweetheart. You almost had it.’ But I never almost h-had it. I didn’t g-get better, not even a little bit.”

Fraser’s hand found mine, warm and solid. “You know what I hear when you talk?”

I shook my head.

“I hear someone who thinks before he speaks. Who chooses his words carefully because they cost more for you than most people. I hear rhythm and cadence that’s uniquely yours.” He squeezed my fingers. “I hear you, Calloway. Not the stutter. You.”

Something cracked open inside me, years of armor breaking apart. “I don’t know how to m-make her understand that this is enough. That I’m e-enough.”

“Maybe you can’t. Maybe that’s not your job. Your job is to live your life, find your happiness. Whether she understands or not.”

I turned to face him fully, this man who’d appeared in my life like a gift I hadn’t known to ask for. “I w-wasn’t lying when I told her I’m happy.”

“Are you?” There was vulnerability in the question, like my answer mattered more than he wanted to admit.

“Yes. T-terrified, confused, completely unprepared, b-but happy.”

His smile was like the sunrise after a long night. “Good. That’s… That’s really good.”

We stood there in my garden, hands linked, surrounded by the evidence of things that grew wild and thrived anyway. The phone had stopped ringing inside. My mother had probably moved on to talking to my father, complaining about my behavior, planning new strategies to save me from myself.

But out here, with Fraser’s steady presence beside me and the sage perfuming the air, I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long, long time: whole. Not fixed, not cured, but complete exactly as I was.

“Ready to go back in?”

“In a minute.” I looked up at him, gathering courage. “Fraser? Thank you. For staying. For… For seeing me.”

He lifted our joined hands and pressed a kiss to my knuckles, the gesture so tender it made my throat tight. “My pleasure. Though I really wish you’d stop thanking me.”

“N-not today. I c-can’t.”

“Fair enough.”

We made our way back inside, where our coffee had gone cold and the morning’s peace had been thoroughly shattered. But Fraser dumped our mugs and started fresh, moving around my kitchen with the easy familiarity of someone who belonged there.

Because somehow, he did.