Page 85 of Family Bonds- Emma & Warren

He dropped his head sideways on top of hers. “I can’t wait either. Are you going to let me read it before it’s published?”

“I never let anyone do that,” she said, squishing her lips to one side. “But I probably will with you. It’s almost as if you wrote a portion of it.”

“Hardly that,” he said. He wasn’t as good with words as she was. He was better with ideas.

“Enough of it,” she said.

“I’ll let you two have that talk,” his mother said. “Warren, we’ll chat soon.”

“Bye, Mom,” he said and disconnected the call.

Emma hopped up, put her leg under her hip, and angled her body. “What’s this mysterious talk we have to have?”

“My mother thinks I should talk to you about my father.”

“I’d like that,” she said.

“You didn’t ask more before,” he said.

“Because it felt as if you weren’t ready. I know I appear to be someone with no restraint, but I’m not completely clueless.”

He dropped his hand on top of hers and threaded their fingers together. “No,” he said. “You’re not.” He had to remind himself of that. She didn’t joke about everything. That she cared even when it might not come across like others’ actions.

“Tell me what you want,” she said. “I won’t promise to not ask questions because I don’t think I’ve got the restraint once we get started.”

“I want you to ask. My father was a high school football star. I don’t think he could have gone pro even though he says he would have. He didn’t even plan on going to college if you ask me.”

“Why is that?”

“Because when everyone else was picking colleges, my mother said, he still hadn’t decided onanything. He’d had offers and kept dragging his feet. His parents weren’t going to pay for it. They told him he had to get loans himself. He didn’t even have a major declared.”

“That makes it hard on a lot of levels,” she said. “But if he was getting offers, then it might not have been as much in terms of loans.”

“That’s the thing,” he said. “My father says one thing, my mother another. I believeher. He wasn’t getting all that much offered in scholarships and not to the big name schools as he said.”

“You went to Ohio State,” she said. “I saw that, and Ohio State is ranked high in college football.”

He laughed. “They are. We won a championship my junior year and a bowl game my senior year. I hated going that far away from home but knew I’d have to for my future. I had to think several steps ahead.”

It killed him to leave his mother alone doing things around the house.

Not even just him helping with a part-time job, but snow removal and cleaning and laundry.

His sisters stepped up like he knew they would.

“You made sacrifices,” she said. “Everyone makes them in life, but not everyone’s are as big.”

“My father made none, but he would cry that he made the biggest of them all. My mother got pregnant a few months before graduation and my father said he couldn’t go to college then. He had a child to raise.”

“Since there were kids after you, I’m going to assume he stepped up at some point?” she asked, lifting an eyebrow. “Your parents were married, right?”

“They were married after graduation,” he said. “My mother got a job right away. My father found one too in a plant. He had a lot of jobs and normally got fired from them all.”

“You said he had a drinking problem? Did he always?”

“Don’t put a pretty name on it,” he said, not hiding his disgust. “He was a drunk. Everyone knew it. My guess is that is why he always got fired. No clue. My mother should have left him and not the other way around.”

“Do you know why she didn’t?” she asked.