Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Frank
Title: Bloodlines are everythin. Until they’re not.
People yap on about loyalty. About blood. About family lines and who belongs where.
Truth is, blood's a slippery bastard. Looks solid till you put pressure on it. Then it runs everywhere.
Back then, I thought I had everythin sorted. New wife in the kitchen with her belly gettin bigger by the day. Whole cattle ranch under my name. Future lined up neat as fence posts.
Then along came Sally.
Pretty as a peach. Voice soft enough to calm a dyin steer. Always lookin at me like I was more than I was. Made me feel seen, which was a dangerous bloody thing.
I shouldn't have touched her. Not with Edith carryin my kid and sleepin in the next room. Not with my life already laid out.
But I was never good at resistin what I wanted. And Sally never pushed my hands away.
When she told me she was pregnant, she cried. Hands shakin like she expected me to explode.
I didn't. The baby was mine. That's all that mattered. And no child of mine was leavin Koolaroo.
When Sally went into labor in the middle of the night, Edith handled it. Sleeves rolled up. Voice steady. No panic. Just gettin on with what had to be done. Country women are good like that.
But there was too much blood and Sally panicked. She grabbed Edith's wrist halfway through and said things she shouldn't have. Told her about us, like confessing our affair would save her.
It didn't.
Sally bled out before dawn.
Edith was crushed with guilt. Saying all sorts of things she should've done different. Things that might've saved her. But what's the point of that? Sally was dead. Nothin left to fix.
Edith never mentioned the affair again. Never said Sally's name after that night.
Sally went into the ground out past the swamp, where the soil turns sour and nobody goes unless they're lost or stupid. Same stretch of land those greenie bastards once tried to steal from me over a handful of frogs.
That was the end of Sally.
Not the end of the baby, though.
Edith raised the kid like it was her own. Soft heart, that woman.
And I let her. Least I could do.
But turns out, while I was out musterin or elbow-deep in busted engines, someone else had been slippin through the back door and slippin into Sally.
I only found out years later, when the doctor with his fancy tests told me the kid Edith had raised as her own ain't mine either.
Fuck me.
Didn't matter how many women I'd had on the side. Didn't matter how many lies I told Edith to keep her happy. Sally screwin around on me cut deeper than any blade. She seemed so innocent.
But it was too late by then. Sally was in the ground, and the kid was callin Edith Mom and callin me Dad. Damage was already done.
Paid the doc to shut his mouth. Didn't need the whole damn town knowin I'd been played for a fool.
Family's family, I told myself. Don't matter where the seed came from. But it gnawed at me.
Still does.
That's the irony. Loyalty ain't in blood anyway. It's in the land.
Koolaroo never lied to me.
And now you know. One of you kids ain't even Branson blood.
Chew on that.
Frank Branson.