His eyes cut over to me again. “Is this . . . Is this a . . . uh . . . body issue? ’Cause you’re skinnier than a rail. And I gotta say you looked a lot better a week ago when your clothes weren’t all saggy.” His grip tightened on the steering wheel as a look of guilt twisted his face. “If us calling you Ox done this, tell me now and I’ll put a stop to it. But it ain’t ever had anything to do with what you look like. You my sidekick is all that means.”

“I know that, Pa.”

“Is it some fool at school then? Tell me their name and I’ll go first thing Monday morning and handle it.” The fire blazing in my father’s deep-blue eyes left no doubt he would handle it.

I lifted both hands, shooing his assumption. “No. Nothing like that.”

Pa parked the truck somewhere in between the shade and sunshine, giving me a glimpse of the Dave Foster from my past for the first time in a very long time:

The old soul who sat on the porch with his young’uns surrounding him while whittling a stick and singing a Creedence Clearwater Revival tune.

The father who patiently helped Phoenix overcome his fear of tractors once he was released to come home from rehab, taking him for slow rides around the farm on the smaller John Deere at first and then the bigger ones.

The sensitive man who noticed Boston’s slow development before the doctors and teachers and then made sure my brother received the best care and education opportunities.

The romantic who used to lead Mama in a slow dance around the living room while Mama’s Percy Sledge record played. Serenading her when their song, “When a Man Loves a Woman,” would come on. And boy, could Pa sing. Boss and I would hide at the top of the stairs and listen to him. Both of us giggling every time Pa made Mama giggle.

All those memories collected, forming a major contradiction to the Dave Foster I’d been living with in the last two years.

“Does . . . ?” His lips trembled and the life began fading from his eyes again. “Does this have to do with you missin’ your ma?”

My throat tightened. “I miss her every day, but this has to do with Miss Wise.” I took a deep breath and spilled it, explaining everything about the lady, the biography books, and the research at the library, and how my appetite had vanished somewhere in the midst of discovering the disturbing history of the Holocaust.

Once it was all spilt, we sat in the truck staring straight ahead at the newly plowed field between the house and the packhouse. A flock of crows were rummaging the rows for anything that might have been unearthed.