Excerpt from "North"

A piece of something I'm working on called "North"



Pam’s mom, Rachel, smiled up at her from the hospital bed.
“Who’s the Father?” she asked in a whisper.
At first Pam didn’t know what to think, then remembered that she was cradling three month old Andrew in her arms and she smiled.
“Joe, Mom.”
“Oh. I always liked him.”
Rachel closed her eyes and Pam walked out of the room. She died a few hours later.
After getting the call that her mom had passed, Pam got into her car and drove to the house. She had a knack for snapping into action and getting things done in a time of crisis. She left Andrew with Joe and her brothers as they drank endless cups of coffee and said nothing except:
“Well, she led a good life. A good, good life”.
“Yep. A good life.”
“Yep.”
She found the key under the welcome mat and went to the basement where the safe was. Pam brushed away the dead pill bugs and sat on the musty, damp concrete floor. Pulling out manila envelope after manila envelope, she figured this wasn’t going to be an easy job. She emptied the contents of the safe into her lap and began organizing them. The handwriting that labeled each envelope belonged to her mom, it was severely slanted and pointy.
“Adoption Papers”
It was written in small letters at the top as if it was trying to hide. Pam let the contents slide into her lap. She wasn’t all that surprised. There were days when she and her brother, James, would search the house for these papers. James, now in his mid thirties, had much darker features than the rest of his family and could have been mistaken for a Mexican, rather than a Pollack.
But what fell into her lap did not have James Michael Dudek on it.
“Bernard Clarence Dudek.”