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Doug woke early, having to pee.  He peered myopically at his alarm clock, telling himself that if it was still before eight, he could go back to sleep.  It was seven.  Doug made sure he threw the covers closed again so the bed would stay warm, and he shuffled into his moccasins, crossed his small room in two steps and  opened the door to the dark hallway.  He was so glad to be back home and away from his crazy mother.

When his parents were divorcing, his mother had uprooted him from the city in which he had been raised and pulled him as far from his father as they could get, to his grandmother's house.  Doug loved his grandmother, but moving to a tiny town in rural Pennsylvania, being dragged out of school in the middle of his extremely awkward freshman year, and having his family torn in two was devastating.  The more he lived alone with his mother without his father's influence, the more he resented her and the more he understood why his father would cheat on her.  For three years he endured his mother's faint heart and weeping and bitterness.

Doug was what was called a late bloomer.  He was short, pudgy, and his voice hadn't changed yet.  He believed it was because of his mother, and lack of contact with his father, that had stunted him.  In his junior year of high school, he took the GED instead of enduring another year of mockery.  In a finally deepening voice, he announced his intention to move back home, to the city, with his father.

His mother wept, of course.  "Your father won't want you back," she announced.  "He loves his freedom."

"He already said he wants me back."  Doug stood, defiant.  He had been secretly calling his father and arranging it all behind his mother's back.  When he told her, she accused him of the same kind of deception as his father.  Doug was secretly proud.  His father picked him up himself, driving a new vintage Volvo.  They took the winding roads back home at top speed.

Doug had been back with his father for just under a year when he woke a seven in the morning in his old room, mattress on the floor and clothes in a pile simply because his mother never would have allowed it.  His eyes were only half open when he got to the bathroom door and found it closed.  He knocked lightly, "Dad?  Gotta pee."  Without an answer, Doug turned the knob and was only able to push the door open a couple of inches before it bumped to a stop.  "Sorry!"  Without a response, Doug blinked the sleep from his eyes and pushed harder at the door, shoving his father's arm and shoulder enough to poke his head inside.  His father lay on the floor, unmoving.  Cold.  Dead of a massive heart attack.