Bad Blood: Does Your Family Fight

By Robert Parrish

Its been a while since thirty-year-old Danny Johnson returned to his hometown. When he goes back to attend the funeral of his aunt, it strikes him how distant and dysfunctional his extended family is.

And so, after an intense dream, Danny comes to a decision: hes going to reach out and attempt to get his family back together after years of fighting, separation, drugs, and divorce. In spite of his efforts, however, none of them will commit to meeting and talking about their problems. Desperate, Danny takes a step hed never intended: he tells a cousin that he has cancer. Although its not true, it serves as a push to gather all of the family in one place for a reunion. But only time will tell whether Danny will be able to use the meeting to reconnect his family members with each other and help them all find forgiveness.

In this novel, a young man misleads his extended family into believing he has cancer in an effort to bring them together for reconciliation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: May 16, 2017
• ISBN: 9781480846210

Robert Parrish

Robert Parrish is a writer and author happily living with his wife, Alicia, in Mesa, Arizona.

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Copyright © 2017 Robert Parrish.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-4620-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-4621-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017905536

Archway Publishing rev. date: 05/08/2017

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

CHAPTER

1

D riving into his hometown of Steubenville always filled Danny Johnson’s mind with a cocktail of conflicting emotions. He thought it had been too long since he’d been back. No matter when he drove in, it had always been too long. However good his reasons for staying away, he’d only made a trip back every couple of years since he left home for college over a decade ago. There was the nostalgia, sure. It was a bit out of his way, but he always made a point of driving by Big Red to see how his old high school was holding up, to remember the chilly nights at football games and the timeless hours passed in those white-painted brick halls, the backwoods parties fueled by bad beer and bonfires that his little brother would tag along to, and the way life was easy before adulthood took hold. Even through nostalgia’s lens, though, he couldn’t pretend the town was anything but what it was: a dying steel town whose best days had come and gone. Every time he came, there were more plywood-covered windows, more falling-down porches and For Sale signs on yellowed lawns. The homes along the Ohio River had long since given up on tenants. They’d stood abandoned for so long. Their only regular occupants were the squatters—crack and heroin addicts at the end of their ropes, with nowhere else to go but a dilapidated company home that hadn’t seen fresh paint or running water since the Wheeling-Pitt plant closed its doors. The people sitting on those front stoops with cigarettes between their fingers stared out at the passing cars with dead eyes. Danny usually altered his route to avoid seeing the row houses too, out of fear he’d recognize his younger brother on one of those stoops. But Tommy was locked up in rehab, and the sight of the ramshackle dwellings was, at the moment, sad only in the abstract.

Danny cranked up the radio as he turned left on Lawson, hoping Bon Jovi could drown out his dark thoughts. It was the same station he’d listened to back in high school, playing the same songs. His mother’s neighborhood, well back from the main drag, hadn’t changed so much with the years, and in the bright sunlight of a crisp spring day, he could navigate by muscle memory, letting his brain travel into the past. There was the Petrick house, where his first girlfriend had lived, and two doors down, his cousin Sam’s place, where he’d spent way too many hours in the basement on Sam’s Sega Genesis. There was Scott Deluca’s old house, where Danny had gotten drunk the first time on a bottle of peach schnapps they’d snuck out of his mom’s liquor cabinet. Memories, nothing more. He wondered idly how many people he still knew on this street as he guided his car to the curb outside his childhood home. His mom must have heard him pull up; she was at the door to greet him before he’d even made it up the front porch steps. She looked tired, her graying hair pulled back into a hasty bun, and there were hints of dark circles under her eyes, which were the same deep-ocean blue of his own. Tommy was the one who’d inherited their father’s near-black irises. His mom had said to him once she should’ve known that was a sign he’d be trouble.

Where’s your suit? his mom asked as they hugged their greetings. He held up the garment bag he carried in one hand as an answer. His mom said, Well, go right up. We don’t want to be late. You know how Anita was about being punctual.

If you’re early, you’re on time, Danny answered, smiling slightly, remembering his aunt Anita saying that exact line time and time again. His mom nodded, one palm on his back pushing him gently through the front door.

So you throw on that suit, and let’s skedaddle. For Anita.

For Anita, he echoed as the screen door snapped shut behind them.

It was always something sad, of late, that brought Danny back home. It used to be an even mix at least—a cousin’s graduation, an old buddy’s wedding—but he’d just passed thirty, and those joyful life milestones were increasingly crowded out by more depressing events. His last visit—almost two years ago, he realized now that he was thinking about it—was when his mom had a heart scare and spent a few weeks in the hospital. That hardly qualified as coming home anyway; he’d stayed in a hotel near the medical complex, never stepping foot inside his childhood home. The time before that had been Grandpa Carter’s funeral after he’d succumbed to a long battle with lung cancer. It was one of Grandpa Carter’s daughters they’d be putting in the ground today—Danny’s oldest aunt, though she was still gone before her time—only fifty-four. Danny almost didn’t feel he had a right to be sad about it; he hadn’t seen Anita in, well, must be five years or more. But she’d been young, relatively. He’d thought there’d be more time.

Despite his mother’s fears, Danny pulled into the funeral home’s parking lot with half an hour to spare. Anita’s daughter Kim was pacing outside the entrance with a cigarette when they came up. Danny took her in an awkward hug, muttering condolences. Tear streaks had dried on Kim’s cheeks, the mascara smudged around the corners of her eyes.

How you holding up, Kimmie? Danny’s mom asked, patting Kim’s shoulder.

Kim answered, Good, considering. I’m just glad I made it back in time to see her in the hospital. She didn’t die alone, no thanks to Keith and the twins.

Keith was Kim’s younger brother; the twins were Kenny and Kitty, her older siblings. Danny always thought it was a little cheesy, the repeated Ks, but that had been Anita’s way. She’d liked things having patterns. Kim had taken after her mother in that regard; her children were James and