"Perfectly natural," Cindy commented. "No man or woman can be constantly refused sexually and be expected to just passively allow hunger and frustration to eat away at them."

Eddie bobbed his head. "I understand that, and you two do, but do you think my father did? Oh no, not him! He found out Mom was with this other guy, I don't know how but he did; and right away he filed for a divorce on the grounds of adultery. He could prove it, too, and so the judge gave him custody of me and Mom didn't get any alimony or anything… It was awful!"

Carl clucked his tongue compassionately. "Now I see why your mother moved to California – not only because it's cheaper there than in New York, but she was hurt and understandably bitter and wanted nothing more to do with the life style that had caused her troubles."

"I think so, too," Eddie agreed. "I can tell by her letters that she's still having kind of a hard time and that she's sort of lonely."

Carl cleared his throat to hide his increasing interest. "What prompted you to leave your father now, Eddie?" he asked. "Something must have or you wouldn't have hitchhiked all the way out here from New York unannounced. Do you want to tell me about it? It might help if you did."

"I… I don't really want to talk about it," Eddie replied, but he did. The entire episode was festering inside his impressionable young body like a cankerous sore, filling him with outrage and hurt and frustrated confusion, and he was near-bursting with the need to unburden himself. These two pleasant people, by their manner and understanding comments, had instilled in the teenage boy a sense of camaraderie and confidence; it would be easier to talk of what happened with them that it would be to talk about it to his mother. If he told his new friends first and got it all out in the open, the task of telling his mom would be that much simpler when the time came – as he knew that it would as soon as he saw her.