The day he met Seth Duerson, he was shocked. Shocked how his hair could just lay down while his sister’s did the very opposite. The moment he stepped up to the front of the church beside Jon and gazed over Eugene Duerson’s serene, dead face; Greg was to sit down in the aftermath. Trying to compare, trying to pin-point the key similarities the three siblings shared.      Surely, it was the nose.    Rhoda claimed she didn’t want to be within Seth’s home, but here she was. Scoring over the family album. Sitting beside her, Greg thought her scowl didn’t match how watery her eyes were (but ultimately knew better than to say that.) “This is me.” She whispers. Her long finger extending to tap on a picture he couldn’t even properly see yet.    And when he does see, he wonders if her hair has always been like this at each and every age. It’s big and curly now, the photograph tells him that it was thick and curly then. He sees she’s been making the same expressions forever too; the scowl, the narrowed eyes...Greg had been so in thought, observing his hand-me-down-clothed mother so thoroughly: he missed how her fingers found a way underneath the elastic.  He had not known that it was her father - his grandfather’s - picture she stole until the car ride back home. Loud country music between them, louder wind coming in through both sides of the rolled down windows.    “See this man?” He never expected the photo to be presented, he doesn’t know how she does it. Steer and somehow remove an item from her br- Greg doesn’t think about it, disgusted.     “That’s your Paw.”    “Grandpa?” He corrects, eyes squinted as the sun shows no mercy through the wind shield.    “S’what I said, right?”    He looks onto him - a man beside his wife. A man who looks like a giant in comparison to his wife and cabin. Noticing the cabin is what causes him to wonder just how tall the dark-haired man is. She speaks again before he has the chance to even dare try some mental math,   “He looks like you.”    Now rather than focusing on height, Greg strains trying to look at that unclear face. He supposes he can make out the jawline, the thin lips. The nose...Greg supposes he does look like him. “He’s tall.” Is all he can say, deciding to keep this photo safe in hands.     Surely, the scoff is her way of smiling endearingly; “you’re tall.”   From then on, there would be times in which Greg walked beside little Jon on the pavement. The setting sun casting their silhouettes on the pavements, his limbs look longer than they should have and he can hear his mother’s gently say, he looks like him.   The sight of Bern Duerson stays with him in even the most insignificant ways. It causes him to gaze over his face in the mirror once puberty sets in. He doesn’t have signs of dark hair on his chin, does he? He can’t have a beard. If he doesn’t catch it now it will be a long one. A hillbilly-ish beard.   He’s going to look like him, Greg knows with neither fear or acceptance. But it turns out.   He doesn’t look like Bern. He doesn’t look like Seth. Or Eugene or even his mother. He doesn’t look like a single Duerson because he is adopted.    And on days like this, when he sits the closest to the window as Mr. Watson says they’re going over homework; Greg does not fret if the answers he dared to put little effort into last night are right. With two fingers pressing his temple, he wonders, just who he looks like the most in his family. His real family.   The memory of seeing that hillbilly man beside his little wife and little cabin for the first time fades away.

 Communication between the mother and son always went on this way. The glances, the shifting and re-positioning of lips. Even posture said something too. Greg felt their non-verbal communication could vary a good hundred ways, ninety at minimum. Of course, Rhoda talked too: she talked and in doing so gave him requests, asked him questions among other things like insignificant small talk. But to know mother couldn’t believe this? That she thought this was all stupid? She just had to look his way or hum his way.  There was never a sign Rhoda would one day use words to describe her disdain. No foreshadowing one day she was going to talk about serious things. It’s just one Friday when it all begins. In her car, she slows down at the corner where the eleven year old is on the path of journeying home. Tells him to get in, they’re going to the market.  “Make me a list.” Her order is concluded with a cigarette flicked from the window. No mind is given to Greg’s ‘hidden’ attitude as he opens his backpack. It felt wrong meddling with your school items in a car. Not only that but he hated writing while in a car. Never does Rhoda say what to put on paper, for its Greg who ALWAYS makes her the perfect lists with everything. He knows exactly what to do, exactly how she wants it to begin. Now while Rhoda knows she made no mistake in abruptly picking her son off the street; the next following seconds feel like a lifetime. The low and soft country music playing between them isn’t enough for her satisfaction. “It’s Tiffany’s death day.” If there was a better way to say this – a better word to use than ‘death day’ – Rhoda doesn’t dwell on it. Greg’s silent, already erasing his jagged E. The lack of response has Rhoda wonder if he remembers the doe-eyed brunette. Also wonders if she just wasted her breath. Finally the boy says, “That’s too bad,” all in one-focused breath. “It’s sad Jon didn’t get to know her.” “I know.” As Rhoda swallows, it feels as though a lump is there. Almost ready to choke her. The next claim is harder, “I miss all my friends.” “Visit them.” A scoff comes as she blinks her eyes. The days of would-be crying are assumingly long gone as she can say in response, “Who has that money?”  The car may stop as she pulls into the parking lot, but these sorts of conversations do not. These murmurs of the deceased – the complaints of eye-roll worthy occurrences at the Diner resurface. And ever so randomly at that. Oh. The glances she gives him live on in those off-the-wall chaotic situations where its best to stay quiet but, these talks overshadow it.  Greg never felt bothered by this, needless to say. Never realizing it showed a sort of…loneliness, his mother had within her. A loneliness that drove her to speak to her son so directly, as though he were an old friend. Only reasonable friend.

“I’m going to assume you said that you promised. I’ll see you around.” Placing a quick kiss on the freckled cheek of Jamie, Greg ran off back towards home leaving the ghillie dhu dumbfounded but happy. Turning around, he also started to head back home making plans on meeting in this same field again tomorrow.