“Ma...” Not yet a man plastered all over the news and papers, it is enough for Frank to go unnoticed as anyone special in unremarkable clothes and a cup of coffee-- just another guy doing rounds in the supermarket that Delores favors, the cart in his hands holding random cereal boxes and an assortment of non-perishables just to complete the look of the excuse. Unbeknownst to him, he is echoing the very steps of his other mother, the one whose blood ran through his veins. He’d never heard the story of the time Luisa Castiglione haunted a store just like this in Brooklyn just to get an audience with the same woman he’s counting on now.
There’d been words prepared for the moment, apologies and explanations, but they leave him the second that his other ma looks up at him and realizes... That’s when he’s abandoning the cart, letting it gently roll into a wall of shelves, and launching himself full-tilt at her, bone-deep faith telling him that her arms will catch him like they have every other time he’s had need of them. He doesn’t deserve them-- he’s thought about the hurt she must have felt, the worry, the questioning... his return date having come and gone and no show of the small Castle family at her dining room... and then the news, the godawful news about Maria and Lisa and Frankie...
and Frank just missing in the middle of it all... now here, wrapped around her and pressed into her shoulder the same as he had been when she told him she knew that he was due to become a father.
@maternalmelancholy










