A Sad Soul Can Kill You Read Online Free PDF Page A

gut-wrenching for Franny to find herself pregnant and unmarried.
    Even now, fifty-one years later, she could still remember the terrible ache in her heart after Homer’s father went missing in action. She never saw him again, and her heart was left feeling like there was a vice grip around it. Somehow, she knew she would never be the same after that.
    Charlotte, Franny’s mother, had made the decision to send her daughter away until after she’d had the baby. So Franny had stayed at a facility that offered pregnant girls the opportunity to continue their education while providing a reprieve for them during their pregnancy.
    When Homer was born, and Franny saw the curled up claw where his left foot should have been, the vice grip around her heart was replaced by a fracture, which caused her heart to crack and shatter. The deformity was more than she could handle. It was the last straw.
    She left Homer with her now-deceased mother shortly after he was born and enrolled in an out-of-state university. In the beginning, she called weekly to check on Homer’s well-being.
    â€œHow’s my baby?” she’d ask her mother.
    â€œHe’s doing fine,” Charlotte would reassure her.
    â€œHow’s he doing with that foot?”
    â€œHe’s making a lot of progress in therapy.”
    â€œIs it still balled up?”
    Each time Franny asked that question, she always hoped to hear her mother say that Homer’s foot had somehow miraculously uncurled itself and had become a normal-looking foot. But that was never the case, and her heart sank each time she heard the answer.
    â€œYes,” Charlotte had said. “It’ll probably stay that way, but Homer is going to be just fine.”
    As time passed, her weekly calls became every other week, then once a month. Soon, months went by without her calling to check on her son. And for every month that passed without her calling was a month she managed to subdue the guilt inside of her just a little bit more.
    She never told any of her college classmates or her roommate that she had a son. And by the end of her freshman year, the facade had become her reality. The guilt—having been hushed into silence—became temporarily nonexistent.
    The financial aid Franny received from the government was not enough to cover all of her expenses, and Charlotte had refused to help her.
    â€œI’m taking care of your son,” Charlotte had said. “That’s my help, and that’s all the help you’re going to get from me.”
    So Franny had gotten a job through the campus work-study program, and divided her time between studying and working to supplement the cost of her tuition. After graduating, she’d worked for a short time as a nanny, taking care of another woman’s son and daughter.
    The irony of what she was doing had not escaped her. There she was taking care of someone else’s children while rejecting her own child. Men do it all the time, she’d told herself. They make babies, and then leave babies . Including her son’s father. And it was this way of thinking that allowed her to continue living without having any physical contact with her child.
    Eventually, she began working for the Department of Health and Human Services as an administrative assistant. The job paid well, and she was able to save a great deal of money, some of which she sent home to her mother every week. Still, she had not returned home to see her son.
    On Homer’s fifth birthday, Charlotte called Franny. “When are you coming home to see your son?” she asked.
    â€œI’ve been so busy,” Franny had said. “I’m trying to make plans now, but it’s so hard. How’s he doing?”
    â€œWell, he gets teased about his foot sometimes,” Charlotte said, “because of the limp, but other than that he’s all right.”
    Two more years passed without a visit from Franny, and on Homer’s