Nothing in the deep southern heart of Louisiana ever changed and that was why Eddie supposed it was so hard to come back. He had seen the almost over powering beauty of New York at sunset, he saw the best and worst of humanity there, how could he go back to Franklin now?

He rented a car from the airport in Lafayette and drove for a few solid hours before every memory he had of childhood began to take form again. He turned the radio up and let the screaming guitar of Bruce Springsteen wash everything away that was haunting him. The road became increasingly rocky and familiar and he had to swing the car over to the shoulder of the road to take a deep steadying breath before he pushed the car into gear and it resumed its slow journey down the road.

The small hospital was still standing and as he parked the car in the small parking lot, he glanced at himself one last time in what he guessed was a gesture implanted in him from New York. The door creaked soundly under his weight but no one seemed to pay attention. Perhaps because there was no one in the front of the hospital except for an old man who was quiet content with sleeping the day away.

He tip-toed past him quietly down a long hall that boasted a variety of cramped rooms, all painted different bright shades in an attempt to make it seem more cheerful, but in the end it all failed. He had been in this hospital many times before, but of course it seemed a lot bigger and intimidating to a young boy then it did now to a man. Sunlight was streaming from the open windows and Eddie demanded to know what gave the sun the right to shine, for it to be one of the most beautiful autumn days when he was somewhere he never wanted to be again?

Most of the doors were open; however there was one on the end that was ominously shut. He walked to the end of the long hallway that seemed to keep stretching as he walked and reached out for the doorknob. He almost had it in his hand, could feel the coolness radiating from it when someone cleared their throat behind him. He did the best he could not to jump and settled his stomach with a deep breath before he turned around.

He knew those eyes. At least he would of if he had recognized the face that they were set in. A woman was standing behind in clad in a white buttery- soft looking leather jacket and bone colored slacks, long sunshine blonde hair was carefully pulled away from the dusty gold skin that was spackled with a handful of freckles, but the eyes; the wonderfully blue eyes were icy.

"Can I help you with something?" She asked, her voice carried definite roots from the Bayou. "Yes, sorry. My mother was.Look you're going to think I'm crazy if I'm wrong, but you couldn't possibly be Polly Hawke could you?" The woman looked at him for a long unsettling moment that dragged on for eternity before the unpainted but extremely feminine mouth spread into a grin that showed off very white and straight teeth.

"Eddie," She said, still beaming like the sun when she nearly leapt into his arms. He wrapped his strong arms around her tiny waist and plucked her right off the floor and spun her into a circle. "Shit girl how did you get to be so pretty?" He asked as he pulled the band out of her hair and let the long tumble of gold surround her face. She answered his question by placing a saucy kiss on his mouth. Unconsciously, he noted to himself that she tasted like mint toothpaste and lip balm.

"I'm glad you're here," Polly said when she finally managed to contain her bouncing excitement to see her old friend again. "Nothing major ever really comes through these doors, mostly it's just a few cuts that need stitching or some frantic girls from the high school in for PAP smears and pregnancy tests. Although last summer Tom Cranford blew a hole in his foot last winter when he was hunting in the woods, says he slipped on some ice and the damn thing went off, anyway serves him right. However when you're mother came in to me." She trailed off sadly and looked up at Eddie, surprised to see the slight steely look in his eyes.

"Just tell me what she has Polly, all the letter told me was to come here and here I am, so what the hell is going on?" Polly watched him steadily for a minute. "She had pancreatic cancer, in the very last stages of it" Eddie let out a bitter oath and ignored the looked that she gave him. "Why isn't she at the Memorial in Lafayette or Baton Rouge for Christ's sake?" He asked angrily and Polly shrugged a dainty shoulder. "I've called all the hospitals all over Louisiana; all of them say the same thing. Besides Louise says that she was born here and she wanted to die here, and since she refuses to sign papers for chemo and radiation therapy, there wouldn't be much of anything they could do anyway now would there?"

Louise Hart-Alden, although she may have detested her only child, had always had a soft spot in her withered heart for Polly Hawke, the sweetest little blonde girl who managed to never say or do anything wrong.

"Can I see her?" Eddie asked as he glanced over the closed door. Polly checked the clock mounted on the wall. "Yeah," She began slowly as she jotted something down on the clipboard he hadn't noticed she was carrying under her left arm. "She sleeps most of the day now, but when she's awake all she does is ask for you" Eddie gave the door a grim look as if he could see already what was on the other side of it, but waited silently as Polly pushed the door open and the two of them went in together.

For a minute Eddie was sure that Polly had gotten the room number wrong, for the tiny woman in the white bed couldn't have possibly been the same woman who had made the first 18 years of his life pretty much hell on earth. But the woman turned to the sound of the opening door and looked past the both of them.

Polly went forward and gently rearranged the sheets on the bed. "Mizz Alden," She said in a clear voice. "You're son is here" Louise angled her head the best she could and peered at Eddie skeptically. "That's not my son; my son is ten years old" Polly gaze Eddie a sympathetic look but he shrugged it off. "No honey," Polly said as she plumped the pillows under her head a bit. "Your son was ten 17 years ago, Eddie's come to see you now"
She nudged him forward with her hip as she passed by him to collect the dirty laundry and Eddie considered not saying anything. "Hi Mom," He said a little meekly and the woman with sandy brown eyes now hazed with sleep and disease looked at him and seemed to focus. "Edward," She said between numb lips and clutched his hand desperately. "I was so horrible to you when you were young"

Somehow Polly managed to slip out of the room without being noticed and left Eddie alone with his mother who he had not talked to in seventeen years. "Look you don't have to explain it." "No," She interrupted him, "but I want you, so please listen" She took a couple of steadying breaths and began slowly:

"A couple weeks before you were born, your father ran off with some 18-year- old tramp he had met in Pittsburg named Vanilla, I was so angry at him for leaving when I was pregnant with his baby. I got a note from him a week later saying how that he didn't think he was the father and that the baby was now my responsibility and I should do whatever the goddamn hell I wanted to with it. Then you were born on June 5th and all the nurses fell in love with you, you were so small and perfect, you were never even fussy. You had your father stamped all over you, especially the smile. I hated you for that alone, why did you have to look so much like him when all I wanted to do was hate him and love you?

"The older you got the more I saw James in you, and oh how I was terrified that if someone knew what had happened, that he had ran off and left me alone, that someone would come and take you away from me, but I desperately needed you. I hardly let you play with your little friends from school because I was worried that if you fell or got hurt then they would think that I was doing it to you and being a bad mother, but what I didn't realize that by shutting you away was the worst thing I could have done to you. I remember the day that you're English teacher from the 3rd grade called and told me that you didn't want to come home because I hated you. I wanted to weep and rage at the same time, but instead I started the little newspaper, so I hardly ever saw you anyway and I suppose that that was just as fine for you as I pretended it was for me.

"When you turned 16, girls were always sniffing around you and I guess you were sniffing after then as equal much because you were always bringing them home with you. I hated the thought of one of the stealing you away from me so I picked at them until they flat out refused to come back here again, and I'm sure that they hated me just as much. I knew that one day you were going to leave and I couldn't always keep you to myself, but I must say I was hardly prepared for you to pack your bags and announce that you were leaving the day that you turned 18. Well sure enough you did and I let you go without so much as a goodbye.

"The best thing I ever did was let you walk out of the house that day, but I despised that I didn't tell you that I really did love you for you were my only son, my only child, but pride wouldn't let me. Nevertheless, I've come to the point in my life when I begin to worry about regrets, and the one true thing that I've regretted is that I never told you how much I truly love you. I can see that you've made something fantastic out of yourself, it was more then I ever did and you're a spitting image of your father now, but through everything I put you through when you were younger, I desperately loved you and I still do, I just wanted to make sure that you knew that before I go"
Louise settled back a bit more and then slowly, softly, drifted off into sleep.