Prologue
West Bumfuck, AR
CHRIS BOTTOMS HAD undergone colorectal surgery, which left him wearing an ostomy bag. The surgeon who performed the procedure had accidentally cut a nerve, leaving Chris unable to relieve himself normally—he now has to catheterize himself to accomplish that simple task.
Chris and his partner Mickey O’Donovan have just journeyed to Arkansas to visit Chris’s mother, from whom he’d been estranged for more than half of his life. Chris agreed to make the trip only because his mother was on her deathbed. To his surprise, he learned that not only had his mother been sober for nearly eleven years, he had a half brother, who was nine, going on ten.
His mother asked Chris to take custody of his brother and raise him, and with Mickey’s enthusiastic consent, he’d agreed t
