With the assistance of David and Patty, Mark made sure the Old Lion got the proper military send-off he would have undoubtedly expected.
Complete with 21 Guns and Taps.
He had been shown and buried in full dress blues, and a chest full of medals and his "stars and bars" had accompanied him to the grave.
It is the way he would have wanted it.
Demanded it.
The day was perfect, the sky was clear and several hundred showed up to pay their last respects.
It was amazing to see and hear how The General had touch each of their lives. When they completed folding the flag it was presented to Mark. They came one by one to touch his arm and give their condolences. I was...Mark thought...his son. He was my Dad. He really was.
Biology be damned.
When at last it was over and evening came, after the kids were asleep, Mark sat silently in the darkness on the veranda.
Orphaned.
Patty quietly joined him and touched his hair.
"H'its hard ain't it? Cain't beleeve he's real'y gone, somehows. Alw'ys thought he gonna outlas' all of us."
Mark was surprised to see a tear slide down her coffee brown face. She brushed it quickly away.
"I w'nt to 'splain somethin' to you. Somethin' he never tole anyone but me. I think you need to hear it."
Mark listened as she told him of Regina and his son he could never claim until his burial.
"Mygina. My Gina" he suddenly realized. The woman he was talking about in the hospital the night he was dying. The son that he claimed was his and Mark had never heard about. He wasn't taking out of his head. He was trying to let me know.
Then Patty explained how this son had fallen in with a married woman and then he had been framed for her death. How obsessed that The General had been over the case insisting that the husband had obviously killed his wife in a jealous rage, and his boy had been a convenient scapegoat.
"Mark" Patty spoke quietly in that voice used to soothe animals and comfort the dying
"The pers'n who fram'd his son was Doc Troy. It was tha' doc'trs wife that was kilt."
Mark sat in stunned silence.