SERVED COLD

Sean Marshall Parker, at age 27, discovered he wasn't Sean, Marshall, or Parker – a life event similar to a volcanic eruption, an earthquake, or a shifting of the Earth’s tectonic plates. It was a life-changing experience happening as quickly and surely as refracted light deflects off facets of a prism, changing direction and color. He tried to make sense of it all, of what he had just heard at a dying man's bedside, a dying man laying waste to Sean's personal history with the words, "I have a terrible truth to tell you." How was he to make sense of all he had just heard at the bedside of a man he had always known as his father?

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Much earlier, before ever hearing those disturbing words that would twist his life and pull him apart like a rope of taffy, Sean was basking in a typical weather day for Tucson; in other words, near Arizona-perfect. Feeling satisfied, more than that even, about the wheel turning in his hands, forming a fusion of glass and clay into a unique piece. He was creating a gift for Seffie. Taking care not to disturb her sleep, he crept out of the bedroom before the sun’s rising. The living area was an apartment attached to his studio, once a garage or stable in a former life.