Ever since Frank told Kat the sad story of his biological mother, Kat was on a hunt to find the long lost Kennedy family. They ordered a death certificate, they spent hours at the public library searching for a newspaper article that would give a clue to where the family lived and a public account of the story. They mostly came up with nothing though. Matt and I would listen, but Matt wasn't interested in digging up any trouble. He also didn't want to risk hurting Terry's feelings. Her story was that Frank Sr. didn't want to talk about it and she didn't know anything. Frank Sr. died a year after Matt had discovered the birth certificates, so they never had the opportunity to ask any questions of him.
Ironically, it was through Matt that Frank and Kat connected with "the others", as we called them. One day, out of the blue, Matt got an email from his mother's sister's daughter; or his first cousin. She said that she had been looking for him and his brothers and she found an email address for Matt somehow. Initially, he was going to ignore it, but I convinced him that it would be good to talk to them. If it would give them comfort to know that the boys were fine after the traumatic past, it would be worth it. They emailed back and forth and he even got an email from his mother's sister. They gave lots of details about the family and what happened and how they lost touch. Matt was happy that he corresponded with them, I think it gave him closure too. He gave his brother's their email adresses and they all decided to say hello. It was Frank and Kat that took it a step further and met them. They visited the aunt's home several times and were invited to some kind of family reunion. Kat told me that Matt and I were invited also. I wanted to go, simply out of curiosity, and convinced Matt that we should go and at least meet them. As I expected though, Frank and Kat couldn't remember where it was and promised they would give us the address, but they never did. They were keeping "the others" all to themselves for some reason. I thought that they wanted to reinvent themselves as the people that they wanted to be and Matt and I might ruin their fantasy if we were to intrude. These people became their new family and that was when Frank called Terry and told her that he no longer considered her his mother. Years later when Frank talked about them, his language had deteriorated to a point where he didn't have as many words at his disposal; all he could say of his fascination with them was "they look like us". This seemed important to him. He also told me once that he could call the aunt if I wanted him to, but that she had told him that he and Kat were causing too much trouble, and not to call them any more. He said that Kat would start fights with him, then call the aunt to complain about him.
After Frank called to reconnect after all those years had gone by, we got together at Terry's house. She had moved back from North Carolina and lived about five miles from Matt and me. Frank filled us in on all that had happened to him with the divorce and he was just so distraught about not being able to spend time with Frances and Eric. The protection from abuse order had been renewed every year and he had no hope of seeing them, but it didn't stop him from talking about them almost incessantly. We heard the same stories over and over again. His favorite story he told me every time was when he had a small window in between PFA orders and he went to Eric's soccer game. He stood on the field cheering on Eric, when Kat came up and began shouting that he was not allowed to be there. She struck him and pushed him and actually knocked him down on the field. The police arrived and asked him to leave. He attempted to complain about the physical confrontation from Kat, but the police weren't interested in pursuing her at that time. The PFA was renewed and that was the embarrassing end of being a soccer dad. Frank told me this story almost every time he visited.
We knew something was amiss with Frank though. There was almost something creepy. There was a vacant look in his eye and the vocabulary was missing. He used the phrase ". . . and stuff like that" to end almost every sentence. We felt sympathy for him, but Terry was still angry. She was happy living in blissful ignorance of Frank's new problems and was worried that he would try to draw her into them. She said "I just wish he had stayed away.". She wasn't about to let herself get hurt again, and no one knew him better than she.
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