Dating the Best Man

by Gail Sattler

  “I can’t believe your mother would let the police take you away.”

  “She couldn’t have stopped them, but she didn’t even try. It was obviously me who did it. They hauled me away, but since I was a juvenile and he said that he wasn’t going to press charges the police took me home after a night in detention.”

  “Your mother must have been glad to have you back.”

  He shook his head. “Not really. Remember she’d flushed the drugs he’d brought down the toilet, and with her dealer in the hospital, my mother was pretty mad. Also, we’d just been evicted. When the police dropped me off the landlord was there, because of the damage. Also there’d been a lot of buzz in the neighborhood about what happened. While they were arguing I ran inside to change, then I went to my part-time job. Word that I’d been arrested for beating up one of the local dealers had gotten around really fast. I didn’t even make it to my station. I got fired because they didn’t want a person like me working there, even though all I was doing was slinging burgers.”

  “Can they do that?”

  “They can do whatever they want. If I wanted the job back I would have had to take them to court, and I wasn’t in a position to do that. When I got home, after fighting with the landlord, my mother kicked me out, and my landlord charged me with property damage. Those charges did stick because I was so close to being legal age when it happened. By the time it hit the courts, I was legal age, so they couldn’t send me to a juvenile detention center. Fortunately, property damage is only a misdemeanor—hence the community service. That was why planting trees up at the camp worked really well. It was hard work but I had three squares and a roof over my head.”

  All Daphne could do was stare at him. “What did you do in the meantime? You said your mother had kicked you out.”

  “She did. Until the court case came up I had to sleep on the couch of whoever would take me in that day and pretty much beg for them to feed me, because no one would hire me after I got fired.”

  She couldn’t imagine begging people to house and feed him. It also meant he had been living out of a suitcase, and even though he didn’t say it, she wondered if he spent any time living on the streets with the vagrants.

  “What did you do when the tree planting was finished?”

  He sighed. “The ranger in charge felt bad for me because I didn’t have a job and I didn’t have a place to live. When the tree planting gig was over he set me up with a part-time job with the parks board and a friend of his took me in for cheap room and board while I finished high school however I could. I managed to get my GED. He later co-signed so I could get a loan for college to be a forest ranger. When I graduated he gave me a good reference and pulled some strings and I got the job. The rest is history.”

  “Your boss cosigned your college loan?”

  “Yup. And he’s still my boss, so I can’t default on the loan.”

  While it was good that he had a stable relationship with his supervisor, she couldn’t rid her mind of the reality that Cory had beaten someone so badly that it required hospitalization. Even if it was a drug dealer, the man was still a person.

  “Does your mother still see that man…Hank?”

  “Yes. He’s still her drug dealer. The only good thing is that when she spent a few days with nothing in her system she saw what it was doing to her. She’s not a hard-core addict, but she’s definitely hooked. She gives it up for a while, but she always goes back. She lives in a run-down boarding house and spends all her spare money on drugs. At least she’s able to maintain a job and she’s got a car now.”

  Daphne remembered Cory getting a gas card for his mother for Mother’s Day. It now made so much sense. In a very sad kind of way.

  He turned to face her. “When she’s talking to me, I try to get her to go into rehab and to come to church with me, but she refuses. She says God can’t help her, but I know He can. She knows she needs help, but she won’t take it. I’ve found a place that can help her that my pastor recommended, but she won’t go.”

  Daphne tried to picture it, but she had no experience with that kind of life. All she knew was what she read. But she did know that most of what children learned when they were young was by example. If his mother was a habitual drug user from his childhood days, his daily exposure to it would teach him that drug use was normal, because that’s what he saw every day.

  “Have you ever used drugs?” She held her breath, waiting for his answer.

  “Not really. Probably less than what the average kid would try. I was always focused on sports, always on the school teams. They had policies about not using drugs, and I was one of the few who listened.”

  She probably should have been picturing him being the star of the basketball team, but like a bystander who couldn’t pull themself away from a train wreck, the mental picture of Cory pummeling another man played over and over in her head.

  Regardless of the reason, Cory had lost his temper and caused serious injury. This was more than just a fistfight; he had sent a man to the hospital—with his bare hands. “You’d mentioned property damage. What kind of property damage?” Even though she had a feeling she wouldn’t like the answer, like the train-wreck syndrome, she had to know.

  “When I threw him into the wall he didn’t just dent the wall, he made a hole. My mother didn’t have any money to fix it, and it was more than the damage deposit. The landlord took us to court over it, both of us. Even though I was a juvenile, they still charged me. That’s why I had to perform the community service. I did that instead of having to pay for the repairs. That’s why my mother had a hard time finding another place.”

  Daphne couldn’t imagine the force it would take to throw a person so hard it made a hole in the wall. All she could do was stare at him. In her mind’s eye scenes from the Incredible Hulk played out—a being so strong he could do anything, except control his temper when he became angry.

  “I know how bad that sounds, and it is bad. But it really was self-defense. I would never use my size and strength against anyone. I want to defend the defenseless, not hurt them.”

  Daphne stared at him; begging her with his eyes like a beaten puppy dog. But he wasn’t helpless—far from it. People were helpless against him.

  Regardless of the fact that he said he’d only been defending himself, the results had been catastrophic. Ever since she’d known him, even though they’d had disagreements, she’d never seen him in a situation that tried his patience or his temper. If that was how he defended himself, the easygoing Cory she knew, or at least thought she knew, was a different person when things didn’t go his way.

  “Why are you telling me this now?”

  “Because I don’t want you to find out later from someone else.” He cleared his throat and his voice dropped to barely above a whisper. “Because I want you to understand…” He paused, making direct eye contact. “Because I’ve fallen in love with you.”

  * * *

  A silence thicker than the dead of a moonless night hung in the air between them. Cory could even hear himself breathing. Ever since he’d met Daphne at the mall that first time they’d had dinner together, he’d known the history hanging over his head was something he had to tell her. The more they’d gotten to know each other, the more pressing it became—he’d wanted the day he told her he loved her to be full of romance and hope for the future.

  Instead he felt the possibilities of his future with Daphne crumbling into bits and being blown away by the winds.

  He wasn’t a fighter. He’d only been in one fight in his life, and he’d just told her about it.

  Most women he’d met would have excused it as an error of teenage angst. At the time his life had fallen apart, but with God’s help he’d been able to rise above it and do good—for animals, people and nature. But Daphne wasn’t most women. She needed a man who could protect her and never lift a finger to hurt her or threaten her, or anyone else, in any way. He was that man, except for that one day. Because of the magnitude of that o
ne day, he’d had to tell her about it. To hide the truth would have been a lie, and he couldn’t do that.

  “It’s in the past, but it is my past.”

  At his words, she froze and looked at him like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck.

  “Does my brother know this?”

  “No. It’s not something I walk around telling people. I was a juvenile, so my records are sealed. But it did make the news at the time, so what happened is public record. In the end, what’s on record is a misdemeanor, no time served, only community service.”

  “You beat someone so badly he was taken away in an ambulance. Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

  “It’s not something I’m proud of. I was waiting for the right moment, and it didn’t happen.”

  His heart sank, waiting for her to say something, anything, but nothing came.

  He couldn’t blame her for being afraid of him.

  He steeled his strength—saying it out loud was harder than anything he’d done in life. “This changes things, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes. It does. I’m sorry. I need time to think.”

  He felt himself go cold from head to toe. “I understand.”

  “I need to go.”

  He didn’t try to stop her. He just watched as she dashed into the living room, grabbed her purse and ran out the door.

  Not knowing why, he stayed on the balcony and waited, watching the pathway leading to the building’s main door. After a few minutes Daphne appeared. She ran out the main entrance and straight for her car. It took off so fast he wondered if the tires had squealed.

  Over the past few months he’d done his best to help her regain her confidence and not be afraid of every dark corner. She’d built up her strength and stamina, and most of all, courage and street smarts. Now she no longer needed her brother at her side every time she went someplace other than work.

  At the same time, she no longer needed him, either. She’d earned herself the promotion at work, and she was well on the way to get on with her life.

  Without him.

  He didn’t know what he was going to do without her. He’d known for a long time that he wasn’t what she saw as her Mr. Right—he was not a skinny accountant. Even though he wasn’t what she thought she wanted, he had to prove he was what she needed.

  If only he could figure out how.

  Chapter 12

  Daphne pulled the car to the side of the road, stopped and looked out the window at the entrance to the highway.

  She couldn’t go home.

  If she went home she would talk to Rick. She didn’t know much about sealed juvenile records, but she did know herself well enough to know that if she saw Rick right now, she would tell him what she knew about Cory. Regardless of how she felt, what he’d said was in confidence, and not up to her to repeat—especially to one of his friends. Once said, words could not be unsaid. Even if she never saw Cory again, she couldn’t destroy his friendship with her brother.

  But was that what she wanted, to never see him again?

  She really didn’t know.

  All she knew was the more she thought about it, while there was a lot he had told her, there was a lot he hadn’t.

  She couldn’t see the Cory she knew losing his temper that way. She just couldn’t. Yes, his mother had spent the money he’d worked so hard to earn on drugs instead of the rent. Still, knowing Cory’s gentle nature, she couldn’t see him losing his temper to that degree. She felt as though he’d given her only the bare facts, but not all the details.

  She had to find out what he hadn’t said.

  That day, three people were there. She’d already talked to him. She obviously wasn’t going to find the drug dealer and talk to him. The only person left was his mother. Even though the relationship was strained, Cory’s mother was the only person who could give her the answers she needed.

  Daphne didn’t know the exact address, but she remembered the name of the street from seeing the Mother’s Day card before Cory had mailed it, and she also remembered that his mother’s name was Kathy.

  If his mother had a landline and not a cell phone, she would hopefully be searchable online.

  Daphne pulled her cell phone out of her purse, set it to check the web, and sure enough, came up with an address on the street he’d written on the envelope. She entered it into her GPS and was soon on her way.

  Just as Cory had said, it was a run-down neighborhood. The boarding house her GPS led her to was no different than any other house on the block—in poor repair. Daphne told herself that she knew enough self-defense moves that she would be safe here in the middle of the day.

  After making double sure she’d locked her doors, she made her way to the door.

  Holding her breath, she knocked and waited.

  A taller-than-average woman who had the same almost-black hair as Cory and a feminine version of the same chin answered.

  “Are you Kathy, Cory’s mother?”

  The woman’s face paled. “Who are you? Has something happened to him?”

  Daphne shook her head. “No. He’s fine. I’m a friend of his, and I wonder if I can talk to you about something.”

  The color came back into Kathy’s face and at the same time her eyes narrowed and her lips tightened. “What? Has he done something?”

  Daphne didn’t think this was a good sign, but she wasn’t going to leave. “I know things are a bit strained between you and your son, but I wanted to ask you a few questions about him.”

  Kathy’s eyes narrowed even more. “Are you pregnant?”

  The question should have startled her, but it didn’t. She’d known for a long time that Cory was the son of a single mother and had never known his father. She wondered if this was the same reaction Kathy had gotten from her own parents, who had disowned her.

  She shook her head. “No. Nothing like that. I just want to talk. Could we find somewhere private? Can I take you out for coffee and a doughnut?” As the words came out of her mouth, she remembered Cory saying his mother wasn’t good with money.

  Daphne made a point of checking her watch. “I just realized the time. I know it’s early, so if you haven’t had dinner, I could take you out where we could grab a burger.”

  Kathy stiffened and crossed her arms over her chest. “What do you want?”

  Daphne shook her head. “Nothing. I just want to ask a you a few questions about him as a teen. What he was like.”

  Kathy remained silent for a few seconds, then nodded. “I’ll go get my purse.”

  When the door closed in her face, Daphne wondered if that was a hint to go away and not come back, but the door did open again. Kathy came out carrying a worn handbag and, unless Daphne was mistaken, she had run a brush through her shaggy hair.

  In her car, she remembered passing a fast-food restaurant on the way there, so that’s where she headed.

  “What’s your relationship with Cory? You obviously know him well enough to have found me.”

  Daphne sucked in a deep breath and tried to appear relaxed. “We’re friends. But he told me something from his younger days today, and I need to know more.”

  Beside her, Kathy gasped. “He told you, didn’t he?”

  “About what happened with him and Hank? Yes. He did.”

  A silence hung between them. When she stopped at the red light, Daphne turned to Kathy. “If you want, I can take you home.”

  “You want to ask me what happened that day, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  Again, the silence hung.

  Kathy sighed and turned her head to look out the window, presumably so Daphne couldn’t see her face.

  “I’ve lived that day over and over. Everyone made a lot of mistakes that day. Sure. Ask me anything you want.”

  She didn’t say anything more until they were at the restaurant and had their meals in front of them. While they ate Daphne tried her best to make small talk, even though she was the only one talking. Kathy simply ate and nodded
every once in a while at something she said.

  When they both had finished eating and only had their drinks to finish, Daphne felt the time was as right as it would ever be. “I’m just going to come right out and say it. I hope you’ll answer just as openly as I’m going to ask. What happened that day? Cory told me what he heard and his side of the story of the fight with Hank. Now I’d like to hear yours.”

  Kathy lowered her half-finished drink to the table. “That was a really low point in my life, and I wasn’t thinking very rationally. I was starting to get the shakes, and I don’t remember everything that happened, but I’ll never forget when Cory walked in…”

  Kathy sighed, then continued. “If Cory told you that Hank started the fight, he was telling the truth. He also didn’t lie when he said that Hank spat on him then threw his beer at Cory’s face. I don’t think Cory could see when Hank started hitting him. I was so shocked I didn’t know what to do. I was so strung out that all I could think about was that I hoped the cops didn’t come, because I didn’t want to get arrested.”

  “Cory told me that.” But now she knew he hadn’t told her the whole story.

  “I don’t know how, but Cory managed to focus just as Hank aimed the empty bottle at his face. I remember screaming, thinking that if Hank hit my son in the face with a beer bottle it could knock him out and kill him. Then suddenly Cory grabbed Hank’s hand and ducked. The bottle flew out of Hank’s hand, bounced off Cory’s face, fell to the floor and smashed. Hank moved to kick Cory, yelling that he was going to pay for that… I remember wondering why Hank would say that, because at that time Cory hadn’t done anything but grab his hand. Then Hank yelled at me that if I tried to gang up on him, I’d be sorry. I was already sorry, but I didn’t want to make it worse. Then he started yelling that I was going to pay, too. He said he’d kill Cory. And me, too.”