The Good Father

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “And Jeff knows them, too. Through you. He also knows to be on his best behavior with you because of that.”

  “Jeff is a good man.”

  “So are you. And you’re the last person he’d want to disappoint.”

  He sipped his beer.

  There might have been bugs out, if they’d been there a month or so earlier. And there were still no lights out on the ocean. She needed them there. Needed something to look at besides him.

  Because out on the water, alone with Brett, all she wanted was to crawl on his lap, have him wrap his arms around her, grab her sides with fingers that could work magic on her body and never let go.

  But of course he would let go.

  And she’d fall.

  “If Jeff was struggling with anger issues, he’d do something about it. Like me.”

  Ella froze. Not because of the chill in the air, but from the inside out. Like him? The words were so random she couldn’t help but stare at his silhouette in the darkness.

  “What do you mean, like you...and struggling with anger issues? You didn’t even act out in anger, Brett. Not ever. Heck, you never even raised your voice. You were afraid you’d be like your dad, sure, but you never were, Brett. Not ever.”

  While she could hardly believe her brother would hurt his wife or child, she knew, with every ounce of her being, that Brett could never be that man. He had a shut-off valve that would stand up to anything.

  He sipped again. And she wondered, with guilt and a small bit of hope, too, if he’d had so much beer that his tongue would be loosened.

  If maybe, this one time, Brett would open up to her about the residuals left behind by his father’s anger. To her knowledge only her brother and his mother had ever been that lucky.

  “What do you think you did?” she asked. Because she knew damn well he’d never stepped out of line. Hell, for that matter, he’d never even stepped up to the line. There’d been a time, in one of her lowest moments, when she’d wished he had lashed out. At her. At the world. Even if it meant slamming his fist through a wall. At least then he’d be fully alive.

  “I went to see a divorce attorney while my wife was pregnant with our child,” he said.

  She was on a precipice. She couldn’t see. Didn’t know how she’d gotten there or where she was going. Holding on to the arms of the chair, she rode the water with the boat.

  “Because you were struggling with anger issues?”

  “Yes.”

  Ella’s jaw dropped. Leaning forward she reached for his beer. Took a swig and handed it back.

  History had a cruel way of reinventing itself. “No, Brett, you left because you didn’t want to be a father to the child I was carrying. And truth be told, you’d been leaving me slowly long before I got pregnant. I think it was because I wanted more than you could give me,” she said softly, but very clearly. Because one thing she’d learned over the years was that she had a right to be heard. “I needed you to be all in and the more I needed from you, the more emotionally distant you became.”

  He didn’t say a word. And she knew she’d said too much. So she took another sip of his beer. It was still more than half-full.

  “You used to tell me how you feared being like your father,” she said to the night air. Unable to look at him again. “But that was just fear talking. A result of having grown up in an abusive home. You told me so yourself. And I’ve done a lot of reading since then.”

  She could smell him, though. That aftershave...she wished she’d never chosen it.

  He reached down beside his chair, and she heard the refrigerator open and then shut, followed by the sound of a beer cap twisting.

  “I wanted to share your daily ups and downs. You didn’t,” she told him, sorry if he didn’t like the truth, but intending to get it out anyway.

  He’d started this.

  She’d been prepared to go back inside, sleep on the couch he wasn’t using and leave him in the room with a sleeping toddler.

  Their marriage was long over. What she’d once thought they’d had, if they’d had it, had been destroyed a long time before. Facts were facts. She’d learned to accept them. He couldn’t come along now, all these years later and suddenly try to rewrite the script.

  “I believe in helping others,” she said now, taking the cold beer he’d retrieved and opened as he handed it to her. Finding a sad humor in the knowledge that he must not have wanted her to share his. “And I believe in asking for help when I need it. I think people being there for people is what life is all about.”

  He didn’t respond for a third time. Déjà vu. As usual, she was talking to herself. But when, in the past, she’d have fallen silent in response, she didn’t this time. She wasn’t speaking for his benefit. She was speaking for her own.

  “You’re just different,” she told him. “All those years of infertility treatments and you never once told me you didn’t want to be a father. Don’t you think that’s something I should have known? Instead, after I finally get pregnant, you go see a divorce attorney without even talking to me first. And look at The Lemonade Stand. You’re its founder, and no one there knows who you are. Because you can’t get that close. Can’t let anyone share the emotional parts of your life. Even your career... You don’t do charity work yourself—you check up on those that do to make sure they stay honest. It’s commendable work. Necessary work. You’re a great man, just one who’s chosen to live life from the sidelines.”

  She’d figured it all out a couple years ago. Once she’d come through the haze of hurt and disbelief after her world had fallen apart.

  But she was fine now. Or thought she was until she heard him say, “I’m not denying any of that.”

  Somehow she managed to stay upright. To sit there without dropping the bottle of beer she held. Inside she crumbled.

  She’d been right!

  And only in the confirmation did she realize that she’d subconsciously been hoping that someday he’d tell her differently. That she’d spew her accusations and he’d dispel the hurtful assumptions and tell her...what?

  “However,” he continued, “it’s important for you to know, in light of Jeff’s situation, that I tried to talk to you about my issues, but you refused to believe me.”

  “What?” If he’d told her he was a Martian she couldn’t have been more surprised.

  “I told you I struggled with the very real possibility that I could be like my father.”

  He had. Several times. “In the beginning, yes, you did. You were completely honest with me way before you even asked me to marry you. But that was it, Brett. I assured you that I wasn’t afraid. That your fears were just that—fears. Not reality. And our years together proved me right. Even in the worst times, you never once showed any sign of violence.”

  “Why do you think I grew more and more distant?”

  Confused, Ella stared toward his shadow in the moonlight. Was this really happening?

  “You want me to believe that you were struggling with anger issues?”

  She sat. Welcomed the air cooling her hot skin.

  “The first time I noticed a burning need to lash out was your freshman year in college when we were all at the homecoming party at the Delta house and that lecher, Danny Simpson, had you up against the wall, pawing you...”

  She’d forgotten all about that. Danny, while pretty much a loser slob, hadn’t been a mean guy. He’d been attempting to come on to her and had been too drunk, falling against her and trapping her against the wall. He’d also apologized a thousand times over the next day and had appointed himself her silent slave for the rest of their years in college.

  “I didn’t even know you saw that,” she said now. She’d been at the party as Brett’s date. From the moment she’d stepped foot on campus as a freshman, in his and Jeff’s sophomore year, she’d been Brett’s date.

  “I was heading over to save you from him, but you disentangled yourself and led him to a couch before I could get to you.”

  She w
ished she could see Brett’s face. It sounded as though he might be grinning.

  And her belly flip-flopped. She’d given him a memory that made him smile.

  “I’m not seeing where the anger issue was in all that,” she said. She knew for certain he hadn’t gone after Danny. The guy had passed out minutes later and hadn’t come to until the next day.

  “Inside me,” Brett said. “It’s not what I did. It’s what I felt.”

  Light flashed behind her eyes. Almost as though the sun had suddenly started shining through the night sky, and then was gone again. Leaving her sitting beneath the canopy in the dark.

  “You saw an injustice. You saw me at risk of getting hurt, and you got mad.”

  That thing with Danny had been before they’d ever made love. Long before he’d asked her to marry him.

  “You’re doing it again.”

  Another jolt. Her stomach turned, and nausea was there. “Doing what?”

  “Making light of what I’m trying to tell you.”

  “I’m not...” Ella replayed his words in her mind. Brett saw himself as someone he wasn’t. His inability to trust himself came from his youth. Her job was to help him see himself as she saw him. Right?

  But... “Why do you say that?”

  “Ah, El, this isn’t worth going into. You were a great wife. I failed. Can’t we just leave it at that?”

  In some ways she really wanted to.

  “I don’t think so.” Because his words, if he didn’t explain them, were going to give her sleepless nights she couldn’t afford. She’d already had more than her share. And she told him so.

  “In the first couple years of our marriage, during those first fertility treatments, I’d tell you about my fears. You’d basically pat me on the head. You didn’t believe me when I told you I was struggling.”

  Well, of course she hadn’t believed him. If he’d told her he was afraid he was going to fly to the moon in the morning, she wouldn’t believe him about that, either. But...

  “All you ever told me was that you were afraid of becoming like your father, Brett. You never once told me that you were struggling with anger...”

  “I feared being like my father for a reason, El. You should know me well enough to know that.”

  “Yeah, the reason was that you grew up in an abusive home and your fear was left over from that...”

  “No, I struggled because you brought out the most intense emotion in me. A love that was bigger than I was. More than I could control. And for every good emotion, there’s a shadow side. I came face-to-face with that over the incident in college, but didn’t think much of it at the time. As you say, most guys would have been pissed enough to get violent in that situation.”

  Understanding teased at her in a horrifying sort of way. She had made light of Brett’s fears. Because to do otherwise would have given them a weight they didn’t deserve. She’d been trying to help him.

  But in the end, would it have made any difference? Whether the fears were based in reality, or simply imagined, they’d still come between them.

  “The longer we tried and failed to get pregnant, the more tense I grew,” he was saying. “Not because of my need to have a child. Exactly the opposite. Each time, I’d feel more relieved. But you...you got more and more depressed, took longer to bounce back each time. I was losing you to your need to have a child. At the same time, I was growing more and more certain that I wasn’t meant to be a father. But I loved you so much and didn’t want to be without you. I just kept hoping the treatments wouldn’t work, and you’d eventually see that we could be happy just the two of us. But that wasn’t right, either, because I knew, deep down, that you needed more than I’d ever be able to give you. Before I could figure out what to do about any of it, you got pregnant...I felt like I was being crushed between steel walls with no way out. I saw the attorney because I had to be prepared in case I got to the point where I couldn’t handle things. And then later, after you lost the baby...”

  That was the one that hurt too much for her to handle alone. She’d needed someone who could share her grief, not someone who’d made it clear that having their baby wasn’t what he’d wanted. When she’d started bleeding after her eighth week, she’d called Chloe long distance in Palm Desert, not Brett, who’d been forty-five minutes away. And then she’d called an ambulance to take her to the hospital in Santa Barbara.

  “When I got the call...when I got to the hospital...”

  It had been too late. He’d been in LA, at a board meeting. By the time he’d made it up the coast, she’d already lost the baby.

  Brett had come to her room. She’d woken long enough to see him sitting there. And remembered hurting because he’d been in a chair along the wall, watching her. Not close. Not holding her hand.

  She’d needed so badly to feel his touch. To know that he was hurting for their lost child. To know that he felt anything at all for her. And hadn’t been able to ask him anything before losing consciousness again.

  She found out later that they’d given her high doses of sedative that first day because she’d been so inconsolable.

  “I couldn’t help you,” Brett said. “You knew by that point that I hadn’t wanted us to get pregnant. I blamed myself, like I’d somehow tempted fate by not appreciating the gift we’d been given...”

  Sad thing was, she understood. Brett couldn’t help how he felt. Any more than she could help how she felt. Her heart ached for him.

  She tried to stay on that road again, now, with Brett. He was finally talking to her. But she couldn’t travel with him. He’d arrived too late. Living in the moment was how she’d learned to cope.

  “I left before the love you felt for me turned to hate.”

  His words called her back.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  BRETT SAW ELLA slide forward on her chair—to reach out to him? Or go in?—and panicked.

  He blurted what was on the tip of his tongue before she did, either. “If you wanted so much more than I had to give, why did you stick with me all through college?”

  He was curious. And curiosity killed the cat. Much better to have understanding and move on.

  “I don’t know.” She gave the nothing answer, but she sat back again. So he waited.

  “You exude.” She’d gone back to sipping from her beer. And he was glad.

  “There’s an energy about you, Brett. A goodness that permeates the air around you.”

  He should have asked the question long ago.

  “And, as we’ve already said, before we were married, and for the first year or two afterward, you shared more. You used to talk to me.”

  They used to discuss the world’s problems. And find solutions for a lot of them, too. He remembered the conversations. Missed them.

  “I never quit talking to you,” he said. But he had, of course. In the way she meant.

  Until the last horrible few months of their marriage they’d had great discussions about anything and everything that didn’t pertain to intimate, personal emotions.

  And they were back where they’d started. He was a man who could be a potential domestic abuser. As his dad had been.

  “My dad was a great guy once. I told you that.” The boat swayed, and he shifted. Unbuttoned the top of his shirt as he started to sweat in the cool night air.

  “Yeah.” The man was a first-class dick, and Ella knew it. She also knew that discussion of him was off-limits. Even in college, he’d refused to talk to her about his old man. What she knew, she’d learned from Jeff, and he had it on good authority that Jeff had told her very little.

  His beer was more than half gone, and he wasn’t tired.

  But maybe he could talk himself to sleep. Maybe he owed Ella this—understanding. A way to set her free.

  “He and my mom, they were high school sweethearts.” He’d never told her that, either, though he knew that Jeff had done so.

  “Both of them products of abusive homes.”

  He drank. “Time
out of time,” she’d called their weekend. He damned sure hoped she was right. That he’d be himself when he got home the next day.

  Himself with one hell of a headache—not from three beers, but from the tension climbing up the back of his neck.

  “That’s what brought them together.” He wasn’t as careful about his word choice as usual. “The dark secret they shared. The shame.”

  Shame. Brett could feel it, even now, descending upon him. Like humidity from the air, it clung to him. Making him sticky. Heavy.

  “They promised each other that they’d never have an angry word in their home. Because they both knew the cost, the pain, they trusted each other like neither of them would ever have trusted anyone else, to keep the violence away.”

  He heard an intake of breath. And knew that he was giving Ella something she’d deserved long ago.

  “It worked right up until I was ten years old.”

  There were so many ways that it had worked right. Little League. Summers at the beach. Dinners at Uncle Bob’s. His father had taught him how to in-line skate. And let him ride behind him on the back of his motorcycle...

  “What happened when you were ten?”

  He knew she already knew the answer to that question.

  But he didn’t want her to go up to the cabin. To leave him out there all alone.

  He did, of course. But he didn’t.

  “My little sister was diagnosed with leukemia. And because my dad was spending so much time with Mom and us, while they figured everything out, he lost his job.”

  “What about the Family Medical Leave Act?”

  He forgot. He was talking to a nurse.

  “It had just been signed into law a couple years prior to that, and I don’t know what happened. I was only ten.

  “The story’s a classic from there,” he said. “Dear old Dad started drinking, and anytime he found out Mom had another bill to pay or Livia needed another test, he’d hit something. Started out with the wall. Then Mom.”