Mr. Right Goes Wrong

by Pamela Morsi

  “Okay, so you want to talk?” Eli asked.

  For a second he thought the boy might stick with silence. Then after a hesitation, Tru heaved a huge sigh. The kid’s shoulders slumped as if the weight of the world were upon them.

  “I...I gotta talk to somebody,” he told Eli. “I’m going crazy. I go over it and over it in my brain and I...I don’t know.”

  Clearly, this was going to be hard for both of them. Eli screwed up his own courage.

  “I want to assure you,” he said. “That no matter what’s going on with me and Mazy, I am still your friend and you can talk to me.”

  Tru took a deep breath. “It’s about my father.”

  Eli was so surprised that he momentarily stopped to stand still in the street.

  “Your father?”

  “Tad Driscoll. Did you know he’s my father?”

  After an instant of hesitation, Eli nodded and they began walking again.

  “Yeah, of course you know,” Tru said. “Everybody knows. That’s what he told me.”

  “He?”

  “Tad Driscoll. My father. He told me that he’s my father.”

  Eli had to shut his mouth. He also had to bite his tongue. What the devil was Driscoll up to?

  “He decided that I needed to know,” Tru explained. “He said that Mom believed I’m too young to understand. But if I don’t know, I look like a fool.”

  “Under no circumstances would anything not under your own control make you look like a fool,” Eli told him.

  “He says that Mom still thinks I’m her little baby,” Tru said. “She thinks I can’t own up to my own heritage, my own position in the town.”

  “Your position in the town?”

  “Yeah, you know, being a part of the most prominent family in town. Being a Driscoll.”

  Eli felt slightly nauseated.

  “If I’m going to live in Brandt Mountain, or really any of the western North Carolina counties, I should start thinking of myself as a Driscoll.”

  Eli clenched his fists tightly and then released them as he got a grip on his initial reaction.

  “Truman Gulliver is a fine name,” he said with deliberate calm. “I remember your grandfather. Any fellow would be proud to be named for him.”

  Tru nodded. “Mom and Gram really loved him and I know they named me for him because they love me.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “He...my father said that if I wanted to pursue a name change, to be a Driscoll instead of a Gulliver, he would pay for it.”

  “He would, huh?”

  “Yeah, he said that he would be proud.” Tru smiled at that. “Imagine. My father. Being proud of me.”

  “Any father would be proud of you.”

  “Thanks.” The smile faded as the confusion returned. “It’s all so different from how I thought it would be,” he said. “I always thought that if I met my father, I’d punch his lights out. How dare he desert my mother! How dare he refuse to claim me! What an asshole, right?”

  “Right.”

  “But then I meet him and, you know, he’s nice. He said that he’d always wanted a son and when he saw me, he realized that he had one.”

  “It’s unfortunate that he didn’t realize it earlier,” Eli said stiffly.

  Tru nodded. “He told me how it was back then. Back when it all went down. Before I was born. He had a girlfriend that he was in love with. And then there was my mom, who was so crazy and she was, like, putting out for guys.”

  “Putting out for guys?”

  “He didn’t say it that way, but that’s what he meant. She liked him that way and she was available to him. Stuff happens.”

  “Yes, stuff does happen,” Eli said. “But it doesn’t always happen the way people remember it. Mazy was very young and naive and Driscoll was...he was a cad.”

  Tru shrugged. “Sometimes guys are like that,” he said. “I heard about you dumping Mom at the roadhouse. Uh, wow. That was cold.”

  The truth caught Eli off guard. He could hardly argue against it.

  They reached Main Street, stepped up onto the wide sidewalk and continued their uphill trek.

  “So, anyway, I’ve been seeing him a little and we’ve been texting, but my mom doesn’t know. And that feels weird.”

  “You don’t feel comfortable telling her?”

  “He asked me not to.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “He’s afraid she’ll get all freaked out and run away with me like she did before.”

  “She didn’t run away with you,” Eli said very carefully. “Mazy was getting on with her life. Driscoll didn’t choose to be a part of that.”

  Tru nodded slowly. “I know that he’s not seeing it quite the same way that Mom sees it. But it’s not like both of them can’t be a little bit right and a little bit wrong.”

  Eli wanted to state unequivocally that in this instance Mazy was one hundred percent right and Driscoll was totally wrong, but he could see that Tru was confused and trying really hard to make sense of the whole situation.

  “You remember that support group I told you about?”

  Eli nodded.

  “One of the things that we talked most about was kind of getting past the bad things that our parents had done,” Tru said. “We all wish that things had been different. But they weren’t and there’s no fixing that. The future, though, doesn’t have to look like the past. We’ve got to be willing to hope, even if our experience warns us that our parents may be hopeless.”

  What kind of teen support group was this? Eli wondered again.

  “That’s how I get my head around you and Mom,” Tru continued. “Everything I know about Mom and men tells me that you’re just the newest guy passing through. But I choose to hope that she’s ready to be with somebody who’s decent enough to love her back.”

  “And if that doesn’t...doesn’t happen?”

  Tru shrugged. “Disappointment isn’t easier just because you expected it all along.”

  The kid was right about that. But Eli was certain that Tru was wrong about Driscoll. There was too much past behavior for Eli to give him any benefit of the doubt.

  He started to tell Tru exactly that. Then he remembered what Mazy had said to him. A person deserves to believe that they were conceived in love, even if it was only love of the moment. Eli was sure there had been love, at least on Mazy’s side. She’d told him that children need to have a good opinion of both their parents, no matter what the two thought of each other. Each of us is half of two people. It’s not fair to teach someone to hate half of himself.

  Eli bit his tongue on the truth about Tad Driscoll, although he was absolutely certain that Driscoll would have no such compunction. The creep had never had a problem portraying Mazy as the villain. He had done it before, to basically the whole town. He wouldn’t hesitate with Tru or with anyone to do it again to get whatever he wanted. But what on earth could he want?

  Tru answered the question that Eli hadn’t even asked. “He...my father...he wants to spend more time with me. He wants us to do things together.” Tru eyes brightened at that. “I guess like it used to be with you and your dad, huh? He said that he asked Mom. That he really tried to persuade her to let him be a part of my life. She wouldn’t go for it. He thinks she might still be holding a grudge.”

  “You know your mother, Tru. Does she hold grudges?”

  The teenager hardly hesitated. “No, she really doesn’t,” he admitted. “But I’m certain she would never grant my father any custody or visitation rights.”

  “Custody? Visitation? Driscoll talked about that?”

  “Yeah. He says that Mom has already controlled the situation long enough. We can go to a judge and I can ask for time with him.”

  Eli did
n’t like the sound of that at all.

  “He says he knows the county judge. They were friends in high school and he knows the whole story already.”

  Eli knew the county judge, as well. Bo Spalding had been one of Driscoll’s crew back in the day, and one of several who had spread lies suggesting Mazy’s promiscuity.

  “There is still a lot more to it than a couple of old buddies making a deal in court.”

  Tru’s brow furrowed. “I kind of wondered about that myself,” he said. “And I feel bad talking about something so big, making plans for stuff we’re going to do and keeping it a secret. Mom would definitely want to know. And he...my father shouldn’t ask me to keep it from her. Mom and I, we’ve always been a team. And she’s always shared...she’s shared some really bad stuff with me, even when she didn’t want to. Some of those talks were really hard for her. And I didn’t always make it easy. If feels wrong to be going behind her back.”

  “It feels wrong because it is wrong,” Eli said. “You’ve got to tell her.”

  “Do you think she’ll be mad at me? I mean, I should have told her right away. Will she be mad about that?”

  “I don’t know,” Eli said. “I don’t think so, but she might. That doesn’t mean that you don’t do it. It’s a big part of being a man to own up to your mistakes even when you know it’s going to bring trouble down on your head.”

  Tru took a deep breath before nodding agreement. “Thanks, Eli, I knew I could count on you.”

  43

  Mazy had been successfully avoiding Eli. As long as she kept her distance, she reassured herself, her feelings for him would lessen. That’s what always happened. The breakup would be intense and painful and the world would feel cold and hollow. Then slowly, slowly, one foot in front of the other, she would move on. Life would begin to shine once more. She would recognize that the man was wrong for her. She would take heart that someday she could, she would, love again.

  Seated in her tiny office, the copy machine droned behind her providing welcome white noise that couldn’t quite obscure the thoughts in her own head.

  Mazy had ignored Eli’s existence. She’d refused to take his calls. She’d given the flowers he’d sent to the Mountain View Nursing Home. But she couldn’t stop thinking about him. She’d gotten used to talking to him, sharing with him.

  He was just a habit, she assured herself. One that would be broken.

  Typically when a romance went sour, she would move across town or to another town. She’d start her life over someplace where she would never run into the guy again. That wouldn’t happen this time. The same reasons that had brought her home kept her here. She had to put in the time to reestablish herself. And her son deserved to get through high school without another move.

  The thought of Tru had her determination melting into sadness. She regretted allowing him to get so close to Eli. She knew he was hurting. In all the ins and outs of the relationships she’d had, Tru had stayed disconnected. He’d been, at best, neutral when it came to the men in his mom’s life. But she knew he liked Eli. And she surmised that his personal relationship with him was the cause of his current silence. He was appropriately responsive, agreeable and obedient. But an unfamiliar silence had settled in on him. He was holding something back. She feared that it was an attachment to Eli and a disappointment in her latest romantic failure.

  Mazy hated that for Tru. But it couldn’t be helped. No one was going to drive her away, force her to abandon her goals or make her feel uncomfortable. She had done nothing wrong. Except to be lured in by the same dysfunctional pattern that had kept her from being her best self thus far.

  She knew, of course, that in a small place like Brandt Mountain, they would at times be thrown together. But she hadn’t really expected that a family occasion like Thanksgiving would be one of those times. She couldn’t really see any way to get out of it. Her mother was planning the meal.

  She tried to rephrase and repurpose. Eventually she would have to face Eli again. What better time to do that than amid friendly faces and family.

  That made her feel a bit better. She tried to hang on to it.

  Mazy stared determinedly at the file on her screen as she leafed through the paperwork on her desk. With the holiday only days away, Mazy knew she had to finalize the list of uncollectable debt being bundled and sold. She was, for all intents and purposes, finished. She had gone over the particulars again and again. She had spoken with all the parties involved. The action would not be a surprise to any of them, although bad news was always jarring no matter how expected it happened to be.

  The only thing left was to add Nina Garvey’s loan to the list.

  Something about the paperwork continued to nag her. Something about the file felt wrong, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

  Mentally she scolded herself. Shame on her for allowing herself to get too involved. Banking, especially this kind of banking, required impartiality. No one should get a break just because she liked them or worried about them. That wasn’t merely bank policy, it was basic fairness.

  Of course, she thought unkindly, Tad had made some allowances for his friends. But that was his decision that he had to live with. Mazy lived with her own decisions and this one was clear-cut—favoritism was wrong. She liked Nina. She felt sorry for the raw deal her crappy husband had left her. And she wished that she could help. That’s what kept her, day after day, checking and rechecking numbers that she already knew were accurate.

  It was time to bite the bullet and turn in the list.

  Mazy sighed heavily.

  Behind her came a chuckle as Deandra came in to unload her collated copies from the machine.

  “You sound like me viewing the kitchen after my hubby decided to cook dinner as my anniversary gift.”

  “Sorry,” Mazy apologized.

  “I was, too,” she teased.

  Mazy smiled.

  “Hey, we all have those days,” Deandra said. “In your job, there may be more of them than for the rest of us. Tomorrow we start over and do it all again.”

  Mazy nodded stoically as she scooted the mouse until the cursor was at the edge of the file. She clicked to shrink it and then dragged it across to add to the debt bundle folder.

  There, it was done.

  She leaned back in her chair. She didn’t feel one bit better. There was something, something, that was a little bit off.

  “Deandra,” she said. “You handled the Garvey file, right?”

  “Sure did.”

  “Did it ever feel like to you that something was missing there?”

  “Missing?” The woman was thoughtful for a long moment. “No, I think everything always seemed okay. Except for having to deal with Wesley Garvey. He was such a slimeball.”

  Mazy couldn’t speak to that, but she’d heard a lot about the guy, and none of it was good.

  “Nina’s nice, though.”

  “Yeah, I don’t really know her,” Deandra said. “I’ve seen her around town, though. She’s looks real sweet, but I’ve never talked to her.”

  Mazy was surprised at that. “You never discussed the loan?”

  “No, actually, I never did,” she answered. “I always dealt with Wesley Garvey. And the day after he died Mr. Driscoll took the account from me. He said he would handle it personally.”

  “Tad handled it?”

  Deandra cleared her throat before giving a warning nod toward the empty doorway. “Yes, Mr. Driscoll handled that loan.”

  “His initials aren’t on it anywhere,” Mazy said, thumbing back through the pages in case she’d missed it.

  Deandra shrugged. “I don’t know about that,” she said. “I haven’t seen it since the morning that Garvey wrecked.”

  The woman gathered up the last of her copies and left the room. Mazy sat staring at h
er computer screen. In the back of her mind, snippets of past conversations played in her head.

  He showed up at my house the day of the funeral.

  I’ve been scared to come to the bank.

  I’m so glad that it’s you handling my loan and nobody else.

  Ordinary statements that had gone unnoticed when they were spoken.

  Karly’s words came back to her, as well. Driscoll has been a user all his life. He preys on vulnerable people. I don’t know if he could change. And even if he could, would he?

  Mazy clicked open the debt bundle folder. She dragged Nina’s file out once again and opened it up. There was something...something. She knew it. She just had to find it.

  44

  They got the last of the furniture to the second floor with not so much as a scratch on any of it. It was an accomplishment, but Eli’s upbeat, cheerful mood was completely fake. Inside his head, he was mad enough to spit. The image of Tad Driscoll cozying up to Tru like a father made him sick to his stomach.

  He kept up the calm demeanor through the unloading, the trip home, the closing of the shop. Once Clark had driven off and Tru was walking home, the pleasant mask he’d been wearing slipped into a steel-jawed anger. He was in love with Mazy. And Tru was a terrifically decent kid. It was like watching a traffic accident happen and being powerless to do anything about it.

  He went up to see his dad. As soon as Ida stepped out of the room, it all poured out of him like a flood of fury, incredulity and despair. “I’ve got to do something,” he told Jonah. “But I don’t have any idea what.”

  Eli felt like moaning aloud. He hated feeling so powerless. A glance toward his dad put that in perspective. His father had physical use of only one arm and somehow he still managed to make a positive impact on people’s lives.

  “I should get you to bed,” Eli told him.