Page 31 of His Bittersweet Regret

“It ends today,” my mother demanded.

Opal laughed and that sound set everyone on edge.

“How’s that going to end, Kathy?” Opal asked. My mom was visibly flustered by the seething anger that spewed forth with the words she spoke. “How exactly am I going to avoid the walk? Maybe I should just spend all the money I have saved for a crib on cab fare every day?”

“Well, there are other…”

“Or maybe I should go hungry instead. Oh, I know, I could stop paying the $4,000 that I still owe the doctor for the delivery fees and just have my baby in the bathtub or something. Isn’t that how people do home births now? You people are so used to making good money that you don’t know what it’s like to struggle. I’ve been doing just fine, and keeping my baby healthy, this whole time. You don’t get to step in at the end and judge me for what I have to do to survive!”

“No one is judging you, darlin’. We’re simply worried about you,” my dad tried to tell her in a calm, even tone.

“Yeah, because I happen to be carrying your grandbaby. You didn’t give two shits whether I was dead or alive before you found out,” she tossed back at him and jerked her leg away before he could clean up the wound on her foot. My parents were stunned still and silent as Opal got up.

“I’m leaving. Thanks for making me have to spend some of my hard-earned savings to get back to my apartment when I was only a few feet away earlier. I really appreciate the exact opposite of help. And I’d really appreciate you all leaving me the hell alone from here on out. Every time one of you comes into my life, it gets worse. I can’t take anything worse happening. I’ve reached my damn limit, so just stop!”

Opal limped out of the house and down the driveway to wait on the taxi she called, and we all stood in the living room of my family’s home, absolutely shell-shocked. The sweetest girl in the world had just turned into a wounded animal, lashing out at people for trying to help her and that was all my damn fault.

“I was just trying to help her,” Mom whimpered as Dad pulled her into his arms.

“Kathy, I hate to say it, but I think too much damage has been done to that girl. We’re going to have to wait and see if maybe she comes around after the baby is here.”

“But…” Mom hesitated, trying to get her argument together. “She can’t keep going like that. She’s walking miles to and from places every day, Ed.”

My dad turned on me then. “Did you ever give her money back?”

“I haven’t been able to find her.”

“Well, you have a damned good place to start now. You might want to get on it, so that girl isn’t killing herself and our grandchild just to keep a roof over their heads.”

I nodded in his direction.

“And Son?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t come back to this house until you get that mess you made straightened out. I mean it. I can’t even stand to look at you right now. You aren’t the man that I thought you were. Letting your woman live like that when she’s carrying your baby while you’re out carrying on with some stupid idea in your head that you need to date other people.”

“Ed,” my mom tried to coax him into settling down.

“We raised a bunch of assholes, Kath. First the twins, now this shit with Marsh.”

That was the last thing I heard as I closed the door of my family home, knowing that my dad wasn’t wrong. “Wait!” I heard behind me and turned to see my brother standing there.

“Are you going after her?”

I nodded.

“I need to come too.” I was going to argue, but honestly, he was probably the only one who could get through her door once we got there. That was, if we didn’t take so long that we couldn’t follow the damn taxi that just picked Opal up.

“Let’s go then.”

15

Opal

The cab pulled up to my shabby apartment in a section of town that was known to be the lowest of the low, the worst of the worst. This was where the criminals supposedly lived. That’s what people told themselves so that they felt better about the fact that this was in fact where people who had no other options lived. The downtrodden and weary lived here. Sometimes, those same downtrodden people might turn to a life of crime to help put themselves in a better situation.

That last bit was something I told myself often, so that things wouldn’t seem so scary when I had to walk home later than usual, like I had earlier that day. Unfortunately for me, Kathy Kennedy had been driving by and saw me. It was almost laughable that she thought she was rescuing me from walking through the neighborhood, when I lived here.

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