Page 59 of Hero for the Holidays

But it wasn’t easy, and it never could be.

“Damn. I really fucked things up for you, didn’t I?”

As apologies went, it kind of sucked. But it was the refrain echoing in his soul.

“There were two of us involved in that relationship,” she said.

“But it didn’t help. The way that I reacted to everything.”

“No. It didn’t help. But we can’t keep rehashing it. We can’t keep going over and over...”

“We can, though. Until I get it all sorted out inside myself. Until I...reckon with the fact that I hurt you. All the ways I hurt you. Because all I have thought about for years is the way thatyouhurt me, Fia. But I never looked deeply enough at the way that I hurt you. I looked at you and saw the person who was in control of the decision. The person who was in control of whether or not we became a family or broke apart. That wasn’t fair. It was never fair. And it becomes clearer and clearer to me when you say things like that. You haven’t even had sex with anyone else. Because you were so...so scarred by what happened. By the consequences. I’m sure that the way I treated you had something to do with that.”

“I don’t know... Don’t. Don’t make it sound like you were evil. Or abusive. You weren’t. You were fundamentally a pretty good boyfriend. Until everything went to hell. Or at least, you were as good asIwas. I was the one who screamed at you all the time, every time you talked to another girl. I was the one who was so obsessed with you that I started sneaking out every night to see you. Youneverpressured me for sex. I jumped on you. I was the one who told you it was okay the times you didn’t have a condom. I bear as much of the responsibility for what we were as you do. Yes, the whole thing surrounding Lila’s birth...and the way that you held it against me,thatwe can interrogate. But don’t act like you victimized me. I own responsibility for us.”

“I don’t really get how you do that.” He looked out the window, every feeling on the spectrum shifting through him. “How you act so fair. How you let me be so many different things, but I only let you be one.”

“Because I’ve had to,” she said. “Because that’s what it’s like to be a woman in the world, Landry. Because it’s what it’s like when you find yourself pregnant as a teenage girl and you have to go through all of your options. You have to be able to see things from a lot of different angles. And...it’s what I had to do in my family, too. I had to be able to see things from everybody’s point of view. Because my parents...”

“There was no scope for complex thinking in the King household. You agreed with my dad or you were out on your ass.”

“How...how did you all end up with the ranch? I mean, I know your dad was in prison for a while after...”

“That’s not what we were talking about,” he said.

“No, I know. It’s just not interesting, though. How I survived. Why I’m able to think about things this way. It’s because I went through something really hard. And I knew that I wasn’t a villain. So I had to learn to think of myself in a more complicated fashion. I don’t think that’s actually unique. I think it’s survival. I think we both had to do our fair share of that. It sounds like you had to look at things black-and-white to survive.”

He ground his teeth together. “Yeah. In a fashion. My father wasn’t abusive in the way that Seamus McCloud was. The McClouds survived worse than we did, don’t get me wrong. But he made everybody around him feel like they were walking on eggshells all the time. He set himself up to be the smartest, most important man in the room. He was gregarious and interesting when he wanted to be, and he was a tyrant at other times. But again, not in the way that he made you feel afraid. He made you doubt yourself. Made you doubt your own strength. Made you question everything. So yeah, I chose black-and-white a lot of the time, because my dad splintered things. Because he made me question reality. Denver wouldn’t let him come back after he got out of jail. He paid him to leave. That’s the only real thing our dad ever loved. Money and power. We made it clear he didn’t have power anymore.”

“He... Denver has money?”

“Yeah,” said Landry. “You started the whole collective with him, do you not know that?”

“I always thought that big injection of cash he gave was from the Kings.”

“No. It was from his pocket. There was nothing here. Everything our dad made was from his drug running, his illegal gambling and loan sharking. It was all dirty money, and the ranch itself...that was a front. It was dying. Denver did what he had to do to get it back on track, and he made it clear to our dad that there was no place for him here. He was a narcissist who overplayed his hand.”

“I... I really had no idea. Not the narcissism thing, I did know that. I mean, maybe I didn’t think of it as a diagnosable condition, though I know for him it was on that level.”

“It’s tough,” he said. “Because I’ve spent a lot of time hoping I’m not my father. And I realized I’m more him than I’d like to be. I acted in a way that would’ve made him proud. I’m sorry about that.”

“You’re not your father.”

“Hell, I might be, Fia. What do I really want to have a kid for? Is it to shape her into something that’s mine? Is it to prove myself right? I’m not sure that I can trust my own motivations. It’s messing with me because I’m not sure what my dad thought about anything. I imagine him as some kind of Machiavellian figure who knew that he was manipulating everybody around him, but now I just wonder if he thought he was justified. That scares the hell out of me. That I could be him and not fully realize it. That what I was doing was making a cast of villains to avoid looking at the fact that I was one.”

“I told you. Don’t oversimplify it. You aren’t a villain. You never were. I care about you, Landry. I always have. Even though I’m angry at you. I didn’t fall in love with a narcissist when I was fifteen. I saw that you were hurting. That you were a kid with a lot of feelings, and nowhere for them to go. No wonder you were so angry.”

“It was hard not to be angry. He would tell us we could do something, have something, and then tell us he never said it. He would forget all birthdays. And then get angry if we forgot his. If we didn’t make a big song and dance about the patriarch. He talked about the cost of raising us. What we owed him. How much more money he’d have if they didn’t have all those kids. When my mom left, he said it was us. I knew it was him. I knew it wasn’t us. But then you have to wonder why she didn’t come back. Ever. Because we are grown now, and he’s not here. And she’s no contact for what reason?”

“It wasn’t you,” she said. “And you’re not your father. Look at the lengths you went to to get your child.”

“I don’t understand how you can say that.”

“Because I can believe that both are admirable things. My giving her up, and you wanting to make space for her in your life. And I can believe that what you did was a little bit petty while also acknowledging that you did it out of love.”

“Shit,” he said. “I feel like an emotional preschooler next to you.”

“Because the world only demands men ascend to the emotional level of the preschooler, Landry. That’s the problem. So if it seems outrageous to you, it’s only because I don’t think you realize how much is asked of women. But let me tell you, being the one ranch with only women, being the only woman on the board for Four Corners, I do get how different it is.”

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