Page 40 of Two Wrongs

“Let’s go in,” I grumble. I take her hand and drag her behind me.

A nervous energy fills me up, and I fight the urge to start pacing again. I know a sure fire way to work out all of this anxiety, but before anything physical happens between Wren and I again we need to talk. I could be delusional, but I’d like to think we could help each other through this. Hell, if she’s the only one of us who benefits from this arrangement I plan to propose, then that’ll be enough.

While I’m trying to sort through all the things I need to say to her, she sighs. “Can you sit? All your fidgeting is making me nervous.”

I make sure to sit as far away from her as I can to keep from giving in to the urge to touch her.

“Thanks,” she mumbles. “I don’t know what to do. If I file a police report Liam is going to get in a lot of trouble, but if I don’t my life is fucked.”

I nod. Of course I want to tell her not to file a report. Despite everything he’s done, he’s still my son, and I want to protect him. But, she’s right. Her life will be harder to start out six thousand dollars in debt, with a negative payment history. There will be enough trauma starting over as a divorced twenty-three-year-old woman.

Her eyes narrow, and I can tell she’s getting pissed off. “Don’t just sit there and agree with me.”

“What do you want me to do, baby bird? I want to protect my son, but you don’t owe him shit after the things he’s done to you.”

She deflates, and folds in on herself. I rush to her side. I’ve never been good at watching a woman cry, that’s even more true when it’s Wren. I thought it was hard to see her happy with someone else, my own son at that, but I was wrong. Seeing her misery is worse.

I wrap my arms around her and hold her against my chest. I don’t tell her everything is okay, or to stop crying. She deserves to shed every tear she needs to. This entire situation is shit and it’s better to get it all out. Eventually her breathing evens out, and she falls asleep in my arms.

Our discussion can wait. The shit storm we’re in isn’t going anywhere, and for a few minutes her mind is at ease. I scoop her up in my arms and make a decision I may end up regretting.

Bypassing my guest room, I take her straight to my bed and tuck her in. I brush her hair from her face and kiss her forehead. “Sleep now, baby bird.”

* * *

I havehours alone to sit and look at the life I’ve built. My business and home were things I didn’t believe were possible when I was a child. Growing up with alcoholics for parents, I thought I was doing well not to spend my days at the bottom of a bottle. Then Liam came into my life much too soon, and everything changed. I had someone else to think about, and all the negative voices in my head weren’t enough to stop me from trying.

When Liam was eleven, I managed to buy this house. It was a foreclosure, and in rough shape. I remodeled it one project at a time. Those days were filled with watching lots of how to videos and teaching myself all the things I should have been taught how to do by my dad. It was an eyesore straight from the seventies, shag carpet and all. All of the rooms were separate, giving the house a boxy closed in feel. I knocked down some walls, removed the wood paneling, new counters, appliances, and wood floors and it became an entirely different house.

I’m proud of it, not only because I did all the work myself, but because I was able to give my son a stable home. After his mother left we bounced around to different rentals in town. Once I started Hale Automotive and saved some money, I was able to really give him the kind of life I’d always dreamed of as a kid.

I guess I thought he’d end up better than me if I could give him more. Unfortunately, along with things, it seems I also gave him my parents’ tendency for addiction. I’ve failed at a lot of things in my forty-two years, but none of them felt as heavy as failing as a parent. Logically I know his actions aren’t my responsibility, but knowing I raised a man who’d cheat on his wife, steal from her, and from me makes me wonder if there was something I should have done differently.

Wren strolls out of my room looking rumpled. She yawns and looks around confused. There’s a crease on her cheek from the pillow, and her newly dyed blonde hair is mussed.

“Hey, you slept a long time. I hope you’re hungry, dinner’s almost ready,” I say.

It’s clear she’s still coming out of a deep sleep. The kind where you wake up not remembering falling asleep. It probably doesn’t help that she woke up in a different spot than where she fell asleep.

“You cook?” she asks in a husky voice.

We weren’t the kind of extended family that did holidays together. The few occasions we were all together Charlie’s mom was the chef for the holiday dinner. Liam and I had a few traditions as he was growing up, but the way I treated Wren after they got married drove him away a little, at least when it came to trying to make us all one big happy family. They both thought it was because I didn’t like her. For many years I tried to believe that as well, but I’ve fantasized about her too many times to really accept the lie as fact.

“You don’t?” I’d known her parents a little, and I’m surprised her mother didn’t pass along that talent.

People tend to marry young in this community. When you don’t go off to college, real life starts almost immediately. There’s little reason to put off marriage when two incomes can mean the difference between having a place to live and food to eat. Then there’s way too many people like me who find themselves parents before their age loses the word teen.

Elisa and Martin Parker were a couple of years ahead of me in school, but this is a small town. I knew they got married after Martin got his AA degree and started working as a radiology technician. He made enough money for Elisa to stay home and they had Wren a year after Liam was born. Charlie and Martin had played basketball together in high school and stayed friends so I saw him every once in a while.

I knew that Elisa practically ran the parents group at the school, and her cupcakes funded most of the sports equipment they managed to purchase while she was alive. They had the kind of family I’d wished Melinda and I had. We never did. Instead our marriage looked more like the one my parents had, minus the booze.

“My mom always said she would teach me later. Funny thing about later is that it doesn’t always come.”

Her words hang heavy between us. There are so many things I’d like to do with her. I keep telling myself we can’t, but when I look at it through the lens of never having another chance with her, some of my reasons seem inconsequential. Even my son’s feelings might not be enough to keep me from taking what I want.

“Go sit at the table. We’ll talk over dinner,” I tell her.

She obeys without arguing, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t arouse me. There was a twisted side of me that liked it when she submitted to my demands.

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