Page 7 of Two Wrongs

She’s tiny, and not just in height. I believe a better word is delicate. Her face could turn even a rugged grease monkey such as myself into a poet. I could write verses describing her expressive green eyes, high cheekbones, upturned nose, and plump bow shaped lips. The body she hides under oversized sweatshirts and cardigans is lush with tits that could fill even my giant hands, a trim waist, wide hips and a plump ass. Wren is a walking wet dream, except apparently for my dumbass son who actually has the privilege of touching her.

Even if she weren’t married to my son, her age would put her firmly in the off limits category, but she is married to him. Noticing her is wrong, jerking off to thoughts of her makes me disgusting, but as long as no one knows the vile thoughts that run through my mind I can live with it. Making her think I hate her is a necessary evil.

Every time I see my words hit her I hate myself a little bit more, but it’s far better she believes them than know the perverse thoughts I entertain when she’s near. Regret gnaws at me now though. She’s out there somewhere, trying for the first time to make it on her own. Which reminds me of something she said Friday night.

“What did Wren mean when she said you won’t let her have access to your bank accounts?” I ask Liam.

I know I pay him well. I’ve wondered many times why they live in the worst apartments in town, and why she drives the same car her parents got her when she turned sixteen while my son drives a flashy Mustang. The signs were there from the beginning, but I stupidly let him convince me she was the one who had a spending problem.

“That’s none of your business.”

I grab his shoulder and force him to face me. “Please tell me you aren’t using your joint money to spend on your girlfriend.”

He shakes my hand free. “Stay out of it. This is between me and my wife.”

“I don’t think you’re going to have a wife for much longer. Friday night was bad. How long have you been seeing another woman?”

Charlie, my oldest friend, and best mechanic stops near us. He slowly wipes his greasy hands off on a rag. Both of us are covered with random smears of grease and blood from the inevitable cuts we get while fixing cars. My son, on the other hand, is shower-fresh.

“It wasn’t my place to say anything,” Charlie begins. “The boy has been stepping out for months now. I felt bad for the girl, but I wasn’t sure what to say about it.”

I turn to Liam. “Months?”

He shrugs. “I got caught up in something. I didn’t know how to fight it. I just needed to work it out of my system. She didn’t need to find out.”

“Who? Please tell me you weren’t stupid enough to take up with someone from town.”

Liam shakes his head. “Who doesn’t matter.”

I throw the first thing within reach. A wrench, unfortunately, and it crashes through the window on the back door. “It fucking does matter. People talk in small towns. How did you plan to get this out of your system and get your marriage back on track if she were to find out about this? I hope you have a plan, because she knows now, and I don’t think she’s going to be forgiving and forgetting.”

“I managed for seven months and she didn’t figure it out! Just stay out of it. I can fix this. Wren loves me.”

I force a deep breath in through my nose. I’ve never been this angry with him before, and it feels like shit. “If you love her, let her go. Some things can be broken too much to be fixed. You should have let her go when she got that scholarship, so for once, do the right thing by that girl and let her have a life.”

“She needs me. She’ll see that. I’ll end things with—with that woman, and we’ll be fine.”

“I’m not the one you need to convince, son.”

* * *

Wren’s caris back in town. Carl has been in the shop twice this week getting his wife’s brakes fixed, and he never mentioned her absence. Which tells me she’s been back since Monday at least.

I haven’t seen her, but that’s not unusual. It’s been my practice to avoid her whenever possible, but with everything going on, the need to check on her is overwhelming. I try and tell myself I only want to make sure she’s okay, that she’s found a place to stay, but the excuse sounds weak even in my own head. I’m the last person she’d want to see.

I look out across the shop and see my son finally getting his hands dirty and working on a farm truck brought in for a tune up. We don’t get a lot of those, because most of the farmers handle a lot of their own maintenance. This customer is one of the few farms to turn a profit now, and has neither the time nor the interest to fix this old clunker.

Liam has always been gifted with machines. I’d hoped he’d channel that talent into an engineering degree, or even a vocational certification. He’s been out of high school now for six years, and he hasn’t really done anything more than work here. That would be great if I thought he had an interest in taking over my business or opening a second location, but he doesn’t have any interest in running Hale Automotive.

Maybe he’s right, and I have failed him. God knows I didn’t want him to live my life. I fought him on getting married young, because that’s what I did. Of course, his mom and I got married after we knew he was on the way. At least Liam and Wren still had some of the benefits of being young. I haven’t been young since the pregnancy test said, “pregnant.”

This town may have always been the right fit for me, but my son has chafed at the smallness of it. Like his mother, he sees the wideness of the world around us as having endless possibilities. I should have encouraged him to travel and work that wanderlust out of his system. Hell, I should have pushed him to straight up leave. I thought he would at one point. Then Wren smiled at him one day in school, and his feet grew roots. Also like his mother, love wasn’t enough to keep those roots in place. Wren became another thing trapping him here, and whether he wanted to admit it or not, he resented her for it.

Mad or not, her beauty couldn’t be ignored. She is a siren, calling to him to bash himself against the rocks just to stay near her. He chose the wrong way to try and save himself, but you don’t blow up your life if you’re happy living it.

Maybe this is all just the wishful thinking of a forty-two-year-old man who can’t stop lusting after his twenty-three-year-old daughter-in-law? What I need is to go out and meet a woman. I’m not a monk, there have been a few relationships over the years. When Liam was young I avoided serious relationships because I’d just been burned by his mother. Then I had to focus on being a father and getting my business off the ground.

There’s been one reason or another to stay single. When Liam was a teenager, I had an on again off again situation with a woman who came into town for business a few times a year. By design we were never going to be serious, because for most of the year we lived in different cities hours apart. She got promoted a few years back, and what we had came to a natural end.

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