Page 16 of A Taste of Chardonnay

“That’s something he has to live with.”

It was the least he deserved. I didn’t know if he even cared about the damage he caused, the destruction he’d brought into my life.

“What are you going to do?”

“What do you mean?”

“I was surprised to have gotten the call this morning. I’d have expected you to tell Michael to fuck off.”

“I’d never tell Michael to fuck off. He knows my coffee order.”

Franc laughed. “Good point, but still. Why not have him call the cops? Or call Ray or Albert or one of the other veterans?”

Ron hung out at the local VFW and had made friends with the other veterans in the area. It was a small group, but from what Nero had told me about them, they were loyal to one another.

“Any one of those guys would have shown up, so why didn’t you call them?”

His question sat in the air, poking at me, but I didn’t have an answer. I could have lied and said I got the call and it was on the way to the distillery, but that was bullshit, and Franc would have smelled it from a mile away.

“I wish I knew.”

Franc patted my shoulder. “I do.”

“Really? You’re a fucking mind reader now? Even if you were, there’s honestly nothing going on up here.”

“I don’t need to be a mind reader to know you wouldn’t leave Ron there. Just like you’d never want someone to treat you the way he treated you. Whether it kills you or not, you won’t give him the satisfaction of turning out like the example he gave you. You will always strive to be better, to do better, because you don’t want to be another statistic. You don’t want to be him.”

“You think you’re smart?”

“I know I’m smart. And it’s okay if you’re just figuring this out now. Even if I have been telling you for over thirty years. Congratulations on catching up.”

“I never said you were smart. I asked ifyouthink you are.”

“Same thing.”

“Not even close.” I rested my arm out the window and glanced at Jack in the rearview. His tongue hung from his mouth, flopping in the breeze. I never thought I’d take on the responsibility of another creature, but Jack proved I was capable, and I would never have it any other way.

“Animals are good for people,” I said.

“Sure, they escape from every damn cage, go missing for hours on end, eat entirely too many bugs.”

“I wasn’t talking about Sally. But we both know you love that beardie.”

“She’s all right.”

“You built her a cage bigger than the bedroom I grew up in.”

“She needed space to move around.”

I shook my head and slightly laughed.

“I’m just saying… maybe that cat helped unlock something in Ron even he didn’t know was inside of him.”

“What, like compassion? Tolerance? Love?”

“Something like that.”

I hoped for the cat’s sake, she would never meet the Ron I knew.

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