Page 64 of Drilled (Dad Bod Contracting 2)
“Hooray for James!”
He laughs. “Yeah, hooray for James. He still had Renée then, and he was pretty optimistic about life.
“So I went and got papers drawn up that same day. Took them to her, lied to her face and told her I had proof she was cheating, and that if she signed the papers now I’d make sure she got her share of what I had, which was a decent chunk, back then, or she could fight it and get nothing.”
“She fought?”
“Oh no, nothing that simple. She bargained. Bartered. Nickel-and-dimed me for every last penny I had. She knew I was desperate to get clear of her, and she used that to fuck me over. And I let her. Gave her the condo overlooking Lake Michigan, the fancy new car I’d bought her right before I found out she was cheating, plus some investments I’d made.”
“Damn,” I say, whistling. “She fucked you hard.”
“I wanted out. It was just stuff, just money, what did it matter? I was truly desperate. Once I realized I could be free of her, that I didn’t have to stay with her out of some misplaced obligation or religious guilt or something, I was crazy to get free, so I just agreed to everything.” He shrugs. “I left that marriage at age twenty-seven, flat broke and angry as hell at the world. I got a one-room basement apartment in one of the most dangerous areas of Chicago, worked my ass off to rebuild my savings. Spent the next ten years or so working my way up at the company, got to the point that I was on the verge of making the leap up into high-level management. And then, the very day I was supposed to sit for an interview for a management position at the company I’d been working for, I got the call from James that Renée had died in childbirth.”
“Jesus, Franco.”
“Yeah. I’d been coming down here every weekend to hang out with them for years at that point—I’d just seen Renée the weekend before. I’d felt the baby kick.” He’s quiet, wrought with memory. “Then bam, gone. Dead. No warning, no goodbye—one of my best friends and my best friend’s wife, gone. So I quit my job that day with zero notice, broke my lease, packed up, and came down here. Lived with James and the girls until he was on his feet, and then moved in with Grandma and Grandpa until they moved into the home, at which point I bought this place.”
“When did your grandparents pass?”
“About a year after they went into the home. Grandma died first, and Grandpa went about a week later, because he couldn’t be without her. He told me as much. I was visiting him and he told me he wanted to go be with Beth. He was lucid to the very end. I held his hand and told him to go be with Grandma, that I’d be fine. He asked if I was sure, and I said yeah. I told him I loved him, and he closed his eyes like he was going to sleep. Got this big smile on his face, and just stopped breathing.” He’s silent a long, long time. “Damnedest thing I ever saw. Just…gone, by his own choice, naturally. He just…let go.”
“That really beautiful, actually.”
“They were together sixty-four years.” He sighs. “If anything could make me believe in love, it was them.”
I think of what we just experienced together, and I wonder if that applies to me at all. But the moment that thought enters my head, I mentally and emotionally recoil. No! Don’t wonder that. I don’t want that responsibility, that burden. I don’t believe in love any more than he does, so why would I want to factor into him believing it?
I don’t.
Simple.
Franco stands up, crosses to the pile of discarded wood pieces, squats and sorts through the pile until he finds something he finds suitable in some way, and returns with it to the workbench. Curious, I watch while he twists the piece of wood this way and that—it’s a block about six inches by four inches by three inches, a pale, soft-looking wood. He selects a different knife than the one he’d been using; this knife is thicker, longer, with a differently shaped blade. Slowly, carefully, he begins shaving off slices of wood at a particular spot, each movement of the knife made at a precise angle and for a specific purpose.
He glances at me as he carves. “So. I showed you mine, now you show me yours.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
Chapter 11
Franco quirks an eyebrow at me. “You had to know I would ask. You can’t think I’d tell you my deepest, most painful memory and not expect the same in return from you, can you?”
I laugh. “No, I knew you’d ask.” I take a moment to watch his slow, sure movements of the knife, gathering the courage to tell my own pain. “Mine is pretty similar to yours, actually. It’s all rooted in childhood, you know? I’ve actually got an Irish background myself, obviously, with a name like Donovan. We weren’t Catholic at all, though. I mean, we were by background, but none of my family was practicing in any meaningful way beyond Christmas Mass, Easter Mass, things like that. My dad was—is, to this day—a piece of shit. Human garbage, and I don’t say that lightly. There is, legitimately, no human being on the planet I despise more than my father.”
