Page 75 of The Fundamentals

“What was I supposed to do?” she asked right back. “Kevin and I had to protect our son.”

“From me? From the truth? From his own actions?” My voice was raised because I was angry, but the overwhelming feeling that I had was something very different: disappointment. This was the woman I’d loved and trusted? “I knew you were hiding something,” I said. “I knew it. So all this time, he’s been on some beautiful island in the Caribbean?” I thought of the place that Aubin had visited on her honeymoon and my anger increased. That guy got to go there, while I’d been cowering in fear of him?

“No, that’s not what happened. I don’t know what happened.” She wiped under her eyes. “He hasn’t been in contact with us at all, not one time.”

“Not even to ask you for money?”

She frowned. “No. We had set up a separate account that he could withdraw from because we didn’t know if you were watching his finances, too, but he hasn’t touched it. He was supposed to write us postcards from along the way. I even gave him stamps.”

Of course she had.

“We haven’t heard one word from him.”

“I bet that his grandma has. He wouldn’t leave her out in the cold, not when he wants to inherit from her. If there’s anything left after the way he’s been stealing.”

She stared. “What?”

I wasn’t going to get into how Ward had been tricking Grandma Diane out of her retirement money, but it was how he’d been able to buy his last car. “Ask him about it.”

“I would like to, but I can’t find him!” She reached past the double espresso and grabbed my arm. “Did you do something to hurt him? You and your husband?”

I pulled away. “No, we didn’t.” My mind went briefly to Bowie wanting to take care of things by himself, and he might have—but he would have told me so that I could have stopped worrying. He wouldn’t have let me go on blindly. “You should talk to the police.”

“Right. You’d like that,” she said scornfully, but then her face turned red and tears leaked from her eyes. “I need to find my son!”

“Valerie, I’m sorry but I don’t know anything more about Ward than you do. Probably I know a lot less,” I told her.

“And if you did know anything, you’d go to the police first.”

“I would,” I agreed. I drew a breath and tried to blow out my anger. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for me. Thank you for being a surrogate mother when I needed one.” I breathed again. “That’s so confusing to me now, though. It’s so hard for me to understand why you didn’t step in about Ward’s abuse. I needed that from you a lot more than I needed your help setting up a checking account or getting my driver’s license.”

She didn’t answer.

“It made me believe that the way he was treating me was ok, or deserved, or normal. If you could have stood up for me, I might have stood up for myself a lot sooner. I know that it’s not your fault but I wish you had acted differently. I wish that Ward had, and I wish that I had, too. I hope we all can do better from here on out.”

I waited but she still didn’t speak. She wasn’t crying anymore, either, and I figured we’d both said all we needed to, so I left the coffee shop. I had other things to occupy my time than worrying about Ward anymore, wherever he might be. I was thinking a lot about what had happened the night before between me and Bowie. My mind wasn’t just on the sex, although whenever I thought about that part, my body involuntarily clenched inside. I was also remembering what he’d said about us having children, and then, as the sun was rising this morning and I was hardly able to keep my eyes open after the exertion we’d just put ourselves through, he’d whispered something to me.

“You’re my wife, Lissa,” he’d said. “My wife.” And something else, but I’d been smiling and falling asleep and hadn’t quite caught the words. They couldn’t have been what I was imagining now.

I called my dad, again, on the way over to the stadium and oddly, his voicemail box had some space in it. “Dad!” I burst out. “I know you’re avoiding me. You have to call me back! Please, we need to talk,” I said into my speaker before I hung up, and I decided that I’d have to go find him. It reminded me of when I’d finally gotten the hang of driving, well before I’d had a permit or a license that would have allowed me to do that legally on the roads, and I’d scouted his various hangouts when he would turn up missing.

Thinking back to that, I got angrier and I called him again. “You know what?” I said to his voicemail. “I think this is really childish, silly behavior. I understand that you’re ashamed of getting fired and of how you’re acting with your new girlfriend. I get that you’re hiding it from me, and that’s ridiculous. Grow up! Be a man! Be a father, Dad!” I hung up again and when I called back to say even more of the things that were on my mind, the mailbox was now full.

I found him at the stadium, anyway. There was a special lunch for former Woodsmen players in one of the newly renovated halls and he was supposed to be working the event, but I had a better idea of where he’d be.

“Dad!” I pounded on the roof of his car and he sat straight up in shock.

“Damn it, Sissy! I was having a good nap,” he told me angrily through the window.

“Unlock this door, right now.”

He yawned and stretched before he did that. “What do you need?”

“You haven’t listened to my messages, I guess.”

He yawned again. “I never listen to those. If you slide your finger, you can erase them without having to hear them.”

I wasn’t sure why I was surprised or why that would make me so furious, but it did. “That’s bull. I can’t believe that you do that!”

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