Page 13 of Hearts to Mend

She groans and rolls her eyes, but it’s the God’s honest truth.

I change the subject. “We tried to make it work. I barely knew my dad before he died, and I didn’t want that for my son. So we…tried. What I didn’t know at the time was she’d developed an addiction to pain medication.” Dee cringes, and I pause, knowing I’ve touched a nerve in reminding her of the addiction that took her mother. But I need to get this all said, so I push forward. “There was a lot I didn’t know about Theresa, and when we tried to have a relationship, it was…not good. Looking back, I realize trying to form a family with her was the worst decision I could have made. The only thing Theresa and I have ever had in common is an amazing son.”

Clearing my throat, I continue, “She managed to stay clean while she was pregnant. I’m forever grateful for that. But shortly after Matty was born, she relapsed. I was deployed in Afghanistan while she was stateside with Matty, strung out on God knows what. One day, she left him locked in a hot car in the Walmart parking lot. Fortunately, a shopper spotted him, and the police shattered the window to get him out.”

Dee looks appropriately horrified because it is so fucking horrifying. I shiver at the thought of what could have happened that day. Mom sends Christmas candy to our Walmart-parking-lot hero every year now.

“That was the first time Theresa went to jail, and Matty was placed into foster care. I was granted a Chapter 5-8 discharge from the Army, and once I was back home, I petitioned the courts for full custody of Matty. Theresa was allowed supervised visits as long as she stayed sober, but she couldn’t.

“When Theresa tried to steal meds from one of her elderly neighbors, she was arrested for robbery and assault. The courts took away her visitation, and I was allowed to move Matty here. Now, I just want to give him the life he deserves, a calm and comforting home where he can thrive.” I finally stop talking and watch Dee as she soaks up everything I’ve told her.

After a moment, Dee nods sagely and says only, “Thank you for your honesty.”

Not that again. It’s her kiss-off line, her signal she’s about to leave. She turns away from me, walking back toward the house, and I follow, working to keep pace with her fast strides. After a good hundred yards, she stops and swings around to face me, her expression one of anger as she huffs, “What I still don’t understand is why.”

“Why what?”

“Why you left me to go fuck someone else.”

“That’s not why I—”

“I know you think you left for some noble reason. You left to ‘free me’ or some bullshit, but did you actually believe that breaking up with me would make me stop loving you?”

Oh God, what a thing to say. Those words are sadder than any coyote song. I stare at her, dumbstruck. She turns and storms away. Jogging to catch up, I nearly run straight into her when she halts and turns on me again.

“Did you never feel that way for me? Because if you had, it wouldn’t have been so easy for you to leave.”

“It wasn’t easy—”

“You thought you could spare me by hurting me? Jesus Christ! What is wrong with you?” She scowls at me, and the hurt in her eyes breaks my heart. A lump forms in my throat, making it impossible to speak as a single tear trickles from the corner of her eye and traces down the soft slope of her cheek.

She takes a moment, and when she speaks, it’s barely more than a whisper as she tells me, “If you’d died, it would have broken my heart…again. Even after you’d broken my heart the first time, I still would have mourned you. So don’t act like you were being noble, sparing me from caring. I’ve always cared about you. I still care about you, you fucking asshole. I can’t help it. And I hate it. You left me, but you didn’t die, and I hate you for it.”

Another tear escapes, and Dee angrily brushes it away.

Fuck. It was a lot easier to hurt her from eight thousand miles away. Standing here, watching the tears fall down her cheeks, I want to make it better, make it right between us again, and fix this awful mess I made.

Without even thinking, I hug her. It’s all I know to do. It’s all I’ve ever known to do with Dee. When she’s hurting, I hug her. It’s rote. But the moment my arms wrap around her and pull her against my chest, I know it’s so much more than habit. It’s the first connection I’ve felt with her since I left for war all those years ago.

For a moment, one brief, perfect moment, she lets me hold her. She lets me take a deep breath of the scent of her skin, her hair, and I feel her body melt against mine, surprisingly soft for such a strong woman. A breath saws out of her, and I squeeze her even tighter.

But then the moment ends, and she pushes me away. With one mighty step backward, she glares at me. “What is this? What are you trying to do?”

I play dumb. “Hug you?” While it’s stating the obvious, it’s not entirely true. The moment she melted into my arms, I knew I’d want more, need more from her, with her. I’m desperate to fix what I broke between us, to earn her trust again. I want to get back everything I could have had with her if I hadn’t been such an idiot.

Like she can read all my thoughts in my eyes, she shakes her head, and her sadness turns to anger, a fire sparking deep within. But she doesn’t yell at me. She looks past me to the horizon where the road dips back down toward my mom’s house, and in a painfully soft voice, she says, “This was a mistake.” And with that she brushes her tears away and adds, “This can’t happen again.”

Itching to fight about this, I challenge, “Why not?”

She frowns at me, like I’ve reached a new level of stupidity for not understanding. And maybe I have, but I want her to explain it to me. I need her to talk to me.

She doesn’t though. All she says is, “Goodnight, Rico.” Then she leaves me again, walking double-time down the hill.

This time, I don’t try to match her pace. I let her leave me, keeping an eye on her from afar as she makes it to Mom’s house, gets into her sexy purple muscle car, and takes off down the hill toward town.

When the glow of her taillights disappears into the night, I groan with exhaustion and walk to Drew’s house. I’m about to knock on the door when I hear my son’s laughter inside.

Opening the way in, I catch sight of him and that bright red cast covered in graffiti as he runs through the living room with a wand in his hand, trailing a string with little feathers on the end. Two bumbling cats come rolling and rollicking after him as they give chase.

---