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It was nice having a friend around again. Someone I could trust with my daughter, anyway.
I lifted my squirming little girl from her car seat and set her on the grass, her little legs moving at full speed before I even had a chance to put her on the ground. “Be careful, Georgia!” I shouted after her as she made her way to the swings and pulled herself up on the lowest hanging one. She held onto the chains and kicked and kicked her legs, but the swing didn’t move.
She was going nowhere fast.
The playground was crowded with children and their families. I worked my way through a sea of running and screaming little folk. I ducked under a stray soccer ball whizzing by my head. It took me twice as long to reach the swings as it took Georgia.
When I reached her, I stopped dead in my tracks.
Bethany Fletcher, Owen’s mother, was pushing Georgia on her swing. Georgia was squealing with glee. “Higher...higher!” she shouted.
“Not too high,” I said, making my presence known.
Bethany gave me a courteous nod. “Hello, Abby.” Her smile slid into a straight line. Bethany wore a light beige suit jacket with a white blouse and a matching knee length flowing skirt. Her signature bright red lips were no more. Now, they were just glossed over, neutral. Her once-severe bun had been replaced by soft dark waves falling around her face and shoulders.
She looked almost human.
“What can I do for you, Bethany?” I asked. I kept my tone even. I didn’t need her using the anger or anxiety I felt in her presence against me.
Before she could answer me, Georgia interrupted. “Mama, the nice lady pushed me on the swing!”
“That’s great, baby!” That girl could make me smile through a plane crash. “Why don’t you try out the new slide, okay? Mama will watch you.”
“Okay!” She squealed. Bethany held the chains on her swing still so Georgia could jump off. She took off running toward her next adventure on the shiny red slide.
“Can we talk?” Bethany asked. She sounded hopeful and even a bit kind, nothing at all like the Bethany who’d ordered my beating four years earlier. Her voice was calm. There was no hatred radiating off of her. I’d only seen her in passing since the day she dropped all the major charges against me. Only the marijuana possession charge had been kept. I paid a three-hundred dollar fine and served six months probation for that one. She could have easily dropped all the charges, but keeping one was her way of letting me know who pulled the strings in Coral Pines.
I was all too aware.
I sighed and took a seat on the bench facing the jungle gym. If Bethany wanted to talk, Bethany was going to talk. My saying yes or no had never made a difference to her before.
She took a seat next to me. “I’ve been wanting to tell you something for years now, and have never had the opportunity, and really didn’t know how to say it. I didn’t want to reach out because I didn’t want to scare you away.” She wrung her hands in her lap and nervously continued, shifting her focus from her feet to where Georgia was playing. “It’s just…I’m so tired.” She took a deep sigh and finally turned to look me in the eye. “I’m so tired, Abby... of everything.” Her bright green eyes that used to stare daggers into my own, were now softer and watery.
“Excuse me?”
“I’ve been cleaning up messes my entire life. Sweeping things under the rug, justifying horrible behavior on a regular basis. Not just in my practice, but in my life, in my own family. Had I known you were pregnant, I would have tried to stop that, too.”
I had thought of that, and it was the reason I’d hid my pregnancy for as long as I possibly could. Nobody knew until Georgia was already here.
I didn’t even list Georgia’s father’s name on the birth certificate.
“So, I’m done now. I’m not doing it anymore and haven’t for a long time,” she announced, like it was something she’d been thinking about for a while. “I know you could never forgive Owen, and I don’t blame you. I can’t forgive him, either. Our relationship hasn’t been the same since this happened if that makes things any better.” She looked up from her hands at my raised eyebrows, realizing how weak that sounded. “Of course it doesn’t.”
“What did you really come here for, Bethany?” Avoiding one another for four years had been downright peaceful.
“I know I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve anything after the way I treated you, and you should know that I am so, so sorry for that, too. I don’t even recognize the person I am anymore, and it makes me sick to think of all the things I did to hurt people back then, what I did to hurt you.” She shook her head as if she was shaking the bad memories from her brain. “I want to get to know Georgia,” she said. “I’m willing to work for it, to gain your trust. I know you’ve never come right out and said who her father is, but I saw her with her babysitter in the grocery last week and got a really good look at her. She’s got those green Fletcher eyes, although they are a little brighter than everyone else’s.” She cleared her throat. “I would really like a chance to get to know her.”
I was shocked to hear that she wanted anything to do with Georgia, and my instinct to fight her off from four years ago bubbled at the surface.
Bethany did look tired though... hurt, even. The harshness of four years ago was gone and in her place was a woman whose sharp edges had been softened and rounded down with time.
Shortly after the secret was out that I had given birth, Owen had come to the apartment demanding to see his daughter.
I‘d slammed the door in his face and called over to Frank’s office in the adjoining shop. Thankfully, I’d caught him in a run of sobriety, and he was in that day. Within seconds, I’d heard a scuffle outside, and then a car pulling out of the gravel lot. Frank didn’t come over to check in on me afterwards, he waited until he was back in his office before calling me on the phone to let me know the problem had been taken care of.
The morning after, there was a note from Frank on my desk about a new alarm system being installed in the apartment that very afternoon, and a loaded .22 on my keyboard.
Owen never bothered me again, but with my .22 at the ready, I kinda wished he had.
“You want to bring my daughter around Owen?” I asked Bethany. I tried to rein in the panic in my voice, but I know she’d heard it.
“No, no. It would just be me,” Bethany assured me. “I haven’t told anyone about this—not even my husband. I’m not asking to take her anywhere, either. Maybe, we could meet up at the park, just like this, and I could play with her a little...get to know her.” She looked like a woman who was desperate to form a relationship with someone—one that didn’t take everything she had to keep it from falling apart.
Bethany let out a long held sigh. “You know, I tried to have him put away, but Owen’s father wouldn’t have anything to do with the idea. Instead, I had Cole lock him in a cell for a few days to calm him down after he’d had a fit. That’s what we called his behavior, anyway. I started recognizing the similarities between my son and my husband. Jamie’s never been a gentle man.” Bethany’s eyes glazed over. “He is very much like my son. I think he’s just better at covering his tracks.” She crossed and uncrossed her legs.
I couldn’t figure out why she was telling me any of this.
“If I had to pinpoint a time when it all started to go wrong, I would say it was when Mason died.”
“Mason? Mason Dunn?” I asked.
What did Jakes’ brother have to do with the Fletchers?
“Yes. They grew up together, practically shared a crib. Marlena was my oldest and dearest friend. I think when both Mason and Marlena died, Owen started to lash out. He blamed everyone and anyone for Mason’s death, especially his brother Jake.”
“Why?” I asked. “It was an accident.”
“Yes, well. Jake was supposed to be with Mason that morning, but he was still a teenager and probably didn’t want to be on a boat in the middle of the river at five a.m. on a Sunday. So in typical teenage fashion, he didn’t show up at the docks. Mason went out alone. Nobody knows what happened to capsize the boat. The waters were due to be rough, but nothing more than usual. Owen just assumes if Jake had been there with him, then maybe Mason would still be alive.”
“Or they both could’ve died,” I said. At least now, I knew why Owen and Jake had hated each other from the very beginning. That hatred hadn’t started with me. I’d just added to it.
“I know that. But Owen couldn’t see it that way. I felt so helpless, he was hurting so much. Instead of getting him help to work through it, I justified his behavior. I enabled him. Instead of making him realize he was wrong, I made excuses.” She gave me a sad smile. “I helped to make him what he is.”
“Has he hurt anyone since me?” It was something I wondered about almost every day.
When she nodded, I almost fell off the bench. I clutched my stomach. “The Preston girl. Stacy, I think her name was. Owen gave her a black eye and roughed her up a bit. We also think he might have sunk the Prestons’ shrimp boat, but he denies it, and they have no proof.” She wiped her palms on her skirt. “Nothing compared to what he did to you, though.”
