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“Ashley, baby, I’m so sorry.”
I melt. Seriously. Right into butter on the uncomfortable waiting room chair. Baby. He’s never called me any kind of endearment.
Baby.
Baby.
That voice that enthralls me.
But I can’t stop now. I’m opening up to him in hopes that he’ll open up to me.
“Yeah. I mean, we stayed in shelters when we could, but we also lived in a tent sometimes.”
“Fuck,” he says.
I clear my throat. “Anyway—”
“How did you eat?”
“Well…sometimes, we didn’t. Other times, my mom would get a day’s work here or there, and her employer would send home food for us. There was a guy in Chinatown who owned a restaurant. He’d give me rice and lo mein if I went in. Every now and then someone would give me a half-eaten sandwich or something.”
“You ate leftovers?”
“Yeah. I even dumpster dived a few times. Not when my mother was around. She hated that. She’s a classy woman. Being homeless didn’t change who she is.”
“It shouldn’t.”
“It didn’t. She was determined to find her own way and get us out of there. She never resorted to prostitution or selling drugs, like a lot of homeless people do. And she was determined no one would touch me. Ever.”
As a mother should be, of course. But when I found out about my father and what my mother had been through at his hand, I truly understood her determination.
“She sounds amazing.”
“She is.” I force a laugh. “She agrees with you about my oenology degrees, though.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. She wanted me to go to trade school right out of high school so I could start making money. She didn’t want me ever to be in the situation we were in when I was a kid.”
He smiles. Sort of. A half smile.
I’ll take it.
“But I worked my ass off in high school and got great scholarships and grants. The fact that we had virtually no money helped a lot. There’s a ton of college money available for those who really need it.”
He says nothing.
Of course, he never needed it. Didn’t matter anyway, since he didn’t finish college. I want to ask why, but that’s a question for another time. This is about me opening up. Not pushing him to open up.
“I read all the time. I still read a lot, but not like when I was a kid. When you grow up without TV and everything, books are your best friends.”
“Books?” he says.
“Yeah. Books. You do read, don’t you?”
“Not much. I mean, not for a while. What’s your favorite book?”
“Kidnapped.”
Dale goes rigid. Over a book?
I’m not sure what to do, so I say, “Anyway, back to my…”
“Your what?”
I draw in a breath. “My father. Back to my father.”
“You said he died.”
“Yes, and he did, in a way. But before I came here, my mother told me the truth about him. He’s dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Please. Don’t be.” I draw in another breath. “I don’t let myself think about what I’m about to say, Dale. It’s something I’d rather forget. In a way, I wish my mother had never told me, but I understand why she did. We have to know where we come from. We have to keep ourselves from making the same mistakes as our parents. Not that I’d ever do what my father did…”
He brings the back of my hand to his lips and kisses it gently. A sweet gesture, and I think I fall in love with him a little bit more, if that’s even possible.
“It’s okay,” he says. “Tell me.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Dale
Homeless.
Ashley was homeless.
When she told me she sometimes went to bed hungry, I never imagined…
My sweet Ashley.
She’s opening up, probably hoping I’ll do the same.
Unfortunately, she’s going to be disappointed.
“My father wasn’t a good man,” she says. “He died years ago. In prison.”
I lift my eyebrows. For some reason, though, I’m not overly surprised. A person doesn’t “not talk” about a parent if he or she is a paragon of society.
“I’m sorry,” I say again.
“I didn’t know the man, and once my mother told me the truth about him, I’m glad I never knew him.”
“You mean he was a criminal.”
She clears her throat. “Yeah. And what he did. To her.”
A bad feeling lodges in my stomach—kind of like I ate some rank food and the acid is trying to digest it but can’t.
A feeling not unlike…
I shake my head to clear my thoughts. “Ashley, what did he do?”
Her neck moves as she swallows slowly. “He raped her, Dale. And I’m the result.”
That acidic lump in my stomach balloons into nausea that threatens to prick its talons through my flesh.
Ashley’s mother and I have something in common, then. I don’t want to go there, but I can’t help thinking about it.
This beautiful woman—this woman I love more than anything—only exists because a criminal forced himself on her mother.
What must it be like to go through life with a child of a rape? Did she remember the horror every time she looked at Ashley? Beautiful Ashley?
