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“When you talked about him with me in the past, I never realized…”
“How strained things were between us in the end?” I grimaced. “I don’t focus on those times. They make me sad and I’m sad enough. I was a daddy’s girl. Even after everything went wrong, that never changed.”
“If anything, it probably made you rebel more.”
I hummed in agreement. Sharing him with my mom was normal. But with groupies and roadies? No. Fucking. Way.
“Conor?”
“Hmm?”
“Were your ma and da good parents?”
For the longest time, he said nothing. To the point where, when he pressed his face to my shoulder, I just thought he was going to shrug my question off and go to sleep.
My own eyes were starting to close, beginning to feel heavy with fatigue and the stress from the day by the time he muttered, “Do you know how people do what they can with the best they’re given?”
“Yes?” was my drowsy retort.
“That’s what Ma and Da were like. They did what they could with what they’d learned, but my grandfather was a mean son of a bitch. Da was two screws loose of a full set, but he didn’t help any. Ma’s family wasn’t much better, and she was always irate and erratic, quick to temper because, I think, she knew Da responded well to that—”
“What do you mean?”
“The more irate she was, the more he calmed down in an argument. He didn’t fear her, not by any stretch, but she was a loose cannon. We have this inside joke about her hitting him over the head with a rolling pin, you know?”
“Yeah, you told me the story.”
“But she used to throw shit at him too.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Cans. One time, potatoes.” A soft chuckle drifted from his lips. “Nothing hits harder than a fucking Idaho potato. That was actually hilarious. He got a black eye from it.”
“That’s spousal abuse, Conor,” I pointed out with concern.
“It was, but I don’t think we looked at it that way back then.”
“Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have.”
“No. I agree.”
“Did he hit her?”
“Never.”
“Were the attacks frequent?”
“No. Only when he pushed a topic.”
“Like what?”
He sighed. “Do you really want to know this?”
“Of course. You don’t talk about yourself a lot, do you know that?”
“I talk plenty.”
“That’s an understatement,” I drawled. “You definitely talk plenty, but not about where you come from.”
