AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Is that actually what I came here for?
A little voice inside me calls outyes.
If Bhodi’s big brother was a bad guy, I would have simply asked for another. This is information I need to ensure my son’s well-being, but it’s also damning. It’s meant to be used to hurt someone else. Even if that someone else caused me the biggest pain I’ve felt in my life, I still deal in kindness. I don’t like rushes to judgment. Although, all along my gut told me William’s motives hadn’t changed.
I swallow and look at Jake who is leaning against his desk. His arms are crossed, his head tilted, and there’s a hint of compassion in his features that he’s quick to wipe away.
“Read it.” Jake tests me. “We don’t have all day. You’reontonight.”
The way it comes out, you’d think I was dancing up on that stage. It’s my likely future. I’ve left my fiancé and come to a man who dabbles in the criminal for help. My pride has nothing to lose.
Trig has found every seedy detail of the decade William hid from his responsibilities.
In a bitter voice, Jake narrates each slip I look at.
“Retired. Sole source of income is his military retirement. Divorce decree and alimony payments to his first wife. Younger daughter gets two more years of child support.”
“This is more than he owes Bhodi each month!” I’m nauseated.
Trig swears, his annoyance like an aura. He must know how little my son has actually received.
“The older daughter’s arrests for shoplifting began four years ago,” Jake continues, making me wonder if he was ever a lawyer as he lays out the facts. Perhaps it’s his dead delivery. This scenario may have played out so many times in this office that Jake seems to take pleasure in being a great big jerk.
Don’t ask why I won’t call him a mobster. Underworld criminals are dark and broody. Jake’s more of a sharply dressed Viking out to pillage in his crisp linen pants and a light blue shirt that matches his icy eyes. Maybe because I love Jake in my own weird, forgiving way and I don’t want to see him as the bad guy… And that’s another reason I couldn’t convince myself to come to Sweet Caroline’s when the lights were on. I didn’t want to believe he’s a man capable of doing anything illegal.
UnseemingI’ve given up on.
Ungentlemanly too, when he lacks politeness and prods me to keep going. There’s credit card debt and the foreclosure of his house.
“But I thought his wife got that in the divorce?” I question.
“She did, but he’d drained the equity.”
“This isn’t the man I was involved with.”
Bhodi’s father was in the military. He wasn’t a spendthrift or a gambler. When we were together, he never struck me and anything less than a decent boyfriend. William’s issue was his midlife crisis and his wife not wanting to move to North Carolina when the military transferred him here.
He’d gone back to her. She’d won—lousy prize as it was—but for William to console her, agreed to forgo a relationship with Bhodi.
Or do I have it wrong?
The person in this file is in financial ruin. The life he went back to wasn’t as perfect as he’d led me to believe. He said he loved his wife and missed his kids.
He never missed my kid. He hadn’t loved me. William is the most selfish man I’ve ever encountered besides Rex Stanton… And I manage a strip club owned by a criminal for Christ’s sake. If anyone’s interacted with her fair share of questionable men, it’s me!
“When your mill girls fixed the marquee, Kelsey mentioned a guy was in who asked if Cary was a guy or a girl. She told him it was Cass. When he didn’t know who that was she said, ‘the guy who owns all the dealerships’. Most customers wanted to know when they could congratulate you in person, but this guy’s ears perked. He hounded her to the point that Kelsey freaked she wasn’t supposed to say you were engaged to Cass.”
“Who I was dating was common knowledge. Bhodi practically lives at the service center.”
My son asked me recently when he could call Cary ‘dad’. I put him off saying we’d discuss it after the wedding. He won’t be able to now. I haven’t figured out how to keep Cary in Bhodi’s life if I’m not in Cary’s. The road has forked and that’s a bridge I’m about to cross.
“We pulled the footage from that night.” Trig shuffles through some grainy photos, showing me several views of the same man.
“William,” I mutter.
Cary’s money did play into this somehow.
The final paper in the folder is actually three clipped together; A birth certificate for a baby girl who is Emory’s age. The spot marked father is blank. Underneath is a court order for a DNA test that’s a year old, but no test results, and finally an injunction to garnish William’s wages. Both of those were filed in another state.
