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I take a giant breath. “Probably the fact that she launched her attack on the sidewalk, where there were multiple witnesses in the parking lot, is the only reason I’m not rotting in a prison cell today. Everyone testified I’d done nothing except try to stop her from hurting someone.”
Hollie’s fingers splay across her mouth. “John...”
I nod slowly. “By that point in my career, I’d witnessed death a few times, but that…” The absolute worst.
“And Tyler?”
My eyes close. “Tyler saw the entire thing.”
“John…I am so sorry you went through that.”
I stare into her eyes. Pity? Sympathy for sure. Both make a man feel weak. Make him want to duck and hide. “Don’t feel sorry for me, Hollie. I made my bed.”
“What Deann did was not your fault.”
“But plenty of the rest of it was. I set the stage. I’m guilty. If I’d been half the father I should have been, I could have headed the whole thing off.”
“You don’t know that. She probably would have cracked in a different way, at a different time. Maybe at a time you weren’t there to make sure Tyler was safe.”
Snorting, I bolt up so fast my foot slips for an instant on the damp earth. “Safe? Is that what he was? He spent months in counseling and he has—so I’m told—issues with depression, anxiety. He drinks more than he should. I was the classic absentee father, Hollie. Worse. And…”
“And?”
I made his mother hate me enough to try and kill me.If neglect and indifference are classified as abuse, I’m guilty. Worse, I lumped my son in with the mother and ignored him too.
For all practical purposes, I abandoned my child.
A groan I can’t suppress any longer finds voice. Anger is superior to regret. Unfortunately, I don’t own the luxury of hanging onto it. This remorse pulsing in my gut, in every muscle and tendon in my body, feels tight enough to rip me in two. I want a do-over. Not with Deann, not unless I traveled all the way back to the start and never fell for her in the first place. I want another chance with Tyler. Starting the day he was born, I would do things differently, I would. Promise.
Hollie tilts her head up. “Was Deann mentally ill?”
Yes. “You’re trying to excuse me.”
“No, I’m asking an obvious question that I think has an obvious answer.”
Does she now? I affix my hands to my waist. “I found out afterwards that she’d been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, as well as a couple other things, around the time of our divorce. No one bothered to tell me or my parents.” Or the court.
“So you had no idea.”
“Not an excuse. Can’t you see that? Tyler was too young to understand, but if I’d been around more, he might have at least grown comfortable enough to confide in me about what was going on.”
“Or he might not have. He was still very young.”
“Why are you arguing about this? I was a lousy husband and an even worse father.”
She looks at her hands in her lap.There. She’s admitting it to herself, if not to me. “What happened afterwards?”
Here comes another layer of my failure, and she better be ready. “Tyler went to live with George and Judy. Their place was already like home to him, and he had zero interest in being with me. Nothing I or his counselor or anyone else said could shake him from the belief I murdered his mother. He cried at the sight of me.”
A fish or something similar jumps, splashing the water near the shore.
“You still didn’t fight for him.”
“Nope. I went on my merry way, the chips having fallen where they may.”
“I doubt you were too merry, John.”
The soft, wispy way she states the obvious undoes the tiniest of knots in my stomach. My head falls. “No.”
