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June and I were doing a long-distance marriage back then. We’d always been an unconventional couple. We didn’t seek to limit ourselves to monogamy or to the idea of restrictive love.
She was free in her world, just as I was free in mine. While I looked for jobs that would allow us to come together as a family in NYC, I also took care of the family estates in Ashwell Springs.
Sally stayed with her mother. I visited every month and got to see the hustle and bustle of New York from the eyes of the two people I loved the most in the world.
It was... June and I were a team. My loss, our loss, it didn’t feel like I’d just been deprived of a partner or someone to grow old with.
It was more. It was the loss of a marriage, one that had given me more freedom and love than anything else in the world.
When my mother finally asked me to take Sally and come home, I knew I couldn’t do it. Bless her heart, she was the sweetest old lady. To her, the best way forward was to run from everything that had broken me.
Everything that could break Sally in the future.
But what would that mean for us? For me as a father? That I’d taught my little girl that when the wolves come, you run? How far would she go before she needed to turn around and face them?
No. I would not leave. I would stay and watch my girl take the big city by storm. She’d learn to trust her gut and her limbs.
I promised myself that I’d enroll her in martial arts as soon as she’d turn four. Give her a head start.
And once I’d decided to make NYC my home, I quickly lost control of everything.
Noah and Benjamin saved me many times over. They practically lived in my house, taking care of Sally and making sure she got by.
Me? I sat on a couch in the living room, my face progressively more gaunt and haggard. My once razor-sharp jawline had begun to sag. My eyes had bags the size of Vesuvius. I stopped sleeping.
Sleep brought dreams of her. Sleep told me I should have moved to NYC with her. Sleep asked me to get revenge, but I didn’t know where I could begin.
And then, just around the time I thought I couldn’t take anymore, I got a phone call.
I’d been sitting alone in the living room, nursing the drink in my hands. I was a mess, with my scruffy beard, bloodshot eyes, unkempt hair, and broken heart.
The caller’s voice had been gravelly. He identified himself as Ken. It didn’t take me a second to associate that name with the name of the truck driver serving time for killing my wife.
I’d wanted to break the line between us, reach into the phone, and punch him. Hurt him. Do anything except sit there and feel tears rolling down my face.
He told me he was repenting and that he wanted to tell me how to get even.
Which brought me to East Bay, my entire system fraught with the weight of what I was about to do. I did not want to give Ken the chance to repent.
No, I wanted him to sit in there and suffer for what he’d done. I wanted him to cry and clutch his chest and beat the walls of the prison, wishing he’d never been born.
And in the same breath, I wanted to know why.
One of the prison guards, his face austere and withdrawn, led me through a maze of dimly-lit corridors. Eventually, he stopped in front of a steel door.
He inserted a key and turned it. The lock clicked with a heavy thud, and the door swung open.
I stepped into a small room with tables and chairs. This had to be the visitor’s space. A place where families got to come together. Even the assholes here had more than I did.
Taking one of the chairs, I sat down and tried to breathe. It felt like my chest was going to explode.
Ken did not look like the man I’d wanted him to resemble. No. He wasn’t beefy or brawny, with a satanic red glint in his eyes. Hell, he didn’t even look like a criminal.
He was a middle-aged man with a weathered face and a beer belly. And he looked ashamed.
He didn’t get to do that. He didn’t get to make me feel any pity. Nothing except hate and anger. Nothing.
New wounds hurt, but very few things in this world could compare to the pain of having an old one repeatedly ripped open and exposed.
