AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“He shouldn’t have said it, but I don’t want to act that way, either.”
Bowie didn’t say anything but I was sure that I knew what he was thinking. He was remembering what had happened in his house when he was a little boy, when his uncle had slapped his wife and his father had dragged the guy outside and hurt him in retaliation.
“I’m not your aunt,” I said.
“Not yet. You’re not married to him, yet.” He walked to his truck. “Goodbye, Lissa.”
And I watched him drive away, and that was when I started crying for real.
∞
“I know he’s upset.” Valerie put down her coffee mug very carefully and didn’t meet my eyes. She hadn’t yet, not the whole time I’d been here.
“I know that, too,” I said. “I’m very sorry. He’s not responding to me and I guess I was hoping he might be at work today.” I looked around the marina as I spoke but Ward was nowhere to be seen. Now, as summer started to draw to a close, there weren’t as many people renting boats or using the dock. I wondered if his argument with the couple who’d told him that they’d badmouth the business had affected its popularity, too.
“He hasn’t been into work this week,” Ward’s mom told me. “He said you two had gotten into an argument because…”
“If he said that I cheated on him, that isn’t true, Valerie. I swear I never would have touched another man while we were together.”
She looked up, relieved. “I didn’t really think that you would have. I know how Ward sometimes gets upset about things and blows them out of proportion.”
The proportions of Bowie were pretty big, though. “He got angry at me because I’m friends with another guy,” I admitted. “I hid it from him, and he was right to be upset about that.”
Valerie didn’t answer right away. She examined her coffee cup again, swirling around the dark liquid inside it. “He has a temper.”
“He does. I understand, though. I shouldn’t have kept secrets.”
“You know how Kevin and I like you, Sissy. We’ve always been so glad that you and Ward are together.”
“I know, and I’ve always felt lucky to have both of you in my life, too. You’ve been wonderful to me.” They were the people who took me out to dinner after I graduated from high school. Valerie had helped me fill out my college applications and Kevin had worked on my car, more than once. “I look up to you so much,” I told her. “You guys are my ideal of how a marriage should be.”
She swirled the cold coffee. “What do you want me to do about my son?” she asked.
“I’m not sure. I don’t know what to do,” I confessed. “He was so angry at me when he left my house and he’s never gone this long without talking to me.” Ward had done something similar, though. A few times he’d gotten mad and then ignored me for long enough that I’d worried myself sick thinking something had happened to him. I’d also felt sick when I’d thought about what he would do when he did return.
He’d always appeared before now, though. Days had passed and there had been no sign of him.
“He hasn’t talked to me, either,” Valerie said slowly, “but he texted his father yesterday and said he’s ok. He didn’t want us to let you know. I have to,” she said apologetically to the son who wasn’t here. “I’m sorry that the two of you are fighting. I’m sorry he acts this way,” she continued, and sighed as well. “Ever since he was a little boy, he’s been…difficult. I always believed that it was because he was too smart for his own good.” But she puffed a little with pride at his brainpower as she said it.
I nodded. I knew that Ward had done well in school without putting in any effort at all. He’d never had to try, to work at anything.
“I didn’t have anyone to compare him to, except for his cousins. But I could tell that he was different,” she went on. “Ward was always so particular about his things, his toys and then all his electronics. When they would come over to play or when he had friends around, he had such a hard time sharing.”
“I don’t expect him to share me,” I told her. “A couple means two, two people only.”
She nodded. “But it would have been better for him to have siblings. I wish he could have, but it didn’t work out for us. It was a miracle that we had him at all after trying for so long. Nine years,” she said, and I could see how that wait had felt as sadness settled over her face. “He was a miracle and I know we’ve treated him that way. My mother-in-law hasn’t helped him, either.”
No, she hadn’t. Ward’s Grandma Diane thought he was wonderful and told him so, a lot. Just as no one was good enough for her, no one was for him, either—I certainly wasn’t, which she also liked to repeat to him and to everyone else.
“Maybe he’s with her,” I volunteered. He always liked to be at her house, surveying the property that would be his when she died while being told how great he was. She also said that he reminded her of the husband she’d lost many years before, a man apparently so perfect that she never thought to replace him, even though he had left her and disappeared from their lives forever.
“I’m not saying that Ward is perfect,” Valerie continued, as if she was responding to my thoughts. “I’m sorry you’re fighting again about someone else in your relationship.” She paused, then said, “I know that he cheated on you, Sissy. He told me that was what the trouble had been between the two of you in the winter.”
Now I looked at her coffee cup. It had been pretty bad trouble. “He was drunk when it happened. He apologized for everything and I forgave him.” I hadn’t forgotten, though.
“I thought that he’d made some positive changes since then,” his mom said. “I thought the therapy had helped him.”
“I think it did. For a while,” I modified. “I know that I’m making mistakes, that I do things that set him off. I’m not going to see that guy I was friends with anymore, so that should help, and I’m really going to watch what I say and what I wear. I just don’t want to quit the squad, even though Ward doesn’t like me cheering. It’s only one more season, then I’ll graduate in the spring and we’ll get married.” Forever.
