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“Four? You never told me that,” Alex said to Jace.
“I wanted you to see my parents’ long, loving relationship as my role model,” Jace explained.
“Good call.” Alex shook her head. “Your grandpa Warren seemed so charming and normal.”
“He can be charming all right,” Graham gave a wry laugh. “But he’s not good at being alone. He and my mother split after my tenth birthday. For my eleventh birthday, he sent a card signed by him and his new wife. They’d only been dating a few months, and no one in the family had met her before they eloped.”
“Wow. Thatisfast,” Alex agreed.
“Too fast. Once the excitement waned, he discovered she was a little off. That marriage didn’t even last a year. After that divorce, Dad came around again. My brother and I thought he and Mom might get back together. But Mom wasn’t having any part of that after he bailed on her once already. He married wife number three about a year and a half later. Unfortunately, wife number three didn’t want anything to do with Dad’s past—including my brother and me. When we went to visit the summer after they were married, she put us in a day camp for one week. Then she sent Dad and us on a camping trip for a week.”
“And she didn’t come?” Megan asked.
“No. She went on a cruise with her parents and sister’s family.” Graham had never shared that with his kids.
Megan frowned. “She didn’t want to be a mom?”
“She was at least ten years younger than him, but they never had kids.” Graham hadn’t witnessed her having any maternal traits. Not that his father exhibited a lot of paternal interest either.
His limited contact with his dad dwindled further after the visitation agreement ended when Graham turned eighteen. Other than attending Graham’s West Point graduation and wedding and a few family funerals, they’d only seen each other a handful of times during that twenty-year marriage. Graham usually originated their occasional phone calls. “Once they split, he reached out and wanted to rebuild our relationship.”
“He came before Christmas when I was nine or ten,” Jace said. “He brought gifts and told us all these wild stories. But it was like,who are you?”
His dad may have blamed his third ex-wife for his lack of involvement in his children’s lives, but he’d made the choices based on his wants years before marrying her. That drove Graham to be a different kind of father. However, he hadn’t anticipated when he’d enrolled at West Point that 9/11 would happen. Or how many times he’d be deployed or away for training.
Graham had done all he could to stay plugged in with his family—cards, letters, vacations together. Megan and Jace would never doubt how important they were to him. Even if he dated or eventually remarried, it wouldn’t be to the detriment of his relationship with his kids.
“Dad’s made an effort since then. Fortunately, Linda isn’t like wife number three.” While his dad was in Graham’s life more the past decade, due to the missed years, trust issues, and complicated feelings toward his father kept them from having a close relationship.
“Weren’t he and Linda together over four years before she agreed to marry him?” Megan asked.
Graham nodded. “I think he’d been asking her for a while and eventually wore her down.” They’d passed the honeymoon stage of their relationship by that point and been through some tests, like Linda’s bout with breast cancer. “At their ages, maybe this one won’t end in divorce. And I can guarantee I won’t get married to stay here.” His father had married so he wouldn’t be alone, which only brought him more heartache. Graham was smart enough not to repeat that mistake, nor would he repeat his predecessors’ indiscretions.
ChapterFour
Erin’s studentwaved to a camouflage-clad man making his way through the busy café.
“You did a great job implementing what we discussed last week,” she said. “For next week’s essay prompt, focus on eliminating word repetition. Find a synonym or other way to say it and combine sentences. It’s better to keep it shorter and engaging than to say the same thing over and over.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Downey.” Garrick closed his laptop, and his father stepped over.
She tried to make out the unit patch, but his right shoulder was angled away from her.
“My wife said he’s learned more from you in three weeks than this past semester in class.”
“With tutoring, he’s getting individual attention over trying to teach general concepts to thirty-five students at a time.”
“You’re seriously undercharging for your services and expertise.”
“It’s my way of supporting our military kids. I’m too old to enlist and go through basic training,” she joked and summoned her nerve. “What unit are you with?”
“Sixteenth MP Brigade.” He turned his shoulder so she could make out the patch on his sleeve. “You help Garrick get his scores up enough to get a college scholarship, and I’ll let you off with a warning for any parking or speeding violations on base.” He grinned as he spoke.
“Hopefully, I won’t have to take you up on that. But can you connect me with any Special Forces units for some writing research I need to do?”
“Probably not. The Army keeps those guys hidden pretty well.”
That was an understatement. “It was worth asking. I’ll see you next week, Garrick. We’ll be back at the library at our usual time. Thanks for meeting me here this afternoon.”
