After the Climb (River Rain 0.50)

“Yeah, when you were dating Betsy, even if that was getting serious, though it didn’t go that way. But this is her and Mom knows about her.”

Duncan went very still.

Of course Dora knew about Genny. He’d told her. She was his wife. He shared everything with her. And he did that before she was his wife.

What he did not know was how his son knew that.

Before he could ask after that, Sully stated, “And this is gonna mess her right up.”

“Your mom is solid, Sul,” he assured. “She’s found a therapist she’s connected with. She understands the obsessive paths her mind can lead her on. And she now has the mental tools to avoid them, and she uses those tools.”

“It was her.”

“What?”

“It started with her.”

“What are you saying, Sullivan?”

“Imogen Swan. What kicked it all off. Ground zero. Her being yours. It’s what kicked it all off. It was her.”

Duncan’s chest started burning. “How do you know this?”

“That time you were up in Oregon. Opening the store in Bend. Do you remember that?”

Shit.

That had been a particularly bad episode with Dora.

“Yes,” he bit out.

“You asked her to come with you. You even begged her to come with you. I heard her. She said you had to go alone. It was a test.”

There had been a number of tests with Dora.

He’d always failed.

“I remember this, Sully.”

And he did.

He just hated his son had heard this and he had no idea, until then, that he had.

“Well, Gage was on that camping trip with Jack. And I was at a sleepover at Wyatt’s, but Wyatt got to not feeling good and his mom brought me home. And when I came in, Mom was on the phone with you. And she was losing it with you.”

Duncan said nothing.

He thought he was beyond the disappointment, and at times fury, other times frustrating impotence, and other times debilitating sadness, of what had become of his wife and their marriage.

But the fury was returning.

“I remember this clearly, Sully, and I didn’t know you didn’t have that sleepover,” Duncan stated.

“Yeah, because she made me promise not to tell you because of what happened after she hung up on you.”

Yes.

Fury.

“She made me lie to you, Dad. And that sucked. It really pissed me off. Because you never lied to us. You made a big deal of it. And there I was, Mom making me lie to you.”

Mm-hmm.

Fury.

He could not deny he had guilt, feeling it, since Dora was unwell.

However, that was not news even back then.

But it couldn’t be erased, the number of therapists she’d fired because “we don’t connect.” And his constant offers that she remain at his side, even when he was at work in his office in town, so he could show her whenever he left her, it was not about another woman. Offers she did not accept.

He was not a man who thought he’d allow any illness, no matter the cause of it, to end his marriage.

But as he’d have to face the consequences of a wife who decided to treat cancer with homeopathic remedies that had no hope of rooting out that disease, he faced the consequences of a wife who had lucid stretches of understanding something was terribly wrong, and deciding to take the path of denial and not treatment.

That was Dora’s.

And eventually, she’d owned it.

Unfortunately, by the time she’d done that, not only was their divorce final—and it being further after he’d endured more abuse from her accusing him of picking up with “his women” after he “got done with her,” when, for her sake, he hadn’t started dating—she’d finally found a therapist who could reach her.

But it was too late.

Because he’d met Betsy.

He hadn’t started anything with her, but he’d met her, and he intended to start something.

He did.

Betsy had since moved to Park City, a move that Duncan was not willing to make with her, and she was not willing to stay in Prescott, which told the tale of how committed they truly were, and that ended.

But now it was Imogen.

And he had no idea what Genny had to do with anything.

He’d told Dora about her before he’d even asked her to marry him.

And from that time on, it had never come up.

They’d opened their store in Bend eight years ago.

Sully had been thirteen.

And Duncan knew nothing about this.

“What happened after she hung up?” he asked tightly.

“She lost it, Dad. Totally destroyed the kitchen. Tore everything out of the fridge and threw it around. Ketchup everywhere. Tomato sauce. Salsa. Mayonnaise. Broken jars. Stuff came out of the pantry and mixed with it. Pasta. Flour. Spices. Bottles rolling around. Her slipping all over it. I stopped her before she got out the plates. But I had to do that physical. I had to lock her down. In the end, she threw back a pill and went to bed, but it took me, like, three hours to clean up that mess.”