I’d never hated anyone as much as I hated that man the summer of 1976. If I could have fired his ass without putting more work on poor George Hobart, I would have done it ten times over. Weston Marian was a selfish son of a bitch, and no amount of sweet-talking from Betsy was going to change my mind about it.
I made sure not to notice his generosity in taking my children to do fun things off the ranch like grab a milkshake in town or visit a neighbor’s new litter of puppies. I ignored all the extra work he put in around the Hobart place when it became clear that George was losing his own will to live watching Betsy suffer. And the rare times Major Asshole accepted an invitation to Sunday dinner in my parents’ kitchen, I pretended like he was part of the furniture.
And throughout all of it, he accepted my abuse like it was his due, like it was part of the price he paid for accepting Betsy’s confidence. He stayed in the shadows during those months. When he wasn’t working his ass off taking care of the ranch or the farm, he was caring for George’s personal residence and making sure my kids still got to all their extracurricular activities. It didn’t matter to me. Nothing made up for his lies of omission.
The well of my anger was deep and dark, building and frothing until the dam finally broke late one afternoon in early September. I’d gotten called out on a case in the middle of the night and had come back home around dawn. After catching several hours of sleep, I woke up to find Betsy sitting by the open window in our bedroom crying quietly. It was unusual that she wasn’t sitting in a rocker on the porch by her rose garden. When I’d arrived home from Baltimore, I’d realized she’d replaced the scraggly old boxwood bushes in front of the porch with gorgeous full specimens of all different hybrid versions of her roses. The fall-blooming ones were a sight to behold right now, so she usually took advantage of every spare moment out there. She’d sit and knit by the roses, although now that I thought about it, I realized I hadn’t seen her with her needles in a while.
“Why are you crying?” I asked groggily. I got up and went over to her.
She tilted her head toward the window. “Listen.”
That’s when I noticed Major Secretkeeper kneeling alongside the flower beds with all four of our children lined up alongside him. Each of them had gardening gloves on and were listening with rapt attention. Brenda clutched the handle of a watering can, and Billy had the hose nearby. Gina held a weeding fork.
Major was talking quietly to them. “We’re only helping your mama with her roses until she feels better, okay? Now, this is one of her favorites. She calls it the Bologna rose. See the pink speckles? That’s called variegated, when it’s speckled like that. Well, it doesn’t want to get its arms and legs wet. It’s kind of prissy, you know? So we only water its feet.” He turned to Brenda and showed her how to water the base of the rosebush.
Betsy’s voice was soft and scratchy over my shoulder. She’d been fighting a bad cough that was leftover from a head cold. “He started planting those roses the day I was diagnosed, and he’s been out there every single day since feeding and watering them to make sure they bloomed like a Rose Bowl Parade for me.”
I stared down at the riot of colors. The perfume from the blooms was strong enough to reach our bedroom when the breeze blew in.
“I thought that was your garden,” I said. “That you planted it and took care of it.”
She turned her head to give me a look disbelief. “Liam, I’ve barely been able to hold my own hairbrush for three months and you think I’ve been kneeling in the flower beds gardening while you’ve been at work?”
God. Now that she said it, I realized how stupid my assumption had been. I stared down at the major, my feelings of betrayal and gratitude making a murky soup in my gut.
“He’s one of the best men I’ve ever met, hon. You bringing him here was a gift to all of us.” Betsy’s voice was gentle but firm. She was making sure I knew how juvenile my resentment had been toward him.
“Mpfh. He’s not the most experienced foreman, you know. We could probably find someone better.” We both knew I didn’t mean it.
“I want him to stay here. To be here for our children when… if something happens to me. They adore him.” She reached out and grabbed my jaw with her cold hand. “Do not let our kids lose someone else important to them. Promise me.”