Her hand spasmed in my t-shirt, where she was gripping it with her nails. “I can’t change what’s happened to him here, and legally Cody has to go to his dad’s house, but I’ll do everything I can to make sure it doesn’t happen again and that it doesn’t ruin how far he’s come.”
“If anyone can, it’s you. Just bear in mind, once he opens up and tells you everything, you need to keep your shit together. Ain’t gonna do him no help getting yourself arrested.”
She had a point, and it was similar advice to what I’d given Evie earlier on.
“I’ll do my best.”
She moved so that she could pat my chest as she took a step back. “Go and get that boy some donuts. Sun’s kissing the sky now, so he’ll be needing something to fuel him while he tells his story.”
I raised my hand to say goodbye, oddly saddened that this was it for some reason. Maybe it was the history, or perhaps it was the gratitude for what she’d done for us tonight.
“By the way, your son sounds like an absolute hunk. If he’s still single, I’ve got a granddaughter who’s looking for a man.”
Laughing, I shook my head. “Sorry, he’s married with a baby. I’m a granddad now.”
“Well, shit,” she growled. “Fuck me, now I feel old as hell.”
I had a feeling this wouldn’t be the last I’d see of her, and it was proven when she shouted just as I was getting into the vehicle, “I’ll see y’all soon. Evie says she’ll get my number from the sheriff.”
Smiling widely, I shut the door just as Evie leaned out of the window to answer her. “See you at Thanksgiving, Mrs. C.”
All three of us were laughing as we pulled out of the parking lot, something which was a far cry from how we’d been when we’d pulled into it earlier.
That lasted all of three minutes into the drive home.
Spinning in her seat, Evie looked into the back of the car. “Tell me all of it. What did he do?”
“He brought a woman home tonight who’s twenty, Mom, and told me he’d knocked her up. The first girlfriend he had after he got rid of the witch had two sons my age, then he knocks someone close to my age up? After he said he didn’t want the responsibilities of being a parent?
“Oh,” he yelled, and I took my eyes off the road to look in the rearview mirror at where he was sitting with his hands clamped either side of his head. “And get this—he says he never said that. In front of the chick tonight, he says he never once said he didn’t want the responsibilities of being a parent, and that you were lying ‘cause you’re so full of shit.”
“God,” Evie breathed, watching her son with tears in her eyes. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”
“He didn’t want to be my dad, but he was cool with acting like one for those other kids and making one with a woman closer to my age than his. What’s wrong with me, Mom?” he sobbed, breaking my heart even more. “Why am I not good enough?”
Making sure there was nothing behind us on the road, I jerked the wheel and pulled onto the side of it. Not even wasting a second, I was out of the vehicle and opening the door to the back to get to him.
Undoing his belt, I pulled him into my front, wrapping my arms tightly around him.
“I want you to listen to me, Cody, and listen hard. You are more than good enough, so don’t ever question that, not even for a second. He’s your dad, so it’d be wrong of me to talk shit about him, but I will say this—the problem isn’t yours. His weaknesses and issues are. Not. Yours. The problem here is all his, so don’t ever blame yourself again.”
He began bawling into my chest, and when I looked up at Evie, she was in much the same way, but her eyes were glued to her heartbroken child.
“He doesn’t love me,” he croaked as his shoulders shuddered.
“I can’t answer that, bud,” I said softly. “But I can tell you that I could list at least fifty people who think you are the absolute shit—myself and DB included. All the guys at P.V.P.D. think it, all the people in Piersville that I know think it, your mom does, your uncle, aunt, and grandparents think it, too.”
Then leaning down, I stage whispered, “And I’ll bet if I told them what’d happened tonight, every last one of them would be at your dad’s door to kick the shit out of him. Want me to make it happen?”
It had the intended effect on him because he froze and then began laughing.
“I mean, I’ll be leading the crowd to the door, but I’d let them take a shot at him, too. Life lesson, Cody, you can’t be selfish in situations like this. You’ve got to let everyone else get their licks in as well.”