“That makes it sound worse than what it was,” he muttered. “She does love them. But when you love yourself most of all, you can’t really love a kid the way that kid needs to be loved.”
“Or a husband.”
“Yeah,” he whispered. Then he said, “Baby, relax. She’s gone.”
“I’m allowed to be mad about this, West.”
“All right,” he murmured. “But so you can get over it, I’ll give it all to you.”
I already knew there was more to give.
I just no longer wanted to have it.
Though I needed to have it, for Buck, me and the kids.
However, I didn’t have to pretend to like it.
So I didn’t.
“Fantastic,” I said sarcastically.
He grinned.
Then he kept talking.
“We fought. Even in the early days, we fought. We fought more later. Then more. Back then, I didn’t get it. I had on my hands this pretty girl who was sweet as sugar then could turn on a dime. I was too young to know she was sweet as sugar when she was getting her way, and she made that turn when she was not. I had no clue what I’d gotten myself into. I just knew what my folks had. I wanted what they had. I was all in to start a family because I loved the one they made. And that family had fallen apart. I wanted it back. I was too young to know Kristy was not the right woman and I made a family with her and then it was too late.”
“Oh, Buck,” I said quietly.
He shook his head.
“I do not regret havin’ my kids. I regret that was what they grew up with. And it scared the fuck out of me. Because, seein’ us, their mom up in their dad’s shit all the time. Screaming at him. Him shoutin’ back at her. Her sticking him with a knife. They wouldn’t know what they should look for. What they should expect. Some version of what my mom and dad had. I’m not sayin’ Mom and Dad didn’t fight. They did. But the bottom line always was that they loved each other. They were into each other. They listened to each other. They liked spending time with each other. And I did not give that to my kids.”
He shook his head again.
I didn’t say anything and waited.
He kept going.
“Took Kristy to see Dad. A few visits in, he asked her if he could have some time alone with his boy. She took off and left me with him. And he said, ‘Son, get shot of her. She’s not the one.’ By then, Kristy was pregnant, but we didn’t know it yet. It didn’t matter. I thought I was in love and I told him he didn’t know what he was talking about. But he’s my dad. He knew what he was talking about.”
“Sometimes we have to make our own mistakes.”
“That one, my kids paid for.”
“Buck,” I whispered, feeling that for him because he wasn’t hiding how deeply he felt it.
“Mom had only been around her a couple of times before she died. She never said, but I don’t think she thought much of her either.”
“West, you were a very young man,” I reminded him. “Nobody ever has all the answers or makes the all the right decisions. Even adults. But you were nineteen. Twenty. That’s two, three years older than Gear. Think about that.”
“Yeah,” he grunted.
“And they have you and I’m not sure you realize what a steadying force you are in their lives.”
“They also now have you.”
At that, I engaged my other hand to use his beard to pull him down to me for a quick kiss.
I then pushed him back and reiterated, “But they’ve always had you and what you and Kristy had might not have been great for them, but I can assure you not ever having it, that having one parent who knocks himself out to show them love and teach them good lessons and give them a safe space really works.”
“I hate you didn’t have that, darlin’,” he said in a voice that shared eloquently how much he meant it.
“I know you do,” I replied. “But that’s over, West. And it’s on the other side, but I have it now. And the kids will soon be here full-time, so I’ll really have it. It’s all good.”
He took his time examining my face as if to ascertain if what I said was true.
When he got that from me, he moved on.
“Thinkin’ on things, again recently, been wonderin’ if I didn’t do right by Kristy.”
That surprised me.
“Sorry?”
“I expected you to just snap to and get with the program. That program bein’, I just expected us to fight. That’s what I had with her, and we were together for fifteen years. I just expected there were times it was gonna get ugly and you’d not only roll with that, you’d meet that ugly time after time. It didn’t hit me, again until recently, that I had a different kind of woman on my hands. And now I’m wonderin’ if I expected too much of Kristy.”