“In what way isn’t this my fault?” Jack snapped. “I left her up there, Dad.”

“She’s grown.”

“Well, she sure as hell doesn’t act like it.”

“I suppose you’d be an authority on grown-up behavior?”

Jack opened his mouth and then shut it, as if realizing that locking himself in his room for five days was about as childish as it got.

“You know, Dad,” he said, leaning forward, putting his elbows on his knees. His eyes were narrow slits and Walter had a pretty good idea that whatever was coming, it wasn’t going to be pretty. The boy was like a raccoon in a cage, all fired up with nowhere to go. “You’re one to talk. How many times did you go to Al’s Bar when Mom was on one of her rampages?”

“A lot,” he answered, feeling a hot flush climbing up his skin. “I’m not proud of it.”

“I suppose that makes it okay? Being sorry excuses your absence?”

“No,” Walter said, turning away from the TV to face his son’s damning eyes. “Nothing excuses how I wasn’t around for you when you needed me.”

Jack blinked, a deer in headlights, trying to decide which way to jump.

“I kicked her out after that mess with Mia’s family.”

“I know.”

“But you still didn’t come back.”

“Did you expect me to?” Jack asked. “Like getting rid of her, years too late, would make me rush back here?”

Yeah. It had been stupid, hoping for that. “No,” he said, “I suppose not.”

The boy was silent for a long time and Walter watched him, feeling a well of patience, deep and dark. Patience he’d never shown when Jack was a kid.

Jack stood, shaking his head, paced a few feet.

“Mia says I need to deal with what Mom did to me,” Jack said, staring up at the ceiling. All that pain he tried to hide covered him, like he was a packhorse who’d never been given a break. “Can you believe that shit?”

Walter shifted in his seat, wishing he was anywhere but here, and knowing his days of running from this were over.

“Your wife is a smart woman.”

“My wife.” Jack laughed. “My wife is kicking me off my own damn land.”

“Thought that’s what you wanted?” Walter asked. “To leave.”

Jack pushed his hands through his hair, looking every inch a man who had no idea what he wanted.

Poor guy, Walter thought.

Walter figured there wasn’t much to say, though, so he kept his mouth shut. Waited for the boy to get around to pushing those heavy weights off his back.

The silence got deep. Thick. It became hard to breathe and still he waited.

“Did you know she was hitting me?” Jack finally asked. “When I was a kid?”

It was the hardest thing he’d ever done, owning up to his part in how bad Jack’s childhood must have been, but he nodded. “I knew she lifted her hand. But not how much. Or how bad.”

“Why didn’t you stop it?”

“At first it didn’t seem so bad. You were a willful, stubborn boy—”

“Which, of course, makes it okay,” Jack snapped.

“No. It doesn’t. But she took on the discipline. I ran the ranch—”

“And drank, don’t forget the drinking.”

Walter licked his lips. There was so much he wasn’t proud of.

“I finally stepped in after that night you came home with me from town with your clothes all torn up. You’d been up on the roofs. Remember?”

Jack nodded, silent, his eyes wary.

“Anyway, I saw how she went after you…” Walter stopped. His hands were big, strong. His fingers wide, the middle three of both bent sideways from the first knuckle from being broken. He’d never hit his wife, never put hands on her in that way, but it had been hard controlling himself that night.

Jack’d been a big boy, but his fear that night, facing down Victoria, had made him small. His own mother made him small. It wasn’t natural.

Walter had put a stop to it as fast as he could, but Victoria had gotten a couple of good licks in with her belt. He’d sent Jack to Sandra to get cleaned up and he’d told Victoria that if she so much as touched Jack in anger again, he’d send her away without a penny.

“She didn’t hit you again after that, did she?” Walter asked.

Jack thought for a minute. “No,” he said, sounding surprised. “She didn’t. Not like that.”

Shame sizzled through him and he hated his skin. He hated himself. “I should have kicked her out years ago,” Walter said. “But I didn’t know what I’d do with you and I was so scared that she might get custody of you somehow. I mean, dads didn’t get custody back then. Especially dads who spent most nights down at Al’s.”

“They did if their wives were nuts.”

“But even that seemed to come and go,” Walter said. He wasn’t a smart man, had never claimed to be, and the situation he’d gotten into with his wife had made him feel even more stupid. Foolish and angry. “It was like a storm cloud would come over our house and she’d be this monster, and then it would leave and life would be normal again.”

Tags: Molly O'Keefe Romance
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