Another maniacal laugh has him hanging on to the door, trying to stay mostly upright. “Wrong again, stepmother, dearest. My wife doesn’t give a shit about me. She took the kids and left.”
I wave my hand in the direction of his car, which is parked halfway on the driveway and halfway on the grass. “And you wanted the kids to see this, did you? Don’t you think Natalie has experienced enough of you being a drunken ass?”
“A drunken ass? Don’t hold back or anything,” he scoffs.
My eyes roll so hard I get a little dizzy. “Thatwasme holding back, Liam.”
Liam takes a step away from the car and holds his arms out wide. The movement causes him to stumble a bit, but he manages to catch his balance before he falls. He laughs again asif any of this is funny. “By all means, lay it all on me. Give me the full, ugly truth.”
We’re all just a web of strings, really, made up of all our thoughts and memories. They’re all just there, tangled together, forming who we are. It’s not our primal self, but the one we build to face the world. Tug on any of those threads hard enough and the entire construct unravels. I think I’ve been waiting a long time to let it all come undone.
I jab my finger in his direction. “Don’t forget that you asked me for this,” I remind him.
“You were a shit husband to me. I’ve watched you with Claudia, and for a while, I had hoped that you were growing up. You hadn’t faced any real problems since she came along, though, so I held my judgment. You knew pain was a trigger, but rather than ask for help, you would rather just throw up your hands and give in to your demons.”
“You have no idea what kind of pain I’ve been in, so spare me the sanctimonious bullshit,” Liam snaps.
“I’ve had four children, you think I don’t understand pain?” I scoff.
“I wrenched my back replacing an engine, it’s not the same,” he mumbles.
“You’re fucking right, it’s not. And you think I don’t know what it’s like to throw out my back? I picked up Parker while I was five months pregnant with the twins, and slipped a disk. I was on bed rest for two weeks with nothing more than acetaminophen for the pain. Then I hurt my back again in labor with the boys four months later.”
“Do you want a fucking award? I have a disease, Wren. God, you’re the same judgmental bitch you were when we were married.”
The sound of tires squealing on the asphalt stops me from the rage-filled litany I was about to unleash. I don’t even have to turn around to know who has arrived.
The creak of the door to Griffin’s ancient truck gets Liam’s attention. He might be drunk, but he still has enough presence of mind to be wary of his father when he’s pissed. Listening to Griffin stomp through the yard between our houses, I can tell before I see his face that he’s pissed.
I pull the phone out of my back pocket and realize I didn’t connect to voicemail, but instead I’ve been on the phone with Griffin this entire time. At least now we can stop pretending that Liam isn’t spiraling out of control again.
Griff comes over, wraps his arm around me, and kisses me on the forehead. “Hey, Baby Bird, I can take over here. I’m keeping my promise; you don’t ever have to be responsible for him again.”
“I’m right here,” Liam interjects. “No one has to be responsible for me.”
Griffin is fifty-three now, to Liam’s thirty-five. Being younger doesn’t give Liam an advantage, though. It’s not even the drinking that makes them an uneven match. Griffin is a couple of inches taller and has always taken better care of himself, including exercising regularly. Basically, Griffin is a beast, and Liam is nothing more than a watered-down version of his dad.
The vein on Griff’s forehead throbs. “I really wish I didn’t have to be, son, but once again, you are screwing up your life. I’m not about to stand back and watch my son kill himself with alcohol and painkillers. We’ve gone around with this enough already.”
Griffin lets go of me, crosses the distance to Liam, and yanks the keys out of his hand. “And if you think that I’m going to let you drive blitzed out of your mind, then you’re dumber than I thought you were. The last thing you need added to yourlaundry list of fuck ups is killing someone. You really want to be responsible for someone having to be told that their loved one is never coming home?”
Liam’s eyes slide my way and hold for a heartbeat. He was the one home with me when I was told that my parents were in an accident. Sure, it was rain and not a drunk driver that took them away from me, but not hard to imagine what the scenario Griffin presented would look like.
He hangs his head and silently starts to cry. I turn around without saying a word and leave Griffin to comfort him. He’s right, Liam is not my responsibility anymore.
Wren - Past
Things settle back downto normal for Griffin and me, or at least as close to normal as there can be considering how we began. I know that he goes over to Charlie’s to visit with Natalie, but I still haven’t been able to bring myself to spend time with her. Ordinarily, as her grandpa’s wife, I would develop a relationship with her, but there’s nothing ordinary about my connection to her.
I don’t exactly like myself for the animosity I feel toward a baby. She is an innocent baby and not responsible for the circumstances that brought her into this world, but I also can’t forget. So Griffin goes alone, and I sit at home berating myself for not being able to move past this.
I should be able to. I am madly in love with my husband. Whenever I think about my life before finding Liam cheating, Itry and remember what made me ever think that was love. This isn’t me trying to write Liam out of my history either. I believed wholeheartedly that I loved him at the time. Now that I’ve loved and been loved in return, I see it for what it was. Liam was my high school sweetheart. He was my first everything, and had we parted ways after I graduated, I think I may have looked back on our time together fondly. We didn’t let things end naturally, though. We pushed ahead and forced our relationship long past its expiration date.
Now we’re all locked into a toxic holding pattern. Charlie is taking care of Natalie, although I think my aunt has been helping him a lot. Griffin goes over to visit at least a couple of times a week.
It’s not a lot of time, really, but for a few hours a couple of times every week, Griffin is almost an hour away while I am going stir crazy at home. Our little girl is only a few weeks from making her appearance now, which has pretty much sidelined me from everything. Not because my doctor said I need to stop working, but because Griffin does a pretty good impersonation of a mother hen.
This is another one of those days that I find myself pacing the floors of our small rental house. The new shop location is already making a profit, and soon we’ll have the café open as well. It already would be, but Griffin slowed things down until I’m ready to go back to work. He has a point.
