“You have to go and talk to him. Don’t let him make excuses; make him face this head-on. It’s the only way.”
Looking at her, my mind slips back a decade, and I see all of the hurt and confusion on her face. At least this time, she won’t be the one suffering for his choices. I’m sure wherever Claudia is, she is struggling with whatever he might have done. Maybe I’m an asshole, because she’s just as much my daughter-in-law as Wren once was, but I don’t care about her even a fraction of what I did for Wren before she became mine.
Griffin - Past
“Look at you,dearie! You have the most adorable bump. Maternity clothes are so fashionable nowadays. When I was having my kids, no one wanted to be reminded that people have sex, at least not women, so we wore these large mu’umu’u style dresses,” Dolores rambles on without taking a breath.
She loops her arm through Wren’s. “I’ve got one of your favorite muffins waiting for you, fresh out of the oven. How about you and I sit and catch up a bit?”
Wren leans down to speak closer to Dolores and says, “Make it two and you’ve got a deal.”
I start to follow them up the stairs, but before I make it inside, Dolores turns around and puts her hand on my chest. “Not you. We can’t have proper girl talk with a hunk of beef like you hanging around.”
“Hunk of beef?” I ask her, trying hard not to laugh.
She rolls her hazy eyes. Time may have dimmed her eyesight, but it has not done the same to her sassy attitude. “You know what you look like. You’ve always known, judging by the way you’ve strutted around town since you were a teenager.”
“What exactly do you expect me to do if I’m not coming in?” I could try to charm her, but Dolores has spent too much time babysitting me when I was a kid, then my son when my ex-wife left, to fall for my charms.
She reaches inside the door, grabs a list from the entry table, and hands it to me. “Be a doll and run some errands for me. Mycar needs an oil change, Patches needs to go to the vet, and I need my meds from Palmer’s Pharmacy.”
My mouth falls open. “Patches is our cat, of course, I’ll take her to the vet,” I agree.
Dolores insisted on keeping the cat while Wren is pregnant because of the risks of cat litter for pregnant women. She knows full well that I will do whatever it takes to make my Baby Bird happy, even cleaning up cat shit. Wren is the one who pushed me to agree with her, knowing that since she moved in with me that Dolores has been lonely. We come to visit every week, and there are others who visit her as well, but it isn’t the same as having someone around every day.
My agreement is all she needs to hand me a cat carrier with the kitten Wren adopted after her split with Liam, her first act of rebellion. My son hates cats and wouldn’t let Wren have one. Of course, her second and most profound rebellion was hooking up with me. At least we started out that way, but I don’t think she even thinks about Liam much anymore.
I hope she doesn’t, at least. I don’t know how I would handle it if I ever learned that she misses what they had. It’s juvenile, but I like to think that what we have is the real thing. They were children when they started dating, and barely adults when they got married. Even then, they were only adults in the legal sense.
Looking at the rest of the list, I go back to the entry for her car. “Why does your oil need to be changed? Better yet, why do you even still have a car? You haven’t driven in like eight years,” I point out.
She waves me off with her bent and spotted hand. “I only take it down to the mailbox and back.”
I shake my head. “I’m getting you a golf cart,” I mumble.
She bobs her head, white curls bouncing with the gesture. “I’m going to hold you to that. My vision is bad, but my hearing is excellent,” she says, tapping her ear lobe.
I grunt, which is as good as an agreement for me, and I grab the cat carrier and head down to her classic fifties Buick. She’s been babying this car since her husband, Ben, bought it for her when they got married. I should talk her out of keeping this car, but I understand being so stuck on someone you can’t have that you’ll hold on to any part of them that you can. At least she had a whole life with her husband. Still, it doesn’t make it easier to be without them. Thank God Wren is younger than me, because I don’t think I could live any more of this life without her in it. I’ve already spent the last few years pining for her when I thought it was hopeless.
Dropping off the cat is easy. They prearranged for Dolores to drop her off and pick her up before they close today. I swing by the shop next and get ready to do the work on the Buick myself, but Charlie runs me out. Normally, I’d do anything to keep from working on one of my days off, especially with how much I’ve been working trying to launch the new location for Hale and Storm Automotive, but I'm willing to do just about anything to prevent having to go to the pharmacy.
With that plan foiled, I have no excuse, except to walk a few blocks over to Palmer’s Pharmacy and get in line to fill Dolores's prescriptions. Considering I am over six feet tall and walk around with whatever the male equivalent of resting bitch face permanently glowering at people, you would think I would stand out and stop people from talking about me within earshot. Apparently, not in Harriston, the people in this town are not particularly aware of their surroundings, or maybe I’m not as intimidating as I like to think. It's also possible that they just don't fucking care. It wouldn't be the first time somebody has disregarded how I might think or feel about something in pursuit of some juicy news.
When Melinda told me she was pregnant with Liam, at the end of our senior year, that spread around town pretty quickly,too. I think that’s how both of our parents found out. Although, it didn’t come as a surprise because the bar of achievement in Harriston is pretty low. Not surprising that it was Mr. Palmer who took it on himself to share that joyful news, too. That’s why most of us make that drive over to Pine Bluff to get condoms or really anything from the pharmacy. Maybe if people felt like there was even the tiniest bit of privacy to buy those things in this town, the teen pregnancy rate wouldn’t be the highest in the state. Not everyone has a car or the gas money to drive nearly an hour round-trip. It isn’t lost on me that if you don’t have enough money to make that trip, you definitely can’t afford a baby, but teenagers aren’t known for their critical thinking skills.
I see now that I got off easy from the rumor mill back then. The town was done talking about Liam’s impending birth before Melinda even started showing. Of course, teenage pregnancy isn’t nearly as interesting as a relationship with your daughter-in-law, so it’s going to take a lot longer for this news to die down.
Not sure when it’s going to happen, though. It’s been almost a year now, and it’s still passing around like when we first got together. Even rumors that Charlie is hooking up with Hattie, Wren’s aunt and the baby sister of one of his best friends, aren’t enough to move them on to something else. They just found some room for more news. I’ve learned not to engage with the people spreading half-truths or straight-out lies about me. Instead, I stand here, clenching both my fists and my jaw as I listen to the vile garbage being spread.
“I heard that they shared her," whispers one bored housewife.
“Really? Because I heard that he won her in a bet from Liam,” says her equally vapid friend.
I would recognize the condescending tsking sound anywhere, having been on the receiving end of Mr. Palmer’s performative morals. Secretly, or not so secretly, he loves the gossip thatspreads like a gas leak in his store. It’s just as toxic and stinks. The only thing he might love as much is feigning moral superiority over the people who spread the gossip in his business.
“Ladies," he chides, “let's not go spreading baseless accusations. That's not the kind of town Harriston is.”
“The hell it isn’t,” I grumble under my breath.
