Or was it he was afraid to start a new life not knowing if he’d be good at anything else?
He knew what he was good at. Football.
What happens when that is gone?
But could he continue to play and risk his life?
“She probably didn’t know who it was,” he said. He wasn’t sure why she had said nothing to him. “You just wanted to know how I was doing?”
“That and that I’ve been trying to reach you. I need your help.”
Nothing changed. It wasn’t about how he was doing but a ploy to get to him.
“You know,” he said, “you were never around when we needed you. What makes you think we should be there for you?”
There was silence on the other end. He wouldn’t let himself get worked up over this when he felt the pulsing in his head.
“I was a shitty father and husband,” Sean said.
“Yeah, you were,” he said.
“I felt sorry for myself and did the one thing I said I’d never do. I took after my father.”
Guess that was something they had in common. Not wanting to take after their father. He was sticking to his promise.
“What do you want?” Warren asked. “We are past heartfelt conversations and asking for forgiveness.”
“I want to get clean,” his father said. “I need help. I want to be there for you when I wasn’t before.”
“Don’t go there,” he said. “Don’t even try. You see me in the news with Emma and you see where she is from and you want a piece of that. You’re not coming near me or her or anyone else in the family. You had a lot of chances to get clean and chose not to.”
“It’s different this time,” Sean said.
“No,” he said. “It’s not. We know it’s not. Don’t lie to me.”
There was a pause, and he’d continue to be silent until his father spoke again.
“Do you know what it’s like for people to know you’re my son and I’m here working some union job?” The angry shift in his tone said it all.
“And there is the dick that walked out on us. Don’t reach out again. Not to me or the girls or Mom. And sure the hell not Emma. If I find out you did, I’ll take care of it in ways you can’t imagine. And if you aren’t afraid of me, youshouldbe afraid of her family. Lose this number, but you’re getting blocked anyway.”
He hung up after that and sat down with his head in his hands.
It was throbbing now.
He shouldn’t have taken that call.
Nothing ever changed, and he wasn’t sure why he thought it might.
To distract himself, he found the notebook he’d been writing in at Emma’s. The book he was plotting and hadn’t told her about. He’d said he’d try, but she never brought it up again.
It would take his mind off the real world and his problems that most wouldn’t think were problems and let him escape into something he had more control over.
Now he understood why Emma was always so happy and easygoing. She wrote her own endings.
Maybe it was time he did too.
39
