Chapter
11
Bobby
Pulling up to the small, yet friendly, looking ranch home, I wasn’t sure who was more nervous, me or Belle. She hadn’t spoken another word to me since I’d told her, when we pulled up at the hotel, that she was taking me to Seth and Declan had exited the truck when she said okay. She called Sheriff Jenkins and asked him to bring Seth home in twenty minutes. After disconnecting the call, she promptly turned her radio on so loud we couldn’t have said a word to each other over the music if we’d wanted to.
Perhaps my comment on the way back to Poteet about the kind of cold, deceitful woman I’d felt she’d become had been harsh, but it was exactly how I felt. Being the straight shooter that I was, even back when I was a teenager, she should know I wasn’t one to pull my punches; physical or verbal. There’d never been a reason to be that way with her before. Now there was.
The outside of the house was painted a bright, sunny yellow with white shutters on the windows. It was the same colors as the fantasy dream house we’d built together in our minds a hundred times during the two years we’d been together. We walked up the stained porch steps and stood in front of the red door she’d always wanted, using her key to unlock the deadbolt.
“Yellow house, huh?”
“Just because you gave up on our dreams didn’t mean I had to, Bobby. I wanted a yellow house, so when I could afford one, I bought me and my son a yellow house.”
Guess I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t pulling their verbal punches anymore.
Pushing the door open, she stepped aside and waved a hand, inviting me in. Walking through the doorway and past her, I stopped in a small entryway that connected to the living room. It was filled with the family essentials of a couch and a loveseat covered in chocolate brown leather and an oversized entertainment center, sporting a large screen television. It was an open floor plan, the living room flowed into the kitchen and dining area, which were only separated by a long breakfast bar, equipped with four barstools. The walls were painted almost the exact same color of yellow as the outside of the house and a dark beige carpet ran from the living room down the hall to where the bedrooms probably were. The small entry way, kitchen and dining area floors were covered in a dark beige ceramic tile that matched the carpet’s color.
I didn’t miss the little touches that made the house more of a home for its two occupants. Candid photographs of Belle, Seth and even Teagan hung on the walls in ornate picture frames. There was a blanket draped over the back of the couch and matching throw pillows on the furniture, all in burnt orange and white colors with the Texas Longhorns symbol on them. It was then I noticed the dining room chair cushions were also burnt orange and there was a ceramic pitcher and cookie jar decorated in Longhorn symbols. It appeared she was still a big football fan, but her choice of team was surprising to me. After all, we’d grown up in Georgia where, like Texas, football was a religion, but we had worshiped at the stadium stands of the Bulldogs. Everyone we knew still back home would consider this blasphemy.
Looking over my shoulder to see Belle watching me with an unreadable mask in place, I said, “The Longhorns? Seriously?”
The front door opened behind her and Seth walked in, answering me without missing a beat as he closed the door behind himself. “Why wouldn’t Mom root for the Longhorns? It’s our team.” Coming to a stop beside his mother, I watched as my son braced his feet shoulder width apart, crossed his arms over his chest, and then gave me the once over. Christ, he was just like me.
Turning around to face them both, I told him, “There was a time when your mom was a die-hard Georgia Bulldogs fan, that’s why.”
Seth shrugged his shoulders. “Mom hasn’t lived in Georgia since before I was born. I’m sure, after she moved here, she realized the Longhorns were a superior team compared to the Bulldogs, but you’re not here to talk football, are you?”
Was the kid fourteen or forty? Because, at the moment, he sure wasn’t acting like a damn teenager. No, he was acting like a grown man, trying to protect the little woman of the house. Only there wasn’t a little woman that needed to be protected. Belle could damn well take care of herself. She’d already proven that with all of her actions so far. If I weren’t so pissed at her right now, I’d be amused by this whole big man act my son was trying to put on for me. Problem was, I was angry, so it was not really amusing at the moment.
Belle put a visibly trembling hand on Seth’s shoulder and then looked to me, nodding towards the living room. Her voice wavered for a second when she said, “How about the three of us go sit down so we can talk?”
Mother and son settled down on the loveseat, leaving me to sit by myself on the larger couch. How fitting that even where I sat on the living room furniture brought home how much I felt like an outsider to the two people I should never feel that way with. Looking to Belle for guidance on how they should proceed, I was greeted with that mask of hers again, instead of help. It was such a blank look I would have thought she was impersonating a robot if it weren’t for the way she was fisting her hands in her lap. She was clenching them so hard the fingertips were a bloodless white. So she wasn’t as unaffected as she was trying to pretend to be.
Clearing my throat, I looked to Seth and started. “We should start with introductions.” Rubbing my nervous hands over the tops of my thighs, I wondered how one went about telling another human being they were their father without sounding like some bad Darth Vader impersonation.
“Seth, my name i-”
“I know who you are.”
Did he just say what I think he said? Maybe I had a wax build up going on in my ear. Sticking a finger in both ears, wiggling them around to make sure there were no blockages, I took my fingers out and sputtered, “I’m sorry, did you say you know who I am?”
The boy’s face was just as blank as his mother’s; however, I couldn’t find any outward signs of emotion from him like I had with Belle and her hands, which wasn’t helping me figure out if this conversation was going well, or if it was the beginnings of an emotional clusterfuck.
“Yes, sir.”
Well, slap me silly and call me a monkey shit target. What exactly did my son think he knew about me? Had his mother filled his head with lies? I didn’t want to think Belle would do that to me, but as of right now, I didn’t know what to think of the former love of my life. Why did the idea of labeling her former bother me so badly, too? Ignoring the urge to shoot Belle an icy glare, I kept my eyes on Seth.
“What exactly do you think you know about me?”
“I know your name is Bobby Baker. You’re from a small town in Georgia, named Sylvania, where you grew up with my mom. She told me you made good grades in school, played on a championship football team, and then left for the Army after you graduated top of your class.”
Seth stopped talking to stare at me for a few moments. I tried to sit there and stay calm under his scrutiny, but the sweat slicking my palms was a big, fat indicator I was anything but calm. Was that it? Had his mother told him anything else? Like that I was her first boyfriend? Had she told him how we’d spent every spare minute together for two years? That I was the one she’d run to after her father would come home drunk and mean? That it had taken me over six months to convince her that she was safe with me? Had the mother of my son told him I was a bastard for leaving her? That I couldn’t be trusted to keep my promises or be counted on?
Had she told our son I’d broken her heart and left her unknowingly pregnant and alone?
I couldn’t take the wait anymore. I needed to know if my son knew who I really was. Did he know I was his father? Opening my mouth to broach the subject again, he stopped me by standing up abruptly.
“Stay here, please. I’ll be right back. I need to get something out of my room.”
Just like that, Seth strolled out of the living room and down the hall as if he hadn’t left a billion pound elephant sitting in the room with his absence. At least he’d used the word please, though. It meant Belle had done a good job instilling some manners into our child. Still floating in a state of confusion, I moved my gaze from the spot where my son’s back had disappeared down the hall to his mother. She looked cool as a cucumber, which frankly pissed me off a little bit more than I already had been. Where was all the remorse she’d had at the football field? Did she think that now that I’d met our son in the flesh the slate was wiped clean and she no longer owed me my pound of flesh in retribution?
If that’s what she thought, she was superbly, fucking mistaken.
Or at least, she’d looked totally unaffected until I looked back down to her hands to see they were still tightly clasped together. So much so that a small drop of blood was leaking out from under one of her nails where it had broken the skin of the palm of her hand. I heard her give a small sniffle as I stared at the drop of blood and it reminded me that she’d learned growing up to at least give the appearance of locking her emotions down. That piece of shit father of hers had taught her the hard way he wouldn’t listen to a little girl’s cry, so she’d become the master at hiding how she felt, no matter what. Perhaps habits like those were hard to break.
Seth came back into the room holding what looked like a small photo album and a picture frame in his hands. Sitting back down on the couch, next to his mother, close enough his leg brushed against her own, he dropped the album in his lap, but extended the frame out to me. I didn’t know where this was all headed, but the hair on my arms stood up and I had the sense of foreboding wash over me. Whatever this was, it was going to be huge; possibly life changing.
That thought should have seemed ridiculous since I was already in the middle of a life changing moment—the first point in time where I met my son—which should have been when he was born. Instead, it was in this moment when he was already fourteen, sitting in a living room that was not in my family home, and handing me an unfamiliar picture frame I somehow knew was about to flip my world on its axis.
I held out my hand, letting my boy place the frame in it, and when I tilted the picture up to see what it was, the breath choked in my throat. It was a picture of me as a senior in my high school football uniform, running off the field with my teammates. I was headed, not towards my coach or my parents, but directly towards the person snapping the picture of me on their camera. I was running straight for Belle. A huge smile on my face, my eyes lit up with something I hadn’t seen in the mirror for too many years to admit, and happier than I’d ever been.
We’d won the championship game and, the moment Belle had taken that picture, I remember thinking it was the best day of my life. I knew I was running off the field towards my girl. We were headed to Trent Bazemore’s house to party, where we were going to drink beer out of the kegs his older brother had scored for us, horse around on our four-wheelers in the unused fields behind his house, and I’d be ending the night loving Belle in the bed of my truck. At the time, I didn’t think life could get any better than that.
Now that day seemed like a pale comparison to sitting here with the man-child who was the spitting image of me because—although this moment was bittersweet and wrought with resentment—sitting here with Seth like this now was the best moment of my life. Moving my eyes from the picture back to my boy, I remembered to breathe again as he said, “And you’re my dad.”
~~~
Annabelle
If there was ever a moment in my life I thought Bobby Baker was in danger of passing out like one of those overpriced, tacky, prom queens from our hometown, it was right now with dots of sweat on his forehead and a slightly paler complexion. Far be it for me, though, to point out that he needed to take a big ass breath and get it together. With the way he was staring at our son, he’d apparently somehow forgotten I was in the room with them. Hell, he might have forgotten I was in the same galaxy. I certainly didn’t want to ruin their first father-son moment, either. So, I stayed perfectly still and watched my little boy, who wasn’t so damn little anymore, tell the man who I’d once loved with all of my heart, that he knew Bobby was his father. Then, I watched in a combination of half-fascination, half-trepidation as Bobby finally remembered that breathing was good and his chest slowly rose and fell in a deep, relieved breath. I watched all of that while trying desperately not to burst into tears, or have a dag-gum heart attack, because at any second the proverbial shoe was going to drop and things were going to go to hell in a hand basket.
My relief lasted approximately seven seconds before it morphed right into confusion. “You know who I am.”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“How long have you known who I am?”
“My whole life. That picture has been in my room for as long as I can remember.”
“I don’t understand. If you knew my name, who I was, then why didn’t you ever look for me? Didn’t you want to meet me? Get to know me?”
I closed my eyes to hide their watery state. The blow up was coming. Oh, boy. We’d hit landmine territory. It was going to suck to pick up those metaphorical pieces after everyone had been blown to teeny, tiny, bloody bits.
“One day. Yes, sir.”
Oh, I couldn’t watch this. My lungs started to burn and I realized I’d been holding my breath without even realizing it. All I could concentrate on now was what was about to happen. The fuse was stuck into the bomb.
“What do you mean, one day? Why would you not want to get to know your own father?”
No, no, no. This was going to be so, so bad. I gripped my hands even harder to hide my trembling. I felt the sharp edges of my nails bite further into my skin. Now, the match was lit.
“That’s hard to explain, sir. I do want to get to know you, I wasn’t sure you would want to get to know me.”
Here we go. I felt a sob starting to bubble up my throat, so I did what I’d done many times before, growing up to stop the sound, and used my teeth to bite down on my bottom lip. The match had touched to the fuse and now it’s angry sparks were sizzling down to the finale.
“Why in the hell would you wonder that?
Two seconds till detonation.
No answer from Seth. My eyes squeezed tighter shut. One second to blast.
“Did your mother tell you that I wouldn’t want you?”
The question was asked so quietly that I barely heard it, but there it was. Confirmation he would think the worst of me. Just another piece of evidence in the giant trial of my life that no one would ever think I was good enough for Bobby. Including Bobby himself.
Seth’s temper exploded. “You hold on a second, mister! My mother’s never said an unkind word about you. Ever. Maybe you should tell me why I should be so hot to get to know the guy who’s managed to make my mom cry on and off for the last fifteen years after he left her?”
I couldn’t make myself open my eyes. I should be stronger than this. A son should not see his mother being this weak. He should not see my shame in knowing he had heard all those nights I’d lost the fight to be strong, to close off my heart and had ended up losing my ever lovin’ mind while sobbing like a silly little girl into my pillow. How ridiculous was I to think I’d ever hidden that from him?
“Do you have any idea how many nights I’ve laid in my bed and listened to her cry all night long? To hear her cry so hard she could barely breathe? How when I was little and didn’t understand what was going on, I’d crawl out of my bed and into hers so I could hug her and make it all better? I can tell you this, little boys do not like it when the only person in their life is that broken and they don’t know how to fix them! It’s not any easier when she finally stops crying, either, because, now that I’m older, I go into her room every time, knowing I’ll find her clutching the stupid letter you sent her. Her face will be all puffy and red and she looks like someone ripped her heart out; all because of you and that shitty letter.”
The second to last word brought me out of my self-induced shell. My voice was choked when I snapped out, “Don’t you start cussing, Seth Roberts Baker! What have I told you about that kind of shit?”
My visibly pissed off son swung his head around to look at me and project his unhappiness at the reprimand. “Really, Mom? Because ‘Do as I say, not as I do’ isn’t one of the most ridiculous rules parents have tried to push off on their kids since the dawn of time? I love you, but get over it already.”
“Let me get this straight.” Bobby’s voice was vibrating with fury. “You know who I am. You even carry my last name, but you’re not sure if you want anything to do with me?”
My son turned back around to look his father straight in the eyes when he dead-panned back, “I don’t know, Dad. You tell me. Do you want to get to know me? Or are you going to leave me behind, too?”
Bobby stood up and started stalking to the front door. What I wouldn’t give for this all to be some really bad dream instead of the jacked up reality I was currently living in. It had all gone horribly wrong and it was all my fault, so I had to do something to fix it. “Wait, Bobby! Just wait!”
Rushing after him before he made it out of the door, I grabbed him by the arm to try and keep him from leaving. He jerked his arm out of my grasp and rounded on me like a pissed off lion. “How could you do this to me?” he roared, banging his fist against his chest, over his heart. “To the first person in your life besides fucking Teagan who cared for you! Who bent over backwards to show you that you deserved to love and be loved. First, you kept my son from me and now you’ve turned him against me! That’s how you repay me? Repay the kindness my parents showed you and the two years we had together? Did you get your goddamn revenge? Are you fucking happy with yourself?”
His face was an ugly sneer I’d never seen from him before. Something that looked very similar to the memories of what my father had looked like as he’d taken out his anger and frustration on me. The kind of face that would probably haunt my nightmares for years to come. His hand swung up in my direction so he could point a finger in my face and I flinched backwards as if he might hit me.
The logical part of me knew deep down Bobby would never hit me, never hurt me that way. The damaged little girl stuck inside a grown woman’s body didn’t know that, though. She’d shoved logic out of the way in the name of self-preservation because all she could see was that, once again, someone we loved was furious with us. Someone who was bigger than us and could cause more damage—both mentally and physically—than we might be able to survive, which meant we should duck for cover. Do what we had to do to deflect the blows to our body and soul so we could get up to face another day when it was done. How I hated the weakness in that damaged little girl. The weakness in me that I would feel the need to cower backwards instead of stand and fight. That flinch was something I hadn’t done in years because; once I’d left Georgia, I’d left behind anyone and everyone who could hurt me. Given myself the false security that I was stronger. Now, when glaring reality was in front of me, I knew there was still someone out there that could hurt me and those defenses I’d built for myself were crumbled before him.
Bobby saw the flinch. The finger he’d had held up, pointing at me, dropped to his side and reformed as a clenched fist, which only made my body involuntarily tense for the possibility of a strike. His mouth opened, he paused, and then his mouth closed again as he shook his head. “I need to leave. I need to go and calm the fuck down because all I can think about right now is you’re the biggest bitch I’ve ever known and I wish I’d never met you.”
Slowly backing away from the enraged man in front of me, I stupidly couldn’t help but wonder. Had someone just hit the play button on Bon Jovi’s You Give Love A Bad Name? Because the pain radiating through my chest sure as shit felt like I’d been shot through the heart. It was such an acute agony I briefly wondered if one really could die from a broken heart. A particular affliction I’d been so sure I’d survived before seemed to mock me with the truth that my heartbreak had been put on hold all of these years; it was finally back to finish me off. Would I ever stop being a fool when it came to Bobby Baker?
The next thing I knew, there was an equally pissed fourteen-year-old man-child standing in front of me. Acting as a barrier between me and the source of my pain.
“Don’t you take this out on her! Obviously you need to stick your fingers back in your ears and wiggle them around some more because you must not have heard me when I said this the first time. She’s never said a bad word about you to me. I can make up my own mind! It wasn’t hard to make it when I read that letter of hers. Or when I heard Mom and Aunt Teagan talking late one night. Going on and on about how shitty their life was growing up and how they’re glad they’re not living like that anymore. Who could blame them? Who would want to stay around a town that belittled them and did nothing to help them while they were getting beat on by their own fathers?”
“How can you blame her for wanting to run as fast and as far as she could from that place after you left her? I’m close enough to the age Mom was when she ran away. If I was put in her shoes, I would have done the same thing. Maybe it wasn’t the right thing for her to do in the long run, but it was the right thing for her at the time.”
Through the haze of pain, I managed to grasp onto one thought. God, I loved my boy. Even if he was wrong and yelling at his father when he shouldn’t be, I couldn’t help thinking I seriously loved my son right now. Defending me when I was the one who was at fault here. He wasn’t done, though, because he kept on going.
“You know what else Mom talked to Aunt Teagan about that night? How she wasn’t surprised you ended up not wanting her because she wasn’t good enough for you and the whole town made sure to remind her of that often. Aunt Teagan tried to tell her she was wrong, but she wouldn’t hear it. Well, you wanna know what I think? I think Aunt Teagan was right and you’re not good enough for my mom!”
Losing the fight to hold myself up on my own, I slumped forward to lean my forehead on the back of my son’s shoulder. Tears that were streaming down my face were caught by the soft cotton from Seth’s shirt and there was a giant ass wet spot from where I was silently bawling like a baby. The magnitude of my mistakes were battering at me like a ten ton hammer. Beating me down until I couldn’t help being amazed I wasn’t a broken heap on the floor, but it wasn’t over, because my son had one more nail to put in my proverbial coffin.
“And until you realize that you’re just as much to blame for all of this as she is, then no, I don’t want to get to know you. I don’t want anything to do with you. And if you ever call MY MOTHER a bitch again, I’ll show you how much of a man my mother raised me to be all on her own because I will knock you the hell out!”
The door slammed behind Bobby as he left.
Oh, God, what had I done?