You should be so fucking proud of yourself, Thatcher. I wasn’t proud. Not by a long shot. She rarely cussed and hearing those words come out of her mouth, I knew she was finished. I was an asshat. She’d stormed off, presumably to her mother’s house, because when I got home from work, the house was eerily quiet. Too quiet. I considered going in to The Tavern for a bite to eat but I couldn’t force myself to move.

Even running, which usually gave me a piece of mind, felt like scum on the bottom of my shoe. I popped the top off my beer and looked down at the empty spot on my porch where Spider-Man’s bin used to sit. Fuck. I didn’t even like that turtle and here I was sulking about him too.

All her and Thayer’s things were gone when I got here. Her clothes, Thayer’s little football and game of Memory that had sat out on the table for the past few weeks. It was like it had all been a dream. Not a trace of either of them anywhere. Well, except for the gray tie she’d left in shreds on my bed. She’d not only felt it was important to destroy it, but to leave the remains in a place where I could see them clear as day.

Her panties and bra that she’d had hanging to dry in the laundry room were gone as were her pair of glasses she started leaving in my room. They’d constantly been a prop in our relationship and now they were gone.

Everything. Even the damn turtle.

I’d fucked up. It started almost five years ago when she told me she was pregnant. Since then, no matter how much older I got, or how much wiser I thought I was, I hadn’t changed. Not emotionally anyway. I was still the fucked-up kid, brooding over my childhood. Wondering who was going to take care of me and ensure me that I didn’t turn out like my dad.

I checked my phone, hoping she would text me back. My messages glared back at me. Even they looked at me like I was an idiot. Asking how had I managed to fuck this up another time. I checked my recent calls in my phone. I’d tried calling her three times now. It went straight to voicemail every time. She hadn’t set up her voicemail yet, so all I got was the standard operator telling me the phone number and how I should leave a message. I never understood that. I called. I know the Goddamn number.

Even this beer didn’t taste good. It tasted like Abigail when I kissed her on warm nights like tonight when we read outside. I closed Deer Creek because I couldn’t go through with the idea of using them to obtain the money. Sure, I’d still been on the fence about coming clean with her. I’d even envisioned in my head how we’d laugh about this ten years down the road and how stupid I’d been to think I could pull the wool over her eyes. So much for ten years down the road. She wouldn’t even text me back.

She hated me.

My heart shattered into pieces falling directly to my stomach when she screamed that. My mind replayed her face over and over as she yelled – screamed - at me at the top of her lungs. I’ve never seen her that mad in all the time I’ve known her. Abby didn’t get mad. Not at anyone, ever. Always the optimist, she saw two sides to every story and never got nasty with anyone.

Just me.

I dumped my beer out into the grass, I hadn’t a clue what I was going to do with myself now. Shit, I couldn’t even recall what I did before they moved in with me. I guess I just worked. Guess that was what I was going back to do.

Tomorrow, maybe she would answer my calls.

~

“What the hell happened?”

“She saw the will.”

“You never told her about it?” Cap asked.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like how?”

“Like you’re all judgmental. Like you knew I should have told her.”

“Dude, you should have.”

“Fuck off. When would there ever have been a time to bring that up? Over dinner? No. There was never a good moment to bring up the fact that I was an asshole.”

Cap cracked the shell of a peanut and dumped the nuts into his hand. He shrugged, “Now you’re hosed. No girl. No son. Definitely lost the half a rock. What the hell are you going to do?”

“Beats me. Work I guess. Go clean out the Deer Creek store. Put the building up for sale.”

The bell dinged and Ryan walked in to the store. It was early and I was already crabby. “What the hell happened to you?”

“Abby and Thayer moved out,” Cap answered for me.

“Why?”

“I don’t want to get into it, okay?”

“This have anything to do with Thayer being your son?” Ryan went to the back counter and filled up his coffee mug.

“How’d you find out he’s my son?”

He turned away from the counter, “I didn’t learn it from my so-called friend, asshole. Whole town knows he’s yours.”

“‘Cause of my dad? I barely told him yesterday.”

“Nope. Far as I know, your dad’s been out at Red Hill giving bids out from that tornado that ripped through there. Which I only know because I had to ask him about some metal. We’re not dumb, Thatch, we knew Thayer was yours the second Abby was pregnant.”

“Why didn’t anyone say anything to me?” I asked, frustrated.

“You clearly had your mind made up that you weren’t taking responsibility. Are you going to now?”

“Nope. Abby hates him.”

“Cap! No, he’s right, though. She hates me. It’s why she moved out.”

“Where’d they go?”

“Don’t know. She couldn’t go to her mom’s before because there was no room. She won’t talk to me.”

“Maybe she’s staying with Francis. You know that old lady she’s always taking to church?”

“I don’t fucking know,” I said.

“You never said exactly what you did,” Ryan prodded.

“When my grandpa died, he left me money-”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Okay, well, he left me more except in order to get this money I had to have an heir. Long story short, is he knew, like y’all did, that Thayer was my biological son and the stipulation was that I had to prove custody of a child in order to get the rest of the money. Which was a great idea because of Deer Creek having problems.”

“Then they moved in with you.”

“Yeah. They moved in with me and when all this bad shit started piling on Abby, the guilt started eating at me so I couldn’t go through with it.”

“Only he never came clean to Abby and told her about the will. She found it sitting out plain as day and gave him the business.”

“Cap, don’t you have somewhere to be? Like out welding a fence post or something.”

“Nope.”

Just my luck. This almost felt like the good old days, shooting the shit with my friends. Now, a small part of me was gone though and I wasn’t sure I could ever go back to being the old Thatcher. How could I get that small part of me back? How could I get her and our son back? For good?

I pondered those questions late into the afternoon. And the next day and the following three days after that. I never heard from Abby. I made Ryan ask Miranda if she’d seen her and she hadn’t. I asked Francis, who swore she hadn’t seen Abby since the week before her house burnt down. I knew she was around though because Thayer was still in school. I knew that because I had asked Grace to check.

Wherever Abigail was, she was clearly unwilling to be found. Or unwilling to go out in public. I’d quit texting Abby, each time I sent a message that went unanswered was just another nail in my heart.

My days blended into one another. I got Vern to manage Lone Star while I took the week and went up to Deer Creek. I met the few people who had rental equipment out and packed up what inventory that was feasible to store away for now. All of the feed and milk replacer, items that couldn’t be stored away, I kept out. I had a trailer as part of the rental equipment and used that to haul all of the grain and salt blocks back to Lone Star. It didn’t help matters that all I could think about while I was at Deer Creek was the superb blow job Abigail had given me while we were there.

I leaned against the same counter, downing a jug of water, sporting an erection just thinking about her on her knees. Fuck. It’d been over a week since she’d yelled her heart out at me and I still had no plan on how to get her back.

I was a pussy.

It was late Thursday night by the time I got back from Deer Creek. Most stuff was boxed up and cleaned out. I figured another load or two and I could list it with Arianna Lynch, Deer Creek’s hottest realtor. In both the physical sense and commercial sales. I’d left her a message this morning and was expecting her to call anytime.

I grabbed the pile of mail that’d built up while I was gone and once inside, began shuffling through it. My grandfather’s handwriting caught my eye and I did a double-take, looking around the house to see if this was some sort of joke.

But it was there. His large flourish sweeps of cursive, addressed to me. For some reason my heart skipped. I hesitated before opening it, dreading the fact that I’d let him down. I did let him down. By not claiming the money. I knew that wasn’t the moral of the story. The moral was that I didn’t have Thayer in my life like he’d set out to do and I knew this letter must hold the remaining emotions of him telling me how disappointed he was in me for not being a better man.

I carefully set the letter on the edge of the table and went for a shower. Everything in my room and my bathroom reminded me of Abigail. It was pathetic. I’d long since thrown away the tie but I couldn’t part with the books. Since I’d bought the other two with the tie, we hadn’t started the second one at all. Those were stashed in the top drawer of my night stand.

The scalding hot water sluiced over my dry skin and I couldn’t shake the disappointment I knew my grandfather must have felt the whole time he was alive and knew about Thayer. I regretted not giving him the opportunity to know his great-grandson. I regretted all the stupid fucking choices in my life. Unable to get the letter out of my mind, I quickly washed my hair and toweled off.

Retrieving the letter, I sat on the couch and rubbed my fingers along his handwriting amazed at the indentations I felt from the pen. I was prolonging the inevitable. I took great care in slicing open the top of the envelope with my pocketknife and pulled the folded letter out.

“Thatcher,

If you are reading this, my time has long passed. The first order of business I must say, is thank you for being my grandson. I’ve never gotten around to thanking you for all the hard work you’re always doing for me around the hardware store. Even at my place. I’ve appreciated you for a long time. I instructed my trustees to mail this letter to you if you failed to meet the terms of the will. I wrote two letters you see. One, in the event you met the terms and this one, if you didn’t.

I suppose it came as a shock to you to find out I knew about your son. You might know by now that I got to visit with him a few times. Once he came in to the hardware store when he was about two. Abby let me show him around. She also brought him to see me when I was in the hospital. She was a nice lady to have done that. When she helped out at the senior center during the little holidays – you know Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day – she was always so kind to me. Of course, neither one of us ever talked about Thayer being my great-grandson. We had an unspoken agreement.”

A single tear dropped onto the letter and I quickly wiped it away. Damn, I missed the old man. He was always so clever. It shouldn’t surprise me that he got a chance to spend time with Thayer. I continued on:

“Anyhow, if you’re reading this letter, you no doubt didn’t follow through with my will stipulations. I’m proud of you. You made the right choice. You see, my idea was to merely push you in the right direction, to get you to quit being so stubborn about those two. You don’t think I know the kind of man you are? You don’t think I knew you wouldn’t do what the will asked? I can only hope you’ve come to your senses by now.

Those two people need you, Thatcher. Just as much as you need them. I know all about your fears of being like Walter. It’s high-tell time you get your act together and get over it. Grandma and I never cared for Walter and we don’t know where we went wrong with your mother – she lost her backbone when Walter came into her life, but none of this matters now. You and I both know you’re nothing like your dad. You still have the chance to raise that boy. I will be disappointed in you if you don’t.

I can only guess two reasons you didn’t meet the deadline for the will: you never gave it a chance or you did and Abby found out. If I had to bet on you, son, I’d say you tried going through with it. If nothing else, to get close to those two again.

Soul mates only come around once. Go find her. Go find your son. Be the dad I know you are, Thatcher.

With all my love,

Grandpa

P.S. – Bet seeing my hand writing from the grave scared the crap out of you!

P.S.S – You will need to arrange a meeting with my trustees. They will have documents you will need to sign.”

“You could say that again, Grandpa.” I dried my eyes using the hem of my shirt, unable to believe he manufactured all of this. I let out a short laugh. I couldn’t believe he’d done this. I felt freer. Lighter, after reading it. I’d been so filled with the anticipation that he’d be disappointed in me and it wasn’t like that at all.

I reread the letter a few more times. I wanted them in my life. It was easier said than done though. Especially now that she hated me. She didn’t hate me, I knew, she didn’t hate anyone. But she looked like she hated me that day. My chest still burned with emptiness. I’d fallen in love with her and now I was broken.

I didn’t bother getting into my bed, where it would just be another night of missing Abby. Of being tortured by all the ways I’d touched her while we lay between the sheets. Instead, I lay in the darkness of my living room staring at the ceiling, thinking about what I needed to do, in order to regain her trust. I needed a plan to figure out how to show her I wasn’t going anywhere and that they were my life.