Tia

 

Dad asks me where I’m going next day after dinner, and I tell him I’m going to meet Logan after his shift, to hear him out. I try not to get impatient when Dad warns me against being taken in too easily again. He’s always been like this. I guess because it’s just him and me, and he worries about me. But it’s still annoying.

Logan is waiting at the old bridge when I get there. He kisses me on the cheek and asks me if I want to go for a walk or a drink.

“Walk, I think.”

He takes my hand, and I don’t pull mine away. Is that the reason I chose to go for a walk, hoping he would do that? Because we’re likely to be alone on our walk? Because he might kiss me again?

We start off along the river bank where the last patches of snow are melting and creating a slushy mess.

“You want to know about my marriage?” he says, nudging a pile of slush sideways with his foot.

“Dad said that you might just tell me what you think I want to hear.”

He looks up. “I don’t know you well enough to even guess what that might be. I don’t like talking about it, but I also don’t have anything to hide, if that’s what you think.”

I shiver. My breath makes clouds in the air.

“Hey, you’re better dressed for the weather tonight, but it’s still cold. Are you sure you want to walk?”

“I’m sure.” I want to be alone with him, even though I don’t know how I’m going to feel once he tells me what he has to say.

And in any case, if it’s bad, I don’t want to sit in a bar surrounded by sparkly Christmas decorations and people who are out enjoying a good time.

“We can’t be too long. I only said half an hour to my sister who looks after Alice. Sometimes I think my daughter doesn’t see enough of me and will think I stopped wanting to be her daddy. And while it would be easier sometimes not to be a dad, I’ll never wish that.”

“How come you ended up looking after her?”

“My ex hated, no—hates—being a mother.”

“What? I thought you might say she was ill or something.”

“Not ill. Well, probably not in the sense you mean. She has other priorities.” Whatever he means by priorities, it sounds like Alice is not one of them. Poor kid.

“Doesn’t she have Alice stay over sometimes? A few of my friends at school used to flit from parent to parent. I used to envy them occasionally because it has always just been me and Dad as long as I remember.”

“What happened to your mother?”

“She died when I was a baby.”

“I’m sorry.” He gives me a hug, and I have to resist the temptation just to stay in his arms, to hold him close and not let him go on with his story.

“It’s as if Alice’s mother has died, too.” He releases me and takes my hand again. We trudge through the patches of snow and slush. “She hasn’t asked to see Alice for over a year and in any case, there’s no way I can send Alice to stay in the squalid places Philippa lives. I’ve gone to get my ex out of some tricky situations in the past.”

He stops walking and pulls my fingers up to his lips and kisses them. “I’ve tried to help her with her addictions, but she just treats me with contempt, denies she has a problem or blames me for driving her to drink. I don’t even know if it’s just drink anymore. The places she stays are real hellholes.”

I squeeze his hand, still warm despite the cold night. But he looks crushed, as if even talking about his ex-wife is painful. “How did it get so bad? She couldn’t have been like that when you got together with her.”

“We got married when I was in the military. All the time we were engaged, it was great. She was always pleased to see me when I came home on leave, and those times were special. I looked forward to seeing her more than anyone else in civilian life, along with my parents. Happy times. Great getting away from the action in Afghanistan, too.” He looks down as he tells his story. It’s as if those homecoming memories were spoiled by what came later.

“What happened when you got married, then?”

“She changed. She started to get annoyed that I was away so much. I thought leaving the army and training to be a firefighter would make her happy, and I wanted to get back home too. I saw friends killed out there, maimed. I’d had enough. But once I was out of the army, she started picking on everything I did. Whatever I did for her wasn’t good enough.” He picks up a pebble from the path and lobs it into the river.

“Maybe she just wanted an excuse, because by that time, she had started drinking. A lot. In the end, I never wanted to finish my shift at work because I didn’t know what state I’d find her in. Then I came home one day and found her in bed with one of my friends. That was the final straw for me. The end of my marriage.”

“Oh, god. I’m sorry.”

He hugs me as if hiding from it all. But I realize he hasn’t finished. Of course there’s more. He hasn’t told me where Alice comes into all this.

He takes my hand again, his thumb running back and forth over my palm, and we walk farther along the river bank. “My ex was two months pregnant when all this happened. She only mentioned it when the whole thing blew up. I had to ask her if the baby was mine. She wouldn’t say.”

I’ve never met the woman, but I already hate her for the anguish she’s caused. And he hasn’t even finished telling me everything.

“I still wasn’t sure who the father was until Alice was born, but I stuck by Philippa because what guy leaves his pregnant wife in the lurch no matter what she’s done? And I was terrified the baby would be damaged by her drinking and whatever else she was doing. But Alice is healthy and looks so like pictures of my sister and me as babies that I know she’s mine.”

He pulls a picture out of his wallet and shows me his daughter.

She’s a cutie. “She still looks like you.”

“I know.” He smiles. “Philippa seemed to hate Alice from the start. Maybe because of that. Maybe she wanted to hurt me by having another man’s child. I’ll never know. But she started staying out all night when I was working, leaving Alice on her own. I was beside myself. So dangerous. If fire broke out, how would a baby get out?”

I gasp, horrified a mother could leave a child to go out drinking. Dad always had babysitters for me. Always. He never left me alone.

“So I fought her for custody. In the end, it wasn’t much of a fight. She never wanted a child or anything to do with me. She just wants money to feed her habit.”