Chapter 21

Some of you need to go to church because I don’t want you in hell with me.

-Coke’s secret thoughts

Coke

I slammed the door shut and walked into the kitchen to find my daughter staring at me expectantly.

“She wouldn’t come back?” she asked.

I shook my head. “No.”

“Did she answer the door this time?” she continued, munching on one of the oranges that her mother had knocked on the floor earlier.

The rest of the fruit was resting on the counter, while the bowl my mother had made with her own two hands lay broken into four jagged pieces.

I absently picked up the orange peel, hating the way that it just lay on the counter instead of being immediately discarded into the trash, and froze when I saw the bowl sitting on the very top.

Beatrice hadn’t been stupid.

She knew what she was doing.

Beatrice had hated that I used paper plates. Hated. It.

Beatrice was more of a fine dining kind of woman. Placemats, two forks, linen napkins.

She was literally everything that I wasn’t.

She’d also hated that I had kept some “crap” from my parents.

The bowl that she had broken had been the bane of her existence. That bowl followed me everywhere and had since I’d moved out of my mother’s house and into her father’s at the age of eighteen. It’d gone with me out of state when I’d gone to basic training in Missouri. To three duty stations, one in Germany, and the other in Japan before settling back into Missouri. Then had come back home with me once I’d been injured.

She hated the bowl. She’d accused me of loving that bowl more than her so many times that I’d lost count.

The funny thing was that she was right. I loved the bowl.

My mother had made it for me for Christmas the year that I turned seventeen. She’d gone to a pottery class at the local YMCA. She’d made one for all of her sons. It was lopsided since mine was her first attempt, and it was painted a putrid gray that really wasn’t all that attractive.

But it’d been the most special thing I’d ever gotten from my mother.

She’d spent quite a bit of money on that class, and we never really had money to spare.

The bowl was big, ugly and one of the only things I’d ever gotten from her that hadn’t been well used or something that all of us brothers had to share.

And Beatrice had fucking broken it.

“Dad, are you okay?” Frankie asked, taking a bite of her orange.

I nodded, throwing the peels on top of the trash.

“Yeah,” I croaked. “I’m going to go work on the truck. You’ll be okay?”

Frankie looked at me like I’d grown a second head.

“Yeah, Dad. I’ll be okay. Plus…I don’t think Mom will be back any time soon. Not with what you said to her.”

What I said to her wasn’t anything she hadn’t heard before. However, I think that this was the first time that she actually believed me.

“I haven’t loved you in a very long time, Beatrice. You lied, connived, and then I was forced to marry you. The only reason I showed you even a modicum of kindness was because you first had my kid growing inside of you. Then, because my kid needed a mother. You refused to move with me and tried to force me to choose between our family and the career I needed to support it.”

“I didn’t follow you because you never asked!” she hissed. “Who doesn’t ask their wife to follow them?”

“Beatrice, I set up a house, moved into it, and you never came despite me sending you plane tickets. How fucking much more did I have to say to get you to come? I needed Frankie there. I needed to see my daughter more than every couple of months!” I bellowed.

“That’s what I’m talking about, right there. It was always Frankie, Frankie, Frankie. Never Beatrice,” she snarled right back, this time taking out the spice rack.

“Because Frankie was my daughter. I loved my daughter! A man’s not a man if he doesn’t want to see his baby girl,” I countered. “You stole all those years from me because I never ‘asked’ you?”

I never liked you went unsaid.

But I was sure she could read it in my eyes.

“You left me,” Beatrice said, a little softer this time.

“And could you blame me? Beatrice, you made my life a living hell. You never gave me what a man needs from a woman. Then, you got some on the side while I was away working…and no, don’t bother to deny it. I’m not stupid. That was one of the reasons that I didn’t give you another kid. That is why I took some time off and didn’t even tell you that I was getting a vasectomy. I couldn’t, not in good conscience, bring another child into this mess you created. And I didn’t trust you enough to ever put that birth control decision into your hands. You’d fuck me over just like you did all those years ago.”

Beatrice went silent for a few long moments, allowing me to continue.

“But the moment that Frankie saw your true colors, I was finished pretending. The fifteen and a half years that I was married to you were both the best and worst of my life. The best because I got Frankie, and the worst because I had to put up with you to get her. And now, when I’m finally happy with the woman who just walked out of here, you decide that you want to ruin this, too? Well, let me tell you something, Beatrice. I’m not going to stand for that. You’re not going to ruin this, because this? Her? Well, she’s the second-best thing to ever happen to me. Now get out before I call the cops and tell them that you broke in.”

That was when Beatrice had finally relented.

She backed away toward the door, looking between me and Frankie.

It’d been the parting shot as she was leaving that had made me think that maybe I should’ve held my tongue.

“You’ll regret this one day. One day, the precious life you’ve created for yourself will all be a memory, and you won’t have anyone to blame but yourself. You’ve made a huge mistake,” Beatrice prophesied.

But it was too late. I’d felt compelled to say what I said.

It’d needed to be said.

Beatrice needed to hear how awful my life was with her.

“The only mistake I’ve made in my life was you. Now leave.”

“Yeah,” I paused and looked at her. “Frankie, you know that what we said…you were never a mistake.”

Frankie smiled. “Dad, trust me when I say that I know Mom a lot better than you. At least you got to escape…me? I hated every second of my life. Why do you think I buried myself in school work so much and graduated with so many college credits?”

I hated that I’d left her to Beatrice. I wish I would’ve tried harder.

But I’d thought, at the time, that Beatrice would be the better choice.

A girl needed her mom.

I breathed out a frustrated breath. “I hate that you ever had to choose, but I want you to know, you really are the best thing to happen to me.”

“And Cora is the second?” Frankie asked, sounding hopeful.

I thought about that for a long moment before answering. “Yes.”

“Now, let’s make plans. How do you think we can get her to talk to you?”