by Doreen Alsen
“Then don’t be a judgmental ass. I fought my father, I brought up my son, and I’m damned”—she jabbed her finger into his chest—“if I’m going to let you take over now. He never defied me before you came along. Chew on that.” She showed him the door.
He gathered up his righteous indignation and took it along with him.
Chapter Twenty-One
“We need to figure out a way to deal with Danny after last night’s stunt.” Beth’s voice crackled as Jeff listened to her on the phone.
“We do.” Jeff put a Pop-Tart into his toaster and glared at the coffeemaker trying to make it brew faster.
“He has to face the consequences of what he did.”
“What do you suggest?” The toaster started to smoke, telling him the pastry was done just the way he liked it. Incinerated. Well, he really didn’t like his Pop-Tart charcoaled. He just couldn’t figure out how to get the toaster to work right.
“My first impulse is to pull him off the team, but that would get in the way of his relationship with you.” She sighed. “As if I’m trying to keep you and him apart, and that’s not the case.”
Finally coffee filled the pot. He poured a cup and inhaled the brisk, nutty scent. And moaned in ecstasy. What mortal man could resist? Not him.
“Are you okay?”
Oops. “Yeah,” he grunted, took a sip, and winced at the heat. “How about we take him someplace after the game and talk to him about it.” And do something he and Katie never did for Cookie. “Present a united front.”
“That could work. Maybe just go grab some ice cream or something.”
“Agreed.”
“I guess we’ll decide where to take him after the game, so I’ll let you go now. Jeff?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you for being willing to work with me.”
“He’s my son, too.”
“See you later.” Beth clicked off.
He’d been really rough and way out of line with her and he needed to apologize. He could do that when they talked to Danny. Jeff put down his phone and picked up a piece of black Pop-Tart. Beth would forgive him and they could move into a better relationship from there. He felt his chest expand, his heart open.
Hope jumped right into that big ol’ space.
Even though they were at odds, he still loved her. Things needed to be settled, for sure, but God help him, he still loved her.
He probably always would.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Beth sat with Anita on the bleachers watching their sons play football. A lovely fall day, a slight breeze, fluffy white clouds floated in a perfect blue sky.
“They are so cute,” Anita laughed as the boys ran up and down the field. “Better than I thought they’d be.”
Beth smiled and nodded. “Especially considering all that equipment they’re wearing.”
“Ben sleeps well after all“ Anita jumped up. “Look! Is that Ben running down the field?” She shielded her eyes with her hand. “And that’s Danny falling back to throw to Ben!”
Beth also leaped up. “Oh my God! It is!”
She bounced from foot to foot as Danny threw a perfect pass to Ben, who caught it and took off toward the goal post. She cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled for all she was worth. “Way to go, Danny!”
Anita joined in with a hearty whistle and shouted, “Run, Benny! Go, go go!”
Score! The Junior Shark moms and dads screamed in jubilation as the boys jumped all over each other then ran to the sidelines to Jeff.
The memories of another football game hit Beth, memories of Jeff making a pass like that to his buddy Tim, scoring a touchdown. The guys piling on each other and Coach Mike running onto the field.
She remembered sneaking out of the house to meet Katie and go to the game together, how nervous and excited she’d been. She and Jeff had skipped the party after, to go somewhere alone and talk. How young they’d been. Her skin prickled and she felt a soft pull of warmth. Jeff was grinning at her from across the field. Pride rolled off him, pride in their son.
She grinned and waved back. He turned to the boys and she felt a pang of longing for what could have been.
She ached with wanting all that. How foolish, especially after he’d been such a butthead last night. Maybe this little outing with Danny after the game would be a step in the right direction, because she would make it very clear that he was not rolling over her.
****
Danny danced around in front of Jeff and Beth as they walked to the docks. They’d stopped at Julie’s Coffee and Sweet Shop after the game for treats and now were headed toward the shore to talk to Danny and maybe feed a seagull or two.
He glanced at Beth from the corner of his eye. She wore her hair in a ponytail she’d pulled through the back of her silver and black Sharks ball cap. Dressed in a simple blue T-shirt that matched the color of her eyes, topped with a brand spankin’ new Sharks’ hoodie and a pair of well-worn faded jeans, she looked like the high school girl he’d fallen in love with.
She turned and caught him staring. “What—do I have ice cream on my face?”
He shook his head. “Just thinking that you don’t look old enough to have a ten-year-old son.”
She snorted. “There are days I feel old enough to have a one-hundred-year-old son.” Her tongue snaked out to lick her pistachio ice cream. “While Danny’s floating on Cloud 9, we need to talk about what we’re going to tell him.”
“First things first. I need to apologize for last night. I was really out of line and I’m sorry. My only excuse is that I was so panicked I didn’t think before I spoke.”
“I’m glad you said that because you can’t talk to me like that again, especially in front of Danny. I’m serious. I won’t let you disrespect me in front of my son. She took a deep breath. “So about Danny.”
“I figure he’s got a right to be mad, but he’s got no right to be fresh with you and just make his own rules up because he’s mad.”
“He wants to live with you because he hates me.”
Something lit inside of him. “Would that be so bad? Katie and I shared Cookie when I still lived in Addington.”
“This is totally different. You and Katie have a legal agreement, with joint custody. Danny wants to live with you because he’s trying to punish me.” She pursed her lips. “He’s trying to play us against each other.”
Jeff stayed silent as he digested that. “True. But what would it hurt if he stayed with me some of the time? I really want to get to know him.”
“I know you do and I want that too, but we have to keep that part out of the mix for a little bit so he doesn’t think he’s getting rewarded by being a little snot.”
He laughed, the sound coming from deep within him. “I never thought I’d hear you call your precious son a little snot.”
“Let me clue you in on something. He’s not always so precious.”
“Was it hard raising him on your own?”
“When my father was alive, it was very hard. All those rules.” Beth took advantage of a trashcan and dumped her melting ice cream cone into it. To Jeff it looked like she’d lost her appetite.
“Danny was—is—a very active little boy. Father demanded a quiet well-mannered child who never gave anyone a moment’s trouble.” As she spoke, Danny ran ahead of them, kicking rocks like they were tiny little footballs. “I walked a tightrope for the first six years of his life, keeping my father in check while letting Danny have as much of a normal life as possible. Although sometimes things fell through the cracks.” She sighed. “Danny had learned to make collages in pre-school and wanted to make one for my father for Father’s Day. I got him all the supplies he needed and magazines galore and let him have at it.”
“You let him play with scissors?”
“No, I gave him a machete and told him to have at it.” She saw Jeff make a face that could only mean you dufus. “He wanted it to be a surprise and didn’t want me to see it, so I didn’t. Father’s D
ay came and my father opened Danny’s collage and I thought he would have a heart attack.”
“What? Did Danny find some porn magazines on his own?”
“That might have been better. Oh, no. Danny had cut the storybook version of The Bible to shreds.” Her eyes shone. “He wanted to give his grandfather pictures of all the people he admired and talked about.”
“Your father didn’t like it?” Jeff couldn’t imagine his mother hating something Cookie made for her.
Beth sighed. “The book had been blessed by a priest. So, to my father’s way of thinking, Danny had disfigured a holy book. He called the collage an abomination. Thankfully Danny didn’t know the meaning of the word.” She shuddered. “I had to take Danny out of the room—out of the house, and try to explain why his grandfather didn’t like the gift.”
“Jesus.” Jeff didn’t know what else to say.
“You have to understand, Jeff. That’s what our life was like. It got worse after my mother died. If I’m protective, that’s why.”
Jeff’s body heated with each word. He wished Bob Pritchard wasn’t already dead so he could kill him again. “I wish you had found me, told me.
“And married to the person who let everyone know we were eloping.” She shook her head. “It’s old ground. On to the task at hand.” She gestured toward Danny.
“Maybe he’s just rebelling“
“This is not rebellion. This is temper.”
Jeff saw that. The kid couldn’t feel free to take off whenever he wanted because he didn’t like the rules. “Got it. So what do we do?”
Beth chuffed out a breath. “I want to lay out the facts, objectively, and make him realize how wrong he was and how he should make it right.”
Jeff grunted. That sounded a little too ‘New Age’ to him, which in his not so humble opinion, would not work. “There has to be a consequence, Beth.”
“Of course there does. What do you suggest?”
“Military school?”
That made her laugh, as he hoped it would. Then she got real serious. “The worst thing he could experience right now is being kicked off the team.”
No, Jeff thought. Just no. “I can bench him, not let him play, but not kick him off the team. Have another idea?”
“Yeah, but it won’t have the same impact as benching him. The only thing he loves more than football right now is The Refractor, this superhero he’s totally into. I let him buy the comics, but I don’t let him play the computer games.”
“I remember from when I was in his room.” He didn’t know The Refractor from Donald Duck. “So?”
“We can cut him off cold turkey, like Time Bomb exploded and made everything go away.”
“Time Bomb?” This felt a little bit more like his territory than any Barbie Cookie had ever made him play with.
Beth studied him, like she was trying to get a bead on him. “Time Bomb is The Refractor’s arch enemy. He can explode at will and then re-form back into his physical shape when he wants to. He works together with Mega Mole.” She blew out a breath. “Please don’t make me explain Mega Mole.”
“Okay, I won’t. But someday you’ll have to school me on Barbie shoes.”
She stopped walking, clasped her hands in front of her, like a nun, and turned the saddest eyes he had ever seen to look at him.
“I wasn’t allowed to have Barbies. I only got to play with them when I went to Katie’s house.”
And there she was, the elephant in the room, also known as Katie.
And if Katie knew that he thought of her as an elephant in any way shape or form, she’d totally explode.
Much like The Refractor’s arch enemy Time Bomb.
Beth’s shoulders drooped. “I can’t believe you married her.”
His chest ached. “Now that I know the whole story, I can’t believe I married her either.”
Beth’s eyes caught fire. “You must have loved her.”
“I told you. I thought I did love her. She pulled out all the stops and I was lonely. Now I realize that she was the closest thing to you that I could have.”
He prayed that she’d get it. He’d told her before, he knew, but he really needed her to understand that.
That he’d really never loved Katie.
Which, of course, made him the biggest asshole in the whole universe, but it was in the past and he couldn’t fix it. He could only live in the now.
And the now was all about fixing Danny.
“I will make it clear that he can’t play me against you,” he said. “You have rules and he has to follow them.”
“Thank you,” she said, simple as pie.
“He lives with you and by your rules, but he can stay with me regularly.”
“I can do that.”
“There’s one more thing. I want to take him to Addington to meet my mom and his sister over Columbus Day weekend.
Beth didn’t flinch, didn’t blink. “That’s what you said and I’ve thought about it. So, it’s fine. But only if I go with you.” Her clear blue eyes held no sign of doubt or giving in.
Oddly, the moment held more intimacy than he’d felt in a while. Well, since the date she’d gone on with him.
Then he saw her looking at him expectantly. “What?”
“I’m going, end of story. I’ll find some place to stay, but I will go.”
“I’m not sold on the idea. Katie will only make things more difficult between Danny and Cookie. I think it’s better if I go alone.”
Beth sighed. “We’re at an impasse, I guess.”
Yeah they were and she held all the cards.
For now.
They reached a row of benches. He stuck his hands into his pockets. The wind had picked up now that they were on the waterfront and a hint of salt tinged the air. Looking out over the wharves, he could see a storm rolling in, chasing away the blue skies and fluffy clouds from earlier in the day.
Danny ran over to them. Jeff crouched in front of him, so they were eye level. “We gotta talk about what happened last night, champ.”
“I don’t want to.”
Beth sat on one of the benches. “I’m sorry, but you don’t have a choice.”
“I know you’re having a hard time with your mom since we found out I’m your dad. But here’s the thing.” Jeff made sure Danny was looking right at him. “You’ve got to follow her rules and treat her with respect.”
Danny glanced at Beth. “But if you’re my dad, I can live with you.”
“No you can’t. You can stay with me sometimes, but you still live with your mom and she calls the shots.”
“Her rules are dumb. She treats me like a baby.” Danny kicked the sand and rocks at the edge of the bench.
“Her rules aren’t dumb. They’re to keep you safe. And they would be the same at my house.” He looked at Beth to assure her of the same thing.
“You could have really gotten hurt last night,” Beth interjected. “You just can’t go off whenever you want without telling me.”
“I wanted to go to the Lanes and you wouldn’t let me.”
“That party was for teens, Danny. Not for kids still in elementary school. You didn’t belong at a party for teens.”
“Dad was there.”
“And I had to leave my team to bring you home, which wasn’t fair to the guys.” Jeff put his hands on Danny’s shoulders. “What you did was wrong and next time you do anything to break your mother’s or my rules, I’m benching you.”
He cocked his head to one side. “What’s that mean?”
“You can still be on the team but you can’t play in the games.”
Danny swung his head from Jeff to Beth then back to Jeff, the movement more than a little frantic. “You can’t do that!”
“We can and we will.” Jeff stood. “The choice is yours. Follow your mom’s rules and start to treat her with respect again, or no football.”
Danny stared at the ground, his lips pressed into a thin line.
“You need to tell u
s you understand the deal here,” Jeff said.
He hesitated. “I understand,” Danny said finally, but he didn’t sound happy about it.
“Good. Now apologize to your mother for what you did last night.”
Another hesitation. “I’m sorry, Mom.” He didn’t sound happy about that, either.
Too bad. Beth stood. “It’s getting cold and I think it’s starting to rain. We should get home.” She pulled the hood of her sweatshirt over her head. “Would you like to come for dinner? It won’t be fancy, just some crockpot chicken thing, but you’re welcome to join us.”
And what was this about? Maybe she thought she could change his mind about the trip to Addington if she was nice?
“Please, Dad?” Danny pleaded. “I can show you my new Adventures of The Refractor comic book.”
He had a slew of things to do at home: lesson plans, watching last night’s game video, working out some details for the football clinic with the Nelson twins.
It all paled against the opportunity to spend more time with his son.
Well, much as he hated to admit it, after today’s truce, he wanted to spend time with Danny’s mother too. “Thanks. I think I’d like that.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“So, see The Refractor can control light and stuff. His hair changes color when he uses his powers. Like this.” Danny held up his favorite Refractor action figure, pressed a button and the hair went from black to blond.
He’d dragged out all his action figures to show Jeff. Beth listened as she got dinner on the table.
Hey, Dad, she thought. Welcome to the wild, adventurous world of The Refractor.
“Cool,” Jeff said.
“And this one is Dr. Pierce Powers and he can control other people’s powers, like make them stronger or weaker whenever he wants.”
“He’s a good guy?” Jeff’s voice rumbled in her ears.
“Yep!” Danny said. “The Refractor, Pierce Powers and this one, Princess Arabella, are all on the same team. She comes from the planet Moreese from a far off galaxy in another dimension. That’s where the whole ‘across all dimensions’ line comes from.”