“There, it’s done,” he said.
“Well, it’s not like you can’t just buy more. I’m not with you all day.”
Blake let out an exasperated laugh. “Wow, I can’t win with you today. I thought I woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”
“You didn’t wake up in the bed at all,” I retorted. “I’m going to work. I don’t want to get into this. You know how I feel about your drinking, especially now. You are my child’s father; I don’t want you to be like this again.”
Blake stared at me. I could see the doubt in his eyes. He didn’t really know what to say, but I could see the gears turning. I wished he would make the right decision on this.
“I’m not an alcoholic,” Blake said. “I wish that once and for all you would realize that.”
I looked at him. “Do you know how many times my mother had this same conversation with my father? I remember most of them. I was a child, but I can remember my father battling the bottle for years. I know all the lies, all the deflections, all the tricks—I know them all. I’ve seen them, many times. Over and over again. You will not show me anything new.”
“Well, it may come as a shock to you, but I am not your father,” Blake said.
“You’re right; my father got sober,” I said.
Then I stormed out of the house.
I was pulling out of the driveway when I finally broke down and started crying.
I didn’t want to go through what my mother went through. I knew that it was coming. I hadn’t realized how much of a fear of this I had until I saw those same behaviors happening with my own fiancé. It was happening with him. I knew it.
No, I didn’t. Not for sure. Maybe he was right. Was I overreacting? I did that sometimes. I’d overreacted when we first met, right? Or was I right then just as I was right now?
Everything was so confusing. One thing I knew, was that I didn’t want an alcoholic father in my child’s life. It had left a lasting impression on me and I did not want our child to go through this. And I wasn’t going to go through it as a wife; it had been hard enough as a daughter.
I coasted through the school day, my mind adrift to the point that even a few of my students throughout the day asked me if I was alright. I played it off and just said I wasn’t feeling well. But I was delighted when the bell rang at two-thirty to end the day.
I quickly grabbed up my things and left, straight to my parents’ house. My father was out with a friend playing some golf; it was just my mother at home. I was glad. I had to talk to her.
“Well, it does sound like a lot of the same patterns,” she said after I expressed my concerns.
“So, what should I do?” I asked.
“You are doing the right thing. Just be firm, but fair. Let him know that no matter what, you love him and if he needs some sort of help you will stick by him as he gets that help. But he has to want it for himself. He can’t want it for anybody else.”
“Right,” I said. “I’m just worried I came off too harsh on him.”
“I don’t think you did. You have to be harsh, especially at first. He has to know there is no wiggle room with you.”
“I know,” I said. “I just needed to hear it from you. Thanks, mom.”
“You’re welcome sweetie,” she said. “By the way, I hope you understand just how happy we are about the baby. We both know you will be the best mother out there.”
“Thanks. How is aunt Dottie? You said she was having some health issues? I meant to ask you about that?”
It was nice to hear my mother put things in perspective and to assure me that I was on the right track with everything I was doing. I knew I was; I had learned from the best. I’d spent so much time observing my father wrestling with his demons and my mother making sure he stayed on the straight and narrow. Of course, there had been stumbling blocks along the way, but my mother had handled them beautifully. And to his credit, so had my father.
“She is doing fine,” my mother said. “She’s got those cataracts, which you know. She was also getting some floaters in her field of vision. The doctor said those were caused by some blood pressure problems, so she is on medication for that. And she has scheduled the cataract surgery soon as well. So, she is going to be fine. I’ll tell her you asked about her.”
“Thanks,” I said.
There was a moment of silence on the phone and then my mother began to speak.
“Dear, you trust me, right?” She asked.
I wasn’t sure what she was asking. “What? Of course.”
“Well, I want you to prepare yourself,” she said.
Where was this coming from? We’d been talking about my aunt’s health, and now my mother was telling me to prepare myself. There was something wrong with her or my father, wasn’t there. Oh, no… please… no… I couldn’t handle anything happening to my parents. I needed them. They were going to be grandparents. They had to meet my child, and my future children. They weren’t even that old. No… it had to be a mistake…
“What?” I asked, trying to keep the tears out of my voice.
“Oh, honey, we are fine,” My mother said putting her hand on my leg. She had noticed how I was tensing up. “I’m sorry, but your father and I are just fine.”
I breathed a sigh of relief and a little chuckle escaped me. “Wow… that… wow… I thought you were going to tell me…”
“No, don’t worry about us,” she said. “It’s Blake.”
“What? What about Blake?”
“Well, specifically Blake’s family.”
“Um, ok… what about his family?” I asked. What was going on?
“Your father and I have been a bit concerned about him lately,” she said. “You know, we could see how stressed you were about all of his secrets and so forth. It’s weird. You aren’t the only one who has noticed, dear.”
“Ok… what are you saying?”
“Well, we hired a private investigator to look into him.”
“What? Mom, what the hell are you doing? That’s crazy?”
I stood up and started pacing. This was a huge violation of Blake’s privacy. I felt offended for him.
“We did what we thought was right,” she said. “That’s what parents do. We will always try to protect you, baby. Even though you are all grown up with a baby of your own almost here.”
I was touched by the sentiment. I knew my parents loved me dearly, and I felt very lucky to have them. But this was something I couldn’t wrap my head around. I felt strange just knowing the information, as if I owed it as Blake’s future wife to tell him about this deception. I had to take his side, right? That was how I felt a wife should be. Was I wrong? Maybe. I couldn’t tell.
“Just listen,” my mother said. “The investigator found some strange and disturbing things about Blake’s family.”
I was getting intrigued, and frightened. What was my mother about to tell me?
“What? What did you find out?” I asked.
“They used to be in the mob,” she said. “His father was a Mafioso at one point, he might still be. Blake’s Uncle Louis is still pretty active in it.”
I couldn’t believe what my mother was telling me. I shook my head. “No… that can’t be. You… you’re mistaken.”
“We have evidence. Blake’s father is very lucky to not be in prison. There is a strong probability that he killed people. The investigator said he found out Blake’s father had been in the mob since he was just a teenager. A few years back, he suddenly backed out of it. And all of his enemies suddenly disappeared. The cops could never pin it on him, but it’s obvious what happened.”
I wiped a tear from my eye. I was still pacing, but my feet had slowed considerably. My knees felt weak. Ripping pains of nausea coursed through my stomach, and I felt light-headed. I wanted to throw up and pass out all at the same time. This was not happening to me. Why? Why did my mother have to tell me these things? There had to be some kind of mistake.
I sat down and put my face in my hands. I fel
t disgusting. How could I have fallen for all of Blake’s lies?
“I can only imagine what you must be feeling, honey,” my mother said.
“No… no you can’t…” I said. My throat was clenching tightly, and my words came out as strained whispers.
“It was for your own good. That is why we did this. We hoped to find nothing at all. We would never have wished this on you, or Blake.”
“I know. I just… how could he lie to me for so long?”
“Maybe he was worried of what you might think of him if you found out?”
“I… I guess I can understand that… but I can’t… Ugh! I am so furious at him for lying to me. What else has he been lying about?”
“From what we can gather, nothing else.”
“So, the private investigator followed Blake around for a bit?”
“For a week,” she said. “He did a great job and delivered back to us a full report of what he found.”
“Wow, I didn’t realize my parents were so well connected,” I teased.
My mother chuckled. “No, just willing to pay a little price to find out about the man our daughter is going to spend her life with.”
“I’m sorry that this happened,” she said. “But you need to talk to Blake. Listen to what he says. What he says may surprise you. It may surprise all of us.”
I nodded. I knew that my mother was right. I needed to give him the benefit of the doubt, even though I knew for a fact that he’d been lying to me the entire time I’d known him. My fiancée was a lair. My baby’s father… was a liar… it cut me to the bone. I felt like I was bleeding on the inside. Was Blake, some kind of a monster? Or was he just scared to tell me something about his family, something he had no control of or anything to do with?
“You’re right,” I said. “I’ll talk to him and hear him out. I’ll try to keep you and dad out of it. There’s no reason to stir up bad blood between you and Blake.”
“We’d appreciate it, but we are made of thicker skin than that. He is a smart man; he’ll probably figure it out.”
“I know,” I said. “Blake’s uncle is still in the system? He is still tied to the mafia?”
“As near as we could find out,” my mother said.
“Blake is very close to him. What if Blake is actually mixed up in it somewhat? What will I do then? I can’t… I’d have to leave him. There is no way I would ever put up with that. The type of danger he’d have to be in—that me and the baby would be in. No, that won’t do. That is a deal breaker.”
My mother shrugged. “You do what you think is right, but you won’t know anything for sure until you talk to him.”
I stood up and hugged my mother. I left a few minutes after that. I had to talk to Blake.
Chapter Nineteen
Blake
I watched Tina storm out of the house with her last words ringing in my ears. My father got sober.
Wow, she was really comparing me to the type of problem her father had. Why was this such a huge issue for her? I realized that her father had been a hardcore alcoholic and he’d had a lot of issues getting sober. I could imagine what a horrendous childhood it might be to grow up around that, but I was not like that. Our child was not going to have a father like that. Was Tina really scared of that happening?
She was. I could clearly see that she was. And it saddened me. I hated to see her in so much pain, and to know that I was the cause of it. Even if I didn’t agree with her about this, I guess I could humor her. I’d stopped drinking before. I could cut way back on it, or even stop for a time being again, if it meant that much to her. No sweat. I wasn’t an alcoholic and I was getting sick and tired of her calling me one.
I felt like hell, though. What had happened last night? I’d hung out with Uncle Louis, we’d played pool, had a few drinks, and then I’d had a car take me home. And when I got home, instead of going to bed, I sat down on the couch to watch some movie and opened up a bottle of vodka, which I’d drank most of.
Wow… was this becoming an issue? Drinking alone wasn’t usually a good sign; I knew that. But I didn’t have to do it, did I?
No. I was fine. I was just letting Tina get into my head. She’d been so crazed lately with working overtime to plan the wedding, get the hang of teaching, that psycho Norm, and even her friends who had been harping at her about the wedding stuff. On top of all that, she was now carrying our child. Our child… I couldn’t believe that I was actually going to be a father. I’d dreamt of it all my life.
I hopped in the shower and got ready for work. I was going to have to skip my workout this morning and hope I could tack on some form of exercise later in the day, maybe after I got some work done. I couldn’t stand for it to get this late without accomplishing something that was not about my body.
I made it to work just in time to check in with my secretary, Linda, and to see the meetings I had today. I was ready to go, despite the hangover I was dealing with. Aspirin was my friend today and after a little while it started to kick in.
The first meeting of the day was with a man named Neal Watson. He was a new investor who was hoping that Dane (who was late of course and missed the meeting) would give him some seed money to invest in his new product line, something to do with an outfit that laundered itself in the air in ten minutes. I thought there were other familiar things in the market, and I told him I’d talk it over with Dane and get back with him. It was most likely going to be a resounding no, but that was if I ever got Dane back on track. That guy was tough to pin down. He’d most likely hooked up with some girl and was still hooking up with her, or he was more hungover than I was. Unlike me, he didn’t care enough to power through things. It was a miracle he got anything done at all sometimes.
After the meeting I went back to my office to relax a few. I had to go check out a few houses that I was interested in flipping later on, and then I had to check out a condo in the east valley that I was thinking of buying. Those might both turn out to be lucrative pursuits.
I was sitting at my desk doing some research on some newly listed properties in the area, when Linda came into the office holding a bag with a bow on top of it. She had a wide smile spread across her face as she sat it on my desk.
“I guess you impressed somebody,” she said.
“Oh, really? Wonder who it’s from?” I asked.
She read the name off the card. “Arnold Goldwater.”
The name sounded familiar. I believed that I met with him the week before about something. I wasn’t sure what though, right off the top of my head. I was still hungover, and my head was pounding. The aspirin had only taken a tiny bit off.
She pulled the contents of the bag out and sat it on my desk. It was a brand new bottle of very expensive scotch. Wow… that was nice. Occasionally, people gifted me bottles of liquor, which I usually re-gifted to Dane or occasionally to Linda.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’m going to do some more work before I head out to the field.”
“Ok,” Linda said. As she walked away, she looked back at me in that flirty way I was familiar with. Dane had been after me ever since I hired her, to sleep with Linda. That would have been the dumbest thing I ever could have done. For one, I loved Tina. That would never change. And number two, sleeping with someone at work—especially your own assistant—was just like asking someone to take a lot of your money away in a lawsuit. People did that and wondered why such bad financial situations immediately headed their way. It was stupid as could be.
Linda walked out of the office and it was just me and the bottle of scotch alone. I looked at the time. It was barely eight in the morning. Wow, I was thinking of having a drink this early? No. I was not going to give in to that.
I was fine. I didn’t need it at all.
A knock came at my door right then. I looked up to see Dane entering without being invited. He had finally shown up. How nice of him.
“Hey, buddy,” Dane said. “Wow, you got the bottle going already? Sweet, I’m all about day drinking
.”
I laughed. “No, that is a gift from a client.”
“Nice,” he said. “So, what do you say to a round of racquetball?”
“Right now? I just got here,” I said. “Well, I did already attend a meeting.”
“Really? Anyone good? Anything we’d be interested in?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “But you should have been here anyway.”
“Right, well I was a bit tied up. And I mean that literally. The girl I went home with last night tied me up and then she left me that way as a gag.”
“What? How did you get out?”
He shrugged. “This isn’t the first time this has happened. I always pre-hide a pair of scissors I can get access to in the mattress.”
I burst out laughing. Wow, my friend was even more deranged than I realized sometimes. He led a strange and varied life. It would probably make a bestselling biography one day.
“Ok,” I said. “I guess we can do some racquetball. It’s been a while.”
“Great.”
Twenty minutes later we were downstairs on the courts in our athletic clothes. We used to play racquetball at least once a week. There were few cardio activities that beat it, and since I missed my workout, I figured this might do for the day. Plus, I had at least an hour before I had to head out anywhere.
“So, how’s everything going?” Dane asked as he drew back to serve.
“Not bad,” I replied.
“I apologized to Ruby for you,” Dane said.
“Ruby?” I asked.
“The stripper I ordered for you the other night—specially for you. Which, I almost feel that you should pay me back.”
“Did you sleep with her?”
Dane looked at me and smiled widely. “Yes.”
“Then you got your money’s worth, so stop complaining,” I said.
Dane served the ball. It flew against the wall and then came back at me. I rushed at it and hit the ball just before it went out. After a few more exchanges Dane missed his swing and the ball bounced away to the corner.
My head was pounding, but I knew that this would help the hangover. Sweating it out was sometimes the best medicine. Why did I do this to myself? What was I thinking, drinking the way I was? It was destroying my health, and it had driven a bit of a wedge between myself and Tina. That was the last thing in the world I wanted to do. Even if she was overreacting, it obviously meant that much to her. And her feelings meant everything to me.
His Secrets Page 19