Three Days on Mimosa Lane (A Seasons of the Heart Novel)

by Anna DeStefano

  “Deal with it?” Walter half yelled, half sobbed, his pain suddenly off the charts in a way Brian didn’t want to witness but couldn’t turn his back on. “Deal with what Troy did, when I could have stopped it?”

  “How could you have stopped it? What makes you think you could have stopped Troy, when we haven’t coached the kid in two years?”

  “Because…” His friend sighed and wiped at his eyes. He stared at the ceiling, as if he were praying. “Because two years ago I caught Dillon Wilmington slapping his son around after practice one night, after you and everyone else had gone home. I’d circled back to the playing field because I’d left my clipboard, and there they were—Troy trying not to cry while his old man called him every name in the book for being afraid of being tackled, and Dillon slapping his kid across the face, raging that he’d show him what it was like to really be scared…”

  Silence fell between them. Brian took a long drink, empathy nailing his ass to the bar stool for as long as Walter stayed. His son’s heartbreaking guilt had sounded equally out of context. And for months Cade’s secret had fueled his assumption that he was to blame for Bubba’s death.

  “Did you…” he started to ask, but he didn’t want to sound as if he believed for a second that his friend was any more at fault than the rest of their community.

  “Did I say anything to the son of a bitch?” Easygoing Walter clenched his fists and pounded them on the bar. “I wanted to take the man apart. Right there in front of his kid, I told him if I ever saw anything like that again, I’d report him to the county. I told Troy he didn’t have to take that kind of abuse…” Walter covered his eyes with his hands, all of him shaking now. “But what did I do when Wilmington pulled his boy from the team before the next practice, so I never had to deal with him or Troy again? Nothing. Not a damn thing. I was busy with my own shit and with the other boys, and I didn’t want to get involved, right? Maybe I’d just caught the bastard on a bad night. After all, if he were really knocking his kid and maybe even his wife around that badly, wouldn’t someone else know? Someone at school or at their church? Who was I to pry into his life?”

  Brian didn’t know what to say, other than, “I’d probably have done the same thing…”

  He didn’t like to think that he wouldn’t have been there for Troy. But since the chaos in his own personal life had always been a struggle to handle, it was a good bet that he wouldn’t have involved himself in another family’s problems, unless he’d felt he had no other choice.

  The question was, why hadn’t anyone in Chandlerville or on Mimosa Lane done anything on Troy’s behalf before it was too late? Had everyone else been blind to the warning signs Cade and Walter thought they alone had seen? Or had the entire community let down an abused little boy, and Bubba, because they hadn’t wanted to see what had been going on right in front of them all this time?

  He put a hand on Walter’s arm and squeezed.

  “It’s not your fault,” he said again. “We all should have known. We all should have gotten involved—with Bubba, too. He’d been ganging up on other kids for years. Everyone saw it on the ball field. You and I even talked about it a few times. But it hadn’t gotten bad enough to do anything about. At least, we thought it hadn’t…”

  His friend yanked his arm away, mumbling something unintelligible that, had it come from anyone else, Brian would have thought sounded like fuck off.

  Minutes that felt like hours passed in silence, except for the soft drone of the TVs overhead.

  “So…” Brian cleared his throat.

  He drank more of his beer while he thought about how genuinely Walter and Julia had always loved Chandlerville. They’d given so much of their time to the community. And here Walter was, feeling the Wilmingtons’ and the Dickersons’ tragedies as if they were his own—to the point that his grief and guilt were ripping at all that was most precious to him in his own life.

  Brian’s neighbors were remarkable people.

  “So, you were a good bowler?” he asked, sounding like an idiot. But he was desperate to say something, anything, that wouldn’t set his friend off again.

  Walter turned his head to stare, his eyes bloodshot and glassy.

  “Had plans to go pro for a while,” he said, his attention returning to the nearest TV. “But I’d have had to drop out of college, and my old man wasn’t having any of it. Then Julia and I made plans of our own… Still, opening my own place coulda happened, if I’d pushed my wife for it hard enough.”

  “A bowling alley?” Brian wouldn’t have been any more surprised if his friend had said he’d wanted to build a spaceship and fly to the moon.

  “Bowling center. A family joint, where the community could come and hang out. Kids’ leagues. Adults. Church groups. Even the biker types who want to hoot and holler a bit. A place for everyone. A good-time place…”

  And instead, Walter had been sitting behind a desk in a corporate office much like W&M for going on twenty years now.

  “Wow,” was all Brian could say to that, staring down at his mug and at the gauntlet of his own life choices.

  Walter nodded. “Sometimes I wonder…”

  “What?”

  “If it would have made a difference.”

  Brian felt the world settle a little heavier on his friend’s shoulders.

  “At home?” he asked, genuinely curious.

  “With my boys and Julia. With Troy and Bubba and their families and the rest of us. Everyone’s so busy… Everyone’s got so much on their plates, and we’re all just winding tighter and tighter until there’s nothing but the busy, and we forget who we were when we all started, and something just… unravels.”

  Like Beverly and James Turner. And even though Brian didn’t know the Dickersons well, he knew for certain after witnessing the man’s heartbreak at the school board meeting that Chuck had never intended to set his boy on the path of bullying and hurting others, until it had cost Bubba his life.

  “So, bowling’s the answer?” Brian asked, only half kidding.

  Another grunt from Walter.

  He drained the rest of his beer.

  “Nah,” he said. “But maybe liking what you do is. Liking your life, and spending time doing what you like. Work. Family. Your kids. Friends and the community. Julia and I, we thought we were all about the community, but I haven’t made the time to speak one-on-one with Chuck Dickerson since Bubba aged up to another football team. And, well, you know just how relieved I was to not see Troy and Dillon Wilmington any longer. What kind of coach lets something like being worried about a kid’s safety slide like that, just because you’re busy and have a new team of players to coach who won’t be nearly as much of a hassle?”

  “It’s not your fault. It’s nobody’s fault.”

  “It’s all of our faults. These are our kids. This is our community. And we’ve given all that security up. We want more for ourselves and families than we had growing up, sure. But working for more has taken over everything, until we don’t see each other anymore. Until our kids are turning on each other, because we don’t see how much they’re hurting.”

  “You didn’t do any of this,” Brian said, trying and failing to understand his neighbor’s inebriated logic.

  “Then why can’t I go home and spend time with my boys anymore? Not after what I knew about the Wilmingtons. Not after I did nothing. I hate being with my wife and my own kids. I hate being at work. I want to be somewhere else all the time. I want my family to be something else, and we never will be.” Walter signaled for Law to set him up again.

  “And you think drinking is going to fix that?”

  “I yelled at her, man,” Walter sobbed into his empty mug. “Came home early from another nothing day where I cared about numbers and other people’s money more than I did anything important, and my boys were gone as usual. Julia was gone. Nothing to eat in the place, when she used to make it smell so good and keep the boys close because they’d always be home for her dinner if nothing else. Now
I don’t know them anymore. They don’t want to know me. And I got so pissed I started drinking early, to keep from smashing something with my bare hands. Then what did I do when my wife finally did come back—from the school board meeting I’d promised her I’d be at but didn’t show for? I started screaming at her right in front of Sam, because that’s what I am.”

  “What?”

  Brian tried to imagine the scene his gentle neighbor was describing. Walter had never so much as raised his voice to any of the kids they’d coached together, no matter how frustrating a game or practice got. And Sam had witnessed his meltdown in person, without ever letting on.

  “What are you?” Brian pressed.

  “A lousy bastard who’s got no business taking care of nobody anymore—not my wife and kids or anybody else’s.” Walter dropped his head into his hands, having an honest-to-God crying jag, his words more slurred by the second. “I don’t want any of it. None of the worthless stuff we’ve got. What good is any of it? Our families are falling apart, and there’s no fixing them.”

  He went to throw back the latest shot Law had poured. Brian put his hand over Walter’s and slid the tequila out of reach, until his friend finally let go.

  “We don’t have nothing,” Brian said. “We have our families still, even if we’ve messed things up for too long. Our kids are still here. We can fix this, Walter. Every family in Chandlerville has a chance now to see what’s been slipping away and fix it. But drinking’s not going to get it done. You know that. What are you doing here like this, worrying your wife? She loves you, no matter how bad it’s gotten, no matter what you’ve done. Don’t keep doing this to Julia. The two of you can make it work together. Tell her what’s wrong.”

  The way Brian had never been completely honest with Sam until now. And even though he’d promised himself and his wife that he’d changed, he was fighting daily not to fall into feeling the same panic as his friend—that maybe it was too late, and there was no going back to what they should have been from the start.

  “I quitmy job,” Walter mopped at his face again with his wrecked dress shirt. “Couldn’t be there anymore. Couldn’t keep being what I didn’t want to be, where there was no point anymore. I couldn’t be home neither. So I’ve been here with my buddy Law since Tuesday.”

  For four days? Walter had quit his job Tuesday, and had been going on all-day benders ever since. Brian looked over at McC’s bartender, who nodded in silent confirmation, shaking his head while he dried off the mugs he’d pulled from the steaming dishwasher beneath the counter.

  “You need to be home, Walter,” Brian said. “With Julia, no matter how hard that’s going to be for a while. Just like Sam needs to be home with me, if I can convince her that I’ll work on our problems the way I haven’t before. No one’s going anywhere, not my kids or yours. But we can’t help them until we get ourselves together. If…”

  If what?

  What had Sam said to Nate at Chandler? Something about not coming back to school if that’s what he needed. Not forcing himself to do what didn’t fit, when doing something else was going to make the difference between him continuing to hurt or getting better.

  “If you’re not happy, change things,” Brian said to his distraught friend, thinking as he had been all afternoon about the decision he owed Jeff in the morning. “Talk to your wife and figure something else out. Anything but just sitting here and throwing away everything you two have built. If the old stuff isn’t working anymore, find a new dream together. What about the bowling alley you said you wanted to build?”

  Walter harrumphed or hiccupped or both. “Whatabout it?”

  “You’ve got the connections to finance it. And I hear tell you’ve got a neighbor who’s a fair to middling architect, if you’re in the market for one.”

  Walter’s red-rimmed eyes were brimming with tears and confusion. “I can’t let you do that.”

  “You can’t let me help you, the way you and Julia have been there for my family? If I’ve learned anything from the last three months, it’s that we need our friends when we’re dealing with hard stuff like this. And sometimes we need to push each other to get better, instead of watching everyone make the best out of staying hurt. So, I’m pushing. You think neighbors and community don’t mean anything in Chandlerville anymore? Let’s prove you wrong. And if you think a bowling center is what we need to change things, I’m in. Whatever it takes to make this work for you and Julia.”

  Walter chuckled again, as if they were both nuts. And maybe they were. But Brian was thinking of Jeff’s offer again, and the other man’s seemingly sincere interest in making the opportunity of a lifetime possible for him. There were worse things in life, than to go out on a limb for a friend who wasn’t quite ready to stand out there on his own.

  “But first,” he told Walter, “we’ve got to dry you out.”

  “’Cause that’s gonna make everything feel better?”

  “Nope.” Brian pushed his own beer away, resisting the urge to drain the rest of it.

  “’Cause I’ve gotta face my wife and figure out how much of a marriage I’ve got left to make work?”

  “Yep.” Brian clapped a hand on his friend’s shoulder, the way Pete had for Brian so often this last week. “The same way I’ve got to maneuver Sam back under my roof, before I end up being Law’s next good-time buddy.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sam said, hoping for her friend’s forgiveness for what she’d said back at the house, and knowing she’d likely have to wait a long time to get it.

  She and Julia were waiting in Brian’s Altima. Standing outside the car, outside McC’s, with the community driving by soon on their way home from work, had been a nonstarter. Julia had taken the backseat again. Sam was once more in the passenger side, front. And the silence between them since they’d left her house had to stop.

  Sam couldn’t stand it.

  She turned sideways, looking over the headrest. Julia was staring out her window, as if the empty Waffle House across the street held the answers to all her problems.

  “Sorry for what?” Julia asked. “Finally saying what you’ve clearly needed to say since you moved in with Walter and me?”

  “No. For pointing my finger at you and your difficult choices, so I could ignore my own colossal mistakes for as long as possible. You’ve been the best friend I could have hoped for. Both you and Walter have been. I’m a louse for not being supportive when you needed me.”

  “Best friends tell the truth, even when it hurts.” Julia went from gazing out the window to staring at her clenched hands. “That’s the kind of support that really matters. And you’re right. I don’t know what we’ve been doing, you and I. But we’re not helping our families. Maybe the only people we’ve helped are ourselves—making it as easy as we could not to deal with things.”

  Sam nodded—to herself.

  “I’m moving back home tonight,” she said. “Brian and I are going to handle our family and our problems together, no matter how hard that’s going to be.”

  “And I’m talking my husband into dealing with whatever he’s going through instead of drinking until he’s unconscious, or he’s not welcome back in our house.”

  “I’m not sure I can be the kind of woman Brian wants for his wife.” Sam’s hands were fists now, too. “He deserves someone who believes in the good things in life, and someone who trusts the bright future stretching out ahead of us. And some days I do. A lot more days now, thanks to the time you and Walter have given me. But then…”

  “I’m not sure Walter knows what he wants anymore, except to push away me and his sons and our life…” Julia patted Sam’s shoulder and managed a brave smile. “I’m ready to push back, though.”

  Sam covered her friend’s hand with her own, their connection solid and more priceless to Sam than ever. Julia stiffened. She was looking out the windshield, where the front door to McCradey’s had swung open. Walter and Brian left together. Brian had his arm around Walter, keeping him on his feet. />
  “I’m right here if you need me,” Sam said, determined to never again let her friend down. “Always.”

  Julia nodded. “You, too, darlin’. We’ve got to take care of our own business, but we’ll never be alone, you and I. Never. Right?”

  Sam smiled, feeling better and worse that they’d come full circle.

  “You bet your southern butt,” she said.

  Chapter Twenty

  Brian pulled onto their cul-de-sac with Sam beside him and Walter and Julia in the backseat, silent and as far apart as they could get—connected only by their clasped hands.

  Julia had reached out for her husband when he and Brian had made it to the car. “We need to talk when we get home,” was all she said. To which Walter had hung his head and nearly collapsed at her feet, saying only, “I’m ready.”

  Brian stopped the car at the Davises’ driveway. Julia unhooked her seat belt first. After several failed attempts by Walter, she helped her husband with his. In the rearview mirror, Brian watched them gaze at each other for several weighted seconds.

  “Are the boys home?” Walter said, near tears again.

  Julia nodded. “They’ve been part of this all along. You owe them an explanation, the same as you do me. And they need to be part of whatever decision we make next.”

  Walter swiped at his eyes with the heel of his free hand. He nodded once.

  “Thank you both,” Julia said to Brian’s reflection. “I don’t know what I would have done if you—”

  “Don’t finish that sentence,” Brian said over the lump in his throat. “You never have to worry about finishing a sentence like that with us. We’re here. After what you’ve done for our family and our community, all the lives on Mimosa Lane and in Chandlerville that you’ve touched… We’ll always be here.”

  Julia smiled. She opened her door.

  “And Walter?” Brian said. When his friend’s gaze met Brian’s in the mirror, Brian said, “Call me about that venture we discussed. Whenever you’re ready, I’ll do whatever I can to help.”