With the Father

by Jenni Moen

  “Maybe.”

  He nodded. “Lots of families, yeah?” His head cocked to the side, and his brow wrinkled.

  “It was Batman.”

  “Ahhhh,” Paul said, sitting down on the grass beside me. “And he reminded you of your favorite little Spiderman, didn’t he?”

  “He didn’t look anything like him, but yeah …”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t think about all of the families that would be here. I should’ve realized it would be hard for you.”

  My breathing had slowed, and I was feeling more myself again. I looked back across the street toward the crowded grounds. This was my life now. I couldn’t have a panic attack every time I saw a child that was close in age to mine. I’d never be able to go out in public. “It’s not your fault. I don’t expect you to give me special treatment.”

  “But I’d like to.” My head snapped up to find him watching me with a cautious and sincere look on his face. “I can’t help it, Grace. I have this crazy, unexplainable desire to take care of you. I want you to run to me, not away from me. I don’t expect you to be okay all of the time. We’ll find ways for you to move sideways if you’re not ready to move forward.”

  Right or wrong, I wanted that as well. I wanted him to take care of me. I wanted more than watering trucks and platonic coffee dates. I wanted his arms around me. In moments like this one, I wanted to lean my head against his chest and wait for the panic to subside. “But how is that going to work?” I asked aloud.

  “When we’re ready, we’ll talk about that. But you’re not ready yet. I don’t want to be another thing you have to go through.”

  Was it too soon? Probably. I didn’t want to be the crazy woman who pushed too hard because she only thought she knew what she wanted. However, I didn’t believe for one second that Paul would ever be something I would have to go through. “I want to talk about it now.”

  The smile that followed lit up his entire face. “Soon. I was kind of hoping that we could stay in town for a while and have dinner after we drop Russell at the airport,” he continued. “If you’re not feeling up to the Riverwalk, we can go somewhere else. Maybe somewhere quieter?”

  “Have you ever been?” Once again I was feeling like a heavy weight, pulling everyone around me down.

  “To the Riverwalk? No, but that’s okay. We can go some other time.”

  He’d said ‘we.’ I might be confused about a lot of things, but I wanted there to be more we’s. “I’m okay. Let’s go tonight. We will have fun, and I haven’t been in years.”

  Wrestling with something, he scratched his chin. “It’s not going to bring up memories, is it?”

  I shook my head. “No. No bad memories there.”

  “I didn’t say ‘bad’ memories. Just because they make you sad now doesn’t mean they are bad memories. Some day you’ll be glad for those memories. Especially Spiderman.”

  “Especially Spiderman,” I repeated, smiling, not because I was thinking of Spiderman, but because Paul always made me feel like my feelings were paramount to anything else. “I want to go. Really. I haven’t been since I was a kid. Jonathan thought it was only for tourists.” I immediately felt awkward and awful. Here I was thinking about how considerate Paul was, and yet I’d brought up the one man who hadn’t been. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” His accent was more pronounced when he was confused. “For mentioning your husband’s name? Don’t be.” Reaching for my hand, he continued, “You’ve been talking about Jonathan for as long as I’ve known you. I don’t expect that to change now.”

  I ran my hand through my hair in frustration. “If only the reverse had been true,” I muttered.

  “Remember when you said he was your soul mate?”

  “I believe you told me I shouldn’t believe in soul mates.”

  He reached over and took my hand in his. Flipping it over, he traced the lines on my palm with his index finger. “No, I said that I don’t believe in soul mates. I’ll never tell you what you should think or believe. I want to know what you think, not change it.” I was struck speechless, but luckily he wasn’t expecting an answer. “My point is simply that learning that he wasn’t perfect doesn’t lessen the loss. It probably only makes it worse.”

  There was a lot of truth in that. I’d grieved for my perfect husband and wondered how I could live without him. Now I grieved for the memories that had become tarnished and dull during the past few weeks. “Can we not talk about him any more?”

  “Sure. What would you like to talk about?”

  Us, I wanted to say. “How about dinner? Let’s talk about where we should eat.”

  “What are you hungry for?”

  You, I wanted to say. “How does Mexican sound?”

  “I want what you want.”

  I hoped that was really the case.

  _________________________

  We didn’t talk about Jonathan again. Paul made it so that he was the last thing on my mind.

  At the airport, he double-parked in front of the terminal, we all crawled out of the car to say our good-byes. Loaded down with his suitcase and a plastic bag from the Alamo gift shop, the little round man looked like he might have trouble making it to the gate. Like a third-wheel, I stood awkwardly to the side, giving the two some space. After a few hushed words that weren’t meant for my ears, Father Russell clasped Paul on the back and pulled him in for a hug.

  Finally, Father Russell turned to me. “Come here, Grace.” I’d stepped in front of him. I didn’t know the man – had just met him that day - but the way he looked at me made me feel like we were old friends. When he’d finally joined us in the parking lot after my embarrassing breakdown, I’d been humiliated and apologized. However, Father Russell just waved it off. ‘When I am weak, then I am strong,’ he’d said.

  Giving me a hug, he whispered in my ear. “Take good care of my boy. He’s new to this, but his heart was built to love. You’ll see.” He released me, leaving me standing there wondering if he’d just given me his approval. Was he sanctioning what was happening between us? How could he when it went against the vow Paul had taken to the church?

  He stepped toward the automatic sliding door, and it opened with a whoosh. “Oh, wait!” he said turning back. “I almost forgot.” He dug through his plastic tourist bag and pulled out a wad of tissue paper. Handing it to me, he said, “Food for thought.”

  Then he was gone.

  Paul looked at me curiously as we got back into the car. I shrugged and unwrapped the tissue paper to find a coffee mug that he’d purchased in the Alamo gift shop. ‘Never surrender or retreat,’ was written in big bold letters.

  Paul shrugged as he pulled out into traffic. “Crazy old man,” he muttered under his breath. But he said it with an affectionate smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

  The closer we got to our destination, the more excited I became. We were going have dinner by a slowly flowing cesspool of water that probably carried typhoid and a host of unmentionables beneath its surface, but my body was humming in anticipation. It was something new. Something different. And I wanted to share it with Paul. I had new memories to make.

  Paul felt it, too. I could tell. His eyes sparkled and a wide grin spread across his face as he maneuvered into a tiny parking spot that was only a couple of blocks away from where we could walk down to the river.

  “You know,” he said, holding the car door open for me to get out. “No one knows us here. We don’t have to worry about anyone seeing us together. Do you think I can hold your hand?”

  I stepped out onto the curb and threw my purse over my shoulder. “I’d be upset if you didn’t try.”

  “Well, I can’t have you being upset. That just won’t work for me.” He wrapped his hand around my smaller one, pulled it to his mouth, and brushed his lips lightly across the top of it. I had a desire to close my eyes and revel in the feel of his mouth against my skin.

  “Let’s go,” he said, bringing me back to reality. However, reality wasn�
�t so bad. He didn’t let go of my hand. Not even on the steps that took us to the below street level. Not as we walked along the river. Not as we’d stood in line outside of the cheesy, touristy Mexican restaurant with the bar that was far too loud for an early Monday night.

  It was only as we approached our table that he finally let go. “I want to sit across from you so I can look at you. Having dinner with a beautiful woman is still a little surreal,” he said with a wink.

  Our waitress greeted us and gave us the rundown on the evening specials. To her, we were just another couple. Another table. Another tip. We were normal, and as far as I was concerned, normal felt good.

  “For someone with no practice, you do this date thing well,” I said after she’d taken our orders and left. I felt my cheeks flush, and I grimaced in embarrassment, not sure why I’d just tried to put a label on something that couldn’t and shouldn’t be labeled.

  He chuckled. “Do I? It doesn’t seem that hard, but maybe that’s because I’m with you. I honestly can’t imagine doing this with anyone else, but with you I want to do it all.”

  Heat spread across my face, and I blushed even brighter.

  He chuckled again. “Well, that’s not what I meant. It’s not untrue, but that’s definitely not what I meant.”

  I wiggled in my seat, having now completely embarrassed myself. However, he didn’t look flushed at all. “Oh, my gosh. New conversation,” I stuttered.

  He smirked mischievously. “I like this conversation just fine. If this is our first date, don’t you think you should ask about all of my old girlfriends? Isn’t that what you talk about on first dates?”

  My mouth fell open. Old girlfriends?

  Naturally, I’d assumed that Paul had never had a girlfriend, but that seemed foolish now. After all, he hadn’t found Father Russell until he was seventeen. On the street or not, seventeen year old boys were far from pure. Without parental supervision, I could only imagine the kind of trouble a seventeen year old boy would find.

  “I see I’ve got you thinking now.” He took a sip of his drink and raised an eyebrow at me.

  “Well, yeah,” I said dumbly. “Do you have a lot of old girlfriends?”

  “Not during the last twenty years, obviously. I have spent the last two decades decidedly girlfriendless.” I giggled at his ability to make a joke in spite of the situation he was now in.

  “And before that?”

  He thought for a second before he spoke, and during that second his emerald eyes were as murky as the river water outside. “I guess you could say I dated, though this is a first.”

  “What’s a first?”

  “Taking a girl to dinner before I try to kiss her.”

  Again, my chin dropped. He continued to surprise me. I liked that he wasn’t shy. I loved that he didn’t hide his emotions or cover up what he was thinking. After being lied to for so long, Paul’s honesty was a relief. “You didn’t have to take me to dinner. I would have kissed you again without it.”

  “I wanted to take you to dinner. Just like I wanted to hold your hand. And when we’re done here, I’d like to take one of those cheesy riverboat rides. And if you just happen to sit really close to me, I’d be okay with that. And I can guarantee that at some point tonight, I’m going to try to kiss you again.”

  “You know, we should probably be careful. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that we’ll bump into someone we know here. We’re not very far from home.”

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve lived dangerously. I say we go for it.”

  And that was exactly what we did. After dinner we resumed our stroll along the river, and then we took the boat ride he requested. I sat so close to him that I couldn’t tell where I ended and he began. With every touch, electricity zipped through and all around me, igniting a fire that I thought had been permanently extinguished. And when he’d leaned in and kissed me as we went through one of the many tunnels, between each hyperactive and erratic beat of my less wounded heart, I recognized something I’d been lacking.

  A small, but definitely detectable glimmer of hope.

  DISTRACTION

  KATE

  I threw the last file into the box I would be taking home and put the lid on top. “My job here is done,” I said to the empty office. I leaned back in the chair and rocked a few times.

  I had worked hard for the last two days, doing pretty much nothing else. I wanted to put this job behind me. However, even though I wouldn’t be back, I knew that my work was far from finished.

  I still wasn’t any closer to figuring out why Jonathan had done the things he’d done or to finding Hope. I wasn’t giving up though. I would find her. They say you shouldn’t blame the other woman because it’s the husband who committed the wrong. There is some validity to that theory, and I’d once had the same philosophy. I’d slept with my share of men with girlfriends – even one who’d I’d found out later had been married. But I’d never knowingly had an affair with a married man.

  Hope had known about my brother-in-law’s family. The messages they’d exchanged made that clear. Though she’d never been given the opportunity to destroy it completely, I had no doubt that she would have eventually. She’d been a bomb, just waiting to detonate and tear their family apart.

  I felt the need to find her, shove their pictures in her face and introduce her to the family that she’d so easily disregarded. Since she claimed that she didn’t know how she was going to go on without him, I planned on giving her the option of joining him.

  I shoved the chair away from the desk in frustration. Turning to the window, I stared down at the small, picturesque downtown. The sun slipped behind the buildings on the other side of the street and shadows danced across the store fronts. It was later than I’d intended to stay up here, but I had no reason to rush home. Everyone had plans tonight, and I had no interest in returning to a dark and empty house.

  I suddenly wished that I hadn’t cut all my ties with the people in this town when I’d so gleefully run away more than ten years ago. It would be nice in times like this to have a friend that I could call. I knew many of Grace’s friends, but they’d always been hers, not mine. I’d never had much in common with any of them.

  I ran through my short list of possibilities for the evening and realized how limited my options were. There was really only one. I knew he was still here because I’d heard him banging around in the break room down the hall a few minutes before and cussing out the coffee maker.

  Being with him made sense. Nothing else floating around in my head made any sense so why couldn’t I give into the one thing that did?

  I stood up and tiptoed down the hall, looking in the other offices to make sure that we were really alone. I had never been here this late, but I knew Maddox would be here for several more hours unless I gave him a reason to leave.

  I made up my mind. I was going to give him a reason to leave early. The man worked too hard anyway. He deserved to be rewarded. And honestly, I wanted to try one more time to flush Paul from my system. Maybe this time, Maddox and I would get it right.

  I poked my head into his office and cleared my throat. He looked up, and the irritated expression on his face melted. I smiled, hoping that he wasn’t going to hold a grudge for my feigning sickness when I’d cancelled our dinner plans a few days ago.

  The flash of his perfectly straightened and whitened teeth told me he was over it. “Are you calling it a day?” he asked.

  “I am, and I was kind of hoping that you were ready to do the same.”

  He tossed the pen in his hand down on the desk and turned his chair so that he was facing me. He cocked an eyebrow at me and shot me a sly smile. “I could be persuaded. What do you have in mind?”

  “Your place? I thought maybe I could cook you dinner.”

  “Really?” He looked genuinely surprised. Whether he was surprised because I was offering or surprised because I knew how to cook was unclear.

  “Really.”

  “Off
er accepted.” He was already out of his chair. “Though we might have to stop at the store on the way home. I have to confess that I don’t eat there that often, and when I do, it’s mostly Captain Crunch and Oreos.”

  “Okay, since you clearly never get a home cooked meal, do you have any requests?”

  “Do you have any specialties?” he asked, retrieving his suit jacket from behind the door. I watched the muscles as he felt in the pockets to make sure he had his keys and wondered if he was lying about the Captain Crunch and Oreos. He didn’t look like he lived on them.

  “I have several.” I paused just long enough for him to catch the innuendo. “But my culinary specialty is veal piccata.”

  “I’m game for whatever you’re offering.” He placed his hand on my back and practically pushed me down the hall. “Do you need to grab anything before we go?”

  “Yes actually. I’ve got the last of Jonathan’s personal documents boxed up. I need to grab it and close down his computer.”

  His face fell, disappointment written all over it. “So you’re done here then?”

  “I guess so,” I said. “There isn’t much left for me to do. I gave your secretary all of the work-related stuff. I’m taking his personal stuff home with me.”

  “I have to admit I’m going to miss seeing you up here everyday. I’ve gotten used to having your pretty face around.”

  I was also a little apprehensive about it being my last day. Not because I would miss hanging out in Jonathan’s depressing office but because I would miss having somewhere to go when I needed to escape. I would also miss having a purpose. I didn’t think I’d be satisfied just hanging out around the house. “Me, too. I’ll miss seeing your face, too.”

  He picked up the box and waited by the door for me to gather up my things. I took one last look around and turned out the light behind us.

  Maddox was quiet as we took the back stairs down to the parking lot. “I can go to the store and then meet you at your house,” I offered as he placed the box on my passenger seat.