Chapter 29
It had been a long time since I’d been home.
Unlike the Grassos, I didn’t have many happy memories from my childhood.
Hell, I didn’t have many happy memories until Rose came into my life.
My throat tightened, and I swallowed. Now wasn’t the time for tears.
There’d be plenty of time for that later, but right now I needed to walk through the door of my childhood and try to make sense of the depressing nightmare that was the years of my life that were supposed to be the best.
I stood on the cracked concrete steps, staring at the flaking blue paint of the front door, my hand hovering over the house number.
It wasn’t lost on me that I felt the need to knock on my own mom’s door when I never once knocked on the Grasso’s door.
Well, I did once. Then Mr. Grasso asked me if I was the pizza delivery guy, and when I looked at him confused, he had said, “The door is always open for family.”
My hand froze. The house hadn’t changed much.
It had the same faded shutters. The same rust stain crept down the siding under the gutter Dad never fixed, even though Mom harassed him about it constantly.
After he left, Mom just gave up on it, just like she gave up on everything else.
So much was the same, but somehow the house felt smaller, as if time had squeezed the remaining life out of it.
I drew in a breath that tasted like uncut grass and old regret, then knocked. The door opened, and the scent of cigarettes and stale air hit me.
“What the hell are you doing here? Is someone dead?” Mom asked, and I scrubbed a hand over my face.
“No one’s dead. I just… needed to see you.”
Mom blinked, suspicion and confusion warring in her eyes. She folded her arms over her faded t-shirt. “Why now? It’s been what? Four years with barely a phone call.”
A guilty heat crept up my neck, and I rubbed at it. “I’ve been… busy.”
“Busy. Right.”
“Mom, come on.” I sighed and glanced toward the living room, at the old floral couch and the crooked pictures on the wall from when I was in kindergarten and second grade. “I’m not here to fight.”
She stared at me for a moment, walked toward the table in the hall, snatched up her cigarettes and plucked one out. She popped the cigarette into her mouth and lit it. She took a long drag. “So why are you here, Wyatt?”
“I’m trying to figure some shit out.”
She snorted. “And you thought you could do that here?”
“Rose is pregnant.”
The admission hung between us, heavier than the familiar cloud of smoke that always drifted through this house. Saying it out loud made it real in a way that nothing else had.
“What?”
“Surprise. You’re going to be a grandma.”
She stared at me for what felt like an eternity, her mouth opening and closing, but nothing coming out. Tears welled in her eyes, and I nearly fell over with shock.
“You’re going to be such a good father.”
She pulled me into her arms, like she did before our life imploded and showing affection wasn’t acceptable anymore. And I became a child, sinking into her embrace, allowing her to hold me. I pressed my cheek to her shoulder, not caring if she felt the dampness there.
“We broke up,” I admitted. Technically, we did, and after everything, I had no idea where we actually stood. It didn’t matter. We had broken up. And it was the reason I had to come back here.
“What?” Mom shoved me back, shock completely engulfing her aged features. “You broke up? You just told me she’s pregnant.”
“It’s complicated.” I had no idea where we stood. We broke up, but then we slept together. I thought we were going to get back together, then the baby bombshell dropped, and I had no idea what the hell to think now.
Mom let out a humorless laugh. “Complicated? Jesus, Wyatt, give me a fucking break. Everything between you and that woman has sounded like a goddamn fairy tale, and now you’re telling me you left her after she got pregnant? I always thought you were better than your father.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t leave her. She left me.”
“What the hell did you do?”
“Why do you think it was me?”
“It’s always the man.”
I rolled my eyes. Her hatred for my father had made her hate all men. Sometimes it even felt like she hated me.
“She wanted to get married.”
“Okay, what’s the problem? You love her, don’t you?”
“More than anything in this world.” The confession scraped on the way out. It felt almost too big for this room, too fragile for this air that was so thick with smoke.
Mom leaned back in her chair, exhaling a slow stream of gray toward the ceiling. “So marry her.”
My jaw tightened. I stared at the scarred wood molding, tracing a crack with my thumb, remembering the thud of Dad’s fist against the grain as he and Mom screamed at each other. “I don’t believe in it.”
She barked out a laugh that sounded part Marge’s sister’s from The Simpsons and part Irish Wolfhound. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it?” I snapped, looking up at her. “Marriage destroyed this family.”
Her cigarette paused halfway to her lips. Ash trembled at the tip. “Marriage didn’t destroy this family. Your father did.”
I shook my head, refusing to let her gaslight me. But visions of playing with toys and days at the park were replaced with Dad slamming doors, Dad’s laugh fading to a permanent scowl. “We were happy, and then you two got married, and it all fell apart.”
She pulled one last drag, then put the cigarette out with a little too much vigor. She immediately grabbed another one and lit it. Smoke filled the small area, and she pointed her cigarette at me. “You have it all wrong.”
Silence stretched between us. My pulse thudded in my ears.
“What are you talking about?”
“You want a beer? Or are you too fancy for that now and only drink wine?”
“I’ll take a beer, Mom.”
She nodded and walked into the kitchen. I followed, eyes taking in the clean countertops and the scent of Pine-Sol. She opened the fridge, grabbed a can of beer, and held it out to me. I took it, popping the top and taking a seat at the round table with four chairs.
I wondered if she ever had anyone to have dinner with, or if she was always alone. That same guilt crept up my neck. I rolled my shoulders, trying to force it off me.
Mom sat across from me with a beer of her own. “I blame myself.”
“For what?”
“For your distorted view of marriage. Your father and I are not an example you should base anything on. Marriage didn’t ruin us.
Yes, we should never have gotten married.
We got married as a last-ditch effort to save our relationship.
I knew walking down the aisle it was a mistake, but I ignored that voice in the back of my head and just kept walking.
I believed once we were married, things would get better.
“And they didn’t.”
“They weren’t good to begin with, kid. That’s the difference between your dad and I and you and Rose.
I have barely spoken to you in four years, but I doubt much has changed.
You talked about that girl like she hung the fucking moon.
It’s why I haven’t even attempted to reach out, because I knew you were happy, and that’s all I ever wanted.
I couldn’t give that to you, but Rose and her family could.
To think you are throwing it all away because you think marriage is a death sentence… it breaks my damn heart.”
I stared at her. Condensation pooled around my fingers and dripped onto the table, forming a puddle beneath the can.
“It’s not just you. I work at a vineyard that now specializes in weddings.
I’ve watched people stand up in front of family and friends, declare their love, be so damn happy, only for it all to crumble a year or two later.
I watched you and Dad scream at each other until all that was left was silence.
” I shook my head. “I don’t want that with Rose. ”
“Then what’s the alternative, Wy? Because right now, you don’t even have her.”
It was like a punch to the gut. No. Fuck that. It was a goddamn uppercut to the jugular. I couldn’t argue, so I didn’t say anything.
“You think you’re protecting her by keeping things exactly the same? Think that it’s preserving what you have?”
“Yeah. I do, actually.”
Mom reached across the table, resting her hand on mine, eyes sharp and glimmering under the dim kitchen light.
“That’s bullshit. You are hurting her. You’re hurting yourself.
You’re hurting your unborn child.” Mom let go of my hand and held hers up.
“Don’t look at me like that. I might have been a terrible mother, but I know my son, and I know most of your life you were afraid of losing good things because you think nothing good stays. ”
“It doesn’t,” I said around the lump in my throat.
“It can, Wy.” Mom exhaled, moving her beer can to the side. “Your father… He wasn’t good, kid. The best thing to happen to us was him leaving, but I was too young and stubborn to see it. But you know it, and that’s why you’re here talking to me and not him.”
She had a point.
“Good can stay. You just got to fight for it even when it scares the hell out of you.”
“What if I mess it up? What if I become Dad?”
Mom took a sip of her beer, leaning in her chair and kicking her foot onto her knee. “That’ll never happen.”
“How do you know that?”
“Like I said… I know you. I’ve seen you with Rose. You love her in a way your father wasn’t capable of. You will be the father you wish your father was, and that will make you the best dad a kid could ask for. But it’s up to you.”
“Rose told me she doesn’t want me to marry her out of pity.”
“I knew I liked her.” Mom lit another cigarette.
“Girl knows exactly what she wants and isn’t afraid to tell you.
Something else that sets you two apart from me and your father.
I could never be honest with that man. I was afraid I’d set him off, and he’d tell me I was an ungrateful bitch, so I bit my tongue…
a lot. If I had the self-confidence your Rose has, I could have saved myself a lot of heartache. ”
“She’s tough. Strong. The best damn thing that ever happened to me, and I feel like I lost her.”
“Then win her back.”
“How?”
“Marry her, not because of pity, but because you love her. Plain and simple.”
The words sat like lead in my chest, and not because they scared me. It was the opposite. They felt right.
I wasted ten years thinking I was protecting Rose from disappointment, from heartbreak, from becoming my parents.
Sitting here in my childhood home, the ghosts of the past breathing down my neck, I finally saw the truth.
I wasn’t afraid of marriage.
I was afraid of losing her if I did it wrong. And for the first time, the idea of Rose in a white dress, rings, flowers, standing in front of our family and friends, declaring our love… The idea of forever didn’t feel like a ticking time bomb to disaster.
It felt like something I needed to fight for.