Chapter Ten #2
“I wish you could have talked to me,” he said.
“Me, too. And I wish you would have told me more about the divorce.”
“I didn’t want you to worry.” He ran his hand through his hair. “We are terrible communicators.”
She smiled. “Mom’s at fault, too. She should have made me see you.”
“I’ll be sure to mention that the next time we talk. She always enjoys being told she’s wrong.”
Joylyn laughed.
He reached for her hand again. “Can we start over? Can you believe that I’m so happy you’re here and that no matter what, you’re never getting rid of me?”
“I’ll try.”
“I love you, Joylyn.”
She swallowed. “I love you, too, Dad.”
He let the words wash over him. For this moment, things were good. He wasn’t dumb enough to believe one conversation could fix five or six years of problems, but it was a start.
“You want to go out to dinner?” he asked. “You can pick where. We can even go to that horrible barbecue place you like.”
“Why don’t you like it? You like barbecue.”
“It’s too cute. They’re trying too hard.”
“You just don’t like the dancing pigs. I think they’re the best part.”
He rose. “That’s where you want to go, isn’t it?”
She grinned. “You know it. And when we get home, we’re going to decorate the house.”
“As long as it’s not with dancing pigs, I’m in.”
Got a second?
Wynn stared at the text, ignoring the sense of excitement that bubbled up inside her at the message. Garrick wasn’t texting her about sex—it was after eight on a school night. There was no way they could do anything. Not that it being a school night mattered for them, but it meant Hunter was home.
Maybe she should hint to Hunter to have a sleepover with one of his friends, then figure out a way to subtly tell Garrick that she was going to have the house to herself, she thought with a smile as she texted him back.
Yes and you can even have more than just the one second.
Very funny. I’ll be right over.
She stood and looked at her son. Hunter was stretched out on the family room sectional, his gaze glued on the television where one of his favorite sitcoms played.
“Garrick’s going to stop by to talk about something,” she said. “We’ll be in the living room.”
“Okay, Mom.” His attention never left the screen.
“Later we’re going to hunt parrots and sell them on eBay.”
This time Hunter turned to face her. “Just because I don’t look at you doesn’t mean I’m not listening.”
She laughed. “Just checking.”
“Where would you hunt parrots? Aren’t they from South America? That’s a long way to go.”
“Yes, it is, although I believe there is a flock of parrots living somewhere in Los Angeles. And it’s not really a flock. A group of parrots is called a pandemonium.”
“You’re making that up.”
“Not even a little.”
Hunter sighed. “Parents are weird.”
“And yet you love me anyway.”
She headed for the front door and pulled it open just as Garrick stepped onto her porch.
He looked good. Tall and lean, with a hard edge to his expression. She thought about the events that had dominated the local news.
“Hi,” she said, stepping into his embrace and hugging him tight. “You okay after today?”
For a second he looked confused. “You mean the shooting.” He swore. “That’s not even what I wanted to talk about. Damn, it was a day.”
She led him into the living room where they sat on the sofa, facing each other. She tucked her feet under her.
“What happened?”
“With the shooting? From what I heard, the local news got all the details right. My guys are going to be okay. They’ll both be released in the morning.
The suspect is dead, and based on what I saw he did to his own kid, I’m okay with that.
” He held up a hand. “That makes me a bad person, I know. I’ll live with it.
Should he have been shot in cold blood? No.
But he drew first and injured two of my men.
He could have killed them and more, so he got what he deserved. ”
It was a lot to take in. She stayed quiet so he would keep talking.
She didn’t know much about what it took to work in law enforcement, but she was clear on the fact that even in Happily Inc, Garrick saw things she couldn’t imagine.
When she added in his time in Phoenix and the DEA, he was dealing with more than most.
He gave her a few more details about what had happened at work, then sucked in a breath.
“I talked to Joylyn.”
“Good talk or bad talk?”
“Good. Tough, but good.” He looked at her. “I found out why she stopped wanting to see me.”
Wynn leaned toward him. “Tell me.”
“It was my ex-wife. She lied. She said I’d dumped her and that I couldn’t wait to get Joylyn out of my life.
She said my own daughter was a burden and that I didn’t really want to spend time with her.
” Pain filled his eyes. “It wasn’t like that.
Sandy left because she didn’t want to be married to me anymore.
She’d always resented how close I was to Joylyn and how I made her a priority.
At the time I knew I was probably pushing things in my marriage.
I made sure all the holidays revolved around Joylyn without letting Sandy have input.
But to lie to my daughter, to make her feel I didn’t care about her. ”
His jaw clenched. “I want to do something, but I don’t know what. Finding her and confronting her all these years later probably isn’t a good idea.”
“No, it isn’t. Especially when you’re angry.”
“I’d never hurt her.”
“No, but you might scare her and that doesn’t help anyone. What did you tell Joylyn?”
“That I loved her and always wanted to see her. I reminded her I showed up every weekend, hoping she would see me.”
He leaned forward and took Wynn’s hand in his. “I missed her so much. Being with her was the best, and one day it was just gone. I didn’t know how to deal with that.”
“Which you also told her, right?”
“I did. I offered to give her the phone numbers of my friends back in Phoenix so she could confirm the story with them. I wanted her to know I was telling the truth.”
Which was just like him, Wynn thought. No one could question his affection for Joylyn.
“I’m sorry Sandy did that. She must have been really upset to lash out the way she did, which is an observation, not an excuse. Even if she felt justified to hate you, hurting Joylyn like that crossed a line.”
He shifted so he was leaning back against the sofa, but kept hold of her hand.
“When we got married, we talked about having kids, but we wanted to wait. After a couple of years, I started bringing it up, but she always had a reason why now wasn’t a good time.
Eventually we started fighting about it. I accused her of changing her mind.”
He looked at Wynn. “I wonder if my relationship with Joylyn had something to do with that. I wonder if she thought I wouldn’t love our child the way I loved Joylyn.”
“Did she ever say that?”
“No. I would have denied it. Of course I would have loved our kid just as much. It’s not like I have a limited amount of parental love and Joylyn got it all.”
“That’s the rational argument.”
He nodded. “You’re right. I really was unreasonable with Sandy. She begged me to make changes in some of the holiday rituals Joylyn and I had. So the three of us could do them together. But I said what we did was important and I wanted everything to stay the same.”
“Like?”
“Like we spent every Christmas Day at Alisha’s house.”
“That’s very modern of you.”
“Yeah, well, Sandy had family in the area. She said we should at least alternate so she could sometimes see her family on Christmas.”
“She’s not wrong.”
“I know. I just...” He looked at her again.
“I wanted to spend every second with my daughter. I wanted her to feel safe and loved.” He shifted his gaze to the front window.
“When I got a job on the Phoenix police force, I talked to Alisha about joint custody. She didn’t want to do that.
I even went so far as to talk to a lawyer.
She said I had a good case—that I’d agreed to the parenting plan when I’d been a minor and my situation had completely changed.
She thought I could get more time with Joylyn. ”
“Why didn’t you pursue it?”
“How do you know I didn’t?”
“Because your lawyer said you had a good case, so if you had, the parenting plan would have changed. If it changed, Joylyn wouldn’t have been a position to refuse to see you. So why didn’t you?”
“Joylyn didn’t want me to do it,” he said. “I talked to her about it. She would be testifying in court. She got upset and said she didn’t want to hurt her mom. That it would be hard for everyone. She liked how things were.”
“Which must have hurt to hear.”
“Some,” he admitted. “In my head, I got her point. Joylyn had a routine she liked. She had brothers and a stepdad. Mitch is a good guy. Why upset everything? So I didn’t move forward, and then I met Sandy and you know the rest.”
“You’re a good dad. I’m sorry you lost so much time with Joylyn.”
“Me, too. I told her about Colombia. She was asking questions and it came out.”
“She’s twenty-one, married and pregnant. I think she’s mature enough to handle the information.”
He turned to her. “I told her I’d been captured because somebody who knew who I really was betrayed me, but I didn’t tell her the rest of it.”
Questions bubbled up, but she held them inside. She had a feeling Garrick needed to talk about what had happened, but that would go better if he went at his own pace, and not hers.
He rubbed his thumb against the back of her hand.
“I was sent into Colombia as an American with a drug distribution connection. I had a good identity and a partner. Raine. She was a DEA agent—one of their best. We were supposed to be newly married and very happy together. Everywhere I went, she went. She played dumb, so eventually the men started ignoring her.”
Wynn felt a knot form in her stomach. Whoever Raine was, Wynn hated her. Pretend married? So they’d slept together.
“Was she beautiful?” she asked before she could stop herself.