Chapter 3
Harding~
N eedless to say, I hadn’t slept at all last night, but I had still managed to text our lawn service, asking them if they could shovel the snow that had finally stopped early this morning. Though Paige’s job was rather demanding, it wasn’t physical to the point where she couldn’t handle it. Yeah, there’d been times when she’d feel worn out at the end of the day, but she had always insisted that she could handle it, and I had chosen to believe her.
At any rate, I couldn’t put off the firing squad any longer, so not caring about breakfast, I picked up my phone, then dialed my father’s number. While I was close with both my parents, I just felt as if my father was the one that I needed to speak to right now.
Luckily for me, my parents, Lou and Casey Rice, were solid people. My father was a retired insurance adjustor, and my mother was a retired city bus driver, and so far, they were living their best retired lives. They were also great grandparents, and so that kept them busy a lot of the time. I had given them Brendan, and though he was already twenty-four, my parents still treated him as if he were fourteen. However, at six-foot-one, he was a grown man, and while he looked like me, he had taken after his mother in coloring. Brendan had brown hair, hazel eyes, and a smile just like my ex-wife, Leslie.
I also had a brother named Jeremy, and at forty-eight, he was a career military man. He could have retired ages ago, but he was a true patriot, and dedicated to defending his country, he had passed on having a family to stay true to his heart. Jeremy and I were also damn near identical in looks. We’d both taken after our father, only I’d gotten an extra inch over Jeremy’s six-foot-two.
As for the rest of what made up my life, my ex-wife was married to a great guy named Carlson, and they’d ended up having a daughter, which had given Brendan a half-sister, one that he absolutely adored. Despite being products of divorce, my son and his sister were very close, and I actually considered her family on our side, though she really wasn’t by blood. Nonetheless, Raylee was a doll, and it helped that we all got along well.
Then there was my best friend, Luke Denims. We both worked for Carter Electric, and while I was a foreman with the company, I wasn’t big on titles or anything like that. Twenty years ago, I had started at the bottom and that’s where I was comfortable at. I had no problem still getting my hands dirty, and my crew knew it, something that I made sure of. Respect was everything when it came to dangerous jobs, and that was something that I refused to forget, despite the size of my paycheck.
Luke was also six-foot-two, still built like a machine at forty-six years of age, and he was married to the love of his life with two children rounding out his perfect existence. Amy was his high school sweetheart, and I’d never known a happier couple. Now, while that might sound like jealousy on my end, considering what all I was going through, it wasn’t. I loved Luke like a brother, and I’d do anything for him and his family.
So, it was my parents, my brother, and my best friend that were going to help me get through this, and I couldn’t be more grateful. While they might think that I was stupider than a box of rocks, it wouldn’t make a dent in their loyalty. In fact, they had proven that the first time around, though my marriage to Leslie hadn’t ended because of cheating.
“Harding,” my father greeted as soon as he answered the phone.
“Hey, Dad,” I sighed, that sick feeling back in the pit of my stomach.
“What the hell, son?”
I let out a hollow laugh. “I fucked up.”
“I’d say so,” he agreed quietly.
“You have to believe me when I tell you that I never meant for this to happen,” I said, stating the pointlessness of the obvious. “I…I never meant to make such a mess of things.”
“You mentioned having doubts about your marriage a few months ago, so I’m having difficulty understanding why you didn’t do something about it back then, Harding,” he remarked, doing his best to tone down his lecture. “You’re forty-six, not twenty-four. This was not the mature or right way to handle your failing marriage, son.”
“I know that,” I replied as evenly as I could. “But there’s nothing that I can do about it now.”
“No, I don’t suppose that there is,” he sighed. “That girl is hurt, and I’m afraid that there is nothing that any of us can do about it.”
“Well, if it’s any consolation, I’m giving her everything,” I told him. “I have no plans on dragging this out or putting her through any more heartache than necessary.”
“While that sounds noble, it’s the least that you can do, Harding,” he pointed out a bit heartlessly. “You were the one that chose wrong.”
“Trista isn’t wrong,” I immediately replied, automatically defending her.
“That’s not what I meant, Harding,” he corrected. “The way that you chose to handle this was wrong. You should have left Paige months ago. Either that, or you should have gotten some counseling to help put your marriage back on track.”
“There was no getting my marriage back on track, Dad,” I admitted. “Paige is not the same person that I married five years ago. Now, whether she turned into this new person, or she’d always been this new person, I don’t know. I just know that she is not the person that I’d said my vows to.”
“That still doesn’t excuse what you did to her, Harding.”
“I know, Dad.”
I heard him let out another deep sigh over the phone, and I hated how this was affecting more than just me and Paige. Even if she hadn’t chosen to post her feelings on social media, there was no way that our close family and friends weren’t going to be affected by our divorce. I had placed everyone in a very uncomfortable situation, and we were all going to be feeling it for a while.
“Well, you’re going to have to call Jeremy and your mother soon,” he said, the family patriarch in him coming out. “Jeremy deserves the details since he’s already in your corner, and your mother has been fielding calls from Paige all night and morning. She didn’t want to speak to Paige until she’d spoken to you first. She doesn’t want to chance making anything worse.”
“No, I appreciate that,” I replied gratefully. “I’ll call Mom and Jeremy as soon as I get off the phone with you. In fact, maybe we can all meet at your house later this evening. It’ll feel nice to be surrounded by family right now.”
“You also need to talk with Leslie and Brendan,” he pointed out. “Brendan also deserves to know, and Leslie should know in the event that this unpleasantness touches her, Carlson, or Raylee. The internet is toxic for situations like this one.”
“I’ve got a lot of apologizing to do,” I said, stating the obvious again. “I feel like such crap, Dad.”
“Harding-”
“But I’m still very aware that I deserve to feel this way, and that’s making this so damn hard,” I went on, cutting off whatever he’d been about to say. “I feel fucking horrible about how this is affecting everyone, but at the same time, I can’t do anything about it because I shouldn’t do anything about it. I deserve to feel this way.”
“Look, just focus your energy on Paige,” he advised. “Help get her through this if you’re really serious about your regret in all this.”
“Dad, I want to,” I replied truthfully. “However, I can’t see this ending well. Especially, if she’s already posting things on social media.”
“Yeah, that certainly isn’t going to help the situation,” he agreed. “Still, her feelings are her own, and we can hardly judge her for acting irrationally last night. I imagine that these next few days are going to be rough ones, son.”
Knowing that there wasn’t anything left to say, I said, “Look, let’s have dinner tonight, and then we can discuss this some more. With Jeremy and Mom there, maybe we can come up with some easier solutions to all this.”
“Have you heard from Paige?”
“She texted me last night about the snow,” I answered. “Not sure if it was a test or not, but I assured her that it’d be shoveled this morning, so that she didn’t have to do it herself.”
“Christ,” he sighed, the weight of my choices in his voice. “Well, at least this isn’t your first divorce, so that’s something.”
“Really, Dad?”
“While you might not like hearing the truth, having already been through a divorce should help you navigate this thing easier, Harding,” he pointed out. “The same goes for her, truth be told.”
“I don’t consider being divorced more than once a good thing, Dad,” I remarked seriously.
“Then make better choices in the future, son,” he replied sternly. “Do not keep repeating the same mistake of letting love blind you to what is real and what is just wishful thinking.”
I knew what he was getting at.
“My feelings for Trista are real, Dad,” I assured him.
“Yeah…well, so were your feelings for Paige,” he returned ruthlessly, and he wasn’t wrong.