Chapter 8
“Is it that bad?” Amelia asked as she poured them both more wine, but the glasses were only half full as she handed him his. They settled back at the island, and he stared into his glass before he began his tale.
“As you know, Opal is my daughter. She was young when her mother died.”
Raymond scrubbed his face, shook his head, and looked at her directly. “I’m not saying I won’t tell you, but I am saying is that it’s intense, and some of what I’m about to tell you I haven’t revisited in my mind for years, decades even.”
“Do you want to settle on the couch?”
Raymond looked at her with a smirk, and a shake of his head.
“No offense, but I would probably start packing your boxes if I went into that room. One of the ways I think through things is to keep busy. Packing up your things would be perfect, but I won’t because I want to get this story out.
” He looked at her sternly then. “I won’t be repeating it again. ”
Amelia threw her head back and laughed. “I would probably let you too pack for me.”
“Maybe later, or I can get a hotel room later, and come here in the morning to help you pack.”
“I have a spare room you can use.”
Neither said anything, and Raymond heaved a heavy sigh, sipped his wine, then turned on his stool to face her. “I’m not crying in my wine about what I’m about to tell you. It’s all true, and I can even give you case numbers if you want to look it up online since it’s all public information now.”
“Wow, it sounds intense.”
“It is. Don’t tell Opal this, but I blame myself for everything, well, most of it.
Especially, the second half of this story.
I should have paid better attention to what was right in front of my face.
But I digress.” He shook his head, sipped his wine, drew in another deep breath, and let it out slowly.
“In order for you to understand everything, I’m going to have to start at the beginning. ”
“I’m all ears.”
“Okay, I met Opal’s mother on our first day of college.
We were enrolled in the same program, pre-law.
I actually bumped into her, and had to catch her from falling.
” He grinned as he remembered. “I was looking at the map, trying to figure out where I had to be for orientation, she was doing the same thing. From that day forward, we were inseparable. Because we were in the same program, we were also enrolled in the same classes, had the same schedule, everything. We even joined the same study group. I wouldn’t say it was love at first sight, but it was instant attraction.
We later, after our first year, realized we liked each other on a deeper level.
When we returned for our sophomore year, we started dating, and we were exclusive after that.
We went through pre-law, and law school.
I knew from day one that I would be returning home to Charlotte, North Carolina to work in my family’s law firm.
” He shook his head and had a small smile on his face as he remembered something.
“The year before we graduated law school, I brought her home to meet the family. Before that, it was phone calls, and Facetime videos. This time was in person. I didn’t learn until after we graduated that during that holiday, both Dad and Grandpa had taken Ciara aside and basically interviewed her for a position at the law firm.
She didn’t tell me until after we returned to school.
Fast forward to graduation, and we both took the summer off before hitting the real world.
We got married that summer. Nothing big or flashy, but her sister and brother-in-law were there, that’s the only family she had.
My parents, and grandparents were there.
When we started working for my family’s law firm, neither one of us were treated with privilege.
We went in with the knowledge that we would be starting at the bottom and working our way up. ” He shook his head with a smirk.
“What?” Amelia asked quietly, when he stared off into space. She sucked in her breath as he looked at her and grinned.
“What I didn’t tell you was that I was set to eventually inherit the law firm. After grandpa retired, Dad would take over, once Dad retired, I would take over. I had to wait years before that happened. Or so we all thought.”
“What happened?”
“It was five years into our careers, and while both Ciara and I worked sixty hours a week, or more, we were happy, and we were able to purchase a house. Six months after the house, we found out we were pregnant. She didn’t quit work, but she cut her hours down to forty a week, while I still worked the sixty.
Everything was perfect, she had what doctors referred to as a textbook perfect pregnancy.
Opal was born healthy, and after her maternity leave, Ciara came back to work part-time.
We had discussed it, and though she wanted to work, she also wanted to be home with Opal.
We didn’t need the two incomes, so I let her work what she wanted to.
” He sipped his wine, stared off into space, and shook his head.
“Sometime later, I believe Opal was about a year and a half old by then, she was thriving, hitting all her milestones, and Ciara came to me to discuss her quitting work altogether. I supported her. About three months into her being a stay-at-home mom, I noticed that she seemed tired more than when she was doing it all. I encouraged her to get her annual physical.” He paused again, and reached up to scrub his face with both hands.
When he looked at Amelia, she jerked at the anguish she saw in his face.
“Breast cancer, stage three. I knew she was tired, and I should have encouraged her to stop working altogether, but every time I brought it up, she said she was fine. I believed her.”
“I’m so sorry, did the chemo treatments help?”
“No. By the time it came to start the treatments, six different doctors said that it wouldn’t help, because it was so aggressive. They gave her three months, and she lasted six. She passed away a week after Opal’s second birthday.”
“I’m so sorry,” Amelia said, and wiped her tears, but reached out and laid her hand over his, giving it a gentle squeeze.
“This next part might make me sound like a bastard, but I did what I did because I felt like I had to do it, or I would lose my ever-loving mind. I got into a routine. First, Mom and Grandma said that I had to hire a nanny for Opal, I refused. Then they said that I needed to turn custody of her over to them. Again, I refused.” He shook his head as he remembered that time in his life.
“They told me that being a widower, I wouldn’t be able to take care of Opal properly.
I proved them wrong. Later, I’ll tell you how petty I was to my own mother, but that’s later in my story.
Anyway, when Ciara was alive, Opal went to daycare twice a week, I talked to them, and was able to enroll her all five days.
I got her up every single day, fed her, dressed her, and got her to daycare.
Then I’d go into the office. I’d leave to go pick her up, then go home, cook dinner for the two of us, and play with her afterward.
Later, I would help her with her homework.
” He sipped his wine and got up to rinse out the glass.
He leaned his hips against the counter to continue his tale.
“Just before Opal turned five, Dad got sick. He too had cancer. During Ciara’s bout with the disease, Mom tried to tell me what to do, by not listening to the doctors and forcing the chemo on her.”
“That wouldn’t have worked, it might have prolonged her life for a month or two, but if it was as aggressive as you said, it wouldn’t have helped. And she would have been miserable the entire time.”
“I know, that’s why we opted not to do it.
By aggressive, I meant she had breast cancer, and within two months, it had spread to her other breast, her liver, and her kidneys.
” He shook his head when Amelia swore. “We made her as comfortable as possible, and kept her home to be with Opal as much as we could. The only professional services we used was Hospice. The three of us were all together as a family when she passed at home.”
“I am so sorry.”
“Don’t be, anyway, Dad’s cancer wasn’t as aggressive as Ciara’s, not that I’m comparing, but for the next ten years it was hell for them.”
“How?”
“The chemo helped with the first diagnosis, then a few months later, they’d find it someplace else.
He and mom threw everything they had at the cancer.
For ten years, he was in and out of chemo or radiation.
Toward the end, he barely weighed a hundred pounds, and he wasn’t mentally there.
I don’t want to say dementia, but he barely recognized mom, let alone me, Opal, or his parents.
He stopped working five years into the treatments.
Anyway, I know it was petty of me, but I felt so angry that they refused to listen to the doctors.
After Dad’s funeral, I forgot what was actually said, but I do remember that it pissed me off.
I turned to Mom and told her that maybe she should check herself into a home if she couldn’t even cook herself a meal.
I didn’t talk to her for a good year after that.
I know it was stupid and petty, but she had said something to her friends that she would never be like me and give up. ”
“Wow, so all that chemo probably did prolong his life, but if it kept coming back in different areas of the body, then it wasn’t really helping.”
“That’s what I told her, but she told me to mind my own business. During all this, I was still working at the firm, and Grandpa hadn’t retired yet, though he was pushing seventy. Around the time Opal was five. I started dating a woman, that lasted less than two months.”
“What happened?”
“We were in my home, Opal was doing her homework at the kitchen island, just like she did every night, I was at the stove, cooking our dinner. Jesus, I forgot her name now, but she kept telling Opal to go to her room. When Opal asked why, she said that children should be seen and not heard.” He shook his head and snorted a laugh.
“Then she had the audacity to show me brochures she had gone out and gotten to send Opal to boarding school after we got married. This was only after two months of dating, and in those two months, it was only five dates. If memory serves, that particular day was the first time I introduced her to Opal.”
“Holy shit, sorry for swearing, but what the hell? More importantly, what did you do?” She shivered when he grinned.
“I looked her dead in the eye and told her that it was lucky that I would never ask her to marry me, then I escorted her to the front door, told her to leave, and shut the door in her face. I never heard from her again. Oh, I failed to mention that during this time, my taking over the firm was being transitioned.”
“Let me guess, she thought that because you would now own the firm, then you were making the big bucks, and she could have you bankroll her lifestyle?”
“Yeah, pretty much. When I went back into the kitchen, I didn’t make a scene, I finished cooking, and helped Opal with her letters and numbers.
Later that night, after her bath and story, as I tucked her into bed, I apologized to her for bringing that woman in our lives.
I told her that I would never put any woman before her.
For the next three years, we were a team, and we made our lives work.
After dinner and tucking her into bed, I would work in my home office. It worked for us.”
“Until when?” she asked quietly. “I feel something happened.”
“It did, nothing bad, at first, I’m talking years, almost fifteen years, things were good.
Let me back up. When Opal was eight, I met Melissa.
She had a three-year-old daughter, Amber, from a previous relationship.
She wasn’t married to him. We dated for two years, and when the girls were ten and five, Melissa and I married.
” He shook his head as he remembered that time.
“If I’m being perfectly honest, it was amazing.
The four of us blended so well, it was like we had always been a family.
There was no sibling rivalry between the girls, Melissa didn’t try to force herself as a mother figure onto Opal, and I didn’t force myself to be a father to Amber.
It all came naturally, we were a perfectly blended family,” He looked at the floor, and even with his head bent, Amelia could see the anguish on his face.
“What happened to make it not?” she asked softly. When he picked up his head to stare at her, she sucked in her breath at his expression. “Jesus, Raymond, what the hell happened?”
“Greed,” he answered in one, blunt word.