Chapter 3 #4
"Sometime, yeah." A shrug. "So. I was single for a while after Slade. Reoriented my life."
"Wait…what about skating? I thought you made the Olympics or something."
"I qualified, but never got to compete."
"Why?"
"Your father. That's why."
"Oh dear."
"Yup. Story of my life—a man got in the way of my dreams…again.” I laugh ruefully. "That's not entirely true. It was as much my own stupid decisions as anything Kevin did."
“Meaning knock you up?"
"Sort of, yes, but not right away." I shake my head. "That came later. I was twenty-four, so older than most of the other skaters, but I was good. My qualifying program is still out there on the internet somewhere, I think."
"So what happened?"
"Kevin was a hockey player. Beer league, rec league, or whatever. He was honestly pretty terrible."
"He was a forensic accountant."
I snicker. "He didn't exactly look it, though, honey. I still have a type."
She boggles at me. "You have a type?"
I arch an eyebrow. "Yup. Point is, he played hockey.
Never missed a practice or a game. I missed lots of my stuff to show up for his, even though my comps meant me progressing toward the Olympics, and his games were just for fun.
Whatever. A couple of months after qualifying, he had a game.
It was a rival team that always beat them.
There was a brawl on the ice, a lot of guys got arrested and needed stitches, including Kevin. "
"Oh, geez. Boys."
I snort. "Right? Well, it would have been fine, but some of the guys from the rival team jumped Kevin and some of the others at a bar a few days later. Beat the hell out of them, put 'em in the hospital. Kevin had a cracked skull, broken ribs, broken orbital bone, and a broken nose."
"Jesus. Over a beer league hockey game?"
I shrug. "Over fragile male egos and their obsession with solving things with their fists." I shake my head. “We were married by then, I should probably mention."
"Wait, go back. He was a forensic accountant who didn't look the part because you have a type—that being big, rough assholes?
" It was a question, but she kept going.
"He was also a hockey player who got into brawls, but he was nice and all that other stuff that made him different from your other exes. Do I have all that right?"
I sigh. “Yeah, pretty much. He had a steady job that had him home at five-thirty every day. He lived in chinos and polos or button-downs. His idea of casual wear was a graphic tee tucked into his pressed blue jeans."
Mal guffawed. "He tucked his T-shirts into his jeans, which he ironed?”
"He did. With a belt. And loafers."
"No socks?"
“Obviously.”
"O-M-G."
What I'm not telling her is that I hated how he dressed, but he more than made up for it in the bedroom. That's none of her business and irrelevant to this discussion.
"So…what happened?” she asks.
"He got into a car accident and had a TBI—a pretty bad one.
He had a concussion after the beating, and the car accident compounded the already very serious brain damage from the wreck.
It took him over a year to recover enough to go back to work.
I had to take care of him. I had to choose between my husband and the Olympics. I chose him."
Mallory is silent for a long time. "God, Mom. Twice, you came so close—twice!"
I nod. "I did."
"It was while I was taking care of him that I got pregnant."
"You'd already had to pick, though, by then, right?"
I nod. "Yeah. I knew by then that the Olympics weren't happening. He had no real family to speak of—his parents both died when he was in college—so I was it, and there was no way I could leave him home alone that long. He still got confused easily, he was tired all the time, got migraines, all sorts of things. He was honestly super lucky that he recovered as well as he did, according to the neurologist.”
"I guess I understand the hockey thing, now," Mal says.
“Yeah, that's a big part of it." I sigh, coming to the hardest part.
"So, the thing about TBIs is that they can really mess you up for a long time, even after you're more or less healed or whatever. Personalities change, temporarily and sometimes permanently, depending on the severity. And Kevin definitely changed. Quicker temper. More easily frustrated by simple things. Started resenting me. Eventually turned verbally and emotionally…um…abusive.” I swallow hard.
"I found out when you were about, oh…nine or ten months old, that he was cheating on me. That he had been even before the TBI."
"Oh…my…god," she hisses, intense and pissed off. "You gave up the Olympics for his ass while he was screwing other women?"
"I mean, not right after the accident. He could barely walk to the bathroom on his own for a while.
He just restarted it once he was more or less fully recovered and back to work.
" I fight the visceral memories. "I brought you with me to visit him at work.
He'd forgotten his lunch, so I figured I'd pop in with it. "
She grimaces. "Oh god."
"I walked in just as he and his office manager were buttoning up their clothes in his office.
Big argument ensues, naturally, and it comes out that they'd been fucking since before he and I got married.
And it was someone else before her. But yes.
I gave up my dream that was in my hands, for him, and that was how he repaid me. "
"You don't seem angry enough," she says.
I blow a raspberry. "Oh, I was plenty angry back then. Ask Sheriff Tate."
"What would he say?"
"That I put sugar in her gas tank, slashed her tires, spray-painted ‘home-wrecking whore’ across the front of her house, egged her house, TPd her house, and almost physically assaulted her."
She snickers. "Oh."
"I did get arrested, actually, but Judge Reynolds’ daughter was a close friend of mine, and his granddaughter was one of my first students, so I got out of it."
"Nice." She eyes me. "So then you divorced his cheating ass?"
I nod. "I did. Had papers in front of him a week later."
“He fought it?"
I shake my head. "Opposite. He saw it as an opportunity to start over. He offered me the house, full custody, and a lump sum payment of fifty thousand dollars. In return, he'd never have to pay child support or alimony, and he was absolved of all responsibility to you and me.”
She rubs her nose with the blanket. "I…I don't know how to feel about that."
"I get that."
"Like, on one hand, he set you up pretty well, right?
But then, it was that easy for him to just…
what? Fuck off into the sunset and pretend I don't exist?
Like, not to be whatever about it, but I can see not wanting to talk to or see you—you're his ex.
But I'm his daughter. And…nothing from him?
Ever? Like, you don't have a shoebox full of letters you've been intercepting my whole life or anything? "
I cackle at this, but the levity is short-lived. "No, honey, there are no secret letters. I'm sorry."
"I just don't get it."
"Me either."
"Where'd he go?"
"Atlanta, last I knew, as of two or three years ago. He popped up on my feed one day because Facebook is an asshole. I was curious, so I stalked him a little.”
She waits, eventually rolling her hand for me to continue, when I don't. "And?"
"I wasn't sure if you'd want to know."
"I do. I'm curious."
"He's remarried and has three kids. White picket fence, literally, cute little blond wifey, two cute kids, a Lexus, golfing buddies.
I'm not sure anyone in his life even knows about us, to be honest. Not that it matters.
He started over. Moved on. Put us out of his mind.
Men can do that, I guess. I dunno how, but enough of 'em do it that it seems to be a pretty common thing. "
"But…" she shakes her head. "You've never thought about blowing his life up? It’s never occurred to you to send a pic of us to his wife on Facebook?"
I shake my head, sighing in a way that's not quite but almost a laugh.
"It did cross my mind when I first saw his family, but no.
Who would that help? Not me. It would just make me seem like the crazy, petty, vindictive ex.
It wouldn't help you, either. Sure, it'd wreak havoc on his life.
Depends on his wife, honestly. But why, Mal?
To what end? He hurt me badly. More than anything else that's ever happened in my life, he really, really screwed me up.
But what kind of person does it make me if I go for revenge nearly twenty years later?
I don't need his money. I don't need his attention.
I know you've grown up without a father, but—"
"But I don't need him either, and I never did."
I smile. "Glad you see it that way." I curl my arm around her shoulders and hug her closer. "Besides, I got the best thing of all out of the whole deal."
"A paid-for house?"
"Paid for? Please, Mal,” I cackle. “I re-mortgaged the shit out of it to start Wheeler Figure Skating Academy. I'll be paying that off till you're thirty." I nuzzle her cheek with my nose. "No, honey. You. I meant you."
"Oh." This is in a small, sniffly voice.
"He doesn't know what he's missing, baby girl. But that's fine. It just means I get you all to myself."
Mallory snuggles closer, and we lapse into silence for a while.
"I'm getting cold," I say, eventually. "Let's go in. I have some old scrapbooks full of photos, if you want to see what I looked like as a badass biker chick."
"Hell yes!"
And so we go up to my room, and I dig the thick binders out of my closet and let her leaf through them, pointing out who's who, where’s where, and when.
She can't get over a photo of me that Slade took a few months before we broke up.
I'm half-lit in profile by a giant bonfire.
I've got my cut on with nothing under it, showing a ton of side-boob, my hair down to my waist and loose.
He caught me dancing, full of joy and freedom.