Chapter 3
CHAPTER
THREE
GRAYSON
Molly’s car is ready by four the next day. It should have taken longer.
The ignition coil is bad, two spark plugs are fouled, and the valve-cover gasket is leaking enough oil to explain the smell. None of it is catastrophic. None of it requires an engine rebuild or a conversation about whether repairing the car will cost more than it’s worth.
I replace the coil, change the plugs, install a new gasket, and top off the oil. Then I check the brakes. The tires. The battery. Every belt and hose beneath the hood.
I tell myself I’m being thorough because she’s going to be my daughter-in-law next week. Family doesn’t leave my garage in a car that’s anything less than safe.
That’s the only reason.
It has nothing to do with her green eyes, her yellow dress, or the way her fingertips felt when they brushed my palm.
It has nothing to do with the strained smile she gave me when she asked whether Carter was with me.
By five thirty, I’ve driven the car twice and parked it in the spot beside my office.
The engine is quiet. The warning light is gone.
It accelerates smoothly, and there isn’t a drop of oil beneath it.
Molly should have picked it up two hours ago. I stand inside the open bay with my arms crossed, watching the road. Each time a car turns into the industrial park, I straighten. Each time it passes the garage, irritation tightens inside my chest.
She’s a teacher. Things come up. Parents arrive late. Children forget backpacks. End-of-year meetings drag on longer than expected. There are a dozen reasonable explanations for why she isn’t here. Unfortunately, none of them explain why she hasn’t answered my calls.
I called her at three fifteen to tell her the car would be ready by the time she finished work.
No answer.
I called again at four thirty.
Still nothing.
At five, I sent a text.
Your car is ready. Let me know when you’re coming. The message says it was delivered, but she hasn’t responded. I look through the windshield at the paper chain hanging from her rearview mirror. The yellow link with I LOVE YOU written across it sways in the faint breeze from the open window.
“Maybe she forgot,” Luis says from behind me.
I don’t turn. “She didn’t forget her car.”
“She could’ve gotten busy.”
“So busy she hasn’t looked at her phone in three hours?”
“It’s possible.”
“Not likely.”
I check my phone again. No messages.
“Damn it.”
I find Carter’s name and call. He answers on the fifth ring.
“What?”
Not hello.
Not Hey, Dad.
Just an annoyed question, as though I’m interrupting something more important.
“Molly hasn’t picked up her car.”
There’s a brief pause. “Okay.”
I wait for him to say more. He doesn’t.
“Is she there?”
“No.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
My hand tightens around the phone. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“It means I don’t know where she is.”
“You’re getting married next week, and you don’t know where your fiancée is?”
“She’s a grown woman. I don’t keep a tracking device on her.”
“I’ve called her twice. She isn’t answering.”
“Then she’s probably busy.”
“Doing what?”
“How the hell should I know?”
The careless edge in his voice turns my concern into anger. I walk into the office and close the door, though there’s no one left in the garage to hear me.
“Her car has been ready for hours.”
“So leave the keys somewhere. She’ll get it tomorrow.”
“That isn’t the point.”
“Then what is the point?”
“The point is that she seemed upset yesterday. I want to know why.”
“Maybe she was upset because you were bothering her at work.”
“I didn’t bother her.”
“Are you sure? You don’t exactly understand boundaries.”
My jaw clenches. That isn’t his word. It’s his mother’s. She used to say it whenever I asked where she’d been or why she’d spent money we didn’t have. Any expectation was control. Any question was an interrogation. Any attempt to keep our family together meant I didn’t understand boundaries.
Eventually, I stopped asking. By then, I had problems far worse than a failing marriage.
“Put Molly on the phone,” I say.
“I told you she isn’t here.”
I know my son. I might not know him as well as I should, but I know when he’s guilty.
“What did you do?” I ask.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Who was she?”
“Nobody.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“She’s a friend.”
My stomach knots. The more he talks, the less I want to hear.
“If you cheated on her—”
“Stay out of it.”
“She’s going to be your wife.”
“Maybe. If she stops acting crazy.”
My vision darkens at the edges. “Crazy?”
“She started screaming before I could even explain anything.”
“What was there to explain?”
“I’m hanging up.”
“If that woman was half-dressed in the house you share with Molly, no explanation is going to make it better.”
“How do you know she was half-dressed?”
The question comes out sharp. He’s caught himself. I didn’t know. Not until now. A cold, heavy certainty settles through me.
“Carter.”
“Forget it.”
“Where is Molly?”
“I don’t know.”
“Call her.”
“She needs time to calm down.”
“She needs a fiancé who doesn’t humiliate her in her own home.”
“And I needed a father who wasn’t in prison.”
The words stop me more effectively than a fist. Silence swallows the line. I release the edge of the desk and look down at the crescent-shaped marks my fingers have left in the wood. There are some accusations a man can defend himself against. That isn’t one of them.
Carter knows it. Worse, I know it.
My years in prison are a weapon he rarely uses, which only makes it hurt more when he does.
I wasn’t there during the years that mattered.
I wasn’t there to teach him how a man treats a woman, how he keeps his word, or how he faces the consequences of his mistakes.
I was locked behind concrete walls and steel doors because I made my own bad choices.
His mother sent pictures at first. But by the time I came home, he had learned how to live without me.
I spent years trying to close the distance, but there are some gaps a man can’t repair with fishing trips and birthday presents. I tried to teach him integrity after he was old enough to resent me for believing I had any right to teach him at all.
Maybe this is my fault. Maybe I left him alone too long. Every ugly thing I see in him now grew during the years I wasn’t there to pull it out by the roots. But Molly didn’t put me in prison and shouldn’t have to suffer for what my absence did to my son.
“Go to hell.” He hangs up.
I lower the phone and sit in the silence. My pulse pounds hard enough that I feel it in my jaw. Every instinct tells me to drive to Carter’s house and demand the truth in person. It would take twenty minutes. Fifteen if I ignore the speed limit.
I could stand on his porch and give him the piece of my mind he deserves. I could remind him that marriage isn’t a game, that trust is easier to destroy than rebuild, and that the kind of woman who fills a classroom with love doesn’t deserve to come home to another woman in her living room.
Only one thing keeps me in my chair. He’s my son. And this burning desire to protect Molly shouldn’t be a feeling at all. I’m in the wrong and I know it.