8. 7 - Ghosts of Husbands Past

7 - Ghosts of Husbands Past

My daughter cried the biggest tears I’ve ever seen when I kept her home from school the next day. I sent Josh off with my sister, who for once, gladly took him after I explained why I was so late coming home last night.

“I didn’t know how to tell you, or if I should. What if you knew and just didn’t care? You know?”

“Sweetheart, how could you think I wouldn’t care about someone saying that shit to you?”

“Not about me, but about Dad. He… He… Why was he such a bad person?” Her voice broke at the end as more tears fell, and my heart cracked wide open for the weight my daughter had been carrying on her shoulders.

This was where it got hard. I wanted to rant and rave about all the ways my husband, her father, had turned into a crappy person over the last few years of his life, but I couldn’t. Not to her. Not to my son. Not ever.

“Ariel, your dad made some mistakes in his life. I won’t argue that, but no person is the sum of their mistakes. We all have ups and downs. The longer you live, the more mistakes you make.”

“It’s not a mistake to have a baby with another woman when you’re married with two kids at home. That’s not a mistake. He was paying their bills while we were struggling.”

“I doubt he was paying many, if any, of their bills, baby girl.”

“How do you know?”

“I know exactly how much money your father made and even what he spent and where it went.” Though, there were niggling doubts about how much money he really lost at the casino. It made sense that he tried to turn his paychecks into something more every week, considering I knew to the penny what he would bring home in each check. Maybe he won more than he lost, and it all went to her. That wasn’t something I could talk to my daughter about, though.

“Well, maybe he had another job.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Sweetheart, we could speculate all day long about what your father did with his time when he was alive. The truth of the matter is that we don’t know, and we’ll probably never know. Without a DNA test, we may not know if that other child is your half sibling either.”

“How can you be so calm about this?”

“Mostly because I spent all of last night crying it out, but also because I already mourned your father being gone from my life. It turns out he may have been gone a little sooner in ways I didn’t know about back then. I don’t know, honey. It’s a lot to process and I don’t think I’m done doing that just yet.”

“Is it because you like the biker guy?”

“Whoa, how did this go from a talk about your dad and what that girl said to you to Walker.”

“Walker? That’s his name?”

“Yep.”

“Well, you didn’t answer the question. Do you like him?”

“I don’t know. We’ve only talked a few times.”

“I didn’t realize that you and Dad weren’t exactly happy, but the more I think back, the more I remember you guys arguing and-” She stopped in the middle of what she was saying.

“And?” I prompted.

“And you argued a lot about money, I think. I’m old enough to understand. You said you knew where the money went, but did you?”

My heart broke inside my chest all over again. “Ariel, I don’t want to tell you.”

“Because it’s bad, right?”

I nodded.

“Can you just… I need to trust you and that starts with us being honest with each other. What if tomorrow, someone else comes up to me at school and tells me that we have the same dad or that he robbed their house or sold their dead uncle drugs or something?” My eyes widened at that.

“Where did all that come from?”

“My imagination, because that is what is going through my mind. It would be better if you just told me. Josh is too young to understand. Whatever you say won’t take away from the good memories I have of my dad. He was still the guy who tied my shoes, kissed my bruises, and picked me up on the first day of school because he couldn’t be there to drop me off. I know he loved me, and I loved him. That will never change.”

“When did you grow to be so wise?”

“I don’t think I am. It’s just facts.”

“Right. Well, then I will tell you all you need to know to set your mind at ease. Your father gambled at the casino. Supposedly, he lost more than he won. What you heard us fighting about were the times he lost so much that we didn’t have enough money to cover our expenses.”

“Maybe he won and gave it all to someone else,” she voiced the same thought I’d had just moments ago.

“It’s possible, but we’ll never know that for sure.”

“We could ask Dina’s mom.”

I chuckled then. “There’s one place you can never expect to receive the truth and that is from the mistress of a dead man.” I cringed, knowing I should have never said that out loud.

“Harsh, but probably true. Dina is a liar anyway, so I bet her mom is too.”

“I went to school with Dina’s mom, can confirm,” I stated with a blank face. Ariel laughed at me.

“Do you think we’ll be okay?” She finally asked.

“We’re already okay, sweetheart. Trust goes both ways, though. If anything else major like this lands at your feet again, you have to be able to bring it to me.”

“How did you know, anyway?”

“I heard some rumors recently and it was mentioned that Terry had a daughter your age. I didn’t want you to be blindsided by it.” I hated lying to her after talking about trust, but I promised that I wouldn’t out Griff for doing the right thing.

Ariel stared at me for a minute and then cocked her head to the side as she assessed me. “Griff told your biker man, and he told you, huh?”

“W-what?” I stammered.

“Yeah, that’s what happened.” She huffed and then plucked at some lint on her yoga pants. “I’m not mad at him. It feels better not to carry that secret around. You didn’t want to blindside me, but that’s exactly what I did to you by not coming to you about it. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’ve been so bitchy. I thought maybe you knew, and I hated you a little bit for staying with him.”

“Whether I stayed with your dad or left him, whether it was because of the gambling or another woman, none of those things are something you have a right to judge because you don’t have the whole picture. When two people are in a relationship, everyone around them sees maybe a tenth of what really goes on. Even when you’re the person in the relationship, there are things you won’t see, sometimes until it’s too late. You don’t have to respect someone’s decisions to give them the grace they need to make it and respect that it is their decision to make.”

“Yeah, I guess I get that.” She moved closer and wrapped her arms around me as we sat there on the couch together. “I’m sorry that he was such a butthole before he died.”

“Me too, baby. It’s not how I wanted to remember your father and it certainly isn’t how I wanted you to remember him.”

“I’m going to remember the good guy who was always there as my dad and pretend the one making all those mistakes was someone else.” She threw a little emphasis on the word mistakes.

“I’m not sure that is a healthy approach, but I don’t have better advice, so as your mom – a person who also makes her fair share of mistakes – I will say that if you ever need to talk about either side of your dad’s personality, it is okay to do it. I’m here for you, no matter what.”

“I do know that. My feelings were just all jumbled up and I didn’t know what to do after Dina told me about her little brother.”

We sat quietly, snuggled into one another, each processing things in our own way. Before long, I yawned and stretched in defeat. “I need a nap before Josh comes back home.”

“Go on up to bed. I love you, Mom.”

“Love you too, my precious daughter.”

Ariel smiled at me as I moved to go upstairs. “Hey, Mom?”

“Yeah, sweetheart?”

“Have some good dreams about your biker man. Most of the girls in school have a huge crush on him.”

“Do you?” I asked, shocked that schoolgirls even knew who he was. Then again, small towns being what they were, I supposed it made sense.

She shook her head adamantly. “Nope. He’s old. I have my eyes on someone else.”

“A future biker man?” I asked.

She shrugged and giggled. “Maybe.”

“Lord help me,” I muttered as I carried my exhausted self up the stairs and proceeded to do exactly what my daughter told me to do. I had a salacious dream about a certain biker man and his beautiful, thick head of hair trailing all over my skin as his mouth explored my body.