I take it from her, deeply regretting how much I enjoy when our fingers touch.
I would like to kiss her.
To forget this evening happened.
Though I would prefer to have earned that honor rather than deserving to be verbally eviscerated for my failure to raise upstanding, law-abiding children.
“Maybe two months after my parents died, my brothers started asking for a dog,” Bea says. “All three of them wereasking constantly. I was barely keeping up with who had to be at band practice or play practice and who had to be at baseball practice and when Ryker’s therapy sessions were and if they were all getting their homework done, so I kept telling them we’d talk about it later. But later came and went, and they got tired of the answer, so Griff and Hudson snuck into the elementary school and stole the kindergarten class’s guinea pig.”
I peer in the direction of her voice. “Truly?”
“Yep. That was my first run-in with the local chief of police. No, second. Ryker was the only one of my brothers home the night of the fire, and the police had a few questions for him, so at the ripe old age of nineteen, I was officially his adult to be present when they were questioning him as a minor at not-quite-sixteen. But not the point. Point is, kids do kid shit. Even bad kid shit when you think their consciences should know better. And eventually they grow up and become the kind of people who will host cookouts at their farmhouses for you even though they don’t like using the grill because it’s on fire or being around a lot of people.”
I twist the top off the bottle and take a sip.
Ah.
I’ve got the shandy.
It’s rather lovely.
The voice whispering that I don’t deserve one of my favorite drinks whispers a bit softer, as though I might be loosening up on the self-flagellation.
“Then there was the year Griff didn’t turn in a single assignment on time,” Bea continues. “Ryker missed some occasionally, especially when his nightmares about the fire would come back, but not like Griff did his freshman year. I was getting calls and emails from the school about him failing classesconstantly. And he kept rolling his eyes at me and telling me the baseball commissioner didn’t care if he passed algebra, and hedidn’t listen to the softball coach at Austen & Lovelace who told him otherwise, but she used her network for me to get us a call with the local minor league team’s coach who put the fear of the ghost of Babe Ruth in him for me.”
I sip at my beer again and remain quiet.
Her voice is calming.
So is the message she’s gently delivering, which is soothing parts of me that I never knew could be soothed.
That I never thought I deserved to have soothed.
Is this what true family is supposed to do?
“And that was the year that Hudson had a cold every other week, which meant he was at the doctor every other week because I didn’t want to not take him if it was actually worse than just a cold because that would’ve been letting my parents down if I didn’t get him diagnosed right and then he got that infection in his heart that sometimes happens with strep throat.”
“Is that a thing?”
“Yep.”
“Bloody hell. Charlie sniffled yesterday.”
“Probably allergies.”
I sigh deeply and stare into the darkness, idly letting the bottle dangle by my fingers. “Lana took the boys. She has no time or bandwidth, as she calls it, for them this week—her mother is being quite difficult, which she insists is not her mother’s fault, given her memory issues—but I’m clearly inept at being a parent, so she took the boys.”
Bea’s hand rests on my leg, and she squeezes gently. “My parents were pretty awesome as far as parents go, but I still remember occasional nights when I was little when one of them would get angry and the other would tap in. And I can’t tell you how many fights my brothers and I had the first couple years after our parents died because I didn’t get a break and I neededone and felt guilty for not being able to live up to the example they set for us.”
“My parents were bloody awful, and I was constantly berated for anything, sometimes even perfection not being perfect enough, and so I have no idea how to discipline my children without being my parents, but I was so fucking angry this evening, and all I could hear was my father’s voice coming out of my mouth.”
She scoots closer and settles her head on my shoulder. “I googled your parents too. I know you can’t tell a person by their search results, but I’m pretty sure your father wouldn’t be sitting in the grass beating himself up over worrying if he was a good father or not.”
I want to sigh again, but instead, I take another swig of beer.
She’s not wrong.
Generally, after berating me, he would seek solace in the arms of a mistress.
