“Don’t Daddy me. Why would you get back with him?”
“We’re not back together. I just live with him. It’s free housing. He wanted to make it up to me.”
“I’m sure he does. He still with that blonde demon?” Daddy asks.
I crack up.
“That jonesing Jezebel,” he mutters.
“Daddy. They work together. And I am not with him anymore, nor do I want to get with him anymore, and if you’re wondering… he did ask.”
Daddy bends to pick up the dog’s mess, but I take the bag from him and pick up the tiny lump before wrapping it.
“Men like that, baby, they only want one thing. If he could leave you once for a woman barely a quarter of what you are, and it don’t take much—”
“I know, Daddy. I know all that. I’m not going to lie, my heart still remembers, you know…”
Daddy goes quiet for a minute.
“That’s why I’m worried, because I know you still love that boy. I ain’t faulting you for that. You love who you love. But baby girl… you got to love yourself too. If a man not going to love you and treasure you the way I brought you up to treasure yourself, then you need to leave him alone. He had one chance and he blew it. And if you take him back, you’re basically giving him the permission to do it again.”
“So you don’t think there’s circumstances in which sometimes things happen?”
“When you make a marriage commitment to forsake all others, that’s exactly what it means. If you have no self-control or thewillpower to do it, then you don’t need to be getting married. He looked me in my eye and told me that he would never hurt you and that he would protect you, and I trusted him. And now I can’t even die in peace because he sent you back out in the road broken and with nobody to take my place to protect you when I’m gone. And I’m already old and decrepit.”
I stay quiet for a long stretch as Daddy keeps talking, his words sinking in while we continue walking.
“Do you think maybe… I’m just meant to be alone?” I ask him, the question spilling out of me before I can stop it. I feel exposed… small.
Daddy inhales and then lets out a slow, heavy exhale. “Baby, nobody’s meant to be alone. There’s somebody for everybody, but the love and respect has got to be the same on both ends.”
“The thing is… it was. Before he started working at that job. And then I think like… did I do enough as a wife?”
“You can always find faults with yourself, because we are our own worst critic. I remember when I blamed myself for so many years, even now, about what happened with your mom. Could have done more, should have done more. I let too much slide by, and if I had done my part more she probably still be here.”
“Daddy, you can’t put that on yourself. Mama is very headstrong.”
“But that’s what I’m trying to say, baby. You can only do so much naming and blaming on yourself, but it comes down to the other person taking some of that responsibility. You did your job as a wife? Huh? You did the best you could?”
“I think so.”
“Then the rest is up to him. He chose to let his guard down. That’s what being in a relationship is about. People think you live happily ever after and that’s it, no work involved. It’s constant work and constant investment. You get up and you eat every day, don’t you? Shower every day? Make sure you’re taken care of?
“Like having a baby. You start neglecting that baby and it grows up malnourished, and eventually you might not have that baby anymore. And marriage is something that can grow into something beautiful, but both people… they need to put constant work.”
Daddy shakes his head, looking forward as he shuffles along. His little dog yanks at the leash suddenly, barking at something it sees in the distance.
“And Lincoln…” Daddy continues quietly, “…he stopped investing. He was invested in something else, and that girl at his job, everything else but what he should have been doing. You stop investing in something, eventually something’s going to suffer, and he chose it to be your marriage. That says a lot about him. He chose other things over you. No matter how hard your mama worked, she always continued investing in us. Not once did she ever feel like she was not present, and I know that was not easy, but that was a choice she made.”
I nod.
-??-
Chapter 13
Lincoln's POV
The park is quiet.
