“Are you okay?”
“I think…” He grabbed my arm. “I think I need that water Betsy was offering.”
“Wait here.”
I ran into the house and straight for the kitchen where Betsy was filling a pitcher with lemonade. Her normally placid demeanor shifted into panic mode the moment she saw me. I wasn’t even finished explaining the situation before she’d taken off down the hall, calling over her shoulder for me to bring the water.
Arriving back on the patio, I was stunned to find Betsy embracing Tucker, his forehead pressed to her shoulder.
Was he… crying?
Speechless, I held his glass of water with a shaky hand.
Pulling his shoulder back, Tucker blinked at me with frantic eyes. “I’m so sorry. You have to believe me, everything I did was to protect you. I swear.”
“Protect me from what? My own mother?”
“God yes, Bodhi, from your own mother.”
Betsy took the water and turned it over to Tucker before addressing me in a calm voice, “I know you feel you’ve been wronged, but just remember there are two sides to every story. You owe it to yourself to hear him out.”
She glanced back at Tucker before patting my cheek and slipping into the house.
“Tell me,” I said flatly.
Resigned, my father stared into his glass. “How far back do you want me to start?”
“As far back as it takes to explain why you made me think it was my fault my mother was dead.”
“I never meant for you to think that.”
“Well, I did.”
Tucker buried his head in his hands. “I screwed everything up so badly.”
There was no disagreeing with him on that front. And as much as I wanted to feel sympathy for him, he hadn’t earned it yet. I flopped in the chair opposite him and waited for my truth. And, finally, after an over twenty-year wait, it came.
“I was eighteen when my mother remarried a man named Andrew Easton. It was her third marriage. Needless to say, because of her track record, I wasn’t real optimistic about this one lasting either. So, before they married, I moved out. I had no interest in a new daddy.
“Anyway, he was an okay guy, I guess. But he came with a lot of baggage. His ex-wife had taken off with a former flame, leaving him to raise two daughters alone. The older one was sixteen and her name was Serena. The younger was Marni—she was fourteen. I think he married my mom to be a good influence on his girls, but she was a timid lady, had struggled with depression all her life, and was also a gigantic pushover. Andrew’s daughters ate her alive.
“From the start, those girls were nightmares. Both had drug and truancy issues. They were rude and never listened to my mother. The words they called her…” Tucker shook his head, anger tinging his tone.
“Anyway, mom sunk further into depression and, a year after she married Andrew, she reached the end of her rope and hung herself with it.”
It was the first time he’d ever discussed his family with me, and now I understood why. Tucker had always been about perfection, and to have something so devastating, so messy, in his past would have been viewed as shameful. His hand shook as he lifted the glass to his lips.
“I blamed those girls,” he admitted. “And aside from seeing them occasionally at the restaurant where I worked, we had no contact. I learned a few years later that Andrew had a heart attack when Marni was sixteen. After that, she just ran wild.
“I was twenty-five the day she walked into my work six months pregnant and begging for my help. She claimed she wanted to get healthy, for you, so I took her in. It was the first time I’d ever seen her put someone else first, and I was hopeful that you would be the thing to turn her life around.
“Anyway, Marni lived with me those last three months. She got a job as a waitress and was doing great. Until you were born and things began falling apart. Friends, parties, drugs… they came back with a vengeance. Bad things started happening. Some days I’d come home from work to find Marni and her friends passed out on my couch while you were lying on the floor, needles scattered all around. Other days, I’d come home and find you alone in the crib, diaper full and crying from hunger. Soon she was disappearing for longer and longer stretches of time. I wasn’t your father or even related to you, but suddenly I became your primary caretaker. I never signed up for that, Bodhi. You were just dropped in my lap and I did the best I could.”
As I listened to the story, I had newfound respect for Tucker. He’d only been a little older than me when all this went down, and I had to wonder how well I would’ve handled a drugged-out Marni… and a baby.
Tucker sighed, and then continued, “When you were about four months old, Marni was arrested. I’d been working with social workers and they were fully aware of the situation. When they confronted her about abandoning you, she signed away her parental rights and suddenly I was being given the option to adopt you or let them place you in foster care until they could find you an appropriate family. The thing is, I’d grown attached to you.” His gaze found mine and held. “I loved you, Bodhi. And I thought that would be enough, but clearly I had no business being a father. I realize now how selfish I was. I should have let them place you with a loving family instead of turning you into a circus animal. I’m so sorry, kid. I really am.”
Tears spilled down his cheeks, and the sympathy I never thought I’d feel hit me full force. He looked…broken. Not larger than life, like he’d always appeared. Today, Tucker proved he was only human.
