Oh dear.
“So, you’re saying, he still loves her?” I asked carefully.
“Yeah. I’m sayin’ that and I’m sayin’ the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I’m a lot like my dad, includin’ the fact I found a hard, bossy, tough-as-nails woman I thought I could fix and make happy. Unlike my dad, when I could take no more, I moved on. He didn’t. Like me and Mitzi, my parents don’t get along. This is because Mom still wants to control Dad and he’s not down with that, but Dad still loves Mom so he’s always strugglin’ with the idea that maybe he should be. It’s not cool and it’s hell on the kids. Dad comes out two or three times a year but he only does it anytime he hears word Mom’s thinkin’ of comin’ out. So he makes his plans and she gets shitty and backs off. Kids see their granddad but they haven’t seen their grandma in three years. He plays that shit with her all the time just to dick with her ’cause he’s pissed she isn’t what he needs her to be. Drives her nuts and she gives that anger to me, and while he’s here I have to listen to his shit when he crows about stickin’ it to her. It’s insane and a pain in my ass.”
It sounded like a pain in the ass.
“That isn’t very nice,” I noted, again carefully.
“Nope,” Hop agreed. “But I can’t find it in me to say she doesn’t deserve it. The best day of my life up to then was the day he left her. She busted his balls and he took it but that didn’t mean he didn’t go down without a fight. They fought all the fuckin’ time. Morning, noon and night. Loud. Vicious. Told you kids suck shit up like a sponge. With that, Jimmy, Teddy, and me didn’t have to suck it up. It was shoved down our throats. She was still a bitch after he left but at least we didn’t have to listen to our mother and father tearing into each other all the fuckin’ time. It was a relief.”
I wrapped my fingers around his thigh and said quietly, “That doesn’t sound like a fun upbringing.”
“It wasn’t,” Hop confirmed. “Dad’s a good guy but eventually boys grow up and look at their old man and they can do one of two things. Have somethin’ they wanna emulate or get scared shitless that they’ll grow up just like him. Jim, Ted, and me, we got the last. Jim, like me, fucked up and moved on. Teddy’s so busy movin’ on, he hasn’t settled so he fucks up constantly. Not a great legacy for either of my folks to give their boys. Honest to Christ, babe, if they weren’t such good grandparents, I’d be done with the whole fuckin’ thing. But they love Molly and Cody. My kids and Jimmy’s kids do not get any of the shit we were treated to, and I want my kids to have that. So even though they bite at each other and that reminds me of unhappy times, I put up with it because the kids have to have one set of grandparents who love them unconditionally, and not with the haze of hatin’ their mom and dad hangin’ over every damned thing.”
“That makes me sad not only for you but for Molly and Cody,” I admitted, and after the words left my mouth, his hand curled around the back of my neck and he leaned in so he was all I could see.
“That’s why you make buttermilk pancakes and, when the opportunity for a weekend in the mountains comes up, you jump on it. Why, when a beautiful woman offers to make dinner, you take her up on it immediately ’cause you wanna be with that woman but you also want your kids to be around beauty and the goodness of a home-cooked meal. Why, when the last thing you wanna do is play fuckin’ Pictionary, you do it ’cause you don’t remember one single good time in your life that involved both of your parents that didn’t end in ugly words or an out-and-out fight. Why, they laugh and you hear it’s carefree, you feed on that shit because you know they know you hate their mother but they still got it in them to laugh real, deep, from their fuckin’ gut. So even though that shit is all shit and they know it as much as you do, it didn’t seep into their blood like you were scared as fuck it would and you rejoice in that.”
When Hop was done talking, I was staring at him and I wasn’t breathing.
All I could do was take him in and let each of his words, the depth of love he had for his kids, settle straight into my soul.
I must have done this for a while because I felt his fingers tense at my neck and he called, “Lanie?”
I pulled in a breath and then told him straight. “You’re a good man, Hopper Kincaid.”
His expression changed again, surprise sifting through then warmth settling in.
“That beats out you telling me I’m distracting for the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” he replied.