She stiffened, a hint of dread in her expression, like she knew what was going to happen next in the story.
“My mom marries my dad when she graduates from high school, adopts Seamus, goes to live with the O’Malley’s—my dad’s parents—and puts herself through nursing school part time while taking care of his parents and his kid. But he’s always so grateful, can’t say thank you enough. He buys her presents, nice stuff, and expensive jewelry. Gratitude for miles. She wants more kids. He’s deployed, career navy guy, so he’s only ever home to get my mom pregnant. Appreciation as far as the eye could see. He gives her everything but his time.”
“Then one day, my dad is home for a weekend. Being an asshole teenager, I sneak my father’s wallet, planning to lighten him of a few twenty-dollar bills. I open the wallet and what do I find? Pictures of him with a lady who is not my mother, and they look recent.”
Kat flinched.
“No pictures of my mom. No pictures of us kids. Just pictures of that lady.” My eyes lost focus as I remembered. “I took one photo, ’cause I didn’t know who this person was, and asked my grandfather O’Malley about it. He loses his temper—as he was prone to do—and confronts my dad in front of my mom. So there we were, the four of us, my mom crying, and the truth all comes out. I didn’t know about Seamus, about any of it, and I didn’t know my dad had been running around on my mom the whole time with this lady, but it all comes out. And Grandpa tells my dad he has to choose, he can’t keep putting Eleanor and the kids through this.”
The taste of coffee and croissant turned sour in my mouth.
“He packed his bags.” My stare returned to hers. “And do you know what he said to my mom before he left?”
She shook her head. Her big, brown, beautiful eyes teeming with compassion.
“He said he would always be grateful. But that gratitude wasn’t love, and he was tired of trying to force it.”
“What a bastard.” The words were a breath, like she hadn’t meant to speak them aloud.
I smirked, though I didn’t find her statement funny so much as painfully true. “Yeah. Well. I found out later his precious Linda died that same year. His parents didn’t speak to him, went to their graves disowning him. He’s still in the navy and that’s all he’s got, high up now, an admiral or something.”
“You don’t know if he’s an admiral?”
I shook my head, pushing the croissant away, no longer hungry.
“Was that the last time you saw him?”
“No. I saw him . . .” My eyes moved up and to the right. “I saw him a few years back in Washington, DC. I was there for work and ran into him at a restaurant.”
“Did you talk to him?”
I nodded. This part of the story was easy to tell. But, looking back, I’d always had the sense it had happened to someone else. “He approached me, wanted to go somewhere, to talk.”
“What did you do?”
“I told him that I’d always be grateful he sent money home to Ma when we were growing up, but that gratitude wasn’t the same as love, and I was tired of trying to force it.”
She flinched again. “Ouch.”
“What the fuck does he care? He’s the one who left, he’s the one who didn’t give a shit.”
Kat nodded, her pretty mouth a mournful line. “You’re right. He’s the one who left.”
“Damn straight.” I reached for my coffee, but then set it back on the table, feeling restless. “And you want to know the worst part of it?”
“What’s that?”
Disgusted, I crossed my arms. “Those pictures of him in the house. She won’t let us speak badly of him, sends us down the cellar if we do.”
“Do you think she still . . . ?”
“I don’t know.”
And that was the God’s honest truth.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Sildenafil, sold as the brand name Viagra™ (among others), is a medication used to treat erectile dysfunction and pulmonary arterial hypertension. It was initially studied for use in hypertension (high blood pressure) and angina pectoris. When the first clinical trials were conducted, male patients presented with a common adverse side effect: marked penile erections.
There is a generic version of Viagra™ available (as of December 2017) via Teva Pharmaceuticals.
—The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists
**Kat**
Dan began playing footsie with me under the table just after 9:00 PM.
I felt something slide up my leg and jumped. Mr. Stevenson, the VP of estate finance at Brooks and Quail, where many of my family’s US-based investments were housed, had been reviewing the loss statements over the last quarter.