“Sure.”
“You never talk about having any extended family members. I’ve shared my past with you and Quinten, and I was hoping you would tell me about yours.”
“There really isn’t much to tell.”
Camilla thought he meant there wasn’t much good to tell, based on the way he shuttered his emotions behind a stoic face. She scooted closer and whispered, “I can handle you, Ben. Warts and all. You know I’d understand after what happened to me.”
“I know that lots of people have dealt with much worse than what I had growing up.” He kept his eyes on the road as he spoke, his gaze focused far in the distance.
“But it shaped you. I want to know how you came to be the man you are today.”
Ben smiled down at her. “You have as much to do with that as anyone else. I want to be a better man for you.”
Not letting him off the hook, Camilla nudged him gently with her shoulder. “Nice try, handsome. We’ll get to me later.”
“My childhood was average, I guess. I didn’t understand that there were problems until I was a teenager. I thought that everyone’s dad drank until he fell asleep in his chair every night. He worked and provided a home for us. Was usually a pretty nice guy. Funny as hell when he was drunk. When I was a teenager, it got hard for him to hold down a job because he was drinking during the day, too. Mom had to get a job to supplement his income, and eventually, she became the sole breadwinner. I got angry when I saw what it did to her. She’d always seemed a little frail, but being the main support was hard on her physically and emotionally.”
He never went home for holidays, so Camilla worried what had become of them.
“One winter, she developed bronchitis and couldn’t kick it. She wound up in the hospital.”
“Oh, no.”
“Dad didn’t have a job. I came home from school, and he was asleep on the couch. There was a message on our answering machine from one of the nurses at the hospital in Ozona, where we lived. She’d collapsed at work and had been rushed to the emergency room. I didn’t have my driver’s license yet. He woke up while I was listening to the message again and was pretty upset when he heard it. I remember being so pissed off at him and felt like he didn’t have a right to suddenly be upset. I yelled at him that it was his fault she was sick. He looked at me like I’d pulled the rug out from under him and insisted he could drive us to the hospital.”
Ben paused again as though he was reliving those moments, and Camilla waited, bracing herself for whatever he’d gone through, her heart aching for him. She didn’t hear anger when he talked about his mom and dad. She heard love and loss in his voice, and she couldn’t help but respond.
“He wanted to take care of things?”
“As best as he could, I guess. Against my better judgment, I let him drive us to the hospital. I could’ve talked sense to him and stopped him, but I was so worried about Mom and needed to check on her. He cried when he got behind the wheel, like it just all came crashing down on his shoulders. He confessed to me that he was an alcoholic. It was his fault she had to work so hard, and also his fault she’d worked herself until she’d gotten sick. It wasn’t very mature, but I gave him the silent treatment, just fuming the whole way to the hospital.”
“How old were you?”
“Fifteen.”
She wasn’t holding immaturity at that age against him.
“He swore to me that he’d get himself into treatment. I sat there taking it all in, wondering how I should respond. The only dad I knew was drunk dad. I didn’t know if I could believe him.”
“Did he get into treatment?”
“No.” Ben paused briefly, let out a deep sigh, and continued in a gravelly voice. “On the way to the hospital he passed out behind the wheel, and the car slammed into a tree. I was buckled in, but he was ejected through the front windshield.”
Camilla wrapped her arm around his waist and whispered, “I’m so sorry, Ben.”
Ben kissed the top of her head and forged on as though he needed to get it over with. “I woke up in the hospital with broken ribs, and my right arm and my left leg were both in casts. I was a mess. By that point, my mom was in the intensive care unit. I went to her as soon as they let me out of that hospital bed. My grandparents came, which helped, I guess. They were with me when my mom and I found out from the doctors that Dad was dead. Killed on impact.”
Camilla stroked his arm but remained silent.
“I saw the light that remained in her go out. She was so weak, and losing Dad took all the fight out of her. He hadn’t taken good care of her, but she’d still loved him. I was fifteen, but I could see what was happening. I hung on to the fact that she still had me, still had a reason to live, but she died two days later.”